BaKhabar, June 2012, Page-5 [India and Pakistan: Lengthening Shadows of a Toxic Past, Part-3, by sister Asma Khan]

India and Pakistan: Lengthening Shadows of a Toxic Past, Part-3

... By Asma Khan* (asmaanjum.khan@gmail.com)

Sixty-four years after they parted ways, their toxic past and violent split still continues to haunt India and Pakistan and hundreds of millions of people on both sides of the divide. [ Part-1 || Part-2 ]

Gandhi-Jinnah-divide?!

Note: Part-1 of this long essay appeared in the April issue of BaKhabar. The next parts of this historical-but-still-highly-relevant essay would appear in coming issues of BaKhabar.
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Besides, Jinnah, once a veteran Congress leader and a passionate champion of the Hindu-Muslim unity, had come to the conclusion that peaceful co-existence for the two communities had become impossible. It was the same theory that was propounded by Guru Golwalkar and Veer Savarkar, the ideological parents of the extremist Hindu nationalist movement. Savarkar was even linked to Mahtama Gandhi’s murder but let off for lack of evidence. While Muslims have squarely been blamed for far too long for the cardinal sin, many in turn blame the likes of Golwalkar and Savarkar and their mindset. With Savarkar becoming the president of Hindu Mahasabha in 1936, the organization began to aggressively propagate its theory of the Hindu nation. Savarkar writes in his book, Hindutva [1923] that a Hindu is one who acknowledges Hindustan as his Pitru Bhumi [fatherland] as well as his Punya Bhoomi [Holy Land]. Effectively it means that there can not be a Hindu nation with foreigners like the Muslims, Christians and the Parsis, who had their religious holy places outside India. He was also the first to propound the two-nation theory, referring to the Hindus and Muslims as two separate nations. Ironically though, it’s Jinnah, not the Hindutva’s proponents, who has ended up as the villain and architect of the two-nation theory.

Indeed, like the Nazis, Golwalkar et al believed in racial purity and Aryan supremacy and approved and admired Hitler’s methods to ‘purge’ Germany and achieve racial purity. Golwalkar had also objected to the honouring of Abdul Hamid and the Keelor brothers for their bravery during the India-Pakistan war since they were not Hindus.

To comprehend the complexity of the whole issue, we must first understand the genesis of hatred and mistrust that had come to develop between the two lead players, Hindus and Muslims. Nirad C. Chaudhury, the late Indian author who made Britain his home, is the zeitgeist who has captured the pre-Partition ethos superbly, in his widely acclaimed work, The Autobiography of An Unknown Indian [1951]

He for one rubbishes the theory that it was the British who fanned the flames of enmity between the two communities. He claims the seeds of hatred were sown much before the British arrived in India. He debunks the much popularized theory of Hindu tolerance terming it clearly to be only a myth. According to Chaudhury, the first description of Hindu nationalism that he found in was in Abu Rayhan Alberuni’s Kitabul Tarikh al Hind. Alberuni had earned the sobriquet of being the world’s first anthropologist and founder of Indology, for his amazing description of 11th Century India. He had accompanied Mehmud of Ghazni on his Indian conquest and finished writing his Kitabul Hind, around 1030 CE.

Alberuni observes that the high pride the Hindus had over their “better than the best religion, land and philosophy is palpable in their behavior.” The Hindus, he writes, “fight with words, but they will never stake their soul, or body, or their property on religious convictions. Their fanaticism is directed against all foreigners. They call them malechchha, i.e. impure, and forbid having any connection with them.”

This concept of the pure and impure is ingrained in the Hindu psyche at a very deep level and it’s one of the chief reasons for its discrimination against its own kind - this distinction of high and low among the people on the basis of their birth. Alberuni further observes that the hatred of the Hindus against Muslims intensified with the Muslims making inroads in their country which began with the Arab conqueror of Sind, Muhammad bin Qasim.
Commenting on Alberuni’s observations about the much celebrated Hindu tolerance, Nirad Chaudhury confesses, “I was shocked when I read Alberuni’s account of Hindu xenophobia for the first time, for I had been nurtured in the myth of Hindu tolerance and catholicity. But subsequent reading and inquiry has convinced me that Alberuni was substantially right."
Chaudhury also refers to a Sanskrit poem written around twelfth century which is full of, in his own words, “a lamentation over Muslim depredations…. and punctuated by a liberal abuse of the Muslims.”[381] The Hindus, he says, seemed to struggle against this rising tide of Muslim conquests but with little success. “The Hindus”, Nirad Chaudhury analyses, “were never hopeful but perpetually haunted by a premonition of defeat and had more fear of the invincibility of the Muslims than confidence in their own powers.”
Chaudhury further notes how a Hindu king when he succeeded in defeating an Arab army was awarded the title, Resister of the Irresistible. He makes another valid point when he attributes the birth of Hindu nationalism in the course of this ever losing battle of the Hindus against the Muslim tide to a growing ‘sense of defeat’ among its adherents. He describes this nationalism as a weapon of the defeated and a product of frustration on the part of the Hindus. The Hindu, Chaudhury argues, always clung to his ‘disloyalty’ as he considered it as an expiation for his services to the foreign ruler, which he took to be against his convictions.
On the other hand, the Hindu, he points out, “was also confident that one day his day will come without risking life, worldly possessions and ease, so he didn’t invest in a premature revolt, he waited. His time came, when the Muslim political power weakened in India at the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth, and Hindu nationalism rose in a flood to the political plane. The Hindu (then) exultantly stamped on the head of the exhausted enemy.”.
Chaudhury, however, points out that the Hindu was ready to accept the Muslim if he gave up all his Islamic values and traditions and sent invites, many times over saying:

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?

The modern Hindu, according to Chaudhury, felt aggrieved when the Muslim was not fast enough to accept his invitations. He adds the ‘clear-sighted’ Muslim responded thus:

Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, and would not join the dance.

* Asma Anjum (Khan), a social reformer, is Asst. Professor in Solapur. She has taken over as Chief Eidtor of BaKhabar starting May 2012 issue.