MUSLIMS & THE STRAIGHT PATH: Part - 1-E - Egalitarian Muslims and Hindu Rejection

Muslims & The Straight Path  [Published 2010]

Part - 1-E

EGALITARIAN MUSLIMS AND HINDU REJECTION

While it can be understood that foreign invaders, intent to plunder and to return home, cared little for the feelings of the native population, it is deplorable that even after Muslims had settled in India for hundreds of years, and even Muslims of Hindu origin, they, like most foreign imperialists, continued to show the most callous disregard for the sentiments of their conquered subjects. Common to all Hindus, of whatever caste, is veneration for the cow. The bull is equally sacred due to his connection with Shiva. But the cow is divine in her own right and is inviolable, and even among non-vegetarian Hindus beef is never eaten. But the Muslims eat beef excessively, and how deeply this practice violated the Hindu spirit can be judged by the fact that the Mughals had hardly been replaced by the British when Hindu leaders started cow protection societies.  Even the Congress, from almost its origin, passed resolutions on this subject annually. This problem now no longer exists, but till independence the daily slaughter of thousands of cows contributed greatly to anti-Muslim sentiment among Hindus and widened the gulf between them. It is a shame for the Muslims that they enjoined religiosity with beef eating. Any learned Muslim truly following the Quran and the Prophet will vouch that hurting the sentiments of other human beings, albeit of those in majority, is unIslamic. This writer is of the opinion that eating of beef is haram (forbidden) in India; if only the Muslims begin following their true religion. The only person who matters, and who is known to have expressed similar views publicly, is Khomeini who too gave a fatwa that if the sentiments of the Hindus were getting hurt, eating of beef was haram (forbidden).

The Muslims, on their part, witness to distorted versions of religion in the adhering masses of the Hindus, found little in them to attract them. Monotheists, they condemned the polytheistic practices they saw all around them. Egalitarians, they were shocked at the iniquities of the caste system. But what they most deeply resented was the Hindu inhibitions which completely precluded any social intercourse. Neither the chauvinism of conquerors, nor the Muslim Umma concept can, therefore, solely be held responsible for Muslim collectivism and their consequent sense of “identity.” In his ‘History and Culture of Indian People’, RC Majumdar wrote:

“The segregation of the Muslim community was rendered necessary, at least to a large extent, by the social rules and habits of the Hindus who regarded the Muslims as unclean and impure. The Hindus maintained no social intercourse with the other community by way of inter-dining and intermarriage. They were uncompromising in this respect and regarded the touch of the Muslims, or even a scent of their food, as pollution.”

Exclusion is tantamount to rejection and, as every psychiatrist knows, rejection creates deeper complexes than any other emotion. The feeling of rejection persists to this day, chiefly in the area of employment.

It is ironical that Islam with its social egalitarianism, instead of having a leveling effect on the many-tiered Hindu social system, brought about the acceptance of hitherto secular social customs as orthodox Hinduism with religious sanction behind them. Islam being a moral and social system of laws which were believed to be divinely revealed, law was left to the ulema, and the State never assumed legislative functions. Therefore, during the whole of what is historically termed as the “Muslim period” the State took no interest whatsoever in social reform. In the result, the Hindus continued to be governed by their own customs and caste panchayats. In fact, under Brahmin leadership, they became even more closely knit as a defense against conversion. Another cause of resentment to Brahmins in particular was that in the Muslim administrative services many new Muslims had been recruited who were formerly low-caste Hindus. This fortuitous reversal of roles was not digested by the upper-castes easily.

This may have been the reason for other causes of resentment also. Even an Islam-influenced Hindu such as Rammohan Roy felt compelled to point out the denial of the civil and religious rights of the Hindus under “Muslim” rule, even though the rule was imperialist Mughal more than theological Muslim. (Everything the Mughals did was no more “Muslim” than everything the British did was “Christian”)

For all the comforting belief in the synthesizing effect of a “composite culture” which the Machiavellian British divided in order to rule, the fact is that due to Muslim bigotry and Hindu xenophobia the Mughal rule, except by vested interests and professional classes, was deeply resented. The hatred against the Mughals in east India has been graphically depicted by Bengal’s greatest novelist, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, in his book ‘Ananda Math’ in which the controversial song ‘Vande Mataram’ appears. If the book is anti-Muslim, which it is, it was because the Hindus of that period were anti-Muslim. Bankim Chatterji was a novelist; not a propagandist. Niharranjan Ray is a historian, and he brought out a very significant difference between the Muslim and Hindu ethos in one of the lectures he delivered at the Aligarh Muslim University in 1972, and later published by the University in a book entitled ‘Nationalism in India’. Explaining the reasons for the hatred of Hindus against the Muslim conquerors he stated:

“. . . but this was not because the Muslims were alien or foreign [the converts who formed by far the largest number of the community certainly were not], but because in Islam the Hindus had found for the first time a religion and a way of life that admitted no compromise, was militant and aggressive in its behavior pattern and aimed at controlling the entire area of man’s life including the political and the economic. It was on this, the last two that the crux of the situation laid. That it was so, was proved by the fact that when the British dispossessed them of their political power and authority the community at once found itself in a position where they had, as it were, no legs to stand upon.”

Muslims will do a great disservice to their religion if they do not get back to their history books and conclude, as we claim, that Islam got derailed shortly after Prophet’s death. History is replete with incidents showing them possessing all the negative traits, yet carrying aloft the flag of Islam. There are all proves and the writers agree that as per face of Islam presented by its adherents, Muslims are incapable of living in a minority, leave alone in a democracy. Unless the Muslims unite on accepting that such teachings have nothing to do with Islam and the Muslim leadership shortly after the Prophet was showing a pseudo-face of Islam, they will let the blame fell on their professed religion.

The only comforting fact, which the Hindus are largely unaware, is that these pseudo-believers in Islam have barbarically treated their own supposed ‘brothers’, whenever they felt the need. Barely 25 years after death of the Prophet, the Muslim Governors in ‘Islamized provinces’ like Egypt, Syria, Basra and Kufa were acting as autocrats, gathering wealth and living with pomp and luxury, all in the name of Islam.

Certain segments of Muslims, to this day, have good opinion about the rule of Muawiya, whereas there is no-denying the fact that he was an usurper, one who fought against the Caliph, not refrained from killing even the most pious companions of the Prophet, went on territory annexing spree merely for the booty, for the women and allied riches which came along with it.

Conquest is a material phenomenon and has nothing to do with spirituality. The fact that the books on Islamic history that are taught under Islamic Studies, like the one by PK Hitti, only talk of the conquests and sword, speaks of the general Muslim mindset, which failed to reach to the higher and more sublime aspects of Islamic teachings.

History, which glorified the likes of Khalid bin Walid, referred to by Muslims as Saifullah (the Sword of Allah) is silent to recount the incident wherein he killed a companion of the Prophet, merely because his wife was extremely beautiful, and ‘married’ her the same day, something that Islam would never permit.
Loyalty to the state and how a Muslim ought to live in a minority can best be understood from the unaccounted and largely forgotten chapters of Islamic history, the study of which will reveal that Imam Jafar Sadiq, Imam Musa Kazim, Imam Ali Raza lived under the most adverse circumstances. Yet, Imam Jafar Sadiq is known to be the originator of arguably the world’s first university of its kind, with nearly 6000 students, from as far and wide as Spain and India. Yet, they were the most pious people of their times, the most spiritually inclined, the most learned, and the most peace-loving who never tried to usurp political power.

Coming back to the Indian scenario, the existing social stratification was intensified by another consequence of the Muslim rule. The Hindu states which remained independent, such as the Vijayanagar Empire and the Mahratta Confederacy, became the champions of Hinduism in its defense. They became the refuge and sanctuary of orthodoxy. As true today as five hundred years ago, a society on the defense is inevitably more anxious to preserve than to reform and to find apologists for all that had been inherited, good or bad. These states therefore came to believe that their duty was the ‘conservation’ of the dharma, and the upholding of past customs and practices. Consequently, Hindus, whether in the parts of India under direct rule of Muslims or in independent Hindu kingdoms, froze and every kind of custom came to be considered as sacred and inviolable.

But even if the social egalitarianism in Islam failed to level the orthodox Hindu social system, it succeeded, not in the number of conversion but in the manner it stimulated protestant Hinduism.

If the impact of Islam on Hindus increased the existing social stratification, the impact of Hinduism on Muslims brought about social fragmentation. The overwhelming majority of Hindu converts having embraced Islam more for social than for theological reasons resulted in Islam being no more than an overlay on an infrastructure of Hindu customs, practices, and even superstitions. The Muslims also congregated in the cities and consequently the unifying force of Islam was hardly felt in the countryside. Furthermore, the Muslim invaders had not brought women with them, and the practice common on all levels of marrying Hindus introduced Hindu social practices into Muslim households. In the result, the new Muslims fell into innumerable sects, biradaries and jama’ats, and when, as sometimes happened, a whole sub-caste was converted, they retained their collectivity. This was all against the concept of ‘Muslim Umma’, and the old Muslims themselves made matters worse by introducing social differences of their own. Foreign descent became a social distinction, the descendents of the invaders being known as ‘ashrafs’ and those of converts as ‘ajlaf’. Saiyeds, Ansaris, Qureshis proliferated, and if a Saiyed married a Sheikh’s daughter, he would not give his daughter in return. The Muslims therefore split vertically as well as horizontally, in addition to the Shia-Sunni differences.

Hindus and Muslims therefore became plural societies within themselves and only became entities in relation to one another. It was this nebulous feeling of separatism which was crystallized by politics into “two-identity” rivalry which Jinnah found it easy to internationalize. But that was much later. Meantime, due to the social exclusiveness in both, Hindus and Muslims, found it preferable to live apart. In cities there were, and still are, Hindu and Muslim areas, and even in mixed villages the Hindus grouped around the temples and the Muslims around the mosques. Though in their own interests they coexisted peacefully, and in urban areas mostly, even evolved a common language – Urdu – from the time district officers have left records there was communal tension at every religious festival. Even in cosmopolitan cities Muslims generally prefer their own company and, apart from certain elite segment, it is rare to find the majority mixing freely with Hindus. A great deal of Muslim communalism is due to the consequent intellectual in-breeding.

Dogmas that the pseudo-face of Islam created certainly blockaded Muslims from their spiritual thought, and in consequence their minds became static and stagnant. This can be understood by the total lack of attempts towards flexibility except perhaps by emperor Akbar, the son of a Sunni father and a Shia mother and born in the house of a Hindu and brought up among Sufis, who made an attempt to synthesize various religions. But whether the attempt was genuine and not motivated by state-policy, or more as a Henry VIII than Martin Luther, is uncertain. It is however certain that even though the Quran limits the number to four, Akbar had during his life more than three hundred wives. Moreover, according to Badauni, an assiduous chronicler of Akbar’s reign second only to Abul Fazal, after hearing both, he dismissed the Sunni court Qazi, who disagreed and replaced him with a Shia who decreed that Akbar’s superfluity of wives could be religiously permissible under the muta’a principle which was a private pact between man and woman for an agreed period of time. Evidently, Akbar too was a ruler first and a Muslim later, just as Maharaja Ranjit Singh, also known for keeping a big-sized harem, was a ruler first and anything else later. To consider Akbar or even Aurangzeb as living the Islamic way of life is as wrong as it was to consider Muawiya as the symbol of Islam.