It has often been asserted that the polytheistic Hindu failed to establish a spiritual kinship with the monotheistic Muslim who held much that is Indian in scorn and still seeks his spiritual inspiration abroad. How can we say that India ignored the teachings of Islam when we find saints like Nanak and Chaitanya, Namdev and Tukaram, preaching the brotherhood of man and the futility of caste in matters spiritual? Although attempts on Hindu culture and institutions fill the pages of Indian history, how can we assert that Muslims ignored the appeal of Hindu culture when we find Muhammad Jayasi weaving a beautiful romance to illustrate the teachings of Hindu philosophy, when we read the simple devotional hymns of Kabir and Sheikh Farid, who refused to recognise the barriers of caste and creed on the high road to God’s kingdom? “Utter not one disagreeable word,” said Farid, “since the true lord is in all men. Distress no one’s heart for every heart is a precious jewel.” In the same strain did Kabir proclaim, “There is the same God for the Hindu as for the Muslim.” A rejuvenated India found an Akbar to put an end to political chaos and social disharmony and a Shah Jahan to dream a dream in marble the like of which is not to be met in the world.

Further, is not the very cry ‘‘No Swaraj without Hindu- Muslim Unity” an insult to the freedom-loving Hindu ? Could there have been anything more emasculating to the Hindu— the Hindu who had successfully withstood and smashed the on. slaughts of many invaders over the past thousands of years — than telling him that he could not secure Swari.i without the help of Muslims ?

It was only in the nineteenth century that Western Indologists and Christian missionaries separated the Buddhists, the Jains, and the Sikhs from the Hindus who, in their turn, were defined as only those subscribing to Brahmanical sects.... Nowhere in the voluminous Muslim chronicles do we find the natives of this country known by a name other than Hindu. There were some Jews, and Christians, and Zoroastrians settled here and there... The chronicles distinguish these communities from the Muslims on the one hand, and from the natives of this country on the other. It is only when they come to the natives that no more distinctions are noticed; all natives are identified as ahl-i-Hunûd-Hindu!... In all their narratives, all natives are attacked as Hindus, massacred as Hindus, plundered as Hindus, converted forcibly as Hindus, captured and sold in slave markets as Hindus, and subjected to all sorts of malice and molestation as Hindus. The Muslims never came to know, nor cared to know, as to which temple housed what idol. For them all temples were Hindu but-khãnas, to be desecrated or destroyed as such. They never bothered to distinguish the idol of one God or Goddess from that of another. All idols were broken or burnt by them as so many buts, or deposited in the royal treasury if made of precious metals, or strewn at the door-steps of the mosques if fashion from inferior stuff. In like manner, all priests and monks, no matter to what school or order they belonged, were for the Muslims so many “wicked Brahmans” to be slaughtered or molested as such. In short, the word “Hindu” acquired a religious connotation for the first time within the frontiers of this country. The credit for this turn-out goes to the Muslim conquerors. With the coming of Islam to this country all schools and sects of Sanãtana Dharma acquired a common denominator - Hindu!... Once again, it goes to the credit of the Muslim conquerors that the word “Hindu” acquired a national connotation within the borders of this country.

Aurangzeb: Hinduism is a false religion. It allows idol worship, it does not teach Tauhid (unicity). Therefore, Hindus will be punished in hell. I pity them and therefore I wish that all should be converted to Islam. It is Allah's wish that there should be only one religion, Islam. If the Hindus accept Islam they will be rewarded with wealth, high offices and land grants. In that case you will be able to retain your leadership, have many more followers and be a renowned priest of Islam which is the only true religion on earth. O Guru, accept my invitation to embrace Islam and you shall get whatever your heart's desire may be. Guru Tegh Bahadur: O Emperor, thou and I and all people are God's and so are all the religions which acknowledge God. If it were His Will that there should be only one religion in the world he would not have allowed other religion to exist side by side at the same time. There is none to dispute His Will. Is there not more than one road leading to Delhi, and more than one gate to enter the capital? O, Emperor you are merely a labourer and not a true servant ofjthe Lord. You work for your selfish ends, worldly achievements, establishment of your rule, to enslave human beings to your will. And all this you wish to do in the name of religion. Even if you perform namaz, fasting, read the Quran and other things enjoined by the law, yet your are a labourer, for you do all this for reward, to secure a place in paradise. Islam is resignation to the Will of the God, and not to wish worldly things here and heaven after death. Aurangzeb: Remember, I am only obeying God's orders in converting all to Islam.
Guru Tegh Bahadur: I know not whether you imagine that you are carrying out God's command or merely wish to hide the crimes committed to satisfy your greed and desire for power under the cloak of religion. Remember, conversion is not carrried out by force or threats or by bribes. Conversion is a thing that depends on the faith of the heart. Why did not the uncle of the Prophet become a convert to Islam? You say your religion does not allow idol worship in any form. Then whfere is the justification to enjoin a kind of worship to be offered to the black stone of Kaaba? O, King, you speak of unicity but you do not know what that means. All the religion believe in the unicity of God. The meaning of unicity doe's not end here. Remember when the self is eliminated that duality can disappear. Thus alone can one believe Tawhid. "

Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya (fourteenth century) at many places admits that Hindus “do not embrace Islam”, and that “the heart of these people is not changed through sermons”.

While our leaders and the Supreme Court keep chanting, ‘All religions are one’; while they keep recalling the Vedic pronouncement, ‘Truth is one, only the sages call it by different names’; while they keep recalling Ashoka’s rock edict, ‘One who reveres one’s own religion and disparages that of another, due to devotion to one’s own religion and to glorify it over all others, does injure one’s own religion certainly’, the ulema proclaim the very opposite set of values, the truly Islamic values to be fair to the ulema. Thus we have Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan descend as an avalanche on persons who countenance processions in which books like the Gita and Quran are carried with equal respect; he declares that for a Muslim to even say, ‘Hindus should live by the Vedas, Muslims should live by the Quran,’ is kufr; a temple is the abode of Satans, he says, a Muslim is forbidden from going into it; to describe the Holy Quran as being like the Veda is kufr; to say that Hindus should live by the Veda is to ask people to follow kufr, and to ask people to follow kufr is kufr...

I am not Indian nor a Hindu. But I know one thing. Secularism should not mean that demeaning Hindu Gods is justified and telling the truth about Muhammad is not.

Whenever a Muslim called upon the Muslim society, he never faced any resistance-he called in the name of one God ‘Allah-ho-Akbar’. On the other hand, when we (Hindus) call will call, ‘come on, Hindus’, who will respond? We, the Hindus, are divided in numerous small communities, many barriers-provincialism-who will respond overcoming all these obstacles? “We suffered from many dangers, but we could never be united. When Mohammed Ghouri brought the first blow from outside, the Hindus could not be united, even in the those days of imminent danger. When the Muslims started to demolish the temples one after another, and to break the idols of Gods and Goddesses, the Hindus fought and died in small units, but they could not be united. It has been provided that we were killed in different ages due to out discord. Weakness harbors sin. So, if the Muslims beat us and we, the Hindus, tolerate this without resistance-then, we will know that it is made possible only by our weakness. For the sake of ourselves and our neighbour Muslims also, we have to discard our weakness. We can appeal to our neighbour Muslims, `Please don't be cruel to us. No religion can be based on genocide' - but this kind of appeal is nothing, but the weeping of the weak person. When the low pressure is created in the air, storm comes spontaneously; nobody can stop it for sake for religion. Similarly, if weakness is cherished and be allowed to exist, torture comes automatically - nobody can stop it. Possibly, the Hindus and the Muslims can make a fake friendship to each other for a while, but that cannot last forever. As long as you don’t purify the soil, which grows only thorny shrubs you can not expect any fruit.

They left no stone unturned in de-Hinduizing or denationalizing the Hindus, in effect de-Indianizing the Indians, in various ways. It is preposterous to question their credentials as true Muslims. Their 'Ulama' exhorted them off and on to make the best of their sword to root out the Hindus and convert India into a full-fledged Dar al-lslam. Sayyid Nur ad-Din Mubarak Ghaznawi Suhrawardi, at once a leading Sufi, a leading Muslim divine, and the Shaykh al-lslam of Sultan Iltutmish. led a deputation of Ulama to the Sultan and advised him to give an ultimatum to the Hindus to embrace Islam or face death. The Sultan’s prime minister pleaded powerlessness on his behalf to do so." Then the Shaykh offered an alternative suggestion: ’... the king should at least strive to disgrace, dishonour, and defame the Mushrik and idol- worshipping Hindus.... The sign of the kings being protectors of the faith is this: When they see a Hindu, their faces turn red and they wish to swallow him alive....'

I may defend a Muslim's stand that he is a Muslim first and an Indian afterwards , for I myself say that I am a Hindu first and am therefore a true Indian .

In due course of time, Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in a religious sense because that is the personal faith of an individual, but in a political sense as citizens of one state.

My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines.

First, all Hindus and Muslims should accept one reality - that we are ethnically and culturally the same. No one from the Hindu-Muslim society must suffer German-Jew paradigm. Each and every Muslim of India emanates ancestorily from the gene, RBC, bone, blood and flesh of a Hindu. If there is something in Hindu dharma that hurts Muslims, I, as a Hindu leader, am ready to reform that.

If the Hindus sang Vande Mãtaram in a public meeting, it was a ‘conspiracy’ to convert Muslims into kãfirs. If the Hindus blew a conch, or broke a coconut, or garlanded the portrait of a revered patriot, it was an attempt to ‘force’ Muslims into ‘idolatry’. If the Hindus spoke in any of their native languages, it was an ‘affront’ to the culture of Islam. If the Hindus took pride in their pre-Islamic heroes, it was a ‘devaluation’ of Islamic history. And so on, there were many more objections, major and minor, to every national self-expression. In short, it was a demand that Hindus should cease to be Hindus and become instead a faceless conglomeration of rootless individuals. On the other hand, the ‘minority community’ was not prepared to make the slightest concession in what they regarded as their religious and cultural rights. If the Hindus requested that cow-killing should stop, it was a demand for renouncing an ‘established Islamic practice’. If the Hindus objected to an open sale of beef in the bazars, it was an ‘encroachment’ on the ‘civil rights’ of the Muslims. If the Hindus demanded that cows meant for ritual slaughter should not be decorated and marched through Hindu localities, it was ‘trampling upon time-honoured Islamic traditions’. If the Hindus appealed that Hindu religious processions passing through a public thoroughfare should not be obstructed, it was an attempt to ‘disturb the peace of Muslim prayers’. If the Hindus wanted their native languages to attain an equal status with Urdu in the courts and the administration, it was an ‘assault on Muslim culture’. If the Hindus taught to their children the true history of Muslim tyrants, it was a ‘hate campaign against Islamic heroes’. And the ‘minority community’ was always ready to ‘defend’ its ‘religion and culture’ by taking recourse to street riots.