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

Islamic Imperialism in Indiaintended by the Khilafat Movement (aided by Gandhi and Nehru et al.), to their separatist demand for creatingan independent state dividing India, and to their indulgence in mindless violence against the Hindus (e.g.,Mopla Rebellion) to achieve their goal.Muslims came to India as brutal invaders and ruled for centuries. They inflicted utmost cruelty,including mass slaughter and enslavement of native Indians, engaged in massive plundering and looting oftheir wealth and perpetrated large-scale destruction of their religious symbols and institutions. The economicexploitations aside, the British rule came somewhat as a relief to India’s non-Muslims after their sufferance ofenduring Islamic brutality and humiliation. As the British rulers were about to leave, returning India’ssovereignty to the people after so many centuries of foreign rule, Muslims became hell-bent on dividing theland. Although a great multitude of Indians had become Muslim during Islamic conquests and rule resultingfrom forced conversion, enslavement and other forms of persecution and economic compulsions, they had noright to divine India based on a foreign ideology so brutally imposed on the people. Muslims’ demand for anindependent homeland and unleashing of mindless violence to achieve it, therefore, created the perfect groundfor the rise of nationalist sentiments and religious zealotry amongst Hindus. Consequently, for the first time,some Hindus as a religious entity rose up as a militant religio-nationalistic force to confront the instigatoryMuslims from dividing their country. Particularly after the Mopla violence (1921), Hindu cultural, religious,political and nationalistic ideas were floated. In 1925, a Hindutva organization, Rashtriya SwayamsevakSangh (RSS), was founded on Hindu and Hindustani nationalism. It was a natural reaction to the long periodof historical injustice and to the ongoing Muslim bigotry, intolerance and violence.THE 1947 RIOTS & MASSACRES: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?The blame for the Partition of British India and the related violence has been primarily placed on the British,particularly by the Hindus. India’s Congress Party believed, notes Koenraad Elst, that an evil factor (theBritish) was ‘forcing a partition on an unwilling brotherhood of Hindus and Muslims.’ 538 Major literaryworks on the Partition—such as Khushwant Singh’s novel Train to Pakistan, Bhishm Sahni’s novel Tamas(made into film) and Urabhavi Butalia’s collection of Partition-related Testimonies in The Other Side ofSilence—have been projected in a way to put more blame on the Hindus by highlighting the cases of Hinduviolence. However, the most common impression among the people of the subcontinent is that the Hindus andMuslims were equally guilty of the violence and cruelty that occurred during the Partition. Most researchworks on the issue are also done in a directed way to even out the blame on the Hindus and Muslims. Anobjective analysis of the 1947 violence will be presented here. This will help readers to judge how muchblame should be shared by each of the three parties involved: a) the British Raj, b) Muslims and Islamistmovements, and c) Hindus and Hindutva movement.The Mopla RebellionIn order to understand the violence in the course of independence of India and her eventual Partition in 1947,let us first go to Malabar in South India in 1921 to witness the kind of mindless brutality Muslims couldperpetrate on their innocent Hindu neighbors. It is noted that Muslim traders had allegedly settled amongsttolerant Hindus in the Malabar Coast in 629 and intermarried with the Hindu women to form theircommunities, while some low-caste Hindus had also allegedly converted voluntarily. By the early nineteenthcentury, they had become substantial in number (currently about one-fourth). Often ignited by Sufi masters,they were now powerful enough to go on a Jihadi path, against the Portuguese occupiers and Hindus.According to Robinson, they developed ‘a tradition of holy war and martyrdom… it has been manifest in538. Kamra AJ (2000) The Prolonged Partition and Its Progroms, Voice of India, New Delhi, p. VII170