Hindus who have adopted Islam are really strange people. Although, according to all laws of classical sociology and ethnology as well as common sense they should remain an integral part of the Indian people and nation, in fact, just the opposite occurs.
As soon as yesterday'sHindu adopts Islam, he undergoes such an amazing transformation that can be only compared to the phenomenon that zoologists call metamorphosis. The typical peaceful Bengalese, with soft, harmonious facial features, in which every educated inhabitant of our world would unmistakably recognise ?a child of the Indian plains?, will adopt fully the typical appearance of an Arab in just a couple of months?from his clothing, through the expression of his face and to his manners. His countenance will become soon hard and harsh, a typical feature of the Semitic race from the Middle East and in his gaze?severe and imperious?one will be able to see unmistakably the fanatical flame so characteristic for all Arabs.
Before long, the newly fledged Indian Muslim will start not only to resemble an Arab, but also to feel and think like such. His emotional nature will become turbulent and untamed, his reactions vicious, and yesterday'squiet man, the most peaceful creature on the planet, will start shaking fists in the streets, shouting?with bloodshot eyes and spurting saliva from his mouth??Kill the infidels!? and ?Allah is great!? He will abandon his people'straditional alphabet devanagari that his Hindu ancestors have used for centuries, to adopt the Arabic script. And, to top it all, he will completely alter his name. If he was named with some beautiful Indian name?like Satischandra Datta or Dhirendramonah Chatterjee?now he will call himself Abdul Rashid or Ibn Abi al Husein. To adopt the name of some mythical personage of the early Muslim history?like Muhammad or Ali?would be understandable and could be justified, but to renounce all your former names for other ones with the only reason of them being Arabic is completely inexplicable.
Listening to the names of many young Bengalese from Bangladesh nowadays one can'thelp but wonder if their parents had used for reference some telephone directory from Kuwait, Abu Dhabi or Saudi Arabia before choosing their children'snames? Is it possible that those people never feel they are committing a hideous treachery against a civilisation that is much older and greater than the Arabic one, and more important, has nothing to do with it?
Undoubtedly, the case here resembles very much what Westerners call ?brainwashing?. It seems that the new Muslims on the Indian Subcontinent don'trealise they never can be real Arabs, and that this voluntary Arabisation is an extremely shameful phenomenon, a result of the still living colonial psychie and the low level of education on the Subcontinent. Never mind if it is English or Arabic colonialism. The fruits are all the same.
All said above gives way to even gloomier thoughts. Converting to Islam, Hindus totally reject their ethnical identity and adopt the Arabic cultural self-determination; with the demographical rise and the triumph of this Semitic religion, wide territories are being irretrievably lost from the sphere of the Indian civilasation and are moved, in the spiritual sense, thousands of kilometers more to the west direction. May be in order to achieve a full resemblance to the Arabian deserts the Bengali Muslims in Bangladesh have to take decision to import sand from Sahara to cover their rice fields with it, to build their own Egyptian pyramids and start labouring their land with camels rather than buffalos? Unfortunately in the humid Bengali climate camels can suffer from tuberculosis?
On the other hand, their Muslim brethren in Pakistani Punjab and Sindh (territories known for their dry climate) have already fulfilled their most daring Arabian dreams. Their country is already an exact copy of Saudi Arabia. They have built their paradise on earth.
(Some of our readers have wondered if the writer is the Russian nobel laureate rebel who died late last year. This writer is a different person and he is a reputed sociologist working with Russian Academy of Sciences. He has been to India many times and is interested in Indian culture. He has written for Organiser in October 2005 and March 2007, on similar subjects.)
