Intolerance in India - A Travesty of History
By Syed Osman Sher
Mississauga, Canada
From antiquity, the Indian subcontinent has experienced a continual inflow of alien people. It has fired the imagination of all types of people: wanderers, settlers, raiders, traders, conquerors, and colonizers. In this regard two opposite forces, push and pull, have been operating in one direction: movement of peoples towards the subcontinent.
The fertility of the land, the lush green forests, sparse population, over-flowing rivers, abundant milch cows, harness cattle, mineral wealth, convenient trade-routes, and legendary stock of gold and precious jewels have, on the one hand, attracted invaders from outside and, on the other, over-population and desiccation of the adjacent regions of Asia have compelled their inhabitants to move towards this green pasture. They in turn, however, brought with them new ethnicity, cultures, customs, religions, and languages.
The subcontinent has thus been host to hordes of aliens such as the Aryans, Greeks, Scythians, Parthians, Kushans, Huns, Arabs, Turks, Afghans, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British. Its canvas is a mosaic of many resplendent colors, each radiating in its own peculiar light.
Very few countries have seen such an influx of people as India has seen. Its lands and rivers, forests and deserts, hills and plains have become havens to those who wanted to make it their abode, and they have not only been accommodated but also been assimilated. In this process, people have learned new arts and sciences from each other; took many things of value from one and gave their own to the other. This openness and togetherness have proved to be great spurs to the development of civilization in India.
In the context of the Indian pluralistic society, tolerance has thus become the hallmark of its culture. It is also a fact that, in accordance with human nature, the history of India includes accounts of competition, of discrimination, of bigotry and of exclusiveness, and that such phenomena undoubtedly present some dark spots, though not much prominent. The vast subcontinent, with its many regions and sub-regions, has seen rulers belonging to one religion or the other with a varied mix of peoples living under them, but the masses remained unconcerned as to what faiths and beliefs the rulers embraced or forsook. Setting aside the episodes of struggle for political power and brutalities at higher levels, love, understanding, and accommodation have been the ground realities. Religion has not been used either by the state or by the populace as a tool of persecution. On the contrary, it has been played as an instrument for demonstrating tolerance. According to Percival Spear, a British historian, “The Mughal policy of tolerance was extended and amplified by the British. But while it was more complete it was more frigid, for the Mughals, while occasionally demolishing temples, would also endow others, give grants to Hindu as well as Muslim divines, and patronize Hindu festivals. The religious neutrality of the government, as pressured by Christian groups in Britain, forbade all this and left the people with a feeling of aloofness and disdain. The tradition of aloofness from religion as a complement to the policy of tolerance is not one calculated to endear the idea of the secular state to the average Indian heart.”
There is no denying the fact that in the post-Partition days India did not lose its pluralistic and secular essence for about seventy years. However, the present BJP Government of India seems to be toeing the lines of the British in polarizing the Indian society and creating divisiveness in the Indian nationhood. The British did it with a purpose: by creating dissension, they could weaken the nationalist spirit and lengthen their rule. But, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s policy smacks of vendetta and hatred towards the Muslims.
The Muslims are present in the subcontinent for the last twelve hundred years. There is a famous axiom: ‘Hinduism has a wonderful power of assimilation; it has always conquered its conquerors’. True, when the Aryans and other invaders came here, they were absorbed and assimilated fully in the local culture and were completely Hinduized. But this maxim is only partially true. Hinduism has conquered only those communities, which did not have their own strong religious codes or beliefs. It was unable to bring into its fold even those small communities of early Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, who had settled in the country two thousand years earlier. Similar was the case with the Muslims. They found no ground to merge into Hinduism. The ways of life and the whole philosophy of the two communities differed too radically from each other. For instance, idolatry and the institution of caste were anathemas to the unequivocally monotheist Muslims, and so were such doctrines as of karma and reincarnation.
However, the Muslims, though not assimilated in India from the angle of religion, were subdued to a very large extent on social and cultural fronts. They adopted many Hindu customs and even values and gave in return their own. They fully submerged themselves in the culture of the subcontinent. Undoubtedly, the two communities had their religious and social differences, but they coexisted with little friction unless the British sowed discord. The two communities lived their times together in the cities and villages, on the streets and marketplaces, peacefully sharing each other's sorrows and joys, values, and sensitivities, festivities, and celebrations. Together they have made a significant and positive history. This amalgam of the two cultures had given birth to the Indian race, or in modern terms, the South Asian race.
The present government in India, full of religious fanaticism and bigotry, should bear in mind that in the days when the Muslims came and settled in India, conquest of a foreign land was an act internationally recognized as normal and legal, that Islam was a new religion and its followers were fully soaked in the spiritual zeal of their belief, that it was not the period of enlightenment, that it was the time of absolute monarchy, that local public opinion did not count much, and that international public opinion did not exist. In such a situation, and in a land where a segment of the followers of Hinduism itself was subjected to abuse and mistreatment under its own religious laws, and in a land where its people, wanting a change, had themselves ventured upon new religions like Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, the ground was ripe for mass conversion. In spite of this, the Muslims did not proselytize or even indulge in organized missionary activities as the British had done. Historically speaking, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have wiped out mythological and pagan religions from the world, whatever part they conquered and wherever they ruled. It was the liberalism of the Muslim rulers of India that has saved the Hindu religion from being wiped out completely and remaining only as an incidence of history. This act surely imparts nobleness to the Muslim rule of India.
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