Saturday, August 16, 2014

The gospels of Maududi and Golwalkar By Aakar Patel - liveMINT

My comments posted on Livemint website over article:The gospels of Maududi and Golwalkar

Though the essential genre of the politicizing of religious ideals was about the same as conceptualized by both, Maulana Maududi had the advantage of a vast Muslim World out there in firmament after the post war decolonization and liberation of so many Muslim countries, including Pakistan; Guru Golwalkar had less success in his own country, due to powerful consolidation of power by Pandit Nehru's Fabian democracy. Even now, though Prime Sevak Modi has declared from Red Fort in his extempore speech that appeared to be similar to his political election harangues, that he wants India to be Jagat Guru spreading the word of Swami Vivekananda around the globe, the crucial vote is mortgaged with the West, if he will be allowed and to what extent. Still, if Aakar Patel, turning a bit nationalist would find Guru Golwakar to be Bharat Ratan material, so will be Maulana Maududi too, a son of the soil that need to be recognized for the global impact of his work and ideas.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/1vjiUyWzBmP15GfFKow9CI/The-gospels-of-Maududi-and-Golwalkar.html



The gospels of Maududi and Golwalkar

Modi has popularized Golwalkar’s ideas through democracy, just as Maududi’s ideology is dominant in Pakistan’s constitution and its civil society

Aakar Patel

The gospels of Maududi and Golwalkar

Inception: (left) Maududi founded the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941: Photo: Wikimedia Commons; and Golwalkar was the second sarsanghchalak of the RSS. Photo: Courtesy: VHP.org

In the 1900s sprang the two great men from Maharashtra who would trouble the world with their ideas before they were 40. One was M.S. Golwalkar of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The other, from Aurangabad, was Abul A’la Maududi of the Jamaat-e-Islami.

This is not widely known, but Maududi has provided the intellectual underpinning for Islamism across the world.

Very briefly, he did this through his brilliant interpretation of the word tawheed (indivisibility of Allah). Traditionally Muslims were always suspicious of things such as the Christian Trinity and insisted there be no violation of Allah’s godhead. Maududi extended this principle of indivisibility and said tawheed “totally negates the concept of the legal and political independence of human beings, individually or collectively”.

From here, Maududi arrived at the idea that because of tawheed, all sovereignty belonged to God and not to the people. Thus he rejected Western democracy, which was not Islamic and had to be resisted. The other thing Maududi did, through his text Al Jihad Fil Islam (Jihad In Islam), was to lay down the way in which Muslims were to establish the theocratic state.

Every Islamist, from Sayyid Qutb of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia’s Osama bin Laden to Iraq’s ISIS, has located his rebellion inside the theoretical structure provided by Maududi. There is not a single idea that the Arab jihadists have put out that eclipses Maududi (our loonies being brighter than their loonies) and in several ways he remains more advanced.

He rejected Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s tribal jihad in Kashmir against India, saying only the state could wage war and such freelance jihad was not lawful.

Maududi conceived a small vanguard (exactly as in the Marxist sense) of Muslims who would take over the state and impose piety on society top-down.

Today, the Jamaat-e-Islami seeks to implement Maududi’s ideas in Pakistan through electoral politics, and I hope to be able to write again about these soon.

Though the founder of the RSS was K.B. Hedgewar, its true identity emerged after the young Golwalkar took it over in his 30s. Hedgewar was a doctor but he didn’t have the sharpness of his successor, who was also well educated.

Golwalkar expanded the RSS with an unrelenting focus on the shakha, a word that means branch, and its morning activity. Golwalkar theorized, correctly, that it was simple physical work, playing games, singing anthems together, that would build a disciplined neighbourhood Hindu community from a society fragmented by caste.

This Hindu brotherhood would be deployed where Golwalkar needed it, for relief during a natural disaster, protecting Hindus during a riot, and spreading the cultural message of Hindu nationalism. Golwalkar’s stress is also, like Maududi’s, on indivisibility. But here the suspicion is of diversity not in godhead but in nation.

It is breaking from Hindu culture and Indianness that is unacceptable and everyone must fold their cultural expression into it. Golwalkar was the real father of Hindutva, figuring out exactly how he could use the ideas of Hindu nationalism on the ground.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recognizes his genius. In his biographies of 16 great men, Modi writes his longest chapter on Golwalkar. Though the Prime Minister doesn’t engage with his master’s ideas intellectually, offering only anecdotes that show his character, the reverence is total.

Here is how Modi describes Golwalkar’s release from jail: “After Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the Sangh was banned. It was later found to be not guilty. Guruji was released from jail. This man, who spoke of loving all humanity, was to be felicitated in Delhi. He was a young man of only 40. Lakhs of swayamsevaks were ready to sacrifice their lives for him. Lakhs of ears were eager to listen to him in Delhi. Journalists from all over the world were at hand. Everyone was eager to know what instruction Guruji would send out. Would he urge them to bring down Pandit Nehru’s government violently? To spread anarchy across India? Instead, after 19 months in jail, this great man said: ‘Forget all that happened. Those who did it are our people. If the tongue is caught between the teeth, we don’t break the teeth to punish them because the teeth are also ours. Forget it.’”

Ultimately, of course, the ideas of the two great thinkers Maududi and Golwalkar turned out to be dangerous and violent both to their own communities and to others.

Maududi had international impact, but we must consider that Golwalkar’s heirs are only just taking over.

The papers say Modi is thought to be considering the Bharat Ratna for two men, Subhas Chandra Bose and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This is being written a couple of days before 15 August and I don’t know if he will announce this. In any case I doubt Bose and Vajpayee are particularly important to him. The man whom Modi would really want to give the Bharat Ratna to is Golwalkar.

The Congress has given Bharat Ratnas to its leaders and one could say it has done so indiscriminately, handing it to everyone from Gulzarilal Nanda to K. Kamaraj to Rajiv Gandhi.

The RSS feels aggrieved by this and rightly so. In 2003, The Times of India’s Akshaya Mukul reported that an RSS man, Dattopant Thengadi, refused the Padma Bhushan under Vajpayee, saying he couldn’t accept it before “Shri Guruji”, meaning Golwalkar, was given the Bharat Ratna.

This had been attempted in 1998, but Vajpayee was careful in managing relations with his “secular” allies and wisely kicked the can further down the road. Modi’s management of Godhra destroyed Vajpayee’s coalition. After that he was forced to ignore his Hindutva instincts but lost the election in any case.

Modi has never disowned or forsaken Golwalkar and at some point in his tenure, I believe, will give him the Bharat Ratna. Modi has popularized Golwalkar’s ideas through democracy, just as Maududi’s ideology is today dominant in Pakistan’s constitution and its civil society.
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
Readers' comments:
  • Ghulam Muhammed 26 minutes ago
    Though the essential genre of the politicizing of religious ideals was about the same as conceptualized by both, Maulana Maududi had the advantage of a vast Muslim World out there in firmament after the post war decolonization and liberation of so many Muslim countries, including Pakistan; Guru Golwalkar had less success in his own country, due to powerful consolidation of power by Pandit Nehru's Fabian democracy. Even now, though Prime Sevak Modi has declared from Red Fort in his extempore speech that appeared to be similar to his political election harangues, that he wants India to be Jagat Guru spreading the word of Swami Vivekananda around the globe, the crucial vote is mortgaged with the West, if he will be allowed and to what extent. Still, if Aakar Patel, turning a bit nationalist would find Guru Golwakar to be Bharat Ratan material, so will be Maulana Maududi too, a son of the soil that need to be recognized for the global impact of his work and ideas.

  • Avatar
    Guest 6 hours ago
    Maududi is truly the architect of the anarchy model that is destroying the Islamic world from Afghanisthan to Iraq from within. Golwalkar's ideals are not that radical and in any case do not enjoy the kind of blind acceptance in India as Maududi's does in the Islamic world. Strangely Maududi's model could not succeed fully in Pakisthan due to its westernised ( unislamic?) army which does not want to lose political power

    Avatar
    Guest 6 hours ago
    Maududi is truly the architect of the anarchy that is destroying the Islamic world from Afghanistan to Iraq from within. Golwalkar's ideals are not that radical and in any case does not enjoy the kind blind acceptance in India as Maududi's does in the Islamic world.

  • Gopi Maliwal 9 hours ago
    Intellectual const....n at its worst...
    such a weekly waste of precious, limited op-ed space on this Kansa-like Modi-obsessed sour loser....!

  • Avatar
    rathore 12 hours ago
    RSS has zero , repeat zero standing in Maharashtra. All these "xxx.kar's" are forsaken by Marathis esp. those in vidarbha. Let any one from RSS run and win a single election in Nagpur. A discredited bunch of senile Marathi Brahmans is now pushing RSS along. Brahmans are a shunned , minuscule portion of Maharashtra today and organizations like the RSS are their only way of staying relevant.
    As for the RSS support base in North , it is primarily from the gang of refugees who have come from Pakistan. M J Akbar once said that the biggest mistake India made was to let these Pakistani Hindus come into India and specifically into Delhi post partition. Khatris and their like have destroyed Delhi and turned it into a cesspool of corruption by their unscrupulous ways . They have always backed the RSS to get back at Muslims and Pakistan and it is these people who will never allow any normalization of relations with Pakistan.
    • Avatar
      Vinayak rathore 4 hours ago
      You are hallucinating. I can suggest a good physician if you need one.

      Gopi Maliwal rathore 9 hours ago
      ...gang of refugees.. such compassion... LOL~
      Also, can you pl cite ref / link to the supposed comment by MJ Akbar mentioned by you above.


    cheguramanakumar 15 hours ago
    There is one striking, massive earth shattering difference between the two: Maududis ideas have already resulted in tearing apart a civilisation 5,000 years old. The Indian subcontinent is now a neighborhood with nuclear daggers drawn. It has set fire to the entire Middle East with grave peril to human lives, esp minorities. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost to jihad, to Islamic terrorism. The whole of humanity seems to be under threat.
    Maududis ideology is also at the root of failure of democracy on Islamic states.

    Golwalkars ideas have spread only thru democratic means. It is not a threat to mankind. It may help in unifying Indians as a people.
    So please don't equate the two men, thanks !

Resisting Nazis, He Saw Need for Israel. Now He Is Its Critic. By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE and ANNE BARNARD - The New York Times

The New York Times

Middle East

Resisting Nazis, He Saw Need for Israel. Now He Is Its Critic.

By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE and

AUG. 15, 2014

Photo
Henk Zanoli, second from right, with his family in 1942. A year later, he smuggled a Jewish boy from Amsterdam to the family’s home in a Dutch village and helped hide him through the war. Credit Yad Vashem

THE HAGUE — In 1943, Henk Zanoli took a dangerous train trip, slipping past Nazi guards and checkpoints to smuggle a Jewish boy from Amsterdam to the Dutch village of Eemnes. There, the Zanoli family, already under suspicion for resisting the Nazi occupation, hid the boy in their home for two years. The boy would be the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.

Seventy-one years later, on July 20, an Israeli airstrike flattened a house in the Gaza Strip, killing six of Mr. Zanoli’s relatives by marriage. His grandniece, a Dutch diplomat, is married to a Palestinian economist, Ismail Ziadah, who lost three brothers, a sister-in-law, a nephew and his father’s first wife in the attack.

Related Coverage

On Thursday, Mr. Zanoli, 91, whose father died in a Nazi camp, went to the Israeli Embassy in The Hague and returned a medal he received honoring him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations — non-Jews honored by Israel for saving Jews during the Holocaust. In an anguished letter to the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, he described the terrible price his family had paid for opposing Nazi tyranny.

Photo
Hassan al-Zeyada, a Palestinian psychologist in Gaza, whose brother Ismail Ziadah is married to Mr. Zanoli's grandniece. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
“My sister lost her husband, who was executed in the dunes of The Hague for his involvement in the resistance,” he wrote. “My brother lost his Jewish fiancĂ©e who was deported, never to return.”
Mr. Zanoli continued, “Against this background, it is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza. Murder carried out by the State of Israel.”

His act crystallizes the moral debate over Israel’s military air and ground assault in the Gaza Strip, in which about 2,000 people, a majority of them civilians, have been killed. Israel says the strikes are aimed at Hamas militants who fire rockets at Israeli cities and have dug a secret network of tunnels into Israel.

Mr. Zanoli transformed over the decades from a champion to a critic of the Israeli state, mirroring a larger shift in Europe, where anguish over the slaughter of six million European Jews led many to support the founding of Israel in 1948 as a haven for Jews worldwide.

But in the years since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza during the 1967 war, Europeans have become more critical. Israel blames anti-Semitism, which has grown in Europe with the rise of right-wing politicians. Some European protests against Israeli military action have been marred in recent weeks by open anti-Semitism, blurring the line between criticism of Israeli policy and hate speech against Jews. But many other critics, like Mr. Zanoli, say their objection to Israeli policy is not anti-Jewish but consistent with the humanitarian principles that led them to condemn the Holocaust and support the founding of a Jewish state.

“I gave back my medal because I didn’t agree with what the state of Israel is doing to my family and to the Palestinians on the whole,” Mr. Zanoli said in an interview Friday in his spare but elegant apartment, adding that his decision was a statement “only against the state of Israel, not the Israeli people.”

“Jews were our friends,” said Mr. Zanoli, a retired lawyer who uses a motorized scooter but remains erect and regal, much as he appears in a yellowing 1940s photograph archived at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

Mr. Zanoli said he had never publicly criticized Israel “until I heard that my family was the victim.”

In Gaza, Mr. Zanoli’s in-laws say his gesture is a fitting response to the losses of their family and others who have lost multiple relatives in strikes on homes. Those in-laws include Hassan al-Zeyada, a psychological trauma counselor who is an older brother of Ismail Ziadah. Their mother, Muftiyah, 70, was the oldest family member to die in the bombing.

Like Mr. Zanoli, Dr. Zeyada, 50, who works to treat the many Palestinians in Gaza traumatized by war and displacement, has given much thought to the fact that Israel was founded after the Holocaust, one of history’s greatest collective traumas.

Dr. Zeyada, who transliterates his family name differently from his brother, said Friday that he admired Mr. Zanoli and his family for their struggle in World War II against “discrimination and oppression in general and against the Jews in particular.”

“For them,” he added, “it’s something painful that the people you defended and struggled for turn into aggressors.”

Document

Award Returned ‘With Great Sorrow’

In a letter to the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, Henk Zanoli returned his medal as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. 


OPEN Document

Dr. Zeyada said last month that none of his family members were militants. Israel says that it takes precautions to avoid killing civilians, and that Hamas purposely increases civilian casualties by operating in residential neighborhoods. It has offered no information on whether the Zeyada family home was hit purposely, and if so, what the target was and whether it justified a strike that killed six civilians. The military told the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which first reported Mr. Zanoli’s decision, only that it was investigating “all irregular incidents.”

At Yad Vashem, where a leafy garden commemorates the 25,000 people named Righteous Among the Nations, a spokeswoman said Friday that Mr. Zanoli’s renunciation of the prize was “his decision,” but “we regret it.”

More than 5,000 Dutch have received the honor; only Poles have been honored more.
 
In 1943, Mr. Zanoli’s father was detained by the Nazis for his work in the Dutch underground resistance movement. Soon after, according to Yad Vashem’s citation, also awarded posthumously to Mr. Zanoli’s mother, Jans, Mr. Zanoli traveled to Amsterdam to get Elchanan Pinto, 11, an Orthodox Jewish boy whose parents and siblings would all die in the death camps.

“Jans Zanoli knew very well the risks involved by then in hiding a Jewish youngster in her home, but felt the moral obligation to do so,” the citation reads. “Elchanan found a warm and loving home with them.”

After the Allied victory in 1945, an uncle of Elchanan’s took him to a Jewish orphanage. In 1951, the citation says, Elchanan immigrated to Israel, where he changed his last name to Hameiri. 

An Elchanan Hameiri is listed in phone directories as living in Israel, but could not be reached on Friday.

In his letter to the Israeli ambassador, Mr. Zanoli noted that among the bereaved were “the great-great grandchildren of my mother.”
He relinquished the honor “with great sorrow,” he wrote, because keeping an honor from Israel’s government would be “an insult to the memory of my courageous mother” and to his Gaza family.
He added that his family had “strongly supported the Jewish people” in their quest for “a national home,” but that he had gradually come to believe that “the Zionist project” had “a racist element in it in aspiring to build a state exclusively for Jews.”

He referred to the displacement of Palestinians — including members of the Ziadah family — during the war over Israel’s founding as “ethnic cleansing” and said Israel “continues to suppress” and occupy Palestinian areas. Israel still occupies the West Bank; it pulled troops out of Gaza in 2005 but retains control over its seafront, airspace and most of its borders.

Israel says it maintains control to curb Palestinian militants like those with Hamas, which in the past has killed several hundred Israelis in suicide bombings. Palestinians see the continuing conflict as a struggle for self-determination — they use Mr. Zanoli’s word for his anti-Nazi work, resistance — and say Israel is obstructing the establishment of a Palestinian state with policies like settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Mr. Zanoli said he could envision a situation in which he would take the medal back.

“The only way out of the quagmire the Jewish people of Israel have gotten themselves into is by granting all living under the control of the State of Israel the same political rights and social and economic rights and opportunities,” he wrote. “Although this will result in a state no longer exclusively Jewish it will be a state with a level of righteousness on the basis of which I could accept the title of ‘Righteous among the Nations’ you awarded to my mother and me.”

In that event, he concluded, “be sure to contact me or my descendants.”

Correction: August 16, 2014
An earlier version of a photo caption with this article misspelled the last name of the man who saved a Jewish boy in 1943 and returned the award he received from Israel after six relatives of his grandniece’s Palestinian husband were killed in Gaza last month. His name is Henk Zanoli, not Zenoli.


Christopher F. Schuetze reported from The Hague, and Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon. Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Fares Akram from Gaza City.

A version of this article appears in print on August 16, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Resisting Nazis, He Saw Need for Israel. Now He Is Its Critic..  

Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe