The Great Unity - V
A historical investigation into the Hindu-Muslim unity of Bharat
“Such is the story of this period of 762 years which elapsed between the advent of Muhammad of Ghazni and the return of Ahmadshah Abdalli. How far is it open to the Hindus to say that Northern India is part of Aryavarta?
How far is it open to the Hindus to say because once it belonged to them, therefore, it must remain forever an integral part of India ? Those who oppose separation and hold to the ‘historic sentiment’ arising out of an ancient fact that Northern India including Afghanistan was once part of India and that the people of that area were either Buddhist or Hindus, must be asked whether the events of these 762 years of incessant Muslim invasions, the object with which they were launched and the methods adopted by these invaders to give effect to their object are to be treated as though they were matters of no account?
Apart from other consequences which have flowed from them these invasions have, in my opinion, so profoundly altered the culture and character of the northern areas, which it is now proposed to be included in a Pakistan, that there is not only no unity between that area and the rest of India but that there is as a matter of fact a real antipathy between the two.
The first consequence of these invasions was the breaking up of the unity of Northern India with the rest of India. After his conquest of Northern India, Muhammad of Ghazni detached it from India and ruled it from Ghazni. When Mahommed Ghori came in the field as a conqueror, he again attached it to India and ruled it from Lahore and then from Delhi. Hakim, the brother of Akbar, detached Kabul and Kandahar from Northern India. Akbar again attached it to Northern India. They were again detached by Nadirshah in 1738 and the whole of Northern India would have been severed from India had it not been for the check provided by the rise of the Sikhs. Northern India, therefore, has been like a wagon in a train, which can be coupled or uncoupled according to the circumstances of the moment. If analogy is wanted, the case of Alsace-Lorraine could be cited. Alsace- Lorraine was originally part of Germany, like the rest of Switzerland and the Low Countries. It continued to be so till 1680, when it was taken by France and incorporated into French territory. It belonged to France till 1871, when it was detached by Germany and made part of her territory. In 1918, it was again detached from Germany and made part of France. In 1940, it was detached from France and made part of Germany.
The methods adopted by the invaders have left behind them their aftermath. One aftermath is the bitterness between the Hindus and the Muslims which they have caused. This bitterness, between the two, is so deep-seated that a century of political life has neither succeeded in assuaging it; nor in making people forget it. As the invasions were accompanied with destruction of temples and forced conversions, with spoliation of property, with slaughter, enslavement and abasement of men, women and children, what wonder if the memory of these invasions has ever remained green, as a source of pride to the Muslims and as a source of shame to the Hindus?
But these things apart, this north-west corner of India has been a theater in which a stern drama has been played. Muslim hordes, in wave after wave, have surged down into this area and from thence scattered themselves in spray over the rest of India. These reached the rest of India in thin currents. In time, they also receded from their farthest limits ; while they lasted, they left a deep deposit of Islamic culture over the original Aryan culture in this north-west corner of India which has given it a totally different colour, both in religious and political outlook.
The Muslim invaders, no doubt, came to India singing a hymn of hate against the Hindus. But, they did not merely sing their hymn of hate and go back burning a few temples on the way. That would have been a blessing. They were not content with so negative a result. They did a positive act, namely, to plant the seed of Islam. The growth of this plant is remarkable. It is not a summer sapling. It is as great and as strong as an oke. Its growth is the thickest in Northern India. The successive invasions have deposited their ‘silt’ more there than anywhere else, and have served as watering exercises of devoted gardeners. Its growth is so thick in Northern India that the remnants of Hindu and Buddhist culture are just shrubs. Even the Sikh axe could not fell this oak. Sikhs, no doubt , became the political masters of Northern India, but they did not gain back Northern India to that spiritual and cultural unity by which it was bound to the rest of India before Hsuan Tsang. The Sikhs coupled it back to India. Still, it remains like Alsace-Lorraine politically detachable and spiritually alien so far as the rest of India is concerned. It is only an unimaginative person who could fail to take notice of these facts or insist in the face of them that Pakistan means breaking up into two what is one whole.
What is the unity the Hindu sees between Pakistan and Hindustan? If it is geographical unity, then that is no unity. Geographical unity is unity intended by nature. In building up a nationality on geographical unity, it must be remembered that it is a case where Nature proposes and Man disposes. If it is unity in external things, such as ways and habits of life, that is no unity. Such unity is the result of exposure to a common environment. If it is administrative unity, that again is no unity. The instance of Burma is in point. Arakan and Tenasserim were annexed in 1826 by the treaty of Yendabu. Pegu and Martaban were annexed in 1852. Upper Burma was annexed in 1886. The administrative unity between India and Burma was forged in 1826. For over 110 years that administrative unity continued to exist. In 1937, the knot that tied the two together was cut as under and nobody shed a tear over it. The unity between India and Burma was not less fundamental. If unity is to be of an abiding character, it must be founded on a sense of kinship, in the feeling of being kindred. In short, it must be spiritual. Judged in the light of these considerations, the unity between Pakistan and Hindustan is a myth. Indeed, there is more spiritual unity between Hindustan and Burma than there is between Pakistan and Hindustan. And if the Hindus did not object to the severance of Burma from India, it is difficult to understand how the Hindus can object to the severance of an area like Pakistan, which, to repeat, is politically detachable from, socially hostile and spiritually alien to, the rest of India.””1
References
Pakistan or The Partition of India by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, p.63-66
Do you think the idea of “great unity” was more a lived cultural reality or an ideal projected in texts and chronicles?