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"Islamic Manifesto for India"
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To: Rajiv Varma <rvarma@ccaix.jsums.edu>
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Subject: "Islamic Manifesto for India"
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From: Rajiv Varma <rvarma@ccaix.jsums.edu>
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 00:13:19 -0600 (CST)
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From rvarma@ccaix.jsums.edu Mon Mar 13 01: 06:16 1995
"Islamic Manifesto for India"
Sita Ram Goel
It is old. It is new. It is an enduring theme on which the
Ulema and Sufis of Islam thrive.
It is a rueful of an opportunity lost in the past. It is a
fond dream about a future fulfillment. It is a fanatic faith to
fight for in the present.
Borrowing a metaphor from the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx,
the theme can be summarized as well as sloganized as follows:
"We, the Ulema and Sufis of Islam, disdain to hide our aim.
We stand for a full and final conquest of India by Islam.
Muslims of India unite! you have nothing to loss but your
minority complex. You have a whole subcontinent to gain!"
The Ulema and Sufis grieve that Islam was a failure in India
in the final round, though it monopolised political power for
five centuries and more. They envy the history of Islamic
imperialism in Syria, Palestine, Persia, Central Asia, North
Africa, Malaysia and Indonesia where it succeeded in a total
subversion of older societies and cultures in a far shorter
span of time.
The Ulema and Sufis hope and pray that Allah would be
more merciful towards his favourite faith in the future and
enable them to
establish a hukumat-i-ilahiya in India. They feel confident that
this time they will not miss the opportunity of eradicating the
last vestiges of jahiliya from this land.
The Ulema and Sufis leave no stone unturned to keep their flock
free from every "taint" of empiricism, rationalism, universalism
and humanism. They also go in search of fresh pastures among
the weaker sections of Hindu society.The name of the game is mass
conversion to Islam.
In medieval times, when Islam ruled the roost, the most
"upright" Ulema and the "saintliest" Sufis carried on long drawn-
out debate regarding the treatment to be meted out to the Hindus
conquered by the sword of Islam. They quoted chapter and verse
from the Quran, the Hadis and the "learned" commentaries to prove
a pet proposition. The syllogism had more than the three standard
steps. But the argument, they thought, was unassailable. The
inexorable logic unfolded as follows:
1. The four categories of unbelievers whom the Prophet came to
know in his own life-time were the Polytheists of Arabia,
the Jews, the Christians and the Zoroastrians;
2. The Prophet had no qualms about the Polytheists; they were
to be slaughtered unless they surrendered and became
Muslims;
3. The Jews, the Christians and, later on the Zoroastrians
were recognized by the Prophet as Ahl-i-Kitab (People of
the Book);
4. The Prophet condescended to confer on them the designation
of zimmis who could be allowed to live in an Islamic state,
provided they renounced resistance and agreed to pay
jiziya;
5. Umar, the second "pious" Khalifa of Islam, spelled out in
so many words the numerous disabilities to be imposed on
the zimmis, reducing them to a status of utter servility
inside an Islamic state;
6. The Prophet had not known any Hindus in his own lifetime
and could not, therefore, receive a revelation regarding
their status in an Islamic state;
7. The Hindus were not Ahl-i-Kitab; on the country, they were
unashamed and outright Polytheists;
8. The Hindus, therefore, could not be designated as zimmis
entitled to pay jiziya and live under disabilities imposed
by an Islamic state;
9. The Islamic state in India was under an inescapable
obligation to use all its power and resources to force the
Hindu to embrace Islam, failing which they were to be sent
to"hell" where they "rightly" belonged
Quod erat demonstrandum. It was difficult to find a flaw in
this logic without putting Islamic jurisprudence in jeopardy.
One could have of course, faulted the syllogism by asking a
single and simple question: "What happened to the Zoroastrians
whom your Prophet had "honoured" as zimmis? Did Islam allow them
to live as zimmis in the beloved land of their birth? Where are
they now?" But the Ulema and Sufis of Islam have never acquired
the "bad" habit of asking or answering questions. They have
always found it far more convenient to call for a cutting off of
"heathen" heads.
This, then, was the imperative of Islamic theology vis-a-vis
the Hindus. But there were other realities such as the balance of
power between the Islamic state and the Hindu society. In large
parts of India. Hindus were never conquered completely. If
pressed too hard, Hindus revolted and imperilled the Islamic
empire itself. Hindus were also needed by the Islamic state as
hewers of wood and drawers of water so that Muslim swordsmen,
Ulema and Sufis, who had become the aristocracy, could enjoy the
lands and the loot which of Allah and his Prophet had conferred
upon them.
Some Sultans strived hard to carry out the commands of the
Ulema and Sufis. But they discovered very soon and to their great
discomfiture that Hindus despised Islam as a species of barbarism
and fought back fiercely when driven to the wall. The Sultans had
to admit defeat and die unfulfilled. Firoz Tughlaq. Sikandar
Lodi, Aurangzeb and some provincial potentates suffered this
supreme frustration while attempting to forge ahead in the way of
Allah.
The Hanafi school of Islamic "law" came to the rescue of the
Sultan who thus found themselves between the devil of the Ulema
and Sufis and the deep sea of Hindu resistance. This school
searched the "scriptures" of Islam to find support for their
contention that Hindus could also be designated as zimmis and
thus allowed to live in an Islamic state. These Sultans also
indulged occasionally in the luxury of forced conversion and
killing of Hindus en masse. But, for the rest, they were content
to collect jiziya and other back-breaking taxes from Hindus and
enjoy in peace their imperial power and privilege, including
harems crowded with Hindu women captured in war and otherwise.
A notable exception to these two types of Sultans was
Akbar. He saw through the exclusive claims of Islam and kept the
Ulema and the Sufis at an arm's length. He was favourably
impressed by Hindu saints, sages, scholars and statesmen and
became increasingly attached to them.He evolved policy of
sulah i-kul between the Islamic state and the Hindu society. He
abolished jiziya, banned cow-slaughter, permitted questions
regarding the character of Islam and its Prophet, allowed Hindu
converts to go back to their ancestral religions, and prohibited
killing of Hindus for marrying Muslim women without getting
converted to Islam. In short, he restored self_respect to the
Hindu who came forward to help him in building a splendid and
stable empire which came to be envied by the rest of the world.
But there is a strong element of atavism in Islam which
prevents it from learning any lesson from history. Akbar's policy
of peace came in for an adverse review in the reign of Shahjahan
and underwent a total reversal under Aurangzeb.This great ghazi
of Islam declared a new jihad against the Hindus.The result was
the ruin of the Mughal empire which crumbled within two decades
after his death. Power now passed into the hands of Hindus - the
Rajputs, the Marathas, the Jats and the Sikhs.
Islam is also famous for breeding a brand of fanatics who
refuse to recognize objective reality and who love to live in a
world of fantasy. The Ulema and the Sufis refused to believe that
the imperial power of Islam in India was gone for good. Soon
after the break-up of the Mughal empire, there arose Shah
Waliullah (1702-1762) followed by his son, Abdul Aziz, followed
by Syed Ahmad Bareivi (1786-1831). These "gentlemen" were
possessed by the passionate idea-- which they preached with great
fervour-that the imperial power of Islam could and should be
restored in India.
These early Don Quixotes of Islam were followed by others
like Shariatullah (1790-1831), Dudu Mian (1819-60), Titu Mian
(1782-1831) and the Wahabis who titled their swords at the
British power in Bengal and the Sikh sovereignty in the Punjab.
They declared that India had once again become a dar-ul-harb
(enemy territory) and invited their brethren in faith to practise
jihad and hijrat. They met the fate which such lunatics deserve
and disappeared into the dustbin of history. Only the Ulema and
the Sufis still hold them as shaheeds (martyrs).
A new type of wisdom, though within the four walls of Islamic
fanaticism and day-dreaming, dawned upon Khwaja Hasan Nizami in
the early years of the 20th century. He was no ordinary
pen-pusher or mercenary Mulla in some suburban mosque. On the
contrary, he was a highly placed "divine" in the hierarchy of
Nizamuddin Auliya's prestigious silsila and widely honoured in
the Muslim world. He published in 1920 a big book, Fatami
Dawat-i-Islam,in which he advocated all means, fair and foul, by
which Hindus were to be converted to Islam. He advised the Mullas
to concentrate on Hindu "untouchables" and convert them en masse
so that Muslims could achieve parity with the Hindus. He
disclosed in his introduction that he had consulted many Muslim
leaders including the Agha Khan regarding the soundness of his
scheme and that all of them had agreed, though with the caution
that the scheme should be kept a carefully guarded secret inside
the Muslim community. Unfortunately for the Khwaja, the scheme
came the notice of Swami Shraddhananda who exposed it, fought it
tooth and nail, and frustrated it completely by means of his
Shuddhi Movement.
And now we have the same scheme resurrected before us by the
Islamic Centre in London in a still more ambitious form. The aim
of achieving parity with the Hindus has been abandoned in favour
of full Islamisation of India. The Islamic fraternity in India
has welcomed the scheme with open arms. Jamaat-i-Islami is the
most fanatic constituent of this fraternity. There are many more
individuals and organizations operating under different
disguises. In any case, the scheme is being pushed ahead
vigorously with the aid of petro-dollars. Many Islamic countries,
particularly Kuwait, Libya and Saudi Arabia, are its "pious"
patrons.
The full contours of this conspiracy were revealed by Javed
Ansari in the December 1981 number of Arabia : The Islamic Review
published by the Islamic Press Agency Ltd., London. It is an
expensive outfit maintained and financed by Saudi Arabia. Javed
violated no oath of secrecy because the conspiracy became widely
known in India as soon as it was hatched by a conference of
Islamic embassies in the West. He only presented it in a finished
form and with full self-confidence, so that no one was left in
any doubt about its ramifications.
The article by Javed is titled India: The World's Largest
Democracy'. We need not quarrel with his oblique reference to
democracy in India. The "gentlemen" has in mind the Islamic
"democracies" of Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria
and the United Arab Emirates. What he writes in his article is
much more intersting. The main point made by Javed comes at the
end of the article. He says: "Such a programme would require
first of all an abandonment of the strategy which gives priority
to protecting the "special status" and 'minority rights'of the
Muslim community. No minority community can have any such "right"
within the existing Indian system. The only realistic political
option is to develop an alternative vision of India's future-a
vision capable of mobilising all sections of the Indian people
into making sacrifice for its realisation."
What is the alternate vision? Javed does not mince words. His
clarion call is loud and clear. He announces: "Islam must be
presented as an ideological framework capable of redefining, the
social perspective of the ordinary Indian citizen. Islam must
emerge as a cohesive social force challenging the hegemony of
both nationalism and socialism in India. This is a difficult and
challenging task, calling for the building of a new political and
social base."
Who is going to provide that political and social base? Javed
concludes: The movement of the Harijans towards Islam provides a
rare opportunity of initiating this struggle. If this opportunity
is missed, India's Muslims will have lost a chance to play a
decisive role in the making of history."
We have suspected for a long time that Islam is not a
religion as the protagonists of sarva-dharma-samabhava would have
us believe. We are, therefore, grateful to Javed for conceding
that Islam is an ideology. A discussion about the nature of that
ideology need not deter us here. At the moment we are concerned
with the way that ideology is being presented by the spokesmen of
Islam.
It is not an accident that over the past several years the
emphasis has suddenly shifted from the "scriptures" to the
"social message" of Islam. Islam is still being presented as the
only true religion." But a louder noise is being made about
Islamic society being an ideal society. There is an implied
admission that the "scripture" of Islam have failed it in India
over the long stretch of some 1300 years. So the "social
philosophy of Islam" is being given a turn to try its luck in
the same old game of subversion.
Again, we do not want to be detained by a discussion about
the nature of Islamic "social philosophy". That discussion will
be taken up in due course. Here we are concerned with how that
philosophy is being presented to us at this time.
Islam, we are told, stands for the Brotherhood of Man and an
equalitarian social order free from caste hierarchy, class
oppression, economic exploitation, etc. It all sounds as if Islam
is another version of Communism Haven't we been told by some
observant guys that Communism is Islam minus Allah or that Allah
plus Communism constitutes Islam? But we shall not press home the
parallel.
What is the social milieu in which this "ideal" social order
has to operate? Well it is the "goddammed" Hindu society
"encumbered with gross inequality, economic exploitation, caste
cruelties, oppression of women" and so on. The "ideal" social
order has to overcome and destroy this "wicked" social order and
"redeem" these 700 million human beings from a fate "worse than
that of the beasts and worms." The logic is irrefutable, however
irritating it may be to "our brethren of the Hindu fold."
There was a time when the spokesmen of Islam stood alone in
performing the "painful" task of telling the "truth"about the
Hindu social order. Recently, they have been relieved of that
"burden' by a large tribe of Hindu scribes and "scholars"serving
in the daily and the periodical press owned by Hindu moneybags.
They have dragged out no end of "skeletons hidden in the Hindu
cupboard."They have left us in no doubt about the "enormous
inequalities" handed down by the "hoary Hindu heritage". Damn
Hinduism and get publicity as a progressive| That is bait held out
by some notable editors. Many scribes rise to the bait because
the payment they receive is better. Many politicians swallow the
bait, hook, line and sinker -- simply because a periodical enjoys
a large circulation. No politician worth his salt can ignore
publicity in the "prestigious" press. .
It is also not an accident that in recent years we have been
flooded with news about "atrocities on Harijans", A selective
news-reporting in the press leaves the unmistakable impression
that Harijans are the only people who are being beaten up, burnt
and killed in our countryside; that Harijan women are the only
women being molested by "caste" Hindus; and that Harijan
labourers are the only labourers getting buried under the debris
of defective constructions. The reporters who collect these
stories and the editors who display them on the front page have a
glow of self-righteous satisfaction on their faces. It is never
news for them that a larger number of Brahmins, Thakurs and other
"caste" Hindus also get killed in similar fracas; that a larger
number of "caste" Hindu girls get molested and forced into
prostitution; and that a larger number of non-Harijan Hindu
labourers get buried in the like manner. The same Hindu scribes
and "scholars" have started singing the glories of the "Islamic
Brotherhood of Man."
It is this spectacle of breast-beating on the part of the
Hindu "elite" which has emboldened the spokesmen of Islam to
rewrite Indian's history vis-a-vis the swordsmen of Islamic
imperialism. According to Javed, "Islam came to India at the
invitation of the peasants of Sindh who were the victims of
colonial central Indian rule in the 7th century. Muhammad bin
Qasim, the liberator of Sind, was immensely popular among the
masses."
Several Muslim historians of Sind tell us in so many words
that Sindh had been an independent kingdom for more than 150
years at the time it was invaded by the Arab armies. Al-Biladhuri
writes in Futuh-ul-Buldan that between 659 and 712 A.D. five Arab
expeditions were defeated and dispersed and their commanders
killed at the borders of Sindh by the Jats and Meds, before
Muhammad bin Qasim succeeded in his mission of murder, rapine and
loot. Does it at all look like a guest party of Muslims whom the
peasants of Sindh were waiting for to give a warm welcome? The
Chachnama gives a detailed account of how the Jat peasantry of
Sindh fought fiercely for every inch of the motherland and how it
died but did not surrender. It is history a la javed which had
provoked the German philosopher, Schaupenhauer, to say that all
history books were as infested with lies as a public woman with
syphilis|
But while lying about Hindus and their history, Javed has
told the truth about Muslim Sufis and "saints". He writes: "It
was the sufi saints who initiated the struggle for the
establishment of an Islamic state in India. Khwaja Muinudddin
Chisti, Khwaja Nizamuddin Aulia and Bakhtiyar Kaki opposed the
secularist policies of the kings of the slave dynasty of medieval
India . Mujadid al-Thani organized a resistance movement against
the Mughal Emperor Akbar and his attempts to establish a secular
Indian polity. The Mujadid's disciples and devotees included
Akbar's great-grandson, the dervish Prince Aurangzeb Alamgeer."
It is an interesting disclosure about the Sufis. Many Hindus
who have no illusions about prophetic Islam have a very soft
corner for the Sufis who Islam has been presenting as its saints
for the past so many years. But the painful truth is that the
"Mystic Dimension of Islam" has always been the ideological
department of Islamic imperialism.
Javed has also informed us about the newly acquired
self-confidence of Islam in India. He proclaims: "The Muslims of
India are more committed to Islamic ideology, better politically
organized and exhibit greater unity to-day than at any time since
independence. It is this new-found sense of destiny which has
enabled them to welcome the Harijans into Islam throughout India
and to assert their right to formulate a national, social and
political strategy which is distinct and uniquely Islamic...This
community is rapidly adopting the view that their destiny is
inextricably linked to that of India. India must undergo a
social and a political transformation before the bulk of its
population can escape from social deprivation and exploitation."
This self-confidence is symbolised by the waxing fortunes of
Jamaat-i-Islami, the vanguard of the Islamic crusade in this
country, Javed reports: "This view has been consistently
expounded by the Jamaat-i-Islami since 1947 when it was an
insignificant political grouping with little or no influence. It
numbered its supporters in hundreds and its message of preaching
Islam "daawa" and downgrading the importance of "minority
interests" evoked almost no response. However, the Jamaat-i-
Islami Annual Convention held in Hyderabad last July attracted
more than 10,000 participants. Its literature has now been
translated into 17 Indian languages. Thousands of Hindus count
themselves amongst its supporters."
That brings us to the beginning. We have to give a vote of
thanks to Javed. He starts his article by the following statement
: "Since 1947, India, a leading champion of secularism and the
home of the most ancient philosophies known to man has witnessed
more than 20,000 incidents of serious communal rioting. Every year
the number of Muslims who fall victim grows larger." We leave the
statistics in this statement to the Government of India. They
have been cited by a spokesman of the Arabs whose causes our
Government defends, day in and day out. But we cannot help being
grateful to Javed for presenting India as the "home of the most
ancient philosophies known to man." We do not mind it at all that
the compliment carries as a taunt. Truth needs telling, whatever
the twist. The worst liar in the world has a right to tell the
truth once in a while.
We wish and hope that the Ulema and the Sufis of Islam in
India will also admit this great truth and stop denouncing this
country as an area of darkness which "Islam has to illumine," We
appeal to the worthies of the Jamaat-i-Islami in particular and
our Muslim brethren in general to study some of these "most
ancient philosophies" to which Javed has referred. We assure them
that they will find the spirituality of Sanatana Dharma a
refreshing change from the cock-and-bull stores on which they
have been fed so far in the Quran and the Hadis.
