MUSLIMS & THE STRAIGHT PATH: Part - 1-F - The HINDU Response

Muslims & The Straight Path  [Published 2010]

Part - 1-F

THE HINDU RESPONSE

One of the responses of Hinduism to Sufism was the doctrine of bhakti as evolved and developed by Ramanuja. Sometime towards the end of the fourteenth century, Ramananda, a disciple of his, founded at Benares a new sect for the propagation of this devotional religion. Among his disciples was the weaver Kabir who was the first to attempt a synthesis of Islam and Hinduism. He wrote: “God is one, whether we worship him as Allah or as Rama. The Hindu worships him on the eleventh day; the Muslim fasts at Ramzan; but God made all the days and all the months. . . . There is one Father of Hindus and Muslims.”

In recent times, Gandhi, towards the end of his life, asked to be sung at his evening prayers: ‘Ishwar Allah Tere Naam’, but this author, says Baig, has not been able to trace any similar saying by Muslims, including the non-conformist Ghalib.

The next to make an attempt was Nanak, a disciple of Kabir, who lived form 1469 to 1539. With remarkable humanism he studied all religions, and in order to understand Islam he believed to have visited Makkah. Nanak was essentially a protestant Hindu who propagated such Islamic doctrines as monotheism, anti-idol worship, and a casteless society. It was Arjun (1563-1606) the fifth guru who compiled the teachings of his predecessors and of some Hindu and Muslim saints into the ‘Granth’. He then went further and formulated the composite scriptures into a new synthetic religion stating:

I do not keep the Hindu fast, nor the Muslim Ramzan

I serve him alone who is my refuge

I serve one Master, who is also Allah

I have broken with the Hindu and the Muslim

I will not worship with the Hindu,

Nor like the Muslim go to Makkah.

Had the Muslims shown some flexibility towards the Hindus, Sikhism might not have attracted such a good number of followers only to become a new religion. Nanak, in fact, has been termed as a Hindu Muslim. His teachings were an attempt to take the good of both Islam and Hinduism. But Sikhism ceased to be a humanist religion and became a militant sect due to a most unfortunate series of events. At that period, after some abortive rebellions against Akbar, Jehangir ascended the throne. The son of a Hindu mother and a father as non-conformist as Akbar he was not likely to encourage communalism. Yet, at his orders, Arjun was arrested and, since Jehangir had in him a streak of sadism, tortured to death. But, contrary to what is so readily believed, it was not for communal reasons. Arjun had been ill-advised to support Khusro, Jehangir’s son, who had rebelled against his father. This apparently was too much for one who had himself rebelled against his own father and Jehangir’s wrath fell heavily on Arjun in particular and Sikhs in general. That his motivation was personal and political and not communal is well brought out by Khushwant Singh who writes: “Among his tormenters was a Hindu banker whose daughter’s hand Arjun had refused to accept for his son. Among those who tried, in vain, to intercede on his behalf was the Muslim divine, Mian Mir.” But whatever the motives, the harm was done: if the Mughals became anti-Sikh, the Sikhs became anti-Mughal, and consequently suffered considerable persecution.

Sikhism grew in strength as more and more Hindus, particularly Jats and Rajputs, adopted the new faith. Since Sikhism had all the egalitarian advantages of Islam plus Hindu features, it was understandably more attractive to caste-ridden Hindus than Islam propagated by foreign-cultured ulema, who had by then become victim to all type of vices. Sikhism, therefore, seriously impeded the spread of Islam and, moreover, the Sikhs, as they gathered strength, grew more and more restive under the rough justice of the Mughal regime. When the comparatively lax rule of Shah Jahan gave way to the strict one of Aurangzeb, the administration became Islam-oriented and in consequence the Sikhs and an undetermined number of Hindus, forced on to the defensive, came to regard the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, as their leader. The outcome of this reaction was that he was arrested, brought to Delhi, and beheaded.

According to Khushwant Singh:

“Emperor Aurangzeb was not in Delhi at the time. But there is little doubt that the policy of persecution of non-Muslims had been renewed at his personal command, and the execution of Tegh Bahadur, who was looked upon as the leader of the Hindus, had his tacit approval.”

Khushwant Singh also adds:

“There are different versions of the manner in which Tegh Bahadur died. Rattan Singh Bhangu in his Pracin Panth Praka’s maintains that on the Guru’s refusal to accept Islam the Chief Qazi asked him to exhibit some of the miraculous powers he was supposed to possess. . . .On Tegh Bahadur being unable to do so, he was beheaded.”

Khushwant Singh’s low-key account leaves many questions unanswered. Was the movement led by Tegh Bahadur political more than communal? Was his execution, therefore, for political more than communal reasons? Moreover, since the ninth Guru was a personage of no small importance, and his activities taken seriously enough to cause his execution, how was it that Aurangzeb was out of Delhi at that time?

Maheshwar Dayal in his fascinating series of articles entitled “Rediscovering Delhi” published in the Sunday supplement of the Hindustan Times tells another and far more gruesome story. He writes:

“When Guru Tegh Bahadur succeeded Harkishan, hundreds of Brahmins representing various centres of learning from Benaras to Srinagar came to seek his protection and help, narrating harrowing tales of torture of the Hindus, and forcible conversion of their families by the armies of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.”

Moreover, according to Dayal, Aurangzeb was not only in Delhi but personally carried out the interrogation. It was also he who asked Guru Tegh Bahadur “to show a ‘karamat’ or accept Islam; If he failed to do either of these he would be put to death.” As is well known he did neither, and after his two companions were killed in a manner which surpassed even the Mughal standards of savagery, he was beheaded.

In this way the Sikhs were provided a religious martyr. History has proved too often that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church” and it was inevitable that under Tegh Bahadur’s son, Guru Gobind Singh, against whose family inhuman atrocities were committed by the Mughals, the Sikhs became even more militant and even more anti-Mughal.

There are Sikhs who explain that Govind Singh was against tyranny and not the Muslims as such, and Muslims who suggest that the Mughals were suppressing a political movement and were not communally motivated. But both the Sikhs and the Muslims of that time would have had political sophistication beyond human possibility if the Sikhs could have been anti-Mughal without being anti-Muslim; and the Mughals against a Sikh led anti-Mughal movement, without being anti-Sikh. (Even today, it is difficult for Hindus to be anti-terrorism or anti-Pakistan without being, even if subconsciously, anti-Muslim.)

For years afterwards the Sikhs and Mughals fought bitterly; and in spite of all the secular gloss that is now put over those “old unhappy far off things and battles long ago” it was communal confrontation with long-term repercussions. The Sikhs greatly helped the British to suppress the Mutiny whose titular head was Bahadur Shah, the last Mughal emperor. Around Independence, their wrath, reactivated by the killing and expulsion of Sikhs in west Punjab, fell on the heads of Muslims in east Punjab. As a result of the partition riots, though there are in Punjab 49,000 mosques and the income of the Punjab Wakf Board is one of the highest, Muslim population in the State is not even one per cent.

In spite of all such conflicts there is no denying the fact that the Muslims contributed greatly towards development of thought and culture in India. MN Roy, who in the late forties of the last century initiated a school of philosophy which he termed “New Humanism,” wrote in “The Historical Role of Islam”:

“In view of this realistic reading of history, Hindu superciliousness towards the religion and culture of the Muslims is absurd. It insults history and injures the political future of our country. Learning from the Muslims, Europe became the leader of modern civilization. Even today, her best sons are not ashamed of the past indebtedness. Unfortunately, India could not be fully benefited by the heritage of Islamic culture, because she did not deserve the distinction. Now, in the throes of a belated Renaisance, Indians, both Hindus and Muslims, could profitably draw inspiration from that memorable chapter of human history. Knowledge of Islam’s contribution to human culture and proper appreciation of the historical value of that contribution would shock the Hindus out of their arrogant self-satisfaction, and cure the narrow-mindedness of the Muslims of our day by bringing them face to face with the true spirit of the faith they profess.”

Concerned with the erosion of Hinduism by the proselytizing activities of the Christian and Muslim missionaries among the lower classes of Hindu society, Arya Samaj’s founder–Dayananda–launched a counter-movement based on an impersonal God and a casteless society. Since the erosion of Hinduism was chiefly by Islam, it was inevitable that this movement, the program of which included the re-conversion of Hindu apostates and the protection from slaughter of the “divine” cow, should confront Islam in practically every area. Before his tirades against both Christianity and Islam the attacks on Hindus by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan pale into insignificance.

Cows no longer need protection, and the impetus of proselytization has waned, though not died, but the Muslims’ sense of transnational fraternity, and consequential lack of complete “Indianness” and their attachment, on religious ground, to even some of the out-dated rules present in the Personal Law, continue to remain a big divide to assimilation.