Communal History | SabrangIndia

Unofficial Renaming of Akbar Road: Another Attempt at Meddling With the History

Sat, 12 May 2018 05:46:53 +0000

A poster that read ‘Maharana Pratap Road’ was found pasted on the signboard of one of Delhi’s iconic streets Akbar road, on May 9. In what appeared to be a mischievous act, the signboard was disfigured with a poster on the day, which also marks the birth anniversary of the Rajput King Maharana Pratap who went into battle against Mughal Emperor Akbar in 1576.

Though no group has claimed responsibility for the act and the defacers still remain unidentified, the poster was removed, shortly afterwards, under police supervision.

An FIR has been filed by Delhi Police on a complaint by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC).

“No such proposal (of renaming the Akbar Road) has been received by the council, neither such a renaming has been approved. The defacement of the signboard is a law and order issue and the police should take the required action,” PTI quoted an NDMC spokesperson as saying.

Akbar Road is dotted with residences of several senior politicians such as Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Uma Bharti and Suresh Prabhu, as well as BJP president Amit Shah. It also houses the headquarters of the Congress party.

The history of re-naming business
This is not the first time that the signboard has been defaced. A similar case was registered in 2016, when stickers saying ‘Maharana Pratap’ were stuck over the signboard. Interestingly, Hindu sena, a right-wing group, had taken responsibility for the defacement then.

This is also not the first time when the Indian streets have to go through an identity crisis. Myriad of recommendations have been forwarded by politicians, suggesting new identities for roads, “which has little to do with history, and everything to do with politics.”

The controversy regarding the Akbar Road was first sparked in 2016 by one such proposal to the government by Union Minister VK Singh. In a letter submitted, apparently to a wrong government branch, Singh requested renaming of Akbar road after Maharana Pratap.

Taking into consideration such suggestions by various political figures, New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), in last four years, has taken several decisions to re-name streets in Lutyens Delhi, which has prompted discussions about the treatment of the history by the government.

These alterations include – renaming of Aurangzeb Road as Abdul Kalam Road, which took place following recommendation of BJP MP Maheish Girri. He had said that Mughal ruler Aurangzeb was a cruel figure in history and does not deserve to be remembered this way, as reported by The Indian Express. Additionally, the Race Course Road was successfully renamed as Lok Kalyan Marg and Dalhousie Road is now called Dara Shikoh Road despite criticism and allegations against the government that these moves are to “deprive the people of a sense of history.”

Disassociation with ‘history’
Expressing discontent over such ‘populist moves’, an India Today report in 2017, quoted historian Irfan Habib as saying: “It is sad that one after another, streets are being renamed. History is always the first victim of politics and now, with a spree of rechristening, history has been distorted and appropriated.”

Such decisions also call into question the agendas of political parties at a time when everything is clearly not fine in the country and our representatives are more interested in meddling with the history to communally manipulate the society.
Echoing similar sentiments, former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, while addressing a public meeting in Panaji, rebuked the unofficial renaming of Akbar Road.

“Akbar Road will be changed, Aurangzeb Road will be changed. These little things will come together one day and become a whirlwind. That is the fear and apprehension of people like us,” IANS quoted him as saying.

First published in Newsclick.

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“Communalisation” of Indian history around Padmavati, a fictitious character, has colonial roots: Irfan Habib

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 06:43:51 +0000

Strongly intervening in the “violent controversy" raging around the legend of Padmini, veteran Indian historian Prof Irfan Habib has said that this is just “the latest example of our fixation with the medieval past”, underlining, “We seem to have completely, and deliberately, blurred the distinction between what is history and what is only lore or fiction.”

Professor-emeritus of the Aligarh Muslim University, Habib asserts in a strongly-worded commentary, “Padmini was not a historical character, and the story around her is a fictional legend, no more.” He adds, “It is a known fact that the character of Padmini was conceived and created by Malik Mohammad Jayasi in 1540.”

The character appears in his “famous poem called Padmavat, written in Awadhi but in Persian script”, says Habib, adding, “Jayasi's Padmini was a princess from Simhala-dvipa (Sri Lanka). In modern terminology, it was a historical fiction, which had historical characters like Alauddin Khilji and Rana Rattan Singh.”

Pointing out that “no medieval historical record alludes to her existence before Jayasi's Padmavat”, Habib says, “Amir Khusrau, who accompanied Alauddin Khilji in his expedition against Chittor, does not refer to it. Even Jayasi never claimed that he is chronicling history.”

Habib says, “No contemporary historian, including the most authoritative ones on Rajasthan like Gauri Shankar Ojha, mention anything about Padmini.” He quotes well-known conservative historian RC Majumdar as saying about Padmini that "it is impossible, at the present state of our knowledge, to regard it as a historical fact".

“It is no surprise that Padmini acquired great prominence in the bardic chronicles of Rajputana”, says

Padmini in a story book depicted as performing
"jauhar" to escape Khilji's clutches

Habib, adding, “Getting into the academic debate on the issue means no insult to either Rajput or Hindu psyche. It is also not a glorification of the medieval despot Alauddin Khilji. His depredations from Rajputana to Deccan are no fiction, they are all well documented in historical records.”

Commenting on the assault on Sanjay Leela Bhansali for his proposed film on Padmavati, Habib says, “I am more appalled at the communalisation of the entire issue. The whole episode reiterates how the present draws on the past not necessarily always to better comprehend the past but to use the past to legitimise the present.”

He insists, “This is not the first time that we have outraged on filmmaking about the past. We have done that earlier several times and, given the direction some of us are traversing, will surely do that again. It is one thing to study and learn from the past but to live in the past is a dangerous game. It is immaterial whether that past is historical or fictional.”

Habib believes that the root of this “dangerous game” could be found in the way the British colonialists looked at Indian history – starting with James Mill 200 years ago, they divided Indian history into three periods: Hindu civilisation, Muslim civilisation and the British period.

Sarcastically calling it “one of the many gifts the colonial British left behind for us”, Habib says, “They projected 2,000 years of golden age for the first, 800 years of despotic tyranny for the second, and a supposed modernisation under the British”.

He adds, “This division also assumed Indian society as made up of separate religious monoliths – Hindu and Muslim – who were always mutually hostile. This periodisation and characterisation became axiomatic to the interpretation of Indian history. It worsened from the early 20th century onwards, with the emergence of communalism and the final Partition of the country in the name of religion.”

Courtesy: counterview.net

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Counterview: Taimur’s actions were uniquely horrific in Indian history

Wed, 28 Dec 2016 04:36:12 +0000

A response to a Scroll.in article about Hindutva's distorted reading of medieval Indian history.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The unlikeliest of events set off bitter historical debates in India. Last week, it was the name actors Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan gave their newborn child. What should have been a purely personal decision became an occasion for Hindutva trolls to excoriate the couple on social media. In Scroll.in, Shoaib Daniyal pushed back against those upset by the actors’ decision to name their son Taimur, after a Turkic conqueror who, in late December 1398, unleashed in Delhi the worst recorded massacre in Indian history.

While Daniyal made valid points about the nature of Hindutva, the case he made was largely a piece of whataboutery, discussing Alexander, Ashoka, Shivaji and the Marathas, while ignoring the man of the moment, Taimur himself. Daniyal exhibited a failing common to the Indian Left which, since the 1980s, has tended to emphasise deficiencies of Hindu faith and culture while overlooking those of Islam.

Let me clarify, before rebutting Daniyal’s argument, that I am very far from having any sympathy for the Hindutva cause. For proof, read my column about the lunacy of Hindutva history, or this one about Hindutva myths frequently taken as historical truth, this one contesting the idea of the Indus-Saraswati civilisation and discussing how caste discrimination makes itself felt in architecture, urban planning and sanitation; a further exploration of why the Indus Civilisation could not have been Vedic; a take-down of the popular idea of Rajput military success; a repudiation of the notion that yoga as we know it reaches back millennia; a critique of beef bans, written after I signed on to a PIL against one such prohibition in Maharashtra; and a piece underlining the extremist nature of Narendra Modi’s ideology against attempts to paint him as reasonable.

Taimur/via Wikimedia Commons

Logic flaws

To get on to Daniyal’s whataboutery, here is Exhibit A: “Ashoka or Alexander, both of whom led bloody campaigns … are common names among the supposed peoples they conquered. Sikandar, the Persian version of Alexander, is a common name across Iran and the subcontinent.”
It is true that Iskander and Sikander are common names in West Asia, but what Daniyal does not take into account is that Alexander’s conquests pre-dated Islam. His best-known victory came against the Achaemenid emperor Darius III, whose capital Persepolis he destroyed. The Achaemenid kings were Zoroastrian, and to this day, Alexander remains one of history’s great villains in the eyes of members of that faith. Parsis are commonly named after Achaemenid kings like Cyrus/Kurush and Darius/Dara, but not after Alexander. Since Muslim Iranians don’t identify with the Achaemenid kingdom the way Zoroastrians do, they bear no grudge against the Macedonian general.

Let’s consider the Mauryan emperor next, whose name, in Daniyal’s words, “carries no particular taboo in Orissa in spite of the Kalinga war”. The reason for this is rather obvious. Ashoka is revered in India not because of his bloody victory against the Kalinga army but his remorse in its aftermath. Ashoka means “without sorrow” but it his shoka that makes him great. His rejection of gratuitous violence, which was forgotten by Indians but returned to our consciousness after the decipherment of Brahmi in the 19th century, has made him an important figure in the history of pacifism, to which India has arguably contributed more than any other nation or civilisation.

Our most important source for the story of the Kalinga war is Ashoka’s own descriptions in his edicts. There is no extant account of the losing side’s perspective on the battle. But that should not lead us to conclude that the losing side had no view to express. Absence of evidence should never be construed as evidence of absence. That, unfortunately, is a trap into which Daniyal falls when he writes, “This rage is, of course, largely ahistorical. Taimur, for example, finds little mention in historical works written by Hindus at the time or even hundreds of years after.”

Since no historical works written by Hindus in Taimur’s time exist, it is hardly surprising that none makes mention of him. But it would be equally surprising if Muslim rulers’ discriminatory treatment of people professing other faiths did not leave behind a residue of resentment, one that has built up over the generations and today undergirds Hindutva.

Is it ahistorical to condemn past religious bigotry, given that it happened in eras before liberal humanism established itself as the governing philosophy of many nation-states, India included? Daniyal believes so. He writes, “The past truly is a different country and to make it fit modern standards of morality, a fair bit of invention needs to be indulged in.” While the idea that morality has differed over time is hardly controversial, using it as cover to provide moral clean chits to past rulers seems less reasonable than delving into the specifics of history to form judgements.

Question of ethics

Take the case of Shivaji, the third king Daniyal counterposes to Taimur: “Gujarat, where Hindutva has been a powerful political force for decades now, has adopted Shivaji with even more gusto, building statues in cities like Surat, which, ironically, were sacked by the Maratha chief early on in his career”. It’s true that Surat suffered substantially in the war between Mughals and Marathas, but Shivaji’s conduct during his raids on the town did not lack an ethical dimension. In Travels in the Mogul Empire, Francois Bernier records how the Maratha warrior ensured the safety of a Catholic priest named Father Ambrose for he had heard of his reputation as a saintly man, and also spared merchants known for their charity. Moreover, in contrast to Taimur’s sack of Delhi, Surat witnessed no wholesale massacre during the two major raids Shivaji conducted.

Khafi Khan, a 17th-century annalist whose version of events is very different from the one favoured by Hindu and Marathi chauvinists and who considered Shivaji an enemy, had this to say about the Maratha king’s treatment of Muslims and Islam: “He made it a rule that whenever his followers were plundering, they should do no harm to mosques, the book of God or the women of anyone. Whenever a copy of the sacred Quran came into his hands, he treated it with respect and gave it to some of his Muslim followers”.

There is an ecumenical tradition in India that is among the civilisation’s greatest ethical achievements, which stretches back to the time of Chandragupta Maurya in the fourth century BCE, was eloquently theorised by Abul Fazl during Mughal emperor Akbar’s heretical period, and is visible in the actions of Shivaji described by Khafi Khan. On many occasions, these high ideals were not visible in practice, but it is disingenuous to suggest, on that basis, that there is no difference between the Indic tradition of ecumenism and syncretism on the one hand, and Islam’s history of discrimination on the other.

Daniyal is perfectly correct in alluding to, “the castiest Manu Smriti, a book of law linked to India’s crippling 2,000 year old system of caste apartheid”, but his analysis is unbalanced by his dismissal of resentment among non-Muslims created by the trail of desecrated shrines and vandalised icons that stretches from Muhammad’s command to destroy the idol and temple of Al-lāt in the city of Taif to the destruction of the Lion of Al-Lat by ISIS in Palmyra.

Iconoclasm and the inequitable treatment of non-believers has been a rule rather than exception in Islamic cultures, just as caste is the rule rather than an exception in Hindu and Indian culture. These cultural drawbacks continue to resonate in contemporary society and politics, and both ought to be identified and called out with the same vigour.

Having said this, rules are never uniformly or invariably applied. While the Left takes refuge in shoddy scholarship of the kind offered by American historian Richard Eaton in an effort to minimise the deleterious impact of Islamic iconoclasm, Hindutvavadis, and even mainstream publications like Lonely Planet display a conscious or unconscious anti-Muslim bias. It is only by looking at historical sources dispassionately that one can come to any conclusions about particular acts of destruction. How does the evidence stack up in Taimur’s case? I begin with a brief account of the historical context before pronouncing judgement on the Central Asian conqueror.

The Defeat by Timur of the Sultan of Delhi, Nasir Al-Din Mahmum Tughluq, in the winter of 1397-1398; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2014.101/via Wikimedia Commons

II
It started 800 years ago, with a man named Temujin. In 1205 AD, when he was a little over 40, he united the nomads of Northeast Asia’s grasslands, and took the title Chinggis Khan, Mongol for “Great Ruler”. The name is often spelled Genghis or Changaiz. Centuries of inflation and debasement have turned Khan into a common surname among Muslims, and created the false impression that Chinggis was a devotee of Allah.

Having established his rule over “all the people who live in felt tents”, Chinggis turned his attention to kingdoms beyond his own. He, and later, his children and grandchildren, visited a scale of destruction upon China, Iran, the Caucasus, and Russia far beyond anything those societies had experienced before. Dozens of major cities never recovered from Mongol wrath, and the population of the world dropped substantially in the period of their main conquests.

In the course of establishing the largest land-based empire in history, the Mongols destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate and its capital Baghdad. Arabs have had few military successes in Asia since, to the point that an Arab army managing not to lose a war miserably in our time is received by the Arab street as a triumph.

The Mongol empire gradually broke up into smaller Khanates, the heads of which adopted many of the beliefs and practices of the cultures they ruled. In West and Central Asia, this meant converting to Islam. In the Khanate of Transoxania in the late 14th century, a general named Timur (variously known as Tamerlane, Tamburlaine, and Taimur-e-lang) grew enormously powerful. He tolerated puppet rulers for a while, but eventually deposed them to become king himself. He adopted the title “Amir”, meaning general, because only descendants of Chinggis could be Khans.

Unstoppable and ruthless

Timur’s army was as powerful and ruthless as the unstoppable force assembled by Chinggis a century and a half previously. It slaughtered soldiers and civilians on a genocidal scale everywhere it went, as the Mongols had done. His ambition was to recreate the Mongol empire as it had been at its zenith, and he conquered Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia in that quest. He then invaded India, a land Mongol armies had failed to penetrate thanks to the brilliance of the likes of Allaudin Khilji.

The Delhi Sultanate was wobbly in Timur’s time, which allowed him to take control of the capital in 1398, after which he unleashed a massacre of the kind with which the rest of Asia had grown depressingly familiar but would stand out as a uniquely horrific moment in Indian history.

The dynasty Timur created out of nothing returned to almost nothing within a few generations. His successor, Shahrukh, moved the capital to Herat, where the Amirzadas, or sons of Timur (Mirzas for short), adopted Persian culture and urbane manners. In the boondocks to the north, a Mirza named Zahiruddin Muhammad was born in 1483, descended from Timur on his father’s side and on his mother’s from Chinggis. His Mongol uncles couldn’t pronounce his high-faluting name, and called him Babur instead.

An Uzbek descendant of Chinggis named Muhammad Shaibani Khan was rising through the ranks at this time, and became the Timurids’ nemesis. Babur , who had taken hold of the principality of Kabul, visited his richer cousins in Herat to seal a coalition against Shaibani. He was entranced by the poetry, painting, and architecture of the Timurid capital, but soon understood that his cousins were too soft to take on the wily Uzbek. Soon after he returned to the relative safety of Kabul, Herat was overrun, leaving Babur the last Mirza standing.

The desire grew within him to reign over an empire worthy of a man descended from the two greatest conquerors Asia had known. He said to himself, “My great-grandfather conquered Delhi and placed a vassal on its throne. Those guys have declared themselves independent and stopped sending tribute, but if you really think about it, I am the rightful ruler of Hindustan.”

Eventually, he felt confident enough to grab what he believed was his due, riding into India at the head of a few thousand skilled horsemen and defeating an army many times the size of his own. He then did something unique, something that set him apart from the many warriors who had come through the North-Western mountains and fought their way to the Indo-Gangetic plain. He stayed on and ruled, establishing an Indian dynasty of his own.

'Delhi after sack of Timur Lang, 1398'. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

III

Massacre at Loni

Even back in the 14th century, waging war required rudimentary justification. Timur’s favourite one was that the land he planned to invade was not Islamic, or not Islamic enough. India, with its tens of millions of kafirs, was an easy sell.

The act that defines Timur in my mind took place in the town of Loni a few days before the battle against Delhi’s Tughlaq Sultan. One of Timur’s emirs expressed the fear that the men, women and children they were dragging with them would break free and attack from the rear while the army was occupied in battle. Timur’s solution was to have a hundred thousand adult males slaughtered before the battle. But this was not the most appalling aspect of his order. He insisted that individual owners would put their own slaves to death rather than outsource the task. Anybody failing to kill would be killed himself.
The chronicler of Timur’s reign Sharafud-din Yazdi records how a Maulana named Naseruddin, “one of the most venerable doctors of the court, who could never … kill a single sheep, was constrained to order … fifteen slaves to be slain.”

There was nothing Islamic, or even Mongol, about the nature of the Loni massacre. The barbaric act demonstrates that Timur, for all his unsurpassed comprehension of war, lacked any moral compass. He revelled in torture and death in the way only a psychopath could. Any additional cruelty engendered by religious bigotry was but a tiny addition to his gruesome record. As a role model, he falls some way short of Alexander, Ashoka and Shivaji.

IV
Given the facts I’ve outlined, I’d be unlikely to name a son of mine Taimur, though that’s neither here nor there. For those upset by Kareena and Saif’s choice, I have a remedy. Saif’s sister Zoha is married to Kunal Khemu. I propose a campaign to persuade them to name any future son after a Hindu warrior, to restore the cosmic balance upset by the Taimur episode.

My vote goes to Hemu, Adil Shah Suri’s general, because – Hemu Khemu.

Courtesy: Scroll.in

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Was Sardar Patel Anti-Muslim?

Mon, 31 Oct 2016 12:45:41 +0000

Sardar Patel and Indian Muslims

October 31, 2016 is the 141^st Birth Anniversary of the Iron Man, India’s first home minister, Sardar Vallabhai Patel.

In 1996, scholar and politician, Rafiq Zakaria delivered the Sardar Patel Memorial lecture titled “Sardar Patel and Indian Muslims.” (They were divided in two parts: the first, dealing with the Sardar’s attitude to Indian Muslims before partition and the second, his role after partition)

Excerpts from the Lectures that were thereafter published in a volume by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in 1996.

“Armed with all this literary ammunition, I set down to my task to get at the bottom of the charge that Patel was anti-Muslim; even Rajaji had referred to it in his journal Swarajja dated November 27, 1971; “A myth had grown about Patel that he would be harsh towards Muslims. This was a wrong notion but it was the prevailing prejudice.” The more I researched, the more I was convinced that the iron man had been misunderstood in many respects and there were cobwebs about his attitude towards Indian Muslims, which needed to be removed.

[I am glad I was able to do so to my satisfaction; those who heard me on AIR congratulated me on my effort. Fali Nariman, former Solicitor General of India, wrote to me that he enjoyed listening to the lectures; so did the Hon’ble Mr. Justice Chapalgaonkar of the Mumbai High Court. Many others also felt that I was able to present an objective analysis of Patel’s attitude to Indian Muslims, which was sorely needed in the present situation which is so vitiated by communal poison.]

Sardar’s Reactions to the Plight of Hindu Refugees and Muslims Affected by Partition

“….Similar reactions were conveyed to Patel by Azad, who felt that the Home Minister’s sympathies for the sufferings of the Hindu and Sikh refugees had blinded him to the plight of the poor, innocent Muslims in India. Gandhiji continued to suffer terrible mental agony; he spent many a restless night.

“To quote Rajmohan Gandhi, “No human heart could react with equal anguish to every cruelty of 1947 – neither Patel’s nor Jawaharlal’s nor Azad’s. Vallabbhai’s was a Hindu heart. He was, unquestionably, roused more by a report of 50 Hindu or Sikh deaths than by another 50 Muslim deaths.” (5) (Gandhi, Rajmohan, Patel A Life, p. 426.)

“…Patel could not get over his anger against Muslims whom he held responsible for partition; they had brought this tragedy not only upon themselves but also on others. However, Rajmohan Gandhi, rightly added: “ But his hand was just.”

“… This is borne out by many incidents, in which the Sardar did not spare the Hindu or Sikh offenders and provided relief to many stranded Muslims. It was also wrong to charge him with relying on Hindu officers. One of his confidants was the Inspector General of the Special Police Force, who was a Muslim. The first Chief Commissioner of Delhi that he appointed was Khurshid Alam Khan. No Muslim civil servant or police officer was replaced by him. Moreover, most Muslims in the police, civil service or armed forces, had opted and left for Pakistan against Azad’s pleadings. (6) (Azad said: “The action of the Muslim League in driving almost all the Muslim officers out of India was not only foolish but harmful. In fact it was more harmful to the Muslims than to India as a whole. Now that partition had been accepted and Pakistan was being established, it was clear that the Muslim would get every advantage in the new State. If, an addition, some Muslims could have served in India, this would not only have been of personal advantage to them but would have been a great gain for the community as a whole. The presence of Muslims in some responsible positions would have given assurance to the community and allayed many unreasonable fears. I have already said how foolishly the League had acted in insisting on partition.

“The League’s attitude towards Muslims officers was another example of the same foolishness.” Quoted by Seshadri, H.V., The Tragic story of Partition, p. 188.) Patel had to make do with whoever was available, good, bad or indifferent. There was no question of his trying to pick or choose. The Sardar reacted strongly therefore to the charge that he was anti-Muslim. He characterised it as “an invention made to discredit me”. True, he hated the Muslim League; he condemned Jinnah for spreading the poison of communal hatred, which led to partition. “But there are 70 million Muslims in India”, he pointed out, “It is our business to see that they are safe and free”. He deprecated the two-nation theory and declared” our problem number one is to disprove Jinnah and his teachings.” (7) (Krishna, B., Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel – India’s Iron Man, pp.460-461.)

In the preface to Rafiq Zakaria’s book, eminent Indian jurist, Nani A. Palkhivala, Vice President of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan dedicated the volume to two brave Indians ‘in the hope that it will cement the bond between Hindus and Muslims of India’
“One, who defended the garrison of ours at Jhangar, until he fell facing the shelling with howitzers and pounders of the Pakistani insurgents, thus obstructing their march to Srinagar in 1948, (Brigadier Muhammad Usman)
And,
The other who, on finding that Pakistani tanks were menacingly moving ahead across the Wagah border tied explosives to his body and got himself blown up, thus successfully destroying the whole Pakistani column in 1965. (Havildar Abdul Hamid Khan

Each was given posthumously the highest military award of the Param Veer Chakra by the President of India.

Maulana Azad to Indian Muslims in October 1947

“Addressing the Friday congregation on the ramparts of the Jama Masjid, Delhi on October 23, 1947, he asked the Muslims in a voice choked with pain and anguish: “The uneasiness on your faces and the desolation in your hearts that I see today, reminds me of the events of the past few years. Do you remember? I hailed you, you cut off my tongue. I picked up my pen, you served my hand. I wanted to move forward, you cut off my legs. I tried to turn over, and you injured my back. When the bitter political games of the last seven years were at their peak, I tried to wake you up at every danger signal. You not only ignored my call but revived all the past traditions of neglect and denial; as a result, the same perils surround you today, whose onset had previously diverted you from the righteous path.” (10) (Zakaria, Rafiq, The Widening Divide – An Insight into Hindu-Muslim Relations, p.87.)

“….The same Azad, whom they had humiliated and whom their Quaid-i-Azam had mocked as the “showboy of the Congress”, and which canard they had lustily applauded, was being wooed and beseeched by them now. They cried for help and succor but what could he do? He told them frankly: “Today, mine is no more than an inert existence or a forlorn cry. I am an orphan in my own motherland. My sensitivities are blunted, my heart is heavy. Think for one moment. What course did you adopt? Where have you reached, and where do you stand now? Haven’t your senses become torpid? Aren’t you living in a constant state of fear? This fear is your own creation, a fruit of your own deeds.” (11) (Ibid).

“…Reminiscing about the past and the blunders that the Muslims had committed, the Maulana said: “It was not long ago when I warned you that the two-nation theory was death-knell to a meaningful, dignified life; forsake it. I told you that the pillars upon which you were leaning would inevitably crumble. To all this you turned a deaf ear. You did not realise that fleet-footed time would not change its course to suit your convenience. Time sped along. And now you have discovered that the so-called anchors of your faith have set you adrift, to be kicked around by fate.” (12) (Ibid., p.88)

Patel: A Harsh Task Master

“…Such incidents, no doubt, affected adversely Patel’s attitude to Indian Muslims; he continued to distrust them. Their past association with the League always haunted him. He was largely responsible for introducing the obnoxious permit system; under it those Muslims, who had, on and after August 15, 1947, gone even on a visit to Pakistan, were deprived of their citizenship. Nehru protested; he asked how those Indians who went to Pakistan from India “for a while before the permit system was introduced can be punished by some subsequent enactment.” But apart from Patel, the Chief Ministers, including Pandit Govind Vallabh Pant of U.P., insisted that the measure was necessary to restore peace and order. Moreover, it was a counter-move to what Pakistan had done.

“….Another measure, which brought a lot of misery to such Muslims, was the enactment of the Evacuee Property Law, which resulted in the expropriation of their businesses, industries, shops, houses, lands and all such assets, movable and immovable; even Muslims, suspected by the police of intending to go to Pakistan were covered under it. It was a draconian act, but it had the approval of not only the Sardar but also Nehru. They expressed their helplessness, when the affected Muslims agitated, because it was, once again, a counter to what Pakistan had enacted.

“Surprisingly both these measures were initiated by Pakistan, which brought so much suffering and hardship to Indian Muslims in retaliation. This was the cruel reward that Jinnah, who was then alive, gave to his followers in the Hindu-majority provinces; they had hailed him, at the instance of an obscure Urdu editor, as the Quaid-i-Azam (the Greatest Leader) at a meeting on December 10, 1938, at a public meeting in Patna. The title caught on; Gandhiji also used it but not Patel or Nehru. The irony is that Jinnah created the worst hell for the Muslims, whom he had promised a heaven on earth! And the Muhajirs, who migrated from India, are still experiencing the inhuman consequences of his folly. Patel never tired of reminding Muslims of the support they gave him.

Sardar Against India as a Hindu State

“There was constant pressure on Patel to declare India a Hindu state especially as Pakistan had become a Muslim state. He told B.M. Birla, who had strongly advocated such a step: “I do not think it will be possible to consider India as a Hindu state with Hinduism as a state religion. We must not forget that there are other minorities whose protection is our primary responsibility.” (14) (Chopra, P.N., The Sardar of India, p.151.)

“…Numerous instances have been recorded by senior civil and police officers about the Sardar taking them to task in case of failure on their part to protect the poor and innocent Muslims, targeted by Hindu fanatics. V. Shankar has narrated how Patel rushed out one night to save the Dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya in South Delhi, which was taken over by some miscreants; on hearing about it, he wrapped his shawl around his shoulders and told his Private Secretary, “Let us go to the saint, before we incur his displeasure.” (15) (Ibid., p.156) He spent about an hour there, going round the holy shrine “in an attitude of reverence”, making enquiries from all and sundry, and warning the police officer and men on duty. That they would be dismissed if there was any further trouble. Similar encouraging accounts for saving Muslims in distress have been recorded by K.B. Lal, H.M. Patel and other high ranking I.C.S. officers, who worked under Patel during those critical days; he castigated Muslims for partitioning India but did not spare Hindus for unnecessarily harassing and persecuting them. There is also the testimony of no less an antagonist of the Sardar than Choudhary Khaliquzzaman, who records in his book Pathway to Pakistan, the firmness with which Patel saved the besieged Muslims: “After the complaint of the Delhi Muslims I talked to Sardar Patel the next day in the Constituent Assembly about the affair. I said, ‘Will you allow what is now happening in East Punjab to be repeated in Delhi?’ He replied, ‘I shall now allow disturbances in Delhi at any cost.’ When I came out at the close of the Assembly session I learnt that an order under section 144 Cr. P.C. had been enforced for twenty-four hours in Delhi. I thought that at least something good had been done. However before the expiry of this period another order was issued under the same section for seventy-two hours. Rumour had it that this was to curb the activities of the Sikhs and Jan Sangh in Delhi.” (16) (Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, pp.395-96)

The Sardar Patel Lectures

On the Sardar’s passing away on December 15, 1950, All India Radio, which was then the only mass media of its kind instituted the Sardar Patel Memorial Lectures, delivered nationally:
C. Rajagopalachari, better known as Rajaji spoke on “The Good Administrator”
Zakir Husain spoke on “Education Reconstruction in India”, Verrier Elwin on “A Philosophy of Love”, M.C. Setalvad on “Secularism”, Romila Thapar on “The Past and Prejudice”, P.N. Haksar on “The Evaluation of Foreign Policy”, C. Subramaniam on “Centre-State Relations”, Swami Ranganathananda on “Our Cultural Heritage”, P.B. Gajendragadkar on “Kashmir”, K.N. Raj on “Crisis of Higher Education in India”.

Morarji Desai, who dealt with the role of the Sardar in “The Integration and Consolidation of India”, Nani Palkhivala who talked on “The Enduring Relavance of Sardar Patel”, and Justice Ranganath Mishra, whose subject was “Why do we remember Sardar Patel today.”

Sardar Against Hindu and Muslim Miscreants, Criminals

Nonetheless these reactions, however unfortunate, did not turn Patel into a communalist; he remained steadfast in his adherence to secularism. This was evident in a speech, which he gave on October 7, 1950 at Hyderabad, just two months before his passing away. He was told that some Muslims in the city had celebrated the dramatic flight to Karachi of Laik Ali, who was under surveillance. He was the last Prime Minister of the Nizam and a close associate of Razvi. Referring to the jubilation, indulged in by the local Muslims, the Sardar expressed his annoyance at their unseemly behaviour and said, “I naturally begin to doubt, whether Muslims here feel that their future lies in India.” Lest his remarks be taken as an attack on Indian Muslims as a whole, he immediately added, “I know that when Gandhiji was assassinated, some Hindus celebrated the occasion in a similar way. I only wish to emphasize that until this devilry goes out of the two communities, there would not be real peace.” (17) (Chopra, P.N., The Sardar of India, p.150.) He also warned the Hindus that it was none of their business to deal with disloyal Muslims; the arm of the government was strong enough to take care of them. He appealed to his co-religionists to give up their distrust of Muslims. He said, “If you think that you can go on constantly troubling loyal Muslims because they happen to be Muslims, then our freedom is not worthwhile.” (18) (Ibid., p.150) And that he would not allow and would come down with a heavy hand on such offenders.

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