A Vision of United India

Chapter 2

The advent of the Muslims

Later, however, sometime in the middle of the eighth century when the empires in India had grown weak, the regional spirit reawoke in separatist movements, disintegrating the unity or breaking down its large extension over most of the North. It left behind a certain number of great kingdoms in the east, south and centre and a more confused mass of peoples in the northwest. This was the weak point at which the Muslims broke in and rebuilt within a brief period another empire in the north of India; but this empire was not of the Indian type, it was an empire of the Central Asiatic type.

This was the beginning of the second phase, which put a tremendous pressure both on the Indian political system and its culture. Indeed, it was the beginning of a very turbulent period in Indian history.

As a result of the Muslim conquest, doubts have been cast on the political capacity of the Indian peoples. But first let us try and see why this conquest happened. It took place at a time when the vitality of ancient Indian life and culture, after at least two thousand years of activity and creation, had been exhausted for a time or was very near exhaustion; it needed breathing space to rejuvenate itself and this was done by the transference from Sanskrit to the popular tongues in the newly forming regional peoples.

The Hindu kingdoms and empires had resisted all the previous invasions with great success. But with the onset of the Muslim invasions, things took a different shape. No doubt, the Hindu kingdoms resisted, fought valiantly and hard but they finally succumbed. The struggle of the Hindus to resist the Muslim aggression into India was spread over a period of 600 years from 715 AD up to 1328 AD. This contrasts with the swift Muslim victories in Persia (Iran) over the Zoroastrian Sassanians and in Mesopotamia, Egypt and North Africa over the Romans (Byzantines). The Muslims could not subjugate India so easily. And even after subjugating different parts of the country, they were never able to rule it entirely. The next 400 years from 1328 up to 1720 were marked by a valiant and ceaseless struggle for independence by the Hindus to deliver India from Muslim rule.

It was the Rajputs who first led this struggle in North India followed by the Jats, Marathas and Sikhs. In the South, this struggle was embodied in the Vijayanagar Empire. This struggle for independence came to its peak when the Marathas under Shivaji almost brought to an end the Muslim domination of India.

The Muslim conquest was effected rapidly enough in the north, although it was not entirely complete there for several centuries, but the south long preserved its freedom as it had of old against the earlier indigenous empires. The Rajputs too maintained their independence until the time of Akbar and his successors and it was in the end, partly with the aid of the Rajput princes acting as their generals and ministers that the Moguls completed their sway over the east and the south. And this was again possible because the Mussulman domination ceased very rapidly to be a foreign rule. The vast mass of the Mussulmans in the country were, and are, Indians by race; only a very small admixture of Pathan, Turkish and Mogul blood took place, and even the foreign kings and nobles became almost immediately wholly Indian in mind, life and interest. If the race had really, like certain European countries, remained for many centuries passive, acquiescent

Page 13

and impotent under an alien sway, that would indeed have been a proof of a great inherent weakness; but the British rule was the first really continuous foreign rule that dominated India. The ancient civilization indeed underwent an eclipse and decline under the weight of a Central Asiatic religion and culture with which it failed to coalesce, but it survived its pressure, put its impact on it in many directions and it remains to this day alive even in decadence and capable of recovery, giving ample proof of a strength and soundness that is rare in the history of cultures.

And in the political field, it never ceased to throw up great rulers, statesmen, soldiers, and administrators. Its political genius then was not sufficient, coherent enough, or swift in vision and action, to withstand the Pathan, Mogul and European. But it was strong enough to survive and await every opportunity for revival; it made a bid for an empire under Rana Sanga, created the great kingdom of Vijayanagara, and held its own for centuries against Islam in the hills of Rajputana.

Characteristics of Muslim rule

Though the new Muslim rulers built upon the same economic foundations of the Hindu period, they aimed at total destruction of the social, cultural and religious structure as it then existed. In the early days of their reign, the Muslim rulers unleashed a reign of terror, the likes of which India had never before experienced in her history.

After the conquest of India, one of the very first acts of the Muslim invaders was to pillage the well-endowed Hindu temples at Somnath, Thanesar, Mathura, Kannauj and other places. In this way and in one stroke, the riches concentrated in the hands of these temples through many centuries of grants from Hindu rulers, fell into the hands of the Muslim invaders from Ghazni and Ghori. But they were not satisfied with that; they aimed at total destruction of the whole of Hindu culture.

As part of the process, they attacked all the religious institutions of India - Hindu, Buddhist or Jain. Towards this end, the Muslim invaders undertook the desecration of places of worship, destruction of universities like Nalanda, and the wholesale slaughter of monks and priests to wipe out the intellectual bedrock of the people they overran. They made an attempt to replace the languages - Sanskrit as well as the regional languages. They struck at the universities (like Nalanda), traditional centres of learning (ashrams, gurukulas), architectural symbols (temples, Chaityas, Viharas, Stupas), etc. The policy during the 700 years of Muslim occupation of India was to totally replace the superstructure of Hindu culture with a typical Islamic one.

The tyrannical policies which the Muslim rulers followed since their rule was established in 1194 A.D. left a trail of bitterness in the regions that came under their domination. Hindu tradition survived only in remote corners of the country like in Orissa, Assam and parts of South India. The problem, however, was not merely a political one; it was much more a civilisational problem.

The real problem introduced by the Mussulman conquest was not that of subjection to a foreign rule and the ability to recover freedom, but the struggle between two civilizations, one ancient and indigenous, the other mediaeval and brought in from outside. That which rendered the problem insoluble was the attachment of each to a powerful religion, the one militant and aggressive, the other spiritually tolerant and flexible, but obstinately faithful in its discipline to its own principle and standing in its defence behind a barrier of social forms.

Page 14

In order to understand and appreciate the new conditions in India, it would be useful to understand briefly the history of the two religions, Islam and Hinduism.

A brief history of Islam

MOHAMMED, known as the Prophet of Islam, was born of the esteemed Qoreish tribes in Mecca on the Apr. 20, 570 A.D. The chief occupation of his tribe was trade. When Mohammed was twenty-five years old, he married Khadija, a rich widow of Mecca, then forty years of age. She was a gentle woman of spotless character. Mohammed frequently went to a cave in the desert three miles from Mecca, where he spent months in prayer and meditation. One morning, the angel Gabriel appeared to him and said: "Rise, for thou art the Prophet of God. Go forth and preach in the name of thy Lord. Your God is merciful." A voice was heard - the voice of the Lord - addressed to the Prophet. It was recorded and became the text of the holy Koran. The Koran is not a literary work of Mohammed; it is a direct revelation of the Lord.

When Mohammed was convinced of his divine mission, his earliest efforts were directed towards persuading his own family of the truth of the new doctrine. The tenets of his new doctrine were: the unity of God, the abomination of idolatry, and the duty laid upon man of submission to the will of his Creator. These were the truths to which he claimed their allegiance.

However, he faced a lot of resistance from the Arab tribes in Mecca. Mohammed fled from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D. when he learned that the Qoreish tribe planned to take his life. The Muslim calendar begins on the day of this flight, known as the Hijra. But in pure self-defence, after repeated efforts of conciliation had utterly failed, he entered into the battlefield. In Medina, his first task on arrival was to build a mosque, that would serve both as a place of prayer and of general assembly for his followers. The worshippers at first used to turn towards Jerusalem -- an arrangement most probably adopted with the hope of gaining over the Jews. In many other ways, by constant appeals to their own Scriptures, by according them perfect freedom of worship and political equality, Mohammed endeavoured to conciliate the Jews, but they met his overtures with scorn and derision. When all hopes of amalgamation proved fruitless and it became clear that the Jews would not accept him as their Prophet, Mohammed bade his followers turn their faces in prayer towards the Kabah in Mecca.

The change of direction during the prayer has a deeper significance than might appear at first sight. It was really the beginning of the National life of Islam. It established the Kabah at Mecca as a religious centre for all the Muslim people, just as from time immemorial it had been a place of pilgrimage for all the tribes of Arabia. Of similar importance was the incorporation of the ancient Arab custom of pilgrimage to Mecca into the circle of the religious ordinances of Islam - a duty that was to be performed by every Muslim at least once in his lifetime.

In order to appreciate the position in Medina after the Flight, it is important to remember the peculiar character of Arab society at that time, at least in so far as this part of the peninsula was concerned. There was an entire absence of any organised administrative or judicial system such as we connect with the idea of a government in modern times. Each tribe or clan formed a separate and absolutely independent body, and this independence extended itself also to the individual members of the tribe, each of whom recognized the authority or leadership of his chief only as being the exponent of a public opinion which he himself happened to share; but he was quite at liberty to refuse to conform to the unanimous resolve of his fellow clansmen. Further, there was no regular transmission of the office of chieftain; though he was chosen generally as being the oldest member of the

Page 15

richest and most powerful of the clan, and as being personally most qualified to command respect. If such a tribe became too numerous, it would split up into several divisions, each of which continued to enjoy a separate and independent existence, uniting only on some extraordinary occasion for common self-defence or some more than usually important warlike expedition. We thus see how Mohammed, without exciting any feeling of insecurity or any fear of encroachment on recognized authority, could establish himself at Medina at the head of a large and increasing body of adherents who looked upon him as their head and leader and acknowledged no other authority. Mohammed thus exercised temporal authority over his people just as any other independent chief might have done, the only difference being that in the case of Muslims, a religious bond took the place of the family and blood ties. Islam thus became what in theory at least, it has always remained - a political as well as religious system. It was Mohammed's desire to found a new religion, and in this he succeeded; but at the same time he founded a political system of an entirely new and peculiar character. At first, his only wish was to convert his fellow-countrymen to the belief in the One God - Allah; but along with this he brought about the overthrow of the old system of government in his native city, and in place of the tribal aristocracy under which the conduct of public affairs was shared in common by the ruling families, he substituted an absolute theocratic monarchy, with himself at the head as vicar of God upon earth.

Even before his death, all Arabia had submitted to Mohammed; Arabia, that had never before obeyed one prince, suddenly exhibited a political unity and swore allegiance to the will of an absolute ruler. The great work of unity succeeded and at the time when Mohammed died, there prevailed over the greater part of Arabia, a peace such as the Arab tribes, with their love of plunder and revenge, had never known; it was the religion of Islam that had brought about this reconciliation. Mohammed died in 633 A.D. It must, however, be noted that Mohammed only developed the existing social, religious and administrative customs of the Arab people into a new system dictated to him by the Divinity to his secret intuitive mind while he was in a state of trance, when he passed from his conscient into his superconscient self.

But within one century of his death, the whole of Western Asia, Syria, Palestine, and other countries like Egypt, the lands of North Africa and Persia were converted to Islam. In Persia, Islam replaced the religion of Zoroastrianism. By the middle of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century, most of Central Asia had come under the influence of Islam. The Saljuk Turks were converted to Islam in around 960 A.D. and they united into one empire the Muslim kingdoms of Western Asia. The Afghans were also converted to Islam around the eighth century. Then there appeared on the scene the Mongols and Tartars. There is no event in the history of Islam that for terror and desolation can be compared to the Mongol conquest. The hosts of Chengiz Khan swept like an avalanche over the centres of Muslim culture and civilization, leaving behind them bare deserts and shapeless ruins. The Mongols swept over Central Asia and Persia and destroyed the Muslim empire; but by the middle of the 13 th century, the Mongols were themselves converted to Islam. Thus, although the political empire of the Arab Muslims was destroyed, the new rulers after their conversion to Islam recreated another Islamic empire.

Page 16

Persia, which had fallen into the hands of the Mongols, also got converted to Islam in 1295 when Ghazan, the seventh and greatest of the Ilkhans, became a Musulman and made Islam the ruling religion of Persia.

All these conquered civilizations had a long and vibrant history of culture in the past; but after the Muslim conquest, they were all forced to abandon their religion and way of life and adopt instead the Islamic religion. This is one of the characteristic features of Muslim rule; the only exception is India, who has remained faithful to her native religion, Hinduism.

Another point that emerges clearly is that in Islam, religion and politics, religion and conquest, religion and conversion go hand in hand. Every Islamic State inevitably became a theocracy.

As already seen, the tenets of Islam are: the unity of God, the abomination of idolatry, and the duty laid upon man of submission to the will of his Creator. The unity of God was expressed in this phrase: "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah". The abomination of idolatry meant that they broke and destroyed all idols wherever they found them. Islam was thus a monotheistic religion. Islam has five Pillars of Faith or rules that all Muslims are obliged to fulfil. The Five Pillars of Faith include the affirmation of Allah's supremacy as well as four exercises of this faith.

The Five Pillars of Faith

1. The Shahada or Declaration of Faith

The first rule is the declaration or Shahada: "there is no God but (Allah) and Mohammad is his messenger."

2. Prayer

The second rule is the commitment to prayers (Salat) five times a day: Between first light and sunrise, after the sun has passed the middle of the sky, between mid-afternoon and sunset, between sunset and the last light of the day, between darkness and dawn. Prayer is accompanied by prescribed rituals of washing, prostration and the recitation of verses while facing Mecca. The commitment to prayer includes congregational prayer every Friday at noon at a mosque or building for congregational prayer. The word mosque is derived from the Arabic masjid meaning "a place for prostration".

3. Sawm or Fasting

The third rule is Sawm, namely, to fast from sunrise to sunset during the month of Ramadan. Ramadan falls during the ninth month of the lunar Islamic calendar. During the period of fasting and prayer, Muslims are not permitted to eat, drink, and engage in sexual intercourse or pleasurable activities from sunrise to sunset. In refraining from food or drink and in meditation and prayer, Muslims thus personally experience the rigors of suffering, thirst and hunger of those less privileged than themselves. This period concludes with Idul-fitr or the Fast-ending celebrations.

4. Zakat

The fourth rule is payment of one-fortieth of one's annual wages toward charities to aid the poor. This payment is known as Zakat.

5. The Pilgrimage or Hajj

The fifth rule is to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca during the twelfth Islamic month of Dhu-'I-Hijja at least once in a lifetime. The Hajj may only be performed during the twelfth month. Pilgrimages performed at other times are known as lesser pilgrimages.

Page 17

Hinduism

Let us now take a look at Hinduism. The oldest and one of the most important scriptures of Hinduism is the Veda. The Veda is fundamentally a record of experiences based on intuition and revelation. They contain inspired utterances of seers and sages, who had a direct perception of the Divine Being. These seers, or Rishis, heard these compositions during their deep meditations. They are, therefore, known as Sruti. The Rishis transmitted to their disciples the Vedic truths for over a thousand years. At a later date, Sage Vyasa compiled them and put them into writing.

According to the Indian tradition, the Veda is the creation of an age anterior to our intellectual philosophies. In that age, the wisest-the Rishi-depended on inner experience and suggestions of the intuitive mind for all knowledge that ranged beyond mankind's ordinary perceptions and daily activities. Their aim was illumination, not logical conviction, their ideal the inspired seer, not the accurate reasoner.

The Rishi was not the individual composer of the hymn, but the seer (drasta) of an eternal truth and impersonal knowledge.

One very important point to note is that these teachings are not merely speculative. They are based on divine revelations and all those who are ready to follow the necessary discipline can verify them. In other words, they are spiritually verifiable truths. And today, we see that modern psychology is marching inevitably and under the sheer compulsion of facts to the very truths arrived at thousands of years ago by the ancient Rishis. How did they arrive at them? Not by speculation, as many scholars imagine, but by Yoga. Yoga enables us to get inside the object by dissolving the artificial barriers of the bodily experience and the mental ego-sense in the observer. It takes us out of the little hold of personal experience and casts us into the great universal currents; takes us out of the personal mind sheath and makes us one with universal self and universal mind. Therefore the ancient Rishis were able to see what now we are beginning again to glimpse dimly that not only is Nature herself an infinite teleological and discriminative impersonal Force of Intelligence or Consciousness, but that God dwells within and over Nature as infinite universal Personality, universal in the universe, individualised as well as universal in the particular form, or self-consciousness who perceives, enjoys and conducts to their end its vast and complex workings. It is a force of Conscious Being manifesting itself in forms and movements and working out exactly as it is guided, from stage to stage, the predetermined progress of our becoming & the Will of God in the world.

The essential tenets of Hinduism

What are the essential tenets of Hinduism? Hinduism is founded upon three basic ideas or rather three fundamentals of the highest and widest spiritual experience.

1. First comes the idea of the One Existence of the Veda; this One Existence is given different names by the sages, the One without a second of the Upanishads, the Permanent of the Buddhists, the Absolute of the Illusionists, the Supreme God or Purusha of the Theists in all its forms - in a word, the Eternal, the Infinite. The Hindu religion believes that it is possible to discover and closely approach and enter into some kind of unity with this Permanent, this Infinite, and this Eternal. It considers this unity as the highest and last effort of its spiritual experience. This is the first universal credo of the religious mind of India.

Page 18

2. Admit in whatever formula this foundation; follow this great spiritual aim by one of the thousand paths recognized in India or even any new path which branches off from them and you are at the core of the religion. For, its second basic idea is the manifold ways of man's approach to the Eternal and Infinite.

Another important point of the Hindu religion is that one may approach the Supreme through any of the different names and forms, with knowledge or in ignorance; for through them and beyond them we can proceed at last to the supreme experience. To the Indian religious mentality, these names and forms are not merely symbols; they are world-realities. For, between the highest unimaginable Existence and our material way of being, the spiritual and psychic knowledge of India did not fix a gulf as between two unrelated opposites. It was aware of other psychological planes of consciousness and experience and the truths of these supraphysical planes were no less real to it than the outward truths of the material universe. It believed that man approaches God at first according to his psychological nature and his capacity for deeper experience. Thence comes the variety of religious cults, but these are not imaginary structures, inventions of priests or poets; they are intermediate truths of a supraphysical existence between the consciousness of the physical world and the ineffable superconscience of the Absolute.

3. The third idea of the strongest consequence at the base of Indian religion is the most dynamic for the inner spiritual life. It is that while the Supreme or the Divine can be approached through a universal consciousness and by piercing through all inner and outer Nature, That or He can be met by each individual soul in itself, in its own spiritual part, because there is something in it that is intimately one or at least intimately related with the one divine Existence. These three things put together are the whole of Hindu religion, its essential sense and, if any credo is needed, its credo.

Some consequences of this approach

The natural consequence of this approach is that Hinduism means all things to all men. Every approach to the Divine has a place in Hinduism; it recognizes differences and distinctions even while admitting the fundamental unity of mankind. It does not impose uniformity as the other religions do. Hinduism embraces all varieties of religious experience; it is not based on a single experience however overwhelming that may be. Another important point to note is that in Hinduism, the ultimate goal of life is freedom or liberation - Moksha. By this is not meant an outer freedom to fulfil all our desires but an inner freedom to go beyond all external limitations. This freedom is the real unity behind the diversity of Hinduism and the key to its many sides. Hindu pluralism, therefore, is not the denial of unity but the affirmation of a real unity that transcends all outer differences. True unity is built upon freedom, not conformity, and is a state of the heart or inner consciousness, not an outer condition of labels and slogans. The West has emphasized external freedom, which has given it a sense of pluralism in the outer aspects of life; Hinduism teaches inner freedom, without which outer freedom has no real meaning. This inner freedom allows for the full flowering of the soul so that our entire human potential, which is ultimately one of spiritual aspiration, can manifest and bring truth and beauty to our entire physical and outer existence.

Some fundamental concepts of Hinduism

It is important to note a few other concepts, which are fundamental to Hindu religion. There is first the concept of evolution, an evolution of Consciousness and not a merely

Page 19

material evolution of the Darwinian type. Next come the concept of Rebirth and Karma and finally the worship of idols.

The concept of Evolution

The Indian concept of evolution is based on the following:

Spiritual experience tells us that there is a Reality which supports and pervades all things as the Cosmic Self and Spirit, can be discovered by the individual even here in the terrestrial embodiment as his own self and spirit, and is, at its summits and in its essence, an infinite and eternal self-existent Being, Consciousness and Bliss of existence. But what we seem to see as the source and beginning of the material universe is just the contrary—it seems to be a Void, an infinite of Non-Existence, out of which everything has yet to come. Then it begins to move, evolve, create, and apparently it puts on the appearance of an inconscient Energy, which delivers existence out of the Void. Yet we see that this unconscious Energy does at every step the works of a vast and minute Intelligence fixing and combining every possible device to prepare, manage and work out the paradox and miracle of Matter and the awakening of a life and a spirit in Matter; existence grows out of the Void, consciousness emerges and increases out of the Inconscient; an ascending urge towards pleasure, happiness, delight, divine bliss and ecstasy is inexplicably born out of an insensitive Nihil. These phenomena show us when we grow aware in our depths, that the Inconscient is only a mask and within it is the Upanishad's "Conscient in unconscious things", acetanesu cetana. In the beginning, says the Veda, was the ocean of inconscience and out of it That One arose into birth by his greatness, —by the might of his self-manifesting Energy.

The concept of Rebirth and Karma

Next there is the doctrine of reincarnation and Karma.

The doctrine of reincarnation and Karma tells us that the soul has a past which shaped its present birth and existence; it has a future which our present action is shaping; our past has taken and our future will take the form of recurring terrestrial births and Karma, our own action, is the power which by its continuity and development as a subjective and objective force determines the whole nature and eventuality of these repeated existences.

Temple and image worship

Finally there is image worship, which is one of the most powerful manifestations of Hinduism.

The image to the Hindu is a physical symbol and support of the supraphysical; it is a basis for the meeting between the embodied mind and sense of man and the supraphysical power, force or presence which he worships and with which he wishes to communicate. A nexus between the physical and supraphysical is the basis of this worship. Consequently, the Hindu religion is replete with rites and ceremonies of worship. And these rites, ceremonies, system of cult and worship of Hinduism can only be understood if we remember the fundamental character of Hinduism. For the Hindu religion is in the first place a non-dogmatic inclusive religion and would have taken even Islam and Christianity into itself, if they had tolerated the process. All that it has met on its way it has taken into itself, content if it could put its forms into some valid relation with the truth of the supraphysical worlds and the truth of the Infinite. Again it has always known in its heart that religion, if it is to be a reality for the mass of men and not only for a few saints and thinkers, must address its appeal to the whole of our being, not only to the suprarational and the rational parts, but to all the others. The imagination, the emotions,

Page 20

the aesthetic sense, even the very instincts of the half subconscient parts must be taken into the influence. Religion must lead man towards the suprarational, the spiritual truth and it must take the aid of the illumined reason on the way, but it cannot afford to neglect to call Godwards the rest of our complex nature. And it must take too each man where he stands and spiritualise him through what he can feel and not at once force on him something, which he cannot yet grasp as a true and living power. That is the sense and aim of all those parts of Hinduism, which are often stigmatised as irrational or antirational by the positivist intelligence.

Summary

It is quite clear from the above that the two religions are very different in their concepts. Islam believes in one and only one God, while Hinduism accepts many incarnations of the one God.

Islam believes in one sacred book, the Koran; Hinduism accepts many scriptures and includes even the Bible and the Koran.

Islam has fixed rituals, which every Muslim has to follow; Hinduism has rituals but nothing fixed which every Hindu has to follow.

Islam does not believe in idol worship and is committed to destroying all idols; Hinduism believes in idol worship, considering the idol as a physical manifestation of the Divine and allows all forms of worship.

Islam believes in one and only one life while Hinduism believes in rebirth of the soul.