WHEN WE SURVEY the history of Parāvartana or Ghar-Wapsi recounted in the past episodes of this series, it becomes clear that all Hindus who care about their society have, throughout the centuries, retained the primacy of this ceremony of homecoming not only in their subconscious but in their speeches, writing and activism.
To cite a recent example, the titan of Kannada literature, Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa has beautifully infused Parāvartana in several of his acclaimed novels, chiefly in Dharmashri, Tabbaliyu Neenaade Magane, Saartha and Aavarana.
Indeed, Parāvartana is the very subject of his Dharmashri, published in 1961. It is the story of a Brahmin youth who converts to Christianity owing to his passion for marrying a Christian girl and reverts to Sanatana Dharma being unable to bear his stifling new life as a Christian.
In Tabbaliyu Neenaade Magane (Orphaned, in English), we have a vivid scene of how a Christian Principal of a college in Mysore deceptively feeds beef to his student who hails from a family of Golla-Gowdas, or cowherds. In just a few excruciating pages, Dr. Bhyrappa describes the turmoil that this student undergoes when he learns that he has eaten cow meat and how he undergoes an elaborate Shuddhi ceremony to cleanse the sin of consuming beef.
The final chapter of Saartha (Caravan, in English) is an insightful and action-packed exposition of the philosophy of Ghar-Wapsi undergone by a Hindu woman who has been forcibly impregnated by Turushka savages in the wake of Muhammad bin Qasim’s raid. Her spiritual Guru is verily the symbol of magnanimity, compassion and pragmatism rolled in one. He advises her to deliver the child in her womb and to marry Nagabhatta, the novel’s protagonist who has stood by her in thick and thin and to rear the child as a Hindu. This clearly agrees with Devala in letter, spirit and action.
As for Aavarana (The Veil, in English), the whole novel is a layered creative treatise on both forcible conversions and on Parāvartana that simultaneously occurs in the past and the present in the realm of the same space — Bharatavarsha.
NOTWITHSTANDING SWAMI Shraddhananda’s brutal murder, several Hindu organisations and individuals continued efforts at Ghar-Wapsi. However, the Partition of Bharatavarsha was a major and an irrecoverable blow and loss to the Hindu society.
With a single, cold-blooded surgical slice of the pen, the Hindu community was thrown at the mercy of the Jihadi wolves who got a whole new Islamic country which they called Pakistan.
The Partition obliterated even the notion of Ghar-Wapsi in this newly-minted hell hole. To understand the magnitude of Pakistan’s creation, we must recall the fact that the Arya Samaj first began the blitzkrieg of its Hindu activism in Lahore. Its influence encompassed the whole of Sindh, which is now in Pakistan. There is still a large building in Kyamarri, Karachi with Urdu lettering that until recently, proclaimed it as the Arya Samaj Compound. An eyewitness report dated 2016 about the Arya Samaj’s former influence in Karachi is worth citing here:
“Majid pointed to some plaques on the left, but they were all in Hindi.
“A friend of Anwar’s, Muhammad Ali Soomro, who was a local of Kyamarri, pointed in the direction of a kindergarten school, saying, “Here’s the place where once there was a temple.”
“Anwar and Muhammad Ali Soomro took us to another old building nearby, which could easily have been mistaken for a temple if not for the plaque announcing that it was yet another kindergarten school…
“Presently, in Karachi or elsewhere in Sindh, Arya Samaj is non-existent. Its only remnants are the plaques in Hindi that can be seen at the Arya Samaj Compound in Kyamarri. My friends Hassan Mansoor, Hafeez Chachar and Ajmal Kamal helped me read the plaques. They said: “Arya Samaj Kyamarri: ‘The foundation stone was laid by Shri Acharya Ram Dev of Gurukul Kangri on 15-9-1929. The temple was constructed with help of Om Shri Swam Sevak Anand.
“Both the Kyamarri temples now host kindergarten schools… You will only see Muslims in Arya Samaj Compound now.”
Lest we forget, the Arya Samaj’s Shuddhi Movement had been highly active in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Sialkot, Karachi and Multan among other major cities. The fact it was established in Peshawar speaks volumes.
In many ways, Devala Muni had himself predicted the extent of Hindu loss 1300 years ago when he composed his pioneering Smriti. To re-quote its opening verse: “Devala Muni was seated in Sukhasana on the banks of the sacred Sindhu Nadi.”
All that remains of the Sindhu’s sacred memory today is something called the Indus Waters Treaty — a treaty that was made between a parasite that had fattened itself on the host to the extent that it became a lethal new beast.
Among other things, it is the Sindhu Nadi that gave India one of the definitive markers of its Asmita.
Sindhu, now swallowed by Pakistan.
To be continued
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