can "Hindus" see what is wrong in the following? "What is a non-essential to a Hindu may be an essential to a Mussalman. And in all non-essential matters a Hindu must yield for the asking". Gandhi, Young India, 11/5/1921 - here is what is and what became - so problematic in this
Gandhi started off with issue of Hindu festivals playing music near mosques and Islamist violence ag it: "a Hindu may not insist on playing music whilst passing a mosque. he may not even quote precedents in his own or any other place..it is not a matter of vital importance"
"One can easily appreciate the mussalman sentiment of having solemn silence near a mosque the whole of twentyfour hours" Gandhi conveniently forgets that this silence is broken from the mosque every 24 hours 5 times, and that breaking is imposed on Hindus in the whole neighbourhd
What does Gandhi require of his Muslims?"The cow is as dear as life to a Hindu. the mussalman should therefore voluntarily respect his Mussalman brother's sentiment..the days of forcible conversions are gone. Save for the cow Hindus can have no ground for quarrel with Mussalmans"
"the kihilafat question will not recur for another hundred years. If the Hindus wish to cultivate eternal friendship with the Mussalmans, they must perish with them in the attempt to vindicate the honour of Islam"
apart frm the small detail of the Caliphate idea being persistent throughout 20th c in Islamist "scholarship", and the aim to resurrect it in some form never missing from Islamist discourse- Gandhi is subconsciously conceding that Islamic imperialism wont die.
but back to the core issue - is that Gandhi defines what shd be "inessential" for the Hindu - everything else other than the "cow". If only slaughter of the cow by the muslims is "voluntarily" given up-Hindus shd abandon every aspect of their own culture if muslims object.
Gandhi pushes this as concession to Islam by the Hindus, as necessary to bring in communal harmony. The problem here is that Gandhi spins this concession of anything that Muslims object to in exchange for cow-protection as somehow an "equal exchange".
In reality, with the exception of claims of a couple of years of lesser Eid bloodsport on cows at the peak of khilafat agitation, the bloodsport revived very soon and has never scaled down - rather increased as Muslim numbers have rapidly grown on both sides of the border.
But Gandhi's original mischief on concession by Hindu has expanded into ever increasing constraints imposed by the Indian state as well as neighbouring Muslim majority countries on Hindu religious and civil culture or its expression on excuse it will hurt Muslim sentiments.
the very first step in weakening Hindu resistance ag jihad in modern India was thus formulated as early as 1921 by Gandhis' seemingly lofty redefinition of the essential and inessential Hindu: which meant withdrawal of the Hindu frm public presence - taken up by the "Muslim".
there was no instrument to get the Muslim side to cooperate except a Gandhian "appeal" which would however work only on the Hindu once the grassroots had been carefully deprived of its traditional ldrship of ressistance as in UP/Bihar.
we can show that when Gandhi was trying to spin Islam as inherently/de-facto "peaceful", he was already aware of the precise prescriptions of violent jihad for purely religious expansion aims - even if from what he cites as "source", as rather limited and selective.
he gave no hints of his awareness until he was called out on his spin of Islam as non-violent by Muslims, and he did a rather pathetic defence of his spin. But thats another story which may seem now to be uncannily similar to the same pathetic attempts used by spinners today.
