Foreward

MY FRIEND Kewal Malkani is a journalist, a scholar and a perceptive student of Indian History. Being a product of Sindh, it is not surprising that he has devoted a good bit of industry and his historical insights for presentation of a panoramic view of the land of his birth. What surprises me, however, is his wish that I write a foreword to this most interesting book. I must confess that his command both flattered and frightened me. I do not know why Kewal's choice fell on me. Whatever my other pretension, and like many politicians I have quite a few, a deep study of history or a reasonable facility in historical presentation are by no means amongst them. I suspect it is a case of a pleasing misunderstanding. Even so I enjoy it. But it is more than neutralised by the thought that keeping up the pretence would require some amount of labour. The task seemed rather difficult, rendered more so by professional and political preoccupations. But then there happened one of those unexplained accidents. My doctors diagnosed a faulty heart and peremptorily put me to rest. With the heart wired to an E.C.G. monitoring machine, I read through the twenty chapters of the manuscript starting with `Sindhu is Divine' and ending with `The Sindhi Revival'. It is no exaggeration to say that I enjoyed every word and the reading certainly made my forced incarceration bearable. Deep gaps in my knowledge of what Sindh was, what it could have become and what it still might be in the future, have been agreeably filled. I share Kewal's pride in what might be generally described as `Sindhiat'. I greatly admire this outstanding product of his industry and research and heartily commend it to others. I hope the book will get into every Library, public and private. Everyone will enjoy it --- even those who are not in a hospital bed.

At the time of publication, however, the country is going through a monumental crisis. The levers of power have passed into the hands of men without morals and politicians without principles. Every part of the national anatomy is suffering from grave disorder. Scores of corrupt wheeler dealers, fixers, middle- men, con-men, their corrupt clients and principals have infested the landscape like hungry locusts devouring the thin crop that the poor of the country still manage to produce. The poor are too hungry even to be perplexed by the blight that has over taken them and the rich are busy making hay while the sun shines. The intellectuals and men of honest judgment are woe fully silent, struck by a strange paralysis of the moral muscle and the vocal chords. The production of the book at this time on the other hand is so much more evidence of the author's inner equilibrium, sense of poise add objective scholarship. May be, in the true spirit of the Gita, he laboured for love leaving the result to inscrutable Providence. Naturally, I admire him all the more for it.

Mr. Malkani's book is a book of history. History is essentially a story but whereas a story can be written for entertainment which may often bear an inverse ratio to the content of truth in it, history cannot afford such a contradiction. Every book of history becomes a part of the mental furniture of the age it portrays. It must bear the stamp of authenticity and where accuracy is not possible, the fault must be disclosed. Moreover, however authentic a record of events it be, it is worse than useless if it cannot convey the thoughts, emotions and motives of the actors that made the events. This country has never been rich in its documentation of events. The dominant tradition has been one of oral communication. To write the story called history is not thus an easy task.

The Arab conquest of Sindh was a major event in the life of Sindh and Hind. What manner of men were those who subjugated Sindh in the beginning of the 8th Century of the Christian era? Mohammed Bin Kasim and his soldiers were authentic Arabs and not bad Muslims, certainly more humane and civilised than those who followed in their wake some centuries later. They were strongly monotheistic and fervently believed in the message of the Prophet who had passed away earlier on June 7, 632 A.D. Reference to this miracle of the Arabian desert is both relevant and revealing. With all his personal blemishes, somewhat exaggerated by his detractors, the Prophet of Islam must rank as one of the giants of history. He was deeply religious himself and his living habits must have made a deep impression on his followers. He lived in austerity even after he had achieved great prestige and even political power. His houses were invariably cottages of un-burnt brick and the furniture no more than a mattress and a few pillows spread upon the floor, He stitched his own clothes and often mended his shoes, kindled the fire and swept the floor. He lived on dates and barley bread, and only rarely allowed himself the luxury of taking milk and honey. He was courteous and affable, dignified and indulgent. He tended the sick and joined funeral processions of the humblest. He spent little upon his family, less upon himself and much in charity. When he began, Arabia was a tribal desert. He left it a strong nation.

The morality that he imposed was in its context, one of ruthless courage and social pride. The local climate, however, produced sexual precocity and heat. His laws were designed to reduce temptations outside of marriage and increase opportunities within. That his own household consisted of ten wives and two concubines, was a distinct improvement on the prevailing promiscuity of the age. And while he lived, the Muslims had not secluded their women. The two sexes exchanged visits, moved freely through the streets and prayed together in the mosques. When the Prophet's wife Aisha was asked why she never covered her face, she answered: ``Since Allah, May He remain blessed and exalted, has put upon me the stamp of beauty it is my wish that the public should view that beauty and thereby recognise His Grace unto them.'' He was illiterate and was never known to write anything himself, but he composed the most famous and eloquent book in Arabic literature. He created in his followers a thirst for knowledge. He declared: ``He who leaves his home in search of knowledge, walks in the path of god ... and the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr.''

The Prophet neither preached, nor envisaged the bloody conflict of rival religious creeds. He himself had not indulged in wars of aggression. Conscious Arab expansion and military conquests for baser motives was a later development. Partly, the causes were economic, as usual. A deficient irrigation system and a poor soil, produced, in the growing population, hunger for fertile land. Political causes too existed. Byzantium and Persia, exhausted by war and mutual devastation, afflicted by abnormal taxation and corrupt administration, and adjoining kingdom weakened by oppression, produced irresistible temptations for conquest.

In 705 A.D., Walid-I became the King. His reign lasted for the next ten years. Al Hajjaj Ibn Yusuf (Hajjaj for short) was his Viceroy and Governor of Arabia. Sindh had even before attracted the attention of the Arabs during the reign of the second Khalifa. In the next 60 to 70 years, ten attempts at conquest had aborted. The aim of the final invasion, as the 'Chachnama' makes clear, was not the propagation of the faith but, it was a commercial-imperial enterprise. To improve the disastrous balance-sheet by show of huge profit, the conquered people must pay tribute and taxes and yield treasure, slaves and women. Mr. Malkani has a fascinating account of this encounter between the Sindhis and the Arabs. The ruling King Dahir was the son of Chach. The father was a scheming Brahmin who had managed to become the lover of the reigning Queen and after her husband's death, made himself the King. He ruled for 40 years and he repulsed the first Arab attack on the part of Debal [Fort] which, in all likelihood, was near Bhambhore, a little town 40 miles east of Karachi. Hajjaj in Dahir's time, appointed his 17-year old son-in-law, Mohammed Bin Kasim, General and gave detailed instructions for the assault on Sindh. Malkani is right that Sindh would not have fallen, but for the intrigues and betrayals of the Sindhis themselves. King Dahir could have easily repulsed the attack, but he acted with incredible foolishness.

In September 1979, on the Defence of Pakistan Day, a long article appeared in the ``Pakistan Times'' on Mohammed Bin Kasim, as a military strategist. The assessment was military, neutral and fair to the armies of both sides. Historical truth, however, is anathema to regimes; such as, the one existing in Pakistan. The Chairman of the National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research, condemned the writer of the said article, in terms which are extremely revealing --- ``Employment of appropriate phraseology is necessary when one is projecting the image of a hero. Expressions such as 'invader' and `defenders', and `the Indian army' fighting bravely but not being quick enough to `fall upon the withdrawing .enemy', loom large in the article. It is further marred by some imbalanced statements such as follows: `Had Raja Dahir defended the Indus heroically and stopped Kasim from crossing it, the history of this sub-continent might have been quite different.' One fails to understand whether the writer is applauding the victory of the hero or lamenting the defeat of his rival?'' No wonder, the latest Steel Mill in Pakistan and the surrounding environments are named after Mohammed Bin Kasim. He is the hero of the regime.

I am not sure that Raja Dahir invokes respect or admiration in the minds of the Sindhis. In all probability, Malkani is wrong. It must be said, however, that a great Sindhi writer Mr. G. M. Syed in his Book ``Sindhua Ji Sanjaah'' (Indentity of Sindh), has eloquently protested against the Pakistan Government attempting to project Mohammed Bin Kasim as a hero and saviour of Sindh. He deprecates that ports, roads, libraries and colleges should be named after him. He calls him an Arab tyrant who colonised Sindh, and condemned thousands to enforced slavery. Poignantly, he draws attention to the rape of Sindhi women and the massacre of the innocent, on which other Pakistani historians have maintained a criminal silence.

Rest of the Indians across the borders of Sindh were doubtless aware of the Arab conquest. It produced not a ripple on the quiet waters of their placid existence. Life went on as usual. There was neither a sense of territorial loss, nor an understanding of the nstute of the new menace. The conquest of Sindh was dismissed as one more dacoity. Nearly 500 years elapsed before Mohammed Ghori and his marauding hordes descended on India in 1192 A.D. The whole Or northern India was made a tributary to the Ghor Dynasty. Muslim power in India had come to stay. Five centuries went by, but the country did not wake up or prepare to do or die. It is a shameful and tragic tale.

Afflicted by a debilitating pacificism, corroded by the idea of non-violence, Indians seemed to have left it to professional soldiers to fight the invaders. The rest of the people lifted not one finger to defend their homeland. Invaders who thirsted for the tremendous wealth of India and its delicate and beautiful women, never met the resistance that the nation could have generated. The only strong resistance that was offered came from the proud Rajputs, the descendants of the invading Huns of the earlier days. But, even this heroic resistance proved temporary and collapsed by reason of internecine rivalry --- a perennial disease of Hindu lndia, ancient and modern.

A couple of centuries later, when Muslim power in the north weakened, not because of Hindu resistance, but, because of inter-Muslim quarrels, some semblance of a Hindu revival took place in the Empire of Vijayanagar in the south of India. Even this last strong-hold of Hindu culture and independence was crushed in 1565 A.D. As usual, Muslims destroyed the magnificent city of Vijayanagar, one of the most remarkable Hindu cities that ever existed.

In the sordid history of Hindu India's collapse, Mr. Malkani manages to find some comfort in the exploits of the Sumras and Sama Chieftains of Sindh. Even Mr. Malkani's research has not been able to discover when and how they became Muslims, but, obviously, the Muslims of Sindh were different from the Muslims of rest of India, as indeed, they continue to be till today.

The Arabs who spread Islam in 7th and 8th Centuries, were literally following the Prophet's injunction, enjoining search for knowledge. From the Chinese, they picked up the use of paper and the first Paper Manufacturing Plant in Islam was opened at Baghdad. They picked up mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy and every branch of available knowledge, from wherever they went. Most mosques had libraries and some cities had public libraries of considerable content. When Baghdad was destroyed by Mongols, it had 36 public libraries, and private libraries were numberless A Muslim physician refused invitation of the Sultan of Bukhara to come and live at his Court, on the ground that he would need 400 camels to transport his library. The mosques produced scholars as numerous as the pillars in their buildings. They moved people's minds with their eloquence. The country was adorned by innumerable geographers, historians and theologians seeking knowledge and wisdom. The Courts of Princes resounded with poetry and philosophic debates. No rich man would deny support to literature and art. The old cultures of the conquered were eagerly absorbed by the quick-witted Arabs. That was the glory of Islam.

There came, however, some time in the history of lslam when. somebody seems to have decided that no book except the Koran, was worth reading. Independent thought was banished and the Gates of Ijtihad were closed for ever. Modern Muslim reformists have been trying in vain to re-open these gates but, no significant success seems to have been registered anywhere in the world of modern militant Islam. Even Mohammed Iqbal, before he ceased to be the Iqbal that he once was, in his challenging Book --- ``Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam'' dealt with only reconstruction of thought; but, not in any significant manner, the reconstruction of religious thought in Islam. He did suggest that Islam must be re-thought in modern times, but, made practically no contribution towards fruition of this idea. Sadly enough, he became the first to put forward. the idea of a separate Muslim State, which later on emerged as Pakistan. Till then, except for a brief period during the reign of Akbar, no serious effort had been made to synthesise Islam with the predominant faith of the country. Akbar was trying to do what Guru Nanak had started sometime earlier, These were the two great Apostles of Indian integration in the 16th century. It is a sad fact of the contemporary political scene that the faith of the Sikhs is under attack by Mrs. Gandhi and some of the dangerous communalists created by her, and Akbar the great is, and has been, under attack by the orthrodox Ulemas of Islam. Mr. Malkani .is rightly proud of the fact that Akbar was born in Sindh, and it is not a matter without significance that almost every Sindhi Hindu is a follower of Guru Nanak. But, me sad truth is that the real Islam of the Prophet either died with him or soon thereafter. The faith that he created and propagated never reached India in its pristine and pure form. The Muslim fundamentalists of today in. India and abroad are plainly ignorant, if not ridiculous. They, say, they want to return to an Islamic order of things, as indeed, to an Islamic State. In the former, politics are derivative from the spirit of Islam; in the latter, politics and religion are parts of the single totality of Islam. Thus, the latter is more strictly and more truly Islamic. But, they have no conception of the basic problem: What Islam do they have in mind, to which they want to go back? Is it the Islam of the Prophet, or, is it the corrupted Islam of later times? These admirable gentlemen have not even thought of the answer. Most of them have only one thing in mind that the laws of the State must conform to Koranic injunctions, but, they refuse to draw some simple conclusions which inevitably follow. Original Islam did not sanction hereditary monarchy. The people had the right to elect and remove their Khalifa. By this standard, not a single Muslim State can claim to be a truly Islamic State. India is any day more ``Islamic'' than Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. The Ulema has, however, agreed to allow his limited learning to be prostituted. He would maintain every autocratic State. The specious argument used is that Islam recognises the sovereignty of Allah and not the sovereignty of the people. States ruled by Kings and Dictators are, therefore, truly Islamic. Other changes in the law which they want is the infliction of Islamic punishments. The Indian Parliament may be well-advised to give to Muslims accused of crimes, the option of punishment by amputation castration and whippings, instead of the normal punishment prescribed by the humane Indian law.

The fundamentalists have still another vital question to answer. What kind of education do they want? Must education seek knowledge and light wherever they can be found, or, is every source outside the Holy Book to be blacked out and out-lawed? I have described earlier how in the days of its glory, lslam opened itself to the learning of thc entire world. Fundamentalism only provides an intellectual black-hole. Muslims, as indeed, all citizens of all States, must be taught from their infancy that in every religion, the essential co-exists with a lot that is disposable dross. Genuine secularism is never inconsistent with the essential teaching of any religion, though it may well collide with fortitous practices, silly superstitions and some dubious doctrinal deductions. A State might call itself an Islamic Republic or a Hindu Rashtra. In either event, it can be genuinely secular if it metes out full economic and political justice to its minorities and allows them to deny or seek their God in the manner they think best. Secularism does not require abolition of religion, but, its full support, recognition and respect. Its domestic policies and the manifestos of its political parties (assuming they exist) must be based on sound economic and political needs, but, never, never, on the desire to capture votes of religious minorities. Foreign policy must be based on international law and morality and the pragmatic but enlightened long-range interests of the nation. Local Vote Banks are never a satisfactory foundation of relations with other States. It is a pity that we are friendly to the Harem-keeping Sheikhs of West Asia, but not the gallant Israelis fighting for survival; with the mad Gadafi of Libya but not with Hosni Mobarak of Egypt; with one-party dictatorships but, at loggerheads with secular democracies. Fake secularism alone explains this monstrous perversity. The last is, at best, a temporary expedient but, in the long run, it is always self-defeating and destructive of national integration. Religious obscurantism and friction divided this country. We blamed the foreigner for exploiting them, but, to our shame, they persist even today, in more subtle and virulent forms. The nation remains weak and debilitated. I wish the Sindhi poets. Shah Adul Latif the prince amongst poets of the entire world, Sachal Sarmast and Sami were to be introduced to the impressionable young at an appropriate age both in India and Pakistan, and a new era of religious synthesis ushered in. The subtle charm of any great verse is lost in translation, but, this priceless treasure of Sindh must at all cost, become a part of the intellectual heritage of the entire sub-continent. The first two were Muslims and the last a Hindu, but, none can discover in their prolific productions, a single word of religious hatred, narrow minded- ness and divisiveness. Each was deeply influenced by all the religious currents flowing around them, and each drank deep and integrated what he imbibed into a glorious cosmic and spiritual unity.

Iqbal wrote some moving Urdu poetry in this century when we were all slaves and unity of the nation was a categorical imperative. But he wrote, atleast later in life, in the vein of a narrow-minded and arrogant communalist inspite of his liberal Western education, which the three Sindhi poets did not have. To illustrate Iqbal's Shikwa (Muslims complaint to God):

``A people You had blessed, lighten the burdens they bear,

Raise the poor down-trodden and make it Solomon's peer.

Make abundant that rare commodity, love, so that all may buy and sell,

Convert to Islam India's millions who still in temples dwell.

Long have we suffered; see how grief's blood flows down the drain.

From a heart pierced by the scalpel, hear his cry of pain.

The thought of converting Hindus to Islam never entered the mind of Shah and Sachal.''

Iqbal's Jawabi-Shikwa (God's Response to the Complaint):

``There is loud talk that Muslims have disappeared from the earth's face.

We ask you; did true Muslims exist anywhere in any place?

Your style of living is Christian, your culture that of the Hindu;

A Jew would be ashamed if he saw Muslims such as you. You are Saiyyads as well as Mirzas, and you are Afghans --- You are all these but tell us are you also Mussalmans?''

The imperative of religious synthesis intimately connected with lslam's attitude towards minorities in an Islamic State. If the Islamic State is, by definition, an ideological State and the ideology is wholly Muslim, it is manifest that minorities can never be treated equally and justly. What has happened to the Ahmediyas in Pakistan, Bahai's in Iran and to a lesser extent, the Copts in Egypt, is not a very heartening experience or experiment. If Muslim States treat their minorities in this manner. can they easily forget that a quarter of the world's 750 hundred million Muslims are minorities in non-Muslim countries? Sheer self-interest --- quid pro quo --- would indicate that unless the Islamic states are willing to mete out complete equality before the law and equal justice in every sense of the word to non-Muslims, they cannot expect similar treatment for Muslim minorities in non-Muslim States. This is not to suggest that the Muslim minority in India should be held as a hostage to guarantee good conduct of Muslim governments the world over. But, ugly reactions to what happens to non-Muslim minorities elsewhere, are not easily avoidable, particularly when it is not strongly disapproved and condemned by the minorities in India.

The lesson of recent historical events might well induce some sober and responsible thinking amongst the fanatics. The Arab heart-land of Islam suffered a crushing military defeat in the 1967 War with Israel --- a humiliation that was felt personally not only in Egypt, Jordan and Syria, the actual combatants, but, by all Muslim States, Arab as well as non-Arab. Then, in 1972, the largest Muslim State, Pakistan, broke up into two. The hatred, bitterness, mass-suffering and the War could not be prevented by the bond of Islam. The pulls of regionalism proved stronger Economic forces overwhelmed the religious. Lastly, a protracted and a senseless War has been going on between Khomeini's Iran and Sadam's Iraq. By now, the combatants have forgotten what they are fighting about, but, they are still killing one another, and the flower of youth in both the countries is being literally decimated to satisfy the ego of two mad men, both Muslims and fundamentalist Muslims, at that. The lesson is loud and clear. Islam itself can flourish only in peaceful co- existence and by rounding of its sharp angularities without compromise or loss of its essence. Let the Sindhis provide a model to work upon and improve.

Judge Holmes of the United States while on a local train, was once asked by the attendant to show his ticket. The Judge fumbled in his pockets and could not find it, while the attendant who recognised the Judge, said it was nothing to bother about. Holmes turned to him and said: ``No, young man, I must find the ticket, for I have forgotten where I am going.'' I too seem to have forgotten that this is only a Foreword. It must now end with an apology to the readers and gratitude to the author of this interesting work.

Bombay Ram Jethmalani

30th August 1984 Member of Parliament