By Abdul Rashid Agwan
It is really pitiable that a proclaimed cultural organization, which has struggled all through its 90-year long existence for political dominance in India, when reached its acme, has nothing to offer the nation except hooliganism and violence.
It is becoming evident day by day that Hindutva inculcates neither the idea of refined culture nor of national reconstruction or hope for an ailing nation. By favoring rapists in many cases, the followers of RSS have lost the promise to give India any proud culture and by failing on most fronts of governance they hardly leave image of a promising political alternative. And, now by reviving the ghost of two-nation theory they prove that ideologically they have learned nothing from history of the subcontinent or of Yugoslavia which is no more extant today on the world atlas due to a race-based nationalism.
When India is regressing among nations and going lower than even the sub-saharan countries in terms of human development, they are putting energies in reviving the spree of already rejected two nation theory. India is lagging among nations in terms of peace, education, gender justice, freedom of expression, religious liberty and the like, which is pushing down the country from the status of a developing country to an under-developed one. The dominance of Hindutva bandwagon is turning the situation only from bad to worse.
It is not a sound state of mind to condemn the two-nation theory of Mr Jinnah by symbolically demanding removal of his picture from the Strachy Hall of Aligarh Muslim University while venerating the same theory propounded by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. This is a shere hypocrisy.
Mr Jinna has been exonerated from the blame of dividing the country by many able scholars and leaders, including the once celebrated BJP leader, Lal Krishna Advani, and its former vice-president, Jasvant Singh. They all concluded that the erstwhile ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, Mohammad Ali Jinna, was pushed lately to extend his support to the idea of Pakistan by haughty attitudes of some contemporary national leaders. Jinna’s only fear that Muslims would not receive any fare deal in the free India is being proved true by the champions of Hindutva. The way Hindutva forces are attacking everything ‘Muslim’ is indirectly proving Jinna right. And, by subscribing to the path of religious fundamentalism they are marching on the extremist path of certain sections of Pakistan. In a way, they oppose Jinna and his Pakistan but are closely chasing their footprints. The followers of Hindutva are creating scenes which will only please those global forces which long for India as a weak, divided and under developed country for their neo-colonial ends.
It is pitiable again that to win elections for a brand-politics, communal polarization remains the only technique in the hands of caste leaders. They won’t mind ever bleeding India for certain gains. Jinna is one pretext.
Why targeting only Jinnah, Tilak and Savarkar were the originators of two-nation theory