04-03-2004, 09:26 AM
http://www.indpride.com/drbrambedkar.html
Dr. B.R.Ambedkar
"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 following are the extracts from Dr.Ambedkar's book Pakistan or The Partition of India.)
On Hindu-Muslim Relations
Are there any common historical antecedents which the Hindus and Muslims can be said to share together as matters of pride or as matters of sorrow? That is the crux of the question. That is the question which the Hindus must answer, if they wish to maintain that Hindus and Musalmans together form a nation. So far as this aspect of their relationship is concerned, they have been just two armed battalions warring against each other. There was no common cycle of participation for a common achievement. Their past is a past of mutual destruction - a past of mutual animosities, both in the political as well as in the religious fields. As Bhai Parmanand points out in his pamphlet called "The Hindu National Movement": - "In history the Hindus revere the memory of Prithvi Raj, Partap, Shivaji and Be-ragi Bir who fought for the honour and freedom of this land (against the Muslims), while the Mahomedans look upon the invaders of India, like Muhammad bin Qasim and rulers like Aurangzeb as their national heroes." In the religious field, the Hindus draw their inspiration from the Ramayan, the Mahabharat and the Geeta. The Musalmans, on the other hand, derive their inspiration from the Quran and the Hadis. Thus, the things that divide are far more vital than the things which unite. In depending upon certain common features of Hindu and Mahomedan social life, in relying upon common language, common race and common country, the Hindu is mistaking what is accidental and superficial for what is essential and fundamental. The political and religious antagonisms divide the Hindus and the Musalmans far more deeply than the so-called common things are able to bind them together. The prospects might perhaps be different if the past of the two communities can be forgotten by both. (page 18)
The pity of it is that the two communities can never forget or obliterate their past. Their past is imbedded in their religions and for each to give up its past is to give up its religion. To hope for this is to hope in vain. (page 19)
In the absence of common historical antecedents, the Hindu view that Hindus and Musalmans form one nation falls to the ground. To maintain it is to keep up a hallucination. There is no such longing between the Hindus and the Musalmans to belong together as there is among the Musalmans of India. (page 19)
What is, however, important to bear in mind is that with all their internecine conflicts they (the Muslim invaders) were all united by one common objective and that was to destroy the Hindu faith. (page 39)
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 oak. Its growth is the thickest in Northern India. The successive invasions have deposited their 'silt' more there than any where 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. (pages 47-48)
Muslim politics takes no note of purely secular categories of life, namely, the differences between rich and poor. Muslim politics is essentially clerical and recognises only one difference, namely, that existing between Hindus and Muslims. (pages 222-23)
How the Muslim mind will work and by what factors it is likely to be swayed will be clear if the fundamental tenets of Islam which dominate Muslim politics and the views expressed by prominent Muslims bearing on Muslim attitude towards an Indian government are taken into consideration....
Among the tenets one that calls for notice is the tenet of Islam which says that in a country which is not under Muslim rule wherever there is a conflict between Muslim law and the law of the land, the former must prevail over the latter and a Muslim will be justified in obeying the Muslim law and defying the law of the land. (page 285)
According to Muslim Canon Law the world is divided into two camps - Dar-ul-Islam (abode of Islam) and Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war). A country is Dar-ul-Islam when it is ruled by Muslims. A country is Dar-ul-Harb when Muslims only reside in it but are not rulers of it. That being the Canon Law of the Muslims, India cannot be the common motherland of the Hindus and the Musalmans. It can be the land of the Musalmans - but it cannot be the land of the 'Hindus and Musalmans living as equals'....
It must not be supposed that this view is only of academic interest. For it is capable of becoming an active force capable of influencing the conduct of the Muslims. It did greatly influence the conduct of the Muslims when the British occupied India. (page 287)
It may also be mentioned that Hijrat (emigration) is not the only way of escape to Muslims who find themselves in a Dar-ul-Harb. There is another injunction of Muslim Canon Law called Jihad (crusade) by which it becomes "incumbent on a Muslim ruler to extend the rule of Islam until the whole world shall have been brought under its sway....And just as there are instances of the Muslims in India resorting to Hijrat, there are instances showing that they have not hesitated to proclaim Jihad....Not only can they proclaim Jihad but they can call the aid of a foreign Muslim power to make Jihad a success, or if the foreign Muslim power intends to proclaim a Jihad, help that power in making its endeavour a success. (pages 288-89)
A third tenet which calls for notice as being relevant to the issue is that Islam does not recognise territorial affinities. Its affinities are social and religious and therefore extraterritorial....This is the basis of Pan-Islamism. It is this which leads every Musalman in India to say that he is a Muslim first and Indian afterwards. It is this sentiment which explains why the Indian Muslim has taken so small a part in the advancement of India but has spent himself to exhaustion by taking up the cause of Muslim countries and why Muslim countries occupy the first place and India occupies a second place in his thoughts. (pages 290-91)
Past experience shows that they are too irreconcilable and too incompatible to permit Hindus and Muslims ever forming one single nation or even two harmonious parts of one whole. These differences have the sure effect of not only of keeping them asunder but also of keeping them at war. The differences are permanent and the Hindu-Muslim problem bids fair to be eternal......(page298)
There are other defects in Hinduism and in Islam which are responsible for keeping the sore between Hindus and Muslims open and running. 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 partia 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. That is probably the reason why Maulana Mahomed Ali, a great Indian but a true Muslim, preferred to be buried in Jerusalem rather than in India. (page 325)
It might be said that it was unfortunate that mass contact was conceived and employed as a political lever and that it might have been used as a force for social unity with greater success. But could it have succeeded in breaking the social wall which divided the Hindus and the Muslims? It cannot but be matter of the deepest regret to every Indian that there is no social tie to draw them together. There is no inter-dining and no inter marriage between the two. Can they be introduced ? Their festivals are different. Their cultures are different, their literatures and their histories are different. They are not only different, but so distasteful to each other, that they are sure to cause aversion and nausea. Can any-one make them drink from the same fount of these perennial sources of life? No common meeting ground exists. None can be cultivated. There is not even sufficient physical contact, let alone their sharing a common cultural and emotional life. They do not live together. Hindus and Muslims live in separate worlds of their own. Hindus live in villages and Muslims in towns in those provinces where the Hindus are in a majority. Muslims live in villages and Hindus in town in those provinces where the Muslims are in a majority. Wherever they live, they live apart. Every town, every village has its Hindu quarters and Muslim quarters, which are quite separate from each other. There is no common continuous cycle of participation. They meet to trade or they meet to murder. They do not meet to befriend one another. When there is no call to trade or when there is no call to murder, they cease to meet. When there is peace, the Hindu quarters and the Muslim quarters appear like two alien settlements. The moment war is declared, the settlements become armed camps. The period of peace and the periods of war are brief. But the interval is one of continuous tension. What can mass contact do against such barriers? It cannot even get over on the other side of the barrier, much less can it produce organic unity. (pages 338-39)
The Musalmans are scattered all over Hindustan - though they are mostly congregated in towns - and no ingenuity in the matter of redrawing of boundaries can make it homogeneous. The only way to make Hindustan homogeneous is to arrange for exchange of population. Until that is done, it must be admitted that even with the creation of Pakistan, the problem of majority vs. minority will remain in Hindustan as before and will continue to produce disharmony in the body politic of Hindustan. (page 104)
Dr. B.R.Ambedkar
"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 following are the extracts from Dr.Ambedkar's book Pakistan or The Partition of India.)
On Hindu-Muslim Relations
Are there any common historical antecedents which the Hindus and Muslims can be said to share together as matters of pride or as matters of sorrow? That is the crux of the question. That is the question which the Hindus must answer, if they wish to maintain that Hindus and Musalmans together form a nation. So far as this aspect of their relationship is concerned, they have been just two armed battalions warring against each other. There was no common cycle of participation for a common achievement. Their past is a past of mutual destruction - a past of mutual animosities, both in the political as well as in the religious fields. As Bhai Parmanand points out in his pamphlet called "The Hindu National Movement": - "In history the Hindus revere the memory of Prithvi Raj, Partap, Shivaji and Be-ragi Bir who fought for the honour and freedom of this land (against the Muslims), while the Mahomedans look upon the invaders of India, like Muhammad bin Qasim and rulers like Aurangzeb as their national heroes." In the religious field, the Hindus draw their inspiration from the Ramayan, the Mahabharat and the Geeta. The Musalmans, on the other hand, derive their inspiration from the Quran and the Hadis. Thus, the things that divide are far more vital than the things which unite. In depending upon certain common features of Hindu and Mahomedan social life, in relying upon common language, common race and common country, the Hindu is mistaking what is accidental and superficial for what is essential and fundamental. The political and religious antagonisms divide the Hindus and the Musalmans far more deeply than the so-called common things are able to bind them together. The prospects might perhaps be different if the past of the two communities can be forgotten by both. (page 18)
The pity of it is that the two communities can never forget or obliterate their past. Their past is imbedded in their religions and for each to give up its past is to give up its religion. To hope for this is to hope in vain. (page 19)
In the absence of common historical antecedents, the Hindu view that Hindus and Musalmans form one nation falls to the ground. To maintain it is to keep up a hallucination. There is no such longing between the Hindus and the Musalmans to belong together as there is among the Musalmans of India. (page 19)
What is, however, important to bear in mind is that with all their internecine conflicts they (the Muslim invaders) were all united by one common objective and that was to destroy the Hindu faith. (page 39)
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 oak. Its growth is the thickest in Northern India. The successive invasions have deposited their 'silt' more there than any where 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. (pages 47-48)
Muslim politics takes no note of purely secular categories of life, namely, the differences between rich and poor. Muslim politics is essentially clerical and recognises only one difference, namely, that existing between Hindus and Muslims. (pages 222-23)
How the Muslim mind will work and by what factors it is likely to be swayed will be clear if the fundamental tenets of Islam which dominate Muslim politics and the views expressed by prominent Muslims bearing on Muslim attitude towards an Indian government are taken into consideration....
Among the tenets one that calls for notice is the tenet of Islam which says that in a country which is not under Muslim rule wherever there is a conflict between Muslim law and the law of the land, the former must prevail over the latter and a Muslim will be justified in obeying the Muslim law and defying the law of the land. (page 285)
According to Muslim Canon Law the world is divided into two camps - Dar-ul-Islam (abode of Islam) and Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war). A country is Dar-ul-Islam when it is ruled by Muslims. A country is Dar-ul-Harb when Muslims only reside in it but are not rulers of it. That being the Canon Law of the Muslims, India cannot be the common motherland of the Hindus and the Musalmans. It can be the land of the Musalmans - but it cannot be the land of the 'Hindus and Musalmans living as equals'....
It must not be supposed that this view is only of academic interest. For it is capable of becoming an active force capable of influencing the conduct of the Muslims. It did greatly influence the conduct of the Muslims when the British occupied India. (page 287)
It may also be mentioned that Hijrat (emigration) is not the only way of escape to Muslims who find themselves in a Dar-ul-Harb. There is another injunction of Muslim Canon Law called Jihad (crusade) by which it becomes "incumbent on a Muslim ruler to extend the rule of Islam until the whole world shall have been brought under its sway....And just as there are instances of the Muslims in India resorting to Hijrat, there are instances showing that they have not hesitated to proclaim Jihad....Not only can they proclaim Jihad but they can call the aid of a foreign Muslim power to make Jihad a success, or if the foreign Muslim power intends to proclaim a Jihad, help that power in making its endeavour a success. (pages 288-89)
A third tenet which calls for notice as being relevant to the issue is that Islam does not recognise territorial affinities. Its affinities are social and religious and therefore extraterritorial....This is the basis of Pan-Islamism. It is this which leads every Musalman in India to say that he is a Muslim first and Indian afterwards. It is this sentiment which explains why the Indian Muslim has taken so small a part in the advancement of India but has spent himself to exhaustion by taking up the cause of Muslim countries and why Muslim countries occupy the first place and India occupies a second place in his thoughts. (pages 290-91)
Past experience shows that they are too irreconcilable and too incompatible to permit Hindus and Muslims ever forming one single nation or even two harmonious parts of one whole. These differences have the sure effect of not only of keeping them asunder but also of keeping them at war. The differences are permanent and the Hindu-Muslim problem bids fair to be eternal......(page298)
There are other defects in Hinduism and in Islam which are responsible for keeping the sore between Hindus and Muslims open and running. 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 partia 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. That is probably the reason why Maulana Mahomed Ali, a great Indian but a true Muslim, preferred to be buried in Jerusalem rather than in India. (page 325)
It might be said that it was unfortunate that mass contact was conceived and employed as a political lever and that it might have been used as a force for social unity with greater success. But could it have succeeded in breaking the social wall which divided the Hindus and the Muslims? It cannot but be matter of the deepest regret to every Indian that there is no social tie to draw them together. There is no inter-dining and no inter marriage between the two. Can they be introduced ? Their festivals are different. Their cultures are different, their literatures and their histories are different. They are not only different, but so distasteful to each other, that they are sure to cause aversion and nausea. Can any-one make them drink from the same fount of these perennial sources of life? No common meeting ground exists. None can be cultivated. There is not even sufficient physical contact, let alone their sharing a common cultural and emotional life. They do not live together. Hindus and Muslims live in separate worlds of their own. Hindus live in villages and Muslims in towns in those provinces where the Hindus are in a majority. Muslims live in villages and Hindus in town in those provinces where the Muslims are in a majority. Wherever they live, they live apart. Every town, every village has its Hindu quarters and Muslim quarters, which are quite separate from each other. There is no common continuous cycle of participation. They meet to trade or they meet to murder. They do not meet to befriend one another. When there is no call to trade or when there is no call to murder, they cease to meet. When there is peace, the Hindu quarters and the Muslim quarters appear like two alien settlements. The moment war is declared, the settlements become armed camps. The period of peace and the periods of war are brief. But the interval is one of continuous tension. What can mass contact do against such barriers? It cannot even get over on the other side of the barrier, much less can it produce organic unity. (pages 338-39)
The Musalmans are scattered all over Hindustan - though they are mostly congregated in towns - and no ingenuity in the matter of redrawing of boundaries can make it homogeneous. The only way to make Hindustan homogeneous is to arrange for exchange of population. Until that is done, it must be admitted that even with the creation of Pakistan, the problem of majority vs. minority will remain in Hindustan as before and will continue to produce disharmony in the body politic of Hindustan. (page 104)