INDIA AND THE MUSLIM WORLD
In the early nineteen forties, a few years before India became independent, an Iranian Cultural Delegation visited India. The leader of the Delegation in a speech he made in the city of Allahabad said, and I quote: "The Iranians and Indians are like two brothers who, according to a Persian legend. had got separated from each other. One going to the East and the other to the West. Their families had forgotten all about each other and the only thing that remained in common between them were the snatches of a few old tunes which they still played on their flutes. It was through these tunes that, after a lapse of centuries, the two families recognized each other and were reunited". And when they met and recognized each other, they discovered that. Apart from certain tunes, there were many other things common between them. Indeed "Few people have been more closely related in origin and throughout history than the people of India and the people of Iran".
India is multi-religious, multi-lingual, multi-racial and multi-cultural society which has the impress. of an over- informing oneness about it and a many- splendoured variety which is bound together by silken cords of a common unity. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has likened India to" some ancient palimpsest on which layer after layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously ".In this palimpsest the Persian layer remains one of the clearest and the most beautiful. The Iranian impact on India has been profound in civilizational. Cultural and political terms. The highways between India and Iran have been traversed by scholars and statesmen. Traders and artists, by men of piety and learning. and by some conquering heroes too. They were the carriers of ideas which influenced the culture and ways of life of both countries. No branch of knowledge, no art form. No area of human endeavour has remained unaffected by this impact. Music, poetry, language, philosophy and architecture bear witness to a relationship which stretches back in to history.
For nearly’ eight hundred years Persian has been the court language of India, and also the language of the intellectual elite. It had filtered even to some sections of the ordinary folk.
It is a fact of history that outside Iran the greatest and the most significant role has been played by Indians in promoting Persian literature. Compilations of Persian grammar and Persian lexicons were some of the gifts of India to Iran. The Indian style in Persian literature - Sabak-e- Hindi is well known. In the 14th century Amir Khusro wrote poetry in Persian and introduced innovations in Indian music based on Persian music. Sanskrit texts and poetry were translated into Persian. "Panchtantra", the great Indian story book, was translated into Persian and it was through Persian that these stories were transmitted to Europe. DaraShikoh, the eldest on of Emperor Shahjahan. Translated many of the Upanis hads into Persian, and it is said that the Upanis hads first went to Europe in the Persian translation. Thus, it was through Persian and Arabic that much of Indian philosophy and Sanskrit literature was made known to the Western world.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the Indian social reformer and renaissance personally, had mastered Persian among other languages. He wrote a treatise in Persian on the unity of God under the title Tuhfatal-Muwahhidin in the year 1790. He also published a newspaper in Persian called” Mira tul- Akhbar" in 1822-23, the first Persian newspaper in India which was circulated not only in India, but in Kabul, Tehran, Samarkand and Bukhara.
Even today Persian language is taught in India. More than 300teachers are engaged in teaching Persian language and literature in180Departments of Universities and Colleges. in India. India is also an important publishing centre for Persian books. Thus the influence of Persian language, art and literature on India has been significant. No wonder a French savant has described the Taj Mahal as "the soul of Iran incarnate in the body ofIndia".
Ever since Persia became Islamic the Iranian impact on India became identified with Islamic influence on India. Today in addition to' the age-old impact of Persian civilization, India is linked to Iran and to the Islamic world through the massive Islamic presence in its composite society. For over a thousand years Islam was one of the major forces that shaped the cultural, social, economic and political history of India. While Islam in India has maintained all its distinctive religious and cultural characteristics, it has at the same time been woven into the fabric of Indian life and culture through a prolonged process of mutual accommodation and adjustment. There are today 120million Muslims in India and India has the second largest Muslim population in the world ranking second only to Indonesia. After the partition of India, as a distinguished Indian Muslim politician and scholar, Mr. Syed Shahabuddin, has written, "it was India which was the repository of all that was of a permanent nature in the Islamic heritage of the sub-continent". Every Indian, irrespective of his religious faith, is proud of the Islamic heritage, and whatever be the differences that exist between India and Pakistan, we believe that it is the destiny of the people of the. South Asian sub-continent to live in friendship, cooperation and fraternal amity. For we believe that in the long run the forces that make forco- existence and cooperation would be more powerful in South Asia, in the region and indeed in the whole world, than the negative an a disruptive forces that work in the opposite direction.
From ancient times India, as civilization, had looked upon the entire humanity as a single family. The Indian concept of the unity of mankind was not one that was imposed from outside, a standardization and unification of externals, but one' of inner harmony and essential unity. Within this wide framework of approach to life-what we called unity in diversity –tolerance of every belief and custom was practised, and every sort of variety was tolerated, even encouraged in Indian society. This is the matrix in which democracy has taken root, grown and flowered in India of today. Though some of the modern parliamentary institutions were introduced during the British period, they were absorbed and developed by the Indians because of our familiarity with democratic institutions at he grass-roots level in our village panchayats and our traditional heritage of tolerance and respect for different beliefs and points of view. That is "hat has enabled us to grow into one of the most vibrant democracies in the world, and the largest.
Next year India, will be celebrating the 50thanniversary of its independence. It will be for us a celebration of our democracy and of our social and economic achievements under a democratic system. And it will be the celebration of the remarkable phenomenon of a vast country of 960 millions belonging to different faiths, different languages and every imaginable variety of social customs and practices, living together in peace and amity, finding opportunities to strive for the fulfilment of their needs and aspirations.
It will also be the celebration of the launching of a new idea in international politics, viz., the non-aligned movement which has played an important role in the lessening of tensions and conflicts during the dangerous years of the Cold War. And which has an equally important or an even more important role to play today when efforts are being made to impose a unipolar order on world that IS pluralistic and crying out for greater democracy and equality in international affairs.
Bilaterally India and Iran are involved in economic cooperation of major significance. There is a complementarily between the rich resources of Iran and Indian energy needs, scientific-technological capabilities, and for our strength in the areas of management and consultancy. It is possible to match these strengths of our two countries in a cooperation process that will be based on mutual benefit and equality.
In the region it is imperative for us to work together for bringing pence in our neighbourhood and for preventing all manner of external interferences to destabilise nations and to establish strategic strongholds for outside powers. Towards this end we will have to strive consciously to put more vitality and strength into the non-aligned movement.
The civilization and culture of India and Iran are akin to each other and they have preserved over the centuries in the twists and turns of history, values which are of eternal validity for mankind and which are suffused with spirituality and humanity. These values are threatened today by enormously excessive, materialistic and consumerist values that modern media and instruments of propaganda arc bombarding the world with. We have to resist this cultural bombardment from outside by revitalising and strengthening our own culture and values. At the same time, we cannot, and we should not, turn out back on modern developments. The great Indian poet and sage Rabindranath Tagore visited Iran in 1932. He spent some days in this beautiful city of Shiraz and sitting by the tomb of the immortal poet Hafiz composed a poem in praise of him. Later in a message to Iranian friends he wrote: "If we cannot absorb what is modern we shall have to bear its assault. But that does not mean that we have to lose our inner wealth and accept what is coming from outside". The inner wealth that countries like Iran and India have acquired over the millennia is immense and impregnable. That is our great strength and cultural shield. We must consciously and tenaciously hold onto it, while imbibing the best from the outside world. The great poet Hafiz had sung:
"In this dusty world, to hand cometh not a man, It is necessary to make another world, and anew–a man".
We may not be able, out of the dusty and troubled world today, to make another world and a new man, but we can, India and Iran, together make our part of the world a little safer and better to live in.
