India: Citizenship, Race, and Religion
By Syed Osman Sher
Mississauga, Canada
These days India is afire with protests on the issue of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizenship (NCR). Playing the race and religion card, the Government of India, overwhelmed with Hindu religious bigotry, intends to assert the rights on the country for a selected group only. They wish to introduce a system of apartheid whereby the followers of other religions are to be relegated to the position of lesser grade citizens passing their lives on the mercy of a bunch of high caste Hindus. In this age, however, it would be termed as sheer stupidity of a people who are uneducated, ignorant, primitive, and barbarian. The masses of India are not so, and definitely would not let this happen.
Who has the first right, if any, on the land? Apparently, the original inhabitants; then come early migrants and thereafter the modern-day naturalized citizens. Not true! In today’s enlightened era all three categories attain automatically equal rights in a country, not an inch less or an inch more. No question then arises as to who came here earlier and who later, and who should be treated better and who the worse. Those Hindus who claim to be of Aryan descent, and are also the claimant of superior status, themselves are not the original inhabitants of India.
The Aryans were semi-nomadic barbarians, living in Eurasian steppe, who were forced to leave their homeland around 2,000 BC due to some natural disaster like drought, pestilence, plague, or a series of Mongol invasions from Central Asia. Moving in all directions, they spread over a greater part of Europe, Turkey, and Iran. A segment of theirs sought the direction of India. The Aryans, toughened by their nomadic life among blistering sun and heavy snow and sleet, could easily defeat the Indus people, who were civilized, and had not experienced armed conflicts. After destroying the Indus Valley Civilization, that handful of Aryans made this country their permanent home.
The Aryans were extremely proud of their exalted extraction. “Arya” was a self-given name, which meant ‘noble’ or ‘free-born’, but they did not carry with them an impressive culture. When the Aryans began their lives in India they were already divided into three social classes: the warriors, the priests, and the commoners. But here they had found themselves living among a people, who were hostile, although vanquished and subdued. Since the indigenous people, who formed an overwhelming majority, could not be eliminated, the Aryans planned to admit them into the Aryan system. Therefore, it was thought proper to bring them at the lowest level of the caste system, which would also complete the ascendancy of the Aryans. The locals, a dark-skinned people, were thus declared as belonging to a different class, based on the color of the skin, or verna. They were assigned to a new caste belonging to a lower birth, that of the šudras. The once-born šudras were defined as “servants” of the twice-born djivas, and could be 'exiled at will' or 'slain at will'. Various disabilities were prescribed for them in Manu Smriti. They were treated as the scum of society and were disallowed even to participate in the Vedic rituals and to hear or study the Vedic hymns.
After the advent of Aryans, India experienced a stream of alien people who came and settled down in the country. They brought with them new cultures, customs, religions, and languages. As for the religion, it is said that “Hinduism has a wonderful power of assimilation; it has always conquered its conquerors”. Truly, when the Greeks, Kushans, Huns, and other invaders came later they could not withstand the forceful Vedic embrace and were assimilated and absorbed fully in the Hindu religion. But this maxim is only partially true. Hinduism has conquered only those communities that did not have their own strong religious codes or beliefs. It was unable to bring in its fold even those small communities of early Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians who had settled here two thousand years ago, or even earlier. Similar was the case with the Muslims who entered here first in the early eighth century AD. They found no ground to merge in Hinduism. The ways and philosophy of life of the two communities differed radically with each other. For instance, idolatry and caste system were anathemas to the unequivocal monotheist Muslims, and such doctrines as karma or the law of consequences and reincarnation were fundamental to Hindu thought. Further, the oppressive caste system of Hinduism proved counterproductive and gave birth to new religions like Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism whose followers came from the same Hindu stock.
It is also a fact that the Aryans themselves had been absorbed in the local religion of India. Most of the thousands and thousands of gods and many of the doctrines, beliefs, and practices of modern-day Hinduism stand derived from the non-Aryan stock, which eventually became the hallmark of Hinduism, and which led to the formation of the Brahmanical religion. “The oldest religion of India, which the invading Aryans found among the Nagas, and which still survives in the ethnic nooks and crannies of the great peninsula, was apparently an animistic and totemic worship of multitudinous spirits dwelling in stones and animals, in trees and streams, in mountains and stars.” And, similarly, “The earliest gods of Vedas were the forces and elements of nature herself—sky, sun, earth, fire, light, wind, water and sex (Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage). Hinduism is not a revealed religion but one that has arisen sporadically from the fear of the forces of Nature. It has no set doctrines, and is such a composite of varied beliefs that it belies easy definition. It has no church or hierarchy of priests, nor congregational setup of any sort. It has no name of itself; the name, Hindu, was given by the Arabs after the inhabitants of Hind.
Disregarding the Aryan invasion for a moment, it may be argued that the Muslims invaded India, and they belong to an alien race. But the present racial composition of the Muslims belies this statement. The vast majority of the Muslims are the descendants of the natives who had accepted Islam. Only a fraction of them had come in three tranches from outside in the shape of soldiers of Mohammad bin Qasim, Shahabuddin Ghori, and Zaheeruddin Babar. As for the Muslim settlers, who came here from countries like Iran, Iraq, and Central Asia in search of economic opportunities, they are few and far between because traveling from far off lands was not without immense hardship in those days.
The present Government aims brazenly through the citizenship laws to drag first the largest minority, the Muslims, and later the followers of other religions like Sikhs, Christians, and Buddhists, to the status of the šudras and dalits. Living together for a period of four thousand years, the singular color and strength of various beliefs and races have diluted, and this mixture now defines India as a nation. In this context, the exercise undertaken by the BJP Government is a misfit. This repeat performance of the Aryans of about four thousand years ago reflects simply narrow-nationalism. In the context of the prevailing poverty and ignorance in India, it all seems meaningless and smacks of bigotry. Little does the BJP Government realize that the urgent need in the twenty-first century is not to satisfy the religious ego of a few but to put the masses on the path of economic and scientific advancement. Perpetration of religious and social persecution through unpopular diktats would lead only to more pain and penury.
