Where is the rest of the population in the Hindu-Muslim binary?

 Article 1 of Indian Constitution states “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.” But many of us citizens, the right-wing political leaders of both in power and opposition, even the Muslim leaders and the whole of Bollywood calls our country as “Hindustan”. This one word tells us how backward we are and how much do we respect our independent country and our constitution. The concept of Hindustan again & again reminds me of our slavery when we were under the rule of various foreign rulers. But those who call it as Hindustan, knowingly or unknowingly depicts how unaffectionate, uncompassionate and ignorant they are towards other communities living in India. Whenever someone shows their patriotism, especially from right-wing, they are more patriot to the pre-independent Hindustan than the post-independent India (Bharat).

 

Fanatic Domination:

 

Using the references from our history, the British rulers propagated the hatred between Hindus and Muslims and after the independence we carried & continued that hatred. The polarizing of Hindus by the right-wing leaders by giving the birth to terms called “Hindutva” and “Love Jihad”. On the other hand, the lack of education in Muslim community is leading them in this discourse to react proactively. There’s no need to polarize them because they are already polarized in the name of Islam. The only need is one spark, and without any reasoning, these uneducated, brainwashed & polarized youth from both the sides create a religious tensions and sometimes riots too.

The need to polarize all the Hindus in the name of “Hindutva” is required by desperate right-wing politicians is because the whole of Hindu community is divided into sub-groups called as “caste”. These castes are not equal, instead there is a hierarchy of these so-called upper and lower castes. Surprisingly, there is no “middle caste” term in Hindu religion because everyone feels that there’s someone above them and below them. This leads to inequality and that’s why Hindus are not united and this is the main reason right-wingers want to mobilise more & more volunteers for their propaganda; that’s why they have created this hollow ideology of “Hindutva”, which is doing more harm than any benefit. The main agenda to gather all the Hindus under one umbrella of “Hindutva” is not “uniting” them for their betterment, instead to use them as an army against the Muslims.

Here in India, Hindus are in majority and Muslims are minority, so we see the instigation of riots mostly from the people who are more in number because they want to outnumber the already minor population to uphold & propagate their racial supremacy. But what if Muslims were in majority? I doubt, they would do something different. They will do that same according to the mentality of term “majority”. Expanding the region to rule more & more people as per our own law is not only a thing of history. These acts of Hindus and Muslims clearly shows what we’ve already read in our history is still in context. But the modern version of “expanding our territory” is more poisonous. The violence which we see in our history can be seen as a war between two rulers, but today’s situation has become personal and every ideologically polarized and influenced person wants his religion to rule everyone.

 

What the maker of the constitution said about these two poles & the histories behind it?

 

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s two quotes will give us an idea and might sum up what these two extreme fundamentalisms will do to each other and everyone around it.

Dr. Ambedkar writes in his book, “Pakistan or The Partition of India” - “Hinduism is said to divide people and in contrast Islam is said to bind people together. This is only a half-truth. For Islam divides as inexorably as it binds. Islam is a close corporation and the distinction that it makes between Muslims and non-Muslims is a very real, very positive and very alienating distinction. The brotherhood of Islam is not the universal brotherhood of man. It is brotherhood of Muslims for Muslims only. There is a fraternity, but its benefit is confined to those within that corporation. For those who are outside the corporation, there is nothing but contempt and enmity. The second defect of Islam is that it is a system of social self-government and is incompatible with local self-government, because the allegiance of a Muslim does not rest on his domicile in the country which is his but on the faith to which he belongs. To the Muslim, ibi bene ibi patria [Where it is well with me, there is my country] is unthinkable. Wherever there is the rule of Islam, there is his own country. In other words, Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin.”

In the same book, Dr. Ambedkar says, “If the Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country. No matter what the Hindus say, Hinduism is a menace to liberty, equality and fraternity. On that account it is incompatible with democracy. Hindu Raj must be prevented at any cost.”

The following next quotes by Dr. Ambedkar will shed a light on what Hinduism was doing even before Muslims entered India.

Dr. Ambedkar in his book, “Revolution & Counter-Revolution in Ancient India”, writes – “In the first place it must be recognized that there has never been such as a common Indian culture, that historically there have been three Indias - Brahmanic India, Buddhist India and Hindu India. The history of India before the Muslim invasions is the history of a mortal conflict between Brahmanism and Buddhism. Because Ashoka made Buddhism the religion of the state. This of course was the greatest blow to the Brahmanism. The Brahmins lost all state patronage and were neglected to a secondary and subsidiary position in the Empire of Ashoka. Indeed, it may be said to have been suppressed for the simple reason that Ashoka prohibited all animal sacrifices which constituted the very essence of Brahmanic religion. The Brahmins had not only lost state patronage but they lost their occupation which mainly consisted in performing sacrifices for a fee which often times was very substantial and which constituted their chief source of living. The Brahmins therefore lived as the suppressed and depressed classes for nearly 140 years during which the Mauryan Empire lasted.”

Further he writes, “Brahmins made fools of the Kshatriyas and the two brought the Vaishyas under them. However, all three decided to keep the Shudras down. They prevented the Shudras from owning property because it should not be that after acquiring property, they are free from the clutches of the upper three castes. Shudras were prevented from acquiring knowledge, lest they are aware of their welfare. They were banned from keeping weapons lest they revolt against the system.”

The reality of contrast:

 

According to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, both the Hindus and Muslims were at fault.

Even when the idea of “Ummah” (Muslim brotherhood) is discussed in the Constitution of Medina as a brotherhood between Muslims, Jews, Christians and other Pagan religions/tribes, I doubt how much Muslims are empathetic towards others across the world if we look at the terrorism or even at the Muslim governments in general. I’m not generalizing all the Muslims here. I’m empathetic towards all the minorities around the world. Be it Muslims or Buddhists in India, or Hindus in Pakistan. But the reality is those minority Hindus in Pakistan might think that the organizations like RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini, Sriram Sene, etc. are working for the betterment of Hindus and propagation of Hinduism. In the same way, Muslims also can think to spread Islam. Looking at the sentiments of religious people, they’ll incline towards their own religious (or claiming to be religious) organization which are spreading their religions using whatever way they can; be it a charity or be it terrorism. Looking from the same point of view, one may not talk openly about their hidden feelings of spreading their religion using money or muscle power, but somewhere they’ll support their goal ignoring their path. The reason behind this is very simple. Every person thinks that they’re being used (or misused), they’re oppressed, they’re being ignored by the govt., they need more attention for their upliftment, so on & so forth; such feelings of insecurity may bring support for all organizations related to my social identity. This can happen with any society in the world.

On the other hand, even when all the Hindus claim that their Vedas are written by god, I wonder why these gods have made every Hindu unequal. They could’ve made one Hindu religion and all the members of it as Hindus like it’s there with Muslims or Christians. If you question the castes in Muslims and Christians, it’s there only in India, and that thing again came from Hinduism only. If we look on the global level, they just have sects. These sects are made by humans according to their internal beliefs. But these sects worship parallelly to their gods. But in Hinduism, there’s a system of hierarchy which is obviously vertical.

 

The forced Hindu-Muslim brotherhood & ignorance for others:

 

It is a positive thing to pronounce sentences like “Ramzan me Ram hai, aur Diwali me Ali”, but we know the reality. The government like BJP might want to ban processions of Muslims but they won’t speak against miscreants who make unnecessary furore in Muslim areas or in front of their place of worship. Such incidents get discussed in media and in society for a long period. Such incidents happen again & again which creates a situation where only these two communities come in focus, and all other communities gets ignored.

The news media covers these incidents and other communities gets automatically ignored even when each and every person and community is important for any country. It is imperative for everyone, especially for our government to protect rights of every individual; but this binary has created a delusion that only two communities exist in India i.e., Hindus and Muslims.

Every Indian person can tell the culture of Hindus & Muslims even if they’re from another community. Everyone knows their culture and riots too. But when communities like Buddhist, Jain, Christain or any tribal community hold a protest, does the members of Hindu or Muslim community show any concern? They’re interested only in their matters. We can observe here, how the quote of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar fits perfectly here. Even when they said that the brotherhood in Islam is a brotherhood amongst Muslims itself, we can also conclude that the brotherhood in Hindus is brotherhood of their particular caste, and not the brotherhood of the overall Hindu community. These upper caste Hindutvawadi politicians want tribals to call themselves Hindus but when it comes to their rights & protests, how many Hindu leaders or communities support them?

When Khairlanji massacre happened, how many people from other communites came down on streets for the justice to Bhotmange family? But when Nirbhaya rape case happened, the whole Hindu community in our country went on to protest. Protesting against such crimes is very important and natural but being selective to speak for the victims looking at their caste is inhumane. We should protest and ask for the justice for victims like Nirbhaya but where were these people when Khairlanji killings happened? A whole family, parents with son and daughter were paraded naked in the village, all of them including the two sons, their father along with the women in their family were raped several times by hundreds of men in the village in front of everyone including other women and people were so casual that no one opposed it. You can see the difference, a girl from upper caste was raped and our whole nation protested gathering on streets, which absolutely should’ve been done & even I protested against it; but a lower caste family was raped and murdered; leave the country, only that particular community was protesting about that brutal rapes & murders. An important point to note that the scheduled caste has hundreds of castes but we will never see all the castes amongst scheduled caste list together. Whenever there is some atrocity, only Buddhist community will fight for their justice. But when it comes to the election & voting, politicians will try to polarize Hindus like there is no caste discrimination among them and all Hindus are equal. Even the Hindu community will never ask any question to that politician. Instead, they’ll follow whatever a person on stage is saying and that’s how religious fanatic parties like BJP come into power.

In the US, a police officer murdered a black man named George Floyd, the whole world was showing concern for that incident. Again, we should speak against every kind of discrimination & atrocities, but only speaking regarding that topic to stay in the trend is very bad. At that time, Bollywood actors were tweeting and expressing their thoughts on George Floyd’s murder which happened in America. But these Bollywood stars are so hypocrites that they’ll only speak when something gains a national or international coverage. These hypocrites will never see people dying in their country but they are more concerned about incidents happening in America. Such acts are clearly done to stay in the trend and will never speak for their fellow countrymen.

 

Conclusion:

 

We should speak for humanity. When someone is doing wrong to others, we should never wait till it happen with us. Speak against inhumane acts irrespective of their caste, creed, religion, community, tribe, race, skin colour, financial status, etc. If you’re speaking to be a part of the global trend, then don’t speak at all. Because it shows how hypocrite you are like India’s, sorry, Hindustan’s Bollywood stars. These people are the best example of casteist people in India ignore others, but it’s funny when these people say that there’s no casteism in Bollywood. Hindus & Muslims should speak on other issues as well. While reading this article, don’t presume that I’m generalising things. I know there are exceptions everywhere. Such exception in Bollywood is Mr. Aamir Khan who have expressed his thoughts boldly whenever necessary. I know it takes courage to speak out, but just imagine what will happen and how will you feel if something wrong happens to you and no one come to your help. At that time, others might say where were you when it was happening with me? Follow your culture & religion in your homes, but when you step out of your home, become an Indian and see others as Indians.