It is being said in lighter vein that India is a country of Muslims, and they are of three types Muslims, pro Muslims, and anti-Muslims. All are Muslims”. This statement though jocularly made, has great meaning, and needs a keen study. The Muslims of India have been a dominant factor from the past 1,000 years. But during the Muslim rule, Muslims had never called themselves as Muslims, but as “Hindis or Hindustanis” just like other Muslims had called themselves as Arabs, Moghals or Turks. With this name, they are called even to this day in the

Muslim world and in international Muslim congregations including the annual Haj gathering

At Mecca.

Sikhs refuse to surrender: From the past one century, there were attempts by the Hindu nazis to bracket all Indians as “Hindus” giving a politico religious connotation to the word “Hindu” and absorb the Muslims also as a sect or caste of “Hindus” to be called “Mohammad Hindus.” They did this with Jains, Buddhists, and Linguists, and they all succumbed because of their small numbers, closeness to Hindu culture and possession of Sanskritic vocabulary in their religious literature. But the Muslims out rightly refused and reacted by projecting themselves first time as Muslims juxtaposed to the Hindus. This was also politico religious.

The Sikhs, because of their cultural and religious closeness to Islam, Arabic and Persian words in religious matters like Saheb, Takht, Shaheed, Tankiah, Khalsa, Punjab, Khalistan, etc., and Arabic/ Persian names like Mukhtar, Bakhtiar, Iqbal, Sikander, and also Islamic dress etc., managed not to be religiously absorbed by the Hindus. But the Sikhs politically succumbed to the Hindus. The Parsis, despite their small numbers, also managed to keep their religious identity because of their Persian origin and language coupled with their wealth, industry and industriousness. Thus these three groups of Indians with non-Hindu (meaning non Aryan, non-Vedic, non-Sanskrit) connections managed to remain UN swallowed by the Hindu demon.

Article extracted from this publication >>  October 16, 1996