OPED | Tuesday, July 7, 2009 | Email |
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Reliving the
era of jizya
Prafull Goradia
India must
protect Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh
Jizya was conceived
as an instrument of truce in the jihad between momins and kafirs. A demand
for Rs 60 lakhs in jizya is reported to have been made on the Hindus of
Battagram in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province on June 28. Last
month, 35 Sikh families were made homeless in Swat Valley because they
could not pay Rs 5 crore as was demanded by the Taliban. Sad as these
incidents are, these are but minor episodes in the vast epic of jizya.
Caliph Umar ibn al-Khataab, who reigned between 634 abd 644 AD,
dictated a covenant whereby the resident Jews and Christians had to pay a
tribute to the Muslim rulers if they wished to survive with their faiths
and be exempted from conversion or extermination.
The inspiration
of the covenant was founded upon a direct injunction of the Quran: Make
war upon those whom scriptures have not been given (the people of the
Book)… until they pay tribute (jizya) out of their hand, and they be
humbled (page 248, Dictionary of Islam by Thomas Patrick Hughes, London,
1885). This was taken from Surah IX, Ayat 29 (Quran, A Yusuf Ali, 1934,
Lahore). It says to wage war until they pay the jizya with willing
submission and feel themselves subdued.
The Hanafi school of
Islamic jurisprudence prescribed conversion or death to everyone other
than the people of the book, namely the Jews, Sabeans and Christians.
Notwithstanding this fact, the Muslim rulers in India extended the tribute
or poll tax to Hindus. Evidently, this was done to meet economic
compulsions of raising revenue. Otherwise, Hindus should be the last to be
included, considering the abhorrence of Islam for idolators. Jizya was
introduced in India in 712 AD when Mohammed bin Qasim conquered Sindh.
The poll tax continued to be levied by all Muslim rulers until
Akbar abolished the practice in 1564. His great grandson Aurangzeb
reimposed the vexatious levy in 1679. Jizya ended with the advent of
British rule. Jawaharlal Nehru, the friend of Muslims, could not have
brought back a poll tax but he did introduce the Haj subsidy. His
Government legislated the Haj Committee Act, 1959; Article 14 thereof
deals with the subsidy which inter alia includes (g) any sum allotted by
the Central Government or any State Government to the Haj fund. Nehru
celebrated this bestowal by printing the word ‘Haj’ on the normal currency
notes signed by then RBI Governor HVR Iyengar.
The Union Budget
for the year 2005-06 provided Rs 225 crore for the Haj fund. By the Budget
for the year 2008-09, the subsidy provision stood at Rs 413 crore; the
actual expenditure is likely to approach a figure of Rs 500 crore. Prof
Sri Ram Sharma, the doyen of historians in Lahore, wrote in 1940 that
Akbar’s gesture of 1564 had created a common citizenship for all his
subjects, Hindus and Muslims alike. Aurangzeb reversed this visionary step
until the British took over. Jawaharlal Nehru reintroduced the policy of
discrimination through the Haj subsidy, which presumably would help the
Hajis to reach jannat. He, however, left all other fellow citizens whether
Hindu, Christian, et al, to their own devices for the pursuit of
salvation.
The hapless Sikhs may either flee Swat Valley if they
can or embrace Islam or get killed. Right from the time of Nehru-Liaquat
Pact of 1950, the Government of India has failed to come to the succour of
the minorities either in Pakistan or Bangladesh. In any case the problem
of minorities is not confined to the sub-continent. Eastern Europe was
also affected for centuries. Eventually, a committee of the League of
Nations, headed by the former Viceroy Lord Curzon in 1923, concluded that
an exchange of populations was the only lasting solution. In the event a
whole new procedure of evaluating land, property, rights and duties of the
migrating people was developed in detail. Thereafter, millions changed
their countries from Turkey to Greece and from Greece to Turkey; similarly
there was an exchange of Bulgarian Christians with the Turkish
Muslims.
Uncannily, Mohammed Ali Jinnah and other leaders of the
Muslim League right up to early 1947 proposed an exchange of populations
between Hindustan and the emerging Pakistan. MK Gandhi and Jawaharlal
Nehru turned such a deaf ear that the League had to eventually give up its
proposal. When they got their homeland on August 14, 1947, they
unilaterally began the ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs; the process
was slower in the eastern wing.
Surely, it is long overdue that
the Government of India wakes up and saves the minorities of the
neighbouring countries: Pakistan has only a few lakh Hindus left while in
Bangladesh their number has come down to eight per cent of the country’s
population.
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