Current Pakistan

Current Pakistan, Historic overview- diversion, delusion and destiny




Muslims ruled India for some eight hundred years. Initially they came as raiders. There were rich pickings in the fabled land. The country was divided into large and small kingdoms at odds with each other. Some fought fiercely, others acquiesced after a token resistance. Among the invaders, a few came with religious zeal, with a mission to spread the word of God, and resorted to violence only if the natives hurt the proselytizers. Others used the banner of faith as
a subterfuge for aggression. But most came for conquest, and spread of the faith was an added bonus.
Before setting their eyes on establishing an Imperium, Muslims had come as traders. Their relics exist to the day in West India in a predominantly Muslim enclave of Moplahs. Arabs famously traded with
Sind. At one time local marauders had looted and killed some of them. The local Rajah, foolishly as it turned out, haughtily refused to punish the miscreants and insulted the envoys of the Governor of Basrah. He sent his teen-age nephew Muhammad Bin Qasim on a punitive
expedition. Rest is history.
The British elevated this technique of conquest-send traders and follow with military- to an art form. They, less scrupulous, also used the missionaries as stalking horses.
Only Sufis arrived with a message of love, tolerance and friendly co-existence. They came with a few disciples, some times alone, on foot. No armed retainers escorted them. They attracted a following with their exalted mien, piety and sublime teachings. People flocked to them every place they visited, and begged them to stay. A local ruler would at times get perturbed at the influence they wielded. He would prohibit them from his land. The Sufi would comply with grace.
Adherents would follow. The ruler would have to give in. The Sufi would not insist on conversion to his faith. The teaching was that one could be good with any belief, God belonged to all, all belonged to God.
This created an anomalous at times. In the environs of Delhi and in the Punjab, a large section of the population did not know if they Hindus or Muslims. When the British led census takers insisted on a
definition, most in honor of their Pirs opted to be classed as Muslims.
A glance at the demographic map of India tells the story of the influence of Sufis. Muslims constituted the majority of the population in the North West and the North East with a solid Hindu belt in between. Muslim conquest started in the North West, proceeded to Central India, South came next and North East was the last to fall under their dominion. If conversion was at the point of the sword, as some chauvinistic Indians would have it, few Hindus would survive in
Central India which was impacted the most by Muslim
rule. People of Bengal and Assam converted under the
influence of a Saint, Bayazid Bustami(RA).
The concept of nationalism had not developed yet. Regions with inhospitable climes, harsh winters and desolate deserts geographically surrounded India with its fertile soil, plenty of water, generally temperate climate and peaceable populace. She had been the destination of resource-starved neighbors from times unknown. Aryans, Huns, Iranians, Central Asians and Mongols all came and stayed. An invader was taken at his face value. If he was successful in establishing his dominion, he was obeyed like any other ruler, regardless of color, race or creed. People had only one measure. They gave their allegiance willingly if the ruler was just, served in his army, paid him tribute and even put him on a pedestal after a while.
All invaders settled in the land. They consorted with their own kind for a while. Gradually exclusivity was lost. The new arrivals gave some of their mores and norms to the natives and some accepted others from the natives. They inter married. No one thought of going back to his or her native land. There was little to return to.
Not all the conquerors were that benign. Generally the larger their number, the more cruel they were. The Aryan hordes drove the natives to the south, made them do all the menial and scavenging work and called them untouchable for their trouble Overall, though, a homogenous society developed at the end of the day.
Before the advent of Muslims in India, religion had been esoteric, with all kinds of divinities. Natural phenomena were worshipped. New deities were readily adopted in the pantheon. There was a rather vague concept of a central divinity, governing all the lesser ones, in a hierarchy patterned after what obtained in the world. Idols of different stature, representing the gods abounded. One had own personal idols in a niche at home. The teachings of Buddha and Mahavira (the founder of Jain faith) were given the local color. They exist in their near pristine form only in the Far East, China and Japan.
Islam was the first divinely inspired faith to affect Indians in a major way. Jews and Christians had preceded them by centuries, but were insignificant in number and influence. The religion was egalitarian with concepts, at least on paper, of equality before God, amity and brotherhood among the faithful. This attracted some "lower class" Hindus. It was apparently not an overwhelming influence. Eighty five percent of Hindus still belong to lower classes. The Brahmins and Rajput warrior class, which constituted only fifteen percent of the population, have historically repressed them. The stigma remains attached to them even after they converted to Islam. The Brahmin Hindus of Bengal had demanded of the British that Muslims not be given the weightage of their numbers in provincial assembly seats, as they were the progeny of lower class Hindus. The view reverberated in historical memory. West Pakistanis never agreed to accede to the demand of East Pakistanis for seats in the constituent assembly proportionate to their population.
Gandhi Ji was the first person to foresee the profound effect it would have on body politic of India if lower class Hindus were not assimilated, at least in political terms, in mainstream Hindu flock. He
went on hunger strike to have his demand accepted, and literally overwhelmed the lower cast Hindu leader to submit to him. He started calling them Hari Jans (progeny of god). For all the crusades of Gandhi, discrimination persists. Successive Indian Governments
under electoral constraints have had to concede affirmative action in their favor.
At a personal level, denigration persists. I once visited my Brahmin friends in long Island NY. They were entertaining a visitor. I noted a stricken look on their face. After the visitor left I asked them what the problem was. My friends’ wife whom I called Bhoji (Bhabi in Urdu) nearly stated crying. The visitor had been an untouchable-in A BRAHMIN house. This would never happen in India. I tried to console
her. I was a Muslim; they always welcomed me with open arms. But my Bhoji expostulated, you are Syed. We would never contemplate inviting a lower class Muslim in our home in India.
These were liberal people. They had once tolerated meat in their house when my daughter, seven at the time had artlessly protested that there was no meat dish on the table.
Lower caste Hindus have started coming into their own politically, only lately. To date India had one President from their ranks. There have been a few Chief Ministers in UP and Bihar.
To get back to Muslims in India, the religion was also largely nativised. It even adopted a caste system Syed, Shaikh, Moghal, and Pathan, though not as rigidly enforced that two casts could not dine
together, yet they would not inter- marry. Even as late as the sixties an engagement was broken by a Pathan family when they learnt that the prospective bride was a Syed. The mother of the wood be groom said that it would be a sin if she uttered a cross word to her daughter in law. It was, of course, her right to discipline her son's wife. She would rather break her son's heart than forego this privilege!
Muslim rulers were by and large tolerant to the native faith. They were wont to use their faith for statecraft, and to garner support. Aurangzeb, marshaled his forces against his father on the ground that the crown prince was not a good practicing
Muslim. After overwhelming the royal army, he proceeded to perform un-Islamic acts of imprisoning his father and killing two brothers and banishing the third. He imposed Jazya (poll tax in lieu of military
service) on Hindus, but kept Hindu generals in his army. He spent most of his life fighting with fellow Muslims Nawabs of Deccan.
Contrary to common belief Shiva Ji was small fry at the time. I might as well debunk a myth, given wide currency by obscurantist Hindus, that Shiva Ji was a champion of the Hindu faith. He had Muslim Generals in his army and Muslim ministers in his administration. Later too, when Ahmad Shah Abdali took on Marhattas out side Dehli, a Muslim
General in the Marhatta army would have out flanked the Abdali troops, had a jealous superior not prevented him from doing so. Indian history might have taken a different turn.
The Moghal rule was emasculated by the incessant warfare conducted by Aurangzeb. He, conscious of the treatment he had meted out to his father, did not give military training to his sons. The edifice started crumbling soon after his death.
Moghals had been enervated too by long years of luxurious living. They took to leading their army sitting not on horseback, but lounging in a palanquin. Aurangzeb was the last functional General they were to have.
Further blows of Marhatta incursions, Nadir Shah's raid and subsequent massacre on Dehli residents left but a hollow facade of the once mighty empire.
Foreign vultures had long been hovering over the horizon. They now descended, fought among themselves, one overwhelmed others, and won grabbed the richest pickings in history. British ended up as the biggest winners. They initially made a good faith attempt to nativize themselves. They wore the local garments, took native wives and mistresses, and became regular visitors to the houses of dancing girls. They were not brothels, though discreet liaisons did exist, but the
regular business was floorshows of song and dance, with patrons offering jewellery off their own bodies to the favorites. Money was showered too, but for art not flesh. Respectable citizens sent their children to these houses to learn culture and diction. The British even wrote poetry in Urdu and boast of some notable poets in their ranks. (suggested reading the Book White Moghals).
But times were a changing. With the advent of steamships, the journey from Britain to India had been cut down to several weeks from many months. If transport had not so developed the British would not
have been so successful any way. The British in India were enabled to visit their native lands fairly frequently. The lure of language, race and culture was irresistible. Then British girls, allured by tales of
riches beyond dreams of avarice descended in veritable hordes on India and put a stop to their men’s' carousing in short order.
After the battle of Plassey in 1757, only Hyder Ali and his son Tippu Sultan offered credible opposition to the British juggernaught. By the early nineteenth century they had mopped up various princes. They had taken over principalities on one pretext on another, exiling the Nawab of Oudh Wajid Ali Shah, making a faithful ally of the Nizam of Hyderabad for services rendered in stabbing Tippu Sultan in the back, subduing Marhattas and pensioning the Peshwa, annexing Punjab after Ranjit Singh died, and his successors succumbed to the royal pastime of infighting, and finally getting the better of the Talpurs of Sind.
They were now monarchs of all they surveyed. But it is a
curious historical fact that they were still acting in the name of the Moghal King in Dehli, whose writ was accepted in the few acres of the red fort. But the prestige of the crown was such that the British
Governor General had to pay humble homage to the Emperor once a year bearing gifts and message from the British king. He was kept standing during the audience, and had to walk backwards when dismissed.
One Governor General sought permission to sit in front of the Royal personage and exemption from having to walk backwards. Bahadur Shah, destined to be the last of the Moghals, haughtily dismissed the request. Persons better and more exalted than him scions of ruling houses had to stand and walk backwards. The Britisher was only a humble commission holder of the Crown.
Unrest had been brewing. Princes had been supplanted. The British were not as sensitive to Indian mores. The Rani of Jhansi, destined to play a heroic role in 1857 War of independence, was child less. The British would not accept the child she had adopted as legal heir. Hindus, contrary to Muslim practice, had treated
adoptive children as very much rightful heirs. (Why Muslims do not do it is a rather touchy topic). The Marhatta Peshwa had his own gripes. The Begum of Oudh, a redoubtable lady had her own designs. The erstwhile ruling class had come to realize that their King had not only lost his paramountcy, but they themselves had to scrape and bow to low born foreigners.
Soldiers used to the paternalistic behavior of Indian officers, whom they used to call "Mai Baal", roughly benefactor, were put off by the officiousness of the British subaltern.
The Muslim cleric and the Hindu Pandit, contrary to their norm of tagging along with the current ruler, gave religious sanction to the rebellious thought. Mindless of Indian sensitivity to animal fat, Hindus regard the cow as sacred, and Muslims would rather starve to death than lick pig fat, the British introduced a cartridge whose cap had to be bitten off before being inserted into a rifle. The cap had grease lubrication. Soldiers grumbled. British officers threatened them with cruel punishment. A few soldiers were hanged, one a legendary figure subject of a recent movie, Mangal Pande.
Rebellion brewing already took on a life of its own. Some thought was given to organization. The then equivalent of Internet, messages wrapped for security in chapattis, were taken from village to village.