Sir Dr. Allama Iqbal

[TMA]

Let me tell you what the First Empire of the Anti-Christ wanted in the Subcontinent of India

The end of Muslim political, social, economic and cultural power in the Subcontinent of India...they achieved this finally in 1857. Why? Not just for money and loot like all Empires but they realised that the Subcontinental Muslims were the most powerful of the "Islamic blocks" save perhaps the Ottomans. Now once the British had established British India, they needed to ensure that Muslims could not revive themselves and hence poured acid on the soil so to speak...banning Persian...bankrupting Muslim businesses....making the Muslim intellengentsia beggars....etc etc.

And also by controlling the Indian Muslims, they could focus on weakening the Ottoman Caliphate...but to their surprise, it was from British India that most support came...The Khilfat movement...this if successful would be a great blow in their strategic plans...however this movement also died but not without any retribution...the price the First Empire of the Anti-Christ had to pay was a "Pakistan".

Of course most of leaders of the subcontinent were educated in Britain and working for the British. I do not give a pass to many of the Hindu leaders either.

Your Excellency,

The enormity of the measures taken by the Government in the Punjab for quelling some local disturbances has, with a rude shock, revealed to our minds the helplessness of our position as British subjects in India. The disproportionate severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilised governments, barring some conspicuous exceptions, recent and remote. Considering that such treatment has been meted out to a population, disarmed and resourceless, by a power which has the most terribly efficient organisation for destruction of human lives, we must strongly assert that it can claim no political expediency, far less moral justification. The accounts of the insults and sufferings by our brothers in Punjab have trickled through the gagged silence, reaching every corner of India, and the universal agony of indignation roused in the hearts of our people has been ignored by our rulers—possibly congratulating themselves for what they imagine as salutary lessons. This callousness has been praised by most of the Anglo-Indian papers, which have in some cases gone to the brutal length of making fun of our sufferings, without receiving the least check from the same authority—relentlessly careful in smothering every cry of pain and expression of judgement from the organs representing the sufferers. Knowing that our appeals have been in vain and that the passion of vengeance is blinding the nobler vision of statesmanship in our Government, which could so easily afford to be magnanimous as befitting its physical strength and moral tradition, the very least that I can do for my country is to take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the protest of the millions of my countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror. The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen, who, for their so-called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.

These are the reasons which have painfully compelled me to ask Your Excellency, with due reference and regret, to relieve me of my title of Knighthood, which I had the honour to accept from His Majesty the King at the hands of your predecessor, for whose nobleness of heart I still entertain great admiration.

Yours faithfully,
Rabindranath Tagore

Source: Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, eds., Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Letter published in Modern Review (Calcutta monthly), July 1919.

http://dart.columbia.edu/library/tagore-letter/letter.html

Much respect to Rabindranath Tagore.

 

[SuvarnaTeja]

Let me tell you what the First Empire of the Anti-Christ wanted in the Subcontinent of India

The end of Muslim political, social, economic and cultural power in the Subcontinent of India...they achieved this finally in 1857. Why? Not just for money and loot like all Empires but they realised that the Subcontinental Muslims were the most powerful of the "Islamic blocks" save perhaps the Ottomans. Now once the British had established British India, they needed to ensure that Muslims could not revive themselves and hence poured acid on the soil so to speak...banning Persian...bankrupting Muslim businesses....making the Muslim intellengentsia beggars....etc etc.

And also by controlling the Indian Muslims, they could focus on weakening the Ottoman Caliphate...but to their surprise, it was from British India that most support came...The Khilfat movement...this if successful would be a great blow in their strategic plans...however this movement also died but not without any retribution...the price the First Empire of the Anti-Christ had to pay was a "Pakistan".


Much respect to Rabindranath Tagore.

British have used Hindus against Hindus (Caste divisions), Muslims against Muslims (Nawabs vs Mughals), Muslims against the Hindus (Hindi vs Urdu, Muslim reservations, Aligarh Muslim University vs Beneras Hindus University, Indian Muslim League vs Hindu Mahasabha, India vs Pakistan).

British were great strategists.

 

[TMA]

British have used Hindus against Hindus (Caste divisions), Muslims against Muslims (Nawabs vs Mughals), Muslims against the Hindus (Hindi vs Urdu, Muslim reservations, Aligarh Muslim University vs Beneras Hindus University, Indian Muslim League vs Hindu Mahasabha, India vs Pakistan).

British were great strategists.

True. And the Second Empire are even better....