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Swami Ji And Khwaja Hasan Nizami

In 1926 Swami Ji came across an Urdu pamphlet Dai Islam by Khwaja Hasan Nizami. He immediately wrote in answer a pamphlet “the hour of danger: Hindus, be on your guard! The order has been given to attack and destroy the fortress of your religion in the hidden dead of night.” Swami Ji considered it as seditious material. The politicians took no notice of Nizami, but his stature and popularity among northern India Muslims and the influence of his writings cannot be gainsaid. Later swami ji found the pamphlet was in fact only the introduction to a larger volume called Fatami Dawat-i-Islam, which was published in 1920 years before swami ji, started Shuddhi and Hindu Sangthan campaign. In this book Nizami with consultations with Aga khan, the leading Muslim leader has agreed to keep this publication a secret within the Muslim community. The single purpose of the book was to describe all the means, fair and foul, by which Hindus could be induced to become Muslims. It said that the attack should strongly concentrate on the untouchables because, if all untouchables caste become Muslims then the Muslim party will become equal to that of the Hindus (preface of the first edition ; for Khwaja Hasan Nizami, cf.g. Thursby, books, 36-37,156)

Swami Ji felt he had uncovered a giant conspiracy. His pamphlet consisted practically entirely of quotations from nizami’s work, showing how all Muslims should be involved in the fight for the spread of Islam, how pirs, fakirs, politicians, peasants, zamindars, hakims etc could be used and what their allotted tasks should be. It also stressed the need for secrecy and for an extensive spy

Apart from this Nizami has also targeted aryasamaj and swami ji himself. Nizami slyly suggested that something happened to the swami in jail, when he was in the hands of the British, with the result that he who was earlier the great champion of Hindu Muslim unity, had now taken up the task of creating Hindu Muslim enmity. (Khwaja Hasan Nizami, cf.g. Thursby, books, p-173)

The aryasamaj was depicted as the great enemy, active in the reconversion of Muslims, and hoping to swell their own numbers.
In his book swami ji suggested some ways in which the Muslim threat could be encountered. The openness and ethics of his methods stood in strong contrast with nizami’s tactics. Hindus should educate thoroughly in their own religion, a task begun by the aryas but far beyond their means. The native rulers should give up their Muslim ways which tended to make Islam attractive to their subjects. Hindus should desist from participating in Muslim religious festivals, should stop venerating Muslim pirs and visiting Muslim shrines. The Hindu community should protect its weak members: the children and the widows so often driven to Islam by despair. Most of all Hindus should exorcise the evil spirit of untouchability “as long as that injustice remains the Hindu people will remain as easy prey to those conspiracies”. He closed the work with an appeal to Muslim political leaders to publicly dissociate themselves from the schemes of Nizami, and to denounce those who partook in them. (Khatre –ka-khanta by swami shraddhananda p-62-67)

Before leaving for Banaras session (1924) swami ji published another pamphlet name Vartaman Mukhya Samasya, Achhutpan Ke Kalank ko Dur Karo. He presented untouchables as the most pressing problem of the day in both the political and the religious spheres. Congress could not be relied upon to do anything. The problem had to be solved by the Hindus. But their weakness was their divisiveness. The Swami appealed for a rallying point of unity. Whatever differences existed, all Hindus agreed on the issue of cow protection. Every untouchable who becomes a Christian or a Muslim becomes a beef-eater. Therefore, to save one single Hindu from the hands of non- Hindus, means to save in one year the life of one cow. (Vartaman Mukhya Samasya, p-17)

Swami Ji saw the situation is critical, requiring immediate action, but to make the indolent and scattered Hindu nation united for such an exceptional effort is not an easy task, in such circumstances, where should we turn for help? The swami answer was “on whom else falls the responsibility for the protection and upliftment of the untouchables then on the followers of Dayanand?” he appealed for two hundred and fifty preachers from among the aryas and for twenty five lakhs of rupees to support the campaign, to be donated to the dalitoddhar fund of the Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha. (Vartaman Mukhya Samasya, p-18-19)

After swami ji violent protests against nizami’s book the voices roused against his book. Referring to Nizami's book, Mahatma Gandhi wrote in Young India dated May 29, 1924, "I have read his pamphlet from cover to cover. It gives detailed instructions to preachers how to carry on (conversion) propaganda. It starts with a lofty proposition that Islam is merely preaching the Unity of God. This grand truth is to be preached according to the writer, by every Mussalman irrespective of character. A secret department of spies is advocated, whose one business is to pry into the privacy of non-Muslim households. Prostitutes, professional singers, mendicants, Government servants, lawyers, doctors, artisans are pressed into the service. If this kind of propaganda becomes popular, no Hindu household would be safe from the secret attention of distinguished misinterpret (I cannot call them missionaries) of the great message of the Prophet of Islam. I am told by respectable Hindus that this pamphlet is widely read in the Nizam's dominions (Hyderabad State), and that the methods advocated in it are extensively practiced there. As a Hindu I am sorry that methods of such doubtful morality should have been seriously advocated by a gentleman who is a well known Urdu author (Khwaja Hasan Nizami) and has a large circle of readers. My Mussalman friends tell me that no responsible Mussalman approves of the methods advocated. The point, however, is not what the respectable Mussalmans think. The point is whether a considerable number of Mussalman masses accept and follow them"

Nizami send wire to Gandhi ji saying that he had left some so called objectionable matter out of his second edition and was prepared to accept the mahatma’s suggestions for future editions. Gandhi ji on 26th June 1924 write in young India all that was not enough. The pamphlet had done great harm, especially in nizam,s dominions, and only a radical revision was acceptable to him. Swami ji retorted that even that was insufficient, the pamphlet had exerted influence allover north India too, and its nefariousness needed to be thoroughly exposed. That is why he had decided to reissue his own pamphlet.

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