To be sure, the usual suspects are bound to oppose this civilizational viewpoint. With their studied superficiality, the secularists view India as a … - Koenraad Elst

In the Indian subcontinent, Muslims numbered less than 20% in the census of 1881, and more than 24% in the last all-subconti- nental census in 1941. After that, the difference in growth rate between Muslims and non-Muslims has even increased, as birth control became common among the latter, much less among the former. Now, every decade the Muslim percentage in the Subcon- tinent increases by about 1.5%, with the rate of increase itself in- creasing. In 1800, Muslims were 1 in 7, in 1850 they were 1 in 6, in the 1880s they became 1 in 5, around 1950 they were 1 in 4, and shortly after the year 2010 they will be 1 in 3. Already, militant Muslims are talking of Akhand Bharat, a kind of re-unification, and especially Bangladesh suggests that there should be an open bor- der: the perspective of numerically overtaking the Hindus at least in parts of India is beckoning. In truncated India, Muslim population has officially grown 3% in forty years (from less than 10% to nearly 13% in 1951-91), and Muslim leaders claim that the true figure of Muslim population is about 3% higher. In Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal too, the Muslim percentage has continually increased (a small de- crease in Pakistan between 1971 and 1981 is explained by the fact that Ahmadiyyas were officially stamped non-Muslims in 1974). 225

The Guru Granth equally contains writings of some non-Sikh bhakti poets including Kabir, and thousands of references to such Hindu concepts and characters as Rama, Krishna, Veda, Omkara, Amrit. (An near-exact count is given in K.P. Agrawala: Adi Shrî Gurû Granth Sâhib kî Mahimâ (Hindi: “The greatness of the original sacred Guru scripture”), p.2, and in Ram Swarup: “Hindu roots of Sikhism”, Indian Express, 24-4-1991. Examples: ca. 8,300 times Hari (630 times by Nanak alone), 2,400 times Râma (the god-name whose constant remembrance leads to Liberation), 550 times Parabrahman (the Absolute), 400 times Omkâra (the primeval sound Om).) Sikh names are full of Hindu elements: Hari (= Vishnu), Rama, Krishna and his epithets (Har-kishan, Har-govina), Arjun, the Vedic god Indra (Yog-indr, Sur-indr). (About Sikh devotion to Ram, see Rajendra Singh: Sikkha Itihâsa mein Râma Janmabhûmi.) The Hari Mandir, dedicated to Hari/Vishnu, is as sacred to Vaishnavas as any of their non-Sikh temples; its tank was already an old Hindu place of pilgrimage, where Maharana Ikshvaku is said to have performed yajnas. (The 1875 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica says in its entry on Amritsar that it has sacred tank with a temple dedicated to Vishnu in the middle). Ch. 8

Let us now look in more detail into the organizational estrangement between Godse and his mentor Savarkar. Of the events ‘which painfully opened my eyes about this time to the fact that Veer Savarkar and other old leaders of the Mahasabha could no longer be relied upon’, Godse mentions the following examples. In 1946, Savarkar went out of his way to personally reprimand Godse when Apte and he had heckled Gandhiji during a prayer-meeting in a Hindu temple in Bhangi Colony (Delhi), where Gandhiji had read passages from the Quran in spite of protests by the Hindu worshippers, and where he had spoken in defence of Bengal Chief Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the man possibly politically (and probably also directly) responsible for anti-Hindu pogroms in Calcutta and Noakhali.