The BJP Would Be Enraged at Gandhi’s Nuanced Understanding of Aurangzeb

Gandhi, apart from stating that there were no Hindu-Muslims riots during Aurangzeb’s rule, employed his name to popularise spinning while fighting for freedom of our country.

Samajwadi Party’s Abu Azmi, a member of the Maharashtra Legislative assembly, was suspended from the House on March 5 because he praised Aurangzeb.

Surprisingly, Azmi was suspended from attending the ongoing Maharashtra assembly session for its entire duration, a day after he made a nuanced statement on Mughal emperor Aurangzeb outside the House.

Speaking to news agency ANI, Azmi had described Aurangzeb not as a cruel leader who was against Hindus. He claimed that even Aurangzeb never violently converted Hindus to Islam and had a record as a good administrator during the time he was the emperor of the Mughal empire.

Azmi’s statement enraged Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and Shiv Sena MLAs of the assembly. Even ministers harshly accused him of offending their sentiments. They raised an uproar in the assembly demanding action against him.

A motion to suspend Azmi, a four-time MLA, was moved by parliamentary affairs minister Chandrakant Patil, which was adopted in the House. It is indeed baffling that Azmi was suspended for his statement on Aurangzeb which he claimed are based on what historians have documented about the emperor.

Azmi was not present on the floor of the assembly when he was suspended and so that punitive action inflicted on him without affording him a chance to defend himself is in violation of natural justice.

Interestingly, what Azmi said about Aurangzeb closely corresponds to what Mahatma Gandhi said about the Mughal emperor during the period he was spearheading the freedom struggle. One can safely say that Gandhi would have suffered the same punitive action and worse censure from BJP leaders for what he said and wrote about Aurangzeb more than a 100 years ago.

Gandhi on Aurangzeb

It is illuminating to recall Gandhiji’s speech delivered in Pembroke College in Britain in November 1931. He said that British well-wishers of India, who wished it freedom from British rule, had nursed anxieties that in the absence of colonial rule, India would be vulnerable to external attacks and would collapse following the intensification of internal divisions.

Gandhi held British rulers accountable for their communally divisive policies that made India prone to violence and internecine clashes. He said that after the withdrawal of the British from India, Indians would shape their own destiny and, in that context, cited the pre-British period, free from Hindu-Muslim riots that had become frequent after the commencement of British rule. He underlined that even during the rule of Aurangzeb, riots between Hindus and Muslims never occurred.

A month later, on December 1, 1931, Gandhi, while participating in the plenary session of the Round Table Conference in London, remarked, “Hindus, Mussalmans and Sikhs were not always at war during pre-British era, and with the onset of British rule and the policy to divide people along religious identities, such conflicts became more frequent.”

To drive home that point, he referred to the accounts of historians who, in their writings of pre-British periods, flagged the prevalence of amity between people professing diverse faiths during that phase of our history. Gandhi invoked Maulana Muhammad Ali, who, based on historical records, held that British people wrongly assessed Aurangzeb as an abhorrent emperor and said that he “… was not so vile as he has been painted by the British historian; that the Mughal rule was not so bad as it has been shown to us in British history.”

The aforementioned statement of Abu Azmi bears resemblance to Mahatma Gandhi’s remarks on the Mughal emperor.

So why has Azmi been suspended from the Maharashtra assembly?

It is illuminating that Gandhi, apart from stating that there were no Hindu-Muslims riots during the Mughal period, including during the rule of Aurangzeb, employed his name to popularise spinning while fighting for freedom of our country. In his article “Music of the Spinning Wheel” published in Young India on July 21, 1920, Gandhi urged princely rulers to take up spinning and to make his appeal more impactful, he cited the example of Aurangzeb, who weaved caps for himself.

More importantly, he wrote that “A greater emperor – Kabir – was himself a weaver and has immortalised the art in his poems.” It is indeed educative that Gandhi juxtaposed both Aurangzeb and Kabir to persuade the princely classes and those from royal families to take to practice spinning – an important component of the struggle for independence anchored in non-violence.

Almost a year later, he was heartened to see influential Muslims weaving and wearing indigenous clothes in place of foreign ones. He wrote about it in an article published in Navjivan on October 20, 1921, after visiting Rander in Surat district. “The notion that a wealthy person need do no work should be banished from our minds” he said, adding, “Aurangzeb had little need to work, but he used to sew caps.”

On November 10, 1921, in one note, under the caption “A Plea For Spinning,” he referred to the statement of some civil resisters that it was undignified to practice spinning as it was usually done by women. “The underlying suggestion that a wielder of the sword will not wield the wheel is to take a distorted view of a soldier’s calling,” Gandhi said. In that context he gave the example of Aurangzeb and wrote, he “…was not the less a soldier for sewing caps.”

What Gandhi wrote, more than 100 years ago, about Aurangzeb’s cultivated practice of sewing his own caps was recently cited in an article, “When Shivaji’s grandson visited Aurangzeb’s tomb,” authored by Zeeshan Shaikh. Shaikh wrote that piece in the context of the violent utterances, including that of Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, calling for the destruction of Aurangzeb’s tomb in the state. “Aurangzeb’s tomb remains modest,” the article said, adding, “He himself is documented to have funded his final resting place with just Rs 14 and 12 annas – the amount he earned by knitting caps during his last years”.

Gandhi on Gyanvapi mosque

It is important to recall Gandhi’s perspectives on the destruction of a portion of Kashi Vishwanath temple in Banaras by Aurnagzeb. In 1926, a correspondent wrote to Gandhi, “Witness the site at Kashi (or Banaras) where had stood the temple of Vishvanath for long centuries, since even before Lord Buddha’s time – but where now stands dominating the ‘Holy City’ a mosque built out of the ruins of the desecrated old temple by orders of no less a man than the ‘Living Saint’ (Zinda Pir), the ‘Ascetic King’ (Sultan Auliya), the ‘Puritan Emperor’— Aurangzeb.” He then sharply asked, “Do these facts mean nothing to you Mahatmaji?”

In his reply published in Young India on November 4, 1926, Gandhi wrote, “These facts do mean a great deal to me. They undoubtedly show man’s barbarity. But they chasten me. They warn me against becoming intolerant. And they make me tolerant even towards the intolerant.”

It is tragic that even BJP leaders occupying high constitutional positions are promoting hatred, bigotry and intolerance, abandoning the enduring lesson of tolerance that Gandhi put into practice for communal unity. Without it, he said, India’s independence could not be achieved and conditions for non-violence could not be created.

Author: S.N. Sahu

Source: The Wire