HVK Archives: Appeasement or Settlement?
Appeasement or Settlement? - Organiser
A.K.R. Hemmady
()
4 August 1996
Title : Appeasement or settlement?
Author : A.K.R. Hemmady
Publication : Organiser
Date : August 4, 1996
I hope all political parties not only in West Bengal but
also in the rest of India will rise above immediate
political gains and seriously assess what our secularism
is in practice rather than in theory. Reference is to
the unprovoked vandalism by Muslims on the day of
Moharram in the consmopolitan city of Calcutta secularly
situated in West Bengal which has been under a record-
breaking spell of governance by a man of impeccable
secular credentials. Shri Jyoti Basu.
I remember Calcutta of late fifties when East Bengal
Hindus. hounded out of their homeland, encroaching the
side-walk of beautiful Ballygunge Avenue. The Hindus of
Bankim Chandra's, Vivekananda's, Aurobindo's and
Tagore's Bengal did not attack a single Muslim even
though there often were minor scuffles between the locals
and the destitute refugees.
I have purposely chosen the above four great sons of
India hailing from Bengal because they don't belong to an
intellectual fraternity which Nirad Babu bluntly
dismissed as liars. In an interview to Shri Padgaonkar
of The Times of India. 8-8-93 he said: "All Hindu
historians are liars. From 1907 onwards we became aware
of the Hindu-Muslim problem as regards nationalist
movement. From that date till 1946 every, fellow Bengali
I have asked and every other Indian too had only one
standard argument: The Hindu-Muslim problem does not
exist. It has been created by the British."
Muslims' allergy to Vande Mataram is because, if I
remember right. the activities of Anand Math were also
against a. Muslim ruler; and because Vande Mataram was
the slogan which inspired the Indians to undo the
proposed partition of Bengal (1905) on communal basis.
Vivekananda was brutally frank: "Think of the good
Mohammed did to the world and think of the great evil
that has been done through his fanaticism! Think of the
millions massacred through his teachings, mother's bereft
of their children, children made orphans. whole countries
destroyed. millions upon millions of people killed!"
(Complete works, Vol. 1, p. 184). "There has not been
any religion which has shed so much blood and been so
cruel to other men. In the Koran there is a doctrine
that a man who does not believe these teachings should be
killed. It is a mercy to kill him! And the surest way
to get to heaven where there are beautiful houris and all
sorts of sense enjoyments, is by killing these
unbelievers!" (Vol, 2, pp. 35253). "Mohammedans talk a
universal brotherhood, but what comes out of that in
reality? Why, anybody who is not a Mohammedan will. not
be admitted into the brotherhood; he will more likely
have his throat cut." (Vol. 2. p. 1110). There is much
more but let it pass, lest the CPM cadres go in a
procession to Belur Math asking them to delete. these
portions from the Complete Works. if not seeking a
Complete ban.
The Communists are learning Vivekananda but they have
yet to graduate to Shri Aurobindo. Here are a few quotes
from India's Rebirth by him. About the massacre of
Hindus in Noakhali and Tippera (now in Bangladesh) he
said: "As regards Bengal, things are certainly very bad;
the conditions of the Hindus there are terrible and they
may even get worse in spite of the interim marriage
de convenience at Delhi... What is happening did not come
to me as a surprise. I was in Bengal and warned people
that it was probable and almost inevitable and that they
should be prepared for it. At that time no one attached
any value to what I said although soon afterwards they
remembered and admitted, when the trouble first began.
that 1 have been right. only C. R. Das had grave
apprehensions and he even told me when he came to
Pondicherry that he would not like the British to go out
until this dangerous problem had been settled." (pp.'
233-34).
As far back as 1909 he had warned "Every action, for
instance, which may he objectionable to a number of
Mohammedans is now liable to he forbidden because it is
likely to lead to breach of the peace, and one is dimly
beginning to wonder whether the day may not come when
worship in Hindu temples may be forbidden on that valid
ground." (p.55)
Our secularism is so grotesque that even 'the secularism
of Ravindra Nath Thakur could be questioned: "... another
very important factor which, according to the poet, was
making it almost impossible for Hindu-Mohammedan unity to
become an accomplished fact was that the Mohammedans
could not confine their patriotism to any one
country....." The poet said that he had very frankly
asked many Mohammedans whether, in the event of any
Mohammedan power invading India, they would stand side by
side with their Hindu neighbours to defend their common
land. He said that he could definitely state that even
such men as Shri Mohammed Ali had declared that under no
circumstance was it permissible for any Mohammedan,
whatever his country might be. to stand against any other
Mohammedan. That was from an interview which Shri
Ravindra Nath gave to an editor of a Bengali paper in
1924. ("Through Indian Eyes" in The Times of India, 18-4-
24. quoted from Pakistan or The Partition of India, Dr
Babasaheb Ambedkar's Writings and Speeches, Vol.8, p.
276). The CPI and CPM cadres may not mind this Islamic
Comintern but the
Forward Bloc, whose idol is Netaji should mull over the
point raised by Shri Thakur. Before calling the RSS a
Fascist organisation, members of this bloc should
remember that Netaji was also in good company because of
his association with enemies of the Allies.
A great Indian leader who has probed the Hindu-Muslim
problem in great depth comes down heavily on the policies
pursued by the congress before Partition "The riots are a
sufficient indication that gangsterism has become a
settled part of their (Muslims') strategy in politics.
They seem to be consciously, and deliberately imitating
the Sudeten Germans in the means employed by them against
Czechs... 'The question, however, is : Is the Congress
way the right way? The first thing which the Congress has
failed to realise is that there is a difference between
appeasement and settlement.... Appeasement means buying
off the aggressor by conniving at his acts of murder,
rape, arson and loot against innocent persons.... On the
other hand settlement means laying down the bounds which
neither party to it can transgress. Appeasement sets no
limits to demands and aspirations of the aggressors.
Settlement does."
"The second thing the Congress has failed to realise is
that police of concession has increased Muslim
aggressiveness, and what is worse, Muslims interpret
these concessions as a sign of defeatism on the part of
the Hindus and the absence of their will to resist." (Dr.
B.R. Ambedkar, Partition of India, p. 269).
Creation of Pakistan was a settlement of sorts; an
initiation of another round by Muslims but one more olive
branch in the appeasement policy of the Congress. If
only the Congress had listened to Dr Ambedkar's advice to
which Jinnah had a g r e e d - p o p u l a t i o n
migration-the settlement would have been final.
The Muslim appetite has increased and is bound to.
because of an important political tenet inherent in
Islam. Dr Ambedkar says: "Among the tenets one that calls
notice is the tenet of Islam which says that in a country
which is not under Muslim rule wherever there is conflict
between Muslim law and the law of the land, the former
must prevail over the latter and a Muslim will be
justified in obey rig the Muslim law and defying the law
of the land." (Partition of India, p. 292). If any
evidence to that is needed. the latest speech by Shri
Banatwala of Muslim League on the floor of Parliament is
one during the debate on BJP's motion of confidence when
he said that the Shariat law is divine and cannot be
changed.
A common civil code is a Directive Principle of our
Constitution drafted by Dr Ambedkar. That is not
communal; but if after fifty, years of Congress
dithering, BJP takes it up seriously (one of its declared
agendas it is communal! In Goa even today the Shariat
law related to marriage has no legal validity. According
to Dr Ambedkar. right up to 1935 Hindu Law was applicable
to Muslims in NWFP and up to 1937. Hindu Succession Act
was applicable to Muslim in Central Provinces and Bombay
Presidency. In Kerala the matriarchal law was applied.
To aver that Shariat law is immutable is more out of
stubbornness and an unwillingness to accept gender-
equality, rather than cold logic.
"There is another injunction of Muslim Cannon Law". says
Dr. Ambedkar, called jihad (crusade) by which it becomes
incumbent on a Muslim ruler to extend the rule of Islam
until the whole world shall have been brought under its
sway. The world being divided into two camps, Dar-ul-
Islam (abode of Islam) and Dar-ul-Harab (abode of war),
all countries come.under one country or the other.
Technically, it is the duty of the Muslim ruler, who is
capable of doing so, to transform Dar-ul-Harb into
Dar-ul-Islam". (ibid p. 295). According to him the
Mutiny of 1857 for Muslims was not a War of Independence
but a jihad proclaimed by Muslims against the British.
Smt Mamata Banerjee walked out of Lok Sabha over the
issue of cow-protection merely to paint the BJP as
communal forgetting that Gandhiji had advocated it and it
again is a Directive Principle of our Constitution. Dr
Ambedkar mentions: "Another illustration of this spirit
of exploitation is furnished by the Muslim insistence
upon cow slaughter and the stoppage of music before
mosques. Islamic law does not insist upon the slaughter
of cow for sacrificial purposes and no Musalman, when he
goes to Haj, sacrificies the cots, in Mecca or Madina.
But in India they will not be content with the sacrifice
of any other animal. Music may be played before a mosque
in all Muslim countries without objection. Even in
Afganistan, which is not a secularised country, no
objection is taken to music before a mosque. But in
India the Musalmans must insist upon its stoppage for no
other reason except that the Hindus claim a right to."
(ibid p. 269).
Lest the Dar--ul-Harb to Dar-ul-Islam jihad be dismissed
as an antiquated belief entertained only by less
progressive Muslims, may I suggest that our political
leaders read Islamic Declaration by Alija Izetbegovic,
President of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Here are some excerpts : "An Islamic society without an
Islamic authority is incomplete and without power:
Islamic governance without an Islamic society is either
utopia or violence. There can be neither peace nor
coexistence between the Islamic religion and non-Islamic
social and political institutions. Pakistan is the dress
rehearsal for the introduction of an Islamic order under
modern conditions. Islamic protagonists should learn
what should and should not be done from the example of
Pakistan. We believe in Pakistan and its mission in the
service of international Islam. There is no Muslim heart
which will not bound at the mention of something as dear
to us as Pakistan. Pakistan is our great hope."
Let BJP not rub salt over the wounds inflicted in
Calcutta on the day of Moharram by stating the obvious
that in the States served by BJP government, perceived to
be a communal pare., not a single communal disturbance on
that day has yet been reported. Its search of LCM of
HCF, even at the risk of being seen as having retreated
from its earlier position. failed miserably. To some of
its supporters it was a shade of Congress appeasement
policy. The next round of elections is imminent, however
we may wish it away. During this round scrapping Article
30 (guaranteeing the secular right to set up educational
institutions of their choice exclusively to minorities.
including religious minorities) should also be on its
agenda.
The success of BJP is "the visible shapes brought about
by the lines of force of the prevalent thought
configuration, like iron filings giving expression to the
weightless and invisible magnetic field. The so-called
leaders will easily fall in line and gladly make
themselves instruments of a Hindu future, once their
attachment to outdated doctrines is removed by the
thought currents of Sanatana Dharma". (Koenraad Elst.
Ayodhya and After).
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