TERRITORIAL NATIONALISM: ITS ROOTS

Shri Guruji Territorial Nationalism
TERRITORIAL NATIONALISM: ITS ROOTS
Much thought was devoted to the subject before the name 'Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh' was decided upon for the organisation. A number of persons close to the Sangh were also consulted. Naturally, many suggestions were put forth, and objections raised against each name. Even the present name was confronted with the objection that if the word 'Rashtriya' was adopted then its doors would have to be kept open to all other people in the country, i.e., Muslims, Christians, etc. So the name 'Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh' was suggested, as the organisation was restricted only to the Hindus.
Why 'Rashtriya ' and not 'Hindu'
Then why was the word 'Rashtriya' finally adopted in preference to the word 'Hindu'?
There is an instance, which correctly denotes the underlying viewpoint. In Bombay there is a locality known as 'Hindu Colony'. Some persons of that place thought that the foreign word 'colony' should be changed. They came together to change the name. Our revered founder, who was in Bombay at that time, was also invited. When he was asked for his opinion, he said, "More than the word 'colony' it is the word 'Hindu' that requires to be changed first." All those who had gathered, being very staunch Hindus, felt shocked. They asked, "How is it you, being a staunch Hindu, are opposed to the word 'Hindu'? Doctorji replied, 'I am not opposed to the word 'Hindu' as such. I am only opposed to its use in the present context, which denotes that in our own country the Hindus have formed a colony! How can there be a colony of Hindus in Hindustan? If some Englishmen come, stay in a particular locality in Hindustan and call it a 'British Colony' it can be understood.
So also it is, if you go to England, live in a particular locality and call it a 'Hindu Colony'. But a 'British Colony' in England an 'American Colony' in the United States and a 'Hindu Colony' in our land Hindusthan are all absurd. Either you accept that this is not your motherland and that you have come form somewhere outside and formed a colony here, or you change the name 'Hindu'. But they could not realise that there was something incongruous and absurd in having a 'Hindu Colony' in our own country. So the name continues even now.
From this we can realise why the word 'Rashtriya' and not 'Hindu' was used in naming the organisation. Doctorji used to say that in our land the word 'Rashtriya' naturally means 'Hindu' and therefore the word 'Hindu' need not be used. He would say, "If we use the word 'Hindu' it will only mean that we consider ourselves only as one of the innumerable communities in this land and that we do not realise our natural status as the nationals of this country." But, it is a fact that there is in our country quite an amount of misunderstanding about what 'nation' is, to which the Bombay incident is only a pointer.
The British Game
How did this misunderstanding creep in? During the last one thousand years, there bad been many foreign aggressions on our land. The invaders such as the Greeks, Hunas and the Shakas who came previously were either defeated and driven out or, if some of them stayed over, were absorbed in the Hindu Society. But the invaders who came during the last ten or twelve centuries could not be driven out. They could not be absorbed either. They remained a separate entity and ruled as foreigners in this land. The last rulers, the British, were ruling form several thousand miles away. Being shrewd, they knew that perpetuation of their far-flung empire was possible only by knocking out from the minds of the people the faith, which gave them inspiration and strength to fight for freedom. What was that faith?
The British found that the average man here adores his motherland. The people here were blended together as an organic whole, though for the time being their unity was disrupted. A supreme sense of self-respect, love of freedom and devotion to their culture and traditions were ingrained in their blood. Knowing that such an indomitable spirit of nationalism would spell disaster to their empire, they planned systematically to undermine the faith of the people in their motherland, in their dharma and in their heritage.
There is an incident narrated by Lala Hardayal, one of our great revolutionaries. In the South, there was an English officer. His assistant was a local person, probably a Naidu. The orderly of that Englishman was a Brahmin. One day, when this Englishman was walking in a street, followed by his orderly, the assistant came form the opposite side. The two officers greeted each other and shook hands. But when the assistant officer saw the orderly, he took off his turban and touched his feet. The Englishman was amazed. He queried, "I am your senior officer, but you stand erect and just shake hands wih me, whereas he is only my peon and you prostrate before him on this busy road. What is the matter?" The Assistant officer replied, "You may be my officer, but you are a mlechha. He may be a peon, but he belongs to that class of my people which is held in great respect all down the centuries, before whom it is my duty to bow down." Letters are available, written
by that Englishman to the India Office in England, relating all this and saying that unless the Englishman ousted the Brahmin from that position and occupied it himself, i.e., became as respectable or even more, his empire could not last long.
With that end in view, the Englishman began training us systematically in various ways. The first thing he taught was that this was one great 'continent' and not a country. He said that we are not one people and one nation. There were some aboriginals here staying for ages who had been driven away into the forsets and hills.There were also other types of aboriginals called the Dravidas. Aryans came form the North and with their superior strength of arms conquered this land and dominated over the rest. That is, we were told we had no motherland, that most of us had come form somewhere outside and therefore were equally strangers and foreigners to this country. We were also told we had no dharma, no philosophy, no morals worth the name, that all our past life was just one of unrelieved darkness, that the coming of the English here was 'divine dispensation', for we could learn sitting at their feet the first lessons in culture, religion and orderly social
and political life.
The imperialist designs of Macaulay, the brain behind the system of English education, were trumpeted aloud: "We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and millions whom we govern-a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect." And again, in 1836, he wrote to his father, "No Hindu who has received an English education ever remains sincerely attached to his religion….. If our plans of education are followed up there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal 30 years hence." Even to this day, the same insidious indoctrination of young minds is carried on in the Christian convents here-that there is no real Saviour other than Jesus Christ, that the Hindu religion is only a mass of superstitions, that without taking to Christianity they would all be doomed to eternal damnation and so on.
History Distorted
There used to be a book of history for schoolboys, wherein the history of all our ancient emperors and kings was summed up under the title "Tanglewood Tales", i.e., a period of all confusion and darkness. And then, in that confusion and darkness, says that 'historian', the Aryans came, first settled down in Punjab where the battle of Mahabharata took place. Then they proceeded towords the Ganga and Yamuna and settled down in Ayodhya. So he had concluded that several centuries after the story of Mahabharata came the story of Ramayana! I appreciated that 'historian's' ingenuity! Indeed it requires an uncommon genius to discover that the father was born after the son! The entire history of our country thus comprised the 'dark ages' at the start and the later portion was divided into Muslim period and the British period.All these things were being taught right from our childhood and no wonder many of our people believed that we had no national life and
nothing great whatsoever.
Even after the Britishers have left, we find in our school text-books, our history divided into Hindu Period, Muslim Period and British Period implying the same old poisonous theory of the Britisher that Hindu in this land stand on the same footing as the Muslim and the British. The fact that the history of Bharat is one long Hindu Period, sometimes in a free and glorious condition and sometimes struggling with the foreign invaders in the cause of national freedom and honour, and that periods in history are known after the nationals and not after foreign usurpers and dictates masquerading as kings, is not recognised even today.
'A Nation in the Making'
It was no wonder that the so-called educated Hindu fell a prey to the trap laid by the Britisher. He begun to dress and speak like an Englishman. He began to feel ashamed of his ancestors and his past heritage. Some time ago a startling instance of those days had appeared in dharma-yug, a prominent Hindi weekly. Three gentlemen --an Irishman, a Scotchman and a prominent Hindu leader (Pt. Motilal Nehru.) once stayed in a hotel in Europe. In the visitors' book, while referring to their nationalities, the first wrote, 'I am proud to be born in Ireland'; the second person expressed his good fortune to be born as a Scotchman; and the third, the Hindu, wrote, "I consider it a result of my past sins that I am born in a Hindu Brahmin family!"
In such an atmosphere it was natural that the English educated believed that all the centuries of our past life having been one of ignorance and internecine quarrels, we were to start afresh as a nation. In the early days of our freedom struggle against the Britisher, we find in the speeches of many top-ranking leaders the expression "we are a nation in the making" which mean, we are not yet formed into a nation. Even today many leaders say that we are a melting pot, that we are yet to give shape and content to our national life, and so on.
Another theory, which caught their imagination was that since all those residing in this land were under the common danger of a foreign rule, that common danger resulted in forging them all into a new nationality. It is well known that a common danger can build up a nationality which already exists at least in a seed from but cannot create it de novo. It can only rouse and strengthen a nation but cannot create an entirely new one. It infuses into the nation a spirit of unity and sacrifice born out of the will to resist and defy the foreign aggressors. That is all the implication of the theory of common danger. And here it was sought to be applied to achieve new nationality altogether.
Absurdity of 'Territorial Concept'
They forgot that here was already a full-fledged ancient nation of the Hindus and the various communities which were living in the country were here either as guests, the jews and Paris, ar as invaders, the Muslim and Christians. They never faced the question how all such hetrogeneous groups could be called as children of the soil merely because, by an accident, they happened to reside in a common territory under the rule of a common enemy.
During one of our meetings in those days,a gentleman emphatically stated that whoever resided in this country must be considered as our national. I asked him, "Residing for how long?" He said, "there is no time limit for that. "Even for a day?" I asked. He replied, "Yes," Thereupon I remarked, "Then rejoice! We have won swaraj. We have won an empire! There is no need any more for all the trials and tribulations of freedom struggle. For according to your definition the present Prime Minister of England, Ramsay MacDonald, is a national of our land, as he was here for quite a few days. So it means that it is we who are ruling over England and not vice versa!" Such is the extent of absurd and perverse conclusions to which the 'serai theory' of territorial nationalism leads us.
The theories of territorial nationalism and of common danger, which formed the basis of our concept of a nation, had deprived us of the positive and inspiring content of our real Hindu Nationhood and made many of the 'freedom movements' virtually anti-British movements. Anti-Britishism was equated with patriotism and nationalism. This reactionary view has had disastrous effects upon the entire course of the freedom struggle, its leaders and the common people.
TERRITORIAL NATIONALISM: ITS FRUITS
Revolutionaries turned traitors--Congress turned reactionary--Nature of non-Hindu communities--Muslim appeasement--Hindus exhorted for self-annihilation--Leadership, a tragic curse--Malady continuing--Correct the initial blunder.
In main, two types of movements rose up against the British rule in our country. One was the armed revolution resorted to by the revolutionaries and the other, passive resistance led by the Indian National Congress. Let us consider the effects of 'anti-Britishism' on the two separately.
Patriots Turned Traitors
The revolutionary leaders had forged a wide network of secret cells, arsenals and a band of fiery patriotic heroes ready to sacrifice their lives. But some traitor here or there used to betray their secrets and their best guarded and calculated plans would come to grief. When a person strives time and again but does not succeed, he looks around to see if there is anybody who, following the same method, has been successful. This being the human tendency, the revolutionaries wanted an example of some successful revolution to emulate.
Among them, those who had the positive grasp of our national life looked for such a revolutionary inspiration within the country, within our own history, just as a Savarkar and Subash Chandra Bose were inspired by the ideal of Shivaji. Subash Chandra Bose, in one of his last interviews before he disappeared from our country, had spoken highly about the greatness of Shivaji and had even declared that we could achieve swaraj only by following the ideals and methods of Shivaji.
But those who had not that grasp, that positive abiding conviction of our nationhood, but were goaded only by intense antagonism to the British rule, looked everywhere except into their own past. They found that there was a successful revolution in Russia in 1917, which had overthrown the old Czarship and the feudal system and had established 'people's regime', as it was called. Many of our revolutionaries were so much enamoured of it that they sought to bring about a revolution based on Communist ideology and Communist methods. The result was that those who started as devotees of our freedom have now turned into devotees of Communism and of the Russian and Chinese leadership. They are now fighting to 'liberate' our country form ourselves and enslave it to Russia and China. We therefore see that those who were willing to lay down their lives for the freedom of our motherland are now equally willing to lay down their lives for making our motherland a
satellite of Russia or China. Those who were once swadeshabhaktas of the intense burning type have now become equally intense paradeshabhaktas. What a degradation!
The Congress Debacle
The other movement led by the Congress has had more disastrous and degrading effects on the country. Most of the tragedies and evils that have overtaken our country during the last few decades and are even today corroding our national life are its direct outcome.
The congress leaders, when faced with the might of the British empire, felt that their strength was too little. To make up for their weakness they began to look around if some other countries would come to their aid. The revolutionaries too had tried that method. But foreign powers do not rush to the help of weaker people unless there is a chance of their own self-interest being fulfilled. Some of the top-ranking leaders of Congress approached Amir Amanullah of Afghanistan for help. The plan was that the Amir should invade our country synchronising with our uprising from within and help us to drive out the British. As a recompense for his help he was promised that in the place of the British he would be accepted as our Suzerain! But the British, shrewd as they were, came to know of the plot, put these leaders in detention and contrived by their skilful diplomacy to overthrow the supremacy of Amanullah in Afghanistan itself!
When this attempt failed, the Congress leaders thought that at least a united front of all those who lived here should be forged against the British. That was also in line with their notion of nationalism. Apart from the Hindu People, there were four communities living here-the Jew, the Parsi, the Christian and the Muslim.
There was no difficulty about the Hindus. They naturally love this country as their sacred motherland. Since hoary times they have built up a great culture and heritage here. They have given rise to great men of thought and action in all walks of life and in all parts of the country. Therefore the whole land, from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari, is scared to them. They want this land to be free from foreign domination. Even their scriptures command them to aspire for freedom. The spirit of freedom in ingrained in their very blood. As a result, they had never taken foreign domination for granted even in the past and were striking at its shackles time and again with varying degrees of success.
Jews, Parsis, Christians
Then there were the Jews and Parsis who had come here as refugees. The Jews were ignored as they were very few. The parsis, though small in number, were an intelligent, industrious and prosperous community. But to a large extent, they had merged in the mainstream of the Hindu life here. They had developed intense love for our motherland and were in the forefront of our freedom struggle. Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta and Madame Cama became symbols of inspiration for all freedom fighters.
Then came the question of the Christian gentlemen here. During the war of Independence in 1857, some bishops here had raised platoons to help the British Government in suppressing the uprising. Since then, they were always on the side of the British who, after all, belonged to their own faith. The British too were helping the Christian missionary activities in various ways. Vast jungle and hill areas were specially chosen, as for example the Chhota Nagpur area and the Naga territory, where only the Christian missionaries were sent and their borders sealed to all other religious preachers. There was a natural co-ordination between the local Christians, the Christian Missions and the British Government. So, in general, the Christians kept themselves aloof from the freedom struggle.
The Leadership on Trial
Then came the question of Muslims. They had come here as invaders. They were conceiving themselves as conquerors and rulers here for the last twelve hundred years. That complex was still in their mind. History has recorded that their antagonism was not merely political. Had it been so, they could have been won over in a very short time. But it was so deep-rooted that whatever we believed in, the Muslim was wholly hostile to it. If we worship in the temple, he would desecrate it. If we carry on bhajans and car festivals, that would irritate him. If we worship cow, he would like to eat it. If we glorify woman as a symbol of sacred motherhood, he would like to molest her. He was tooth and nail opposed to our way of life in all aspects-religious, cultural, social, etc. He had imbibed that hostility to the very core. His number also was not small. Next to the Hindu's, his was the largest.
Our leaders, were therefore faced with the problem of weaning these people away form their hostile mood and bringing them to the patriotic ranks. There was a very rational and patriotic way of approach. That was to tell them frankly: "Dear friends, the days of old Moghul Badshahi have passed. Now both of us will have to live ultimately as brothers here, as co-sharers in this national life. After all, you also belong to the same race as ours, to the same blood of ours, but converted to Islam at the point of sword by those Moghul, Turk and other foreign races. Now, there is no point in your continuing to associate yourself mentally with those foreign aggressors and trying to follow in their footsteps. Forget all such separatist memories, merge yourself in the life of this soil. Hereafter try to respect and follow the examples of the great sons of this land who fought for the freedom and honour of our motherland and our culture." Then matters would have
been very simple. Such instances have happened all over the world. For instance, the Normans entered England as aggressors. The local people stood up against them to defend their freedom. But later, both of them merged together and faced all future aggressions as one united people. And they have continued to live a unified life even to this day.
Sowing Seeds of Self-Destruction
But, to tell the pugnacious fighting Mussalman that his forefathers were Hindus, that he should return to the Hindu fold as a self-respecting man, that he should give up his aggressive mode of the Moghul days and wake up to the realities of the present century and merge in the national current of life - to tell all this required an unshakable conviction in the supremacy of truth and indomitable courage to face the hard realities of the situation. But, unfortunately, both these qualities, uncompromising love for truth and fearlessness, are really wanting in many of the leading personalities of these days.
There is before us that famous instance of Maulana Mohammed Ali, once known as the 'right hand' of Mahatma Gandhi and a devout Muslim. He was the President-elect at the Kakinada session of Congress in 1923. The renowned songster-patriot Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar had come there to sing the national anthem Vande Mataram. Just as the session was about to commence, when he came forward to sing Vande Mataram, Maulana Saheb stopped him saying, "No, you cannot sing that song. It revolts against the spirit of our religion." But the stout-heated Paluskar refused to be cowed down. He said that he had come expressly for that purpose and he would discharge his duty. In anger Maulana Saheb left the place and stayed away when the national anthem was being sung! There was not a single courageous soul among the whole crowd of leaders assembled there that had the guts to tell him, "Janab, this is our national anthem. Being the President of the National Congress,
you should not object to its singing. You should not allow other considerations to come in the way of patriotism." On the contrary, portions of Vande Mataram were thereafter dropped to appease Muslim fanaticism.
Thus, it was due to the utter lack of will and conviction on the part of our leaders to face the Muslim intransigence squarely from the standpoint of undiluted nationalism, that the seeds of appeasement of Muslims were sown. In their phantom chase of achieving a new unity and a new nationality, our leaders raised the slogan of 'Hindu-Muslim unity' and declared that anything that stood in its way should be forgotten. As they dared not tell the Muslim to forget his separatism, they pitched upon the docile Hindu for all their preachings. The first thing they preached was, that our nationality could not be called Hindu, that even our land could not be called by its traditional name Hindusthan, as that would offend the Muslim. The name 'India' given by the British was accepted. Taking that name, the 'new nation' was called the 'Indian Nation.' And the Hindu was asked to rename himself as 'Indian'.
Hindu-the Sacrificial Goat
The exhortation of the leaders did not stop at that. The Hindu was asked to ignore, even to submit meekly, to the vandalism and atrocities of the Muslims. In effect, he was told: "Forget all that the Muslims have done in the past and all that they are now doing to you. If your worshipping in the temple, or your taking out gods in procession in the streets irritates the Muslims, then don't do it. If they carry away your wives and daughters, let them. Do not obstruct them. That would be violence!" To cite an instance, in those days a Hindu girl was abducted by a Muslim in NWFP and the problem was posed before the Central Assembly where our prominent leaders were present. A Muslim Congress leader lightly brushed aside the incident saying, "After all boys are boys and girls are girls." At that insulting remark not one of the Hindu leaders present there raised a voice of protest. None dared to ask why, if it was just a case of boys and girls, it always
happened that the Muslim boys kidnapped only Hindu girls and not Muslim girls? On the other hand they enjoyed the remark as a piece of humour!
Whenever the Muslims slaughtered cows to insult Hindu feelings, the Hindus were told that it was the religious right of Muslims and that, being tolerant to other religions, they should not object to it. Although there is not a word of sanctions in Quran for cow-slaughter, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had given the Muslims a written assurance that on the advent of swaraj cow-slaughter would not be banned keeping in view their 'religious sentiments'.
Once a notable Hindu personality of those days, in a largely attended public meetings, declared: "There is no swaraj without Hindu-Muslim unity and the simplest way in which this unity can be achieved is for all Hindus to become Muslims!" He did not even realise that then it would not be Hindu-Muslim unity but only Muslim unity as there would be no Hindu left at all!
It was carried to such extent, that self-forgetfulness was taught to the Hindus. They were taught to forget their glorious history, to forget Rana Pratap, Shivaji, Guru Govind Singh and all such inspiring names and, if at all their memory did intrude, to call them 'misguided patriots'. In fact, history was 'invented' to suit their slogans of Hindu-Muslim unity. To give an example of one such invention, a well-known scholar of our country has written that there is hardly an Islam! Is this invention not something 'super-Einsteinian' in its originality? And all this was supposed to be for the achievement of 'Hindu-Muslim unity' and therefore of swaraj! The credulous and freedom-loving Hindu believed in all that and prepared himself to sacrifice his Hindu-hood, all his age-old ideals, heritage and aspirations, as he was told by his leaders that without Hindu-Muslim unity swaraj could not be achieved! One prominent leader had gone to the extent of saying that
he would not accept even swasraj without Hindu-Muslim unity!
In other words, the Hindu was told that he was imbecile, that he had no spirit, no stamina to stand on his own legs and fight for the independence of his motherland and that all this had to be injected into him in the form of Muslim blood. What a shame, what a misfortune that our own leaders should have come forward to knock out the ancient and indomitable faith in ourselves and destroy our spirit of self-confidence and self-reliance, which is the very life-breath of a people! Those who declared 'No swaraj without Hindu-Muslim unity' have thus perpetrated the greatest treason on our society. They have committed the most heinous sin of killing the life-spirit of a great and ancient people. To preach impotency to a society which gave rise to a Shivaji who, in the words of the great historian Jadunath Sarkar, 'proved to the whole world that the Hindu has drunk the elixir of immortality', and to break the self-confident and proud spirit of such a great and
virile society has no parallel in the history of the world for the sheer magnitude of its betryal.
The Bitter Fruit
The direct result was that Hindus were defeated at the hands of Muslim in 1947. And who were these Muslims? The overwhelming majority of them were those who were converted to Islam at the point of sword or by temptations of power and pelf. That is, they were the progeny of that section of our society, which had not the mental stamina or the self-respect to stand up in defence of their swadesh and swadharma but preferred to join the enemy camp to save their skin. And we, children of heroic ancestors of peerless valour who for centuries braved and stamped out waves after waves of the invading hordes of Muslims, accepted defeat at the hands of such a people!
And what a disgraceful defeat at that! During the last one thousands years of our struggle with those aggressors never had we accepted their sovereign rights over any part of this land. Even when they held sway over vast portions of our country as in the times of Akbar and Aurangzeb not a day passed without a Rana Pratap, a Guru Govind Singh, a Chhatrasal or a Shivaji challenging them and asserting our national freedom. The same inspiring tradition of freedom struggle continued unabated during the rule of the Britishers also. However, for the first time in 1947, we gave up the fight, put an ignoble end to the glorious one-thousand-year-long struggle for national freedom, surrendered all our rights and acquiesced in an unchallenged domination of the aggressor over huge portions of our land.
That was the bitter fruit of the continuous draining out of the spirit of self-confidence form the Hindus by the suicidal slogan of 'no swaraj without Hindu-Muslim unity' indulged in by our leaders.
Nemesis Overtakes
No other people in the world have so far been so singularly unfortunate as we Hindus in this regard. The leaders of various peoples have always striven their utmost to infuse self-confidence, to rekindle the drooping spirit among, their people and to make them virile and conquering in the face of enemies. But here, we had leaders who were, as if, pledged to sap all manliness form their own people. However, this is not a mere accident of history. This leadership only came as a bitter climax of the despicable tribe of so many of our ancestors who during the past twelve hundred years sold their national honour and freedom to foreigners, and joined hands with the inveterate enemies of our country and our religion in cutting the throats of their own kith and kin to gratify their personal egoism, selfishness and rivalry. No wonder nemesis overtook such a people in the form of such self-destructive leadership.
Appeasement Whets Appetite
Well, did these leaders succeed, though at such a terrible cost, in realising their dream of Hindu-Muslim unity? No! The more our leaders tried to appease the Muslims, the more their separatist and aggressive appetite was whetted. The British too set about to sharpen their separatist teeth and claws in a bid to set them against the nationalist forces. Thus Muslims were placed in a position in which they were wanted by both the British and the nationalist and their price was rising higher and higher.
In 1857, Surendranath Banerjee wrote in his diary that in order that congress may not appear to be purely a Hindu body, they tried their best to bring in Muslims and even offered fares and other facilities to them to attend the Congress sessions and that in spite of all these, very few Muslims came.
During the freedom struggle, Pandit Nehru had once undertaken in his home province a big campaign of 'Muslim mass contact' to win them over to our side. But the result was that Muslim League began to grow there in leaps and bounds and that very province, i.e., U.P., became the spearhead of disruptionist Muslim movement.
Even as early as 1917, Congress had, in the Lucknow Pact, acceded to separate electorates for Muslims. Later, the Communal Award of 1931 allotted 33.33 per cent seats to Muslims in the Central Legislature, though they formed only 24 per cent of the total population. In addition, Muslims were given 'statutory' majority in Punjab and Bengal, where the Muslim population figures were boosted in the Census to appear as more than those of Hindus. And again, the number of seats reserved for Muslims was far in excess of even those boosted population figures. In the other provinces where Muslims were in a minority they were awarded weightage. By that they got far greater representation than what their population warranted. Still their demands went on mounting. In 1946, when the Central Interim Ministry was formed, the Muslims were given 'parity' with the 'caste Hindus' thus driving a wedge among the Hindus. Finally their price rose to such a pitch that they not
only got two big slices of this land where they live today as complete masters with plans to conquer the rest of our country, but also continue to remain here in sufficient numbers to act as potential fifth-column.
The Blasted Slogan
The partition of our country simultaneously with the quitting of the British and the advent of swaraj, gave the lie direct to the slogan 'No swaraj without Hindu-Muslim unity'. In fact, the relations between the Hindus and Muslims were never so bitter and estranged as in those years of 1946 and 1947. Millions of families were uprooted from their ancestral homes; province after province turned crimson by the flow of rivers of blood; and death, destruction and disgrace scarred the faces of crores of innocent human beings. Even the normal social intercourse, which had existed between the two for ages was shattered during that period. It was precisely at that hour the British quit this land. In what words shall we describe 'the farsightedness and statesmanship' of those leaders who had proclaimed, 'No swaraj without Hindu-Muslim unity'!
The Corrective
Even to this day, after the British have quit the land, we are witnessing the disastrous effects of the reactionary and perverted concept of nationalism. It is a matter of common experience that even a slight aberration at the start in taking a particular course leads one in course of time to an altogether different destination. Further, if a man commits a mistake once, he tends to persist in it. Any advice from others to give up the mistaken course only irritates him and makes him stick to it all the more obstinately. To err is human but to persist in proved and established error is un-human. The quality of rational human being is to acknowledge one's mistake and correct it with all humility with the firm resolve never to repeat the mistake. But unfortunately, our leaders are not prepared to revise and correct their territorial concept of nationalism which has led to the unprecedented tragedy of partition of our motherland, with all its continuing and
growing dangers, and the uprooting of over two crores of our brethren resulting in their indescribable miseries of desolation, distress and dishonour.
This is the price we have paid and we are even now paying for the wrong and unnatural concept of nation that we have adopted. Nor could anything better have been expected to flow out of that. The concept of territorial nationalism has verily emasculated our nation and what more can we expect of a body deprived of its vital energy?
Once in the zoology section of a college the students planned to crack a joke with their old professor. They removed the legs of a water-bug and joined the legs of another species to it. They brought it to their professor and asked him in a puzzled tone, "Sir, we could not make out what this is. What new type of bug is it?" The old professor examined it under a microscope and remarked gravely, "How is it, boys, you do not know such a simple common bug as this? The name of this bug is 'humbug'!"
It was this 'humbug' type of nationalism that was attempted to be vivified. It is like attempting to create a novel animal by joining the head of a monkey and the legs of a bullock to the main body of an elephant! It can only result in a hideous corpse. It cannot be a living body. If at all some activity is seen in that body it is only of the germs and bacteria breeding in that decomposing corpse. And so it is that we see today the germs of corruption, disintegration and dissipation eating into the vitals of our nation for having given up the natural living nationalism in the pursuit of an unnatural, unscientific and lifeless hybrid-concept of territorial nationalism.
Therefore, if we are to rise again as a nation, we must correct the initial blunder, which we committed in accepting the newfangled idea of nationalism which experience has proved to be absolutely false and ruinous. Let us not be deluded into a wrong track by the wily propaganda of interested persons. We have been sufficiently fooled uptill now by their exhortation that we Hindus, who are having a great philosophy of human brotherhood, catholicity of spirit and so on, should not narrow ourselves by the talk of Hindu Nationalism and all such 'communal', 'medieval' and 'reactionary' ideas! We must be able to see through the game and revert to the truth of our nationalism as an ancient fact and the Hindus being the national society of Bharat, so clearly restated by our revered founder when he decided the word 'Rashtriya' for our organisation. We must once again stand up in our true and full stature and boldly assert that we shall elevate the Hindu National
Life in Bharat to the peak of glory and honour which has been its birthright since hoary time.