Recently I visited major Indian cities with large Muslim populations. Not too many people know that India has the largest Muslim minority in the world. India's Muslims are over 135 millions, making over 13% of the over one billion total population of the country. Their history before and after the 1947 partition makes a very interesting subject for a study. Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) rejected the necessity of the partition saying: “My experience of all of India tells me that Hindus and Muslims know how to live at peace among themselves." Before Gandhi, Hindu reformer Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) said: “The Muslim conquest of India came as a salvation to the downtrodden, to the poor. That is why one-fifth of our people have become Muslims," and he denied that “it was all the work of sword and fire" and said that all to call it so was “the height of madness". Indian Muslim author Dr. Rafiq Zakaria even argued that a full-blooded civil war in India would have been preferable to the 1947 partition. But can Islam and Hinduism peacefully coexist? The answer is yes with enlightening leaders from both sides, both in matter of religion and more importantly in the matter of politics. There is of course the widely held view that Muslims hate idolaters and Hindus hate cow-eaters. Yes Islam is against idolatry but not against idolaters. The bad treatment of Hindus by some Indian Muslim rulers was political not religious. While others married Hindus princes to create the necessary bondage between Muslims and Hindus. Thus today in India there are Muslims whose aunts and uncles are Hindus and vice versa. Indian Muslims eat less meat than any other Muslims and if they do they eat none cow meat, some for not to offend their Hindus friends and some for health reseans. While Taj Mahal is an architectural beauty of Indian Muslim heritage, it belongs to all Indians. Now India is building the Akshardham in Delhi which intends to eclipse the Taj Mahal in scale and maybe also in beauty. The Indian Mughal Emperor Akbar ordered the Persian translations of several classical Hindu texts. He was one of the great rulers of India (1526-1707), among them Baber, Humayun, Jahangir, Shah Jahan. (Mughal or Mogul is the same word as Mongol, but the latter refers to the followers of Genghis Khan while Mughal is used for Baber's descendants.) Shah Jahan is the one who built the most famous memorial a man can build to the woman he loved, Taj Mahal, in the memory of his wife Mumtaz-Mahal (meaning the Exalted of the Palace) who died in childbirth. Akbar (1556-1605) tried to create a new religion, Din-ilahi (the Divine Faith) to show that there are common grounds between Muslims and Hindus. With the arrival of the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British the relationship between Muslims and Hindus became worse. The Europeans played the sinister policy of divide and rule, playing one community against the other. Nobel Laureate in Literature V. S. Naipal fuels hatred between Hindus and Muslims in India by propagating “the convert's alienation from the land of his birth," and “because the Prophet was an Arab, Islam makes its followers second class Arabs." This is utterly false. Islam is second to none when it comes to its rejection of a caste system based on place of birth or superiority or exclusivity. But Naipal has never lived in India nor have his parents. He was a born Hindu in Trinidad and lived in England. But India's Nobel Laureate Tagore commended the interaction between Islam and Hinduism. Swami Vivekananda testified to the Islamic virtue of equality and how it is practised. He said addressing an American audience in California: “As soon as a man becomes a Muslim, the whole of Islam receives him as a brother with open arms, without making any distinction, which no other religion does." He had a special message to his California audience which is still relevant today: “If one of your American Indians becomes a Muslim, the Sultan of Turkey would have no objection to dine with him. If he has brains, no position is barred to him." Then the Swami recited from the Qur'an: “There is not a people but a warner has gone among them And every nation had a Messenger, And certainly We raised in every nation a Messenger, Saying – Serve God and shun the devil, To every nation We appointed acts of devotion Which they observe. For every one of you did we appoint a Law and way." The Swami ideas was shared by India's Muslims, among them Mohamed Iqbal (1873 – 1938). The Swami believed that the Hindu – Muslim differences have no basis in religion; they are only propagated by politics; “Religion is an inward growth towards spiritual independence; if it is used as a crutch, it is not religion at all." Elmasry is a professor emeritus of computer engineering, University of Waterloo. He can be reached at [email protected]
