“The most important difference,” Mr. Pakkar Koya then avers, is that the fundamentalism of the Sangh Parivar “is mostly a reaction to certain aspects of Muslim politics in India and the condoning, in the name of secularism, of such politics by the liberal sections of Hindu society.”
Mr. Pakkar Koya recalls that Wilfred Cantwell Smith, the eminent Canadian scholar of Islamic history, had been convinced that “Islam in India had the best chance of evolving into a liberal creed as it shares a home with the most catholic of all the religions in the world — Hinduism.” But, he argues, this never happened because a “siege mentality and the compulsions of electoral politics have made Indian Islam the most xenophobic and reactionary” variant of the Muslim faith. “As I see it,” Mr. Pakkar Koya concludes, “the tragedy of our country is that Muslims failed to imbibe the best features of Hinduism while Hindus took on the worst features of Islam.”
His second letter made the related point that, on all matters of controversy involving the Muslim community — from the Shah Banu case to the Satanic Verses affair — Hindu liberals, in a misguided desire to be sympathetic to “the Muslim point of view,” ended up backing the most retrograde and uncompromising obscurantism espoused by Muslim community leaders. “So in all these matters the most progressive and liberal Hindus find themselves supporting the most orthodox and extremist in the Muslim community.”
Stirring and provocative words, these, which offer much food for thought. I have never met Mr. Pakkar Koya, but in a letter he observes that one of the strengths of Kerala is that Malayali Muslims study in the same language as other Keralites, whereas in most Indian states ordinary Muslims study in Urdu in religious schools while their Hindu brothers learn Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, or indeed English. I share his evident faith in pluralist coexistence, and I appreciate the importance he attaches to the fact that it is Hindus like myself who decry Hindu chauvinism and the erosion of secular values in India. However, his final point is devastating. By pandering to conservative Islamic elements, he says, Hindu liberals have discredited themselves with both Hindu conservatives and Muslim liberals. “In my opinion,” Mr. Pakkar Koya writes, “this is why Hindu liberals are finding it difficult to influence public opinion in India, and this is a development fraught with more danger than the growth in the electoral appeal of the BJP.”
This is a sobering point. Too many Hindu liberals write of these issues as if we were in denial of our own Hinduism, seeking to find our arguments in rationality and secular discourse, rather than in the tolerance and compassion of our own faith. Those of us who want to preserve Indian pluralism must learn to address Hindu opinion from within the fold of Hinduism, where liberalism has a natural place. In rejecting bigotry and sectarianism on both sides of the religious divide, we must stand up for the timeless verities — goodness, kindness, tolerance, love — at the heart of all religions.
And this can certainly be found in the sacred texts of all of India's contending faiths. I have long argued for mutual understanding, in particular, between Hindus and Muslims. A letter from a Muslim reader, A. M. S. Ahmed, tells me that pluralism has to contend with “the pervasive prejudice and antagonism against Muslims and Islam among the vast majority of the Hindus in India.” He finds this to be based on “uncritical acceptance of two assertions”: that Hindus suffered “centuries of oppression” by Muslim invaders and that “Muslims were solely responsible for the division of India.” Reacting to the first assertion, Mr. Ahmed points out that Muslim rulers in southern states like Hyderabad and Mysore did nothing to force conversion upon their non-Muslim majority subjects, and did not interfere with the cultural or religious practices of the Hindus. As to the second, he recalls the well-known episode of Jawaharlal Nehru's unilateral repudiation of the Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946, which Jinnah's Muslim League had accepted — and which would have kept India united, if loosely, in a confederation when the British left.
But this is not what interests me about Mr. Ahmed's letter. I accept, after all, that prejudice and ignorance are common characteristics of a large number of people of all faiths, and that there may well be Hindus who base their attitude toward their Muslim fellow-citizens on such grounds. As for what happened in 1946, the catalog of blunders and missteps that led to the tragedy of Partition is one from which no side emerges unblemished, though obviously there is a difference between those who espoused communal politics and those who stood for secular pluralism. But putting Mr. Ahmed's “two assertions” aside, what we are left with is a more fundamental point: that Hindus do not understand Islam and Muslims, and do not try hard enough to look beyond their prejudices.
The intriguing point Mr. Ahmed makes is that Islam itself is misunderstood by the majority of Indians. Even I have been guilty of juxtaposing Hinduism's unique tolerance of all faiths against the teaching of the Semitic religions that each of them represents the only true path to God. Mr. Ahmed begs to differ, and he cites extensively from the Holy Quran to make the point that Islam is a tolerant faith. “Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth stands out clear from Error; whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold,” says Sura 2, verse 256. “Invite all to the way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious; for thy Lord knoweth best, who have strayed from His path, and who receive guidance,” says Sura 16, verse 125. On coexistence, the Quran declares, “O Mankind! We created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other and not despise each other” (Sura 49, verse 13). And the possibility of different attitudes to religion is explicitly spelled out in Sura 10, verse 47: “To every people was sent an Apostle; when their Apostle come before them, the matter will be judged between them with justice, and they will not be wronged.”
I do not know which translation of the Quran Mr. Ahmed is quoting from, but I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of these extracts. The real issue is the way the faithful interpret the tenets of their faith. “The concept of dharma in Hinduism,” Mr. Ahmed adds, referring to my writings on the subject, “is similar to that of deen in Islam, which connotes a way of life governed by the teachings of the Quran, the examples of the Prophet and the ever-present consciousness of accountability for all thoughts and actions, both open and secret, before God on the Day of Judgment.” In other words, Hindus and Muslims have much more in common doctrinally than the fanatics of either faith would have us believe.
“Having lived together for centuries,” Mr. Ahmed laments, “Hindus and Muslims in general have yet to learn and respect each other's way of life.” He recalls that in 1962 Acharya Vinoba Bhave compiled a selection of verses from the Quran under the title “The Essentials of the Quran” and published it on the Prophet Muhammed's birthday. Another Hindu scholar, Professor K. S. Ramakrishna Rao, wrote a “simple yet erudite treatise on the life and message of the Prophet of Islam.” These books were published, appropriately enough, in Varanasi under the auspices of the Akhil Bharat Sarva Sangh in Rajghat. Will an enterprising non-Muslim publisher today take on the challenge of getting Hindu thinkers to explain Islam, with empathy and understanding, to Hindus?