Readers can see the below-mentioned YouTube video in which author Vikram Sampath and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor spoke to Rajdeep Sardesai, in the ‘India Today Conclave 2021’, on the fundamental fault lines of contemporary Indian history writing and debate. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qswlt56eCro].
The Congress leader Sri Shashi Tharoor, born in 1956, opened the discussion on the wrong premise. He said that the issue, many of them grew up assuming had been long settled, has now reopened fundamentally in past few years. No wonder, Sri Tharoor grew up in Nehruvian time. He went on to say that the partition of India happened on one key question: was religion the determinant of our nationhood? Those (Muslims) who were in favor of religion based nationhood left and made Pakistan and India was made for all without any consideration to religion.
Such simplistic statement had no basis. Before partition, Muslim population of British India was about 24 percent. Following partition, India’s Muslim population in 1950 became about 10 percent. While most of that 10 percent Muslims fought for Islamic Pakistan, they stayed back in India. Post 1947, Maulana Azad was branded by Nehru and his gang as Nationalist Indian Muslim. But Azad was actually used by Nehru to bring the Muslim leaguers, who stayed back in India, to the fold of Congress. Those ex Muslim-Leaguers, who stayed back in India, also helped in the retention of the mindset of Islamic nationhood in independent India. One who has basic understanding of Islam knows that inclusiveness and secularism are antitheses of Islam. So, the Congress leadership of newly independent India force-fed the majority Indian Hindus that if Hindus remained inclusive and secular that would make Indian Muslims inclusive and secular. At this point we need to revisit what Rahmat Ali and Rabindranath Tagore told about Indian Muslims and Islam (and Christianity) respectively.
Rahmat Ali, the proponent of the word ‘Pakistan’ observed in 1933: “India, constituted as it is at the present moment, is not the name of one single country; or the home of one single nation…..…. In the five Northern Provinces of (British) India, out of a total population of about forty millions, we, the Muslims, contribute about 30 millions. Our religion, culture, history, tradition, economic system, laws of inheritance, succession and marriage are basically and fundamentally different from those of the people living in the rest of India.…….. We do not inter-dine; we do not inter-marry. Our national customs, calendars, even our diet and dress are different..…… Religion in the case of Muslims and Hindus is not a matter of private opinion as it is in the case of Christians; but on the other hand constitutes a Civic Church which lays down a code of conduct to be observed by their adherents from birth to death……”.
Tagore said: “There are two religions in the world, which have distinct enmity against all other religions. These two are Christianity and Islam. They are not just satisfied with observing their own religions, but are determined to destroy all other religions. That’s why the only way to make peace with them is to embrace their religions.” [Original works of Rabindranath Vol. 24 page 375, Vishwa Bharti; 1982].
Keeping the above two remarks in mind, let us visit the political equation before partition. In the Central Legislative Assembly election of British India during 1945-46, all 30 Muslim seats were won by Muslim League. In the Provincial Assembly election during the same time, Muslim League won 87 percent of Muslim seats. In 6 Provinces out of total 11, Muslim League got more than 90 percent of Muslim seats. At that time, Muslim League was fighting elections on the single demand of creation of Islamic Pakistan. The results explained, beyond any trace of doubt, the actual intent of Muslims of British India. They wanted their Islamic Pakistan. Be it Bombay, be it Madras, be it Bihar, United Province or Central Province, – the mandate of Muslims was loud and clear in favor of Islamic Pakistan. From 1930 (Iqbal’s demand for separate state for Muslims) to 1947 (independence), via 1933 (Rahmat Ali’s ‘Pakistan’), and 1940 (Lahore Resolution), 1945-46 (Elections) and Direct Action Day (1946), – there was no ambiguity in the minds of British Indian Muslims about creation of Islamic Pakistan. How these facts could be overlooked in new independent India while framing its Constitution?
Sri Shashi Tharoor, in the discussion, mocked the history books of Pakistan for being grossly biased. But while Pakistani history books glorified all the Muslim invaders of India as their heroes, Indian history books have diluted those cruel and plundering invasions by downplaying those. In some instances, brutal and Jihadi Muslim invasions were said to be due to economic reason. So, Indian history books were equally biased too. Sri Tharoor was of the opinion that in newly independent India, it was right to cover-up the bad memories of history for forging a new national identity. He, in other words, said that even the foundation of a new nation can be based on gross lies.
However, in-spite of persistent pampering during six decades of Congress rule, Indian Muslims, barring exceptions, maintained their ‘Muslim first’ identity. The Mughals instead of getting Indianized, Mughalized India. Similarly, Indian Muslims instead of integrating with India started to Islamize it. The current Hijab row (February-March 2022) in India is a case in point. Wearing Hijab is no Islamic obligation for Muslim women. Historically, Muslim women of Indian sub-continent never used Hijab. They used Ghunghat, Pallu or Do-Patta. In the portraits of Indian Muslim women of Muslim era, Hijab is not seen. But suddenly some Karnataka Muslim girl students of schools started putting on Hijab in the schools violating the dress code. Who were behind those girls? Interestingly Indian Left-Liberal-Islamist cabal stood by the side of Hijab wearing girls. Congress, not surprisingly, went into silent mode.
The intention of asserting Islam in India by the Indian Muslims can be better seen in their anti-CAA agitation of 2019 to 2020. In December 2019, Citizenship Amendment Act was enacted by BJP government. It contained an easy process of according Indian citizenship to religiously persecuted Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Jain, Parsi and Buddhist who had come to India before 31 December 2014 from Islamic countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. But Indian Muslims, in connivance with Congress, Communist and other regional secular parties, launched a massive agitation by resorting to lying that CAA would take away citizenship of Indian Muslims. The agitation was mixed with a large scale anti-Hindu riot in Delhi during February 2020.
Muslims of independent India started playing ‘Muslim victim card’ from the very beginning. In the Constituent Assembly the Muslim League members, who did not go to Pakistan, played the ‘Muslim victim card’ and got their Muslim Personal Law to continue. From then ‘Muslim victim card’ has been an effective tool in their hands to justify all anti-national and illegal activities. In recent time Rana Ayyub (known as ‘Muslim journalist’ of India) and Nawab Malik (Minister of Maharashtra governments) have started playing the same ‘Muslim Victim Card’. While Rana Ayyub was accused of money laundering, Nawab Malik was accused of Islamic terror funding.
India has second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. Indian Muslims never had to migrate out of India due to religious persecution like Rohingyas Muslims of Myanmar and non-Muslim minorities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. On the contrary unlike non-Muslims of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, proportion of Muslim population increased substantially in independent India. There has been visible demographic shift in favour of Muslims in the Indian states of Assam, West Bengal and Kerala in past seven decades.
Congress, Communists and all so-called regional secular parties of India fail to accept that Islamic terrorism has been an international phenomenon. This, in recent time, had started in 1972 Munich Summer Olympic Games and became grossly infamous in 9/11. There are more than 150 Islamic terrorist organizations active in different parts of the world. India has its share in the names of Indian Mujahidin (IM), Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), Popular Front of India (PFI) and many more cross-border and international terrorist groups. These groups did dozens of Islamic terrorist acts in India during past two decades. But like a broken record, Indian secular gang (Liberals, Congress, Communist and secular regional parties) has been blaming Hindutva, Savarkar, RSS and Bajrang Dal etc. for the causes of communal tension in the country. The gang can’t appreciate that Islamic terrorism in India is a part of larger international Islamic agenda. Majority of Indian Muslims overtly or tacitly support the Islamic terrorism in India.
What Sri Tharoor and likes of him do not want to know is that Islam is all about dominance, – religious, social and political. Islam divides the humans into Momin (believer) and Kafir (non-believer). Kafirs are seen as the sworn enemies of Islam and Muslims, and the world is divided into Dar al-Islam (territory of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (territory of war). Brotherhood in Islam is not universal; it is restricted among Muslims only. Sri Tharoor is a well read person. Has he not read Calcutta Quran Petition of 1985 to understand the core problems with Islam? Even in recent time, Waseem Rizvi has challenged 26 verses of Quran in the Supreme Court of India for deletion from the holy book. Those verses are grossly and violently against non-Muslims.
Muslim apologists and their supporters in India cannot hide behind Islamophobia and hate speech to cover-up the anti-human and violent teachings of Islam, which makes Islam fundamentally different from the benign Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism). Islamists may point out some violent verses from Hindu scripture to support the violent verses of Quran. But what they would deliberately cover-up is that, the teachings of Quran are ‘prescriptive’ to all Muslims for all times to come; whereas the violent verses of Hindu scripture are ‘descriptive’ to Hindus only. No Indian Muslim can ignore or oppose the core tenets of Islam on which Pakistan was created. So, it is foolish and self defeating on the part secular-liberal Hindu intellectuals of India to expect majority Indian Muslims to think and behave differently for the interest of a peaceful plural India. They are bound to make India Islamic sooner or later.
Since independence, Muslim proportion of population has increased in India from about 8 percent in 1947 to about 18 percent now. Congress, Communist and all other so-called regional secular political parties have been siding with Indian Muslims for vote bank politics, but kept on expecting, to the point of demanding, that Hindus should not take this otherwise. Senior Congress leaders had the audacity to claim that Pakistan sponsored 26/11 Mumbai Islamic terrorist attack was done by RSS. Indian nationalism and secularism have become burden of Hindus alone. Modi’s India has hit at the root of Islam leaning Indian identity and Muslim-centric power politics. The ‘reopening of the issue’, Sri Tharoor referred to in the beginning of the article, was done by the Indian Islamists only with support from Congress, Communist and so-called regional secular political parties in past seven decades.
Indian Muslims have been trying, since independence, to get more ‘Islamic pound of flesh’ from the nation of India. Modi’s India has started resisting that. The new India tells that if Indian Muslims care for Islam, Islamic identity and fellow Muslims only, then they are not any part of today’s Indian narrative. Sri Shashi Tharoor said somewhere that Hindutva and RSS/BJP would make India a “Hindu Pakistan”. Well Sri Tharoor, it is thousand times better to have “Hindu Pakistan” in Bharat than “Muslim India”. It is as simple as that. The article ends with another YouTube video to explain how deep Islamism has penetrated India [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWVR3yjGpvk]. Sri Tharoor is requested to please reflect pragmatically.
