J Sai Deepak’s new book discusses the impact of coloniality — both European and Middle Eastern — on India, Indians and the Indian Constitution
J Sai Deepak’s India, Bharat and Pakistan: The Constitutional Journey of a Sandwiched Civilisation — his second book in the three-volume Bharat series — takes off exactly from where India That Is Bharat ends. While the first book analyses the influence of European ‘colonial consciousness’ — the author calls it ‘coloniality’ — on India, Indians and the Indian Constitution, the second one explores the influence of European and Middle Eastern colonialities, often working in tandem with the larger objective of hurting Bharat and its civilisational moorings.
Five broad strands can be discerned while reading Sai Deepak’s new book. First and foremost, it tells us matter of factly that while India’s enemies, especially of the Islamist variety, are crystal clear about their objectives vis-?-vis Bharat, the same can hardly be said about the latter. Jihadi foot soldiers and their patrons never work in an ideological vacuum and have always been religiously and historically alive to their objective, which they see as divinely ordained.
The author, for instance, makes a pertinent observation about Syed Ahmad Barelvi (1786-1831), who “is credited with laying the foundations for a pan-India Wahhabi network in a systematic manner”. He writes how in late 1826, Barelvi reached Ghazni and camped at the mausoleum of Mahmud Ghaznavi, the plunderer and destroyer of Somnath. “That Barelvi who lived in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries felt a kinship with Mahmud of Ghazni who lived eight centuries before him should come as no surprise since it demonstrates the ability of Middle Eastern coloniality to see common cause for Islam, regardless of region, ethnicity or nationality.”
Barelvi is a highly reverential figure among Islamist terrorists of the day. Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal writes in Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia: “Balakot is in many ways the epicentre of jihad in South Asia… It is also a point of entry into the history of jihad, struggle in the way of Allah, in the subcontinent. It was here that Sayyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly (1786-1831) and Shah Ismail (1779-1831), quintessential Islamic warriors in South Asian Muslim consciousness, fell in battle against the Sikhs on 6 May 1831.”
Is it any surprise that in 2019 when the Narendra Modi government decided to conduct surgical airstrikes on Pakistan-based terrorist camps — in response to the Pulwama suicide bombing that led to the killing of 40 Indian soldiers — Balakot invariably became the preferred choice? It was, in a way, also aimed at sending a message loud and clear: That India understands the true nature of jihadi terrorism emanating from Pakistan. That if “the followers of Barelvi have not forgotten their history” and kept Balakot high on the jihadi map, then India too is capable enough to strike at the heart of the Islamist terror.
The second point that comes out prominently in the book is that Islamists are always in a state of warfare — there may be occasional ‘ceasefires’ but that’s strategic and transitory in nature — while the victims find themselves in a denial mode. This is partly because a Muslim (most of them being converts) is inherently at war with his own identity and past. No wonder, Pakistan, which should ideally be proud of its historic connections with the Indus-Saraswati civilisation, officially calls Mohammed-bin-Qasim, the Arab invader who vandalised Sindh in 712 AD, its “first citizen”. This “mangling of history” or the “fundamental rage” against one’s own past is the outcome of the Arab/Middle Eastern coloniality that makes the convert recast his identity based on his new religious outlook and, worse, go berserk against his old cultural, civilisational past. He is forever battle-ready till “Dar-ul-Harb” is turned into “Dar-ul-Islam”.
This phenomenon works like a subterranean stream, flowing silently and in hiding, but it bursts out in the open when the demography of an area turns to the advantage of the Ummah. Sai Deepak examines some of the fault lines — from Kohat and Balakot in the west to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Dacca (now Dhaka) in the east, and from Deoband and Bareilly in the north to Hyderabad and Malabar in the south. The 1921-22 Moplah rebellion — which Sai Deepak calls an “outrage” — is a classic case of Islamists being ever-ready for the forever war: Unlike the popular perception, the 1921-22 ‘outrage’, which our ’eminent’ historians see through an agrarian crisis prism, was not an aberration.
“In view of the near-unbroken violent communal history of the place, which dates back, to the very least, to Tipu Sultan’s invasion of the Malabar, and earlier by his father Hyder Ali, it would be factually incorrect to pin the blame for the outrage entirely on the Khilafat movement,” the author writes. He then quotes John J Banninga’s 1923 article, ‘The Moplah Rebellion of 1921’, according to which there were at least 51 outbreaks of Moplah fanaticism in 100 years leading up to the 1921 massacre. For the bleeding heart liberals, who never tire of inventing and invoking “Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb”, this is a cautionary tale of one-sided Hindu generosity gone horribly wrong. The Moplahs, if a prominent local legend is to be believed, were the descendants of Arab traders who married the locals of Malabar. As a minority, they enjoyed the freedom to pursue their faith, but when they became numerically superior in the region they refused to return the favour!
The third strand coming out of the book is the Islamist strategy to make the entire community a stakeholder in their jihadi acts of omissions and commissions — this works as a bulwark against occasional military setbacks and leadership losses. They may suffer massive defeats, face some major leadership casualties, but that would never mean the end of their jihadi agenda. It would just mark a period of pause for a decade or two. Sai Deepak finds this Islamist tendency “of investing in the community by making its members stakeholders through participation” similar to the concept of “Raktabija” in the Hindu Puranas. The erstwhile British empire of India faced this problem in dealing with the Wahhabis and the Islamists of other hues. The Americans and others are dealing with this now against the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS and others.
The fourth point, an extension of the third, makes a strong case for tackling the Islamist terror with an iron fist, as the British had done vis-?-vis the Wahhabis and their ilk. The British came up with all sort of legal and administrative provisions, such as the sedition act, to deal with the jihadi menace, especially growing in the north-western part of the subcontinent. Given the Islamist tendency to make the community stakeholders, one must understand that being tough alone won’t be good enough. Here, India can take a cue from how Maharaja Ranjit Singh dealt with — and subdued — his immediate western neighbours. Stick and carrot should go hand in hand. For all the centripetal tendencies of Islam, an equally strong centrifugal force operated among the tribal population in the subcontinent’s north-western territories.
Last but not the least, the book is a vindication of the fact that a liberal class exists in the Muslim community, but only till it doesn’t come face to face with Islamists. The moment the jihadis take up an issue — we saw this in post-Independence India too, whether during the Shah Bano and Salman Rushdie episodes or in the recent triple talaq and hijab issues. It was no different in the colonial era as well. Mohammed Ali Jinnah would drink alcohol, eat pork, smoke 50 cigarettes a day, and dress like an English gentleman — yet this never came in his way of taking up the Pakistan project. He had also defended in court the killer of a Hindu publisher who was assassinated for publishing a “blasphemous” book on the Prophet!
Sai Deepak adds to this the name of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, independent India’s first education minister. Citing Ayesha Jalal, he informs how Jamal al-Din al-Afghani‘s ideas of pan-Islamism and jihad as an instrument against the West among Muslims in India can be attributed to Azad, who also defended the Khilafat movement purely from the Quranic standpoint. “Citing the Islamic Prophet’s pact with the Jews in 622 CE, Azad made the case that it was Quranic to collaborate with one group of non-Muslims, namely the Hindus, to act against another group of non-Muslims, namely the British,” Sai Deepak writes.
This book, like the previous one in the Bharat series, discusses with profound empathy, rigorous research and academic excellence the impact of coloniality — both European and Middle Eastern — on India, Indians and the Indian Constitution. The discourse may not be over yet, but it’s heartening to see one of the world’s oldest civilisations — deeply wounded and deliberately pushed into the area of darkness by a number of forces and factors — finally coming out of slumber to heal its tampered mind, and not just the body. It’s still a long journey back to apogee, but then time has never been too much of an issue for this timeless civilisation.
The author is Opinion Editor, Firstpost and News18. He tweets from @Utpal_Kumar1. Views expressed are personal.
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