Letter to Hafiz Saed

                       Letter to Hafiz Saed

Dear Janaab Hafiz Saed Saheb,

                                                 I hope you are fine. I know you travel a lot, sometimes to Karachi, sometimes to Kashmir to make people realize that the task of ultimate importance is to get 70 virgins (even if they come at the cost of your identity, the blood of your own brothers and the peace of the subcontinent). This kind of intense travelling and spreading the message of jihad requires lot of effort and energy so to begin with I wish good health for you as you are our elder. You have a strong influence over you followers so I feel that if you know the truth and if you have good intentions (which I believe you have because you are a Hafiz and Quraan must have had some influence on you) you can be a great messenger of peace. This is one another reason why your good health is so important for me and all my peace loving brothers from India and Pakistan.

             First and foremost, I wish to inform you or rather enlighten you that you are a Hindu. In fact not just you, everyone who resides in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh is a Hindu. Maulana Fazlur Rahmaan, Imaraan Khan and millions of Pakistanis are Hindus. Please don't get me wrong. I do not want to hurt your religious sentiments. I just want enlighten you about your true identity.

            Janaab, the word ‘Hindu’ has never ever been mentioned in any of the religious scriptures like Bhagwat Gita, Puranas, Ramayana and Mahabharata. Its origin is very interesting. The word was first used by Iranian Achaemenids in 6^th century B.C. for the people who lived in the land of river Indus. The river was known as Sindhu in those days. In Iran they used to pronounce ‘S’ as ‘H’ so Sindhu became Hindu. After that the word ‘Hindu’ was used by the great Iranian scholar Abu Raihaan Muhammad Ibn Al Baruni in his ‘Kitaab-ul-Hind’ in 11^th century. So the word has no religious connotation. It is a term which denotes a particular region. It has a geographical significance or some kind of cultural significance.

            Now, I feel that you will say something about the foreign origins of Muslims. It’s not just you who, I assume will think like this. The other day I met this beautiful girl from Pakistan in Cornell university who gave the same reply when I called her ‘Hindu’. Well, sir, there are 250 million Muslims in India and about 180 million Muslims in Pakistan. If, all of them have foreign origins then this defies the logic of peaceful spread of Islam in India through the channel of Sufi saints. In fact if you refer to the history of south Indian sultanates in Mughal era you will come across a clash between Ashrafs and Ailafs. Ashrafs were the local or Hindustani Muslims and Ailafs were the foreigners. In the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq also there was a clash between the Muslim nobles of foreign origin viz. ‘sadah amirs’ and the Hindustani Muslims. The number of foreigners was always marginal as compared to Hindustani Muslims.

           There is one more angle to look at this idea of foreign origin. This subcontinent has always been the land of migrants. The Achaemenids who first used the word ‘Hindu’ were the descendents of one of those several Aryan tribes who moved towards Iran and then towards India. They were the descendents of ‘Parsas’ and the other tribes like Yadus, Turvas, Panchals came to India. Similarly, the Rajputs who fought against Ghaznavi and Ghurids also had foreign origins. They were the descendents of Huns and Shakas and other central asian tribes who invaded India. So, by this logic everyone is a foreigner in India except the Dravidians and tribal communities of India. Now it is completely impossible to trace the origins of Indians except for those few who migrated 100 or 200 years back like the Pathans who came with Muhammad Khan Bangash. In fact, in their case also the marriages with local Muslims have not left the foreign origins intact. In Kerela also the Arab merchants married with local females and now there is no such thing as pure Arabic in them now. There could be one more possibility. The major section of Muslim population can claim to be the true Hindus in sense that the conversions took place among the lower caste people of India and they were those groups who were probably the earliest migrants to India in 12^th century B.C. or they could also be the original inhabitants of India.

                  I believe, I have conveyed my message to you. My idea is that please do not forget your identity. You are basically a Hindu who follows a religion which originated in the Arab world in exactly the same way that Japanese and Chinese follow a religion which originated in India. So please respect the diversity and cultural harmony of the subcontinent and come out of you hatred for the people of India. In my next letter, I will tell you more about the reasons for the communal riots and the conflict between ‘Hindu-muslims’ and ‘Hindu-brahmanical’ followers. I will also discuss the issue of ‘minority’ in India.

With regards,

Abhinav Pandya

M.P.A, 2014

Cornell University