AND WE NOW ARRIVE at the most anticipated part of Ram Sharan Sharma’s pamphlet: the great role that Islam played in world history as a progressive religion professing universal brotherhood.
He begins with this statement: “Islam played a progressive role inasmuch as it welded the various Arab clans and tribes into a polity and substantially reduced the perpetual tribal feuds that plagued them.”
Which begs the question derived from the Marxist school of historical “logic” – didn’t the class of “exploiters” and “exploited” exist among the Arab tribes, clans and kingdoms? Wasn’t there some “clever” and “crafty” individual or group within the Arab society, claiming to be the messenger of God? Didn’t this group hoodwink the ‘toiling masses’ for their own “class interests?”
When you raise such questions, the standard Marxist response is tauba, tauba! Rubbish!
Marxist definitions and categories are not meant for the great Arabs, and certainly not for Islam. And so, the narrative is spun as follows: the quarreling medieval Arabs had to be united. When that happened, they got a progressive religion named Islam.
In fact, no Marxist analysis is warranted for Islamic phenomena. Whatever is unacceptable to Muslims is not to be spoken about or written. If Muslims regard something as evil, it is evil. If a Muslim abhors something, it is the duty of a Marxist historian to abhor it too. The classic example is the worship of God images and statues, which is forbidden in Islam. That is all a Marxist historian is allowed to do. And R.S. Sharma dutifully concurs.
This is also the reason why Sharma slyly praises the Arya Samaj, a Hindu sect of recent history, for “It opposed idol worship and fought the evils that followed from it.” Other Marxist historians with Hindu names, too, as faithfully hate idol worship. Here is Prof K N Panikkar: “the Ram Janmabhoomi movement underlines the importance of idol worship. It was big tragedy that the movement was supported by the Arya Samaj, a big opponent of idol worship.”
Now the question is: why is Murti Puja, among all religious rituals of all religions, the most unacceptable to the Marxists? Why are not baptism, reading the Kalma and the five-time ‘shouting in mosques’ (as the great bhakti-poet Kabir ridiculed), fire-worship, chanting of hymns, animal sacrifice, proselytisation, etc., treated the same way?
And, what exactly are ‘the evils that follow from idol worship’ according to Prof. Sharma?
The sensible and curious readers will have to find the answer themselves as Sharma and his Marxist clique is silent on why they hate only idol worship, and not, for example, moving around the Kaaba in Mecca? What exactly makes the difference for them, either on the ground of ‘scientific’ or ‘superstitious’ argument?
R.S. Sharma also regrets that the Arya Samaj has given up its anti-idol worship, progressive role and has become ‘anti-Muslim’. That is, the Arya Samaj is no longer anti-Hindu. Alas! What a fall of a progressive organisation! With great sorrow and anger Prof Sharma devotes an entire paragraph to this.
Let’s look at the other side and see what emerges.
It is universally believed in the Muslim world that the Koran is the book which contains all knowledge, and nothing outside it is important or has a right to exist. And so, by the Marxist logic, those who claim such fantastic things about the Koran are doing ‘vicious propaganda’ ‘communalising the mind’ and ‘infecting the mind’ with ‘communal virus,’ which may lead to ‘fanatical wars’ and which ‘poses a danger to the cause of national integration in India.’
When you even mention this fallacy, the Marxist eminences will quickly remind the reader that he is stupid. Because such logical objections are not, by definition, meant for Islam.
You see, a sane mind cannot compare the Vedas, the pathetic ‘song of cattle grazers’ with that of the Holy Koran! This is why Sharma and other Marxist historians never make even an indirect reference to the Koran in such ways as they do to Vedas as a rule.
Next, Sharma, while trying to ‘de-communalise’ our knowledge, mentions with a straight face that the great Nalanda University was not burnt by Muslim invaders. And this is the profound evidence he offers to “prove” this: “if all the Buddhist manuscripts in the Nalanda area were destroyed by the Muslims, then why are Jain manuscripts preserved so well in Gujarat?”
And if this was not enough, R.S. outdoes himself in the matter of the surge of Hindu Renaissance under Shivaji and the Marathas. He states that Hindu Renaissance became possible only through the goodwill of those Muslim Sultans who protected those manuscripts in Gujarat which revived the ancient Indian heritage!
Then in a more meaningful and original comment on the very nature of temples and mosques Sharma writes, “temples were relatively far wealthier than mosques.” Which is why temples were, naturally, pillaged for centuries by Islamic marauders whereas “the very architecture of the mosque leaves no room for storage of wealth.” This is also why the marauders never touched any mosque.
And based on this sort of reasoning, Sharma concludes that if aggressors like Mahmud Ghaznavi repeatedly attacked the Somnath temple, it was actually the fault of the temple – why did it have so much wealth?
But apart from blaming temples for inviting their own destruction, the Marxists offer other creative explanations. One such “explanation” is that not only did Muslim aggressors destroy temples but Hindus kings, too, did so regularly. As an example, they point to king Harsha of Kashmir and as usual, they offer no evidence to back this claim.
And this fact-free lie is picked up by other Marxist historians and repeated ad nauseam. The intent is obvious: to creatively balance the Islamic destruction of temples by concocting the fiction that even Hindu kings demolished temples.
To be continued
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