MUSLIMS & THE STRAIGHT PATH: Part - 1-G - Lack of Social Synthesis

Muslims & The Straight Path  [Published 2010]

Part - 1-G

LACK OF SOCIAL SYNTHESIS 

Jawaharlal Nehru in his ‘The Discovery of India’ wrote:

“Whatever the word we may use, Indian or Hindi or Hindustani, for our cultural tradition, we see in the past that some inner urge towards synthesis, derived essentially from the Indian philosophic outlook, was the dominant feature of Indian cultural and even racial development. Each incursion of foreign elements was a challenge to this culture, and it met it successfully by a new synthesis and a process of absorption. This was also a process of rejuvenation and new blooms of culture rose out of it, the background and essential basis, however, remaining much the same. C.E.M. Joad has written about this: ‘Whatever the reason, it is a fact that India’s special gift to mankind has been the ability and willingness of Indians to effect a synthesis of many different elements both of thoughts and people, to create, in fact, unity out of diversity.’”

Stressing assimilation, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad has written even more persuasively:

“It was India’s historic destiny that many human races and cultures and religions should flow to her, finding a home in her hospitable soil, and that many a caravan should find rest here. Even before the dawn of history, these caravans trekked into India and wave after wave of newcomers followed. This vast and fertile land gave welcome to all and took them to her bosom. One of the last of these caravans, following the footsteps of its predecessors, was that of the followers of Islam. This came here and settled here for good. This led to a meeting of the culture-currents of two different races. Like the Ganga and the Jumna, they flowed for a while through separate courses, but nature’s immutable law brought them together and joined them in a sangam.

This fusion was a notable event in history. Since then, destiny, in her own hidden way, began to fashion a new India in place of the old. We brought our treasures with us, and India too was full of the riches of her own precious heritage. We gave our wealth to her and she unlocked the doors of her own treasures to us. We gave her what she needed most, the most precious gifts of Islam’s treasure: the message of democracy and human equality.

Islam has now as great a claim on the soil of India as Hinduism. If Hinduism has been the religion of the people here for several thousand years, Islam also has been their religion for a thousand years. Just as a Hindu can say with pride that he is an Indian and follows Hinduism so also we can say with equal pride that we are Indians and follow Islam.”

It is not certain on what basis Maulana Azad said that Islam taught the concept of democracy to the Hindus. Has there ever been democracy in Islam? Even if we believe the selection of first 5 caliphs (period referred to as Khilafat-e-Rashida), as democratic selection (we will see later in this compilation that they too were the choice of a handful of Muslims from the city of Medina and not all Muslims), there is no other instance to show that Islam believes in democratic selection at the highest level. Yes, Islam was more democratic at lower levels, particularly in developing the social fabric, without any distinction of high and low, white or black, slave or independent. In those areas, Hinduism still has to come out of age-old discrimination on the basis of caste and instead of learning from Islam has gone a long way in passing on the caste based discriminations among Indian Muslims. If we are talking of synthesis in such a manner, yes it did take place.

Islam of the Sufis was perfectly acceptable to Hindus. Truly speaking, this face of Islam was also closer to the Prophet’s teachings. The pseudo-Islam that came through the conquistadors was materialistic, superficial and utterly for namesake, similar to the Islam practiced by the Umayyad and Abbasid rulers. Needless to say, all the paraphernalia that accompanied these attackers was equally unIslamic in nature and content. If attacks were planned at a certain temple in India for booty, let us not forget that Kaaba too came under the attacking fire of certain Umayyad rulers, to the extent that its cover got burnt. If religion was forgotten in regard to forceful conversion in India, religion was also set aside and remained for namesake when an entire army was collected to kill the 100-odd friends and relatives (right till a 6-month old infant son) of Husain (Prophet’s favourite grand-son) at Karbala, barely 5 decades after the Prophet’s departure.

Husain was a true champion of Mohammad’s teachings. His martyrdom proved to be an important milestone in the progress of Islam as it revealed for one final time the distinction between the true teachings of Islam versus the pseudo-Islam being practiced by the Umayyad rulers. That only about 100-odd people decided to choose martyrdom along with Husain, all of whom got killed, is enough proof that the pseudo-Islam had come to dominate the center stage of happenings. Since the majority had opened their eyes to see this face of Islam as the only face, the materialistic, aloof, self-centered, fundamentalist and intolerant face of Muslim came to be understood as the face of true Islam. Today, we are left with no choice but to expose that Muslim face, if we need to protect and present the real Islamic face.

This pseudo-version of Islam, with all its abundant shortcomings and discrepancies, was incapable of assimilating with the Indian Hindus. Socially, even if for centuries the two societies were side by side, it was like the rails of a railway which never met. Economically also the two societies were complementary more than concentric; the majority of shopkeepers, traders, professional men, etc., being Hindu, and the majority of landowners, military officials, minor government servants, etc., being Muslim. Educationally, till sometime back, and almost invariably, the Muslim boy attended the mosque-oriented madrasa and the Hindu boy either the government school or the temple-oriented pathshala. There were no schools for girls. Post-Independence, while the pathshala system was abrogated and the Hindu boy moved from government to private schools, the majority of Muslim boys continued studying in madrasas till recent times. Reason was that while the Hindus didn’t relate the pathshalas to religion, the Muslims considered leaving the madrasa as anti-religious.

It may be wondered what Nehru and Azad thought of their words when they witnessed the pitiless ferocity with which the supposed “synthesized” Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs fell on each other during the partition riots. Nothing could have brought out more  vividly the complete absence of  any social  synthesis between neighbours  who had for centuries lived side by side, or how unknown to Hindus and Muslims is the humanist concept of ‘love thy neighbour’. But, alas, such a lesson has not yet been learned and neighbours still fall on each other (1992 riots and Gujarat being just two of the several such incidents). There have been thousands of communal incidents, great and small, since Independence.