The term ‘jizya’ often comes up during debates about the tolerance of Islam. Yet, much ambiguity remains about its true nature. This article seeks to comprehensively analyze the concept of jizya and through it, the level of tolerance that Islam provides to the followers of other religions, especially the Hindus.
Introduction:
What is jizya?
Jizya was a poll-tax that all non-Muslim male adults living in territories under Islamic rule were required to pay.1 It was one of the major stipulations of the covenant of protection (aqd al-dhimma) between the non-Muslim subjects and the Muslim ruler under which they were accorded the protection of the state and the freedom to practice their religion, in return for abiding by public Islamic law and submitting to a number of restrictions on their public behaviour.1 Those people were called ‘ahl al-dhimma’ (‘the protected people’) or simply ‘dhimmis’. Originally, only the fellow monotheists, the Jews and the Christians, were eligible for the ‘dhimmi’ status. Later, however, other religious communities too were accorded that status as Islam expanded its empire outside Arabia.
Source of the term
The term ‘jizya’ is found in the 9th chapter of the Quran, al-tawbah (‘the repentance’). This chapter is generally considered as one of the last chapters to be revealed to Muhammad. Quran 9:29 says:
Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.2
The Quranic phrase ‘People of the Book’ (ahl al-kitab) refers specifically to Jews and Christians who had received revelations from the God, prior to the revelation of Quran.3a Thus, the Jews received the Torah (al-tawrat) through Moses and the Christians received the Gospels (al-injil) through Jesus. But they are still disbelievers, according to Quran, since they refused to accept that Muhammad had brought a new revelation from God.3a In other words, the ahl al-kitab disbelieved both in the prophethood of Muhammad and the message he brought, the Quran.
Incidentally, the Quran also mentions a third group, the ‘Sabeans’, whose identity remains ambiguous. Some pagans, like the star-worshipers of Harran town in Mesopotamia, later took advantage of this ambiguity and identified themselves as ‘Sabeans’ to claim tolerance from the Muslim invaders.3b
Context of Quran 9:29
Since Quran 9:29 exhorts the believers to attack the ‘People of the Book’ till they submit and pay jizya, the verse has acquired a controversial status in modern times, especially in the West. It would only be proper to provide both the textual and the historical context of the verse to avoid the usual accusation of ‘taking verses out-of-context to malign the religion’.
Textual Context
To get the textual context of the verse, the verses both preceding and succeeding Quran 9:29 are given below :
O ye who believe! Truly the Pagans are unclean; so let them not, after this year of theirs, approach the Sacred Mosque. And if ye fear poverty, soon will Allah enrich you, if He wills, out of His bounty, for Allah is All-knowing, All-wise. (Q 9:28)4
Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (Q 9:29)4
The Jews call 'Uzair a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth! (Q 9:30)4
A pagan is one who belongs to ‘a religion that worships many gods, especially one that existed before the main world religions’5a – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Quran indiscriminately describes pagans as ‘polytheists’ (‘mushrikun’) and ‘idolaters’ (‘abadat al-awthan’).5b Here, the verse 9:28 uses the word ‘mushrikun’, which is also the most widely used one to refer to the pagans in the Quran.
Historical context of Quran 9:28-30
In 630, Muhammad conquered the city of Mecca without much resistance from the pagans. Next year, he sent Abu Bakr to lead the pilgrimage to Mecca where Ali read a declaration of “exemption” (bara’a) from the hajj that excluded all pagans from performing it in the future.6 Thus, it was the last pilgrimage in which the pagans were allowed to participate, which explained Muhammad’s own absence. There was apprehension that the ban on entry of pagans would also affect the trade fairs that were associated with the pilgrimage. It was in this context that Quran 9:29 was reportedly revealed to compensate for the loss.
Ibn Kathir, the 14th century Syrian historian and theologian, provides the historical context of the verses in his “Al-Bidayah Wa’an-Nihayah"(‘The beginning and the end’) :
Allah, Most High, ordered the believers to prohibit the disbelievers from entering or coming near the sacred Mosque. On that, Quraish thought that this would reduce their profits from trade. Therefore, Allah, Most High, compensated them and ordered them to fight the people of the Book until they embrace Islam or pay the Jizyah……Therefore, the Messenger of Allah decided to fight the Romans in order to call them to Islam.7
Imam al-Qurtubi , the 13th century Andalusian scholar, in his commentary on the Quran, wrote :
Verse 9:28 had forbidden polytheists from approaching Mecca, so trade with them suffered. The Muslims were somewhat upset about this. Jizya was introduced partly to offset this loss.8
The important point to be noted here is that there was no attack on Muslims here. In other words, the call for violence was not for self-defense as most apologists would like us to believe.
How earnestly this divine command was carried out by Muhammad could be understood from the letters that he sent to various rulers. The following is the version of the letter he sent to the people of Eilat, a town in south Palestine :
To Yuhanna b. Ruba and the worthies of Ayla, Peace be with you! Praised be Allah, there is no God save Him. I have no intention of fighting you before writing to you. Thou hast to accept Islam, or pay the tax, and obey God and His Messenger and the messengers of His Messenger, and do them honour and dress them in fine clothing, not in the raiment of raiders; therefore clothe Zayd in fine robes, for if you satisfy my envoys, you will satisfy me. Surely the tax is known to you. Therefore if you wish to be secure on land and on sea, obey God and his Messenger and you will be free of all payments that you owed the Arab [tribes] or non-Arabs, apart from the payment to God [which is] the payment of his Messenger. But be careful lest thou do not satisfy them, for then I shall not accept anything from you, but I shall fight you and take the young as captives and slay the elderly.9
After the death of Muhammad, his successors followed the same pattern. During the capture of al-Hira in south Iraq in 633, Khalid b. al-Walid, the general of Caliph Abu Bakr, declared the following to the Governor Qabilas :
I call you to God and to Islam. If you respond to the call, then you are Muslims: You obtain the benefits they enjoy and take up the responsibilities they bear. If you refuse, then [you must pay] the jizyah. If you refuse the jizyah, I will bring against you tribes of people who are more eager for death than you are for life. We will then fight you until God decides between us and you.10
Commentary (tafsir) of Q 9:29
In his famous commentary of the Quran, Ibn Kathir explains 9:29 thus –
Allah said, “until they pay the Jizyah”, if they do not choose to embrace Islam, “with willing submission”, in defeat and subservience, “and feel themselves subdued”, disgraced, humiliated and belittled. Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of Dhimmah or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced and humiliated.
Muslim recorded from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet said, “Do not initiate the Salam to the Jews and Christians, and if you meet any of them in a road, force them to its narrowest alley.” This is why the Leader of the faithful `Umar bin Al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him, demanded his well-known conditions be met by the Christians, these conditions that ensured their continued humiliation, degradation and disgrace.11
Ibn Kathir refers here to the ‘Pact of Umar’ which, according to Muslim tradition, was issued by the Caliph Umar (634-644) to the Christians of Jerusalem, or alternatively Syria as a whole, after its fall to the Muslim armies. Though its historic origins are debated, with some Western scholars ascribing it to the Umayyad Caliph, Umar II (717-720), the Pact of Umar became an integral part of the Muslim legal tradition by the ninth century.12 Several versions emerged subsequently which elaborated on the conditions and added new restrictions. The Pact would govern how the subsequent Muslim states treated their non-Muslim subjects from the time of the Abbasid dynasty to the Ottoman reforms of the 19th century.12
Historian Milka Levy-Rubin describes the various restrictions listed in the Pact which established the social inferiority of non-Muslims in a Muslim society, “It includes clauses regarding the obligation to host the Muslims and to be loyal to them; a prohibition on building new prayer houses; a list of restrictive measures regarding religious customs such as refraining from beating a clapper (naqus) loudly as a call to prayer, praying loudly, forming processions on holidays and for funerals, displaying crosses and lights on the roads and selling pigs and wine; clauses regarding behavior in the presence of Muslims, such as the obligation to respect the Muslims and to give them priority on the road as well as in seating and the prohibition of burial next to them; and a series of clauses requiring the adoption of differentiating signs (ghiyar), including an obligation to wear the girdle (zunnar) and distinct clothing and the prohibitions of resembling Muslims in appearance, using saddles, adopting seals in the Arabic language, bearing arms, and teaching Christian children Arabic.”13
Other commentaries
In another commentary of Quran, “Al-Kashshaf”, al-Zamakhshari, the 12th century Persian theologian, while interpreting 9:29, describes Jizya thus, "the jizya shall be taken from them with belittlement and humiliation. He [the dhimmi, i.e., the non-Muslim subject of the Muslim state] shall come in person, walking not riding. When he pays, he shall stand, while the tax collector sits. The collector shall seize him by the scruff of the neck, shake him, and say: 'Pay the jizya!', and when he pays it he shall be slapped on the nape of his neck." Other theologians provide similar details—such as, for example, ‘that the dhimmi must appear with bent back and bowed head, that the tax collector must treat him with disdain and even with violence, seizing his beard and slapping his cheeks’, etc.14
However, in contrast to the commentators, the jurists were more concerned with the fiscal than the symbolic aspect of the jizya. For instance, the great jurist Abu Yusuf, the chief qadi (judge) of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809), rules explicitly against such mistreatment. At the same time, the dhimmis were not to be shown any leniency regarding the payment of jizya. Abu Yusuf puts this message in unambiguous terms: "They should be imprisoned until they pay what they owe. They are not to be let out of custody until the jizya has been exacted from them in full. No governor may release any Christian, Jew, Zoroastrian, Sabian, or Samaritan unless the jizya is collected from him. He may not reduce anyone's payment by allowing a portion to be left unpaid. It is not permissible for one person to be exempted and for another to have to pay. That cannot be done, because their lives and possessions are guaranteed safety only upon payment of the jizya, which is comparable to tribute money."15It must be noted here that it is the attitudes of the jurists, rather than of the commentators and other theologians, that more accurately reflected the practice of Muslim rulers.
Some modern apologists argue that the jizya was not a demeaning tax and that it was similar to the zakat of Muslim subjects. However, the case of the Banu Taghlib contradicts their argument. According to a popular tradition, the Banu Taghlib, an Arab Christian tribe, were keenly aware of the humiliation connected with the payment of the jizya according to Quran 9:29. They argued that they should not be subjected to this indignity because they were Arabs and as such should not be treated in this way. Hence, the Caliph Umar decided “to take from them jizya, calling it sadaqa”.16 He made peace with them stipulating that this sadaqa would be double the regular amount.
Islam’s conquests
Islam’s encounter with the Zoroastrians of Iran
After the conquest of Iran by 654 AD, the Muslims faced a new situation as the majority of the Iranian population belonged to the religion of Zoroastrianism. Its prophet, Zoroaster, who lived probably in the 6th century BC, had challenged the prevailing polytheism of his day in ancient Iran. However, there are differences among the modern scholars whether the new religion he founded was monotheistic or dualistic in nature.17
The Quran refers to the Zoroastrians (al-majus) once, in Sura 22:17, as one of the religious groups whom God will judge on the Last Day.18 However, the verse does not make any specific assessment of their religious standing. In other words, it does not include Zoroastrians among the ‘People of the Book’ or among the pagans. It also does not include any directive concerning their treatment by the Muslims.18
Eventually, the Zoroastrians were given the status of ahl al-dhimma and jizya was accepted from them citing a precedent set by Muhammad himself. According to an oft-cited tradition, the Caliph Umar bin al-Khattab decided to take the jizya from the Zoroastrians after he was told that the Prophet had levied it from the Zoroastrians of Hajar (in eastern Arabia) and had enjoined the Muslims to treat them as they would treat the People of the Book.19 The four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (Shafi’ite, Hanbali, Maliki and Hanafi) that attained definite form by the early 10th century, extensively discuss the issue of Zoroastrians being included in the category of dhimmis. All those early jurisprudents were in agreement concerning the status of the Zoroastrians as dhimmis. However, most of them didn’t accept that a heavenly book was possessed by the Zoroastrians. In other words, Zoroastrians were not considered among the People of the Book.20 Only al-Shafi, the founder of the Shafi’ite school, believed that the Zoroastrians indeed had a book in the past.21
Islam’s encounter with Hindus of India
The conquest of Sindh and Multan in 712-13 by Muhammad bin Qasim presented yet another dilemma for the Muslim invaders. The problem of ruling a vast population consisting mainly of idolatrous pagans confronted them for the first time. For, the Quran gives only two options to pagans – conversion to Islam or death. This is as per surah 9:5 which says:
But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.22
This verse is cited most often by the Quranic commentators as an abrogating verse against the earlier verses of tolerance and patience towards the pagans. Generally known as ‘the sword verse’ (‘ayat al-sayf’), it is understood to represent the final Quranic statement regarding relations with pagans.23The words used here for prayer and charity are ‘salat’ and ‘zakat’ respectively, which, as we know, are religious obligations exclusively for the Muslims. In other words, the pagans had no option but to become Muslims if they had to survive. They were not given the option of paying the jizya, unlike the People of the Book.
However, this Quranic injunction, originally directed against the pagans of Arabia, could not be applied to the Hindus of India due to the vastness of their population and dogged resistance to forced conversions. Neither total conversion nor total extermination was possible in this case.24 In the end, political expediency forced Qasim to admit the conquered Hindu pagans into the category of dhimmis and accord security to their lives and property on receipt of jizya. They were allowed to maintain temples and continue with their worship as before.24 Qasim then dismissed them with the following words: “I let you go this day. Those among you who become Mussalmans and come within the fold of Islam shall have their tribute remitted, but those who are still inclined to be of their own faith, must put up with injuries (gazand) and tribute (jizia) to retain the religion of their fathers and grandfathers.”25
At first, Hajjaj bin Yusuf, the Umayyad governor of Iraq who had sent Qasim, rebuked him for not obeying the Quranic injunction to strike off the heads of the infidels. However, he soon changed his mind probably after coming to terms with the reality and wrote to Qasim, “….after they have become zimmis, we have no right whatever to interfere with their lives or their property. Do, therefore, permit them to build the temples of those they worship.”26 The inclusion of Hindus in the category of dhimmis was a significant step as this policy was followed by the Indo-Muslim rulers in later centuries with respect to its idolatrous subjects.27
However, once again it must be stressed here that the Quran does not provide any tolerance to pagans, unlike the People of the Book. It was political necessity alone that compelled the Arabs to include Hindus in the category of dhimmis. The four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence, developed in later centuries, are not unanimous on the issue of providing dhimmi status to the pagans. The Shafi’ites took the Prophet's eradication of Arab pagans to mean that all pagans had to be given the choice between Islam and death, irrespective of their ethnicity.28 It is said to have been the prevalent view of the Hanbalis as well.28 According to al-Shafi, the founder of the Shafi’ite school, ‘’jizya is not by race but by religion’’.29 He writes,
“When Islam appears to someone and he, Arab or non-Arab, does not follow the religion of the People of Scripture and wishes to pay the jizya and be allowed his religion or to follow the religion of the People of Scripture, then the ruler may not accept jizya from him: he must fight him until he submits (in Islam), as with the idolaters.”30
However, the Maliki and the Hanafi schools argued that all pagans can be accorded the status of dhimmis, although they made an exception for the Arab pagans. But this exception made regarding the Arab pagans was hardly of any practical importance since they did not exist anymore after the early Islamic conquests. The Hanafı jurist al-Jassas cites a curious tradition according to which the Prophet had made peace with idolaters upon payment of jizya, except the Arabs ones.31 However, as the term “idolaters” is normally not used for the Zoroastrians, the identity of these idolatrous non-Arab contemporaries of the Prophet remains problematic.
This tradition appears to have ‘originated in order to provide a prophetic precedent for the later inclusion of non-Arab (especially Indian) polytheists in the category of ahl al-dhimma’.31
The tradition which is often cited in support of the idea that all pagans are eligible for the jizya, the “hadıth Burayda”, includes instructions which the Prophet used to issue when he sent each of his commanders on a military expedition.32 One of the instructions was to offer the option of conversion to Islam or payment of the jizya to the polytheist enemies.
However, it must be noted that this tradition is mentioned in connection with the battle of Mu’ta, where the enemies were mainly Byzantine Christians. It’s not unusual as Christians are often described as ‘polytheists’ in the hadiths and Quranic commentaries, due to the charge made against them in Quran 9:30. Thus, the jurists who use this hadıth in support of their argument base it on the wording of the hadıth only and disregard its possible historical background.33 Al-Shafi opines about the particular hadith:
A number of trustworthy authorities have transmitted to me the tradition (hadith) from the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, that mentions inviting polytheists to Islam, then to emigrate to the lands of the Muslims, else to pay the jizya, otherwise they are to be fought. This applies to People of Scripture, and not to idolaters.34
In fact, an authentic hadith cited in ‘’Sunan an-Nasai’’ clearly states Muhammad’s policy regarding the pagans:
It was narrated from Anas bin Malik that:
The Prophet [SAW] said: "I have been commanded to fight the idolators until they bear witness to La ilaha illallah (there is none worthy of worship except Allah) and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger. If they bear witness to La ilaha illallah and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger, and they pray as we pray and face our Qiblah, and eat our slaughtered animals, then their blood and wealth becomes forbidden to us except for a right that is due."35
Islam in medieval India
The attitude of orthodox ulema
Nevertheless, the view of the Hanafi school is particularly important as it came to be predominant in India during the medieval period. The orthodox Muslim theologians, however, chafed at the Hanafi doctrine for its leniency towards idolaters like Hindus. They tried to persuade the Muslim rulers from time to time to confront the Hindu pagans with the option of Islam or death. For instance, such a demand was put forward before Sultan Iltutmish (1211-1236) of the Slave dynasty who referred the matter to his wazir, Nizam-ul-Mulk Junaidi.
Referring to the impracticability of the demand, the wazir said, "There is no doubt that the Hindus should be given the choice of 'death or Islam' since they are the worst enemies of the Prophet's religion, they are neither among the Zimmis, nor do they keep faith, nor has any (divine) Book, nor has any Prophet been sent to India. But at the moment India has recently been conquered and the Muslims are so few that they are like salt (in a large dish). If the above orders are to be applied, the Hindus might combine and the Muslims would be too few in number to suppress (them). However, after a few years when in the Capital and in the regions and the small towns, the Muslims are well established and the troops are larger, it will be possible to give Hindus, the choice of ‘death or Islam’.”36
The discontent over the leniency shown towards the Hindu idolaters is also reflected in the writings of Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357), a historian and political thinker during the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Firuz Shah Tughlaq. In his political tract “Fatwa-i-Jahandari” (“Rulings on Temporal Government”), Barani praises Mahmud of Ghazni for adopting a stricter policy towards the Hindus:
If Mahmud had gone to India once more, he would have brought under his sword all the Brahmans of Hind who, in that vast land, are the cause of the continuance of the laws of infidelity and of the strength of idolators; he would have cut off the heads of two or three hundred thousand Hindu chiefs. He would not have returned his Hindu-slaughtering sword to its scabbard until the whole of Hind had accepted Islam. For Mahmud was a Shafiite, and according to Imam Shafi the decree for Hindus is Islam or death, that is to say, they should either be put to death or accept Islam. It is not lawful to accept jiziya from Hindus who have neither a prophet nor a revealed book.37
The attitude of the Sufis
Since Sufism is the flavor of the season with PM Modi himself being its latest admirer, it would be interesting to analyse the views of some prominent Sufi figures on the status of Hindu idolaters under Islam.
Amir Khusrau (1253-1325) was a Sufi poet and musician of the Chisti order and one of the foremost disciples of the great Sufi saint, Nizamuddin Awliya of Delhi. In his ‘Masnavi Dawal Rani Khizr Khan’ (also known as Ashiqah), Khusrau writes:
The whole country, by means of the sword of our holy warriors, has become like a forest denuded of its thorns by fire. The land has been saturated with the water of the sword, and the vapours of infidelity (ie, Hinduism) have been dispersed. The strong men of Hind have been trodden under foot, and all are ready to pay tribute. Islam is triumphant, idolatry is subdued. Had not the law granted exemption from death by the payment of poll-tax, the very name of Hind, root and branch, would have been extinguished.39
Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi (1564 – 1624), a Sufi saint of the Naqshbandi order, writes about the imposition of the jizya :
The real purpose in levying jizya on them (the non-Muslims) is to humiliate them to such an extent that, on account of fear of jizya, they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It is intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honour and might of Islam.39
Another Sufi saint, Sayyid Ali Hamadani of the Kubrawi order, also notorious for the demolition of several temples in Kashmir, provides a list of twenty restrictions to be imposed on dhimmis in his “Zakhirat-ul-Muluk”. Those restrictions are along the lines of the ‘Pact of Umar’. Some of them are as follow :
1. No new homes for images or idol temples should be built.
2. Old buildings which have been destroyed should not be rebuilt.
3. Dhimmis are not to dress like Muslims.
4. They are not to build their homes in the neighbourhood of those of Muslims.
5. They are not to bring their dead near the graveyards of Muslims
6. They are not to mourn their dead with loud voices.40
The future of Hindus in India
Through the concept of jizya, we have been able to understand the level of tolerance that Islam provides to the followers of other religions. While there is unanimity among the various legal schools that Islam provides tolerance to the People of the Book and the Zoroastrians, there is no unanimity regarding the pagans such as Hindus. So, how does all this affect the Hindus of independent India and what lies in store for them in the future? For an answer, we need to revisit the terror-infested Kashmir valley of the early 90s.
In his book “Kashmir: Its Aborigines and Their Exodus”, Col.Tej.K.Tikoo describes the Jihadi movement that vitiated the valley during 1989-90 and led to the forced exodus of the hapless Kashmiri Pandits. Starting from mid-1989, the killings of prominent Kashmiri Pandits on one hand and the targeting of ordinary Pandits in far flung areas on the other had created enormous fear and sense of insecurity in them. Tikoo recollects the dreadful night of January 19, 1990, filled with war-cries of Islamists, that led to the their forced exodus :
These exhortations urged the faithful to give a final push to the Kafir in order to ring in the true Islamic order. These slogans were mixed with precise and unambiguous threats to Pandits. They were presented with three choices — Ralive, Tsaliv ya Galive (convert to Islam, leave the place or perish). Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims poured into the streets of the Valley, shouting ‘death to India’ and death to Kafirs.
These slogans, broadcast from the loud speakers of every mosque, numbering roughly 1100, exhorted the hysterical mobs to embark on Jehad. All male Muslims, including their children and the aged, wanted to be seen to be participating in this Jehad. Those who had organized such a show of force in the middle of a cold winter night, had only one objective; to put the fear of death into the hearts of the already frightened Pandits. In this moment of collective hysteria, gone was the facade of secular, tolerant, cultured, peaceful and educated outlook of Kashmiri Muslims, which the Indian intelligentsia and the liberal media had made them to wear for their own reasons.41
Here, the options given to the Pandits, not surprisingly, were to convert to Islam, leave or die. In other words, there was no place for Hindu Pandits in the land under the sway of Islam. If they had to live there, they had no other option but to convert to Islam. As already stated earlier, this is the Quranic injunction regarding pagans. It was carried out sincerely by Muhammad to the extent that when he died, there was hardly any pagan tribe left in Arabia.
Tej Tikoo continues with a deep sense of pain and dejection:
Most of the Kashmiri Muslims behaved as if they did not know who the Pandits were. This frenzied mass hysteria went on till Kashmiri Pandits’ despondency turned into desperation, as the night wore itself out.
For the first time after independence of India from the British rule, Kashmiri Pandits found themselves abandoned to their fate, stranded in their own homes, encircled by rampaging mobs. Through the frenzied shouts and blood-curdling sloganeering of the assembled mobs, Pandits saw the true face of intolerant and radical Islam. It represented the complete antithesis of the over-rated ethos of Kashmiriyat that was supposed to define Kashmiri ethos.”41
It has been 26 years now since the forced exodus of Hindu Pandits from their own homeland. During this period, many died in the hope of returning to the valley while those alive are losing that hope with each passing day. However, the tragic fate of the Hindu minority in a Muslim-majority region like Kashmir is not an isolated case. On the contrary, it is almost the same everywhere else. The frequent attacks on hapless Hindus in Muslim majority countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh, including murders, abductions and rapes, are quite well-known to be reproduced here. ‘India Today’ had published a report by journalist Qaswar Abbas in 2011, “Soft target in Pakistan”, which described the horrible state of Hindus in Pakistan.42 As for Bangladesh, just a cursory look at the drastic decrease in the percentage of Hindu population is enough to realize the extent of continued persecution of Hindus there. In 1951, Hindus were 22 per cent of the population in Bangladesh, then known as East Bengal. However, the 2011 census shows they constitute only 8.4 per cent of the Bangladeshi population.43
In India itself, the Muslim majority rural areas of West Bengal too are witnessing such attacks on Hindus. A local Hindu outfit, ‘Hindu Samhati’, recently compiled a list of attacks on Bengali Hindus from 2008 to 2015, titled “Seven years of Hindu persecution in West Bengal: a Report”.44Reports of similar attacks from the Muslim-majority areas of western U.P, Assam, Kerala etc too have increased in recent times. Given the fact that the population percentage of Hindus is steadily decreasing all over India while that of Muslims increasing, such attacks are bound to increase. For, peaceful co-existence with idolaters is mostly present only till the believers are lesser in numbers.
The writing on the wall, then, is quite clear. Yet, we prefer to bury our heads in the sand and pretend as if everything is fine. We didn’t learn anything from the eight hundred years of oppression and persecution under the Islamic rulers. We refused to face the truth even after the gruesome Partition riots and the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits. “If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly”, remarked Ronald Reagan once. Unfortunately, for the majority of Indians, self-delusion is not just folly, it is fatal too.
References
1. Gerhard Bowering, ed., The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013), pp283.
2. Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2000), pp147.
3a. Patricia Crone, God's Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp358.
3b. Jeffrey Kripal, Comparing religions (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), pp28
4. Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an, pp147.
5a. Cambridge University, Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 3rd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp1023.
5b. Crone, God's Rule: Government and Islam, pp358.
6. Bowering, ed., The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, pp374.
7. Ibn Kathir, The battles of the Prophet, 2nd ed. (El-Mansoura, Egypt: Dar al-Manarah, 2001), pp183-184.
8. Sheikh Usama Hasan, From Dhimmitude to Democracy: Islamic Law, Non-Muslims & Equal Citizenship (London: Quilliam, 2015), pp31 https://www.quilliamfoundation.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/publications/free/from-dhimmitude-to-democracy-abridged-version.pdf
9. Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, 634-1099 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp28.
10. Boaz Shoshan, The Arabic Historical Tradition & the Early Islamic Conquest (London: Routledge, 2015), pp71.
11. Andrew Bostom, ed., The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (New York: Prometheus Books, 2010), pp129.
12. Bruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp21.
13. Bowering, ed., The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, pp562.
14. Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp14-15.
15. Lewis, The Jews of Islam, pp15-16.
16. Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and coercion in Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp
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41. Tej.K.Tikoo, “Kashmiri Pandits offered three choices by Radical Islamists”, Indiandefencereview.com, 19 January, 2015, http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/kashmiri-pandits-offered-three-choices-by-radical-islamists/
42. Qaswar Abbas, “Soft Target in Pakistan”, India Today, May 20, 2011, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/hindus-in-pakistan-victims-of-abduction-forced-conversions-and-oppresion/1/138751.html
43. Rabindranath Trivedi, “Declining of Hindu population in Bangladesh?”, Asia Tribune, 30 June, 2016, http://www.asiantribune.com/node/89163
44. India Facts staff, “Seven years of Hindu persecution in West Bengal: a Report”, IndiaFacts.org, March 10, 2015, http://indiafacts.org/seven-years-of-hindu-persecution-in-west-bengal-a-report/
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