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The
Truth About India's Independence - Part 1 by François Gautier
"In the fist part of the true story of India's independence,
François Gautier, correspondent in South Asia for "Le Figaro",
France's largest circulation daily, argues that History books
should be rewritten."
… In 1947, India became free. But at what price! Was this the
independence that so many nationalists had fought for and for
which they had lost their lives? Was this truncated, diminished,
partitioned India the true Bharat of old, whose mighty borders
extended from Cape Comorin to Afghanistan?
Moreover, who was responsible for the Partition of India? Yes, the
British used to the hilt the existing divide between Hindus and
Muslims. Yes, the Congress was weak : it accepted what was forced
down its throat by Jinnah and Mountbatten, even though many of its
leaders, including Nehru, and a few moderate Muslims, disagreed
with the principle of partition. It was also Gandhi's policy of
non-violence and gratifying the fanatical Muslim minority, in the
hope that it would see the light, which did tremendous harm to
India and encouraged Jinnah to harden his demands. But ultimately,
one has to go back to the roots, to the beginning of it all, in
order to understand Partition. One has to travel back in history
to get a clear overall picture. This is why memory is essential,
this is why Holocausts should never be forgotten.
For Jinnah was only the vehicle, the instrument, the avatar, the
latest reincarnation of the medieval Muslims coming down to rape
and loot and plunder the land of Bharat. He was the true son of
Mahmud Ghaznavi, of Muhammed Ghasi, of Aurangzeb. He took up again
the work left unfinished by the last Mughal two centuries earlier:
'Dar-ul-Islam', the House of Islam. The Hindu-Muslim question is
an old one - but is it really a Muslim-Hindu question, or just
plainly a Muslim obsession, their hatred of the Hindu pagans,
their contempt for this polytheist religion? This obsession, this
hate, is as old as the first invasion of India by the original
Arabs in 650. After independence, nothing has changed: the sword
of Allah is still as much ready to strike the Kafirs, the
idolaters of many Gods, as Kargil has just shown. The Muslims
invaded this country, conquered it, looted it, razed its temples,
humiliated its Hindu leaders, killed its Brahmins, converted its
weaker sections. True, it was all done in the name of Allah and
many of its chiefs were sincere in thinking they were doing their
duty by hunting down the Infidel. So how could they accept on 15th
August 1947 to share power on an equal basis with those who were
their slaves for thirteen centuries? "Either the sole power
for ourselves, and our rule over the Hindus as it is our sovereign
right, we the adorers of the one and only true God - Or we quit
India and found our own nation, a Muslim nation, of the true
faith, where we will live amongst ourselves".
Thus there is no place for idolaters in this country, this great
nation of Pakistan; they can at best be "tolerated" as
second-class citizens. Hence the near total exodus of Hindus from
Pakistan, whereas more than half the Muslim population in India,
chose to stay, knowing full well that they would get the freedom
to be and to practice their own religion. In passing, the Muslims
took revenge on the Hindus -once more- and indulged in terrible
massacres, which were followed by retaliations from Sikhs and hard
core Hindus, the ultimate horror.
Partition triggered one of the most terrible exodus in the history
of humanity. And this exodus has not ended: they still come by the
lakhs every year from Bangladesh, fleeing poverty, flooding India
with problems, when the country has already so many of her own.
Some even say that they bring with them more fundamentalism, a
Third Column, which one day could organise itself in a political,
social and militant body.
For French historian Alain Danielou, one of the rare indologists
to have understood this country, the division of India was on the
human level as well as on the political one, a great mistake.
"It added, he says, to the Middle East an unstable state
(Pakistan) and burdened India which already had serious
problems". And he adds: "India whose ancient borders
stretched until Afghanistan, lost with the country of seven rivers
(the Indus Valley), the historical centre of her civilisation. At
a time when the Muslim invaders seemed to have lost some of their
extremism and were ready to assimilate themselves to other
populations of India, the European conquerors, before returning
home, surrendered once more to Muslim fanaticism the cradle of
Hindu civilisation ."
For Sri Aurobindo, India's great Sage and philosopher, the
division of India was also a monstrosity: " India is free,
but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken
freedom...The whole communal division into Hindu and Muslim seems
to have hardened into the figure of a permanent political division
of the country. It is to be hoped that the Congress and the Nation
will not accept the settled fact as for ever settled, or as
anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India
may be seriously weakened, even crippled; civil strife may remain
always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign
conquest. The partition of the country must go...For without it
the destiny of India might be seriously impaired and frustrated.
That must not be." (Message of Sri Aurobindo on the 15th of
August 1947).
Sri Aurobindo had long seen through the British and Jinnah's games
and had warned the nation as early as the beginning of the
century. His answer to a disciple on October 7, 1940 is very
illustrative of the point:"
Q. But now that our national consciousness is more developed,
there is more chance of unity if the British don't bolster up
Jinnah and his Muslim claims.
A. Does Jinnah want unity?...What he wants is independence for
Muslims and if possible rule over India. THAT IS THE OLD SPIRIT...
But why is it expected that Muslims will be so
accommodating?"
Nevertheless, Sri Aurobindo thought that although the old spirit
of the real warriors of Islam, the Muslim invaders, was still
present, the majority of Indian Muslims were unconcerned:
"The idea of two nationalities in India is only a new-fanged
notion invented by Jinnah for his purposes and contrary to the
facts. More than 90% of the Indian Muslims are descendants of
converted Hindus and belong as much to the Indian nation as the
Hindu themselves. Jinnah is himself a descendant of a Hindu named
Jinahbahai...
Sri Aurobindo also sought to dispel the widespread notion that the
Muslims brought so much to India: "The Islamic culture hardly
gave anything to the world which may be said of fundamental
importance and typically its own Islamic culture was mainly
borrowed from the others. Their mathematics and astronomy and
other subjects were derived from India and Greece. It is true they
gave some of these things a new turn, but they have not created
much. Their philosophy and their religion are very simple and what
they call Sufism is largely the result of Gnostics who lived in
Persia and it is the logical outcome of that school of thought
largely touched by the Vedanta... Islamic culture contributed the
Indo-Saracenic architecture to Indian culture. I do not think it
has done anything more in India of cultural value. It gave some
new forms to art and poetry. Its political institutions were
always semi-barbaric.
How could Partition have been avoided? Sri Aurobindo had advocated
firmness: "As for the Hindu-Muslim affair, I saw no reason
why the greatness of India's past or her spirituality should be
thrown into the waste paper basket in order to conciliate the
Moslems who would not be conciliated at all by such a policy. What
has created the Hindu-Moslem split was not Swadeshi, but the
acceptance of a communal principle by the Congress". (India's
Rebirth, p. 189). History was going to show the accuracy of Sri
Aurobindo's predictions: the Congress' obstinate pandering to
Jinnah and his terms, proved to be disastrous and the partition of
India was a blow from which the nation has not yet recovered.
To Be Continued...
* Based on the book Rewriting Indian History (Vikas, New Delhi),
by Francois Gautier
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