Post 2014: The biggest change in India
Without wasting time, let’s guess. No, it’s not the “rise of BJP and/or Hindu politics”. Not infrastructure or economic growth. Not Modi’s multilayered foreign policy, not the official reunification of Kashmir, not demonetization or the fall of left-wing politics or the construction of the Ram temple or the wonders of the Indian COVID vaccine or anything else of note. For most people, it is right in front of their eyes, but they can’t name it. So let me name it.
Post 2014, the real change in India is Indians waking up to something called “Islamic Imperialism”.
It is quite a mouthful, but people are realizing it in the language that suits them. The taxi driver, office boy, the mistry, neighborhood auntie ji, retired uncle ji, the top-notch CEO, and, for that matter, anyone and everyone who lives in India is slowly saying goodbye to the much-vaulted concept of “ganga-jamuni tehzeeb,” i.e., Hindu-Muslim unity or one still talked about: Unity in Diversity. The latter is a compulsion rather than something carefully crafted in India. Every made-up concept has its time, but eventually it’s befriended by Yama. The story of Hindu-Muslim unity is meeting the same fate. What the Muslim always understood is just dawning upon the Hindu i.e., the two systems are mutually exclusive.
Until 2014, non- Muslim Indians were mostly oblivious to the concept of Islamic Imperialism. They didn’t give two hoots about it. It was unfashionable and non-secular to talk about it. Most Hindus had been fed a history of half-truths, a visible toning down of pre-independence India, and the job of upholding a bland version of one-sided secularism.
What is Islamic Imperialism in India?
Simply put, it is the colonization of India by Islamic rulers of various hues who had one single aim: the conversion of India into an Islamic Caliphate (of some form). For those unversed and uncaring, India, Hindustan, or Bharat has, is, and will always be that fabled land which for centuries has been under attack to either participate in its progress or plunder its resources.
Most early invaders like the Greeks, Kushans, and Bactrians ended up accepting Bharat as their own and created a synthetic culture without foisting their own will and way of life on the general populace. This may have been possible as societies then were essentially polytheistic, with little or no concept of “my way or the highway” when it came to religious beliefs. Invasions, battles, and conquests were no less bloody but had little proof of ideological zeal wherein one party wanted the other to accept their way of life, completely giving up what they had come to create and improve upon (over thousands of years).
However, this changed once Abrahamic religions came into existence. A struggle for ideological supremacy between the three offshoots (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) ensued. As the wave of violent conversions and barbarism swept the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Europe, it finally reached India. What began in 712 A.D continued till 1707. Slowly but surely, Arabs, Turks, Mughals, and other sultanates (Deccan, Bahmani, and Bengal) changed Bharat. Post 1707, with the death of Aurangzeb, the last Mughal of note, Islamic rulers were no less violent, but they lost power first to the English East India Company and then to the British Empire. However, during the 1000 years or so of Islamic rule on several parts of India, conservative estimates put that over 300 million Hindus were killed, 40,000 temples destroyed, millions converted to Islam, and two great seats of learning, Nalanda and Vikramshila, destroyed. With such a legacy in tow and not many positive stories to tell, Islamic rule in India had a huge baggage.
During British rule
Luckily for the “Islamic State(s)” of India, the British rule reduced its baggage. Over 190 years of British control, the atrocities of Islamic rule were largely forgotten. During British rule, the Muslim rulers continued to engage with the British but were not seen as the ruling class. In fact, in some pockets, they were in power but had no power. As Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and others were of the same skin tone, which was visibly different from that of the British, they found a common enemy in the British. In the absence of proper education and widespread acceptance of historical wrongs as part of the “conquered people’s fate,” Hindus colluded with Muslims to fight the British. However, this was short-lived as the British and Muslims colluded in intricate ways, which ultimately resulted in the partition of India in 1947. There are various perspectives on who used whom, but the ultimate loser was Bharat, which was divided first into India and Pakistan, and then Pakistan fell apart into two, and another country, Bangladesh, was created in 1971.
Post independence
When India was divided between Hindus and Muslims, it was assumed that both would become free of British rule. This was a misnomer. Indian Muslims piggybacked the freedom movement, and finally, at an opportune time, they negotiated a country to be created for themselves based on the premise that Hindus and Muslims couldn’t live together. They were very clear that “they, the erstwhile rulers of India, couldn’t live in a democratic country where the Hindus were a majority.”
For unclear ideological reasons, the Congress party (led by Nehru), which took over India, chose to follow a secular path even though the choice was easy and clear i.e., to create a Hindu state out of the divided India. The problem was the version of secularism that was imposed. That version included: a whitewashing of India before 1947, a visible toning down of Hindu India, its culture, traditions, customs, literature, art, architecture, languages, history, geography, living styles, fashion, science, contributions to the world, and so on. Even Islamic, Christian, Parsi, and Jewish contributions, cooperative of a united India narrative, were not given much importance. Many pre-British era kings, queens, and generals who had stood up against Islamic rulers were either obliterated from history pages or given the cold shoulder.
Indians born post-independence were educated about British imperialism and how Congress party leaders like Nehru and Gandhi won a hard-fought independence through a non-violent civil disobedience movement. Various freedom fighters were relegated to the back pages, and some, like Savarkar shown in a negative light. India as a country was painted to be a secular, non-aligned, docile, disinterested, weak, and diminutive power. An elephant that lumbered under its weight. Economic growth was rock bottom, and India lagged behind most foreign nations, including Pakistan. Some things were good (like the start of India’s industrialization, the setup of premier educational institutions, India’s space journey, etc.), but it was not enough. Indians in general had no view about India and what it deserved to be, i.e., when would India take its rightful place in the world, when would India start punching its weight (forget punching above it). A country of such historical greatness was languishing, its populace living in penury, and a “chalta hai” (it's ok) attitude took over. And, Islamic imperialism had no place in our books, cinema, theatre, or music. While Bollywood served many box office hits based on British imperialism, there was utter silence on atrocities committed by Islamic rulers. They had just vanished from the narrative. Akbar-Birbal comics and love stories of Mughal kings with their Hindu wives (converted) were feted.
Islamic imperialism was still not talked about, even when there were hundreds of Hindu-Muslim riots (right from 1947). The Kashmir problem, talks of Ghazwa-e-hind, rise of Muslim ghettos, illegal immigration from Bangladesh, and so on, didn’t even cause a blip in the Islamic Imperialism narrative.
Islam centric Politics of India
During all of this, a strange obsession took over most non-Hindu political parties. The math was simple: Appease the Muslims, divide the Hindus, win elections, do corruption, sit back for 5 years, and then repeat the process. If discussed here, the Muslim appeasement and Hindu fault lines are such big topics that this out-of-control blog may further get outta control😊. So let sleeping whores sleep through the daylight. From the 1970s, when socialism picked up in India and Hindu voters started shifting out of the Congress, the Congress began to appease Muslim voters to a much greater extent. This has continued to this day, and the race to appease Muslims amongst Sonia Congress and its various splinter groups has hardened.
Post 2014
Post 2014, 2 things happened: One, Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, and second, a device called the smartphone started becoming popular. The former used the latter, and the rest is history. Through the smartphone and the freedom of the internet (and social media), Hindus woke up to Islamic Imperialism. Hindus started relating to Raja Dahir of Sindh (who?), Prithviraj Chauhan, Lachit Borphukan, and many others they had not even heard of. Events that had occurred hundreds of years ago seemed to have occurred just yesterday. Hindu persecution during Islamic rule (before the British) was researched, written about, read, understood, relayed, and the cycle picked up and repeated itself over and over again. While all this happened, the Indian opposition of Muslim appeasing parties doubled down on Muslim appeasement. This further sped up the Islamic Imperialism narrative. The BJP started to occupy the right, center, and left of politics by carefully crafting its messaging and politics. At the same time, the opposition embraced extreme left politics (worse than Maoism and communism).
Current State
With the genie of Islamic Imperialism finally out of its proverbial bottle, it poses a big problem for Indian Muslims (and their so-called benefactors and their nefarious designs). Still, strangely, it also poses a big problem for the BJP-RSS combine. The latter has a big challenge in managing the narrative of Islamic Imperialism to its advantage. And that is proving to be a difficult task as new age Hindus bearing the burden of their persecuted ancestors are wanting change at a speed faster than light. They want Muslim imperialistic forces defeated, subjugated, and packed off to wherever they came from. This again is difficult as, unlike the British, the Islamic imperialists are Indians whose forefathers were converted through sword, sweat, and sadism.
Islamic imperialism can only be defeated when the genie of Islam, or at least its imperialistic thought (and design), leaves Indian shores, and that is possible only when Indian Muslims do a Ghar Wapasi (return to the Hindu fold) or if they negotiate a way to re-identify as ex-Hindus or ex-Muslims. Both are fraught with risks. Thus, the Indian Muslim is between a rock and a hard place, and that means India too is staring at a confrontation that it has avoided so far. Is the time for finding a middle ground over? Or, for that matter, how long should India keep negotiating for the middle ground? Is it time for another Mahabharata or Ashvamedha Yagya?
