Puppets Of Faith Theory Of Communal Strife (A critical appraisal of Islamic faith, Indian polity ‘n more)

by BS Murthy

  M ohammedan husbandman recently to an English official 'would induce me to send my boy to a Bengali teacher.

  In the second place, our rural schools seldom enable a Muhammadan to learn the tongues necessary for his holding respectable position in life, and for the performance of his religious duties. Every Muhammadan gentleman must have some knowledge of Persian, and Persian is a language unknown even in our higher class District schools. Every M usalman, from the peasant to the prince, ought to say his prayers in one of the sacred languages, Persian, or Arabic, and this, our schools have never recognized. It was lately asserted on high authority, that the prayers of the M usalmans find no acceptance with God unless they are offered in the prescribed tongues. In the third place, our system of Public Instruction makes no provision for the religious education of the Muhammadan youth.

  It overlooks the fact that among the Hindus a large and powerful caste has come down from time immemorial for supplying this part of a boy's training, while among the M uhammadans no separate body of clergy exists. Every head of a M usalman household is supposed to know the duties of his religion, and to be his own family priest. Public ministrations are indeed conducted at the mosques; but it is the glory of Islam that its temples are not made with hands, and that its ceremonies can be performed anywhere upon God's earth or under His heavens. A system of purely secular education is adapted to very few nations. In the opinion of many deeply thinking men, it has signally failed in Ireland, and it is certainly altogether unsuited to the illiterate and fanatical peasantry of Muhammadan Bengal."

  Why the M usalmans failed to recover the lost ground, and how the Hindus regained the same was conceptualized by Hunter thus:

  "Without interfering in any way with their religion, and in the very process of enabling them to learn their religious duties, we should render that religion perhaps less sincere, but certainly less, fanatical. The rising generation of Muhammadans would tread the steps which have conducted the Hindus, not long ago the most bigoted nation on earth, into their present state of easy tolerance, such a tolerance implies a less earnest belief than their fathers had; but it has freed them, as it would liberate the M usalmans, from the cruelties which they inflicted, the crimes which they perpetrated, and the miseries which they endured, in the name of a mistaken religion."

  What all this proves is that in an open society, not constrained by religious dogma, there could be pro and contra view points for debate and discussion, leading to the eventual crystallization of public opinion and political mandate. But the bane of the closed Islamic societies is that there cannot be any contrary view of life than the one formulated in quran-hadith-sunna trio, which dogma has become the shared belief of the M usalmans and the imbibed prejudice of the umma. How sad, there is no countervailing political force to the religious dogma in the Islamic nations; won't the unrest in the Muslim world against the U.S., and Israel that is allowed to brew into destructive jihadism by its despots, prove that? Moreso, the fact that Recep Tayyip Erdogan could readily take Turkey back onto its Islamic ways from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's secular path, once and for all, establishes that in the M uslim societies it's the pull of Quran that prevails in the end.

  Thus, it could be said without any contradiction, that only Islam could have produced Taliban to afflict Afghanistan that suffered no qualms in debasing their own people in the name of their own faith! That is besides destroying the magnificent Budhas of Bamian, carved by their indefatigable ancestors, to be treasured by their progenitors, but then that is the power of Islam to malign the minds of man.

  Bernard Shaw, though, was unfair to the M usalmans when he remarked that Islam is the best religion with the worst followers. But as might be seen, in reality, the M usalmans are the unfortunate victims of the Islamic dogma shaped by M uhammad's hostility towards 'the others' that was unambiguously aided and abetted by Allah Ta'ala through the Quran. Why is not Islam but Muhammadanism, shaped to serve the personal needs and meet the political ends of its messenger, and not the religion designed for the enlightenment or the emancipation of its followers? But, the M usalmans cannot see the reality as the bigotry of the community ensures that the Islamic blinkers are put on the young early on.

  What is worse, there seems to be no way out for them as the umma goes to lengths to keep it that way for all times to come that is. Thus, it can be said that the M usalmans are the victims of a mind-set conditioned by the proclivities of their prophet, vicissitudes of his life, attitudes of his detractors and the credulity of his followers, which the mechanism of their umma perpetuates.

  Chapter 25

  Constitutional Amnesia

  Muhammad Ali Jinnah got what he wanted for Indian Musalmans though in time, their Quranic zeal turned Pakistan into a Rogue State. What of India, the product of an irony of a partition in that while some M usalmans walked away with one-fourth of its land, others stayed back to nurse their separatist dogma in its truncated bosom?

  While the Hindu nationalists lamented about the loss of their ancient land, the Musalman intellectuals were alarmed at their reduced numbers vis-a-vis the Hindus. Even as the Golwalkars articulated the Hindu frustration in shrill tones, the Abul Kalam Azads voiced the Muslim apprehensions in secular tunes. Whatever, as Pakistan became an Islamic State for the M usalmans, India remained a habitat of varied interest groups, the M usalmans included! While the Indian political classes were beset with a sense of loss that partition brought in in its wake, the Hindu intellectuals were upset by the ageold caste guilt that the reform movement occasioned in their collective consciousness.

  It was in such a setting that India ventured to formulate a constitution for itself, of course, piloted by Babasaheb Ambedkar, the intellectual giant from the depressed classes. Yet the end product, touted as the bulkiest of the written constitutions in the comity of nations, turned out to be an exercise in selective amnesia.

  "WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, reads the preamble of the Constitution of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEM OCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:

  JUSTICE, social, economic, and political;

  LIBERTY of status, expression, belief, faith and worship;

  EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;

  And to promote among all

  FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;

  IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEM BLY this twenty-sixth day of November 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION."

  None can fault the lofty ideals of this august document but for the politicization of the testament itself, i.e. by the induction of socialism into it. Strange it may seem, won't the socialistic slant negate the economic justice that it seeks to provide? After all, socialism, as per the COD, is a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the community as a whole should own and control the means of

  production, distribution, and exchange. How could there be an economic justice for an individual enterprising Indian then?

  However, mercifully in the end, PV Narasimha Rao, the Accidental Prime M inister, aided by Dr. Manmohan Singh, his hand-picked Finance Minister, managed to extricate India from the Nehruvian socialist grip to leave his lasting legacy as the 'Achitect of Economic Reforms'. But that was not before socialism wrecked Indian industry, stunted its enterprise, and ruined its economy so much so that, for servicing its national debt, the country had to pledge its gold for some sterling pounds.

  But before that, as if the religious leeway provided by Ambedkar & Co. to the Musalmans and the Christians to upset the demography of India's diminished geography, Indira Gandhi, during her infamous emergency, unconstitutionally amended the constitution to further stymie the Hindu majority though with the laudable 'Statement of Objects and Reasons appended to the Constitution (Fortyfourth Amendment) Bill, 1976 (Bill No. 91 of 1976)' that was enacted as The Constitution Forty-second Amendment Act, 1976, which avers that


  "A Constitution to be living must be growing. If the impediments to the growth of the Constitution are not removed, the Constitution will suffer a virtual atrophy. The question of amending the Constitution for removing the difficulties which have arisen in achieving the objective of socio-economic revolution, which would end poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity, has been engaging the active attention of Government and the public for some years now.”

  Be that as it may, without specifying "the difficulties which have arisen in achieving the objective of socio-economic revolution" in the said bill it was stated that

  "It is, therefore, proposed to amend the Constitution to spell out expressly the high ideals of socialism, secularism and the integrity of the nation, ...” based on which the Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1976 had sought to remodel India as "Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic."

  Whatever, as neither the said bill nor the specified act defined what constitutes a secular republic; we may turn to the COD that defines the hallowed but much abused word thus:

  1. concerned with the affairs of this world; not spiritual or sacred.

  2. (of education etc.) not concerned with religion or religious belief

  3. a. not ecclesiastical or monastic.

  b. (of clergy) not bound by a religious rule.

  Hence, with regard to the above

  1. Is not the spirit of our secular republic against the State subsidy of the Haj (which the Supreme Court had to order to be given up in a phased manner) as that amounts to its showing concern with the spiritual matters of the M uslims?

  2. Is not the penchant of the Musalmans for the madrasa education for their children that stresses upon Islamic separatist dogma against the spirit of our secular republic?

  3. Is not the assertion of the mullahs that they are bound by the sharia, the rule book of Islam, tantamount to the negation of the secular ethos of our remodeled republic?

  Be that as it may, in spite of Indira's unholy amendment, as Indian constitution remained a holy cow, Narasimha Rao had to let it go, besides, he happened to be a congressman and had to run a minority government at that.

  Nevertheless, the article of the 'Original' Indian Constitution with regard to "Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion" exhorts thus:

  1. Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.

  2. Nothing in this article shall affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the State from making any law

  fa) regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice;

  (b) providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus."

  Agreed, the right of the citizen for the profession and practice of one's religion is unexceptionable for it constitutes the birthright. But, why an ordinary Indian citizen should be concerned about the propagation of his faith for the constitution to grant it to him? Besides, where does the right of an Indian citizen for propagation of his faith leave his fellow citizen's cultural need for preservation of his own order, sandtana dharma in case of the Hindus? After all, the right of propagation is but the right to spread one's religion, and one cannot do that without coming into direct conflict with another's religious faith or dharma, as the case may be, can any?

  It's thus, as one citizen's right to propagate his faith vitiates the right of another to profess and practice his religion, India's Constitution by granting the right for propagation of one's religion per se, willy-nilly takes away another's implied right for the preservation of his own faith. Besides, to what avail is the right to propagate one's religion for the citizen rather than to fuel the zeal of the religious zealots for converting?

  And what about the 'FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation' that the constitution provides for! What of the individual dignity of those Hindus whom the evangelists try to lure into the Christian fold, for them to embrace the Son of an alien God! Thus, is not the creed of the Church to propagate its faith that causes the poor of the land to lose their dignity is at odds with our constitutional spirit itself? Besides, as the raison d'etre of religious propagation is conversion, wouldn't that individual right prove inimical to the unity and integrity of the Nation?

  However, going by the hell raised by the missionaries, the mullahs, their political cohorts and the co-opted media, at any move by the State to disfavor fraudulent conversions, the popular belief is that the right for propagation is without any constitutional or moral strings attached to it! Only when the clamor for the future partitions of India on religious lines picks up, would a Western historian be able to spot the constitutional blind spots that gave rise to the development! Yes, it needs Western intellectuals even to see it all in the hindsight even, for India's left-leaning political analysts and Islamapologic liberals are notoriously blind to the realities of the Indian life and times.

  Whatever, what's the rationale of religious propagation based on which the framers of the constitution granted that to its citizens? Though Hinduism and Judaism, the world's oldest surviving religions, are content with their constituencies, it is the Christianity and Islam, the new brands in the religious marketplace that hanker for conversions, of course, having come into being through propagation. Indeed, their religious spread worldwide is owing to their creed as enshrined in their Scriptures per se. If not all, most Christian missionaries and every Musalman mullah entertain the dream of seeing the world turn all Christian or all Islamic as the case may be; after all, that's what their scriptures ordain and their religious creed obliges them to do so, and in

  the Indian context one has to contend with thejihadi penchant to transform Hindustan into Ghazwa-e-Hind.

  It thus defies logic as to how our constitution makers, who went about the exercise in the immediate wake of the country's partition on religious lines, thought it fit to endorse the propagation of one's faith, read the Christian and the Islamic, in the Hindu midst! Well, it's the illusionism of Gandhi that became the idealism of the Congress which influenced the Constituent Assembly of the just-partitioned India. And that shows. How strange then, that the constitution exhibits a singular lack of application of mind of its framers to secure India's integrity as a constituent country for all times to come. Sadly thus, the wise-heads of that time, not to speak of the foresight, lacked the hindsight even. God forbid, they seemed to have unwittingly laid the seeds of a future partition of the Hindustan, whose wings Jinnah had already truncated. But, would this religious 'constitutional' error ever be erased from our statute before history gets repeated! Doubtful though.

  If all this were Ambedkar's idea of a religious safety valve for the disenchanted dalits, the then harijans, yet it would be a betrayal of India's cause. However, the true dalit emancipation lies in bringing about the Hindu reformation from within and not in their opting out of the faith, and surely that wouldn't have been beyond Ambedkar's robust intellectual grasp. M ore significant is his own understanding of the Islamic credo that he articulated thus:

  "Hinduism is said to divide people and in contrast, Islam is said to bind people together. This is only a half truth. For Islam divides as inexorably as it binds. Islam is a close corporation and the distinction that it makes between M uslims and nonMuslims is a very real, very positive and very alienating distinction. The brotherhood of Islam is not the universal brotherhood of man. It is the brotherhood of Muslims for Muslims only. There is a fraternity, but its benefit is confined to those within that corporation. For those who are outside the corporation, there is nothing but contempt and enmity. The second defect of Islam is that it is a system of social self-government and is incompatible with local self-governmen
t because the allegiance of a M uslim does not rest on his domicile in the country which is his but on the faith to which he belongs. To the M uslim ibi bene ibi patria is unthinkable. Wherever there is the rule of Islam, there is his own country. In other words, Islam can never allow a true M uslim to adopt India as his motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin. That is probably the reason why Maulana Mahomed Ali, a great Indian but a true Muslim, preferred to be buried in Jerusalem rather than in India."

  Thus, he would not have been oblivious to the inimical consequences of affording a free religious leash to the moulvis to lead the M usalmans on a separatist course in the partitioned Hindu majority India, but yet that's what precisely he did! Surely, one can understand Babasaheb's hurt that made him vow not to die a Hindu, and, indeed, he did keep his word by embracing Buddhism before his death, but whether he wished the comeuppance of the Hindus at the hands of the M usalmans, one might never know.

  Now, over to the "Freedom as to attendance at religious instruction or religious worship in certain educational institutions" that the constitution stipulates.

  (1) No religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institution wholly maintained out of State funds.

  (2) Nothing in clause (1) shall apply to an educational institution which is administered by the State but has been established under any endowment or

  trust which requires that religious instruction shall be imparted in such institution.

  (3) No person attending any educational institution recognized by the State or receiving aid out of State funds shall be required to take part in any religious instruction that may be imparted in such institution or to attend any religious worship that may be conducted in such institution or in any premises attached thereto unless such person or, if such person is a minor, his guardian has given his consent thereto."