V.P. Bhatia
THE Vajpayee Government's decision to grant a five-year visa to Salman Rushdie, the controversial writer of Satanic Verses, for visit to India as per his convenience, has stirred the cosy dovecotes of all kinds of Mullahs and Maulanas to breathe fire and brimstone and frightened even the secularists out of their wits. It has provided Muslim papers with a fresh pretext to incite the liquidation of Rushdie and launch a hate campaign against the BJP-led Government. Next, they say, it will be the turn of Taslima Nasreen to be given a visa, but that the Muslims of India will never allow them to set their foot here. They have, however, cooled down a bit after Shri Vajpayee's Bus journey to Lahore.

Meanwhile, in an article justifying the Blasphemy Law of Pakistan, prescribing death sentence for anyone indulging in denigration of Islam or the Prophet, Urdu monthly Afkar-e-Milli (Islamic Thoughts) has admonished the Christians of Pakistan and their supporters in the West for demanding repeal of the said law. It has described Bishop John Joseph's suicide as a protest against the award of death sentence to a Christian supposed to be guilty of denigration of the Prophet as totally unjustified. To buttress his argument against allowing even the least vilification of or insult to the Prophet, the writer explains that the liquidation of denigrators and dissidents is sanctified by the practices of Prophet himself who not only justified but felt pleased and gratified if anyone killed such critics, poets and writers during his own life time. Liquidation of denigrators and dissidents thus becomes the immutable law of classical Islam, borne out by tradition.

In this context, the Islamic writer has given four examples from the life of Prophet Muhammad in which he himself endorsed the murder of those, including writers or poets, who had indulged in criticism of him in his lifetime. Simultaneously, he makes the untenable claim that Islam is "the world's really tolerant and moderate religious system whose laws are the most natural and perfectly in keeping with human nature". To cap it all, he claims that "no other religion of the world has given so liberal directions about the treatment of minorities".

Anyway, he gives the following examples of how the denigrators of the Prophet were beheaded by his approval in his lifetime.
1) After the migration of the Prophet to Medina and the establishment of his rule there, there was a poetess named Asma who used to compose satirical verses against him. A blind follower of the Prophet named Amir-bin-Adi could not bear it. So he went to the poetess's home at night and killed her. The Prophet came to know of it in the morning, and the blind killer asked whether he will be taken to task for this murder. The Nabi (Prophet) said, "No one will differ with what you have done." In fact, the Prophet was so 'happy' over it that he told his companions, "Here is a man who has come to the aid of Allah and his Rasul even without asking. Don't call him (the murderer) a blind man. He has in fact acted according to the light of his heart."

2) There was a 120 years old Jew named Abu-Afk who used to compose satirical verses to denigrate the Prophet. When his impudence crossed all limits, the Prophet asked his court, "Is there anyone who will kill this wretched man?" At this his companion Hazrat Salim-bin-Amir "who was already mentally prepared (to murder the denigrator), got up, took leave of the Prophet and returned only after killing the offending Jew in the night".

3) There was another critic of the Prophet, named Kaab-bin-Ashraf. The Prophet asked his companions, "Which of you will kill him? He has caused great mental pain to Allah and his Rasul." On hearing this, Muhammed-bin-Muslim got up at once and asked for his permission (to murder). He was permitted. So he went and killed the denigrator. "The Prophet was very happy and thanked God for it."

4) There was an enemy of the Prophet named Abu-rafa-Abdullah. He was a rich Jew trader, and used to utter offensive words against the Prophet. "The Prophet permitted some of his companions led by Hazrat Abdullah to murder him. They went to the fortress like house where the Jew lived and killed him by a clever strategem."
The paper further says these are only some of the examples showing that despite all his tolerance, any rude behaviour to or offensive words for the Prophet were totally unbearable for the regime of the Prophet or his followers after he established his Islamic Government in Medina.

In this context of Prophet's own practice of ordaining liquidation of his critics, one is reminded of the murder of the ailing Swami Shraddhanand, a prominent leader of the Congress as well as of Arya Samaj, who was shot dead at his residence in Delhi in November, 1926, by a Muslim ruffian named Abdul Rashid. The Swami had earlier led the anti-Rowlatt Act Satyagraha in Delhi in which even the Muslims, upset over the British policy against Turkish Khilafat, participated. He was even invited to address a meeting from Jama Masjid. But within a few years, he became a target of Muslim fury when he started Bharat Shuddhi (reconversion) Sabha in the wake of the Moplah atrocities against Hindus of Malabar in August, 1921, when some 3,000 Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam. Most of them were later reconverted by the Arya Samaj. The murderer Abdul Rashid, who was lauded as a martyr by even the topmost Maulanas, was part of a conspiracy hatched by Muslim Tablighi leaders who were greatly upset by the Swami's aggressive Shuddhi campaign. In fact Gandhiji was no less upset by the Muslim offensive in the post Khilafat days and broke with even Ali Brothers over it. There were tears in his eyes when he came to know of the Ali Brothers' attitude towards large scale anti-Hindu riots on coming out of the jail in February, 1924. No wonder, at the Congress session in Guwahati held a month after Swamiji's assassination, he paid glowing tributes to his martyrdom saying : "This is an occasion that should burn on our hearts the lesson of bravery which is not the exclusive property of the Kshatriyas. ...Let us not shed tears of sorrow but chasten our hearts and steel them with some of the fire and faith possessed by Swami Shraddhanand."

The murder of Swami Shradhanand, Mahashe Rajpal and Pt Lekh Ram 'Arya Musafir' by Muslim fanatics recalled Another victim of Islamic intolerance in those days was Mahashe Rajpal, an Arya Samajist publisher of Anarkali Lahore, who published a pamphlet (written by an anonymous author) entitled Rangila Rasul (Merry making Prophet) in May, 1924, in reply to scurrilous Muslim publications against Lord Krishna and Swami Dayanand. One of these offensive pamphlets was named Krishen teri Gita jalani padegi. As a result of Muslim outcry, Rajpal was arrested and sentenced by the lower court but acquitted in April, 1929, by a Christian Judge of the High Court after five years' prolonged trial. However, after some earlier attempts he was finally stabbed to death soon after and a number of Muslim leaders of Lahore, including the poet, Sir Muhammed Iqbal, participated in the murderer's funeral procession who was hailed as a martyer. Though the book was written by an Arya Samajist scholar Pt. Chamupati, Mahashe Rajpal never revealed his name. (Rajpal's sons are now eminent publishers of Delhi.)

Even earlier, in 1897, in Lahore, an Arya Samajist preacher and editor of 'Arya Musafir', Pt. Lekh Ram, too was murdered because of his 'shuddhi' campaign and sustained exposure of the founder of the Ahmadiya sect, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad 'Qadiani', who claimed to be the latest three-in-one Prophet, the Mahdi of Islam, the Christian messiah and finally, the Kalki Avatar, a reincarnation of Krishna. The Mirza claimed to have been sent by Allah to convert the people to Islam, although he started a controversy even in his own community (Muslims) about his claims. Despite signal services to Islam, the 'reformative' Ahmadiya sect is now banned even in Pakistan because of its founder's claim to prophethood. Even Indian Maulanas keep crying for a similar ban on the Ahmadiyas in India.

Meanwhile, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie also reminds us of two later examples of the plight of progressive Muslims, one of whom was Dr Abid Raza Bedar, Director of Khuda Bakhsh Library of Patna, a government funded institution. At a function in Raj Bhawan, Patna, in May, 1992, when the Governor released a book, Bedar commended it by saying that the Islamic scholars should revise the definition of 'Kafir' to exclude Hindus from it. The book entitled Keynote of the Holy Quran by an eminent scholar, S.M. Mohsin, asserted that the Quran was against 'violence and forcible conversions'. At this led by a local Muslim paper, whose editor harboured a personal grudge, Mullahs of all hues raised a storm against Bedar; he was declared a 'Kafir' and compelled to retire prematurely for this un-Islamic pronouncement. This despite the fact that his remark was only an endorsement of the view of the book's author S.M. Mohsin, that the word 'Kafir' should not be misused to create bad blood against Hindus. Dr Bedar was not excused despite his myriad explanations. Thus the Mullahs virtually confirmed the impression that the Quran enjoined killing of Kafirs.

The plight of two Muslim progressives—Abid Raza Bedar and Mushirul Hasan—hounded by the bigoted Mullahs and let down by secularists. The other case is that of Prof. Mushirul Hasan, Pro- Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia University, Delhi, who in an interview to Sunday magazine had suggested lifting of the ban on Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses on the plea that it had given the author an undeserved notoriety and publicity. It was merely a plea for freedom of expression and by no means an approval of the contents of the book. The interview had allegedly been manipulated by the journalist wife of Salman Khurshid, who was also alleged to have instigated a students' campaign against Mushirul Hasan. The Imam of Jama Masjid, Delhi, too picked up the anti-Hasan cry. As a result Hasan was not allowed to enter the University campus for three years. The Vice-Chancellor, Bashiruddin Ahmed, too came under attack for not sacking Mushirul Hasan. He was accused of being an Ahmadiya, and hence a Kafir himself. He died a couple of years later and Mushirul Hasan resigned from Jamia Millia a couple of years ago as his claim for Vice- Chancellorship was ignored. Neither the powerful secularist lobby nor the secularist UF Government could help Hasan. In both cases, the Mullahs proved their unshakable stranglehold on the Muslim community and their implacable animus against non-Muslim 'Kafirs'—a philosophy which forms the bedrock of Pakistan's polity as much as of the Indian Mullahs.

Christianity, Islam and Hindu tolerance
In a couple of earlier issues, this column has referred to the former Indian diplomat K.P.S. Menon's experiences with Christian missionaries who generally suffer from conversion mania. They enjoyed special privileges as pioneers of English medium schools and colleges as well as for being appendages of the Raj during the British rule. Their mission was made all the more easy because of Hindu tolerance and unsuspecting nature.

In this context, in his autobiography Many Worlds Revisited, Menon gives an example of how the missionaries carried their evangelical task right into Hindu homes to influence them on Christian cultural lines. A familiar figure in this context in his early childhood in his ancestral place Kottayam was a Syrian Christian woman who would come to their house every Sunday with a Bible in her hand. She would sit on a mat reserved for her and read a couple of Chapters from the New Testament. Then she would stay for tea and sometimes bring with her churutoo, a Syrian Christian delicacy for the family. She would go away as quietly and graciously as she came. Menon wondered what made her come to their house so regularly? "Perhaps she was paid a couple of rupees by some Christian mission to read the Bible in Hindu homes," he says. She did not expect to make any converts, but she was encouraged by the friendly atmosphere in the Hindu house.

At his local Christian public school, in Kottayam, before he joined the Christian College at Madras, the boys had to undergo an intensive study of the Bible in the first period every day, for examination purposes. The figure of Christ interested the boy Menon but groomed by his mother in the legends of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (like novelist R.K. Narayan quoted in an earlier column), Christ did not appear sufficiently attractive to him. The Messiah's miracles were wonderful, but the adventures of Rama appeared much more wonderful. Rama's army of monkeys headed by Hanuman, crossing the sea over to Lanka, defeating the mighty Ravana appealed to his imagination much more. Similarly, the divine pranks of Krishna with thousands of Gopis were much more appealing. "After all, we thought, Christ was only the son of God; Rama and Krishna were Gods themselves," says Menon in this context.

Both Menon and his wife belonged to a family of Nairs whose forefathers had undergone great ordeal during the invasion of Malabar by Tippu Sultan at the end of 18th Century. Tippu's atrocities were still a vivid racial memory for the Nair community. As he puts it: "In fact, out of a hundred Nair families which had settled in this region, our families were among the three or four which survived that invasion (of Tippu), the others having been uprooted and dispersed hither and thither or converted to Islam."

Interestingly, K.P.S. Menon contrasts the proselytising zeal of the Islam and Christianity with the tolerance of Hinduism of all forms of faiths and religions by quoting an English District Collector, J.C. Maloney, under whom Menon served as Deputy Collector of Tiruppattur during his first posting as ICS officer in 1924. In his 'fascinating' Book of South India, Maloney quotes the following verse of Rudyard Kipling to describe the blind Semitic spirit of intolerance towards non-believers worshipping idols: The heathen in his blindness
Bows down to wood and stone
On the other hand, says Maloney, the tolerance of Hinduism for all is embodied in the words of Krishna's sermon to Arjuna in the Bhagvadgita as He extends slavation to :
"Even those, who, contrary to the scriptures, worship alien gods and are, provided they do so with faith, in reality worshipping Me."