By Haider Abbas
The unveiling of a ‘hologram’ of the statue of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose by India’s BJP PM Narendra Modi on January 23rd , in New Delhi, coinciding with 125th birth anniversary of Netaji, is an occasion to revisit the legacy of Muslim’s contribution to the making of India’s independence, particularly in the backdrop of the efforts of ‘Hindu-majority-centric’ intellectuals (sic) who have been hell-bent to appropriate even Netaji in their blind rush of communal and divisive agenda.
The article begins:
It is on January 26, 2022 as India ushers into its 73rd Republic Day, there is as always a moment of joy-and-pride for every Indian who pertains to India’s traditions of centuries of ‘living-together’ and its inclusiveness, despite the making of Pakistan which had found the partition of Muslim majority Punjab and Muslim majority Bengal, and therefore, since then the Muslims of mainland India have been relentlessly and unceasingly ‘paying-the-price’ of what was heaped on India by the likes of Congress, despite the ‘acceding-to’ the Cabinet Mission (1946) by the Muslim League for an undivided India. The partition scars have not as yet resolved, after Lakhs of books written on the topic, with everyone holding its own rightful view on it.
The Hindu Mahasabha, The Muslim League, The Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh, The Congress, The Khaqsaar Movement etc worldviews are available for the research scholars to sieve out the ‘real-India’ which perhaps no one in interested-into particularly those Hindus who ascribe to subjugate-Muslims-if- not-to-exterminate from the face of India. There has been no takers of the likes of Allama Mashriqi who had propounded that the fruits of independence, after 1947, should be distributed in proportion to the sacrifices, as the new India was always to be majority-Hindu, and all the ‘resources of the nation’ were therefore to go towards the majority only. It is this what the Brahmin centric Congress could never fathom and relented for the partition. The sacrifices of Muslims, who were the ruling class in-continuation for around eight centuries in India, more specifically, had begun around 1799 when a war broke at Seringapatnum (1799) between Tipu Sultan and the Britishers. It would need a Commission to de-classify, but for the ‘majority worldview’ Hindus it is all a passé. There is a campaign to even belittle the mark of Tipu Sultan, by ‘Hindu-contemptuous-owing’ genre.
Today a genocide bell tends to ring on Muslims, which in fact had always been lurking since 1947, as Muslims have faced more than a Lakh riots in India, under Congress regimes, which have always resulted into a loss of thousands and thousands of Muslim lives and billions and billions of worth of property. But the ‘Hindu-majority-orientated’ Hindus, with the active participation of the whole state paraphernalia, at most of the times, have an uncanny lust for Muslim blood! So as to ‘balance-history’ and avenge the defeats of Rana Sangha, Rana Pratap, Hemu, Marathas (in the third war of Panipat) and even that of Prithvi Raj and the seventeen invasions of Sultan Mehmood Ghaznavi- a thousand years back. The issue of Babri Masjid, on which the Ram Temple is to be built, is all but the same.
Such nursing of historical contempt against Muslims has always been there, but in what is today’s smart-phone India, there is a berserk activity against Muslims, maligning Muslims of their culture, language, etiquette, men and women, monuments, music and icons- so much so to the extent of casting aspersions even on Maulana Azad, who had become the Congress President at an age of 23, and who, by every standard is the father of nuclear India, as it was he who made University Grant Commission and opened up hundreds of engineering and technology colleges in India. Forget his unwavering newspaper Al Hilal ( banned by Britishers) and later Al Balagh which had never let the flame of independence to flicker.
There is a wide coterie of the likes of Pushpendra Kulshrestra ( Kayastha) , GD Bakshi ( Brahmin) etc who have been busy spitting venom against Muslims at every forum, since the around eight years or so, and also eulogizing Netaji SC Bose in same vein, to lampoon Congress to have been involved into downsizing Netaji, with never a reference of the Muslim associates Netaji had, and whose reference is enough to ‘break-the-nose’ of such one-sided-Hindu fanatics. Ironically Netaji was also a Kayastha-a reference to be used, tragically in terms of the caste-based political ecology in today’s India.
Fortunately in order to blunt the xenophobia of Hindu extremists, or the Trads (traditionals) of the sickening fame of Sulli and Bulli Bai misogynistic illegal Apps, or the hundreds of Senas, looking-out to ‘insult and injure’ Muslim men and women, on the streets or in the virtual world i.e. social media, there is a saner voice which has come, that too from the very grandnephew of Netaji, Sugata Bose, on January 23, who took the occasion of unveiling of Netaji’s hologram, and likened it with those who were ‘step-by-step’ with Netaji! His words are enough to make the Hindu-hate-mongers go into claustrophobic convulsions, in order to make them swallow what all they have vomited in the past around one decade.
Sugata Bose, informed openly on India Today Live 1 that his father Shishir Bose, who was then a 20 years medical student, had driven Netaji in his car from Kolkata to Jharkhand. Netaji had then dressed himself as Muhammed Ziauddin. The one who received Netaji in Peshawar was Mian Akbar Shah, and that when Netaji arrived back to Asia from Europe after his 90 days submarine voyage Abid Hasan was his only companion, the commander of the first division of the Indian National Army (IMA), founded by Netaji, which fought in Imphal was Muhammed Zaman Kiani, the man who raised the tricolor in Marianne near Imphal was Shaukat Malik, Netaji’s only companion on his last journey was Habib-ur-Rehman. The Britishers had put Colonel Prem Kumar Sehgal, Major-General Shahnawaz Khan and Colonel Gurbaksh Dhillon on trail at Red Fort trial (1945) for their association with INA. The man who built the INA memorial in Singapore with its motto Ittifaq, Aitemad and Qurbani ( Consensus, Confidence and Sacrifice ) was a Christian officer John Tracy.
The motto at Singapore, is a complete expression in Urdu, a language the Hindu elite has tried to bury under the debris of Hindu/Hindi chauvinism after 1947. What a damning role Congress first UP CM Govindballabh Pant and later Sampooranand played into subverting the role of Urdu, which had once revolutionized every soul who had a zest for a British free India, deserves to be unraveled, as to how the communal canard then drawn by Congress has been received by the hands-down by BJP, with the objective to keep Muslims under permanent siege, with the only adage that BJP wants to outdo Congress policies.
However, the one stroke reply by Sugata Bose, has given the most befitting answer to the hateful-global-tottering Hindu Mahasabhaites! They have had always been there, to push for a Muslim-free India, so as to repeat the history of Spain, but which is never to happen. Perhaps, the slogan by Major Abid Hasan needs to be entailed all the more as never before. Jai Hind!
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The writer is a former UP State Information Commissioner and a political analyst.
