islamic-jihad-legacy-of-forced-conversion-imperialism-slavery

Islamic JihadThe Sepoy Mutiny, in all likelihood, meant for reestablishing the days of jizyah and slavery for non-Muslims, which the British had abolished. The Sepoy Mutiny, according to Nehru, was an effort to reestablishthe old feudalism, which he abhorred. ‘The Revolt of 1857–58 was the last flicker of feudal India,’ heasserts. 529 Would it have been wise for India’s non-Muslims to throw their lot in with the Muslims, drive outthe British and return to the Mughal rule once again? The British exploitation was possibly as bad as theMuslim one. Otherwise, they were definitely freer, less molested, more respectable, and even somewhatprivileged under the British Raj than what they had enjoyed under the previous Muslim rule. ‘The Britishperiod—two hundred years in some places, less than a hundred years in others—was a time of Hinduregeneration,’ notes Naipaul. 530 For them, returning to dhimmitude under the Islamic yoke once again wasclearly a less attractive choice.HINDU-MUSLIM DISCORD, PARTITION OF INDIA & BRITISH COMPLICITYThe British rulers have also been roundly blamed, particularly by Hindus, for the Partition of India in 1947.As the movement for India’s independence started building up following the founding of the Indian NationalCongress Party in 1885, a Hindu-Muslim tension also started building up over the political control ofindependent India. The founding of the All India Muslim League Party later in 1906 further boosted thetension. It took a violent turn in the 1920s and more dangerously, in the 1940s—leading to the eventualPartition of the subcontinent in 1947 into two states: India and Pakistan. The Partition-related riots caused asmany as two million deaths. The British Raj has been summarily condemned for this devastating violence.However, the British complicity in the Partition and the violence connected to it demands a thoroughexamination.A fomenting nationalist movement was sweeping across India in the early twentieth century. Itgained manifold momentum after Mahatma Gandhi arrived from South Africa in 1914. His nonviolencemovement, clothed in Hindu religious principles (ahimsa etc.), greatly aroused the Indian masses. Theoverwhelming response to Gandhi’s call for the boycott of the 1919 Constitution on 20 September 1920 andfor civil disobedience in December 1921 made it clear that the days of the British imperialism in India hadbeen numbered.During this time, there arose two separate movements amongst India’s Muslims. The pious startedthe "Khilafat (Caliphate) Movement" (1919–23). Earlier, as British mercenaries started ousting Muslim rulersone after another, Muslims of India increasingly looked to the Ottoman sultan as their political head andsavior. This trend was inspired by the teachings of the widely popular Sufi master Shah Walliullah (d. 1762),who, seeing that Muslim power in India was crumbling, recognized the Ottoman sultan as Amir al-Muminin,the leader of the believers. After the ouster of Tipu Sultan in 1799, Muslim allegiance overwhelmingly liedwith the Ottomans, which can be gathered from their pliant response to the Ottoman opposition to SepoyMutiny.The Anglo-French forces occupied much of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War andpartitioned it into small independent states. This infuriated Muslims worldwide. The indignant pious Muslimsin India, in their rage against the British interference in Ottoman affairs, waged a campaign for ousting theBritish from India. They were in favor of establishing a pan-Islamic caliphate spanning all Muslim lands ofthe world headed by the Ottoman caliph. They wanted India to be a part of it after the eviction of the British.The Congress Party led by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru—desperate to oust the common enemy,the British—joined this Islamist movement. It lost favor among the Congress Party leaders following the529. Nehru (1989), p. 415530. Naipaul (1998), p. 247167