Mahavatar Vishnudeva Saraswati
is thought to be older than Mahakaya Babaji. His home is Siddha Loka,
sometimes known as Gyan Ganj and also as Shambala, situated some 6000 meters high
on the Bhagirathi Parbat - the true source of the Ganga. Only at times
of human need does he consent to descend to human habitation.
BOOK REVIEW
Review of V.S. Naipaul's
Beyond Belief:
Islamic Excursions
Among the Converted Peoples
by Ram Swarup
In the Land of Converts: An Islamic Journey
Khomeini's Islamic Revolution in 1979 inspired Naipaul to
undertake an "Islamic Journey" and visit Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and
Indonesia, The result was an important book, Among the Believers (1981) on an
important subject. He found the issues involved important enough and he
revisited those parts and has now come out with another very thoughtful work,
Beyond Belief.* The two books go together.
The second journey confirmed the observations and
conclusions of the first. Though Khomeini's Islamic revolution failed, Islamic
fundamentalism of which it was a projection continues to be an important
ideology and to exercise a great political influence.
Though the two books involved some rough travel, they are
not travel books; they are serious studies of an important ideology and area.
They combine history, social criticism raised by larger reflections which place
the author, already a celebrated literary figure in the English world, among
major social thinkers of the age. In the new narratives, the author has created
a new literary form which gives more scope for his reflective talents.
Thinking aloud, the author observes that the overthrow of
the old religions--religions linked to the earth and animals and the deities of
a particular place or tribe--by the revealed religions is one of the haunting
themes of history. In the two narratives, he occupies himself with this subject
though he does not discuss it as such and directly, and limits himself to its
Islamic expression in some important Muslim countries. He says that one main
feature of these religions is that they take out sacredness from the land and
environment of the converts. He remembers his own place of birth in Trinidad
which knew no sacred places. Probably the aboriginal people knew them but they
had been destroyed and instead of them there were in the plantation colony,
"people like us whose sacred places were in other continents," to put
it in the language of Naipaul. Enlarging on the observation, he adds that
perhaps it is the absence of the sense of sacredness that is the curse of the
New World. And perhaps it is this sense of sacredness that we of the New World
travel to the Old to rediscover.
Later on, he met the same phenomenon in Goa where the
Portuguese, representatives of another revealed religion, Christianity, had had
time to do their work. Haters of idolatry, haters of all that was not of the
true faith, levellers of Hindu temples and establishers of the Inquisition and
the burning of the heretics, they created there "something of a New-World
emptiness, like the Spanish in Mexico." But as one stepped out of Goa, one
stepped into the sacred land again. It wasn't political history that made it so.
Religious myths touched every part of the land outside colonial Goa. Story
within story, fable within fable: that was what people saw and felt in their
bones. Those were the myths, about gods and the heroes of the epics, that gave
antiquity and wonder to the earth people lived on" (India: A Million
Mutinies). In destroying the sense of sacredness, Islamic fundamentalism is true
to its type. But it does allow to one peoples, and only one peoples, the
original peoples of the Prophet, their sacred places, pilgrimage and earth
reverences; and these sacred Arab places have to be the sacred places of all the
converted peoples.
Closely connected with this is another phenomenon. The
converts have also to strip themselves of their past. Nothing is required of
them but the purest faith, Islam, submission. Islam, Naipaul adds, "is the
most uncompromising kind of imperialism."
Naipaul finds Islamic fundamentalism at work wherever he
goes: in Iran, in Pakistan, in Indonesia, in Malaysia. It has its stages and
intensities, but there is one minimum requirement: that the converts learn to
lose regard for the land of their birth, reject their pagan neighbours and
regard them along with women of inferior breed; that they hold their pre-Islamic
past and ancestors in contempt. The one unalterable principle is tabligh: that
they give up their old identity in every thing, in their beliefs, customs,
names, dress. But as one advances in piety, others things are added. There is
demand for the enforcement of the sharia, introduction of Muslim penal laws like
amputation of limbs, public lashing and stoning; introduction of Muslim rules of
marriage and divorce, introduction of obligatory fasts and prayers. All this is
often irksome to the believers and in the modern world sometimes also not always
practical. This often invites opposition. Hence the need for the fundamentalists
to capture state power and enforce Islamic laws, the need for whipping vans to
see that men observe rules and regulations of prayer and fasting.
Wherever Naipaul goes, he finds two features very
prominent. One is that the converts are trying to erase their past; the second
is that though they were once victims of an aggression, they are now all for the
aggressor, for the Arabs. Whether in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, their
fundamental rage is against the past, against history, and all this accompanied
with the "impossible dream of the true faith growing out of a spiritual
vacancy."
In Iran, he finds that things have gone pretty far, in
fact too far. Its pre-Islamic past is irrecoverable. It has lost all memory of
its past and ancestors and is ashamed of them. It was once a great power that
had challenged Greece and Rome. But it was defeated by the Arabs in AD 637,
practically as soon as Islam began. It never made up for that defeat again.
Naipaul says that in Iran "people's consciousness began with the coming of
Islam, began with that defeat. It gave a special edge to the faith in Iran, and
a special passion to the people." He adds that "to be an Iranian was
to have a special faith, a special version of the Arab faith."
One would have thought that this much of Islam should
satisfy the Iranians and they should regard themselves as sufficiently Islamic.
But not so. Khomeini's call for Islamic revolution had a wide appeal. Naipaul
visits Pakistan and finds the same forces at work there too. Unlike Iran,
Pakistan still retains important fragments of the past in its dress, customs,
ceremonies, festivals and social organization. But it means no relaxation, no
relief for the people. It only means that there is much more to do for
fundamentalists, much more to deny and repudiate and change.
Similarly Naipaul finds that in Pakistan though most
people are converts, to them their ancient "land is of no religious or
historical importance; its relics are of no account; only the sands of Arabia
are sacred." Their concept of history has completely altered and that
alteration has inevitably diminished the intellectual life of the country. All
the history of the ancient land has ceased to matter; in the school history
books, the history of Pakistan has become only an aspect of the history of
Islam. The Muslim invaders, and especially the Arabs, have become the heroes of
the Pakistan story. Naipaul regards as "a dreadful mangling of
history", a "convert's view" of history. He says that history in
Pakistan "has become a kind of neurosis. Too much has to be ignored or
angled; there is too much fantasy."
Salman, one of his interviewees, talks of this neurosis.
He says: "Islam doesn't show on my face. We have nearly all, subcontinental
Muslims, invented Arab ancestors for ourselves. Most of us are Sayeds... if you
read Ibn Batuta and early travellers you can sense the condescending attitude of
the Arab travellers to the converts."
"The invention of Arab ancestry soon became complete.
It has been adopted by all families. If you hear people talking you would
believe that his great and wonderful land was nothing but wild jungle, that no
human beings lived here."
Naipaul meets the same phenomenon in Indonesia, almost at
the limit of the Islamic world. The country was until recently a cultural and
religious part of Greater India and Islam came late on the scene. As a result,
the country is rich in the monuments of the pagan past but nothing outside or
before the faith was to be acknowledged, not even a great Hindu-Buddhist
monument like Borobudur, one of the wonders of world. While their objection to
these relics is Islamic, some fundamentalists have learnt to clothe it in more
acceptable, socialistic terms. One of them said that the money that was spent on
Borobudur could be used to feed "hungry Muslims." One important
criticism of the Government by the fundamentalists was that the Indonesian
embassy in Canberra looked like a Hindu building.
The same wind blows in Malaysia. In the new climate, to be
a Malaysian is to be a Muslim. Others, the Chinese Taoists, Buddhists and Hindus
suffer many disabilities.
Islam is accompanied by Arabization. Previously Islam
marched with the Arab armies, but now Arab influence marches with Islam in all
matters, big and small. For example, in Iran, when a boy of fourteen, come under
the influence of Islamic fundamentalism, he discarded his old Persian name
Farhad, and gave himself a new Arabic name Maisson, one of the early follower of
the prophet. In Malaysia, a young boy, son of a Chinese Taoist-Buddhist Bomoh,
was converted by a Pathan girl he met. She asked him to read the Quran which he
did in order to have some thing to talk to her about. Under her attraction, he
became a Muslim and gave himself an Arabic name, Rashid, and changed his dietary
habits. Later on, the girl and the Quran receded, but the name stuck.
"Islam as Arab Nationalism"--this idea was
recently projected by Anwar Shaikh, from Pakistan but now settled in Great
Britain. More recently it was mentioned by Ibn Warraq in his Why I am not a
Muslim. The idea is true with certain qualifications. In point of fact, the
Arabs were Islam's first victims. Under its sway, they lost not only their gods
but also their history and ancestors. In their place they were burdened with an
artificial history and ancestry. The Arabs first opposed Islam, but they were
overwhelmed by the new Islamic forces. Very soon, they also found it
economically and politically attractive. They adopted it wholesale.
Converts
Beyond Belief has a second title, Islamic Excursions among the Converted
Peoples. Though the author does not discuss the problem how Muslims came to be
Muslims, he takes it for granted that we all know. Dr. K.S. Lal does it for us
as far as the Indian Muslims are concerned in his Indian Muslims: Who are They?
The "convert" is more than a descriptive name.
In the hands of Naipaul, it has become an important concept. Though on one side
it stands for aggression, on the side of victims, it stands for self-alienation,
for estrangement from one's own people--a more important component of the
concept. The converts have a special psychology. They became converts under
great pressure; but subsequently they solve the problem by pretending that their
conversion was voluntary. Their forefathers were defeated and humiliated; but
they overcome this feeling by identifying themselves with the victors and the
aggressors. Even after conversion the pressure continues; they try to prove they
are more loyal than the king himself; they become ardent champions and
standard-bearers of Islam. In Iran, they think the Arabs are not sufficiently
Muslim, and it is Iran's manifest destiny to keep Islam's flag aloft.
Close to the "converts" is the phenomenon of
"secularists" we meet in India. Though they are not converts in the
accepted sense of the term, they are close to them in their sympathy and
antipathy. There is quite a tribe of them--historians, columnists, politicians.
The marxist historians of JNU are close to Muslim Aligarh School. Their marxist
and secularist hatred for "communal" Hindus has something of the
passion and fervour of Muslim converts.
Beyond Belief discusses Islamic fundamentalism, not
Islam's fundamentals which is the real source of the trouble. Islamic
fundamentalism could not be that cruel if Islam's fundamentals were benign, less
narrow and had more sympathy. Thus the failure is deeper. It is a doctrinal
failure, the source of other failures. What could you do with a system of
beliefs which denies divinity and even goodness in all fraternities (ummah)
other than its own? What could you do with ideas like jihad, daru'l-Islam and
daru'l-harb if they are part of the basic doctrines? Naipaul also omits to
discuss Christian fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism's elder sister who has
been upon the scene over a longer period. Its face has been quite as ugly and
its record pretty as bad in all places including Europe. In the two Americas,
conversions were also accompanied with large-scale genocide.
We hope that Naipaul would undertake another journey among
Indigenous Americans-Indians, the neighbours of his early days, and write
another book on this theme. There he would meet the phenomenon of
"conversion" in its full nakedness, and meet converts who have
forgotten their past completely and have no pride left in it. When Huxley
visited Guatemala in 1930 or so, he saw a ballet in which "Indians
celebrate the defeat and enslavement of their own people at the hands of
Alvarado... and have chosen to exalt the heroism, not of their own people, but
of men who reduced them to peonage." Self-alienation has gone deep.
Cultural and religious degradation of these people
followed their political and economic subjugation. Now their struggle for
independence, or whatever they have in its name, must follow a spiritual and
cultural revival. Men of good will and vision could help this revival. By
writing the proposed book, Naipaul would pay his debt to his old neighbours. The
book would also be a Hindu contribution to the cause of the cultural and
political revival of indigenous Americas.
A New Struggle
In his concept of "converts", Naipaul has raised another very
important question though he does not discuss it. Would the converts come into
their own? Would they rediscover their roots both in their past as well as in
their psyche? Would they be reconciled to their forefathers? Or are they doomed
to continued enmity and historical self-amnesia?
The last two thousand years were years of revelatory
religions. But the new era would see another struggle, the struggle of converts
trying to rediscover their past and to regain ideological self-respect. It is
going to be an important struggle, the struggle of the new era, struggle in
Europe, in Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia, in the two Americas. The
struggle is already on. Though it does not have a name yet, it is the opposite
of Christian or Islamic fundamentalism. It is for a natural religion, the word
nature in the sense in which Greek philosophers used it, that with which a man
is born, sahaja, that which is most essential and innermost in man--his atma.
The work has already begun at least on the external plane.
In most European countries, there is now a conscious effort to rediscover their
pagan roots. Goprun Dimmbla Hangantysdottir, an Icelandic thinker, writer in her
Odsmal of an "ancient heathen civilization of the North which was
suppressed, banned and distorted for centuries by threat-imposed Christianity
and imported culture from the South."
"Beyond Belief" is not going to make its author
popular with the current intellectual establishment in India. Here the
acceptable thing is to admire Islam. To describe Muslims as "invaders"
is a heresy. According to the current stereotype, they were not invaders, but
"liberators" from religious superstitions and social injustice.
Naipaul hurts this stereotype.
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