04-11-2004, 01:14 PM
This is a passage from a book I am editing from passages, conversations with and notes provided by another india forumite. This particular passage deals with the idea of a 'force of history' and is part of chapter 2 on Western Studies of the Indic civilization'. Tell me what you think of the thesis and the readability of the passage and whether the message is coming thorugh. All comments welcome.
<b>
Force of History</b>
This doctrine says that a certain evolution of history is always going on and in a particular direction and there is a historical order of things. In the case of India and the sub-continent it means that the process of Islamization going on from 1000 years will continue to its logical end. Hindus do not pay much attention to the historical order of things," wrote Al Biruni in 1030 CE. "They are very careless in relating the chronological succession of things." The millennium-old censure of the Hindus' lack of historic sense by a medieval Muslim historian appears to still apply, particularly to the Indian historians of the present day.
Such a cavalier approach to History has been exploited by the Islamists, British and modern day communists in India for the last 200 years and continued by the western academics. The Islamist believes in this doctrine of history since it is part of the Islamic history as represented by Islam and is read by all the students who train under the ulema and madrassas. Islamic history has been preserved for a long time with accuracy and also has been presented with a sense of the inevitability of the force of history. This makes the faithful believe that the faith will take them to the destination, which they strive for. This is the reason why the Pakistan army and the Islamic parties are confident in the long run of changing the history of South Asia to their advantage. By showing Islam as a winning religion in the sub-continent the non-Muslim tradition could be totally wiped out of the sub-continent or made a minority. According to this doctrine of force of history, creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh is part of the evolution from the Middle Ages (a third phase of expansion of Islam) and the entire sub-continent will also one day will be a Islamic country. During the cold war the US and Pakistan forced this history as the final destiny of south Asia. The hatred of Hindus particularly the Brahmanas by the Ashrafs and sections of the Anglo Saxon world (the British credited the independence of India in 1947 to the Brahmana community) created a powerful pact between them along with Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which resulted in a cold war plan to change the history of South Asia forever to their advantage.
The protection of Pakistan by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), US and China for so many decades, a strategy that is otherwise inexplicable to the average Indian Ashok, begins to make sense when viewed in the light of the force of history. Such a policy can then be rationalized as being consonant with the geo-political goals of the hyper power. The reason is that by supporting and protecting the center of Islam inside the sub-continent the force of history will work its own way to force change with the population. This process of evolution is still going on for the last 35 years even after 1971 and the collapse of FSU. The US with its vast resources and control of the world media is providing the powerful push to this force of history to become a reality. The latest development in US Pakistan relations as we write this chapter in the spring of 2004, namely the designation of Pakistan as a major non-NATO ally by the Secretary of State Colin Powell is consonant with the scenario that we have hypothesized. It is clear that the aim of the US continues to remain the creation of a Islamic political center in the subcontinent. What is particularly galling from the Indian point of view is that the US seems to think that India will be happy with purely symbolic acts of friendship designed merely to salve the ego, while the US is busily aiding and abetting those who would dismantle India.
The US with the help of proxies inside India is also engaging in social re-engineering and religious conversion to break the Indian society (kinship and old traditions) and accept an Islamic government. The US policy to treat the entire South Asia as one consisting of Muslims and non-Muslims is to make sure that non-Muslims do not gain dominance, both from a cultural standpoint as well as in a leadership sense over the Muslims. In due time over the course of history the expectation is that all the people will be of the same religious ethnicity.
The communists have been a willing and enthusiastic partner in this process, since they believe in this doctrine and since they consider revolution as the modern version of the process of the evolution of history. Revolution in the communist world is similar to Jihad in the Islamic world and employs the same vocabulary and much the same metaphor. Hence Indian leftists and communists have a similar weltanschauung as do the Islamists when it comes to the future destiny of India and are collaborating with various external organizations to bring about such a change.
Why do such disparate groups as the foreign policy establishment (by no means monolithic) of the US and the leftists of India desire the demise of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious Indian Republic with such fervor and single minded purpose? The answer to this question is multifaceted and one can only speculate, listing the obvious reasons. We have already alluded to some of these reasons. There is the commonality of the Abrahamic faith. Much of the weltanschauung of the western world is one that they share with the Islamic Ummah namely the concept of a monotheistic ideology, the aggressive proselytization of their belief systems, and the facile resort to violence, crusades and Jihad for purely religious reasons. In contrast, the Sanatana Dharma is regarded as a Pagan and moribund faith bedeviled by exotic forms of idolatry and steeped in superstition or worse. Politics makes for strange bedfellows and in this instance the Indian left, under the tutelage of China, has made common cause with influential sections of the media, church, and the State Department in the US in undermining and preventing the maturation of democratic institutions in the Indian Republic. It is difficult at this point in time to gage the depth of the relationship.
There is one other point to be made. The relationship between the Hindu and Muslim during the insurrection of 1857 was by and large amicable. Immediately after the quelling of the rebellion in 1857 and the initial orgy of recrimination and revenge against the Muslims of Delhi and other urban centers, the British realized that a unified India, with a harmonious relationship between Hindus and Muslims would make their job of holding on to their ill gotten gains and conquest, that much more difficult. There was also the tacit assumption that the educated Hindu was far from being as malleable and pliable as the inhabitants of some of their other possessions, or even the reputedly aggressive Muslim. Ergo, if there were no differences to be found, they would have to be manufactured. It was imperative that the cultural unity of the subcontinent be ridiculed and the differences accentuated. The plan to institutionalize a âdivide and ruleâ strategy was therefore executed with efficiency and a single-minded focus. The completion of the 1881 census with the extensive enumeration of the Schedule of Castes and Tribes, was the first step among many to diminish and trash the cultural unity of the subcontinent, and to replace her Puranic Itihasa (History) with one that was more consonant with the notion that there was no indigenous civilization in the Indian subcontinent. Max Mueller was hired by Macaulay with the express intent of devaluing the Vedic tradition and to invent a chronology for the Vedas in order to dethrone them from their premier position as the source of Indic traditions.
The second major decision the British made during the later half of the nineteenth century, was to systematically appease the Indian Muslim to discourage him from being absorbed into the Indian cultural ethos. This was the beginning of the conscious policy of preferentially recruiting Indian Muslims, especially from the Punjab, for the Indian Army. Simultaneously, the British manufactured the myth of the martial races, in order to emphasize that the vast majority of the people in the subcontinent did not fall into this category.
The perception of the leftists and communists about non-Muslims in the subcontinent is the same as that of their earlier colonial masters. The force of history is believed to change the non-Muslims and reconcile them to their final destiny.
<b>
Force of History</b>
This doctrine says that a certain evolution of history is always going on and in a particular direction and there is a historical order of things. In the case of India and the sub-continent it means that the process of Islamization going on from 1000 years will continue to its logical end. Hindus do not pay much attention to the historical order of things," wrote Al Biruni in 1030 CE. "They are very careless in relating the chronological succession of things." The millennium-old censure of the Hindus' lack of historic sense by a medieval Muslim historian appears to still apply, particularly to the Indian historians of the present day.
Such a cavalier approach to History has been exploited by the Islamists, British and modern day communists in India for the last 200 years and continued by the western academics. The Islamist believes in this doctrine of history since it is part of the Islamic history as represented by Islam and is read by all the students who train under the ulema and madrassas. Islamic history has been preserved for a long time with accuracy and also has been presented with a sense of the inevitability of the force of history. This makes the faithful believe that the faith will take them to the destination, which they strive for. This is the reason why the Pakistan army and the Islamic parties are confident in the long run of changing the history of South Asia to their advantage. By showing Islam as a winning religion in the sub-continent the non-Muslim tradition could be totally wiped out of the sub-continent or made a minority. According to this doctrine of force of history, creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh is part of the evolution from the Middle Ages (a third phase of expansion of Islam) and the entire sub-continent will also one day will be a Islamic country. During the cold war the US and Pakistan forced this history as the final destiny of south Asia. The hatred of Hindus particularly the Brahmanas by the Ashrafs and sections of the Anglo Saxon world (the British credited the independence of India in 1947 to the Brahmana community) created a powerful pact between them along with Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which resulted in a cold war plan to change the history of South Asia forever to their advantage.
The protection of Pakistan by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), US and China for so many decades, a strategy that is otherwise inexplicable to the average Indian Ashok, begins to make sense when viewed in the light of the force of history. Such a policy can then be rationalized as being consonant with the geo-political goals of the hyper power. The reason is that by supporting and protecting the center of Islam inside the sub-continent the force of history will work its own way to force change with the population. This process of evolution is still going on for the last 35 years even after 1971 and the collapse of FSU. The US with its vast resources and control of the world media is providing the powerful push to this force of history to become a reality. The latest development in US Pakistan relations as we write this chapter in the spring of 2004, namely the designation of Pakistan as a major non-NATO ally by the Secretary of State Colin Powell is consonant with the scenario that we have hypothesized. It is clear that the aim of the US continues to remain the creation of a Islamic political center in the subcontinent. What is particularly galling from the Indian point of view is that the US seems to think that India will be happy with purely symbolic acts of friendship designed merely to salve the ego, while the US is busily aiding and abetting those who would dismantle India.
The US with the help of proxies inside India is also engaging in social re-engineering and religious conversion to break the Indian society (kinship and old traditions) and accept an Islamic government. The US policy to treat the entire South Asia as one consisting of Muslims and non-Muslims is to make sure that non-Muslims do not gain dominance, both from a cultural standpoint as well as in a leadership sense over the Muslims. In due time over the course of history the expectation is that all the people will be of the same religious ethnicity.
The communists have been a willing and enthusiastic partner in this process, since they believe in this doctrine and since they consider revolution as the modern version of the process of the evolution of history. Revolution in the communist world is similar to Jihad in the Islamic world and employs the same vocabulary and much the same metaphor. Hence Indian leftists and communists have a similar weltanschauung as do the Islamists when it comes to the future destiny of India and are collaborating with various external organizations to bring about such a change.
Why do such disparate groups as the foreign policy establishment (by no means monolithic) of the US and the leftists of India desire the demise of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious Indian Republic with such fervor and single minded purpose? The answer to this question is multifaceted and one can only speculate, listing the obvious reasons. We have already alluded to some of these reasons. There is the commonality of the Abrahamic faith. Much of the weltanschauung of the western world is one that they share with the Islamic Ummah namely the concept of a monotheistic ideology, the aggressive proselytization of their belief systems, and the facile resort to violence, crusades and Jihad for purely religious reasons. In contrast, the Sanatana Dharma is regarded as a Pagan and moribund faith bedeviled by exotic forms of idolatry and steeped in superstition or worse. Politics makes for strange bedfellows and in this instance the Indian left, under the tutelage of China, has made common cause with influential sections of the media, church, and the State Department in the US in undermining and preventing the maturation of democratic institutions in the Indian Republic. It is difficult at this point in time to gage the depth of the relationship.
There is one other point to be made. The relationship between the Hindu and Muslim during the insurrection of 1857 was by and large amicable. Immediately after the quelling of the rebellion in 1857 and the initial orgy of recrimination and revenge against the Muslims of Delhi and other urban centers, the British realized that a unified India, with a harmonious relationship between Hindus and Muslims would make their job of holding on to their ill gotten gains and conquest, that much more difficult. There was also the tacit assumption that the educated Hindu was far from being as malleable and pliable as the inhabitants of some of their other possessions, or even the reputedly aggressive Muslim. Ergo, if there were no differences to be found, they would have to be manufactured. It was imperative that the cultural unity of the subcontinent be ridiculed and the differences accentuated. The plan to institutionalize a âdivide and ruleâ strategy was therefore executed with efficiency and a single-minded focus. The completion of the 1881 census with the extensive enumeration of the Schedule of Castes and Tribes, was the first step among many to diminish and trash the cultural unity of the subcontinent, and to replace her Puranic Itihasa (History) with one that was more consonant with the notion that there was no indigenous civilization in the Indian subcontinent. Max Mueller was hired by Macaulay with the express intent of devaluing the Vedic tradition and to invent a chronology for the Vedas in order to dethrone them from their premier position as the source of Indic traditions.
The second major decision the British made during the later half of the nineteenth century, was to systematically appease the Indian Muslim to discourage him from being absorbed into the Indian cultural ethos. This was the beginning of the conscious policy of preferentially recruiting Indian Muslims, especially from the Punjab, for the Indian Army. Simultaneously, the British manufactured the myth of the martial races, in order to emphasize that the vast majority of the people in the subcontinent did not fall into this category.
The perception of the leftists and communists about non-Muslims in the subcontinent is the same as that of their earlier colonial masters. The force of history is believed to change the non-Muslims and reconcile them to their final destiny.