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| Jinnah and the Mountbattens. |
The most outstanding feature of Islam is its history; if you
study Islamic history, you would come to realize that Islam did not spread by
force alone, it was the superior moral appeal of its peerless ethics that won
the hearts and minds of medieval masses. For instance: Mongols conquered most
of the eastern lands of the Islamic Empire during the thirteenth century,
however, the Muslims of those lands did not convert to the religion of the
conquerors: that is, the Mongolian Shamanism. Instead, the conquerors adopted
the religion of the vanquished, i.e. Islam. Not only the Mongols, but several
Turkish tribes also voluntarily converted to Islam. Such was the beauty of
Islamic teachings and its sublime moral appeal in ancient times.
During the medieval times, when Europe was going through an
age of intellectual and moral regression, Islamic culture thrived and
flourished under the Abbasids, Ottomans and Mughals. Muslims ruled over India
for more than six centuries; despite that, at the time of the independence of
India and Pakistan in 1947, Hindus outnumbered Muslims three to one (there were
only 100 million Muslims in the population of 400 million Indians in 1947). That’s
how tolerant and inclusive Islamic culture was back then. By comparison, the
Red Indians of America and the Aborigines of Australia were reduced to a tiny
minority of those continents after the European invasions.
The Sultanate of Delhi and the Mughal Empire were regarded
as benevolent rulers by ancient historians. But when India was conquered by the
British Empire, their Orientalist historians deliberately propagated the myth
of supposedly “savage and rapacious” rule of Muslims in India in order to sow the
seeds of dissension between Muslims and Hindus. In the nineteenth century, the
newly established British education system in India deliberately portrayed Muslim
rulers of India as marauders, rapists and looters in order to malign them. By
contrast, the British rule in India was portrayed in a positive light: that the
British Empire built roads and railways and established schools, colleges and
hospitals in India.
If we were to compare the British and Muslim rules in India,
the Muslim rulers at least resided in India and shared their wealth and fortune
with their subjects. The British rule, on the other hand, was a foreign rule;
the affairs of the state were run by viceroys and governors on the behalf of
the monarchs of England who resided thousands of miles away in London. A small
number of European colonizers in India treated their subjects as untouchables;
they traded raw materials for pennies and sent finished goods back to the
Indian market with huge profits, thus enriching themselves and the British
Empire.
Up until 1857, the Hindus and Muslims of India were united
enough to rise up in arms together against the British colonizers under the
nominal command of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. But after that,
the British education system introduced by Lord Macaulay in India entrenched
communal divisions and made it virtually impossible for Hindus and Muslims to
understand each other, even though both religious communities were the victims
of exploitation of foreign rule.
Regarding the notion peddled by the Orientalist historians
that Muslims or Islam were somehow foreign to India, we need to settle on the
definition of nativity first. If an Indian settles in the US, for instance, how
would you define such a first generation immigrant? Since he was brought up in
India and subsequently migrated to a Western country, therefore such a first
generation Indian-American would have more in common with Indians than
Americans, as such. But how would you identify the children of an immigrant who
have been brought up and educated in the West? The second generation
Indian-Americans, for all practical purposes, would be more American than
Indian in their outlooks.
Similarly, although I concede that the invading armies of
Muslim rulers from Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran were foreign to India;
but once they settled in India, made Delhi their seat of governance,
intermarried and gave birth to Indian children, then how come the descendants
of such benevolent rulers be labeled as foreign invaders? Excluding a few odd
adventurers, like Mahmud of Ghazni, who had his seat of government in
Afghanistan but plundered the wealth of India by conducting raids on Somnath,
the Muslim rulers of India, particularly the Sultanate of Delhi and the Mughal
Empire, were as much native to India as the Hindu and Sikh rajas and maharajas.
Notwithstanding, the only true sociological definition of
nation is ethno-linguistic group. The concept of modern nation state,
particularly in multiethnic federations like India and Pakistan, is an
artificial construct which is predicated on nothing substantive but on myths,
fables and symbols. Rather than monolithic communities, the Hindus and Muslims
of India were more parochial and tribal in character.
The astute Orientalist historians of British India debunked
the myth of six centuries’ old Muslim rule in India by calling them “marauders”
and substituted it with the fables of the pre-Christ Maurya Empire in order to
forge and reify Hindu identity against Muslims. The primary concern of
impoverished Indian masses was to earn bread and butter for their families. The
metanarratives of Hindu and Muslim nationalism were taught by the British
rulers, Hindu elites and Muslim ashrafiya to their subjects in order to distract
and exploit them.
Here, let me clarify that I am not giving a free pass to the
Muslim rulers of India. Their rule must have been as tyrannical as any other
undemocratic, elitist rule throughout the history has been. I am only
contending that the Muslim rulers were deliberately singled out and vilified in
order to sow the seeds of dissension between the two communities.
After all, if the British rulers who resided in England and
ruled over India can be hailed as saviors who built roads and railways and established
schools, colleges and hospitals, not by academics but by common Indian
citizens, then why can’t the Sultanate of Delhi and the Mughal Empire that
ensured peace and stability in India and built architectural wonders in Delhi,
Lahore and Agra be granted a similar level of deference?
By the British divide-and-rule policy in the Indian context,
it is generally assumed by Indian historians that the British rulers used the
Muslim minority against the Hindu majority by giving the former preferential treatment,
separate electorates etc. but the fact is often overlooked that the British
imperialists in equal measure used the Hindus against the Muslims by vilifying
the latter’s culture, rule and religion.
Moreover, the partition of Bengal on religious lines in 1905
was another classic instance of the British divide-and-rule policy through
demographic change. In this case, the British imperialists cleverly partitioned
the Hindu-majority Bengal province into the Muslim-majority East Bengal and the
Hindu-majority West Bengal. As a consequence, the Hindus felt aggrieved and
launched a mass movement against the partition; the Raj obliged the Hindus by
accepting their demand of reunifying Bengal in 1911 which created a sense of
alienation and deprivation among Muslims.
This time around, however, despite unifying the province
along linguistic lines, at the same time the British rulers split up Bihar and
Orissa province to the west and Assam province to the east; thus, reducing the
initial Hindu majority (pre-1905) that included Bihar, Orissa and Assam, in
favor of Muslim majority (post-1911) in the reunified Bengal. Additionally, the
British rulers also devised separate electorates for Muslims in 1909; thus,
pitting one community against the other which had lived peacefully for
centuries before the arrival of British in India.
Finally, rather than cultivating inclusive Indian nationalism
that would glorify Hindu, Muslim and Sikh identities and histories in equal
measure, the British rulers maliciously nurtured exclusionary Hindu and Muslim
nationalism in order to divide the communities and prolong the British rule. As
several contemporary Indian historians have contended that Muslim nationalism
in India was a reaction to exclusionary Hindu nationalism.
The political leadership of India was the product of British
education system that forged artificial identities and entrenched communal
divisions, therefore it was not possible for them to rise above their communal
prejudices and work for the betterment of all Indians as a nation. This
self-serving, divide-and-rule policy by the British rulers and their Hindu,
Muslim and Sikh collaborators eventually led to a carnage and mass exodus of
people on the eve of independence the likes of which history has seldom
witnessed.
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