Why and how Muslims are a separate nation in India

Historically, there has never been anything like Hindu-Muslim unity in India. No elite Muslim had any problem when minority Muslims ruled India for about 800 years. However, during that period common Muslims, who were converts from lower caste Hindus and constituted majority of Muslims, had no position in ruling mechanism of India (Hindustan) as common Hindus. On the contrary, many Hindu rajas, scholars and skilled warriors could reach high positions in Muslim administration. It was a unity of convenience.

Picture started changing following war of Plassey in1757. Muslim rulings elites were being pushed out of power by British merchants of East India Company (EIC) with a determined resolve. The anger among elite Muslims for loss of power and humiliation and exploitation by EIC were the main causes of 1857 revolt against British. The revolt was nominally headed by the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. In that revolt, some Hindu rajas had sided with Muslims not due to unity but due to some common interest.

Following the failure of 1857 revolt, British crown took over the charge of India from EIC. The British crown saw the visible threat from Muslim elites of India and initiated its “pro-Hindu anti-Muslim policy”. Out of power and under tremendous subjugation, Muslim elites could realize for the first time to involve Common Muslims of India to get a larger numerical support base. This was required for two main reasons. Firstly, Islam was exclusive in essence and secondly Islam was inherently political. Thus the distinctive nature of Islam, unlike Hinduism, came up in forefront in modern India in a writing of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan during 1887. Sir Syed first coined the concept of “Muslims are separate nation” in an indirect way and many scholars tend to accept Sir Syed as originator of latter Pakistan movement.

Since unlike Islam, Hinduism did not preach any concept of Ummah, politics and brotherhood among Hindus, the Hindus of British India did not seriously care the orthodox and socio-religious developments in Muslim community which started in second part of nineteenth century. The “Muslims are separate nation” exponentially grew through initiation of Deoband Movement in 1867, Aligarh Movement in 1875, creation of India Muslim League in 1906, separate electorate for Muslims in 1909, Khilafat Movement (1919-24), creation of Tablighi Jamaat in 1926, Pakistan Resolution of 1940 and formation of Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941.

With the advent of twentieth century, British started facing armed resistance, particularly in Bengal, from Hindus as their tool for achieving independence. Muslims of British India since the time of Sir Syed overtly sided with British crown and remained consciously away from challenging British. This led to the reversal of earlier British policy to become “pro-Muslim anti-Hindu” during early twentieth century.

M K Gandhi entered into Indian politics during 1917 and changed the then armed revolutionary freedom struggle of India to non-violent mass movement for freedom from British. Gandhi’s non-violence was not derived from Hinduism. It was rather the core principle Jainism and antithesis of Islam. Gandhi dragged Indian National Congress (Hindus) to support the Islam based Khilaphat Movement which backfired very badly. Gandhi was delusional and could never understand Islam and its teachings. He kept on appeasing Muslims at the cost of Hindus and derived extreme pleasure by humiliating Hindus.

The Hindu response to Islamism in British India was very late. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, abbreviated as RSS, an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist volunteers’ organization was established in 1925 following the Islamic Khilaphat Movement and mass killing, looting, raping and forced conversion of Hindus of Malabar area by Mopla Muslims in Kerala.

In 1947, Muslims of British India got Pakistan for Muslims. But about one-third of Muslims stayed back in India. However, the Gandhian principle of Muslim appeasement continued in independent India under Congress rule. Nehru was openly hostile to anything Hindu. He even called himself ‘a Hindu by accident of birth’. ‘Vishva Hindu Parishad’, abbreviated VHP, an Indian right-wing Hindu nationalist organisation based on the ideology of Hindutva was founded in 1964.

Indira Gandhi, pre-occupied with Muslim appeasement, incorporated the word ‘Secularism’ in the Preamble of Indian Constitution during Emergency Period and Rajiv Gandhi gave the final seal of Muslim appeasement in India by nullifying Shah Bano verdict of Supreme Court through Parliament.

Hinduism and Islam are different like, “East is East, West is West, and never the twain shall meet”. Shortly speaking, Hinduism is inherently inclusive and apolitical, while the Islam is exclusive and political. Hinduism can evolve but Islam cannot. Stray incidences of cordiality between the two communities cannot suppress this bitter fact. Of course, there has always been very small proportion Muslims who never harbored differential attitude towards Hindus and were opposed to Islamism.

So, anybody propagating ‘Hindu-Muslim unity’, as India's heritage, is either a pathological liar or a political crook. When Indian Muslims bitterly oppose any hint of Uniform Civil Codes even today, they still follow the principle of “Muslims are separate nation” in independent India. Many Indian Muslims refuse to be labeled as an Indian first for religious reason. Indian National Anthem is not sung in Madrasas for same religious reason. And the problem goes on. Most of the Hindus have no knowledge of Quran, Sira & Sahih Hadith and they look at Islam from their benign Hindu perspective.

One may ask ‘why is it so’? The answer was given by V S Naipaul when he said, "Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert's worldview alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story.

The convert has to turn away from everything that is his. The disturbance for societies is immense, and even after a thousand years can remain unresolved; the turning away has to be done again and again. People develop fantasies about who and what they are; and in the Islam of the converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can be easily set on the boil."

A brief history of the Kashmir conflict

The Kashmir dispute dates from 1947. The partition of the Indian sub-continent along religious lines led to the formation of India and Pakistan. However, there remained the problem of over 650 states, run by princes, existing within the two newly independent countries.

In theory, these princely states had the option of deciding which country to join, or of remaining independent. In practice, the restive population of each province proved decisive.

The people had been fighting for freedom from British rule, and with their struggle about to bear fruit they were not willing to let the princes fill the vacuum.

Although many princes wanted to be "independent" (which would have meant hereditary monarchies and no hope for democracy) they had to succumb to their people's protests which turned violent in many provinces.

Because of its location, Kashmir could choose to join either India or Pakistan. Maharaja Hari Singh, the ruler of Kashmir, was Hindu while most of his subjects were Muslim. Unable to decide which nation Kashmir should join, Hari Singh chose to remain neutral.

But his hopes of remaining independent were dashed in October 1947, as Pakistan sent in Muslim tribesmen who were knocking at the gates of the capital Srinagar.

Hari Singh appealed to the Indian government for military assistance and fled to India. He signed the Instrument of Accession, ceding Kashmir to India on October 26.

Indian and Pakistani forces thus fought their first war over Kashmir in 1947-48. India referred the dispute to the United Nations on 1 January. In a resolution dated August 13, 1948, the UN asked Pakistan to remove its troops, after which India was also to withdraw the bulk of its forces.

Once this happened, a "free and fair" plebiscite was to be held to allow the Kashmiri people to decide their future.

India, having taken the issue to the UN, was confident of winning a plebiscite, since the most influential Kashmiri mass leader, Sheikh Abdullah, was firmly on its side. An emergency government was formed on October 30, 1948 with Sheikh Abdullah as the Prime Minister.

Pakistan ignored the UN mandate and continued fighting, holding on to the portion of Kashmir under its control. On January 1, 1949, a ceasefire was agreed, with 65 per cent of the territory under Indian control and the remainder with Pakistan.

The ceasefire was intended to be temporary but the Line of Control remains the de facto border between the two countries.

In 1957, Kashmir was formally incorporated into the Indian Union. It was granted a special status under Article 370 of India's constitution, which ensures, among other things, that non-Kashmiri Indians cannot buy property there.

Fighting broke out again in 1965, but a ceasefire was established that September. Indian Prime Minister, Lal Bhadur Shastri, and Pakistani President, M Ayub Khan, signed the Tashkent agreement on January 1, 1966.

They resolved to try to end the dispute, but the death of Mr Shastri and the rise of Gen Yahya Khan in Pakistan resulted in stalemate.

In 1971, a third war, resulting in the formation of the independent nation of Bangladesh (formerly known as East Pakistan). A war had broken out in East Pakistan in March 1971, and soon India was faced with a million refugees.

India declared war on December 3, 1971 after Pakistani Air Force planes struck Indian airfields in the Western sector.

Two weeks later, the Indian army marched into Dhaka and the Pakistanis surrendered. In the Western sector the Indians managed to blockade the port city of Karachi and were 50 km into Pakistani territory when a ceasefire was reached.

In 1972 Indira Gandhi, the Indian prime minister, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, her Pakistani opposite number (and father of Benazir Bhutto, a later Pakistani premier), signed the Simla Agreement, which reiterated the promises made in Tashkent.

The two sides once again agreed to resolve the issue peacefully, as domestic issues dominated.

Both India and Pakistan had other important domestic problems which kept Kashmir on the back-burner. In 1975 Indira Gandhi declared a state of national emergency, but she was defeated in the 1978 general elections.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was overthrown and hanged in 1977; Pakistan reverted to military dictatorship under Gen Zia ul Haq.

The balance of influence had decisively tilted in Pakistan's favour by the late 1980s, with people's sympathy no longer with the Indian union as it had been in 1947-48 and 1965.

Mrs Gandhi's attempts to install puppet governments in state capitals, manipulating the democratic process in the state legislatures, deeply angered the Kashmiris.

The status quo was largely maintained until 1989 when pro-independence and pro-Pakistan guerrillas struck in the Indian Kashmir valley. They established a reign of terror and drove out almost all the Hindus from the valley before the Indian army moved in to flush them out. Meanwhile Indian and Pakistani troops regularly exchanged fire at the border.

Whereas in 1948 India took the Kashmir issue to the UN and was all for a plebiscite, by the 1990s it hid behind the Simla agreement and thwarted any attempts at UN or third-party mediation.

Over the decades the plebiscite advocated by India's great statesman Jawaharlal Nehru became a dirty word in New Delhi. These developments have led many to believe that Delhi has squandered the Kashmiri people's trust and allegiance.

India and Pakistan both tested nuclear devices in May 1998, and then in April 1999 test-fired missiles in efforts to perfect delivery systems for their nuclear weapons. Pakistan tested its Ghauri II missile four days after India's testing of its long-range (1,250 km) Agni II.

Although Pakistan claims that its missiles are an indigenous effort, in July 1999 Indian customs agents seized components shipped from North Korea which they claim were destined for Pakistan's missile programme.

Pakistan's later intermediate-range Ghauri III missile has a range of about 3,000 km.

When the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, set out to Lahore by bus on February 20, 1999, inaugurating the four times a week Delhi-Lahore-Delhi bus service, the world felt that such a genuine effort at friendly neighbourhood relations would lower the tension along the Line of Control in Kashmir.

But, all hopes of diplomacy disappeared once the cross-LOC firing in Kargil began during the mid-1990s. The death toll , including both soldiers and civilians, was more than 30,000.

In the first week of August 1998 Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged artillery fire, described by locals as heavier than that of the 1948 and 1965 wars put together. An estimated 50,000 rounds of ammunition were expended and a large number of soldiers and civilians killed.

In the summer of 1999 hostility in Kargil went far beyond the now familiar annual exhange of artillery fire.

When India began patrolling the Kargil heights that summer, it found to its horror that many key posts vacated in the winter were occupied by infiltrators. A patrol was ambushed in the first week of May 1999. India belatedly realised the magnitude of the occupation - which was around 10 km deep and spanned almost 100 km of the LOC - and sent MiG fighters into action on May 26.

India contended that the infiltrators were trained and armed by Pakistan, and based in "Azad Kashmir" with the full knowledge of the Pakistani government - and that Afghan and other foreign mercenaries accompanied them.

Pakistan insisted that those involved were freedom fighters from Kashmir and that it was giving only moral support.

India ordered the jets not to stray into Pakistani territory; but those that did were shot down.

The conflict ended only after Bill Clinton, the US President, and Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's Prime minister, met in Washington on July 4, 1999.

Meanwhile, the Indian Army had made significant advances, capturing vital territory on July 4. Despite the apparent efforts to mediate, the US maintained that it was not interfering in what India still claims to be a bilateral issue.

Pakistan withdrew its forces later that month. However, skirmishing continued, and in August India shot down a Pakistani reconnaissance plane, killing 16.

The official number of Indian troops lost in Kargil was around 500, with almost double that number of "infiltrators" killed. Nevertheless, India did not declare war against Pakistan - instead, Mr Vajpayee ambigously announced a "war-like situation".

Yet this, by all accounts of soldiers and top Indian army officers involved, was a war in which India lost men engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Pakistani soldiers in the heights of Kargil - a war that could be compared with the one of 1948-49, which was limited to Kashmir, with the other border regions remaining peaceful.

Thus in 1999, in a war limited to one sector, India suffered casualities within its own territory. Despite much pressure from the military and the public, the government decided not to cross the LOC. Pakistan too suffered criticism at home for limiting its war to artillery fire across the LOC and shooting down Indian aircraft.

The fear of a full-scale war (with nuclear capability adding a deadly dimension), coupled with precarious economies and the knowledge of what international sanctions could do to them, may have prevailed in both countries.

Though where Pakistan remains the same, letting it's territory being used by terrorists organisations like LET, JEM, Al-Quida etc, economically devastated, India is becoming a blooming market for global business opportunities and it's GDP is growing at tremendous rate. It has also become the fourth country in the world to have ASAT technology and has the most advanced-non-expensive satellite launchpad system after NASA.

Source: The Telegraph

Ancient names of India

In ancient times, India was divided into smaller kingdoms like Kalinga, Magadh, Gandhar and so on. But most of these kingdoms followed the Aryan culture, Vedic rituals and religion and similar political set ups. You could say they were all part of one civilization. 

That is why, the concept of India was always there- from the time of Alexender's invasion to invasions by Sakas, Huns, Pathans, Mughals- all of them invaded 'India'. The travellers like Hieun Tsang, Fa Huen, Ibn Batuta talked about their visits to India. And that is why, while we do agree that it was the British who gave the final shape to what we today know as India, much before they came- Christopher Columbus had set out to 'discover' India. 

The British, French, Portuguese and Dutch all came to the land they had already known to be India because they had heard about it's riches. And from ancient times, many kings have tried to be emperor of this whole land that together formed India- Samudragupta, Kanishka, later the Mughals and finally the Europians. King Harshavardhana of Kanauj could not conquer the Southern part of India, so he called himself 'Uttarapathanatha'- the lord of the North. The title itself shows he acknowledged the un-vanquished South to be part of the same country which he could not conquer. 

Coming to the ancient name of this country- the ancient kings of the land called it Bharat after the name of King Bharat who had conquered the whole land. By ancient kings I mean the Aryans. Now the Aryans themselves were foreigners who settled by the river Sindhu. It is through mispronunciation that Sindhu became 'Hindu' or 'Indus' (Hinduism is therefore rather a way if life of the people who lived by the Sindhu than a religion, at least, that was what it was originally) and from there we have the names 'Hindusthan' and 'India.'

Update:

Some of old names of our motherland are here:

1) The ancient name of India was Aja Nabha Varsha.

(Aja means Brahma. Nabha means navel or central portion.Varsha means nation/country.)

2) Bharata (Bha means light and knowledge. Rata means devoted to light as against darkness.) The whole country was highly enlightened spiritually.

According to another source, the name Bharat for India is derived from king Bharat, the son of Shakuntala, wife of king Dushyanta.

3) People who lived on the bank of river Indus were called originally as Indu and later as Hindu and the land came to be called as Hindusthan.

4) The name India was given by the British.

5) Aryavarta is another name which refers to India. The Aryans who entered the country,ruled it, and settled here. Aryan means good and noble.

The natives who were non-Aryans were called as Dasyus.

6) Jambu Dweepa ( the shape of India resembles jamun fruit) is the vedic name of India.

7) ”Tianzhu”(=spiritual centre) was the Chinese name during Tang Dynasty for ancient India. This was because of the Indian origin of Buddhism.

8) Before the British and Muslims came to India, our Bharat Varsha was a land of plenty and was nicknamed as ”Sone ki Chidiya” (=”Bird of Gold”)-according to author Shri S.P.Attri.

9. Hodu is the Biblical name for India mentioned in the
Book of Esther.

Source: Cultures of Ancient India