The teeming millions of Hindu India under the influence of crafty Brahmins had digressed from the noble path: the Brahmins had misguided the masses for millenniums. They vivisected God and made people worship thousands of deities placed in the temple in the form of idols, offering them sacrifice of all kinds. The vivisection did not stop here; it was applied to man himself, the supreme creation of God. The people of India falling into the fold of Hinduism were divided into numerous castes and sub castes, in hierarchical order, the Brahmins sitting at the top and the Sudras at the bottom prohibiting inter dining and intermarriage among all The Sudra was a pariah, his position was worse than that of animals, The foreigner, too were considered unclean people. Thus the Brahmins, fanatically and arrogantly trampled under their feet, “the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man”, so very dear to Semitic religions. All this was ungodly and inhuman. “All their (Hindu’s) fanaticism is directed against those who do not belong to the against the foreigner. They call them mulch has i.e. impure and forbid having any connection with them, be it by intermarriage or any other kind of relationship, by sitting, eating, drinking with them because thereby, they think. they would be polluted. They consider as impure, anything which touches the fire and the water of a foreigner. They are not allowed to receive anybody who does not belong to them, even if he wished to, or was inclined to their religion. This too renders any connection with them quite impossible and constitutes the widest gulf between us and them. Mahatma Gandhi took his own goat to London at the Round Table Conference and Malviya his own cooks.
The Brahmin dominated Hindu society was, thus, ungodly and inhuman. In geographical terms it had become allow pressure area; it must therefore, be filled with fresh air from outside. Storm rose in the neighboring desert lands of Arabia; it was that of Islam. It swept over the ungodly land of India with such a fierce velocity that it uprooted very hurdle that it came across. The vanguard of this storm was led by Mahmud Ghaznavi whose aim ‘was “to grind idols to powder, to raze temples to the ground to send idolaters without distinction of age and sex, to that fire which God had lighted for infidels, and those who were denied a resurrection, say no prayer hold no fasts and tell no beds.”
The real motive force of this storm was to extricate polytheism, idolatry, ritualism and caste division among Hindus. This was the passion and fervor which won for the Muslims victories in the heart of India, far away from their own motherland with comparatively very small number. The deities whatever their number may be could be no match for one omnipotent God. The divided and stratified society on caste and polytheistic basis could not withstand the onslaught of united community full of zeal. These are bitter but true facts never realized by Brahmins.
“The whole period of Sultanate (1211 to 1526 A.D.) was one of continuous struggle for dominions and for the most part, for the suppression of Hindus. Millions of them were killed under the fanatic zeal of an intolerant faith. The temples were destroyed, the idols broken to Pieces and the holy shrines desecrated. To crush them was to serve Allah and to die fighting battles for the cause of Islam was to be in paradise. In return for this sufferance 4 Muslim was expected to be showered with the benediction of the Almighty God.”
Did the conflict bring about any synthesis between Islam and Hinduism? The answer seems to be in the negative, The Brahmins were confident of the success of their strategy that they followed in assimilating all the foreign invaders in the past. They never used a sword for they could not wield it. They always absorbed other religious groups by giving a place to their prophet in the pantheon of Hindu gods, began worshiping him along with them, created a new caste for the whole group and thus brought them down from a high pedestal to their own level of polytheism, ritualism and Casteism. “This method of absorption” of the Indo Muslims into the fold of Hinduism by recognition of Allah another of the number less incarnations of Vishnu and Mohammad as an inspired sadhu was impossible.” That the gulf which separates a Muhammad an from a Hindu is a wide one, becomes apparent from the moment one begins to understand nature of the social systems which are the product of Islam and Hinduism respectively. That of the later as has been shown, is exclusive, and that of the former is communistic. Under the Hindu social system men are graded minutely and segregated in infinite number of watertight compartments and under Islam all men are equal. Hinduism is exclusively aristocrat, Islam is emphatically democratic”. The two systems are antithetical
The Hindu Muslim conflict dragged on for centuries. Failing in the battlefield, Hindus rolled up themselves into an unbreakable shell of caste structure, insulating themselves from the whole world of male has in their vocabulary. They felt pride in keeping up their so called purity in the compartmentalize. The hammering by Muslims continued, so did insulating by Hindus. Muslim rulers did not abandon their mode of attack. Hindus failing to push them back, resorted to social boycott of Muslims but the later had the upper hand till 1707, when Aurangzeb died which was a landmark in the cultural history of India.
As a result of this cultural conflict, Hindus were neither obliterated nor substantially transformed. They remained adamant and resisted all change. They stub burly stuck to polytheism, idolatry, ritualism and un egalitarianism. But they were extinct politically. They preferred ignominy to leaving un egalitarianism and idolatry, etc. They were reduced to the status of dumb driven cattle having no self-respect. They bore all kinds of tyranny and had no will and courage to fight against the Muslim ruler. Be beaten but lie like an ostrich with face buried in the sand under self-delusion, was their policy.
The ideas of Unity of God and Brotherhood of Man came to India through the Muslim invasion which the Hindus contemptuously rejected. The Hindu masses stuck to the old order. Finding them to be almost a dead matter, God unfolded the second stage of His plan. He sent Guru Nanak to this ungodly India and set in the transformation through the prophet hood of, Guru Nanak, who started with the slogan: “There are no Hindus, there are no Muslims”. He preached monotheism and equality that were essential parts of Islam; he condemned polytheism, idolatry, ritualism and caste division, the integral parts of Hinduism. He disapproved the sherait, and the Law of War of Islam.
Beside, Guru Nanak infused the spirit of fearlessness and virtues of courage and bravery which were essential for self-respect and the protection of the freedom of religion. His followers were called Sikhs. They distinguished themselves from the Hindus in having a distinct religious doctrine, language, culture, ethics, art and social organization. Hindus began to adopt this new religion and form a new community. Islam had nothing to say against the teaching of Sikhism but, it never liked Hindus from the beginning. Since the Sikhs were mainly from the Hindus, the Muslim rulers considered the new religion a challenge to their political power and ultimately a danger to Islam in India. So they wanted to destroy the new religion at the budding stage Guru Arjan Dev was executed by the orders of Jahangir at Lahore and after a lapse of 70 years, Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded by the orders of Aurangzeb. Both the events gave a fillip to the growth of sturdy Sikh community.
The resurrection of the Sikhs after the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur was a part of the plan of the Lord. It was like Phoenix coming to life after burning itself. They had all the qualities of Islam minus intolerance, sheriats and Law of War. They had discarded the defects of Brahminism. They were subjected to all sorts of tyrannies: by the Mughal rulers in the 18th century. The more the perpetration of tyrannies, the hardier and braver did they become. They carried on a relentless struggle to a successful end. They won freedom for themselves and for India for the first time after centuries of slavery. They laid the foundation of a Nation. They snatched the political power from the Mughal rulers.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 17, 1989
