The year was 1947: Muslims declare they are a nation separate from Hindus. It is not possible for Muslims to live with Hindus in India. They need a separate land – Pakistan – to live their life according to Islam. It is dubbed the two nations’ theory, the theory that was propunded by Mohammad Iqbal and was executed in reality by Mohd Ali Jinnah. This theory has a vast amount of literature, rational and religious both, propounding its justification.
But the Hindus held then in 1947 that religion – whether Islam or Hinduism – cannot be the basis of a nation. Hindus can live without any problem with Muslims in one united India. Therefore, Hindus resisted the creation of Pakistan and, even when Pakistan was created, they encouraged Muslims to continue to stay and live with them in India, whatever of that India was left after the partition. It was said of Hindus – and by Hindus – that Hindus are great; their religion and culture are gtrat! It was so good of them that they followed this path of wisdom.
And, Pakistan was created. It was an Islamic republic, the same Islam that was touted a separate nation, which could not live with a Hindu dominated India. India is declared a people’s republic, equally belonging to all people who lived in India. It guaranteed the equal right to Hindus and Muslims (and other religions) to ‘profess and practice’ their respective religion. This guranteed right included the right of Muslims of India to ‘practice and profess’ Islam in India, Muslims who held – and rightly so – that they cannot live with Hindus in united India. But Hindus still said they can live with Muslims. They adopted secularism in their national constitution. So far it was so great of them; it was the greatness of Hinduism.
Muslims took away a part of India as Pakistan and declared their nation an Islamic republic. They said they would live according to Islam there – the very Islam that could not live live with Hindus in united India and that needed a separate nation of Islam in Pakistan. Pakistan is ideologically founded on Islam – Islam that could not live in a Hindu united India. Islam held that there is no place at all – or at least an equal place – for non-believers (kafir Hindus) in Islamic Pakistan. Hindus cannot become the head of the country; they cannot criticize Islam or its prophet but Hindu gods and sacred books can be criticized by Muslims; Hindus can be forcefully converted to Islam but Muslims cannot be so converted to Hinduism. The result of this mentality was that Hindus and all other religious minorities were a severely persecuted religious minorities in Pakistan from the day one of its creation. For this very reason, Pakistan’s first law minister Jogendra Nath Mandal had to leave Pakistan to live and die in Hindu India.
The net outcome of the two rival policies of Pakistan and India has been the declining of Hindu population in Pakistan from 24% to 2% as of 2019 and the increasing of Muslim population in India from 2% to 20% during that period. Iqbal and Jinnah were right when they declared that Muslims cannot live together with Hindus. It is a truth; all contrary claims in Pakistan are willful falsehood – Taqia – and in India by secularists are willful political fooling. The stark reality is that Muslims cannot live with Hindus, whether in 1947 or 2020, whether in Pakistan or in India.
Modi government has passed a law – CAA – to allow Indian citizenship to Pakistan’s (and of Afghanistan and Bangladesh) Hindus (and other relugious minorities) who were being persecuted on religious ground there but were living in India on visas etc. as on 31.12.2014. It is a great relief to such persecuted persons and a great humanitarian gesture by India.
But Muslims of India are against this law. They will not allow this law to continue. They cannot live with Hindus – there are 100 crores of Hindus already in India – and CAA law will add more Hindus to that number. They cannot allow Indian Hindus through their Parliament to make a law that will allow them to become Indian citizens; they will not allow a law in India that makes it obligatory to register – record – all citizens of India, which citizens include Muslims of India; and, they cannot allow the counting of population of India with individual details. They cannot tolerate this situation to their deteriment. It will add extra weight to their problems that they face in the fulfilment of their design in India. It will hamper their wish to make India a Hindu-free land. But they are not certain whether as of yet the appropriate time to challange and stop Hindus in India, and win against them has arrived or not. But there is no harm that they must probe and test that possibility. They have to make an experiment; and, to learn from this experiment their weaknesses and mistakes and correct them for the future.
Therefore, they have started a public protest at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi and replicated its copies at many places in India. They say their protest is peaceful and a non-violent Gandhian one. Muslims are clashing in heat with Hindu voices in television debates justifying their protest; they fling in these debates open violent threats and abuses to Hindu opponents. They are swearing by the name of Indian constitution and holding Indian Tricolor flags in their hands. But they demn care for constitution (like constitutional direction to frame a uniform civil code) and they do not respect India Parliament that made this CAA law; they burn public transport buses. They welcome a Sharjeel Imam like heroe, who threatens to dismember India by isolating Asam from the country; in the true Taquia style – intentional falsehood – they in their next breath disown that Sharjeel Imam. They hold Indian flag in their hands and cry that they want “Jinnah wali Azadi” – freedom the way Jinnah had got it from India in 1947.
They cannot live with Hindus, like their forefather Muslims had declared in 1947, and all their contrary claims and pretentions are to confuse their opponents and numb their resistance or objection; it is the culture of an intentional and calculated falsehood.
Muslims say – in Pakistan and India both – they cannot live with Hindus. Hindus say – in India and Pakistan both – they can live with Muslims. Muslims say they cannot allow uniform civil code in India; they cannot allow relocation of their mosques (like at Ayodhya, Benaras, Mathura et.) to some other places. Hindus allow interference by government in the matters of their temples. Why there is so much difference between the two? Are Hindus tolerant and Muslims intolerant?
It is the culture that make them different. Culture is more powerful than religion, though culture is powered by religion. Culture is habit without thinking. It is an integral part of one’s conscious and sub-conscious part of mind. It does not require the application of reasoning; it is a habit, which is more powerful than reason.
Islam’s culture is fabricated around these religious pillars: our religion is above anything else in this world; no one can find fault with our prophet or what he said; Islam is superior to any and all other religions and Muslims are better human beings than all others; Jihad against non-believers (in Islam), converting them to Islam or killing them if they refuse to so convert is religious obligation on them; being killed in this effort – Jihad – is glorious and is handsomely rewarded after death in the after world. Just compare this culture with the culture of Hindus! Hindu culture is based on these religious assumptions: all life is sacred because a part of god dwels in every life and therefore killing is bad; god has many forms and is formless too and one can worship him in one’s own way; all religions worship god and have the right to so worship him; all these different ways should be respected. All includes Islam also. Any person having commonsense and open mind will instantly recognise that it is a situation where Muslims are like a cat who is pitted against a rat in Hindus, where the cat says it has an obligation to eat the rat and the rat says that the cat has the right to do what is likes.
Hindus have an inbuilt cultural deficiency and they have no way to get over this defect. Hindus by culture, by habit and by reason are passive. They may be forced by circumstances – that are outside of their power – to react to the offensive; they are historically and as of now not capable of taking to the offensive, the initiative. Now, compare such mental set up of a people to those people who have an inbuilt cultural attitude to be offensive:
Reaction is forced by the offensive to accodomate itself to the circumstances already set up by the offensive. This defensive strategy is fatally flawed. Even the ultimate fate of such defensive strategy is decided by the parameters and limitations set by the offence. If the intention of the offensive is to destroy the opponent, the reacting force is bound to be destroyed if its strategy is limited to be defensive. The intention to destroy the opponent can only be thwarted by the strategy of offensive and by killing the source that harbors that intention of such destruction. But for Hindus it is not possible; it is afront to the Hindu culture; as of today it would look destroying the Hinduism itself.
Is there any way out of this situation for Hindus?
It is a Herculian task. Hindus will need to change – reorient – their culture, which is not an easy thing. They cannot change their religion but they can re-interptet it. They can re-interpret their religion in tune with the changed times and circumatances of today. They can teach that re-interpreted religion in schools and colleges in India to prepare a new generation of Hindus who are not defensive – who do not only react. They can prepare a new generation that thinks of future, that can plan and take initiative to meet the challange before that danger transfixes them into an already prepared set of circumstances.
How can this re-interpreting of Hindu religion be done? Here we are giving one example of how it can be done. Hinduism has a plothera of sacred books. One such sacred book is Geeta. What does Geeta teach to one who cares to listen to it? It teaches many things. All these aspects of teaching are equally good but what matters the most is the focuss where you put your emphasis. Geeta also teaches an aspect of life – an aspect where the Hindu culture needs to re-orient itself to focuss on – that a Hindu is religiously oblized to fight the evil; that when Hindu fights an evil as is his duty to kill the evil-doer; that for doing so it is not he who is to be blamed for that killing; that such death is ordained by the Divine and Hindu is merely performing his religious duty; that in committing violence in the performance of one’s duty – if such duty is performed without any attachment to its fruit like satisfection of one’s illwill or revenge against the victim – Hindu does no wrong. It is not a lisence to kill anybody at will but a mentality to be prepared to kill, if the opponent is wrong-doer or evil-doer. The very presence of this mentality in Hindus would deter the opponent to indulge in wrong-doing. The opponent will think hundred of times before daring to transgress his limits onto the path of his evil design. He would be well aware that he would surely be punished by Hindus.
It is a cultural shift of far reaching consequences. In Mahabharata, Arjun did everything to destroy the evil-doer Kauravas; in Ramayana, Rama did everything to destroy the evil-doer Ravana. To destroy the evil-doer is your duty and no blame of wrong-doing comes to the destroyer, if done without personal motives. It is cultural ethos; it makes a people brave; it makes them mentally ready to nip the evil in the bud. With the presence of such Hindu mentality, nobody would dare to indulge in hooliganism like Shaheen Bagh. Then, there would be 80 Hindus on road to counter one Sharjeel Imam there.
Along with this cultural shift, what Hindus need in order to preserve their existence is to highlight their history that followed this cultural principle – the principle of destroying the evil. Indian history is the richest one in the world in this respect. They need to re-orient their focuss of the history in their schools and colleges in India to prepare a brave new generation of Indians. Alexander attacked India and Porus fought, and defeated – or almost defeated him – in his evil invasion. Seleucus Nikator attacked Chandragupt Maurya and the later fought and defeated him. Mohd bin Kasim attacked India and Raja Dahir Deshpati valiently fought against him. Mohd Ghori attacked India and Prithviraj valiently fought and defeated him number of times; but he did not destroy the evil-doer and so was killed. There is endless history of India that followed this Geeta’s path, fought the evil-doer and won – or lost because they did not adhere to the Geeta’s strict mandate of destroying the evil, when opportunity was available. Bappa Rawal, Rana Sanga, Maharana Pratap, Guru Govind Singh, Shivaji, Bagha Jatin, Chandra Shekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Subhash Chandra Bose … and many more of such Hindus, who fought to perform their duty and killed the evil-doers.
This is the only way for Hindus of India to preserve their existence as Hindus. Hindus are like a lion cub who has been reared for long as a pet of a master and who has forgotten that he is lion. Hindus – or the proud inhabitants of this land called India – have come a full circle of their long history. They have become timid slaves. Otherwise, how can it be explained that at Shaheen Bagh a tiny percentage of Muslims in India are on road and hold this country at ransom demanding a Parliamentary law to be scapped, and the millions of Hindus have not taken to the roads in India to stop such hooliganism, pretentions and intentional falsehood? They are supposed to know that it is the matter of their freedom – freedom now and the freedom in future. Hindus have come a full circle of their history since 319 BCE and today they are of the slaves mentality – slaves in their teperament and slave in their conduct. Hindus may not be aware of their this slave mentality but any person coming from outside of India would immediately sense this weakness of their character.
It was written in 305 BCE by Megasthenes – a Greek ambassador in the court of Chandragupt Maurya – in his book called “Indika” about Hindus thus:
“Of several remarkable customs existing among the Indians, there is one prescribed by their ancient philosophers which one may regard as truly admirable: for the law ordains that no one among them shall, under any circumstances, be a slave, but that, enjoying freedom, they shall respect the equal right to it which all possess: for those, they thought, who have learned neither to domineer over nor to cringe to others will attain the life best adapted for all vicisstitudes of lot.” (Vide page 38, Ancient India as described by Megasthenese and Arrian – compiled and translated from Greek by John W. McCrindle – published by Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, New Delhi).
Perhaps it is because of this ancient custom of Indians of loving their freedom – not to dominate others and not to be dominated by others – that they are still Hindus in India, while all other peoples like the Persians of Iran, Afghans of Afghanistan and many other native people were defeated, slaved and converted or destroyed by their subjugators. Perhaps it is because of this ancient custom that Hindus of India detest anyone who tries to subjucate them, while all those defeated people find glory in their subjugators.