Origins of Islamophobia in India?

Islamophobia gained strength because MUSLIMS CONSUMED BEEF from 1947 to 2014.

As a result of the Non-Cooperation Movement of Mahatma Gandhi the enthusiasm [for nationalism] in the country was cooling down and all evils in social life which that movement generated were menacingly raising their head. As the tide of national struggle came to ebb mutual ill-will and jealousies came on the surface. Personal quarrels raged all round. Conflicts between various communities had started. Brahmin-non-Brahmin conflict was nakedly on view. No organisation was integrated or united. The yavan-snakes reared on the milk of Non-Cooperation were provoking riots in the nation with their poisonous hissing

A change was coming over the country. The aftermath of the 1921 movement had come to Doctorji [Hedgewar] as a shock. Indian Muslims had proved themselves Muslims first and Indians only secondarily so that when the Khilafat was given up in Turkey, they withdrew from the allied movement for national independence.

The whole atmosphere was charged with Muslim fanaticism. ‘Allah ho akbar’ and not ‘Bharat mata ki jai’ was heard everywhere. Soon there were Muslim riots in Bannu, Kohat, Multan, Nagpur, Kanpur and elsewhere.

‘These are not Hindu-Muslim riots,’ he would say. ‘These are Muslim riots because in every single case it is they who start them and go on the offensive.’

These riots culminated in the Moplah atrocity, completed with arson, loot, murder, rape and forced conversion. The nation was dazed. And Doctorji wondered: ‘Is it Khilafat (restoration of Khalif) or Akhilafat (catastrophe for all)?...’

It became evident that the Hindus were the nation in Bharat and that Hindutva was Rashtriyatva. While wishful thinkers pretended not to see the writing across the national political firmament, the realist in Dr Hedgewar refused to dream up wishy-washy dreams. The truth was out. Only Hindus would free Hindustan and they alone could save Hindu culture. Only Hindu strength could save the country. There was no escape from the logic of facts. Hindu youth had to be organised on the basis of personal character and absolute love of the motherland. There was no other way.

The agony of the great soul expressed itself in the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. With five friends he started the day-to-clay programme of RSS. The great day was the auspicious Vijaya Dashami day of 1925

The accounts are revealing in a number of different ways. The Non-Cooperation upsurge, highest point in anti-British unity in the entire history of modern Indian nationalism, is unequivocally condemned. The ‘yavan snakes’, it seems, are at their most dangerous when they are fighting foreign rule side by side with the Hindus, when they cease behaving in the expected ‘anti-national’ manner. Hindu-Muslim fraternity is dangerous because the ideal, evidently is not a united, free India but a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ – only Hindus could constitute ‘the nation in Bharat’. This is hard-headed ‘realism’ – a style of argument much favoured throughout by Hindu communalists. Yet the stereotype of the Muslim as anti-national has to be preserved, and so history must be doctored. Khilafatists are blamed for withdrawing from the ‘allied movement’, though it was Gandhi and the Congress leadership which had unilaterally called off that movement in 1922. The catalogue of riots is similarly twisted, to present the Moplah rebellion– actually far more of a peasant rising against landlords than a straightforward communal disturbance– as a culmination (it had in reality preceded the other riots that had been listed by several years. And Hedgewar’s account clearly reveals the centrality for him of the Brahmin-non-Brahmin conflict. Organised Hindutva emerges right from the beginning as an upper caste reaction to efforts at self-assertion by downtrodden groups within the Hindu fold

From this stand-point, voiced in the old well-known Sanskrit verse, foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but the glorification of the Hindu race and culture... may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizen's rights.

Whatever we believed in, the Muslim was wholly hostile to it... If we worship in the temple, he would desecrate it, if we worship cow, he would like to eat it, if we glorify woman as a symbol of sacred motherhood, he would like to molest her.

Islamophobia gained strength because MUSLIMS CONSUMED BEEF from 1947 to 2014.

As a result of the Non-Cooperation Movement of Mahatma Gandhi the enthusiasm [for nationalism] in the country was cooling down and all evils in social life which that movement generated were menacingly raising their head. As the tide of national struggle came to ebb mutual ill-will and jealousies came on the surface. Personal quarrels raged all round. Conflicts between various communities had started. Brahmin-non-Brahmin conflict was nakedly on view. No organisation was integrated or united. The yavan-snakes reared on the milk of Non-Cooperation were provoking riots in the nation with their poisonous hissing

A change was coming over the country. The aftermath of the 1921 movement had come to Doctorji [Hedgewar] as a shock. Indian Muslims had proved themselves Muslims first and Indians only secondarily so that when the Khilafat was given up in Turkey, they withdrew from the allied movement for national independence.

The whole atmosphere was charged with Muslim fanaticism. ‘Allah ho akbar’ and not ‘Bharat mata ki jai’ was heard everywhere. Soon there were Muslim riots in Bannu, Kohat, Multan, Nagpur, Kanpur and elsewhere.

‘These are not Hindu-Muslim riots,’ he would say. ‘These are Muslim riots because in every single case it is they who start them and go on the offensive.’

These riots culminated in the Moplah atrocity, completed with arson, loot, murder, rape and forced conversion. The nation was dazed. And Doctorji wondered: ‘Is it Khilafat (restoration of Khalif) or Akhilafat (catastrophe for all)?...’

It became evident that the Hindus were the nation in Bharat and that Hindutva was Rashtriyatva. While wishful thinkers pretended not to see the writing across the national political firmament, the realist in Dr Hedgewar refused to dream up wishy-washy dreams. The truth was out. Only Hindus would free Hindustan and they alone could save Hindu culture. Only Hindu strength could save the country. There was no escape from the logic of facts. Hindu youth had to be organised on the basis of personal character and absolute love of the motherland. There was no other way.

The agony of the great soul expressed itself in the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. With five friends he started the day-to-clay programme of RSS. The great day was the auspicious Vijaya Dashami day of 1925

The accounts are revealing in a number of different ways. The Non-Cooperation upsurge, highest point in anti-British unity in the entire history of modern Indian nationalism, is unequivocally condemned. The ‘yavan snakes’, it seems, are at their most dangerous when they are fighting foreign rule side by side with the Hindus, when they cease behaving in the expected ‘anti-national’ manner. Hindu-Muslim fraternity is dangerous because the ideal, evidently is not a united, free India but a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ – only Hindus could constitute ‘the nation in Bharat’. This is hard-headed ‘realism’ – a style of argument much favoured throughout by Hindu communalists. Yet the stereotype of the Muslim as anti-national has to be preserved, and so history must be doctored. Khilafatists are blamed for withdrawing from the ‘allied movement’, though it was Gandhi and the Congress leadership which had unilaterally called off that movement in 1922. The catalogue of riots is similarly twisted, to present the Moplah rebellion– actually far more of a peasant rising against landlords than a straightforward communal disturbance– as a culmination (it had in reality preceded the other riots that had been listed by several years. And Hedgewar’s account clearly reveals the centrality for him of the Brahmin-non-Brahmin conflict. Organised Hindutva emerges right from the beginning as an upper caste reaction to efforts at self-assertion by downtrodden groups within the Hindu fold

From this stand-point, voiced in the old well-known Sanskrit verse, foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but the glorification of the Hindu race and culture... may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizen's rights.

Whatever we believed in, the Muslim was wholly hostile to it... If we worship in the temple, he would desecrate it, if we worship cow, he would like to eat it, if we glorify woman as a symbol of sacred motherhood, he would like to molest her.