Islam has become less rational since its medieval Golden Age. What went wrong?

 

Islam has become less rational since its medieval Golden Age. What went wrong?

 

There is no central doctrinal authority in Islam. The result is a wide range of Islamic thought. The rise of conservative revivalist movements, such as Salafism, can be attributed to the disillusionment caused by the decline of the Islamic world and the failure of modernization efforts. These movements seek to return Islam to its perceived roots and have gained popularity among those seeking social reform and religious renewal. Stupendous intellectual resources already exist in Islam, as does the tradition of debate. These are the ingredients that can help reconcile Islam to the modern world.

 

In 833 AD, the Abbasid Caliph, al-Mamun, was at the height of his power. He ruled a vast empire, and a clear majority of the world’s Muslims considered him the leader of the faithful. However, there was a problem. While he enjoyed considerable influence on questions of religious law and doctrine, the highest human authority in Islam wasn’t the caliph but an amorphous group of respected scholars, the ulema, who were supposed to reach a consensus on contentious issues.

 

Membership of the ulema wasn’t by official appointment, but by something approaching popular acclamation. And, on some seminal matters, consensus proved impossible. For example, rationalist theologians, the Mutazilites, believed humans have free will. Ranged against them were some of the experts on Sharia law, who insisted that God had determined all things, including who was destined for hell. This meant debates could continue without agreement for centuries.

Al-Mamun wasn’t happy about this. He wanted to enforce his right to adjudicate on religious controversies but instead found himself having to negotiate with the various factions. It was time to press the issue. As it happened, he enjoyed the support of the Mutazilites and so picked one question upon which they agreed against the majority of the ulema: Is the Koran eternal, or was it created by God?

 

Most Muslims said that the Arabic text of the holy book had always existed in the mind of the deity. For all eternity, he knew exactly what the political situation in 7th century Arabia was going to be and had the Koran ready for dictation to the prophet Muhammad. This strongly implied that history was determined in advance. The Mutazilites disagreed. They said that although God had composed the Koran, it had not always existed. They further argued that determinism implied humans have no choice about whether to sin and no chance to earn redemption, which conflicted with God’s mercy.

 

Islamic Inquisition

Mercy wasn’t at the forefront of al-Mamun’s mind when he sought to impose his will on the ulema. He issued a proclamation that the Koran was created and insisted everyone consent to it. The most distinguished religious and legal scholars were hauled in for questioning. Those who refused to accept the caliph’s position were tortured and imprisoned until they recanted. The episode is called the mihna, meaning “trial” or “ordeal” in Arabic but often translated as “inquisition.” In this case, the inquisitors were on the side of rationalism and their victims were religious conservatives refusing to disown traditional dogma. Resistance to the caliph was led by Ahmad ibn Hanbal, a venerable expert on Sharia law, whose day job was running a bakery.

  

Al-Mamun died on campaign within months of instituting the mihna, so it was left to his successors to enforce his ordinance. Many of the ulema backed down, but not ibn Hanbal. Despite being beaten until he passed out and interrogated by the caliph in person, he refused to admit the Koran is created. Too influential to be ignored and too stubborn to recant, ibn Hanbal eventually forced the caliphs to accept defeat. After about 15 years, they wound down the mihna. There would never be a central doctrinal authority in Islam.

 

No central authority

As for ibn Hanbal, he is recognized as the founder of one of the four main schools of Sunni jurisprudence. Sharia law is based on the Koran (which doesn’t actually contain very much legal material) and the hadiths — that is, sayings of the prophet Muhammad and his companions. Each hadith is a snippet of a conversation, often involving Muhammad responding to a query from one of his followers. If the Prophet said it, it’s authoritative and enjoys the force of law. The trouble was, by ibn Hanbal’s time, fake hadiths had been proliferating as they were invented to support various agendas. He took it upon himself to collate the authentic hadiths, supporting their authority by showing how they had been passed down to his own day.

 

Ibn Hanbal was not the only collector of hadiths. There are at least six canonical collections, not to mention several thousand sayings dismissed as poorly authenticated. Sharia is far from being a single edifice. Any recognized scholar can issue an opinion, or fatwa, and whether any other scholar concurs is up to him. Today, you can seek a fatwa to address a particular concern over the internet. And if you don’t like the result, you can ask someone else. Consensus remains elusive, although Muslims do now agree the Koran is uncreated.

A wide variety of Islamic thought

It’s the sheer variety of Islamic thought that takes many Westerners by surprise. Without a Muslim version of the pope to delineate heresy from orthodoxy, the ulema have been left to argue it out among themselves. Sometimes rulers would get involved and lend their authority to favored scholars. But even then, dissenters could simply move to a more favorable jurisdiction. Indeed, the biographies of famous thinkers like Avicenna and al-Ghazali are full of peregrinations from one part of the Muslim world to another, as they sought patronage or just to be left alone.

 

The Shia, who dominate in Iran, originally split from mainline Islam over the question of who was the rightful caliph. But in time, they developed their own theological and legal heritage, which has generally bent more toward rationalism than their Sunni equivalents. The Shia have themselves suffered from schism: most significantly, the Ismaili sect that enjoyed its greatest success under the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt. Meanwhile, the mystical practices of Sufism have permeated all branches of Islam. Sufism can’t be characterized as either theologically conservative or liberal since the Sufi masters wended their own way through the doctrinal morass, with some ending up very far from the mainstream.

 

Islam has also absorbed outside influences. The translation movement, whereby a huge stock of Persian, Sanskrit, and Greek writing was rendered in Arabic under the Abbasid caliphate, brought governance, science, and medicine to a Muslim audience. All three subjects thrived as they were turned to issues like administration, the calendar, and good health. Today, medieval Muslim mathematicians and natural philosophers are rightfully celebrated, even if some exaggerations about their achievements have crept into the record. More controversially, pseudoscience like astrology was perennially popular. One caliph used a crack squad of astrologers to determine the most auspicious time to lay the foundation stone of his new capital of Baghdad. Alchemy was especially welcomed by Shia savants, who generated a vast corpus of esoteric texts under the name of a quasi-mythical figure called Jabir.

 

Foreign science and philosophy

Areas of knowledge that had originated outside the Islamic world were called the “foreign sciences.” This was not necessarily detrimental to their position in society even if they had to fight for their corner in the bazaar of ideas. For instance, the Brethren of Purity were a 10th-century sect from Basra, who blended Greek science with Islamic mysticism to create a unique ideology. While they gathered quite a following (despite no one knowing who they actually were), orthodox leaders tried unsuccessfully to suppress their ideas.

 

Philosophy, called falsafa in Arabic, built on the thought of Greek sages, especially Aristotle, whose work had been translated under the Abbasids. Its greatest exponent was Avicenna, the medieval Persian polymath whose achievements laid the foundation for almost all subsequent Muslim philosophy. Within Islam itself, falsafa had to jostle with theology and law for academic kudos. (Some Arab thinkers celebrated in the West, such as Averroes, were much less influential among Muslims.)

 

While it is true that falsafa and foreign sciences like astronomy were opposed by traditionalists, the critique misses the point: Pretty much every Muslim thinker aroused opposition from other scholars somewhere. Throwing fatwas at opponents was part and parcel of debate. Nor should we forget that, for centuries after the Islamic conquests, the majority of the people ruled by the caliphs were not Muslims at all. Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Zoroastrians may have been second-class citizens, but that did not put a stop to their intellectual life.

 

Yet today, despite the range of Islamic thought, few would deny that Muslim countries are generally more socially and religiously conservative than the West — a reversal of the position in the Middle Ages. What happened?

 

An attack on rationality

A superficial and flippant answer might be “nothing much.” The big changes took place in the West rather than the East, which stayed much the same. But there is more to it than that.

The failure of the mihna meant that caliphs would never enjoy the dogmatic authority of medieval popes. But it was also a humiliation for the Mutazilite rationalists, whose influence deteriorated over the following decades. Meanwhile, the triumphant followers of ibn Hanbal and other scholars pushed their twin agendas of determinism and Koranic literalism. In place of the disgraced Mutazilites, new Ashari and Maturidi schools of theology, each named after their 10th-century founders, came to represent Sunni orthodoxy. While the Maturidis, in particular, were sympathetic toward falsafa, both schools reflected a significant move away from the rationalism of their Mutazilite predecessors. Thus, as consensus among the ulema coalesced slowly over the centuries, it inclined toward conservatism. In any case, traditionalists maintained their hold over Muslim laypeople, who never showed much interest in highfalutin speculative divinity.

 

By far, the most renowned of the Ashari theologians is al-Ghazali. In 1095, he was a confidant of sultans and viziers but then left his well-paid job as a teacher in Baghdad, swearing that he would never again be beholden to the state. Shortly afterward, he published a trenchant attack on falsafa, The Incoherence of the Philosophers. In this book, he took 20 theses, which followers of the philosopher Avicenna thought were proven, and showed where their reasoning was faulty. It was not that al-Ghazali disagreed with all the theses, although he considered most of them wrong and some to be outright heresy. Rather, he sought to puncture the pretensions of those thinkers who thought that they could use reason to discover absolute truth. Such certainty, he maintained, was only available through divine revelation.

Al-Ghazali has been blamed for diverting Islamic thought toward mysticism and religious obscurantism. In truth, he is hard to pigeonhole. Western scholars in the Middle Ages thought he was a devoted follower of Avicenna because a summary of the latter’s thought circulated under the name of Algazel. In the Muslim world, his most influential work is the enormous Revival of the Religious Sciences, a complete guide to Muslim ethics and ritual intended to integrate Sufi practice with Sunni belief. Not everyone was impressed. In a fine example of the tensions among different parts of the ulema, the authorities in Cordoba, Spain, had the book burnt in the courtyard of the city’s mosque in 1109.

While al-Ghazali’s reputation as the destroyer of philosophy in the Muslim world is unfair, there is little doubt that rationalism remained a minority pursuit. Al-Ghazali himself was hardly the most conservative of the medieval ulema. The 14th-century polemicist ibn Taymiyyah made him look like a dripping wet liberal. Ibn Taymiyyah railed against Sufism, philosophy, and any kind of religious novelty (by which he meant something that was less than 600 years old). From his base in Damascus, he preached that the only source of religious authority was the Koran, together with the genuine hadiths. His cantankerous attacks on his contemporaries got him into endless trouble. He was regularly thrown into prison and accused of violating the authority of the ulema. And yet, today, his trenchant dogma is extremely influential among traditionalists.

 

Nostalgia meets reality

The term ibn Taymiyyah used for the earliest Muslims who composed the hadiths was “the pious predecessors,” or al-salaf al-salah in Arabic, so his modern admirers are called Salafists. Salafism seeks to return Islam to its roots, inspired by nostalgia for an imaginary past that even Muslim history makes clear never existed.

 

An early Salafist movement was Wahhabism, founded during the 18th century as a joint venture between the cleric Abd al-Wahhab and the Arabian warlord Muhammad bin Saud. Reacting against the decadence of the Ottoman Empire, they carved an emirate out of the desert that survives to this day as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Elsewhere, Salafi principles have been adopted by a broad range of modern Islamist groups, whether or not they consider themselves formally affiliated with that movement.

 

Since Islam is such a broad church, why is it that these conservative revivalists have become so successful? To find the answer, we need to remember that until the 18th century, a Muslim would have been justified in thinking that Islam was ordained by God to convert the whole world. Despite local setbacks, such as the reconquest of Spain by Christians, Islam continued to grow strongly in sub-Saharan Africa and India, as well as Central and Southeast Asia.

 

However, by the 1800s, it was impossible to maintain the dream of superiority. In July 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt. The climactic Battle of the Pyramids lasted barely an hour and ended with the cream of the Egyptian cavalry decimated to the cost of about 40 French lives. In India, the British encroached upon and finally annexed the once mighty Mughal Empire, while Persia had to acquiesce to subjugation by one European power to protect it from the others. It must have been difficult for the faithful to process the enormity of these sudden reversals.

Despots and stability, not democracy and liberalism

Nineteenth-century Muslim modernists, such as India’s Syed Ahmad Khan and Egypt’s Muhammad Abduh, advocated the imitation of the West, arguing that since Islam is a religion of reason it is fully compatible with the Enlightenment. However, modernization has been hampered by the fact that much of the Muslim world is ruled by despots who are only interested in reform to the extent that it shores up their own power. Science was one thing, liberalism quite another. In the 20th century, as Europe continued to accelerate away, political change was suppressed in places like Egypt and Iran.

 

 

While there are few democratic institutions in the Islamic world, we have seen that authority within Islam itself is broadly spread among those ulema who have acquired a certain level of prestige among their peers and the people. The failure of modernism (as evidenced most recently by the collapse of the so-called Arab Spring) has meant religion has been the main outlet for protest. Politicized Islam pursues the twin goals of social reform and religious renewal. The most prominent example is the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by the Egyptian Hassan al-Banna. The Brotherhood combines a demand for social justice with a fundamentalist theology. It was clear threat to Egypt’s secular rulers, who tried suppress it, only to make it more radical. Al-Banna was murdered by the secret police at age 42, while its leading intellectual, Sayyid Qutb, was hanged by the regime.

Preoccupied with the struggle against Nazism and then Communism, the West valued stability over democracy in the Muslim world, leading it to support despotic regimes such as the military juntas in Egypt and the Wahhabist House of Saud. That said, where Western power has been brought to bear to impose democracy, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq, the results have been disappointing.

 

Modernization is possible

So, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the solutions to the Muslim world’s problems will have to come from within. Glib assertions that Islam needs a Reformation are misguided, not least because Salafism itself is analogous to the return to the Bible and early Church Fathers advocated by the first Protestants. And the 17th-century European wars of religion are not an example anyone would like to see followed.

 

Instead, advocates for reform need to have patience. Religious consensus, developed over the centuries, has never been in the gift of rulers like Caliph al-Mamun. It can only change gradually and has always had to accommodate the views of common folk. This means that until ordinary people living in Muslim countries feel their lives are being improved by modernity, they are likely to remain suspicious of liberalism. More democracy will probably mean more Islamists in power.

 

Luckily, stupendous intellectual resources already exist in Islam, as does the tradition of debate. These are the ingredients that can help reconcile Islam to the modern world. It’s a process that has been going on quietly for many years. But it will take time to come to fruition.

 

 

 https://bigthink.com/the-past/islam-rationality-modernity/

Fallacy of the Hindutva Project by Shamsul Islam

 

Fallacy of the Hindutva Project   by Shamsul Islam

One has lost count of religious conclaves of Hindu ‘saints’ friendly to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) calling for violent cleansing of lawful Indian Muslims.

 

It was not long ago that Tathagata Roy, an RSS luminary who

also graced the high constitutional office of Governor of Tripura, tweeted that  “the Hindu-Muslim problem won’t be solved without a Civil War”. Roy claimed that he was only reminding Hindus of an unfulfilled wish of Syam Prasad Mookerji, the RSS icon.

 

In fact, it has been the most favourite theme of the RSS since its inception in 1925. India is for ‘Ramzade’ (children of Ram) and out of bounds for ‘Babarzade’ (children of Babar) who are also described as ‘Haramazade’ (illegitimate children).

 

The RSS and its Hindutva appendages have been demanding revenge for crimes against Hindus in history but have singled out the medieval period in order to focus on the persecution by ‘Muslim’ rulers.

 

It is surprising that in a country like India whose civilisation is more than 5,000 years old, it is a period of 400-500 years of ‘Muslim’ rule that is put under the scanner.

 

In order to arrive at the truth, we need to study the nature of ‘Muslim’ rule. The most crucial issue is, why do the common Muslims of today’s India have to pay for the sins of ‘Muslim’ rulers of the past who had friendly and cordial relations (including matrimonial) with higher caste Hindus?

 

We also need to investigate whether ‘ Hindu’ history was devoid of religious, social and political persecution.

 

Hindutva zealots demanding a Muslim-free India must know that ‘Muslim’ rules survived because higher caste Hindus assisted ‘Muslim’ rulers in running their empires.

 

This unity between Muslims and caste Hindus can be gauged

from the fact that no Mughal emperor after Akbar was born of a Muslim mother. Several higher caste Hindus served the ‘Muslim’ rulers faithfully.

 

The Mughal rule established by Babar, who was invited

by a section of Hindu kings to seize India (as we know it today), was the rule of higher caste Hindus too. Hindu officials in Mughal courts

 

Aurobindo Ghose, who played a prominent role in providing Hindu foundation to Indian nationalism, confessed that Mughal rule continued for over a century because Mughal rulers gave Hindus “positions of power and responsibility, used their brain and arm to preserve” their kingdom.

 

The renowned historian Tara Chand, relying on the primary source material of the medieval period, concluded that from the end of the 16th century to the middle of the 19th century, “it may

reasonably be concluded that in the whole of India, excepting the western Punjab, superior rights in land had come to vest in

the hands of Hindus” most of whom happened to be Rajputs.

 

Maasir-ul Umra, a biographical dictionary of officers in the Mughal Empire from 1556 to 1780 (Akbar to Shah Alam), is regarded as the most authentic record of high-ranking officials employed by Mughal kings. This work was compiled by Shahnawaz Khan and his son Abdul Hai between 1741 and 1747.

 

According to it, Mughal rulers during this period employed around 100 (out of 365) high-ranking officials most of whom were “Rajputs from Rajputana, the midlands, Bundelkhand and Maharashtra”. After Rajputs, Brahmins were the second largest group of Hindu officials in the Mughal administration.

 

Interestingly, the Kashi Nagri Pracharini Sabha established in 1893, “committed to the cause of Hindi as official language”, published the Hindi translation of the book in 1931. It is nobody’s argument that Aurangzeb did not commit heinous crimes against his Indian subjects. It must be remembered that his cruelty was

not restricted to non-Muslims; his own father, brothers, Shias, Muslims who did not follow his brand of Islam and Muslim ruling families in the eastern, central and western parts of India faced brutal repression and were annihilated. Aurangzeb executed the renowned Sufi saint Sarmad in the precincts of the Jama Masjid in Delhi. It is true that during his despotic rule there were countless cases of violent targeting of Hindus and their religious places.

 

However, contemporary records reveal that he patronised Hindu

and Jain religious places of worship. A standing example of this is the grand Gauri Shankar temple, a stone’s throw from Lahori Gate of Red Fort, which was built during Shahjahan’s reign and continued functioning during Aurangzeb’s rule.

 

Reducing all his crimes to repression of Hindus is tantamount

to reducing the gravity of his crimes against humanity. No sane person would deny that the Somnath temple in Gujarat was

desecrated, looted and razed by Mahmud Ghazi (Mahmud Ghaznavi). But a fact that remains buried is that it was done with the active help and participation of local Hindu chieftains.

 

M.S. Golwalkar, the most prominent ideologue of the RSS, while referring to the desecration and destruction of the Somnath temple said: “He crossed the Khyber Pass and set foot in

Bharat to plunder the wealth of Somnath. He had to cross the great desert of Rajasthan. There was a time when he had no food, and no water for his army, and even for himself left to his fate, he would have perished .But no, Mahmud Ghazi made the local chieftains to believe that Saurashtra had expansionist designs against them. In their folly and pettiness they believed him. And they joined him. When Mahmud Ghazi launched his assault on the great temple, it was the Hindu, blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, soul of our soul – who stood in the vanguard of his army. Somnath was desecrated with the active help of the Hindus. These are facts of history” (RSS English organ, Organiser, January 4, 1950). Hindu kings as persecutors

 

Muslim rulers were not the only ones who defiled Hindu temples. Swami Vivekananda shared the fact that “the temple of Jagannath is an old Buddhistic temple. We took this and others over and re-Hinduised them. We shall have to do many things like that yet” (The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, vol. 3, p.264). It was not an isolated incident of desecration.

 

Swami Dayanand Saraswati, who is regarded as a Prophet of

Hindutva, while dealing with the contribution of Shankaracharya in his tome Satyarth Prakash wrote:

 

“For ten years he toured all over the country, refuted Jainism and advocated the Vedic religion. All the broken images that are now-a-days dug out of the earth were broken in the time of Shankar, whilst those that are found whole here and there under the

ground had been buried by the Jainis for fear of their being broken.”

 

According to the ‘Hindu’ narrative of ancient Indian history, Brihadratha, the last Buddhist king of the Maurya dynasty (Asoka being one), was assassinated by Pushyamitra Shunga, a Brahmin in 184 B.C., thus ending the rule of a renowned Buddhist dynasty and establishing the reign of the Shunga dynasty.

 

D.N. Jha, an authority on ancient Indian history, referred to Divyavadana, a Buddhist Sanskrit work from the early centuries that described Pushyamitra Shunga as a persecutor of Buddhists who destroyed Buddhist and Jain religious places. In his 2018 collection of essays titled Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History, Jha writes: “He is said to have

marched out with a large army, destroying stupas, burning monasteries and killing monks as far as Sakala, now known as Sialkot, where he announced a prize of one hundred dinars for every head of a Shramana [opposed to Vedas].”

 

Jha also presented evidence from the grammarian Patanjali, a contemporary of the Shungas, who famously stated in his Mahabhashya that Brahmins and Shramanas were eternal enemies, like the snake and the mongoose (“Monumental Absence: The destruction of ancient Buddhist sites”, Caravan,

June 2018).

 

In the Hindutva narrative, the persecution of Sikh Gurus and

their followers by Mughal rulers is used to spread hatred against present-day Indian Muslims.

 

Mughal rulers, especially Aurangzeb’s armies, committed heinous and unspeakable crimes against Sikhs. Was it Muslims versus Sikhs? Contemporary Sikh records reject such an interpretation.

 

According to a Sikh website (https://www.sikhdharma.org/4-sons-of-guru-gobind-singh/), during the last and the most brutal siege of Anandpur Sahib in 1704, Muslim and Hindu hill rajas completely surrounded and cut off the city.

 

While the Sikhs were trying to escape the Mughal invaders “the younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh, Baba Zorawar Singh, aged 9, and Baba  Fateh Singh, aged 7, were separated from the group in the confusion. They walked through the rugged jungle with their holy grandmother, Mata Gujri ji (mother of Guru Gobind Singh), until they came to small village where they took shelter.” An old servant of the Guru’s household, Gangu, on coming to know that they were there in the village visited Mataji and persuaded her to go with him to his village. According to the narrative,“he expressed care and concern, but his heart was dark with betrayal. Cold, wet and alone, Mata Gujri gratefully went with Gangu to his house” taking her grandsons along.

 

For a few gold coins, Gangu betrayed their whereabouts

 to the Mughal army. At dawn, there was a loud banging on the door and soldiers of the evil governor Wazir Khan took away the holy family to Sarhind.“As they travelled through the city, people thronged to see them pass offering words of encouragement. They shouted curses at the Brahmin and were shocked at the depravity of the Moghul governor.”

 

Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958), a renowned historian, held no brief for Islam or Muslim rulers in India. In fact, he is regarded as a narrator of the Hindu history during the Mughal rule.

 

However, his description of the Maratha invasion of Bengal in 1742 makes it clear that this army of “Hindu nation” cared little about honour and property of Hindus of Bengal.

 

According to Sarkar, “the roving Maratha bands committed wanton destruction and unspeakable outrage”. In The History of Bengal-Muslim Period 1200 A.D.-1757 A.D. (volume II) edited by him, Sarkar reproduced eyewitness accounts of the sufferings of Bengali Hindus at the hands of Marathas.

 

According to one such eyewitness, Gangaram, “the Marathas snatched away gold and silver, rejecting everything else. Of some people they cut off the hands, of some the nose and ear; some they killed outright. They dragged away the beautiful women and freed them only after raping them.”

 

Another eyewitness, Vaneshwar Vidyalankar, the court Pandit of the Maharaja of Bardwan, narrated the horrifying tales of atrocities committed by the Marathas. “Shahu Raja’s troops are niggard of pity, slayers of pregnant women and infants, of Brahmans and the poor, fierce of spirit, expert in robbing the property of everyone and committing every kind of sinful act.”

 

Contemporary records prove that Aurangzeb’s rule was also the rule of Rajputs and Kshatriyas (members of two of the four castes in the Hindu social hierarchy) and other members of higher caste Hindus.

 

Aurangzeb never faced the Maratha ruler Shivaji in the battlefield. It was his commander-in-chief Jay Singh II (1688-1743), a Rajput ruler of Amer (Rajasthan), who was sent to subjugate Shivaji.

 

Aurangazeb conferred the title ‘Sawai’ (one and a quartertimes superior to his contemporaries) on him in 1699 and thus he came to be known as Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh. Aurangazeb also conferred the title ‘mirza raja’ (a Persian title for a royal prince) on him. The other titles bestowed on him by other Mughal rulers were Sarmad-i-Rajaha-i-Hind (eternal ruler of India), Raj Rajeshvar (lord of kings) and Shri Shantanu ji (wholesome king).These titles are displayed by his descendants even today. This Rajput chief also gave his daughter in marriage to Aurangzeb’s son. (https://www.indianrajputs.com/view/jaipur and

https://www.indianrajputs.com/famous/Jai-Singh- II-Amber.php)

 

We have first-hand account of Raja Rughnath Bahadur, a Kayasth who functioned as Deewan Ala (prime minister) of both Shahjahan and Aurangzeb. According to a biographical work penned by one of his direct descendents, “Raja Rughnath Bahadur having attained to the most exalted rank of Diwan Ala (prime minister) was not unmindful of the interests of his caste-fellows [Kayasths].

 

Raja appointed every one of them to posts of honor and emoluments, according to their individual merits; while many of them were granted titles of honor and valuable jagirs for their services. Not a single Kayasth remained unemployed or in needy circumstances.”

 

(Short Account of the Life and Family of Rai Jeewan

 Lal Bahadur, Late Honorary Magistrate Delhi, With Extracts from His Diary Relating to the Times of Mutiny 1857.)

 

This account shows that a Kayasth prime minister of Aurangazeb, a bigoted Muslim ruler, was able to patronise people of his own caste.

 

Another crucial fact that is consciously kept under wraps is that despite more than 500 years of Muslim rule, which according to Hindutva historians was nothing but a project to annihilate Hindus or forcibly convert them to Islam, India has remained a nation with an absolute Hindu majority.

 

The British conducted the first Census in 1871-72, by when the ceremonial Muslim rule was over. According to the Census report:

 

“The population of British India is in round numbers divided into 140½ millions [sic] of Hindoos (including Sikhs), or 73½ per cent., 40¾ millions of Mahomedans, or 21½ per cent. And 9¼ millions of others, or barely 5 per cent., including under this title Buddhists and Jains, Christians, Jews, Parsees, Brahmoes…”

 

These figures make it clear that persecution and cleansing of Hindus was not even a secondary project of the ‘Muslim’ rule. If it had been so, Hindus would have disappeared from India.

 

According to the 2011 Census, Hindus constitute 79.80% of the total population and Muslims constitute 14.23%. India seems to be the only country where despite five centuries of ‘Muslim’ rule the populace did not convert to the religion of the rulers.

The linking of Aurangzeb or other Muslim rulers’ crimes committed in pre-modern India to his/her religion will have serious consequences even for the ‘Hindu’ version of history as narrated by the RSS.

 

Take for example, Ravana, the king of Lanka who according to the Hindu narrative committed unspeakable crimes against Sita, her husband Rama and his companions. This Ravana was a learned Brahman who also happened to be an ardent worshipper of Siva.

 

The epic Mahabharata narrates the story of a great war between two families Pandavas and Kauravas (both Kashtriyas),

not between Hindus and Muslims, in which 1.2 billion people were slaughtered.

 

Draupadi was disrobed by Kashtriyas. If the crimes of Ravana, Kauravas, Pushyamitra Shunga, Jai Singh II, Marathas and Gangu Brahmin, among others, are linked to their religion, as in the case of Aurangzeb and other Muslim rulers, then the country will turn into a land of butchery.

 

If revenge is to be taken on the present descendants of the past perpetrators, then a beginning must be made from the beginning of Indian civilisation; the turn of Indian Muslims will come later.

 

It is sad that the RSS-Bharatiya Janata Party rulers of India, who are never tired of talking about a powerful Hindu nation leading the world, are forcing the country into a state of civil war. With them around, pitting one section of Indians against the other, there is no need of any foreign enemy to undo a democratic-secular India.

BURNING THEIR DRAFT ORDERS By Oren Ziv,

 

BURNING THEIR DRAFT ORDERS By Oren Ziv,  :May 26, 2023:

Resist!

 

On April 1, in the midst of one of the weekly mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv against the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul plans, a group of around 10 teenagers gathered to burn their military draft orders, after announcing that they would refuse to serve in the army in protest of the occupation and apartheid. This symbolic act gained a great deal of attention, perhaps buoyed by the recent wave of refusal threats by hundreds of reservist soldiers as part of the protest movement against the government.

 

From conversations with several of these high school students and young people, it is clear that the protests against the judicial overhaul and the political awareness that it has brought about has accelerated the process of radicalization. Moreover, they feel that other young people are becoming more willing to hear about the occupation, while the issue of army refusal in various forms is growing much more widespread.

 

“People are getting more into politics because there is no choice,” says Sofi Or, a 17-year-old from the northern town of Pardes Hanna, and an activist with Mesarvot, a network that guides young people through the process of conscientious objection. Before the protests, she says, most young people did not think much about politics. “Now, young people who were not in the political scene are open to hearing about politics — and not only ideas from the mainstream. Even within the protests themselves it is easy to start conversations.”

 

“If young people learn about the committee for the appointment of judges [which the government is trying to control], maybe they will also learn about apartheid in the occupied territories,” explains Tal, a 17-year-old from Tel Aviv.

 

Ayelet Kobo, another 17-year-old from Tel Aviv, is also active in Mesarvot. “People around me have really changed,” they say. “At the beginning of the protests, I organized students to come to the ‘anti-occupation bloc’ [a group of protesters at the sidelines of the main demonstration who hold banners and chant slogans against occupation and apartheid, and wave Palestinian flags]. I met people who in the past might have spoken about politics, but were not active. Now they are joining many protests and coming every week.”

 

Kobo says the change is due to the fact that the demonstrations are accessible to everyone. “It is expected that young people will be more radical,” they explain. “The problem is that you hear about terrible things but then don’t know about left-wing organizations and how to join them. The [current] protests are so big that you do not need to get to the other side of Israel to see them. You can just leave the house on Saturday and find people who will speak to you. This knowledge gave people the courage to join in.”

 

Many of the high schoolers who spoke to +972 are not sufficing just with the weekly anti-government demonstrations in Tel Aviv, but are also participating in civil disobedience and direct action. Some are joining Palestinian-led protests in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem, against the eviction of Palestinian families by settlers and the state.

 

Iddo Elam, a 16-year-old from Tel Aviv and a member of Banki, the youth wing of the Israeli Communist Party, says that he has been politically active since the age of 14. “Suddenly, I see friends who never cared about such matters making throw-away comments like ‘It’s so terrible what [the government] is doing.’ Many come to the demonstrations every week and are open to hearing about issues such as occupation and apartheid. Many friends come to the radical bloc and wave the Palestinian flag for the first time, when a year or two ago they would ask me why I’m waving it.”

 

Elam claims that it was the power of the protest that brought about this change – “you can’t ignore them.” What’s more, he says, other young protesters who are not part of the anti-occupation bloc pass by it on their way to the main demonstration — “they see what we’re talking about, they ask their parents, and they watch the news,” Elam explains. He also believes that the need “to fight against more fascist people like [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben Gvir and [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich makes it illogical to ignore the occupation.”

 

Defying Their Elders

In February, Uri Lass, the principal of Tel Aviv’s Ironi Dalet High School, was reprimanded by the Education Ministry for calling on his students to join a youth demonstration against the government’s judicial overhaul. The day before the demonstration, Lass sent a message demanding that students refrain from waving Palestinian flags; some of his students defied him, forming their own anti-occupation bloc within the youth march.

 

At the demonstration, one of the administrators asked a student to stop waving the Palestinian flag. When the latter refused, the administrator asked the police officer supervising the demonstration to forbid the anti-occupation bloc from entering the main square with the rest of the protesters, where the speeches took place.

 

Kobo views that demonstration as a great success. “We appealed to young people we know, and the response was amazing,” they say. “I didn’t think there were more than five or six left-wing kids in my year. But I started talking and sharing things in the [student] WhatsApp group and realized that we have a presence in the school — that we have a voice. A few months ago, [students] didn’t know how to organize, and now they send me selfies from [demonstrations in] Sheikh Jarrah. It’s really impressive.”

 

Kobo was offended that the teachers denounced the bloc, but was ultimately unsurprised. “In the end, the teachers’ job is to preserve the establishment. They teach us history and civics with the aim of making us think that Israel is the most moral country in the world and that we need to enlist in the army.”

 

While Kobo and Elam were active in left-wing groups before this wave of protests began, Tal became active only recently. “I was raised on values of respect for other people, but I never went out to protest,” he says. “At the first demonstration [on Jan. 7, organized by the Jewish-Arab socialist movement Standing Together], I went with my mom and listened to the speeches. The speech by Ayman Odeh [head of the left-wing Hadash party] was amazing.”

 

At the next mass demonstration a week later in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, Tal was already looking for Palestinian flags. “When I arrived, someone asked me if I wanted to hold a flag,” he recalls. After he took one and started waving it, he says he experienced “verbal and physical violence,” but that this only strengthened his desire to go out to the streets and protest.

 

“Going to protests means experiencing radicalization every time afresh. Police violence, tours in Hebron — every time I go out to protest it strengthens my opinions,” he says.

 

‘People Are Getting Used To Our Presence’

The anti-occupation bloc, which has grown to around 1,000 people each week, has become a meeting point for left-wing youngsters. A significant number of them are members of the youth wing of Banki, coming to demonstrations after meeting earlier at the Left Bank — the organization’s headquarters in the city center.

 

“A lot of young people are joining,” says 18-year-old Einav Zipori, secretary of Banki’s Tel Aviv branch. “There is a lot of interest. The protests helped young people who might have been aware of these issues to enter and do things.”

 

Zipori says that at the beginning there were arguments among the leftist youth about whether to join the big demonstrations at all. “In the first weeks it was problematic, but little by little connections were made with other organizations and new people, the [anti-occupation] bloc was formed, and people joined other activities as well.”

 

And whereas members of the bloc initially faced a lot of aggression from other protesters, the level of violence toward them decreased as the weeks went on. “Many people who come to fight are also ready to listen,” Zipori continues. “People are getting used to our presence. More people are reaching out to us, and there is more awareness that Banki exists.”

 

“The message we are conveying is that there is no democracy if it is not for all,” says Or. “The current protests, which are supposedly about democracy, are really a struggle to preserve the status quo — returning to what we had before, where democracy was granted to Jews only. We want to remind this protest movement of the occupation, the oppression that Palestinians are experiencing, and their flag.”

 

“We oppose the reform, but we don’t only want to settle for that,” says Kobo. “The mainstream protests demand a return to the values of the Declaration of Independence. But we know that there has never been a democracy here. Not only because of the occupation; before that there was the Nakba, when people were deliberately expelled to create a Jewish state.

 

“The protests say that if the laws are passed, Israel will not be a democracy,” Kobo continues. “We say that if the laws are passed, they will serve Israel’s anti-democratic essence since 1948. The weakest people will be harmed: Palestinians in the West Bank, Mizrahim, Ethiopians, and immigrants from the former Soviet Union.”

 

Kobo is conscious, however, that while the anti-occupation bloc has managed to assert itself as a legitimate voice in the protests, change doesn’t only take place at demonstrations. “Protests are not the place to change people’s opinions,” they say. “That happens in more intimate forums, such as tours or ceremonies. The idea of a joint [Jewish-Palestinian] ceremony [such as the joint Memorial Day ceremony that took place at the end of April] appeals even to non-radical youth.”

 

Tal’s experience shows that the anti-occupation bloc is sparking conversations with other young people in the crowd. “There have been countless discussions,” he recalls. “People are surprised by what we think. At first they approach us aggressively. When we explain that we just want everybody to live in equality, we don’t want to throw the Jews into the sea, and that there is no reason for one people to rule over another people, they will say: ‘That’s not so bad.’”

 

But despite the optimism, Or is aware that most young people do not accept these positions. “The majority of young people in Israel are right-wing. It has to do with the society we grow up in — a society filled with militaristic, nationalist, and inflammatory messages, which we are fed from a young age. There is still so much work to be done before the message ‘democracy for all’ is seen as normal.”

 

‘We’ve Reached The Mainstream’

One of the issues preoccupying the radical youth in these protests is conscientious objection. Some are preparing to go to military prison as a result of their refusal, while others hope to get exemptions for health reasons. The protests in Tel Aviv have seen future conscientious objectors addressing the crowd in the anti-occupation bloc. And according to those who spoke to +972, the fact that army reservists are now openly talking about refusing has made it easier for them to speak to other young people about refusing to be enlisted altogether.

 

The first conscientious objector to be sent to military prison since these protests began was Yuval Dag, 20, who is now serving his third term behind bars. I met Dag twice — once right after the elections in November 2022, and a second time after the protests started.

 

During our second meeting, he explained how the reactions to his decision to refuse had shifted over the past half year. “I feel that there is more support [for my decision]. You see many more people who go to the main demonstration with Israeli flags, and then encounter the anti-occupation bloc and say, ‘Well done, we are with you.’ This has given me more strength.”

 

Dag attributes this change to the extremism of the current government. “It has become clear to everyone that there is a deeper connection between Israel and the occupation. There is a tangible example of what the government allows, what it lends a hand to, and what it consists of. Suddenly people are talking about Palestinians in the middle of Tel Aviv.”

 

Elam, who plans to refuse, says that the issue came up at school: “We are now having a discussion in civics class about conscientious objection, and many friends who may still want to enlist now understand why people refuse to do so,” he explains. “They also see conscientious objection by reservists and understand that the army and militarism are not some supreme value, but something that should be doubted to a certain extent and even rejected.”

 

Or, who graduated high school this year, will likely be sent to prison in the coming months upon declaring her refusal to enlist. “I am not refusing as part of the protest movement, like the reservists. I am refusing because of the occupation and apartheid,” she says. “But the general discussion about conscientious objection has allowed us to reach the mainstream. People are far more willing to hear it, despite the fact that there is still a lot of hatred.”

Hinduism , lessons from the past by Wendy Doniger

 

Hinduism , lessons from the past

 

 

You could easily use history to argue for almost any position in contemporary India: that Hindus have been vegetarians, and that they have not; that Hindus and Muslims have gotten along well together, and that they have not; that Hindus have objected to suttee, and that they have not; that Hindus have renounced the material world, and that they have embraced it; that Hindus have oppressed women and lower castes, and that they have fought for their equality. Throughout history, right up to the contemporary political scene, the tensions between the various Hinduisms, and the different sorts  Hindus, have simultaneously enhanced the tradition and led to incalculable suffering.

What an utter waste it would be not to keep using our knowledge of a tradition, such as the Hindu tradition, that is so rich, so brilliantly adaptive. The profuse varieties of historical survivals and transformations are a tribute to the infinite inventiveness of this great civilization, which has never had a pope to rule certain narratives unacceptable. The great pity is that now there are some who would set up such a papacy in India, smuggling into Hinduism a Christian idea of orthodoxy; the great hope lies in the many voices that have already been raised to keep this from happening.

We can learn from India’s long and complex history of pluralism not just some of the pitfalls to avoid but the successes to emulate. We can follow, within the myths, the paths of individuals like King Janashruti or Yudhishthira or Chudala or, in recorded history, Ashoka or Harsha or Akbar or Mahadevyyakka or Kabir or Gandhi, or indeed most rank-and-file Hindus, who embodied a truly tolerant individual pluralism. We can also take heart from movements within Hinduism that rejected both hierarchy and violence, such as the bhakti movements that included women and Dalits within their ranks and advocated a theology of love, though here too we must curb our optimism by recalling the violence embedded in many forms of bhakti, and by noting that it was in the name of bhakti to Ram that the militant Hindu nationalists tore down the Babri Mosque. We must look before we leap into history, look at the present, and imagine a better future.

 

Wendy Doniger