IT’S  TIME  FOR  HOME  COMING

 In the darkness of a stormy night, it is not unlikely for a sailor to lose sight and get deviated from his original course. But after the calamity is over, it is natural for an intelligent sailor to strive hard to return to his own course. But even then he obstinately continues to follow the wrong course, it is needless to say that he will reach a wrong destination. The notion applies to the entire community of converted Muslims of this country. Before arrival of the foreign Muslim invaders in this country, their ancestors were either Hindus or Buddhists, and since in a broader sense Buddhism is merely a branch of Hinduism, all of them were Hindus. History tells us that during the days of Muslim onslaught almost all of them were converted to Islam, either by coercion and torture or by allurement. And before that, for past thousands and thousands of years, they were the children of this ancient Hindu country, nurtured in the lap of Hindu culture and breathed the air of this great nation of tolerance, liberty and spirituality. Hence there is not an iota of doubt that that was their original course, their original way of life.

                But it is really unfortunate that they are now denying their ancestral culture, or rather their root, by adopting Arabic or Persian names, taking beef and by several other means. The question therefore remains – Is it possible for them to disown their Hindu ancestry by such superficial means? In fact, Hindu culture is synonymous to Indian culture and hence every son and every daughter of this great nation is a Hindu by birth and this is the harsh truth which each and every converted Muslim irrespective of his or her personal liking or disliking, has to accept. So, the poet Rabindranath Tagore, in his essay “Atma parichay”, writes, “Every Muslim of this country should be called a Hindu-Mussalman and every Christian a Hindu-Christian, as they are Hindu by nationality and Mussalman or Christian by religion”. Rishi Aurovinda used to hold the same view and in his famous Uttarpara Address, said, “I say that is the Sanatana Dharma, which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation has born with the Sanatana Dharma, with it it moves and with it it grows”.

One may argue that, as Aurovinda and Rabindranath were Hindus, they   wrote  all   those  rubbish   simply to glorify Hindu Dharma.  In  mid-l990s,  a controversy   arose  regarding  the  use  of  the  word  Hindutva in an election campaign. The dispute ultimately went to the Apex Court. On 11^th  December,  1995,  the  Special  Bench  comprising three  senior  Judges  of the  Supreme  Court,  ruled  that  to  ask voters to cast their votes for sake of Hindutva is not a communal act. To clarify its stand, the Bench declared in its  ruling that Hindutva is not simply a religion like Islam or Christianity. In fact, the significance of  the  word  Hindutva  is much deeper and pervasive, and it really stands for the culture and civilization which is continuing in this country for  past  thousands  and  thousands  of  years,  or from time immemorial. It is important to note here that the said  Special  Bench  included  the  then  Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and he was a Muslim.   
                It should also be pointed out here that not only Rabindranath and Aurovibda, even the Muslim clerics of Mecca call the Indian Muslims Hindus, when they go there to perform hajj pilgrimage. In early 1990s the renowned Muslim leader of Delhi, Maulana Abdul Bukhari, during his hajj pilgrimage, requested the clerics to discontinue the said practice, but his appeal fell on deaf ears. Another Muslim dignitary, Zanab Rasiduddin Khan, a retired professor of JNU and a former Member of the Rajya Sabha, went to Egypt as an invited guest of the Cairo University and spent two years there. Just before returning home, the faculty members of the Cairo University arranged a farewell meeting in his honour and the speakers started to say that they were enjoying the sweet company of a Hindu for past two years, but they would be deprived of that privilege due to Rasiduddin’s return to Hindustan. Professor Rasiduddin made strong protest and said that he was not a Hindu but a devout Mussalman. But the organizers paid no heed to what he was saying. Then he tried to draw their attention to his Arabic name, but they laughed and said that, if Jawahar Lal Nehru can remain a Hindu with his Arabic surname Nehru (derived from Arabic ‘nahr’, a canal or a river), then Rasiduddin has little difficulty to remain a Hindu with his Arabic name..

                 On 16^th February, 1993, the Delhi edition of the renowned daily Times of India carried an article by Nawab Jafar Jung and Zanab Akhtalur Wasir. In that article the authors claimed that Sir Syed Ahmed, the founder of Aligarh Muslim University, used to maintain the view that – “All those who are born in Hindustan and live here, drink water from Ganga and Yamuna and rest in peace in the sacred soil of this land, are all Hindus”. Another Muslim dignitary Zanab M. C. Chagla, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and a Central Minister, used to say that from cultural viewpoint he was a Hindu and by religion a Muslim. Another Muslim author Zanab Ansar Hussain Khan, went to Pakistan in the wake of partition, spent 37 years there and then returned to India and wrote Rediscovery of India. In that book he wrote, “Indian Muslims should accept the fact that Afghans, Turks and Mughals had heaped untold atrocities on the Hindus in mediaeval India. …  Muslims should abandon their claim on the site of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, a very small price for Hindu-Muslim amity”.

In 1979, just after the so called Islamic Revolution, the Nobel Laureate author Sri V. S. Naipaul went to Iran to see the affairs there in his own eyes. Afterwards, he also traveled three more Islamic countries, namely Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia and narrated his experience in Among the Believers. In 1995, he again visited those four Islamic countries and wrote Beyond Belief. In the latter work he wrote, “Because of its origin in Arabia, Islam demands an imperial loyalty towards Arabia from all the scattered believers of all those Islamic countries”. To describe the Islamic psyche of these converted Muslims, he wrote, “A convert’s world-view alters. … The convert has to turn away from everything that is his own. The resulting disturbance is immense.  …  To a convert, his land is of no religious or historical importance; only the sands of Arabia become sacred”.

But Mr. Naipaul has missed another vital aspect. To a convert, the foreign Muslim invaders who oppressed their ancestors brutally and converted them at the point of sword, were saviours not tyrants. And that is the reason Pakistan has named its long range ballistic missiles Ghauri and Babur, after the two despicable and barbaric killers Muhammad Ghuri and Babur. A similar attitude is being expressed by the Bangladeshi media. The Sufi fakirs and their tyrant masters who, once upon a time, converted their ancestors through blood-bath, are now being portrayed as saviours by the Bangladeshi radio and television. But these people fail to notice that by uprooting them from their own soil, Islam is turning them into pitiable dwarfs or rootless Japanese Bonsais. While commenting on this aspect of the Indian converts, Zanab Anwar sheikh, the non-resident Indian author settled in England, writes that the Indian converts, by way of isolating them from their ancestral Vedic culture and heritage, and the consequent Arabisation, in the name of Islam, has done immense damage to them. They have been crippled in every sphere of life by Islam and, in fact, they have invited their doom by distancing them from their ancestral Vedic heritage.

Many Muslim intellectuals try to convince that by embracing Islam they are following monotheism, which is far superior to polytheism of Hinduism. While commenting on this point, Zanab Abdul Aziz al-Aman, a renowned Bengali author and publisher, writes, “The doctrine of monotheism is much deeper and pervasive in the philosophy of the Upanisads. … So, there is no doubt that, before the revelation of the Koran, monotheism had been well established in Vedas in India”.

On the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of India’s freedom, the 30^th Nov, 1998, edition of the renowned weekly TIME carried interviews with Mr. George Fernandes, the then defence minister of India, and Mr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist. While commenting on his attitude towards the people of Pakistan, Mr. Fernandes said, “I look at a Pakistani as the flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood. We are two different nations but one people”. But in his reply to a more or less similar question, Mr. Khan said, “There are some similarities. But we are basically different. We are Muslims and they are Hindus. We eat cows. They worship cows. That we lived on the same land and spoke the same language does not make us the same people”. It is important to note that, while the comment of Mr. Fernandes reflects an attitude of tolerance and broad-mindedness, love and unification, friendship and peace, that of Mr. Khan reflects extremely damaging, sinister and secessionist Muslim psycho-profile. The above comment of Mr. Khan also shows, to what extent the faith of Islam can distort the thought-process of even a qualified scientist like him.

There is no doubt that the said secessionist Muslim mindset had given birth to the most idiotic ‘two nation theory’ that culminated into the division of this ancient country into three pieces through fratricidal blood-bath, and the bitterness and hatred thus generated is now proceeding towards a nuclear conclusion. And the history of the forth-coming days would have no other alternative but to accuse the secessionist Islamic psyche for all these grave consequences.

In the present context, it would be relevant to quote what the Pakistani journalist Mr. Zafar Adeem says in this regard. He writes, “We have never been able to understand that, if 50 years were not sufficient to make Pakistan fit for receiving a perfect Islamic system, then where was the need to create it at all? If the Islamic system cannot be enforced then why not we go back to the original system, the united India? There is still a heart-warming and soul-stirring call is coming from across the border, devoid of any sectarian heat. The great land of India is a wonderful gift of God, made fertile and creative by nature in every respect. It is a cradle of a variety of religious beliefs and a shining example of unity in diversity, which our Mumalkat-e-Khudad lacks” (ibid, 18.1.98).  

                The Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) is an NGO that is striving to establish peace and amity between people of India and Pakistan. On November 21-22, 1998, it held a two-day convention at Peshawar, Pakistan. Mr. I. A. Rahman, the then chairman of the Pakistani chapter of the forum, while addressing the gathering of both Indian and Pakistani delegates at the inaugural ceremony, urged the governments of India and Pakistan to put an end to conduct further nuclear tests and thus escalating nuclear arms race. Another Pakistani leader Dr. Abdul Karim Naik quoted Upanisad and said, “Only the message of the Upanisads is capable of removing the discriminations among the human race created on the basis of religion and nationality. Only Upanisads consider the entire humanity as a family and every person living in the world as a member  of   that      world-family”  ( Islamic Voice-Jan,1999).

It becomes evident from above discussions that the real amity between the people of India and Pakistan would be established only when the converted Muslims of these two nations discontinue to follow the Arabic doctrine of hate and the pastoral Arabic culture, and come back to the ancestral Sanatana or Vedic culture. Only in it lies the well-being of both Hindus and Muslims. This is the only way that can put an end to mutual hatred, suspicion and enmity, and establish real friendship and brotherhood between the people of these two neighbouring countries and may lead to their re-unification. It is better, sooner the converted Muslims of India and Pakistan understand this harsh reality and liberate themselves from the evil influence of the Arabic doctrine of hate and sectarian heat. Only on that day, Mother India would shed her tears of joy, after getting back her lost children.