TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

wrongs’. Naturally, both these stances led to mutual bitterness. When Muslims began taking pride in the memory of the deeds of Muslim kings, then, consciously or otherwise, these kings became, for them, a sacred part of their religious history. And, on the other hand, Hindus perceived these same deeds as historical misdeeds and began trying to redress them. Both sides have blundered. The mistake of the Muslims is that they are not ready to re-look at the history of these Muslim rulers because they have given this history a religious hue. And, on the other hand, the mistake of the Hindus is that they are not willing to forget the past. They insist on the righting of historical wrongs, even if this results in destroying the potentials and prospects of the present. In this matter both parties need to be realistic. Muslims should not give the Muslim rulers of the past the status of ‘Islamic rulers’. Instead, they should see them simply as the government of particular families. They should disown the un-Islamic and immoral behaviour of these Muslim rulers. They should openly condemn them for this—be it Mahmud Ghaznavi or Aurangzeb or anyone else. On the other hand, Hindus should seek to forget the past, in line with the saying, ‘The past is past’. They should desist from emotionalism in this regard and adopt a pragmatic and realistic approach. Hindus should remember that historical wrongs have always happened, but yet no one has ever been able to remedy any of them. This theory about righting historical wrongs is undoubtedly unwise. It is tantamount to spoiling one’s present in the name of correcting the past. This view is against nature. People who think in this way will, in the name of salvaging their past, only lose their present and future. Unfortunately, however, this is precisely what has happened in India. Countries that have sought to build their present after forgetting the bitterness of their past have achieved brilliant success. One example of this is Japan. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Japan did not seek to correct the wrongs committed against it by America, but, instead, focused on trying to rebuild itself. The result was that Japan is today an economic superpower. In contrast, in India people tried to rectify historical wrongs, but that only further exacerbated the country’s backwardness. For a country to progress, a necessary condition is to maintain national progress as the main issue, setting aside everything else as of secondary importance.