Indians are living in the age of Khilafat 2.0 and we must ensure there isn’t another Partition. This was one among several concerns raised by author J Sai Deepak while discussing his latest book, ‘India, Bharat and Pakistan: The Constitutional Journey of a Sandwiched Civilisation’, during an exclusive conversation with CNN-News18.
“The entire trigger for this book is academic as well as civilisational in essence. It is also very personal to me. This was meant to be a trilogy with part one covering the years 1492 to 1919. The second from 1920 to 1951. The third from the first general elections to 1977, which is also the end of the Emergency period," he said. “But I initially struggled to move beyond 1,800 words in writing this book. There was not a paucity of material or literature, but the flow wasn’t right. I was being mechanical…some crucial element was missing."
To find the missing pieces, says J Sai Deepak, he delved further back into the past, and focussed on the two-nation theory.
“There’s enough literature on Jinnah, but I believed that the answers did not lay in Jinnah. I wanted to know if they were the creators or the torchbearers of the thought. Then I went further and it took me to Shah Waliullah Dehlawi. Then the brilliant intellectual that the Muslim community had as well as those on the other side had something in common…Abdul Wahab and Shah Waliullah Dehlawi were contemporary students of Hadis in Hijaas. Therefore they were taking forward a certain thought process that they themselves had received. Then you look at the two-nation theory in the pre-colonial language, in Dehlawi’s language," said the engineer-turned-litigator.
As far as Mahatma Gandhi is concerned, J Sai Deepak argued that he is blamed for things more than he deserves, especially with regard to the Khilafat Movement. “Gandhi was made Mahatma because of the Khilafat Movement and the Khilafatists. We need to reevaluate our heroes and idols," he said.
Gandhi was not the enemy of the British as they clearly saw him as a friend, and as a moderate, said the author.
He also pointed out how history has been repeating itself in India, albeit in a sinister fashion.
“Going a little back, the Khilafatists were doing what the SDPI and PFI are doing right now. This is a continuum of the Wahhabi thought process…Wahhabism has existed in this country for long, since the middle of the 18th century," he said. “So, this is how it goes. You ban the SIMI, an SDPI and a PFI come up. Now Hafiz Saeed has created a new organisation. So you are going after the farm, instead of going after the substance. You have to find a way that not a single drop of blood touches the ground and it can only be done when the seed itself is uprooted."
His book looks at things of the past continuing in the present, said J Sai Deepak. “We are living in the age of Khilafat 2.0. My only concern is, we should not repeat the mistakes of the past. 23 years later Khilafat Movement led to India’s partition in 1947. We don’t want a partition again. We have had enough of it. There shouldn’t be any more bloodshed. Let’s not operate under a saviour complex," he said.
The author also described the Congress as a “pretatma". “Its DNA moves from body to body. Which is the body that has the DNA and needs to be exorcised, I leave it to the audience’s imagination."
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