Guruji: A drishta-XIII
False nation, founded on fabricated premise
S. Gurumurthy
It is thus official. The Pakistan establishment, the harvest of vicious two-nation theory, is searching for Pakistan's pre-Islamic roots. It is becoming conscious of Pakistan's civilisational genesis in the 'yoga' and 'meditation' of Mohanjadaro and Harappa; of its ancestral origins in Vedic 'Purus' and Puranic 'Takshakas'; of its cultural roots in 'Takshasila' and 'Gandhara'; of its historical antiquity in 'Mahabharata' and 'Arthashastra'; of its intellectual leadership in 'Panini' and 'Chankaya'; and of its historic political masters in 'Maurya' and 'Kanishka'. It also glorifies the Gandhara civilisation, not the Islamic, as “the high watermark of Pakistan's culture”; and celebrates the Kushana's rule, not the Islamic, as “the Golden Period of Pakistan”. What is its impact on Islamic Pakistan?
Jinnah's two-nation theory was built on the ideological premise that Hindus and Muslims look to 'different sources of history for inspiration', to 'different epics', and to 'different heroes'. His theory is now proved bogus by his very creation, the Pakistan establishment, which affirms that – like the Hindus – Muslims too trace their cultural 'inspiration' to Gandhara and Takshasila, their 'epics' and literature to Mahabharata and Arthashastra, and their 'heroes' to Panini, Chankya, Chandragupta and Kushana. Islamic Pakistan's official history claims no other antiquity for inspiration, no other epic, no other heroes! It does talks of new culture [but without saying what it is], new architecture, new food, new dress and new language [Urdu] but nothing more, as value addition by Islam. Jinnah's statement, referring to Hindu-Muslim divide, that, 'very often the hero of one is the foe of the other and their victories and defeat overlap' was part of skillful strategy of Islamic clergy to associate the Muslims with foreign invaders, and disconnect them from their ancestors.
In contrast, Guruji counselled the Muslim leaders [also the Hindu leaders] that the Moghul badshahi is over; Muslims and Hindus have to live ultimately as brothers here, as co-sharers in the national life; Muslims, merely converted to Islam, belong to the same race as Hindus, to the same blood as theirs; they must avoid associating mentally with foreign aggressors, forget all separatism, merge in the life of this soil, respect and follow the great sons of this land who fought for the motherland and its culture. [Bunch of Thoughts p196]. Could anyone be more positive? Guruji was clear. The only way for Muslims to disassociate from the invaders is to own their ancestors. But neither the Muslim leaders, nor even the Hindu leaders, who had opposed Partition, told the truth to Muslims that they and the Hindus had common ancestors, heroes, culture and history. Result. Their opposition to Jinnah was just political, not, as it should have been, ideological and cultural. Result, handful of Muslim separatist thinkers and leaders, ideologically unopposed by others, could project the invaders as their heroes and the invaders' victories as their victory and hijack the Muslims mind. That was how the false two-nation theory was born – as a continuation of the history of invaders, with whom the Indian Muslims had nothing to do culturally and socially. But the false theory has ultimately landed Islamic Pakistan in serious intellectual, cultural and existential crisis.
Soon Pakistan realises Islam cannot make Pakistan
Soon after Partition, the separatist leaders began realising that religious and political Islam could not transform into constitutional Islam that could accommodate all faiths. They found that no one Islamic school could accommodate even the other variants of Islam. The Objectives Resolution passed by the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, after two years in 1949, to define its objectives declared that “sovereignty belongs to Allah” [not to the people] directing that the state should enable the Muslims “to order their lives in both the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teachings of Islam.” But this objective “gave rise to a central question that has bedevilled Pakistan ever since its creation: “If Islam is to be the basis of the state, whose Islam will be followed and how?” [“Islam in the national story of Pakistan” by Aparna Pande, Hudson Institute http://www.currenttrends.org/research/detail/islam-in-the-national-story-of-pakistan]. The judicial commission appointed under Chief Justice Munir to inquire into the large scale violence against the Ahmedia sect had long before [1954] raised this question thus: no two of the several ulamas “agreed on” what is Islam. Any new definition that “differs from that given by all others” will be “out of the fold of Islam”. If the definition given by any one ulama is adopted, one will remain Muslim according to the view of that ulama but become kafir according to every other ulama. [Report on the Court of Inquiry constituted under Punjab Act II of 1954 to enquire into the Punjab disturbances of 1953 (Lahore, Government Printing Press, 1954)]. Consequently, instead of binding the nation together, Pakistan's Islamic ideology operated to divide the Pakistani nation, pitting Muslims against non-Muslims first and later Muslims against Muslims. [Aparna]. Sunni and Shia Islam jointly forced Pakistan to proscribe the Ahmedia Islam; now Sunni's are killing Shias. Islam prescribes One God. But there is no One Islam. Unlike the Hindu philosophy, Islam has no built-in potential to accommodate the diversity among Muslims. Result, Pakistan has ethnic-cleansed non-Muslims [Ahmedia, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, and Parsees] who accounted for a quarter of Pakistan's total population in 1947 and have shrunk to just five per cent in 2010. [Aparna] This did not happen accidentally.
Being anti-Hindu and anti-India became Pakistan's nationalism
The demand for Muslim homeland was driven more by anti-Hindu sentiments. The ideology of Muslim League turned more anti-Hindu after Bengal partition was annulled. [Banglapedia (National Enclopaedia of Bangladesh) http://www.banglapedia.org/httpdocs/HT/P_0134.HTM]. The anti-Hindu prejudices of the pre-Partition days transformed to include anti-Indian sentiments, that is 'Indo-Phobia'. [Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr. Prof. Tuft University. The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama`at-i Islami of Pakistan (1994) p121-122]. Result. The nature of Pakistan state was intrinsically anti-India and anti-Hindu.[See: http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/gandhimistake.html] Why? Never ever an independent nation in history, from day one, Pakistan was unsure of its existence as a nation. Hussein Haqqani, Pakistan-born visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C writes: “[Therefore], unsure of their fledgling nation’s future, the politicians, civil servants, and military officers who led Pakistan in its formative years decided to exacerbate the antagonism between Hindus and Muslims that had led to Partition as a means of defining a distinctive identity for Pakistan, with “Islamic Pakistan” resisting “Hindu India.”…… hostility between India and Pakistan….. serves as an important element of national identification.” [Hussein Haqqani The Washington Quarterly [1994] p. 89 retrieved August 4, 2012]. Christopher Jeffrolet, a well-known author, wrote [Pakistan: nationalism without nation? Zed Books 2002] that Pakistan's nationalism is without a sense of nation and that the essence of Pakistan is anti-India. Khaled Ahmed, a leading Pakistani writer, observed [2008] that to be ‘Pakistani' is to be anti-Hindu: it is part of the definition, and the core of being a Pakistani. Like defining 'oneself' in opposition to the other, India has become 'the other' for the Pakistanis. “Opposing “Hindu India” has become a defining feature of the Pakistani Islamic nationalist narrative.” [Aparna] The anti-Indian, anti-Hindu Pakistan has had its impact on Muslims in India too, who, following Pakistan, have also ex-communicated the Ahmedias! Was not Guruji then right when he said that creation of Pakistan was not the end of Muslim [League]'s ambitions about India, but continuing Islamic aggression against Bharat as manifest in Pakistan's anti-Hindu and anti-India agenda. [Bunch of Thoughts p235]
Erosion of Islamic Pakistan and emergence of Akhand Bharat, as Guruji said
In their blind anti-Hindu rage, Muslims of undivided India created Islamic Pakistan which, they now find, they cannot keep up or give up. After discarding the pre-Islamic elements to divide the unvidied India, Pakistan's diverse inhabitants had no “common identity that might bind them together” and Pakistan has “struggled with this lack of a common identity and principles ever since” Partition. [Aparna] Hans Morgenthau, leading 20th century scholar on international politics, said prophetically as early as in 1956, “Pakistan is not a nation and hardly a state. It has no justification in history, ethnic origin, language, civilisation, or the consciousness of those who make up its population .. it is hard to see how anything but a miracle, or else a revival of religious fanaticism, will assure Pakistan's future.”[Aparna] The dilemma of Pakistan is captured by a Pakistani scholar, Waheed-uz-Zaman, who said in 1973: “If we let go the ideology of Islam, we cannot hold together as a nation by any other means…. If the Arabs, the Turks, the Iranians, God forbid, give up Islam, the Arabs yet remain Arabs, the Turks remain Turks, the Iranians remain Iranians, but what do we remain if we give up Islam?” [Aparna]. Waheed has touched the heart of Pakistan's identity crisis. Consequence? As being anti-Hindu and anti-India is necessary for Islamic Pakistan's existence, Pakistan is frightened that giving up anti-Indian and anti-Hindu agenda means giving up its Islamic character. “Without an identity that is firmly anti-Indian, Pakistan's leaders fear their country will be reabsorbed within a greater Indian identity” [Aparna]. What is that greater Indian identity? Pakistan's pre-Islamic – read Hindu – identity, Akhand Bharat, the undivided cultural nation. And that is the danger to 'Islamic Pakistan'.
But that is also the survival kit for 'Pakistan'. That is why the Pakistan establishment recalls pre-Islamic culture, tradition and ancestry. Pakistan, a nation without nationalism, is now failing as a state. Islam has failed to unite Sindhis and Punjabis, Baluchis, Pashtoons, Mohajirs, Ahmedias, even Shias and Sunnis as a Muslim nation. The jihadis kill Hindus in India, because Hindus are kafirs. But, they kill fellow Muslims in Pakistan because they are not Islamic enough. They have killed 42772 fellow Muslims since 2003, till July 29, 2012, including 4,570 securitymen. [Fatalities in Terrorist Violence in Pakistan 2003-2012, http://www.satp.org] Islamic Pakistan is helplessly sliding into anarchy, tormented and split between Army-ISI-Jihadi combine that hates Hindus and India on the one hand and its compulsion to look to its Hindu past as survival kit, on the other. More on Pakistan's torment, its consequence to the world and to Bharat, next week.
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