BJP President L.K. Advani’s startling endorsement of Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s secular credentials is less damaging than his hallucinations about the common civilizational heritage of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – successor states of undivided India. This politically popular but untrue dogma of ‘one people’ divided by machiavellian politicians needs to be nailed, so that India’s unilateral disarmament vis-à-vis growing fundamentalism in its neighbourhood can be ended before more damage is wrought upon us.
Quoting Quaid-i-Azam’s now immortalized speech of 11 August 1947, Mr. Advani said all three countries should adopt the principles enunciated therein, viz., equality of all citizens; freedom of faith; non-discrimination by the State in matters of religion; and non-protection by the State for religious extremism and terrorism. Since Pakistan legally discriminates against non-Muslims and sponsors terrorism against India, and Bangladesh practices ethnic cleansing of its Hindu and Buddhist minorities, it is baffling that the BJP leader should put these countries at par with innocent India.
Far more damaging, however, is the flawed understanding of civilization and heritage. A common past does not bind a people together if it does not flow perennially into the present. Like most Indians (read Hindus), Mr. Advani willfully disregarded the fact that the continuity of the Indic heritage was ruptured when an exclusivist faith shunned its inclusivist embrace. We will continually demean and debilitate ourselves if we do not evolve paradigms to deal with this reality.
We need to dialogue with other nations and civilizations on our own terms. Sadly, the virtues extolled by Mr. Advani are rooted in Western political thought rather than the Indic tradition, though they are consistent with it. A common civilizational heritage of the nations of undivided India would necessarily be rooted in sanatana dharma (eternal way), the negation of which is the raison d’etre of the Islamic breakaway States. The driving impulse of the three countries now vests in divergent sources; we need to acknowledge that the deviation impacts upon our internal and external security.
Sanatana dharma is a generic term for the eternal spiritual values Indians have cherished over millennia. Based on the cosmic vision of ancient rishis, it is inspired by the ideal of universal welfare of all beings, both human and other creatures. Though it has a formal structure, it is not limited to form, nor fixed in time or space. It includes a realm of pure Consciousness where knowledge is experienced through intuitive perception. Irreducible to words, this is expressed as ‘that which is not’ or ‘that which is beyond.’
This rare ability to define itself in terms of what it ‘is’ and what it ‘is not’ distinguishes sanatana dharma from the one-dimensional literalism that bedevils monotheistic faiths. Dharma avoids dogmatism because the sages refused to declare Vedic revelations as final and binding for all times; subsequent generations were invited to discover Truth for themselves. Broadly, the Indic concept of salvation (moksha) rests on experience, not obedience.
Dharma cannot be equated with religion, which denotes belief in a single messiah and a single path to redemption, and dismisses all other paths as false and fit for annihilation. Religion is definitionally dogmatic, and the point of this brief discourse is that Pakistan and Bangladesh (now a Pakistani proxy), having separated by rejecting the common civilizational heritage, are driven by an impulse to destroy what is left of India. It would be irresponsible to overlook the civilizational aspect of this threat, as successive Indian governments have done, most culpable being the NDA.
Quaid-i-Azam’s 11 August 1947 speech needs to be put in perspective. It upset his staff and colleagues and attempts to purge it from official records began within hours of its being delivered! Still, it may be consistent with Islam. Although Jinnah prompted the bloodshed of 16 August 1946, which forced Partition, and several League leaders called for population transfer throughout 1946 and 1947, he probably envisaged that a sizeable Hindu and Sikh population would remain in Pakistan. It is known that British proved unequal to the task of ensuring safe population transfer, and possibly requested him to try to stem the rioting since he had got the State he wanted. Nehru was also reluctant to handle more refugees, particularly in the east, and West Bengal Congress leaders urged Hindus to trust the Muslim League and remain in East Pakistan. The consequences of this betrayal are still with us.
Anyway, Jinnah wrested Pakistan because he did not want Muslims to live under a Hindu majority, as was inevitable in a democracy. Pakistani writer Javaid Iqbal confirms this: “Since Muslims constitute a large majority, they have the right to demand that constitutionally the head of the state of Pakistan must belong to the majority community…” Similarly, I.H. Qureshi argues: “Quaid-i-Azam’s only argument was that the Muslims were different because they were Muslims, not because they were Bengalis or Sindhis, or Punjabis or Pathans, but simply because they were Muslims. And what in his view made the Muslim different? The basis of the difference was the fact that their entire way of life is founded in the truth, the doctrine and the teachings of Islam.” Jinnah could accept Hindus living as a minority in Pakistan. His 11 August speech only indicated a willingness to let them live subordinated to the Islamic state.
Jinnah’s Pakistan had necessarily to define itself in non-Indic terms, intensify its Islamic identity and seek closer embrace with the Islamic world. This trend developed in the decades after independence. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto cultivated Islamic sentiments by wooing the clergy and declaring Ahmadiyas non-Muslims. Gen. Zia went further and created separate electorates for non-Muslims; imposed zakat and ushr (agriculture tax); and Hudood ordinances (laws of Islamic punishment). Zia set up the Shariat Appeal Bench, and passed the Ahtram-i-Ramazan ordinance which prohibits eating and drinking in public during fasting time. He made Pakistan studies and Islamiyat compulsory subjects at all educational levels, including professional courses. To this, Mr. Nawaz Sharif added the Blasphemy Law, which is handy for persecuting minorities.
Most importantly, successive regimes since Z.A. Bhutto strove to make Pakistan a power centre in the Islamic world. It has the nuclear bomb and has emerged, as Mr. K.P.S. Gill points out, as the hub of international Islamic terrorism, mentor of Taliban and Al-Qaeda. At bottom, however, is a feudal society and bankrupt economy needing bankrolling by Saudi Arabia, America, China, all of whom have separate interests. Instability is built into such a situation.
Pakistan’s real problem is Islam, which has taken it away from Mother India, but has not been able to weld the Mohajirs, Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, Pakhtuns and Frontier tribes (much less the distant Bengalis) into a nation. Unlike the Jews and Israel, being Muslim does not make a nation; Pakistani provinces are bursting with the quest for cultural and regional identity. Yet even territorial nationalism is no answer, as Islam does not recognize boundaries, though it does seek territorial expansion. Pakistan is in a pincer; formed by rejecting dharma, its recourse to religion only intensifies sectarian feuds. Since Sindh was burning while Mr. Advani was there, one is at a loss to understand where he found evidence of the common civilizational heritage of the two countries. Even the Ashram of the guru who inspired him was burnt down in 1948. It never reopened.
The Pioneer, 14 June 2005