May 12th, 2001

One of the conditioned reflexes of the Hindu mind in respect of the History of India is that forced conversions were a regular feature of Muslim rule. This idea was aired and emphasised by the British writing Indian history and has now lodged so firmly in the mind that it is common for people to talk of India having become independent in 1947 after one thousand years. The period of Muslim rule is added to the British period to yield the figure of “one thousand years of slavery”.

This is the kind of distortion which fractured Indian society along communal lines and led to the partition of India into Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu majority India.

A vibrant and energetic Democracy requires equality and liberty to survive and function. This in a multi-religious society means that the state has to be secular. Pakistan goes on experiencing the death, revival and “Life-in-Death” of its democracy during its half century and more of existence because of its seeking refuge in the shelter of a so called “Islamic” state The other fragment, India, remained at least nominally secular up until the time that the Congress exhausted its political capital by playing caste and communal politics and, this above all, by corruption.

Each of its Maharathis like Pawar in Maharashtra, Arjun Singh and the Shuklas in Madhya Pradesh and Bhajan Lal in Haryana and Mishras in Bihar are said to be worth thousands or hundreds of crores.
As a result the communal by self proclamation and divisive RSS/VHP/BJP/Shiv Sena have come to power and are busy making a once secular India into a mirror image of the Islamic state across the border. The RSS “Parivar” have come to power on the basis of a distorted history and as this is illustrated by a letter from a reader we quote from it :-

The reader writes :-

“Some time back you had written about gifts of money, land etc. made by Mughal rulers to Hindu temples and Brahmins. You have also mentioned about similar gifts by Tipu Sultan”

“But you have not mentioned [that] which is evident from all contemporary records that Mughal rulers as well as Tipu Sultan forcibly converted many Hindus and the dispatches received by them were full of details about how Hindus and Brahmins who refused to convert were ruthlessly killed by them.”

The letter continues

“Shivaji had issued similar orders giving land, money etc to Muslim mosques. He had issued standing instructions that in areas conquered by his army, any copy of the Quran must be properly respected and handed over to the nearest Muslim authority”

As can be seen clearly there is a Hindu/Muslim divide in the reader”s mind. Muslims, even the Tipu Sultans and the Akbars convert forcibly: Hindus, however are humane, tolerant and considerate. Was this mildness caused by the fact that the Hindus did not convert in those days. They are now busy making up by converting. The act is covered up by being called “re-conversion”. The people who became Muslim were rarely Hindu. They were Dalits and Kancha Iliah has pointed out that they were never told that they were Hindus. His “Why I am Not A Hindu” spells the position out in detail”

This, the distorted mindset in which brutal and uncouth Muslims were busy converting the mild and tolerant Hindus for 7/800 years until the fair and just British took over power is precisely what British historians of India wished to create in the Hindus. The voicing of the prejudice fifty years after they quit redounds to their credit.

“Mission accomplished successfully!”.

Tipu Sultan is a victim of British propaganda. It has been noticed by even foreign scholars like Brocklebank that the RSS have the same perspective on Tipu as the British contemporaries who fought him. As a result his death anniversary 4th May is not observed. There is no attempt to bring the dust of Bahdur Shah “Zafar” back to India.

As this is the result of British “historians” tampering with Indian history we have addressed the problem in earlier column of “Itihaas”. This has not had the effect necessary and we shall have to state the case again.

There is not enough space today and we shall return to it in future.