Hindu and Muslim Fundamentalism

I am using the term fundamentalism( strictly speaking it does not apply to Hindu religion at all, it being a conglomeration of a set of charming traditions, quaint beliefs, intriguing mythology, historical baggage, profound philosophy, humanism contrasted with abhorrent caste system, adulation of motherhood, co existing with subjugation of women and any number of other characteristics, but no rigid body of dogma or fundamentals) not only as a convenient label, but as used in current parlance, it wonderfully focuses the mind on a particular psyche, mind set, on a muddled theology if you will, which manifestly self serving leaders use to induce followers to accept distorted history, noxious beliefs, deviant religious teaching. This inevitably leads to heightened emotional frenzy, loss of the capacity to discriminate right from wrong, a nebulous higher purpose, resolute faith in the guide and philosopher. The passions are stoked to white heat. . It enthralls people who are semiliterate, mentally immature, in straitened circumstances, not exposed to humane and liberal thought, introspective, perhaps affected by great personal tragedy, indoctrinated in isolation, conjuring dream of ancient glory, its usurpation by the infidel, orgasmic ecstasy of revenge- rape is a common accompaniment of riots. They are given food, clothes and shelter, much like Muslim Madressahs cater to a similar class of people. The alternative to accepting the largesse is usually deprivation, hunger, exposure to elements. They are further deluded with visions of the specific religion’s idea of eternal bliss.
The leaders are generally educated, clear headed, though of a warped mentality, men with a malicious agenda, who do not lose sight of personal gain and take no personal risks. True some of the higher cadre are zealots but they don’t reach the top and at times risk their life and limbs. The leadership does not hesitate getting on the pay toll of vested interests. Valuable land occupied by slum dwellers coveted for building expensive housing estates or for extension of factories, lavish amusement parks, office/ business complexes, can be made available by the simple device of torching the area during a communal riot. The riot does not have to be communal, any kind will do, ethnic, sectarian, linguistic, class, or industrial . In the last instance it saves the cost and bother of negotiations, compensation or court proceeding. Vast tracts of land in Bombay, Karachi, Colombo, Bangkok, Jakarta, and other cities of South Asia. have been so acquired.
Besides this income, loot obtained from the victims, contribution of the followers and other claimants to religious exclusivity also help fill up the coffers of the leaders, who live in the style they feel entitled to. They rise literally on the ashes and bones of the victims, to respectability, election to legislature, nomination to state and federal cabinets, where the scope for the higher cause, self included, gets even wider.
So this essay should be captioned reactionary, economic, capitalistic, pseudo religious fanaticism. This is too unwieldy so I will stay with fundamentalism.
I must hasten to add that though an atheist by conviction I have an indelible mark of inherited Sufism on me. My family abhorred extremism, fanaticism and chauvinism. We shunned Wahabis, Arya Samajis, Islamic Jamats and Hindu Mahasabha in equal measure.. We socialized with equal facility with main stream Sunnis, Shias, Hindus, Rajputs and Kaisth(businessmen class, accountants, administrators, linguists, poets) a few liberal Englishmen and Brahmins, an odd Anglo Indian(of mixed parentage and looked down upon by the British and despised by Indians, they in turn regarded themselves a cut above Indians and fawned upon the British. They monopolized railway services and lower echelon of police officer ranks. In 1947 most migrated to the UK, moaned to any one who listened, of their luxurious life in India. I was accosted by a woman in London who ,with tears in her eyes, dwelt on the number of servant (eleven if I recall correctly) her Bungalow and that no one, but absolutely no one, was left in Delhi in the summer. We all went to Simla (a hill resort, summer seat of British Indian government).
We regarded our friends as charming, cultured, sophisticated, though a shade waywardly. They prayed at shrines, made presentations to saints (actually his disciples )join in Muharram procession (10th of the month of Muharram of Muslim calendar is commemorated for the martyrdom of the grandson of prophet of Islam who gave his life but not his hand into obescience of a corrupt usurper. The procession has borrowed heavily from Ram Lila, there are ceremonial exhibitions of stick word etc. This commemoration is very different in Iran and Iraq, the two countries with Shia majority) join our festivals, what harm would come if they would pray Muslim style once in a while.
India from times unknown, has been coveted for its fertile land, lush forests, pristine rivers, moderate climate, gentle people, beautiful women and spices with pungent taste and smell (so essential to overpower the odor of rotting meat, poultry and fish Europeans had to eat when fresh supplies ran out, as they did every year).
Surrounded by regions with harsh climate, which could not support the exploding population, a phenomenon believed to have occurred 4-5 thousand years BC, and relatively easy of access to central Asian people through the Khyber and Bolan passes in North west of India and other passes through the Himalayas and possibly overseas, invaders, adventurers, traders and economic refugees made a bee line for it.. The original Indians, who had been settled on land which gave forth of its plenty with minimal effort, as a consequence of easy life, had become physically less vigorous and mentally less war like. The new comers who had had to face cruel elements, forage far and wide for food, confront carnivores and other groups of hunter gatherers were far stronger and aggressive than the gentle folk of India and managed to overcome, dominate and enslave the latter. The natives were eventually pushed to the South and North east of the country. These were the Aryans who are thus believed to have spread, from central Asia, to India and far East and to Asian Russia and Europe.
Aryans developed a religion based on nature worship, Sun, moon, rain, fire, lightening, storms, flood and earthquakes. As society stabilized into tribes and people had time to think, ponder and meditate, gods/goddesses of wealth, education, love and fertility has to be invented. Hinduism is thus about the only religion which evolved through a process of observation of natural phenomenon and conclusion drawn there from. It is therefore the only science based (though partially so, the other half of science-replication of results through experimentation was missing) concept.
An organized system was now taking shape with rites, rituals and prayers to propitiate the relevant deity. Men more articulate, shrewd and intelligent had to be assigned to manage it and arrange affairs on auspicious days. They had to mediate with gods too. A preacher class, the Brahmins thus evolved. Other with better physical attributes defended the tribe and in due course, took over as tribal chiefs They were initially chosen by Consensus.
With further social evolution and a number of tribes congregating into collectives, the office of rulers became hereditary. These people Kashtriya- warriors , were to call themselves Rajputs (sons of Raj)
Another body of men mediated trade, bartering good and produce. They came to be called vaishya or business class.
The manual workers physically strong, but not very ambitious or shrewd tilled the land, as peasants and became builders, masons, carpenters, weavers, tailors etc. Natives were made to work on sanitation and do all the unclean dirty jobs as curing hides, collecting and disposing of dead animals and human/animal excreta. They were untouchables.
According to Hindu holy books, Brahmins and Rajputs used to eat meat including beef, in ancient times. The latter still do.
Women, who had been heads of households in hunter, gatherer era, managing the hearth, home and children. Men had to be away for days or weeks foraging for food, leaving a few men behind to protect them. Women had, of necessity, to have multiple husbands, from among those who stayed home and the returning hunter.
There was no concept of personal property- there was little to go by, so inheritance did not figure prominently in the affairs and legitimacy of children to qualify for a share was irrelevant.
With immovable property, houses farms and land, which men had acquired by force of arms and which they wanted to pass on to the product of their seed, legitimacy became paramount. Monogamy was enforced, with all kinds of taboos and superstitions and punishment for women venturing outside the sharp and narrow lines. Those who did were branded “fallen” women. They , most likely, became the earliest sex workers.
Work was heavy and physical, tilling unturned land, carrying heavy stones, wood and produce, fighting with poachers and invaders. Boys were more suited to it, so male issue came to be preferred. Girls were physically weaker and were periodically disabled during pregnancy and parturition. They however exceeded boys by far in endurance.
Females were valued for fertility and had to be protected and cherished. They could, however, not be trusted with affairs religious, so all priests had to be men. Education was also their exclusive right. The warrior class did not see any reason to acquire it. Lower classes were not entitled to it. The business class were content with knowledge of accounting.
This way of thinking runs through all creeds. Women are put on a pedestal. Muslims are taught that Paradise is at the feet of the mother, that she should be taken care of before a father is. But in no creed are they given authority or equal opportunity in education.
Aryans were followed by Huns and Mongols. Both brought an amorphous body of rites and rituals which were, however, not strong enough to prevail.
There was no clash of beliefs yet.. Alexander of Macedonia and Persian kings also ventured into India but they were raiders, plundered and went back with the loot, leaving a few of their compatriots to die of hunger, exposure to element and hostile natives, or to seek shelter with the defeated warriors.
Some Jews did flee persecution in the holy land and migrated to India about a thousand years before Christ but they were too few, ( Jews don’t allow conversion, one has to be born out of Jewish mother, unless you are Elizabeth Taylor or Sammy Davis junior. But conservatives Jews don’t accept even the rich and the famous. Senator, later defense secretary Cohen had a non Jewish mother. He was not quite kosher) and too destitute to have much impact. They and were thoroughly Indianised, except in religion. One of my patients in Karachi was named Rachel. Out of curiosity, , I remarked that it was an interesting name. Demurely she said that she was Yehudi (Jewish). I asked her why she had not emigrated to Israel. She said she did go there, but could not stay for long as the women there were shameless and went around nearly naked..
Afghans are believed by some to be the lost tribe of Israel .
In the first century AC some Christian missionaries also landed in India. (Nestorians) . They , too were few in number, and not particularly successful in proselytizing. Remnants still live in South of India and are indistinguishable from others, except for weekly church attendance.
Another batch of refugees escaping religious repression, the Zoroastrians, came to India when Muslims took over Iran. They also do not permit conversion.
The immigrants mentioned above had one over-riding characteristic in common. They were few in number, though possessed of structured religions, and were not backed by force of arms. Sword behind divinity does wonders for conversion.
So Hinduism held sway in India from the time of the advent of Aryans with standing all comers and spreading to Far East. Buddhism and Jainism, essentially reformist movements, flourished for a while, but only exist in vestigial remnants now, Buddhism largely exported to China, Japan and parts of far east. Lord Buddha’s teachings and to a lesser those of Mahavira, founder of Jains, did shake the establishment, for awhile.
The most famous Indian Emperor Ashoka did pledge allegiance to Buddhism after a particularly vicious carnage in a battle. A large number of his subjects followed suit. But the two creeds, proclaiming non-violence and equality of all(men only) humans fell victim to the machinations of the priestly and the warrior class, whose privileged status they had challenged.
The dominance of Hindu creed was challenged for the first time since its birth many millennia ago, by Muslims about a hundred years after the advent of Islam. The religion had energized Arabs, making them into a highly disciplined messianic proselytizing, formidably unstoppable force. Visions of plenty, delectable women , wine ,food and water, all in short supply in Hedjaz , and therefore rationed of necessity, was an irresistible goad. Loot in the form of gold, jewelry, other goods, women, children and slaves was an added incentive and a pre-requisite for prosperity and a treasury to underwrite further Jihads. Occupation of land and exploitations of resources of the subject people was initially the primary objective. Slavery and concubinage continued to be permitted (and still is). Proseletization was secondary. Conversion was a collateral by product, non Arab Muslim being accorded an inferior status and requiring an Arab patron. The vestiges of this practice survive to this day. One needs an Arab “wali” protector to conduct business affairs in Arab countries
Some Arab Seamen were seized by natives off the coast of SINDH, killed and their property confiscated. This was a routine occurrence (still is, India and Pakistan seize fishermen of the other side, confiscate the boats, eat the fish. The only difference some fourteen hundred years have made, is that not all prisoners are killed, some are kept in jail for exchange of nationals)
The Arab governor of Iraq who had sponsored the sea merchants, protested to the local ruler( Raja Dahir, to become more famous in Hindu and Muslim and Sindhi folklore than his stature would otherwise merit) and demanded reparations. Unaware of what would hit him, the ruler contemptuously rejected the demands and decapitated the emissaries too. The Arab governor Yusuf Bin Hajjaj, a particularly perverse and cruel ruler who relished torture and enjoyed victim’s scream as other would music, sent an expedition under the command of his nephew, a young man in his late teens, Muhammad Bin Qasim later to acquire Icon status among Indian Muslims. In Pakistan revisionist historians under the aegis of “fundamentalist” officialdom call him the first Pakistani.
He duly defeated the Rajah, plundered the land, established a viable beach head and returned to Iraq laden with gold, silk ,precious metals , slaves and women .His uncle had told him off to bring back the virgin daughter of the Rajah, a famed beauty, taking care to protect her maiden hood with his life .The lady to protect her honor, or out of spite, and with a truly remarkable insight into the Governor’s mind told him that she had not been able to resist the victors charms and had seduced his nephew. Regretting the necessity of, but his word had to be shown to be paramount, he ordered his nephew to be put on the rack and the lady consigned to flames .At her last breath, she declared that she was still a virgin, and felt sorry for the hapless commander, but that was life.
The Governor, inconsolable, lamented loudly, tore his hair out, and scratched his face with his own nails. It is not known what he grieved for more , the unjustified torture of his blameless nephew or deprivation from carnal pleasure.
Adventurers, marauders, plunderers and war lords looking for new territory followed. It is a curious fact of history, that invaders were challenged only after crossing the Khyber Pass, what is now Frontier province and the plains of the Punjab( only Porus confronted Alexander near modern Lahore, still allowing free passage over two thirds of the province) Perhaps they practiced war or of attrition, or were busy collecting credible force or patching up inter-ruler disputes in order to forge a common front Perhaps they felt that the enemy was not worthy of notice unless he advanced far enough It may have been for logistic reasons. History does tell us that all major battles with intruders took place at the Punjab-Delhi border in Paniput town.
Warriors came to India for land and riches. Carpet baggers followed for the ruler’s largesse and for the lure of easy life, with plenty of food, fruits and water .Some natives converted to curry favor with the masters, others to get out from under the yoke of upper classes and gain equal status with their erstwhile masters( Islam is egalitarian- for subject races) Some married off their women to cement relations and enhance their status by an alliance with the ruling class .
But the main body of converts owe their change of faith to Muslim mystics, Sufis and Saints who preached and practiced brother hood, tolerance, love, and freedom of choice in faith. Mysticism particularly appealed to the Indian psyche, resonate as it did with their centuries old cults ,rituals, and practices. One look at the religious demography of India will substantiate the point. .Muslims constituted the majority of population in the North-West where Sufis arrived first, were a small minority in the main body of India for a thousand miles ,and then in majority again in North-East, in Bengal, where mass conversion to Islam is attributed to a great Sufi, Bayazid Bustami. The faith spread to far East specially Indonesia, in a similar manner.
Over centuries invaders and natives settled into an amiable accommodation, living and socializing together, and participating in each others festivals, happy and sad times. Hindus served in the armies of Muslim Kings and Muslim generals led the forces of Hindu Rajas. The most well known myth, given wide currency by both Hindu and Muslim zealots, that Aurangzeb, the Moghal king and Shivaji the Hindu rebel, fought for their respective faiths, has no basis in fact. Shivaji’s second in command was a Muslim General and Auranzeb’s general staff was replete with Hindu officers. Aurangzeb spent the better part of his reign fighting fellow Muslim Sultans in the south of India. Following the decline of Moghal empire Marathas had laid siege to Delhi. The Moghal emperor (in name only)appealed to an Afghan warlord- Ahmad Shah Abdali to come to his rescue. In the ensuing battle, a Muslim general of Maratha army nearly broke the flank of the Afghan army.
It is one of history’s might have beans. If Marhatmas had won largely through the brilliant tactics of a Muslim general, Indians may have emerged out of the sloth of Moghal dissipation. A vigorous dynasty may have been born, which could have repulsed Europeans. India would be a dynamic first world country now.
Much too late, Hindus and Muslims gathered under the banner of Bahadur Shah Zafar in one last compulsive, and doomed, attempt to throw out the British.
But deep beneath this accommodation and camaraderie, lurked the ancient feeling of outrage at being supplanted by the Muslims, among upper class Hindus. They objected to Muslims in Bengal being given assembly seats in proportion to their numbers in late nineteenth and early twentieth century,. claming that the latter. were largely a body of converts from lower classes, uncouth ,illiterate and uncivilized.
Brahmans, had suffered the most. They kept on reminding the populace of the ancient glory of India, Hindu Raj, metamorphosing Aurangzeb and his like into standard bearers of Islam, Pirthivi Raj, Rana Sangha and Shiva Ji into Hindu demi-gods
Muslims not to be left behind also made icons out of marauders like Mahmud of Ghazni and adventurers like Ahmad and Nadir Shah and fratricidal bigots like Aurangzeb into high defenders of the faith. Fanatics among them pushed for holy war against Hindus and British alike, railing against accommodation and against Muslims adopting Hindu ways, calling for reversion to pristine Islam. They were the fore runners of Wahabis.
The British having pitted brother against brother, by low cunning and subterfuge, by lies and half truths, by promises and pledges, by bluff and gall, elevated themselves from the status of supplicating traders, to rulers of India. Having snatched the reins of power from Muslims, they initially patronized the Hindus who were already more educated and industrious. They had been running the empire, administration and business for centuries.
After 1857 war of independence the British had realized, that Hindu Muslim unity was a lethal for their paramountcy. Hindus were encouraged to dwell on the mischief Muslims had done to their religion, languages, cultures and psyche. They also realized that some power will have to be devolved on the natives. Indian national congress (INC) was founded in 1885, by an Englishman .
Soon Indian nationalism came into its own. The national movement was led by British trained University graduates, mostly Lawyers .There was no Hindu-Muslim divide as such , but being the majority in the population and having had a head start Hindus dominated the political process. Apprehensive of the campaign gathering momentum, the British started patronizing the Muslims.
Muslims had been going into intellectual and political decline since the failure of the siege of Vienna in late fifteenth century. They had attained such a height that it took a long time to slide to the bottom .About the same time, Mullahs had ruled that the Quran could not be printed in a machine, and by inference all printed works were branded un-Islamic .Though continuing the conquests in Asia, they had lost the edge in science ,technology and research .Muslims in India paralleled the decline of their brothers in faith in Mid-East. They suffered from profound communal depression. as well.
A few Muslim reformers, specially Sir Syed Ahmed Khan tried valiantly to reverse the trend, and given the material to work on, were remarkably successful , but could not quite bridge the gap. To evade victimization by rulers, they shunned the political process, pledging unquestioning loyalty to the crown .
The British encouraged the Muslim upper classes to form their own political organization. Their leader was the Agha Khan, in the current incarnation a product ,pure and simple of the British imperial policy .Muslim League was formed in 1905. Its charter loudly proclaimed its upper class base “ we the Muslim rulers etc” and pledged undying devotion to the Crown. The Agha Khan was its first president.
Hindu and Muslim riots were incited especially over cow slaughter and the proclivity of the Hindus to ring loud bells at the time of sunset prayers by the Muslims .INC secular and nationalist, tried to control the developing conflagration. They had to contend not only with British policy, which now openly favored Muslim in their demand for safe guards under the pretext of protecting minority rights, but also with the scheme of awarding separate electorate to lower class Hindus. If Gandhi had not overwhelmed them with fast unto death on the question, ( upper cast Hindus are only about 25% of Hindu population) INC would have been rendered totally ineffective.. INC also had to deal with Hindu right wing too, who were vying with Muslim communalists in currying British favor.
Politics, before Gandhi appeared on the scene, were upper class, elitist and secular. He no doubt was able to energize and unleash the vast mass of peasants of India, but also released the genie of communal friction, though he tried hard to fight it, by full blooded support to Khilafat
It must be remembered that Jinnah shunned the Khilafat movement. Tagore and Jinnah both are on record in opposing introduction of religious imagery into politics.
The British took full advantage, bringing forth questions of reserved seats, electoral safeguards ,constitutional guarantees, putting the ever dwindling number of nationalist Muslims on the defensive .Some courageous souls, however, stayed the course, the most notable being Maulana Azad.
INC made a few fatal strategic and tactical mistakes. To mention two, in 1928 they reneged on the Congress-League pact for safeguarding Muslim rights, and in 1936, they rebuffed the advances of the only, at the time credible provincial Muslim League body- that in the United Provinces.
It is a curious quirk of fate that a father and son, Moti Lal and Jawahar Lal were involved in both events, the father in 1928 and the son in 1936. The son, as we shall see later, would drive the last nail in the coffin of a united India in 1946,
By the late nineteen thirties, the tide had turned the communalist way. Jinnah once hailed as ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, now the undisputed leader of a Muslim reactionary party, went from strength to strength.
Communal frenzy increased .
The British exhausted by WW11, bowed to the inevitable. They agreed to negotiate the terms of transfer of power to Indian hands.
It is a tribute to the British people that they ditched Churchill, the acclaimed architect of victory, instead electing the pedestrian Attlee, as they perceived correctly that the latter would be able to give them a fair social deal.
The Labor Government, perhaps to placate Churchill and his Tory party implacably opposed to Indian independence, chose Mount batten, a member of the Royal family, to preside over the transition from British rule and hand over reins of the government to the successor states India and Pakistan .If the choice of an inept ,arrogant and rather dim member of the family was a deliberate decision to play havoc with India is difficult to say. But the result was devastating.
Mount batten, mindful of nothing but his place in history, hastened to an ill conceived, ill planned and premature partition. Final boundary awards were not announced till three days after the fateful day. Millions did not know if their homes would be in India or Pakistan .Panic broke out, agent provocateurs had a field day, looters and all kinds of anti social element ran amuck, Police were supine, helpless with out leadership of British officers who had shamelessly abdicated all responsibility .All hell broke loose, normally rational people behaved like raving maniacs, a million were butchered, ten million uprooted. The deep seated scar on Hindu-Muslim psyche has not healed after six decades.
Psychotic trends continue , giving a new lease of life, ever again, to bigotry, intolerance, obscurantism and fanaticism. Pakistan bereft of non-Muslims indulges in ethnic sectarian, and linguistic orgy of massacres. It is currently in the grip of a Neanderthal, male chauvinistic ,supremacist, suicidal, paradise seeking descendents of Taliban . Lest they be accused of discrimination, they bomb the odd church, and abduct a few dalit women.
India has had communal riots with vicious regularity .Major eruption occurred in Jabalpur in 1961 Reactionaries, unscrupulous politicians. don’t let the fire of hatred die down. Ever keeping the flame alive, their greatest glory so far, demolition of Babri mosque, which had been locked up since 1933, and there was no evidence of its being the birth place of Lord Rama the legendary Hindu king .Riots rivaling the ones in 1947 followed with corresponding loss of life .The government frightened of Hindu revivalists dare not control the mobs.
Hindu fanaticism, a reaction to ancient injury, kept in conscious thought by revivalist dreamers hallucinating under charas( a derivative of opium) aided and abetted by an alien ruler and goaded by the extreme right wing lunatic fringe among the Muslims could have been controlled with a little bit of give and take, and statesman like behavior of leaders in accepting one India with three federating autonomous units.
Muslim fanaticism also carrying a historical baggage of ancient glory is however much more deep rooted in dogma and nourished by five hundred years of humiliation and under written by feudals, mid-eastern Emirs and kings and other agents of corporate capitalism and neo-imperialism is much more difficult to eradicate.