HVK Archives: When Mahatma Gandhi flayed haznavi-Ghauri fixation
When Mahatma Gandhi flayed haznavi-Ghauri fixation - Organiser
V. P. Bhatia
()
May 3, 1998
Title: When Mahatma Gandhi flayed haznavi-Ghauri fixation
Author: V. P. Bhatia
Publication: Organiser
Date: May 3, 1998
In his speech at his daily prayer-meeting on December 25, 1947,
four months after independence, Mahatma Gandhi referred to a
verse published in the official Urdu Magazine of Aligarh Muslim
University in which great resentment was expressed over the talk
of the rebuilding of Somnath Temple after the annexation of
Junagadh where the vandalised temple was situated. The couplet
had appeared under the title "Mahmud Ghaznavi", and Gandhiji
himself gave the substance of the offensive verse to his audience
as follows : "Today Somnath is on the tongue of everyone. If the
temple is renovated, it will have to be avenged. A new Ghaznavi
must come from Ghazni to avenge what happened in Junagadh."
AMU threat to avenge rebuilding of Somnath
Commenting further on it, Gandhiji said, "It is painful to think
that such a thing can issue from the pen of a Muslim. I have said
that I must do or die; which means that I shall either bring
about Hindu-Muslim unity or lay down my life. I cannot return
evil for evil. I can only return good for evil. I tell you all
this so that you may not be taken in by such things. You (the
Hindus) must not remember the wrongs that Ghaznavi did. Muslims
should realize and admit the wrongs perpetrated under the Islamic
rule... If Muslims in the Indian Union teach their children that
a Ghaznavi must come to avenge them and destroy the Hindus, who
is going to tolerate this? If this mischievous couplet had not
been published in an important magazine, I should not have even
mentioned it." (Vide 'The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi',
Volume Ninety; Publications Division, Govt. of India, P. 299).
As the couplet had appeared in the 'Aligarh Urdu Magazine' of
AMU, Nawab Ismael Khan, the Vice Chancellor, sent a letter to
Gandhiji expressing regret for the 'oversight' when his attention
was drawn to it. Gandhiji was especially angry that his work of
communal harmony was being made difficult by Muslims, when he was
asserting that the 'misdeeds' of Hindus and Sikhs should be
advertised to the whole world. For, the AMU poem was an extra
strong expression of Muslim commitment to the Ghaznavi-Ghauri
heritage, which is entrenched not only in the Pakistani psyche
but in the Indian Muslim psyche also, if their fanatical
attachment to the Babri heritage is any guide.
Urdu weekly's playing up of Paki missile
OVER-ELATED by Pakistan's over-advertisement of its hauri
missile, a 'popular' local Muslim weekly has flashed the coming
"Ghauri-Prithvi Confrontation" with equal sized portraits of
Nawaz Sharif and Atal Behari Vajpayee flanking the test-firing of
this particular missile on its entire multi-coloured front page.
The same paper had earlier been indulging in its self-exposing
pastime of highlighting the looming danger of Islamic Bomb over
the Indian head more zealously than perhaps even I.Q. Khan could
do. This was of course besides uninhibited praise of Gen. Ziaul
Haq's exemplary fundamentalist services in the cause of Islam in
its columns.
If anything, it is a repeat reminder of the umbilical chord that
binds the overlords and contractors of Islamic votebank in India
with the inveterate India-bashers, Hindu-baiters of what they
invariably describe as Mumalkat-e-Khudadad (God-given country) of
Pakistan. Obviously, the haznavi, Ghauri and Babur Ki Aulad
super-race complex is meant to challenging the meek Hindu to
surrender, though actually it may cure him of the Prithvi Raj
syndrome to spell doom for Pakistan.
There is an in fact an element of nervous in the Paki and pro-
Paki circles that the with the coming of BJP-led Government their
palmy days are over. Not all the bravado of Abdul Qadir Khan and
Nawaz Sharif's propaganda mister Musbahid Husain can hide this
fact. They are in fact frightening their own people still living
in nightmare of Bangladesh War all the more. It is only the
rulers who are indulging in this sound and fury.
Thus while the hauri and its next advertised sequel
haznavi reflect a nervousness in Paki elite, it has ironically
boosted the morale of a certain class of crypto Pakistanis here
claiming to represent the real Muslim voice in India, but
actually leading the Muslims of India into a blind alley, their
impact on the Hindu psyche can be easily imagined. The propaganda
hype o its Hatf (Prophet's Sword) and Ghazni, Ghauri ventures may
be immensely useful in at last one direction good, the Indian, at
least the Hindu students and youth to read and re-read the
treacherous history of Islamic predators to draw fresh lessons
about the need for unity for crushing the cobra's head for ever,
for a real respite from a recurring danger.
Romila Thapar and Pt. Nehru's views
For, as even the leftist historian, Romila Thapar points out in
her History of (Medieval) India, the effects of the frenzied
iconoclastic and predatory activities of Mahmud Ghaznavi,
especially those at Somnath, were to colour the Hindu mind for
many centuries about the assessment of the character of Muslim
rulers in general. The same is the effect now of Paki sabre-
rattling on the Hindu mind. It has kept the Hindu spirit alive
and kicking because of historical memories.
However, the hero worshippers of Ghauri should know how Prithvi
Raj believed his word never to come back and spared his life.
Similarly, after the sack of Somath, Mahmud Ghaznavi could escape
only with heavy losses on his way back to Ghazni, barely saving
his life as even Jawaharlal Nehru points out in his Discovery of
India. There was comparative peace in North India, for over 150
years after that. But as the Indian's sank back to their
complacent ways in a milieu of prosperity and the Indian princes
reverted to their old squabbling ways, hardly caring to know the
mortal dangers brewing across the border, Muhammad Ghauri saw his
chance of not only loot aid plunder but of conquest, conversion
and establishment of Islamic Raj. He was immensely helped in the
barbarous venture by the no-holds barred, treacherous tactics
matched only by the forgiving nature of a chivalric Prithvi Raj
who, as said already, spared Ghauri's life even after inflicting
defeat after defeat on him, but was hardly given even one chance
when Ghauri, breaking his pledge never to venture into India
again, had a chance upperhand only once.
Bravado of the Failed Paki State
The present day Pakistan is now openly flaunting that old Islamic
culture of conquest, conversion, butchery and vandalism, even as
its founding Muslim Leaguers pledge to outdo Halaku and Chenghez
in their blood thirsty campaign atrocities. They of course bank
on the belief that India is still the same old India of refined
Hindu civilisation, tolerant of Pakistan's even most inimical
acts. It thinks so because time and again, it has been let off
the hook-in 1948 by a voluntary ceasefire in Kashmir and at
Shimla in 1972 even after it was soundly defeated with 93000 of
its Islamic soldiers, each one of them claimed to be equal to ten
Indians, taken prisoners. Pakistan was however ungrateful as
ever, so that it was ready within a decade to let loose a deadly
proxy war killing thousands of Indians with the help of its
Islamic mercenaries and network in India. In addition, it is
using its nuclear blackmail to give a protective shield to its
terrorism.
As commentator after commentator is pointing out, its head needs
to be smashed once for all. It is inviting doom, as conditions
for another Bangladesh-type breakup are getting ripe both in the
Mohajir-dominated Sind and. in NWFP. This is apart from the
sectarian strife plaguing it. Meanwhile, its destructive
activities in Afghanistan as Kashmir have had destructive fall
out on its own socio-political milieu. The Americans have already
described it as a failed state, though they want to use it for
their own strategic purposes inter alia of containing India even
as Pakistan tilts to China for sustenance.
"VAJPAYEE is right man in the wrong party", says arch secularist
K. Karunanidhi in the latest repetition of an oft-repeated
secularist subterfuge. But what is Karunanidhi the arch-abetter,
proctetor and patron of Islamic terrorism in cosy corner of Tamil
Nadu alongwith the similar political culprits of Kerala? Wrong
men taking their fossilised parties to doom?
Karunanidhi and his ilk in Kerala are nowadays mightily worried
that their decades-long cultivation and patronage of the most-
treacherous anti-Hindu elements of the South has now been exposed
by the dare-devil Coimbatore blasts. The Islamic suppliers of
their most vital votebank have unwittingly exposed a series of
snakepits all over the two states by their ISI-fuelled over-
aggressiveness. The people of the two states are waking up to the
endless array of powder-kegs they are precariously perched on,
thanks to secularist purblindness.
As a result, no amount of secular sops and lullabies can reassure
the people now. Those who slept over or pooh-poohed the RSS
warnings and wails over the Meenakshipuram conversions, or the
blasting of their head office in Chennai or killing of their
keymen in Tamil Nadu including the latest most brutal one of ABVP
activist Prof. Paramshivam and similar gory killings in Kerala
are now feeling the heat and seeing their sin and crimes
recoiling on them. People are now realising that the Sangh
Parivar's warnings were correct and the secularist howls of
ommunal BJP' wrong. But like a guilty thing surprised, they are
now trying to palm off the blame to the BJP-led Government for
oliticising the issue as a prelude to Hindutva expansion in
the State. They are trying to find scapegoats as the facade of
their artificial world stands shattered, and the BJP ideology
gains credence and acceptability.
Jyoti Basu's 'Animal Farm'
In West Bengal, the superegoist Jyoti Basu too sees his Animal
Farm'-a totalitarian world of poll-management and Bangladesh-
inflated votebank, in jeopardy.
Back
Top
|
