Hindustan or 'Lynchistan'?
By Syed Osman Sher
Mississauga, Canada
According to a report, the Supreme Court of India had affirmed on July 17, 2018 that it would not allow Hindustan to become “Lynchistan”, and had given a number of directions to the Government in this regard. This news was suppressed by both the media and the Government, but with increased lynching incidents the Court has inquired in July 2019 of the action taken in this regard.
If any person has to be responsible for such a ruling, which has put the entire India to shame, it is the ruler, Narendra Modi. Starting with his Gujrat premiership to the present Prime Ministry of India, he has pushed this country to such an abyss that a large segment of his countrymen is now thrown at the mercy of illiterate fanatics and lunatics. They are prowling the streets and preying in packs upon the lonely and the unsuspected Muslims. Blinded he is by the hatred of the Muslims so much that Modi is loath to look at the conduct of the past rulers who had made ‘tolerance’ a hallmark of the culture of the Subcontinent. It was their liberal mind and caring heart that had made the country great. In the array of such rulers, if one tries to find a tyrant, he surely would see none. In this way, Modi, definitely, is writing a history very different from the others. Let us have a glance on India’s past rulers’ eclecticism and their concern for the good of their people.
The historical period of India starts with Bimbisara, who came to the throne of Magadh (South Bihar) in 546 BC and started building an All-India empire by conquering and amalgamating territories in his kingdom. His reign was a period of free-thinking so that we find there a mushroom of religious beliefs, arising either independently or as offshoots of Hinduism. Buddhism and Jainism took birth in his time and in his dominion. This Hindu king was so respectful to Buddha and Mahavira that both the religions were claiming him to be their own. On one occasion, when the Buddha had no money to pay to the ferryman to carry him across the Ganges, Bimbisara was so moved that he passed orders for the general remission of fares for ascetics of all religions.
Chanakya, the architect of the Mauryan Empire, writes about Chandragupta, who occupied the throne in 320 BC: “In the happiness of his subjects lies his happiness, in their welfare his welfare; whatever pleases himself he shall not consider as his good but whatever pleases his subjects he shall consider as good.” Chandragupta's grandson, Asoka, inscribed his edicts on rocks: “All men are my children and just I desire for my children that they should obtain welfare and happiness both in this world and the next, the same do I desire for all men…In the happiness of his subjects lies the happiness of the king; in their good his own good, and not in what is pleasing to him. He must find his pleasure in the pleasure of his subjects”.
Arnold Toynbee says about him: “He charged his officials to take to heart their responsibility towards the huge numbers of people under their rule, and to treat them as gently as nurses treat children (Seventh Pillar Edict;). Though Ašoka had accepted Buddhism, yet he was not intolerant to other religions, especially to the religion of the masses, Hinduism. He held the belief that one’s faith in his own dharma should induce one to respect others’ dharma as well. In Rock Edict XII he advises, ‘But the Beloved of the Gods (Asoka) does not consider gifts of honor to be as important as the essential advancement of all sects. Its basis is the control of one’s speech, so as not to extol one’s own sect or disparage that of another’”.
Another great king, Kanishka, (78-101 AD), was a Buddhist but he was also respectful toward other religions. This is amply demonstrated by his coins, which represented diverse deities, Greek, Sumerian, Persian, Baluchi, Buddhist and Hindu. Such diversity reflected the religious eclecticism of the monarch.
The Gupta monarchs (4th-6th century AD) were the followers of both Brahmanical and Buddhist religions. They kept up the tradition of religious tolerance of the Mauryas and the Kushans. The monarch “punished only to maintain law and order and married only for the sake of progeny”. The Chinese traveler, Fa-hien, who lived in India from 400 to 411 AD, writes: “The people are numerous and happy; they have not to register their households, or to attend to any magistrates and their rules…The king governs without decapitation or corporal punishments.”
Another great king of Northern India was Harshwardhan, who came to the throne in 606 and ruled for forty-one years from Kanauj. Every five years he organized charity festivals at the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna in Paryag where he lavishly distributed cash and other necessities to the needy, ascetics, Brahmans and Buddhists. In the end, he even gave his clothes in charity. He fed thousands of such people daily from his kitchens.
When the Arabs conquered Sindh in 712, they took the local population under their protection after receiving a tax. The policy of humanized system of governance continued throughout the Sultanate and Mughal periods. AlauddinKhilji did not accept Islamic injunctions as a tool of administrating state affairs. According to Barni, the author of Tarikh-i-FerozShahi, Alauddin had stated the following to a religious scholar: "Although I have not studied the science or Qur’an, I am a Muslman of Muslman stock. To prevent rebellion in which thousands perish, I issue such orders as I conceive to be for the good of the State and for the benefit of the people”. FirozTughlaq (1351-1388), equally a great monarch, was a religious person and generally considered an orthodox Muslim. He abolished torture as part of his administration. He himself writes about his humane intentions and his religious zeal: “The great and merciful God made me His servant; I hope and seek for His mercy by devoting myself to prevent the unlawful killing of Musalmans and the infliction of any kind of torture upon them or upon any men”.
Zahiruddin Babar, the founder of the Mughal Empire, left a will for his son, Hemayuam, advising him that it is “incumbent that religious bigotries should be wiped off the tablet of the heart and justice meted out to each religion according to its tenets. Especially, abstain from the sacrifice of cows as this would tend to win the hearts of the people of Hindustan and the populace of the country would be loyal to the Royal favors. The temples and places of worship of whatever religion under the royal authority may not be desecrated. Such justice may be adopted that the King may be pleased with Rayyat and the Rayyatwith the King.” (India as Seen by Babar by R. Nath, P 18)
Akbar's policy of religious tolerance was both political and humane. He aimed at creating a cult of the ruler: a just ruler. What emanated from Akbar's heart was the desire to remove differences among the people of his country and to unite the believers of different faiths by breaking the traditional barriers of religions. In this vein, he presented Din-e Ilahi to his people. H. G. Wells writes in The Outline of History, “His instinct was the true statesman’s instinct for synthesis. His empire was to be neither a Moslem nor a Mongol one, nor was it to be Rajput or Aryan, or Dravidian, or Hindu, or high or low caste; it was to be Indian."
In July 1658, Aurangzeb had assumed the kingship. While settling down to business his first task was to present himself as a model Muslim monarch. He punctiliously observed the public rituals of Islam, and therefore had to discontinue the un-Islamic practices of the Court like jharokhadarshan, weighing of kings for charity, and celebration of navroz and dipawali. Aurangzeb prescribed a series of disabilities for his Hindu subjects. He re-imposed the hated jizya on Hindus. Abolished by Akbar, this tax was not levied during the reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Aurangzeb could not levy this tax for twenty-one years of his reign. But he was as under pressure from the theologians as was hard-pressed to raise the revenue of the State. While the Emperor was in Hasan Abdal, the Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur was executed on the orders of the Qazi court at Delhi in November 1675. There was widespread anger among the Sikhs. So, when Aurangzeb was once returning from Jami mosque of Lahore in 1676 two brickbats were thrown at him. The accused were handed over to the law enforcement authorities, but no reprisal was made against the Sikh community. No communal riot was arranged on the pattern of Modi Government’s Gujarat riots of 2002 when 2,000 people were killed, the majority of them being Muslim.
The historian B. N. Pande observes: “Destiny had ordained that the Mughals would play this unifying role…that even Aurangzeb could play the bigot only half-heartedly, and with considerable restraint.” It was their liberal policies that had made the Mughals a stable unifying force in such a way that the Indian nation of all colors and creeds fought the War of Independence of 1857 jointly against the British under the aegis of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah.
Back to Pakistanlink Homepage
