Imagine being part of a vibrant community where you follow common social norms, celebrate the same events and festivals as others around you, and feel deeply connected to traditions passed down for generations. Suddenly, you are forced to give up these deeply ingrained beliefs and practices and adopt a different religion and culture that is completely alien to you. You even have to change your name to something that doesn’t connect with your heritage and reject all the values and customs your family and community hold dear.
Such a sudden change raises big questions: What happens to your identity? How do you figure out who you are culturally and as part of a civilization when everything you know is turned upside down? What does it do to your individual and collective psyche when you are made to dislike the values and traditions of your ancestors? How do you navigate your identity when the very base of your cultural life is changed against your will?
This article looks into these crucial issues, examining the deep identity crises faced by millions of people in the Indian subcontinent who were forced to switch from Hindu Dharma to Islam over the last millennium.
Seeking Foreign Ancestry
A defining aspect of Muslims in India is their disconnect from their Indic roots and an acute sense of extra-territorial affinity if not loyalty. Despite having commonality in language, diet, culture, tradition, and ethnicity with their Hindu neighbors, they counter-intuitively believe – and assert – they have no connection to India. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent are descendants of Hindus who were converted to Islam at the point of the sword, they are constantly looking for ancestry in Arabia, Turkey, and other places in the Islamic crescent. Their loyalty to the Islamic ummah (or community) is so strong that during the early part of the 20th century, around 18,000 Muslims from India went to Turkey to wage jihad against the Western powers, and Muslim women donated jewelry to the Turkish government.[1] In contrast, there is not a single instance of Muslim women donating their jewelry to India during a war with Pakistan.
Nationalist Arabs even reject the idea of Islamic brotherhood and unequivocally declare that they cannot accept an Indian Muslim as equal to an Arab. But this rejection by the Arabs doesn’t make the Indian Muslim fall back on his Indianness; on the contrary, he doubles down and starts seeking comfort in Turkish ancestry.
While Muslims all over the world are overwhelmingly nationalist (for instance, Egyptian Muslims are patriotic to Egypt; Syrian Muslims are loyal to Syria; Iranian Muslims are fiercely proud of their Persian heritage), in the Indian subcontinent, a large number of Muslims subscribe to pan-Islamism and reject their Indianness. So, while Iranian Muslims use Persian (not Arabic) names, Turkish Muslims use Turkish names, and Moroccan Muslims use Moroccan names; in the Indian subcontinent, they have adopted Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Afghan names. You will rarely find a Sanjay Khan or an Ajay Mohammad in India. Again, Indian Muslims have no hesitation in accepting the Persian Khuda (God) but reject Bhagwan, the Indian word for God.
Ironically, Arabs and Afghans refer to Indian Muslims – usually derisively – as Hindi or Hindko. Nationalist Arabs even reject the idea of Islamic brotherhood and unequivocally declare that they cannot accept an Indian Muslim as equal to an Arab.[2] But this rejection by the Arabs doesn’t make the Indian Muslim fall back on his Indianness; on the contrary, he doubles down and starts seeking comfort in Turkish ancestry.[3]
This attempt to ride two boats at the same time can lead to absurd and comical situations. For instance, Indian actor Shahrukh Khan is named after the son of Taimur, the fanatic marauder who mass murdered millions of people in Central Asia, Turkey, and India. Another actor, Saif Ali Khan, has gone a step further and named one of his sons after the genocidal maniac. Being semi-educated actors from Bollywood, these two perhaps had no idea that Taimur was among some rulers in history who killed purely for sport. Or perhaps it is their deep sense of insecurity and inferiority complex that makes them find heroes among such negative characters among foreign Islamic tyrants.
Similarly, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan Niazi claims he is a Pathan in order to seek a foreign provenance when, in reality, he is just another Punjabi Muslim from Mianwali in Pakistani Punjab. There was also an amusing incident on a Pakistani TV show where former Pakistani diplomat Zafar Hilaly was taunted by his host about whether he was a muhajir (refugee from India). Hilaly claimed his ancestors came from Persia whereas the truth is that he is indeed a refugee from Hyderabad, India.
In psychological terms, this phenomenon is known as cognitive dissonance—the mental discomfort people feel when their beliefs and reality are inconsistent and contradictory
Another sign of trying to be more Islamic than the Arabs is the growing prevalence of the burqa among Muslim women in India. While the burqa is a necessity in the deserts of Arabia and Africa, where it protects them from sandstorms, in the sweltering tropical climate of the Indian subcontinent, it can cause skin diseases and vitamin deficiency.[4] And yet Muslim men, often instigated by their local mullah, force their wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters to cover up fully because that gives them an imagined sense of oneness with the exalted Arab.
In psychological terms, this phenomenon is known as cognitive dissonance—the mental discomfort people feel when their beliefs and reality are inconsistent and contradictory. As humans, we generally prefer our world to make sense. That’s why we often respond to cognitive dissonance by doing mental gymnastics to feel like things make sense again.[5] The Muslim community in India exhibits this contradictory behavior.
Swami Vivekananda had a more straightforward explanation for Indian Muslims discarding their Indic roots when, in 1899, he commented: “And then every man going out of the Hindu pale is not only a man less but an enemy more.”[6] This assertion certainly has a basis in history. The interaction between the first Muslim convert in India and his Hindu king reveals the origin of the separate Muslim identity in the Indian subcontinent and why it persists today.
Origin of Separatism
The first recorded Islamic invasion of India occurred in 638 CE – or nearly 1,400 years ago. With reinforcements from Iraq, Syria, Persia, and several other Middle Eastern kingdoms, a large and powerful flotilla attacked Sindh, the western Indian province closest to Arabia. The naval forces of Sindh soundly defeated this Islamic armada. Over the next 72 years, fourteen more attempts by nine Caliphs ended in utter failure. The Arabs lost countless numbers of men in these campaigns – which were conducted both via land and sea – that the Caliphs declared India a no-go zone for Muslims.[7]
However, in 710 CE, the Arabs mounted a last-ditch invasion led by Mohammed bin Qasim. In 711 CE, the Muslims tasted their first victory on Indian soil when they took the frontier town of Debal after a bitter battle. Like numerous previous campaigns, initially, this one, too, seemed like it was going to be a disaster for the large Muslim horde against a small frontier city. The Hindu soldiers put up a brave fight and were at the point of defeating the Muslim army when some disgruntled citizens of Debal betrayed the defenders during the battle.
It was in Debal that the first recorded conversion of a Hindu took place. This man was promptly named Maulana Islami and sent, with a Syrian noble, to deliver a message to the court of Raja Dahir, the ruler of Sindh. According to the Chachnama (the chronicle of the conquest of Sindh), when the two entered Dahir’s court, the Syrian bowed low to salute, but the newly converted Indian Muslim refused to observe the mandatory diplomatic courtesy.
Dahir recognized him and asked him why he was not observing the court etiquette, and the latter said that with his change of religion, his loyalty now was to “the king of Islam” (that is, the Caliph of Baghdad). The change of religion had resulted in a change of nationality. According to the late historian and politician Kewalram Ratanmal Malkani, “The Pakistani mentality was born.”[8]
This disconnect from their homeland and an aversion to the religion of their forefathers after conversion has become such a defining feature of the majority of the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent that it was noted by Punjabi freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai in 1924.
Following the expulsion of Hindus from Kohat, Rai wrote a series of articles in The Tribune, expounding his views on the Hindu-Muslim problem, its causes, and possible resolution. Rai dwelt on his travels in Turkey to conclude that Indian Muslims were “more Pan-Islamic and exclusive than the Muslims of any other country on the face of the globe, and that fact alone makes the creation of a united India more difficult than would otherwise be the case.”[9]
Separatism on Steroids
The mentality that Malkani referred to involves:
- An implacable hatred of Hindus (as well as the less numerical groups such as Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Atheists, and Christians).
- The defining belief is that India is an ex-Islamic country that needs to be forcibly or demographically returned to Muslim control.
- Unwillingness to accept India as a Hindu-majority country.
- Willingness among Muslims to create chaos and weaken India’s economy even if it damages their own economic interests.
This mindset can be found among large sections of Muslims across the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent. Take Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, an Islamic scholar who was born in Mecca as a citizen of the Ottoman Caliphate and went on to become post-Independence India’s first education minister. Outlining a view of global Islamism, which he explicitly endorsed, Maulana Azad declared: “If even a grain of the soul of Islam is alive among its followers, then I should say that if a thorn gets stuck in a Turk’s sole in the battlefield of war, then I swear by the god of Islam, no Muslim of India can be a Muslim until he feels that prick in his heart instead of sole because the Millat-e-Islam (the global Muslim community) is a single body.”[10]
The Maulana again stressed the need for pan-Islamism among Muslims in India: “This biradri (community of Muslims) has been established by God… All relationships in the world can break down but this relationship can never be severed. It is possible a father turns against his son, not impossible that a mother separates her child from her lap; it is possible that one brother becomes the enemy of the other brother… But the relationship that a Chinese Muslim has with an African Muslim, an Arab Bedouin has with the Tatar shepherd, and which binds in one soul a neo-Muslim of India with the right-descendant Qureshi of Mecca, there is no power on earth to break it, to cut off this chain…”
Indian Muslim Mindset
To the Muslims, a Hindu is a kaffir. A kaffir is not worthy of respect. He is low-born and without status. That is why a country that is ruled by a kaffir is Dar-ul-Harb (a country that is at war with Islam) to a Musalman.
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, jurist and chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, developed an accurate understanding of the Muslim mind. He brilliantly explained why a section of Indian Muslims is perpetually in a confrontational mode: “How far will Muslims obey the authority of a government manned and controlled by the Hindus? The answer to this question need not call for much inquiry. To the Muslims, a Hindu is a kaffir. A kaffir is not worthy of respect. He is low-born and without status. That is why a country that is ruled by a kaffir is Dar-ul-Harb (a country that is at war with Islam) to a Musalman. Given this, no further evidence seems to be necessary to prove that the Muslims will not obey a Hindu government. The basic feelings of deference and sympathy, which predispose persons to obey the authority of government, do not simply exist.” [11]
Plus, Islam does not recognize territorial affinities. Its affinities are social and religious and, therefore, extra-territorial. “This is the basis of Pan-Islamism,” writes Ambedkar. “It is this which leads every Musalman in India to say that he is a Muslim first and Indian afterward. It is this sentiment that 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 second place in his thoughts.” [12]
“To the Muslim ubi panis ibi patria (where there is bread, there is my country) 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.”[13]
Frustration over Defeat
Another reason why Muslims do not accept their Indianness is that India is one of the few places on the planet where Islam was soundly defeated. For over 14 centuries, India has resisted efforts to pass through Islam’s digestive tract and become a distant memory. The price of this struggle was colossal – hundreds of millions of Hindus were killed, all the ancient Indian universities were razed, and hundreds of thousands of temples were demolished. But even more painful was the extensive loss of territory, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. And yet India remains thriving – a living, breathing symbol of Islam’s definitive defeat by the polytheists.
In 1879, poet and Islamic cleric Altaf Hussain Hali[14] published the Musaddas e-Madd o-Jazr e-Islam (An elegiac poem on the Ebb and Tide of Islam) in which he lamented:
Woh deene Hejazi ka bebak beda, Nishan jiska aqsai alam mein pahuncha
Kiye passipar jisne saton samandar, Woh dooba dahane mein Ganga kay aakar.
(The fearless flotilla of Islam, Whose flag fluttered over all the world,
The ship that crossed the seven seas, Came here and sank in the Ganga.)
For a significant number of Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, the very presence of Hindus is an act of intolerance. This is the crux of the problem, and this intense hatred of Hindus finds itself reflected in the vile language of Adil Ahmed Dar, the Kashmiri terrorist who, in 2019, blew himself up in a truck full of explosives, killing 45 Indian paramilitary soldiers. According to Dar, Hindus are “cow urine drinkers” who must be killed so that an Islamic Caliphate can be established in India. The “cow piss” reference is frequently tossed by Muslims, who are clearly envious of India’s economic and scientific progress. Ironically, the Hadiths record that the founder of Islam prescribed camel urine to his followers suffering from various ailments.[15]
Closing Remarks
The Muslims of India must realize that in the hierarchy of Islam, the Arabs (plus the Iranians and even the Afghans) laugh at them for acting more Arab than the Arabs. This is the source of their deep-rooted inferiority complex, fundamentalism, and hatred of their Indianness.
India is a democracy, not a dictatorship, so there is no compulsion on disgruntled citizens to stay. Those who don’t like the Hindu majority in India always have the option to follow in the footsteps of their grandfathers and seek greener pastures in Pakistan or Bangladesh. However, considering the pampering they receive in India in the name of minority status – and the dystopian state of the ‘Land of the Pure’ they created in 1947 – chances are they won’t be rushing for the door. So clearly, the destiny of Indian Muslims is intertwined with that of Hindu India. They must forget about being a separate nation and stop being the special community with “the first claim on resources.”[16] Because when you maintain a separate identity, demand all sorts of sops, and threaten a second partition[17], you are nothing but anarchists. This will backfire because Hindus are running out of patience.
Citation
[1] Global Islamism, jihadism and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, my defence lawyer – Firstpost; https://www.firstpost.com/india/global-islamism-jihadism-and-maulana-abul-kalam-azad-my-defence-lawyer-2981062.html
[2] Tarek Fatah on X: “This is how Arabs view Muslims from the Indian subcontinent. Yet Muslims of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh stoop to kids the feet of those who hate us. We even give our children Arab names; never Indian, Bengali, Punjabi or Tamil and Malyalee–always Arab https://t.co/1vvQg3pDJk” / X (twitter.com); https://x.com/TarekFatah/status/1251620476528574464
[3] English Tanzania specialist (youtube.com); https://youtube.com/watch?v=keONd3WzAe8
[4] Burqa-clad women prone to vitamin D deficiency: Doctors | Hyderabad News – Times of India (indiatimes.com); https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/burqa-clad-women-prone-to-vitamin-d-deficiency-doctors/articleshow/20468505.cms
[5] Cognitive Dissonance Examples: 5 Ways It Pops Up In Everyday Life (healthline.com); https://www.healthline.com/health/cognitive-dissonance-examples
[6] On the bounds of Hinduism (ramakrishnavivekananda.info); https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_5/interviews/on_the_bounds_of_hinduism.htm
[7] KR Malkani, The Sindh Story, page 25 https://sanipanhwar.com/The%20Sindh%20Story%20by%20Dada%20Kewalram%20Ratanmal%20Malkani.pdf
[8] KR Malkani, The Sindh Story, page 37; https://sanipanhwar.com/The%20Sindh%20Story%20by%20Dada%20Kewalram%20Ratanmal%20Malkani.pdf
[9] The Hindu-Muslim Problem (1925) by Lala Lajpat Rai; https://franpritchett.com/00islamlinks/txt_lajpatrai_1924/08part.html
[10] Global Islamism, jihadism and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, my defence lawyer – Firstpost; https://www.firstpost.com/india/global-islamism-jihadism-and-maulana-abul-kalam-azad-my-defence-lawyer-2981062.html
[11] Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India, Chapter XII, Part III
[12] ibid
[13] Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India, Chapter XII, Part V
[14] KR Malkani, The Sindh Story, page 89; https://sanipanhwar.com/The%20Sindh%20Story%20by%20Dada%20Kewalram%20Ratanmal%20Malkani.pdf
[15] Camel Urine and Islam – WikiIslam; https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Camel_Urine_and_Islam
[16] Muslims must have first claim on resources: PM | India News – Times of India (indiatimes.com); https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Muslims-must-have-first-claim-on-resources-PM/articleshow/754937.cms
[17] Dr. Sudhanshu Trivedi Satire on X: https://t.co/hbhdgDqC4Y” / X (twitter.com); https://x.com/Sudanshutrivedi/status/1780429144666313109
(The article was published on Hindudvesha.com on April 25, 2024 and has been reproduced here)
