On reading Prof. Tahir Mahmood’s article in the Times of India (Dec. 22 1991), I was reminded of a bitter comment on the Indian press that it is standing like a thick black curtain between truth and readers. In Sanskrit, there is a word, avidya, which has no right English equivalent. It is not ignorance but something akin to vidya, but all incorrect. It is wrong knowledge. While the ignorant will say that he does not know where London is, the one afflicted with avidya will say that it is in Australia. Tahir’s essay is an exercise in avidya. His attempt to show Islam and Hinduism are one and the same shows him as one who is either ignorant or dishonest or both. (DV edit Feb. 16, 92: Hindu nazis corrupting Muslim intellectuals to destroy Islamic identity”).
What is Hinduism? While none of the books paraded as “Hindu religious texts” mention the term, “Hindu”, the present Hindu Law, i.e. the four Acts of 1955, governing marriage, succession, guardianship and adoption, define Hindus as all those other than Muslims, Jews and Christians. This negative description is so sweeping that it covers a majority of the world population.
Supreme Court ruling: You can be a Hindu without even believing in god. But what one MUST believe in order to be a Hindu is varna dharma i.e. caste hierarchy, according to several rulings of the Supreme Court. It therefore follows that Hinduism is a social system and not a religion. Manu Smriti, Goutama Dharma Sutras, Yagnavalkya Smriti and such other “scriptures” on which the uncodified pre-1955 Hindu law rested, are basically manuals of inhuman and reactionary caste rules and anti- women regulations and there is absolutely no soul-elevating philosophy in them.
Firstly, caste system is the only positive and definite feature of Hinduism. Secondly, brahminism varnashrama dharma/Hinduism has not been and cannot be defined in positive terms. Thirdly, Buddhists, Jains, Lingayats (or Veerashaivas) and Sikhs are not Hindus, since they embraced these new faiths to get rid of the Hindu yoke of varna dharma.
Who is a Hindu?: When the British rulers were looking for a definition for Hindus to enable courts to settle disputes, Lokamanya Tilak and Madan Mohana Malaviya, the two topmost Brahmin authorities of those days, defined Hindus as those who owed allegiance to Vedas. Since Buddhists, Jains, Lingayats and Sikhs had rejected the authority of the Vedas, they could not be counted as Hindus. These are protestant religions, while Islam had nothing to do with Vedic and Varna Dharma (racism).
God the Hindu god of course created four categories of human beings (see verse: 13, chapter: 4, Bhagavad Gita) but the Brahmin created the fifth category and corrected the “defect” in god’s creation. This class of people were called Panchamas. They were and are of course outside the four varnas or castes. Hence called outcastes, Untouchables or the Avarneeyas, whom Babasaheb Ambedkar called Dalits, whom M.K. Gandhi renamed as Harijans.
Dalits not Hindus: The Manusmriti and other Hindu “scriptures” called them Chandalas and ordained that they shall not be treated as humans. The saga of their exploitation and ill-treatment by the savarnas (Hindus), meaning those within the four-fold caste system, has no parallel in history. They were and are the victims of Hinduism. Untouchables, said Dr. Ambedkar are not Hindus and never Hindus, (Dr. Ambedkar’s book, What, Congress and Gandhi have done to Untouchables. 1945).
The Hindu definition of Tilak and Malaviya also suggest the same.
Sudras slaves of Hindus: While the Dalits are NOT Hindus, the fourth-grade sudras (meaning slaves) are. They belong to the fourth varna. They have no right to study the Vedas and no right to education itself, according to the Manusmriti (verse 80; ch.4). If a sudra by chance listens to the chanting of Vedas, the mixture of molten lead and lac should be pured into his ears, (Gautama Dharma Sutras, verse 4; ch.3, part:2). Shankara (775-807 AD) in his commentary on the Brahma Sutras ie. Brahma Sutra Bhashya, known as his magnum opus, has upheld this cruel scriptural sanction (Sutra: 38, Adhikarana:9, Pada:3, Ch.1).
Who are these sudras? Agriculturists (Jats, Kayasths. Reddies, Gowdas, Marathas, etc). Dr. K.V. Puttappa, the poet-laureate of Kamataka and Janapita award- winner and a shudra, once said that he would have been collecting cowdung to earn a living if the British had not come to rule India and universalised education. The one tangible accomplishment of Hinduism is that it dehumanised over 80% of Hindu population. Even the Kshatriyas and Vaishyas belonging to second and third -grade Hindu order were subjected to violent treatment by Brahmins.
Nehru on Hindus: Pandit Nehru said (Discovery of India): “Education and opportunities of growth were withheld from the lower castes who were taught to be submissive to those higher up in the scale. The caste system was a barrier to any change…. it carried with it seeds of destruction.”
Similar contempt has been expressed at what constituted the essence of Hinduism by many other enlightened among the Brahmins themselves, viz., M.N. Roy, D.D. Kosambi. Even Hinduism’s most famous monk, Vivekananda, had severaly critcised Hinduism (Caste, Culture & Socialism).
But Tahir considers all Indians other than Muslims, Christians and Jews as “enthusiastic and loyal followers of Hinduism”. That is why I said Tahir is either ignorant or dishonest or both. Since he is a professor of Law and called an “eminent authority”, he cannot be accused of ignorance. That is why in DV, we have very often criticised intellectual corruption as the worst form of corruption. And Hindu fundamentalists will certainly make best use of such intellectual corruption to confuse the imbecile Muslim elite who hope to buy peace from those who hate and abuse Muslims by singing their very bogus tunes. Muslims are heading towards dangerous times.
Indus civilisation: Having taken Vedic religion as Hinduism, how can Tahir call it the world’s oldest religion? There were several older unorganised religions in India followed by Dravidians, Gonds, Bhils, Nishadas and several other tribes (There were only tribes at that point of time, all over the world). Their religions were known by the name of their tribes. The Aryan hordes who drifted into India killed the peace-loving innocent Dravidian tribes in large numbers and imposed their racist rule and with it their brahminical hegemony on the original inhabitants of India. (See 1951 Census and also Seetajosyam, a research work on Ramayana in Telugu by Dr. Narla Venkateswara Rao, which won the Central Sahitya Academy award).
Tahir buttering Brahmins: Just as the civilised (?) white man enslaved the Africans on their own soil, the Aryans destroyed India’s original religions and cultures, their great glorious Indus Valley civilisation. Much of Rig Veda consists of the details of Aryan invocation to their gods to destroy the original inhabitants of India. Rig Veda is obviously the conquerer’s version.
Those who resisted this onslaught were called Rakshasas. Today’s Dalits (SC/STs) are the descendants of those vanquished races or tribes, whom the religion(?) of the exploiters termed Untouchables.
Tahir despite knowing all these facts of history has subordinated his thinking faculty to please the ruling brahminical social order.
Yadavas not Hindus: If Vedas, Smritis, Shrutis and the epics and varna dharma are to be taken as the basis of Hinduism, the majority of Indians do not become Hindus. It is the height of mischief to count the tribals as Hindus. If the Backward Castes like Yadavas are Hindus, why the Hindu rulers did not accept reservations to them as recommended by the Mandal Commission? It was Tahir’s Delhi University Hindu boys who started the anti-Mandal agitation. His own Vice-Chancellor, also a professor of Law, has said all this.
The country’s population can be roughly analysed like this: Scheduled Castes (20%), tribals (10%), Backward Castes 35%. There is not much difference between this 65% of the population and Muslims (15%) in life-style and food habits. This 65% of the non- Hindus of late are realising that they are the victims of Hinduism.
Hindus constitute just 15%: A true picture of the social turmoil in the country is not clearly visible since the govt. as well as the press is in the grip of the less than 15% Aryan upper castes who are suppressing this supreme truth. There is so much pollution in the intellectual atmosphere of the country that it was very easy to condemn the noble Tippu Sultan and sing praises for the discredited zionist agent, Salman Rushdie. While an overwhelming majority of non- Muslims in India have no hatred for Muslims or Islam, and therefore do not need intellectual acrobatics of the Tahir Mahmood variety, the arrogant upper caste communal Hindu is worried that the supreme truth if known widely will take away his bread and butter. So he is trying to suppress the truth that the non Hindus are over 85% of Indian population by his periodical rath yatra exercises for “Hindu unity”.
All such cries need a target: a wolf. The nazi Hindu has no alternative but to describe the Muslim as wolf. He has to falsify history. He has to cry against Babri Mosque, Muslim Personal Laws, etc. The cry for uniform civil code was resisted not by the Muslims like Ta Tahir but by the leaderless poor Muslim masses.
That episode proved that Muslim intellectuals were not only headless but spineless. Hindus and Sikhs have the same law, but no two communities are more at loggerheads today than these two. Yet no Muslim columnist said so.
Muslim elite going bad: The demoralisation of the Muslim elite and their alienation from their community is so complete they are now begging recognition from the very arch enemies of Muslims and Islam, the Hindu fundamentalists, by trying to confer prophethood on glorified aggressors and deified murderers like Rama and Krishna.
For an objective scrutiny of Ramayana, one should read Moris Winternitz, A.B. Keith, Herman Jacobi, Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, Sukumar Sen, Prof. Weber, D.D. Kosambi, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Periyar EV Ramaswamy, Dr. K.R. Srinivasa lyengar, Jawaharlal Nehru, Ramesh Chandra Dutt, and Tolboy Wheeler.
Rama was Brahmin agent: The chief trait in Rama was that he was an unthinking and obedient soldier under the command of the Brahmins. Secondly, he was the most anti-woman character in the world literature.
Fornicator: Prophet Mohammed said: “Say what is true even if it be bitter”, “The best Jihad is to say the truth before a tyrant ruler”. Tahir Mahmood has indulged in intellectual fornication by describing his farfetched and wishful surmises as “massive evidence” which he finds difficult to “reject or ignore”.
Lasting peace between all communities can be achieved only when the Hindu fundamentalists are humbled and when truth about both Islam and Hinduism are told to our people. But I doubt whether Tahir has such an objective at all, or has an eye on some seat of power or authority which he hopes to occupy by currying the favour of persons whose views are badly in need of credibility.
