The Unfounded Hindu Slavery

The Unfounded Hindu Slavery By BS M urt hy No less t han Narendra M odi, India’s erudit e prim e minist er, had at t ribut ed the selfdisparaging Indian charact er t o it s thousand years of slavery, t hat t oo on the floor of t he Indian parliament . And it’s no wonder that Asaduddin Owaisi, t he Islamist revivalist in the Indian remnant, promptly cont est ed the said proposit ion. Needless t o say, while M odi echoed the lam ent of the Hindu nat ionalist s, albeit in a politically correct vocabulary, Ow aisi sees t he M uslim invasion of Hindust an t hrough the prism of eight -hundred years of Islamic hukummat over t he sam e. What ever, a crit ical examination of India’s Islamic history, even t he one dished out by it s M uslim overlords, and an object ive analysis of it s socio-cult ural const ruct t herein would belie the supposit ion that Hindus w ere forced into slavery in any w hich w ay. No doubt , when the Islam ic marauders eyed it for loot and rapine, India w as long since the home t o the Nalandas and the Takshasilas, the Ivys of yore, and it w as also t he world’s largest economy w it h som e t hirt y-percent share of it s gross dom est ic product . Thus, it ’s as if India t hen w as the crown of the creat ion, adorned w it h Hindu jew els, and that being the case, m aybe t he Hindus of that time w ere just ified to feel t op-of-t he-w orld, like t he Am ericans of t he day do. So, t hat ’s exact ly w hat they felt like, and w e have Aberuni’s t est imony for that In his eponym ous book on India of around 1030CE. “ … t he Hindus believe t hat t here is no count ry but theirs, no nation like t heirs, no kings like t heirs, no religion like t heirs, no science like t heirs.” True, t he Islamic invasions, result ing in m yriad Sult anat es t hat event ually gave w ay t o the M ogul rule, albeit over Hindu subject s largely confined to Nort hern India that any way had t o endure the unceasing assault s by Hindu warrior kings all through. M oreover, in the sam e era, south of t he Vindhyas t here w ere pow erful Hindu kingdoms such as t he Kakat iyas, not t o speak of the might y Vijayanagar Empire, w here t he saffron flag furled unfet t ered all along. That w ay, the geography of the M uslim rule and the demography of t he Hindu polit y t hroughout t he Indo-Islamic period w ere such that the form er could have hardly enslaved t he lat t er in any manner w hat soever. Besides, the int ellect ually suave and cult urally evolved Hindu elit e would have held the barbarian and the bigot ed M usalmans in ut t er cont em pt as exemplified by t he unflatt ering synonym s for them in all the Indian languages. It ’s another m at t er t hough that som e of the slight ed Hindu souls had indeed m igrat ed to the greener Islam ic pastures. Besides, t he M uslim rulers t oo paid no heed to paint India green, which happenst ance M aryam Jameelah rued in her book Islam and Orient alism, t hus: “ If the M ughal m onarchs had assum ed their responsibilit ies as M uslim rulers and organized int ensive t abliq or m issionary w ork, the m ajorit y of Indians would have em braced Islam and hence the necessit y for part it ion and all t he disast ers t hat follow ed in its wake, never w ould have arisen.” (Fresh insight s on the subject in t he chapt er ‘The Number Game’ of Puppet s of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (A crit ical appraisal of Islamic fait h, Indian polit y ‘n more). What ever, it should not be lost on any t hat in spit e of Islam’s thousand-year t enancy in t he Indian subcontinent , at t he tim e of it s part it ion, the M usalm ans account ed for only onefourth of it s populace, yet t he rest being overwhelmingly Hindu. So, it ’s far-fet ched t o presum e t hat the Hindus of yest er years w ould have been enslaved by the M usalm ans in any which w ay. However, at som e st age, t he vengeful Semit ic God had m anaged to m anifest Himself as a Hindu avat ar of Lord Sathyanarayana (t he author is a namesake), an aberrat ion in the pantheon of benign gods and goddesses of t he ancient land. All t he sam e, t he Sat hyanarayana katha, m odeled on Jehovah’s rewards and reprisals, failed t o impart any Biblical character t o the Hindu religious et hos, which illust rat es t he inviolabilit y of sanat ana dharma, the Hindu socio-religious et hnic shield. Hence it can be deduced that t he Islamic dominance over part s of Nort hern Hindust an was largely in it s political sphere, and thus it’s not hing but our povert y of thought t o im agine that our resilient ancient s had enslaved t hem selves to the alien M usalm ans. Nevert heless, t hough the M usalm ans’ barbarian w ays would have been repulsive t o t he Hindu sensibilities, t he Islam ic m ale-cent ric credo had seem ingly corrupt ed the Hindu et hos in varied ways and for one – t he male ownership of the fem ale bodies w ould have appealed t o the base inst inct s of t he Hindu m ales, who hithert o were w ont to celebrat e t heir w omen folk like nowhere, and naturally t hat led to their m oral degradat ion resulting in the event ual Hindu ruination. How ever, the only silver lining on t he Islam ic dark horizon was the evolut ion of Indo-Persian classical art s, not ably t he Hindust ani music t hat w as enriching. Be that as it m ay, event ually, the Islamic aversion for social int egrat ion w ith the nat ive kafir populace coupled with the rapacit y of t he M uslim rulers had invariably enervat ed their reign over Hindust an, and that enabled a band of spice t raders from t he far aw ay Brit ain to carve out their islands of dom inance to st art with in 1757CE . Why, it’s em inently possible that the Hindus, who w ould have all along resent ed the Islam ic shadow on their ancest ral land under t he M uslim sword, could have seen a w ay out from it t hrough the British sails. So it w as thus t he Islamic ground, slow ly but st eadily, w ould have slipped from under the M uslim feet , finally enabling Great Brit ain to consign the decrepit M ogul rule to t he archives of hist ory, so t o say, page by page. It ’s not ew ort hy to underst and the religious react ion of t he M usalmans to their loss of polit ical power t hat w as pict ured by W. W . Hunt er in The Indian M usalmans t hus: “ During the last fort y years t hey have separat ed them selves from the Hindus by differences of dress, of salut ations, and ot her ext erior dist inct ions, such as they never deem ed necessary in the days of t heir suprem acy.” Just to digress, post -part ition, the M usalmans, w ho st ayed back in India, by and large, t ended to shed their must ache-less beards and gave up their skull-caps but fift y years t hereaft er t hey have been increasingly st riving them selves t o sport t heir separat eness by not even sparing their kids from w earing the skull-caps; thank biology for their beardlessness, and showing no m ercy even t o t heir babies by draping t hem in burkas. Though it is for the sociologist s to assess t his ret rograde t rend in the Indian um m a, the discerning political analyst s m ay divine the new found M uslim killer inst inct ow ing it self t o t he Islamic dem ographic grow th in the secularly naïve India. Now picking up the Hindu t hreads in the Brit ish era, besides t he colour of the skin, t he skills of the Whit em an would have at once overaw ed as w ell as fascinat ed the brow n Hindu m an, hugely low by then, in the sam e vein, m aybe in equal m easure. So, it can be presum ed that t he Hindus of t hat era w ould have been but the pale shadow s of their haught y ancest ors, w ho besides disregarding all aliens as mlechas, as Alberuni had observed, happened to “ believe t here is no count ry but t heirs, no nat ion like t heirs, no kings like t heirs, no religion like t heirs, no science like t heirs.” No wonder t hen that Lord M acaulay in his 1835CE M inut e dared t o record that the Hindu India w as of “ false hist ory, false ast ronomy, false medicine in company with a false religion” and the Brit ish should creat e “ a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in t ast es, in opinions, in morals and in int ellect ,” and sadly for t he Hindus t he wily British could m anage t o forge t heir m ind in the M acaulay mould, needless t o say facilit at ed by the Hindu w illingness. And that m ade all the difference in that what the eight -hundred years of M uslim presence in India failed t o do to the Hindu psyche, the British cunning did in less t han t wo hundred years, so much so that it alt ered it s value syst em it self. Though t he Hindus, through ages, w ere w on’t t o celebrat e sexualit y in all it s forms, including lesbianism , as exem plified in the Cant o 9, Harem at Night and Cant o 10, W om en in Want , of Valm iki’s Sundara Kanda, t he foremost poet ic composition of t he w orld, and in t he erotic t em ple archit ect ure at Khajuraho (10 th -11 th Century) t o just name a few , and yet t hey came t o imbibe the regressive sexual credo besides t he concept of sin of the Christ ianit y to their hurt . What ever, w hen t he British left India that w as after sundering it , the Hindu polit y it self w as put asunder on it s int ellect ual plane into the M acaulay elit e, the Indian nat ionalist s w ith the form er holding the sw ay and shaping it s dest iny. So t o say, the Hindu haplessness w as furt her accentuated by helplessness of t he ‘thousand years of slavery’, plant ed in t he Hindu m inds through M aulana Azad’s t ailor-made add-ons to M acaulay’s school curriculum to enervat e t he ‘educat ed’ Hindu psyche t o defeat ist levels w it h devast at ing effect (Read t he aut hor’s Fact s of a Fake ‘Idea of India’). Besides, t he Hindu act ivist s t hat em erged from the nationalist ranks, if anyt hing, have been making it w orse for t he Hindu cause wit h t heir out landish claim s such as pushpak viman w as their ancest ral airplane and t he Taj M ahal w as but a m odified Hindu t em ple, even though they have t he m at chless South Indian t em ple archit ect ure in abundance to show case t o the world, that only earn ridicule to the Hindu Right . Wonder w hy t he thought less Hindus should indulge in m aking such ridiculous claims even as t heir ancest ors had left a host of unimaginable accomplishm ent s, acknow ledged by the w orld at large, for their feel good - the invent ion of zero, value of pi, and the decim al syst em in mathemat ics, and the discovery of ‘precession of the Equinoxes’ in ast ronom y, just to nam e a few. It is in this cont ext , this excerpt from the ‘Cheiro’s Book of Numbers’ is not ew ort hy. The ancient Hindu searchers aft er Nat ure’s law s, it must be rememb ered, were in form er years mast ers of all such st udies, but in t ransmitting t heir knowledge t o their descendant s, t hey so endeavored to hide their secret s from the com m on people that in most cases t he key t o the problem became lost , and the t ruth that had been discovered becam e buried in t he dust of superst it ion and charlat anism , to be re-form ed, let us hope, when som e sim ilar cycle of thought in it s own appoint ed t im e will again claim at t ention to this side of nature. W hen exam ining such quest ions, w e m ust not forget t hat it w as the Hindus, who discovered what is known as the precession of the Equinoxes, and in their calculat ions such an occurrence t akes place every 25,827 years; our m odern science aft er labours of hundreds of years has sim ply proved them t o be correct . How , or by what m eans t hey w ere able t o arrive at such a calculat ion, has never been discovered - observat ions last ing over such a period of t im e are hardly admissible, and calculat ion w ithout inst rum ent s is also scarcely conceivable, and so science has only been able, first to accept their st at em ent , and lat er t o acknow ledge it s accuracy.” So it is high t ime for the Hindus to st rive hard to regain the int ellect ual vigour of t heir ancest ors t hough sans t heir vice of inim ical secrecy, and that should enable them to shed t he m ediocrit y of t heir lazy minds.