Islam and India

Islam in India is the theme of my writing here. I am not a scholar in history neither am I a well-read person. What I am going to write is from my understanding of India –a land that is like a crucible for acting on something to forge newness. The Hindus of India called the major portion of Indian subcontinent as 'Brahmabhumi'. Some like to define it as 'god's own home'. Hindus know from the age old tradition that India is their own land as Germany is the land of the Germans or England for the English. Hindus should not blame themselves for their conception. It is true and natural for them like the Germans and the English.

But India is more than to be understood as the land of Hindus. By writing this, I do not like to say about secularism. This has nothing to do with this conception of secularism. Secularism is a technical term related to the means of governance.But I have to discuss a little about it before coming to my original theme. The Congress government has done immense harm to the national fabric by highlighting the sense of this Western conception in the minds of the people of India while defining India as a secular country. They had no right or authority to imposing such an idea for the consumption of its people so that they become very much aware to understand the meaning of unity through an awareness of division. Did the British require using the sense of the term while ruling the post Mughal- India? Akbar ruled India in a much peaceful way than the Congress government without its people bothering the question whose country it was –Hindus' or Muslims'. What made Nehru and the Congress party thinking it so necessary to proclaim that their government was not meant for the Hindus only? They –unable to avoid a partition, was subsequently afraid of the vast mass of India's Muslims demanding further division of the country. They tried to placate its Muslim population by introducing an emphatic idea of-'secularism' in the constitution for governance. Thus, they sowed a sense of animosity in the psyche of the Hindu population. The Hindus experienced much sufferings at the hands of Turks, Pathans and Mughals from the time of fall of Prithvi Raj Chauhan who was born in 1159 AD and was the last Hindu emperor of India. Unlike the complete Islamization of Persia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Turkey, North Africa, the Islamization of India was never complete. After more than one millennium of Muslim Tyranny from 715 up to 1761, more than 70 percent of the population of India remained Hindu. This was not due to any Muslim charity or benevolence, since the murderous and savage beastlike Muslims have none of these characteristics. The Muslim tyranny in India was as blood- thirsty and insidious as it was in all parts of the world. The British in India was never nearer to the tyranny what Mahmud of Ghazni and Muhammad of Ghor had inflicted on the Hindu population of India The Hindus could not reconcile this fact of Islamic tyranny with their attitude toward Islam. It was not because that Islam was an alien culture that allowed eating of beef, which is anathema to the Hindus but because of Islam's intolerance to other faith and their haughty and barbaric attitude to the followers of other religious paths. The Hindus were never so critical of the eating of beef by the British, as the Englishmen were never as barbaric as Muslims were. So, the dormant subconscious sense of helpless anger against the Muslim's upper hand behavior surfaced in the Hindu-psychic when they saw that the Muslims, largely, did not take part in freedom struggle against the British rule in India and their subsequent demand for a separate Muslim state by division of India. What was the message they sent to the Hindus? The message was that Muslims would not like to live under the Hindus whom they had ruled for almost five hundred years. In such a situation, the Hindus regarded 'secularism' as a mode of diffidence on the part of Congress government. Eventually the Muslims and Hindus continue to live without trust on one another. I think the situation would have been better had the government ruled under the absence of an emphatic idea of secularism; even it would have been better for India to be declared as a Hindu-state where Muslims and Hindus would enjoy equally all that life and any government could provide.

Now under such a background I would like to think about the future of Islam in India i.e. in 'God's own home'.

From time immemorial India had been invaded and plundered by foreign marauders; some of them left India after plundering wealth and causing immense harm to the people and some settled permanently. India is a big country. Her Civilization is 5000 years (or perhaps more) old. She has given birth to the world's most important religions. She provided refuge to other leading religions. People of many races have come to India and settled here. She absorbed them all into her blood and fraternized with them as her children. Unity and synthesis
are the embodiments of Indian culture. India-An
Ethnological Museum: India has often been described as an ethnological museum from the human point of view. Her history tells us about the Harappan
people who lived in the Indus River areas prior to the coming of the Aryans. The Vedas speak about the Aryans
and their spread in the Indo-Gangetic regions. The Sangam classics bear testimony to a well-developed culture among the Tamils, even during the pre-Christian Era, in the extreme south of India. Apart from these early settlers, the Persians entered India in the North West. The Greeks, the Saks, the Huns, and the Kushans followed them. The Arabs, the Turks, the Mongols
and the Mughals
came to India during the medieval times. These people belonged to many races. The Europeans, such as the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French
and the English, came in the modern period. Excepting the Europeans, all others have been absorbed into the stream of Indian life. It is due to this fact that many consider India as an ethnological museum
of many races. Indian society is a multi-racial
society.

Now an Indian Hindu cannot be defined obviously in an immune collective system of Hinduism. Actually, Hinduism is not a religion in the sense the term is used for other major religions of the world.

Here in India –people, from time immemorial, sought (and still seeking) the spiritual truth of life and world by renouncing all the worldly gains and enjoyments. No other country of the world devoted so passionately for the sake of God and truth. There have been spiritual seekers, saints in every land of this world but it was never been so revered and sought after task in life as it was in India. Millions of sadhus, saints and sannyasins consecrated all their lives for attaining spiritual truths. Thus the land has been charged with spiritual consciousness as a piece of iron is magnetized in the constant contact with a magnet. This is the explanation for thinking of India as 'God's own home'. India is not only merely an ethnological museum of different races and religions but also a living laboratory where the spiritual identity of man is going to be developed. Not only that-India is a land where exist all kinds of basic human problems. There can be no human problem-religious, political, social, financial and individual that does not exist in India. India is a land of problems and difficulties. It is because that they can only be solved perfectly and permanently in Indian spiritual atmosphere. India is a crucible where the spiritual future of humanity is being moulded into perfection.

Islam was born as the Providence thus so willed. Islam has its unique place in the creation of God's world. It came and it will remain, as the creation would be incomplete without it.

However, Islam has to traverse a long, arduous path of hardships before attaining the meaning of the purpose of their coming on this planet.They stand for valour and beauty and not destruction and perverse defamation. They will have to manifest the type of perfection for which God is waiting in them. This is true for all the organized religions of this world. For this to be true and to be attained, India is the just right place for Islam. I have no doubt that the Indian Muslims (and not the Talibans) will change the face of Islam. Islam was born in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia. But it will fulfill the promise of Allah here in India as India is the required place for all future possibilities.