Mother or Land?

Once upon a time, there was a family living peacefully and prosperously. One fine morning some street thugs barged in, occupied a portion of their house and lived life in their own “style”. The family though initially resisted the invasion and aggression of their home gradually began viewing the invaders as their own people. Now that these “weeds” were acknowledged as being an integral part of the garden, they demanded a ‘rightful’ share of the house, to which the family accepted. Similar is the story of Bhaaratvarsha where we began viewing the invaders as our associates and finally even made them owners.

Bhaaratavarsha - the land that lies south of the Himalayas, east of Sakadvipa (Seistan), south-east of Vãhlîka (Balkh), west of Burma and between the two seas is verily the punyabhoomi, karmabhoomi and matrubhoomi for millions of people. To us, Bhaaratvarsha is not merely a clod of clay, she is verily the manifestation of Shakthi and rightly worshipped as Bhaarat Mata.

On August 15 1947, she remained stripped of her limbs in the form of present day Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, etc. Shri HV Seshadri Ji in his book The Tragic Story of Partition says “In the [past] one thousand years many parts of our country had been ruled by the Muslims and then by the British, but the nation had never compromised, in principle, its sovereignty over any part of the motherland. As a result, our nation had never ceased to strive for throwing out the aggressors and liberate those parts. And history tells us that ultimately it did succeed in freeing the entire land from the clutches of foreign invaders. However, for the first time, Partition conceded the moral and legal right to them over certain parts of the country and declared an ignominious finale to the one thousand years old heroic struggle for freedom.”

The effect of this inglorious partition of our nation has been tremendous. The partition displayed for the first time that we have surrendered a national principle that the present day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc., are all an integral and inseparable part of Bhaaratvarsha. It is interesting to note an event during the First World War. Germany was defeated and President Berg accepted the authority of France over many German territories in the Treaty of Vermont, as there was no other option. But the same day, he wrote in his diary “My heart will find solace only when the Eagle flag of Germany will flutter there again. Today the land is lost, but this aspiration is inscribed on the heart that is ours.” In the same way, what is sad is not the loss of territory but it is the mindset that caused the loss.

This reveals that we did not view our nation as Bhaarat Mata but just as a piece of land which can be shared with warring factions of our society. In addition, the partitions are a great betrayal to our great heroes who dedicated their whole lives for the cause of Bhaarat Mata. These heroes laid down their lives in vain not knowing that their future generations would hand over their Mother on a platter to the very aggressors whom they had been fighting tooth and nail for more than 1000 years since 636 AD.

Partitions have only made things worse for our nation as we are now surrounded by hostile forces which are vying for our blood every minute. We have given part of our nation to those people who are in every sense antagonistic to the very ideals and ideas which have sustained our race for thousands of years. Those things which were sacred and a pride to us as a nation are verily the objects of hate for the present “occupants” of those lands. Take the example of the Bamiyan Buddha statues which have been dynamited and destroyed. What about hundreds of temples in present day Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Accepting partition also meant that we have implicitly agreed to the views of the Muslim League. The pamphlet Now or Never published in January 1933 by the Indian Muslim students at Cambridge under the leadership of Chaudhari Rehmat Ali, said “India is not the name of single country, nor the home of one single nation. It is in fact, the designation of a state created for the first time in history by the British. Muslims and Hindus do not inter-dine, we do not intermarry. Our national customs and calendars, even our diet and dress, are different. Hence the Muslims demand the recognition of a separate national status.” Have we not conveyed by accepting partition that this was verily true? Don’t many of our Hindu brethren today still feel that we were never a single nation?

Bhaarat is a nation which has respected people of different faiths. It was this nation which gave refuge to Parsees, Jews and others. Such was the nature of our country that we never bothered about the mode of worship. Islam and Christianity are just other modes of worship to an average Indian and hence it does not bother him. The partition of India made it look to the whole world that the majority Hindus of the nation will crush and wipe out the minorities and cannot coexist.

Most importantly, how can we as a nation forget the fact that Islam came as aggressors on a mission to destroy Hindu dharma and convert Bhaarat from Dar-ul-Harb to Dar-ul-Islam? Nowhere on the history of the world have the aggressors been thought of as brothers and handed over a part of the nation because they have a different way of life or because they are a minority. We are being taken on a ride similarly in Nagaland with captions like “Nagaland for Christ”. Do we give them also a part of the nation because they also have a different set of beliefs or because of their minority status?

Lastly, through partition we have displayed that we have no manliness left in us to fight for something which is rightfully ours. This is the reason that Pakistan right from its birth has been waging a war with us in various forms be it direct or proxy. Similar is the case with Bangladesh which is involved in cleansing itself of the Hindu community. If we had displayed the manliness to stand for what we were, we would not be in the present scenario. Thus, it is clear that the partition has sent a lot of subtle messages to keen pair of eyes and set a wrong precedent for the coming generations.

We will see in the next post what we as Hindus could possibly do to avoid being taken for a ride. Most importantly, Happy Independence day! Let's make sure we remember the sacrifice made by our heroes who fought valiantly against the Turks, Hunas, Mughals, French, Portuguese,British, etc not just today but everyday of the year. Vande Mataram!