CHAPTER XII—National Frustration - Page 320

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PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION 295

given up. It was again preached by Muslim patriots during

1920-21, when the Khilafat agitation was goning on. The agitation was not without response from the Muslim masses and there was a goodly number of Muslims who not only showed themselves ready to act in accordance with the Muslim Canon Law but actually abandoned their homes in India and crossed over to Afghanistan.

It might also be mentioned that Hijrat is not the only way of escape to Muslims who find themselves in a Dar-ul-Harb. There is another injunction of Muslim Canon Law called Jihad (crusade) by which it becomes “ incumbent on a Muslim ruler to extend the rule of Islam until the whole world shall have been brought under its sway. The world, being divided into two camps, Dar-ul-Islam (abode of Islam), Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war), all countries come under one category or the other. Technically, it is the duty of the Muslim ruler, who is capable of doing so, to transform Dar-ul-Harb into Dar-ul-Islam.” And just as there are instances of the Muslims in India resorting to Hijrat, there are instances showing that they have not hesitated to proclaim Jihad . The curious may examine the history of the Mutiny of 1857 and if he does, he will find that, in part, at any rate, it was really a Jihad proclaimed by the Muslims against the British, and that the Mutiny so far as the Muslims were concerned was a recrudescence of revolt which had been fostered by Sayyed Ahmad who preached to the Musalmans for several decades that owing to the occupation of India by the British the country had become a Dar-ul-Harb. The Mutiny was an attempt by the Muslims to reconvert India into a Dar-ul-Islam. A more recent instance was the invasion of India by Afghanistan in 1919. It was engineered by the Musalmans of India who led by the Khilafatists’ antipathy to the British Government sought the assistance of Afghanistan to emancipate India.* Whether the invasion would have resulted in the emancipation of India or whether it would have resulted in its subjugation, it is not possible to say because the invasion failed to take effect. Apart from this, the fact remains that India, if not exclusively under Muslim

*This interesting and awful episode has been examined in some details, giving the part played therein by Mr. Gandhi, in a series of articles in the issues of the Maratha, for the year by Mr. Karandikar.