Rejoinder to Javed Anand’s letter to RSS Sarsanghchalak

The well known pseudo-secularist Mr. Javed Anand with leftist background after hearing RSS chief’s Vijay Dashmi message wrote the following letter to him. Mr. Tathagata Roy has sent him a rejoinder which follows this letter.


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RSS, here I come: Javed Anand

Adarniya Sarsanghchalak Bhagwatji

Sadar Pranam

I am deeply moved by your “Hum ko be Parkho”  Dussehra Day invite sent out to Muslims and Christians to join the Rashtriya Swamyamsevak Sangh (RSS)  So, the Sangh Parivar, here I come . Please treat this letter as my application for entry into the fold for your kind consideration . I understand from the media that all you want is for the likes of me to accept that “all Muslims in India were Hindus in the past who have only changed their method of worship.”

I hope I make it since I more than fulfil your benevolent requirement . For starters , I am not too strong on the worship front . Even otherwise, I have no difficulty in accepting the obvious—my Hindu past—for I doubt if my forefathers were Sikhs , Jains or Buddhists. The former are easily discounted for they arrived too late on the scene. Jains? No way , they are not interested in Mughlai cousin . As far Buddhists, I am unable to see what possible incentive there was for them to abandon their faith.

But converting from Hinduism is conceivable . I have been told since childhood that we are Saddiquis. That’s big if you are talking hierachy —being part of the extended parivar of none else than the closest companion of Prophet Mohammed and the first Caliph of Islam  Abu Bakr. But this Arabisation drive Bhagwat Ji I suspect is quite like Sansakritisation —in search of respectability, status and imagination at work. Ir’s quite likely that my forefathers were Hindus and “untouchable”.

Imagine Islam’s appeal to one who is constantly told he is too “impure” to be allowed entry inside a temple . Imagine the doors of a mosque being flung open to him with invite— Come, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of us. No hierachy  here, no caste, no race,  “Sab ka Malik ek” . Who says you are too impure to enter a holy space or hold a holy text ? Here’s the Quaran . Its your as much as anyone else’s Touch it, hold it, read it, kiss it, store it in your heart and mind.

 

Imagine , Bhagwatji, does this not sound like celestial music to the outcast such as my forefathers quite possibly were.  But all this is in the past, no hurdle in the way of my intended “gharvaapsi”  You may not know it but afflicted by fickleness of faith , the  subcontinet’s Muslims is forever being pulled in four different directions , dar-e-Habeeb, maikhana, butkhana, Kaaba.  The sound of the ‘sankh’ or the temple bells continue to mesmerise many a Muslims as much as the call of muezzin  Nowhere it is more evident than in Urdu poetry. a treasure which the parivar sadly disowns.

Examples   the writer quotes  poetry of Mir Taki Mir or even Iqbal  which serves as an evidence of it all.***********.

No major problem Bhagwatji, I ‘ll come running to Hindutva’s headquarters. My only problem is a little voice which keeps telling me I am being naive , gullible and silly. It keeps jolting my memory, asks awkward questions. Perhaps you can help me with some answers.

I eagerly await your assurance.   Javed Anand  

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Rejoinder by Mr. Tathagata Roy     
 

Dear Janab Javedbhai, Salaam Alaikum. Let peace be showered upon you, Begum Teesta, Sabrang, Communalism Combat, and the works.

    Maybe Mohanji Bhagwat is a tad busy just now, so I, a humble Swayamsevak of the RSS, and one of Mohanji’s many followers, took it upon myself to respond to your mail and welcome you into the Hindu fold. I hope you don’t seriously mind!

      I take your mail to be a serious application, by which I am not only moved but considerably shaken. You weren’t joking, by any chance, were you?

      You have been very modest when you said you were not too strong on the worship front. We can see you are very well versed in Islamic scriptures and what passes for history in ‘secular’ circles. But you had, perhaps inadvertently, erred when you remarked that Buddhists had no incentive to abandon their faith and embrace Islam. They had and they did — hordes of them, in Afghanistan, Xinjiang and Eastern Bengal. Remember the enormous Buddha statues of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, which the ‘faithful’ Taliban blew to smithereens? Know of Buddhist stupas and other relics at Mahasthangarh, Bogra in Islamic Bangladesh? Proves that these countries, now Islamic, were Buddhist once. Ah, the incentive for their getting converted? It is called force, aka the sword, the spear, the arrow. Very effective, you know, very persuasive.

      So you have not been able to make up your mind on whether you are a convert from Hinduism or a Saddiqui, from the extended parivar of Abu Bakr who was not only the first Caliph and the closest companion, but also the father-in-law of the Prophet (PBUH), whose six-year-old child Aisha was married to the Prophet (PBUH). Well, nothing wrong in Arabisation, and I humbly suggest you elect the Arabian ancestry. Because here in Bengal I have seen how the ‘Ashraf’ Muslims (those who claim Arabian, Persian, Turkish, or at the very least, Punjabi ancestry) detest the Atrap (known elsewhere as ‘Ajlaf’, converts of so-called low-caste Hindus), and have different Mosques. Don’t tell me there is no caste system in Islam, pal!

      So it was the appeal of “sabka malik ek”, and “kiss the Qur’an, it is as much yours as anyone else’s” got the “impure” lot into the fold of Islam, was it? It sounded like celestial music to their ears, did it? Quite possibly, quite possibly. But Janab Javedbhai, and Begum Teesta, how come so many, so many, of that “impure” lot are still around, whom we call the Scheduled Castes? And the ones in Bangladesh, particularly around the area of Gopalgonj, belonging to the Namahshudra caste, how come they are so badly persecuted by the Muslims that they have to run away to infidel India? Can they not hear the celestial music, blared out by loudspeakers five times a day? Can it be a case of collective deafness? The Taliban say that the Qur’an contains answers to all the questions in the world (which the Marxists say of the ‘Das Kapital’), could you possibly throw some light on this?

    Or is it that very persuasive method, a lot more persuasive than celestial music, called force, that got the so-called “impure” into the fold of the faithful? F-O-R-C-E, aka the gun, threats of torching, rape, murder, mayhem?

    But you are quite right about the poets and writers of this subcontinent. Except that some of them refuse to conform to the ‘secular’ ideals and call upon themselves the wrath of the kind, the merciful. Do the names ‘Taslima Nasrin’, ‘Salman Rushdie’ ring a bell, Javedbhai?

    Help us, Javedbhai and Begum Teesta, out of this quandary!

    Meanwhile, welcome back to the Hindu fold. Unless, of course, you were joking, heh, heh!

    Oh yeah, I forgot. If you come back you will be a ‘Murtaad’, for whom the death penalty is prescribed where everything under the sun is prescribed.

Tathagata Roy

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