Thursday, November 24, 2011

The Forgotten Chapter

Indian Muslim scholars made enormous amount of sacrifices in the struggle that lead to the freedom of the country. After independence the task of writing history was completely taken over by the leftist intelligentsia. The idea there has been to ignore the religion based movements that contributed their efforts to this process of packing the British home. One casualty of this is that the contributions and sacrifices of the huge number of Ulama has been consigned to dust bins and dungeons that are in accessible. It is very rare that a William Dalrymple will stubbornly dig out some details or the Ulama will keep the knowledge alive in their Urdu (earlier Persian too) works. The later might get a mention in an Urdu newspaper once in a while. This has very serious repercussions on the psyche of the minority community. If you are not aware of the contributions of your predecessors in the task of snatching away the freedom then you'll not assert your rights after freedom. In the plethora on sacrifices few token names like Maulana Azad are give token tribute in the course of the year and the duty to a minority that exceeds the population of every continental European country is considered done.

(An Urdu article on relevant topic is by Maulana Nadim-ul-Wajidi, India's Freedom  Struggle and the Sacrifices of Respected Ulama, Roznama Rashtriya Sahara, New Delhi, August 15, 2011, p.2)