Vol. 8 · pages 86–90

61 PAKISTAN : BREAK-UP OF UNITY before the judges, doctors, elders and lawyers. Their reply was that the provisions of the law were clear. The Brahmin must either become a Muslim or be burned. The true faith was declared to him and the right course pointed out, but he refused to accept it. Consequently he was burned by the order of the Sultan, and the commentator adds, ‘Behold the Sultan’s strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees ’.” Muhammad not only destroyed temples but made it a policy to make slaves of the Hindus he conquered. In the words of Dr. Titus: “Not only was slaughter of the infidels and the destruction of their temples resorted to in earlier period of Islam’s contact with India, but as we have seen, many of the vanquished were led into slavery. The dividing up of booty was one of the special attractions, to the leaders as well as to the common soldiers in these expeditions. Muhammad seems to have made the slaughter of infidels, the destruction of their temples, the capturing of slaves, and the plundering of the wealth of the people, particularly of the temples and the priests, the main object of his raids. On the occasion of his first raid he is said to have taken much booty ; and half a million Hindus, ‘beautiful men and women’, were reduced to slavery and taken back to Ghazni.” * When Muhammad later took Kanauj, in A. D. 1017, he took so much booty and so many prisoners that ‘the fingers of those who counted them would have tired ’. Describing how common Indian slaves had become in Ghazni and Central Asia after the campaign of A. D. 1019, the historian of the times says † : “The number of prisoners may be conceived from the fact that each was sold for from two to ten dirhams. These were afterwards taken to Ghazni, and merchants came from far distant cities to purchase them ;…….and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor were commingled in one common slavery. “In the year A. D. 1202, when Qutb-ud-Din captured Kalinjar, after the temples had been converted into mosques, and the very name of idolatry was annihilated, fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery and the plain became black as pitch with Hindus.” Slavery was the fate of those Hindus who were captured in the holy war. But, when there was no war the systematic abasement of the Hindus played no unimportant part in the methods adopted * Quoted by Dr. Titus— Indian Islam, p. 24. † lbid.,p. 26.

62 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES by the Muslim invaders. In the days of Ala-ud-Din, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Hindus had in certain parts given the Sultan much trouble. So, he determined to impose such taxes on them that they would be prevented from rising in rebellion. “The Hindu was to be left unable to keep a horse to ride on, to carry arms, to wear fine clothes, or to enjoy any of the luxuries of life.” * Speaking of the levy of Jizyah Dr. Titus says † : “The payment of the Jizyah by the Hindus continued throughout the dominions of the sultans, emperors, and kings in various parts of India with more or less regularity, though often, the law was in force in theory only; since it depended entirely on the ability of the sovereign to enforce his demands. But, finally, it was abolished throughout the Moghul Empire in the ninth year of the enlightened Akbar’s reign (A. D. 1665), after it had been accepted as a fundamental part of Muslim government policy in India for a period of more than eight centuries.” Lane Poole says that “the Hindu was taxed to the extent of half the produce of his land, and had to pay duties on all his buffaloes, goats, and other milch-cattle. The taxes were to be levied equally on rich and poor, at so much per acre, so much per animal. Any collectors or officers taking bribes were summarily dismissed and heavily punished with sticks, pincers, the rack, imprisonment and chains. The new rules were strictly carried out, so that one revenue officer would string together 20 Hindu notables and enforce payment by blows. No gold or silver, not even the betclnut, so cheering and stimulative to pleasure, was to be seen in a Hindu house, and the wives of the impoverished native officials were reduced to taking service in Muslim families. Revenue officers came to be regarded as more deadly than the plague; and to be a government clerk was disgrace worse than death, in so much that no Hindu would marry his daughter to such a man.”‡ These edicts, says the historian of the period, “were so strictly carried out that the chaukidars and khuts and muqaddims were not able to ride on horseback, to find weapon, to wear fine clothes, or to indulge in betel……No Hindu could hold up his head……Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains were all employed to enforce payment.” All this was not the result of mere caprice or moral perversion. On the other hand, what was done was in accordance * Dr. Titus : Indian Islam, p. 29. † Ibid., p. 30. ‡ Lane Poole : Medieval India, p. 104.

63 PAKISTAN : BREAK-UP OF UNITY with the ruling ideas of the leaders of Islam in the broadest aspects. These ideas were well expressed by the Kazi in reply to a question put by Sultan Ala-ud-Din wanting to know the legal position of the Hindus under Muslim law. The Kazi said :— “They are called payers of tribute, and when the revenue officer demands silver from them they should without question, and with all humility and respect, tender gold. If the officer throws dirt in their mouths, they must without reluctance open their mouths wide to receive it…..The due subordination of the Dhimmi is exhibited in this humble payment, and by this throwing of dirt into their mouths. The glorification of Islam is a duty, and contempt for religion is vain. God holds them in contempt, for he says, ‘Keep them in subjection’. To keep the Hindus in abasement is especially a religious duty, because they are the most inveterate enemies of the Prophet, and because the Prophet has commanded us to slay them, plunder them, and make them captive, saying, ‘ Convert them to Islam or kill them, and make them slaves, and spoil their wealth and property’. No doctor but the great doctor (Hanifah), to whose school we belong, has assented to the imposition of jizya on Hindus; doctors of other schools allow no other alternative but ‘Death or Islam’.” * Such is the story of this period of 762 years which elapsed between the advent of Muhammad of Ghazni and the return of Ahmadshah Abdalli. How far is it open to the Hindus to say that Northern India is part of Aryavarta ? How far is it open to the Hindus to say because once it belonged to them, therefore, it must remain forever an integral part of India ? Those who oppose separation and hold to the ‘historic sentiment’ arising out of an ancient fact that Northern India including Afghanistan was once part of India and that the people of that area were either Buddhist or Hindus, must be asked whether the events of these 762 years of incessant Muslim invasions, the object with which they were launched and the methods adopted by these invaders to give effect to their object are to be treated as though they were matters of no account ? Apart from other consequences which have flowed from them these invasions have, in my opinion, so profoundly altered the culture and character of the northern areas, which it is now proposed to be included in a Pakistan, that there is not only no unity * Quoted by Dr. Titus— Indian Islam, p. 29.

64 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES between that area and the rest of India but that there is as a matter of fact a real antipathy between the two. The first consequence of these invasions was the breaking up of the unity of Northern India with the rest of India. After his conquest of Northern India, Muhammad of Ghazni detached it from India and ruled it from Ghazni. When Mahommed Ghori came in the field as a conqueror, he again attached it to India and ruled it from Lahore and then from Delhi. Hakim, the brother of Akbar, detached Kabul and Kandahar from Northern India. Akbar again attached it to Northern India. They were again detached by Nadirshah in 1738 and the whole of Northern India would have been severed from India had it not been for the check provided by the rise of the Sikhs. Northern India, therefore, has been like a wagon in a train, which can be coupled or uncoupled according to the circumstances of the moment. If analogy is wanted, the case of Alsace-Lorraine could be cited. Alsace- Lorraine was originally part of Germany, like the rest of Switzerland and the Low Countries. It continued to be so till 1680, when it was taken by France and incorporated into French territory. It belonged to France till 1871, when it was detached by Germany and made part of her territory. In 1918, it was again detached from Germany and made part of France. In 1940, it was detached from France and made part of Germany. The methods adopted by the invadors have left behind them their aftermath. One aftermath is the bitterness between the Hindus and the Muslims which they have caused. This bitterness, between the two, is so deep-seated that a century of political life has neither succeeded in assuaging it; nor in making people forget it. As the invasions were accompanied with destruction of temples and forced conversions, with spoliation of property, with slaughter, enslavement and abasement of men, women and children, what wonder if the memory of these invasions has ever remained green, as a source of pride to the Muslims and as a source of shame to the Hindus ? But these things apart, this north-west corner of India has been a theatre in which a stern drama has been played. Muslim hordes, in wave after wave, have surged down into this area and from thence scattered themselves in spray

65 PAKISTAN : BREAK-UP OF UNITY over the rest of India. These reached the rest of India in thin currents. In time, they also receded from their farthest limits ; while they lasted, they left a deep deposit of Islamic culture over the original Aryan culture in this north-west corner of India which has given it a totally different colour, both in religious and political outlook. The Muslim invaders, no doubt, came to India singing a hymn of hate against the Hindus. But, they did not merely sing their hymn of hate and go back burning a few temples on the way. That would have been a blessing. They were not content with so negative a result. They did a positive act, namely, to plant the seed of Islam. The growth of this plant is remarkable. It is not a summer sapling. It is as great and as strong as an oke. Its growth is the thickest in Northern India. The successive invasions have deposited their ‘silt’ more there than anywhere else, and have served as watering exercises of devoted gardeners. Its growth is so thick in Northern India that the remnants of Hindu and Buddhist culture are just shrubs. Even the Sikh axe could not fell this oak. Sikhs, no doubt , became the political masters of Northern India, but they did not gain back Northern India to that spiritual and cultural unity by which it was bound to the rest of India before Hsuan Tsang. The Sikhs coupled it back to India. Still, it remains like Alsace-Lorraine politically detachable and spiritually alien so far as the rest of India is concerned. It is only an unimaginative person who could fail to take notice of these facts or insist in the face of them that Pakistan means breaking up into two what is one whole. What is the unity the Hindu sees between Pakistan and Hindustan ? If it is geographical unity, then that is no unity. Geographical unity is unity intended by nature. In building up a nationality on geographical unity, it must be remembered that it is a case where Nature proposes and Man disposes. If it is unity in external things, such as ways and habits of life, that is no unity. Such unity is the result of exposure to a common environment. If it is administrative unity, that again is no unity. The instance of Burma is in point. Arakan and Tenasserim were annexed in 1826 by the treaty of Yendabu. Pegu and Martaban were annexed in 1852. Upper Burma was annexed in 1886. The administrative unity between India and Burma was