India has assumed alarming proportions. Hardly a year passes without a communal incident in one part of the country or the other. It dislocates social and economic life. It leaves behind a trail of bitterness and terrible memories. It weakens the task of national consolidation. Unless systematic, vigorous and effective measures are initiated to contain the growing communalism, it does not appear probable that our society can usher in an era of enlightenment, social Growing feeling of communalism is a by-product of development of nationalism.
The British were seen as outsiders, enemies of the nation. While mobilising the people to fight the British and to drive them out of the country, inspiration was drawn from the acts of bravery of heroes like Sivaji and Rana Pratap, who in their own way, fought with the Mughals. The Mughals were then seen as representing the forces inimicalto
the nation. They were seen as desperadoes who inflicted humiliation on the native Hindus.
The memories of the destruction of Hindu shrines by Mehmood Ghazanavi and Md. Ghauri as well as imposition ofJizia by Aurangzeb on the Hindus were revived to put the Muslimcommunity in the dock.
Past was called in to aid chauvinists to fix the guilt on the contemporary Muslims for the supposed deeds of their ancestors. Thus were sown the seeds of Hindu militancy in the late 1 9th and the early 20th century. Although the Hindus and the Muslims have been co-existing in this sub-continent for more than a thousand years, the social interaction between them has not progressed beyond formal relationships in agriculture, trade and industry. Closer intimacies between the people belonging to these communities are barred by a long tradition going back to the period of earliest contact between them.
There are historical precedents of Mughals marrying Rajput princesses; such occurrence appears to have been a very limited exception to the rule and was more for diplomatic reasons rathet than for bringing the two communities socially closer.
