By M D Nalapat
History
has to be based on facts and not geopolitically convenient fictions
such as that Aurangzeb was actually a patron of the Hindus, rather than
their scourge.
The
Wahhabis would like the world to believe that the tenets of Islam are
intolerant, when in fact the opposite is the case. All human lives are
children of the Almighty, and not simply those who believe in the
verities expressed with such eloquence in the Holy Quran. Compassion,
beneficence and mercy are the virtues that are sought to be inculcated
in the community of believers through the message revealed to Prophet
Muhammad 16 centuries ago. However, what Wahhabi theology does is to
seek to mainstream the opposite of such values, creating in the process
an exclusivist, hate-filled vision of the world that is in perpetual
internecine conflict. Unfortunately, for more than a century, the UK and
later the US backed and boosted Wahhabism in order to achieve specific
geopolitical objectives. Initially, the theology was deployed against
the Turks and their empire, through creating an opinion within Arab
communities that the Sufi doctrine favoured by the Caliphate was a
perversion of the true faith, rather than an embodiment of its virtues.
Indeed, an inversion of reality took place, with Wahhabism being touted
as the faith in its “purest” form. Subsequently, Wahhabism was put into
service in the 1960s against Arab nationalists such as Ahmed ben Bella
and Gamal Abdel Nasser, and finally in the 1980s against the USSR in
Afghanistan. The CIA, out of consideration for its (dog-wagging) ISI
tail, declined the assistance of Pashtun nationalists in its battle
against the Soviet invaders, preferring instead Pashtun and Arab Wahhabi
groups nurtured by the Pakistan army, which since the time of
Zia-ul-Haq in the 1970s has seen itself as the principal Wahhabi sword
bearer against infidels. Decades later, in 2001, President George W.
Bush made the same error, brushing aside the offer of help from Prime
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in favour of a renewed alliance with
Pervez Musharraf and his toxic army. Much of the difficulties that the
world has been experiencing since owe their origins to the fateful Bush
post-9/11 decision to anoint a lead arsonist as the principal
fire-fighter.
Jawaharlal Nehru, in effect, sought to
inculcate a collective guilt on the Hindus of India for the murder of
Mahatma Gandhi. This had been perpetrated by an individual whom this
columnist believes to have been a dupe of a section of the colonial
bureaucracy. The conspirators, although discovered by the authorities,
were allowed to commit their fell deed. The
Viceroy-turned-Governor-General wasted less than a minute after the
shooting before correctly identifying the killer as a Hindu, although
this indiscretion has been sought to have been passed off as a stray
remark. Nehru kept in place the numerous acts of discrimination against
Hindus that had been perpetrated by the colonial authorities (such as
the takeover of temples), and since then, he and his successors have
only added more items to the list, making India among the few countries
(Bahrain being another) where the majority community has been
discriminated against. To the credit of the Congress Party led by Sonia
Gandhi, they have been open about such a bias, for example by Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh admitting to the tilt with pride. History has to
be based on facts and not geopolitically convenient fictions (such as
that Aurangzeb was actually a patron of the Hindus, rather than their
scourge). Several temples were destroyed during the Mughal era and
alternative houses of worship built atop their ruins. The wound that
this has created in the psyche of a community that is almost a billion
strong needs to be healed, and the surest path to such an outcome would
be to restore the Ram and Krishna janambhoomis
to their pristine state, and to do the same at the Vatican of the Hindu
community, which is Varanasi. These three rectifications and these
three alone would suffice to ensure that a wound, which has for
generations had the capacity to engineer destructive splits within the
national fabric, gets healed. While Wahhabis, who always look to create
tensions, would oppose such moves, yet the compassion and mercy that
suffuses the Holy Quran would get perfectly met by such an act of
beneficence by the Muslim community towards their Hindu brothers and
sisters.
That Muslims are overall as moderate as
any other community in India has been shown by the welcome they have
accorded to the Supreme Court decision to do away with the triple talaq
and its attendant injustices to Muslim women. Another example of fealty
to the divine virtues extolled in the Holy Quran has been shown by the
efforts of Shia Wakf Board Chairperson Syed Waseem Rizvi to ensure an
amicable resolution of the Ram Janambhoomi dispute, through ensuring
both that Hindu sentiments get respected and simultaneously, prayer
facilities for Muslims be not simply retained, but enhanced, they being
non-existent at that location at present. Should a similar spirit of
accommodation be found at Mathura and Varanasi as well, our Hindu and
Muslim communities would join together exactly as they ought to have a
century ago, before Mahatma Gandhi decided to side with the Wahhabis in
the matter of the Khilafat agitation, thereby strengthening that group
over the rest of a vibrant community in a way that directly led to the
1947 partition of India.
Both Hindus and Muslims should ignore the
fanatics within their midst and ensure that an understanding be reached
by the moderate majorities of both faiths on those three locations, so
that the unity so needed between Hindus and Muslims becomes as hard as a
diamond. The efforts at conciliation of Syed Waseem Rizvi indicate that
such an outcome is possible, and indeed, that it could be near.
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