Gujrat And Now INDIA

Subject: Gujarat mirrors India


Gujarat mirrors India

Prafull Goradia

There is a slow but steady crystallisation of Hindu identity, thanks to a perverse form of secularism being practised in the countryIn a recent article on the Gujarat Assembly election, Mr Ramaswamy R Iyer has let the cat out of the bag.

He writes, "What should worry us, then, is not whether Mr Modi is a demon, but the change in the Gujarati psyche. What has happened to Gujarat? Is it still redeemable?

The post-Godhra violence of 2002 is not a matter of deep concern. Even if the allegation that the arson, loot and killing were state-sponsored is true, it matters less. What matters most is the change in the Gujarati psyche!

The resentment against Muslim conquerors is as old as the conquest of Patan by Muzaffar Shah in 1391 and the establishment of Ahmedabad at the site of Karnavati by Ahmed Shah in 1411. The deprivation of Junagadh from the Kshatriya Chudasamas by Bahadur Shah in 1610 was another upsetting event.

As recently as 1989, I had travelled in a bus in Ahmedabad when my fellow traveller asked for a ticket to Pakistan. He meant Jamalpur.

1. Over the years, I have heard again and again how in localities like Kalupur and Dariapur, Hindu families have vacated their flats because Muslim neighbours cooked meat and fish. How the neighbours' sons whistled at their daughters. The families sold their flats at, say, Rs 4,000 a square yard, whereas they had to pay Rs 12,000 for their new residence in, say, the Satellite area. This expensive residence cleansing was at the back of middle class women helping their menfolk in the 2002 violence.
   
   In 1969, Ahmedabad had witnessed a much bigger riot which lasted for weeks together. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan had to be invited from Pakistan to calm public anger at the time.
   
   The year 1985 saw a long lingering riot which eventually cost Mr Madhavsinh Solanki his chief ministership. But prima facie, none of these cataclysms changed the Gujarati psyche. The age-old hypocrisy continued to adorn Hindu lips. However misguided some Muslims might be, they are our brethren. Most of them are of our own common blood. They are less educated. Many of them are poor and backward. Hindus in influential positions do not give them jobs. Political parties exploit them for their electoral advantage. Muslims should, therefore, be helped rather than blamed. So went conversations except in very private when bitterness was allowed to spew. Otherwise, politically as well as socially, it was correct to sound secular.
   
   As a child, I had overheard an aunt of mine, in exasperated anger, call her husband Nadir Shah, although she wore khadi and was in society a paragon of Gandhian samabhav. This is despite Mahatma Gandhi writing in his journal -- Young India, Collected Works -- that every Hindu is a coward while every Muslim is a bully.
   
   Gandhi had set the pace with his taking over the leadership of the Khilafat movement in 1919. His motive was to befriend Muslims. Two leading maulanas, Muhamm-ed Ali and Shaukat Ali, were particularly determined to retain the Sultan of Turkey on his throne and in his Caliphate. After World War I, the British were keen on abolishing the Sultanate and as was Mustafa Kemal Pasha on ending the Caliphate. The Maulana-Mahatma agenda was so dreadfully communal that even Mohammed Ali Jinnah was opposed to it.
   
   The Moplah riots were the direct result of the Khilafat movement. The official reports of the time stated that the main brunt of Moplah ferocity was borne by Hindus.
2. They were massacred by the thousand, forcibly converted to Islam and their women were raped and killed.
   
   The reaction of Gandhi to those atrocities was shocking. He described the Moplahs as "brave god-fearing fighting for what they consider as religion and in a manner which they consider as religious".
   
   The era of Ishwar Allah tero naam and sarva dharma samabhav was inaugurated by Gandhi.
   

• The Mahatma's samabhav, which was succeeded by Jawaharlal Nehru's secularism, rose to extraordinary heights.
• An example was the murder of Swami Shradhananda in 1926 by one Abdul Rashid.
• The murderer's defence counsel was Nehru's friend and Congressman Asaf Ali. The accused was sentenced to death and hanged.
• Gandhi's comment was "I have called Abdul Rashid a brother,... I do not even regard him as guilty of Swami's murder". Most Hindus are still in the grip of this 'secular' samabhav, which explains why within decades after Partition, self-styled secularists are creating conditions for another vivisection of the country.
  
  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has boldly declared "Muslims First". India is a crypto-Muslim's paradise, be he a secularist, a Leftist or a Communist.
  
  After the 2002 Assembly election, fears began to gather that some Hindus, especially in Gujarat, had begun to break out from the chains of 'secular' samabhav and come into their own. The ripples of change also began to reach Hindus living outside Gujarat.
  
  In 2004, at the Calcutta Club there was a seminar with four speakers.
• Mr Narendra Modi, after speaking in Hindi on a Uniform Civil Code, received a roaring applause.
• The growing anxiety of crypto-Muslims was reflected in the media more and more.
• The demonisation of Mr Modi increased as the 2007 election neared. Little did the detractors realise that with every attack, the polarisation in his favour would be solidified harder.