Recently, thanks to Shri Vedantamji of the VHP, I had visited Thondi and Rasathipuram Municipalities of Ramanathapuram and Velloredistricts respectively, and was truly shocked by what I saw. Both these municipalities are in Muslim majority areas, and the Local Bodies election had empowered the Muslims with their capture of the municipalities.
The Muslimruled municipalities have thereafter converted these areas into mini ‘Darul Islams’, in a Hindustan of 83% Hindus! The minority Hindu areas of the municipality were thus denied civic amenities, funds for schools, garbage clearing etc., and sent notices in Urdu. Hindus were bluntly told convert to Islam if they wanted civic facilities.
I could not believe that in South India this was possible where Hindus are actually above national average at 90 percent of the population. I know that in Kashmir valley, Muslims who are in majority have actively or passively connived in driving out half a million Hindus out of their homes and made
them refugees in their own country. Temples have been demolished in the valley on a daily basis. The world could not care less. An American had once told me: "Why should we care? Indian democracy is led by the majority who are Hindus and you want us to talk about the human rights of the community of rulers?"
Such atrocities are happening not only in Kashmir, but in other parts of India as well in pockets wherever Muslims are in majority, e.g., Mau and Meerut. In pocket boroughs of India thus, Darul Islam has today returned
to India after two centuries. Considering that a demographic re-structuring is slowly but surely taking place, with Hindu majority shrinking everywhere, Darul Islam in pockets might indeed, like amoeba, proliferate, coalesce, and jell into a frightening national reality unless we Hindus wake up and take corrective action now, actions for which we shall of course not get a Nobel Peace Prize.
Darul Islam is a Muslim religious concept of a land where Muslims rule, and the non-believers in Islam are termed as ‘Dhimmis". The term ‘Dhimmi’ was coined after the Jews were crushed in Medina [Khaybar to be exact], and the defeated Jews accepted that if they did not convert to Islam, then they would accept second class status politically, culturally, and religiously. This included zero civil rights including the right to modesty of women, and the special tax jizya.
There is thus no scope for Muslims and non-Muslims uniting as equals in the political, cultural, or social system in a Darul Islam where Muslims rule. Secular order in India thus is possible only when Muslims are not in power. Thondi, Rasathipuram, and other places prove that the Muslim mind suffers from a dangerous duality of seeking secularism when out of power and imposing a brutal demeaning theocracy for non-Muslims when in power.
It is this duality that patriotic Hindus must re-shape by modern education and other means, as also retain its demographic overwhelming majority in India. We do not have much time, in fact about 45 years, as the X-graph of
statistical regressions estimated by J.S. Bajaj and colleagues’ shows. ‘X’
represents the two trends Hindu percentage declining and Muslim percentage rising, and intersecting in the year 2061.
The ‘dhimmitude’ of Jews in Medina and later in Mecca represents the beginning of religious apartheid inherent and basic to Islamic mores, and practiced long before what we saw in South Africa on the basis of colour and race, and that which became prevalent during the Islamic imperialist rule in parts of India. Hindus were dhimmis for six hundred years in those parts of India despite being a bigger majority in the country than even today. Hence, a majority is not enough. Hindus need also a Hindu mindset to be free.
In his Presidential address to the Muslim League in Lahore in 1940, Mohammed Ali Jinnah had articulated this concept of apartheid in his own inimitable way: " To visualize Hindus and Muslims in India uniting to create a common nation is a mythical concept. It is only a fancy dream of some unawakened Hindu leaders�.The truth is that Hindus and Muslims are two different civilisations. since their thought process grow on different beliefs."
Large sections of Muslims in India then had rejected Jinnah and his concept of non-compatibility of Muslims with Hindus. But after Independence and Partition, instead of building on this rejection by many Muslims, the Nehru era saw increasing pandering precisely to the religious element that believed in this apartheid. Indira Gandhi vigorously continued this appeasement thereby nurturing the apartheid mentality of Muslim orthodoxy.
But the final undermining of the enlightened Muslim came when the government capitulated in the Shah Bano case. Thousands of Muslims had demonstrated on the streets demanding that the government *not* bring legislation that would nullify the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Shah Bano case but in vain. Rajiv Gandhi, I learnt later, on counsel from his Italian Catholic family, had surrendered to the hard line clerics who protested that the Supreme Court had no right to interfere and to defacto amend the Shariat, the Islamic law code. These relatives on a directive from the Vatican thought that if secular law would be applied to Muslims, it can be to the Christians too.
This was a nonsense argument of the Muslim clerics, since the Shariat had already been amended, without protest, in the criminal law of India. The Indian Penal Code represents the uniform criminal code that equally applies to all religious communities. I therefore ask the clerics: if a Muslim is
caught stealing, can any court in India direct that his hand at the wrist be
cut off as the Shariat prescribes ? If Muslims can accept a uniform criminal
code what is the logic in rejecting the uniform civil code?
In India, Dhimmi status for Hindus during Islamic imperialist rule has had other social implications. Defiant Brahmins and Kshatriyas who had refused to convert and chose to remain Hindus, were forced to carry night soil and suffer great indignities for their women folk. Or it meant gross mental torture. Guru Tegh Bahadur, for example, had to see his sons sawed in half, before the pious Guru’s own head was severed and displayed in public.
The debasement of Hindu society then was such that those targeted valiant Brahmins and Kshatriyas who had refused to convert and thus made to carry night soil, were disowned by other Hindus and declared to be asprashya or "untouchable" . The ranks of the Scheduled Caste community which was not more than 1% of the population before the advent of Islam in India, swelled to 14 percent by the time Mughal rule collapsed.
Thus, today’s SC community especially those who are still Hindus, consists mostly of those valiant Brahmins and Kshatriyas who had refused to become Muslims but preferred ostracization and ignominy in order to remain Hindus. Hindu society today should offer koti koti pranams to them for keeping the Bhagwa Dhwaj of Hindu religion flying even at great personal cost and misery.
I have already written enough in these columns about Hindus being under siege from Islamic fanatics and Christian proselytizers. I have suggested that we can lift this siege only if we develop a Hindu mindset, which is a four dimensional concept. But that mind must be informed, and understand why
others do what they do to Hindus before we can defeat their nefarious designs. Here I suggest therefore that we Hindus must understand the true nature of Islam before we can formulate a strategy to defeat those who
threaten us. In a later column I will write about the true nature of Christianity and how to combat the menace of religious conversions of Hindus.
At this juncture let me add even though I oppose conversion as violence, as Swami Dayanand Sarasvati boldly wrote to the Vatican Pope, nevertheless if an Indian Muslim or Christian changes his religion to Hinduism today, I will not regard it as conversion because it is a return to the Hindu fold of those whose ancestors had been forcibly converted.
Islam is not only and merely what is stated in the Koran. Islam is a trilogy of Koran, Sira and Hadith. This trilogy defines a "true" Muslim or believer. Therefore those who sing praises of the Koran to prove that Islam is intrinsically humane, have not read the Sira and Hadith. While Koran is a
compilation of revelations of Allah to Mohammed through angel Gabriel, Sira
is essentially a biography of Mohammed, while Hadiths are a collection of proverbs, poems, and practices of Mohammed. Thus Islamic theology is Koran plus what the Prophet said or did. This is borne by content analysis of the trilogy. Koran has 153,000 words, while Sira has 408,000 words, and Hadith compiled by Bukhari has 338,000 words. Hence, Koran is just 17 % of Islam, while Sira and Hadith are 83% and about Prophet Mohammed.
For 13 years in Mecca, Mohammed preached the Koran and managed to convert just 150 persons. But in Medina, Mohammed did and said what is contained in Sira and Hadith. Within 10 years he became the King of Arabia, and converted 100 percent of the people who survived the sword of Islam. To enforce his revelations, Mohammed resorted to Jihad, which meant sacred violence as a process of spreading Islam. Holy war is just one phase of Jihad, because Jihad is a process. It is in Sira that one finds a detailed manual of the complete strategy of jihad and political dimension of Islam. Sira is about how Mohammed dealt with those who disagreed with him. In Mecca, Mohammed was conciliatory because he was in a hopeless minority. But he became completely different in Medina,
While Koran is personal to every Muslim or believer, Sira and Hadith affect non-believers. Islam as a trilogy is obsessed with what to do with unbelievers and non-believers. Unlike Hinduism, which says not a word against non-believers, in fact says that other religions also lead to God,
Islam is harsh on them, and justifies violence against them as sacred. The
choice to non-believers in Islam is: convert or accept dhimmitude. Hence, the explanation for Thondi, Rasathipuram, Mau etc., and the duality in ethics practiced by Muslims everywhere. A true Muslim is Dr.Jekyll when in minority, and Mr. Hyde when in majority.
So what should we Hindus do? First, recognize that being a pious Hindu is not enough. Hindus must unite and work to install a Hindu-minded government. If 35% of the 83% Hindus unite to vote for a party, absolute majority is attainable. If Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha, RSS, and VHP decide to mobilize the voter to support a party that espouses an approved Hindu Agenda, then the union government is within reach through the ballot box. Second, search for those Muslims who are ready to openly and with pride declare that their ancestors were Hindus. My guess is that about 75% of Muslims will be ready to do so. These are the Muslims who can be co-opted by Hindus to fight Islamic fundamentalism. If we do not do so, then the Muslim clerics will have a free run of their fanaticism.
For this a required reading is Sri Sri Ravishankar’ s Hinduism & Islam: Dedicated to the People of Pakistan Who have Forgotten Their Own Roots [www.artofliving. org]. In this Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has shown how "Muslims have completely forgotten that their forefathers were Hindus, so they have every right to vedic culture". He in fact traces the pre-Islam origins of the K’aaba and many key words in Koran as of Hindu origin. Third, invest heavily in primary education to make it world class, ban the madrassas for any student below 21 years, and make Sanskrit a compulsory language for all students.
[The writer is a former Union Law Minister]
