Nehru’s Word: No reform movement based on fear and fed on hatred has ever flourished

This week we bring to you the second and last part of the article written by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1933 while serving one of his multiple jail terms in which he criticises intolerance, bigotry and lack of reason as being the biggest obstacles to unity and progress. He decries the weakening of traditions of tolerance in Hinduism and counters the view that Islam is an intolerant religion. Recounting the history of Islam, he says it spread because it was a tolerant religion as compared to the intolerant sects of Christianity then prevalent in Western Asia and Africa, and that one of the charges brought against the Saracens (the term then used for Muslims) by King Philip II of Spain who presided over the Inquisition to justify their expulsion from Spain was their spirit of toleration!

“A great deal is being said now about the strengthening and purification of Hinduism as practised today. Every person, whether he is a Hindu or not, must welcome any such movement in the interests of a wider culture and human progress. Much more must a Hindu welcome it.

"Everything that removes the barriers that keep apart one man from another and make a common humanity possible; everything that raises large numbers of human beings and makes life more endurable for them; everything that substitutes reason for ignorant and blind bigotry is ever welcome. We must therefore welcome the movement to broaden the basis of Hinduism and to rid it of its abuses.

“But I have noted with sorrow that the motive force behind it is not so much the good of Hinduism as the distrust and fear of the Mussulmans. I have come back from the Hindu Sabha meeting in Benares (in November 1933) with this conviction strengthened. The motive is almost entirely political. With this I cannot agree for it can end in only one thing and that is disaster for all the communities in India.

"No great movement of reform ever flourished if it was based on fear and fed on hatred. Logically a movement of this kind can end in only one way. Fear and distrust will multiply and will call out their sister qualities in the other community. Gradually, India will be converted into armed camps and every man's hand will be raised against his brother. That can end only in a terrible catastrophe. That is a prospect which cannot be tolerated and which we must avoid at all cost.

“This is the reason why I ventured to question the appropriateness of carrying on the shuddhi movement on a mass scale. I believe in giving full liberty to every man to adopt the faith of his choice. I also believe that it should be open to anyone, whoever he may be, to join the Hindu fold, should he desire to do so.

"But the present shuddhi movement, in so far as I understand it, is based on different reasons and is proceeding on undesirable lines. And instead of peace and harmony it has created hatred and distrust and bitterness. Toleration has almost ceased to exist and the best of us are not free from ignoble suspicion.

“Hinduism has ever prided itself on its toleration. But today it stands in need of a reminder. ‘All sects deserve reverence for one reason or another,’ said the great Asoka. ‘By thus acting a man exalts his own sect, and at the same time does service to the sects of other people....His Majesty cares not for donations or external reverence as that there should be a growth of the essence of the matter in all sects.’

“There is a common belief among the Hindus that Islam is an intolerant religion and that it has spread by means of the sword. Most of them would mention the names of Chenghiz Khan and Timur and Mahmud of Ghazni as examples of Muslim tyrants. I wonder how many know that Chenghiz Khan was not even a Mohammedan? Or that Timur was as fond of erecting his favourite pyramids of heads in western Asia where Islam flourished as in India? Or that Mahmud of Ghazni threatened the Caliph at Baghdad with dire penalties?

"No great religion has prospered by forced conversion and the history of Islam shows that its tremendous initial success was due to its toleration as compared to the intolerance of the Christian sects which flourished then in western Asia and Africa.

“It may surprise many that one of the main charges actually brought forward in Spain against the Saracens (the term used for Muslims) by the Christian King Philip II (1578-1621) was their spirit of toleration.

"Among the ‘apostacies and treasons’ of the Saracens in Spain, wrote the Archbishop of Valencia in 1602, was ‘that they commended nothing so much as that liberty of conscience, in all matters of religion, which the Turks, and all other Mohammedans, suffer their subjects to enjoy’, and on this ground, among others, he recommended that they be expelled from Spain. The recommendation was accepted and vast numbers were brutally expelled.

“It is most interesting to read of a Spanish Moulvi, being driven out of the country more than 300 years ago, speak thus to his tormentors of the Inquisition: ‘Did our victorious ancestors ever once attempt to extirpate Christianity out of Spain when it was in their power? Did they not suffer your forefathers to enjoy the free use of their rites at the same time that they wore their chains? If there have been some examples of forced conversions, they are so rare as scarce to deserve mentioning, and only attempted by men who had not the fear of God and the Prophet before their eyes, and who in so doing have acted directly and diametrically contrary to the holy precepts and ordinances of Islam which cannot, without sacrilege, be violated by any who would be held worthy of the honourable epithet of Mussulman.

"'You can never produce, among us, any bloodthirsty, formal tribunal, on account of different persuasions in points of faiths, that anywise approaches your execrable Inquisition. Our arms, it is true, are ever open to receive all who are disposed to embrace our religion; but we are not allowed by our sacred Quran to tyrannise over consciences’.

“These are the traditions of toleration in Hinduism and Islam. But now, in the twentieth century, when Europe after centuries of slaughter and persecution has established religious toleration, our unhappy country is going backwards and forgetting the very lesson it taught to the world in the olden time. Intolerance is always due to want of understanding and ignorance of each other.

"Let us therefore try to learn each other's history and understand each other's past culture. The future can only hold out its promise to us if we learn to march together. Our chief enemy today is absence of reason, and its necessary consequence -- bigotry. Let those therefore who believe in reason, and in freedom for this country and in human progress, fight and conquer this enemy wherever and whenever it is found. There will then be few obstacles to unity and progress.”

(Selected and edited by Mridula Mukherjee, former Professor of History at JNU and former Director of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library)