What happens once a person becomes a dhimmi? He always remains a dhimmi.
On Saturday, 4 July, the Jammu & Kashmir government withdrew two books from its school libraries. Personalities and Legends of J&K and Great Personalities of Jammu and Kashmir described terrorists such as Maqbool Bhatt as a ‘martyr’ and portrayed separatist leaders as ‘great personalities.’
These books did not appear from the sky. Personalities and Legends of J&K was written by Hilal Ahmed and Santosh Meena, while Great Personalities of Jammu and Kashmir was written by Dr Sushant Giri. They were published by Oberoi Book Service, Jammu, and Anurag Prakashan, Delhi.
Following the withdrawal, eight officials of the Education Department were suspended. Those suspended included Coordinator Library, Samagra Shiksha, Fazil Imran Saddiqui; Assistant Coordinator Gurjeet Singh; Principal Sanjeev Sharma; Academic Officer Shazia Kouser; and lecturers Imtiyaz Ahmad Mir, Niranjan Sharma, Renu Mengi and Rajmohini. In addition, Sheikh Suheel Ahmad, a contractual Computer Assistant assisting the Coordinator Library in Samagra Shiksha, was terminated with immediate effect.
Books do not find their way into school libraries by accident. Every stage involves a conscious choice. Someone writes the manuscript. Someone edits it. Someone publishes it. Someone approves it. Someone selects it for school libraries. Someone ultimately places it in the hands of children.
Out of the three authors, two were Hindus. Out of the nine officials who faced disciplinary action, five were Hindus.
Were they simply Hindus? I don’t think so. They were Hindus with what I call a dhimmi mentality.
Historically, a dhimmi was a non-Muslim living under an Islamic state who was permitted to practise his religion in return for accepting a subordinate status and paying the jizya. That legal arrangement belongs to history. What interests me here is not the institution itself but the mentality it can produce: intellectual surrender. It is the habit of accommodating an ideology instead of judging it by the same moral standards applied to everything else. It is the willingness to excuse, sanitise or normalise conduct that would be condemned in any other context.
Many will object that no one here paid jizya and that India is a constitutional republic, not an Islamic state. Fair enough. My argument is not that these individuals were dhimmis in the historical or legal sense. My argument is that prolonged life, work or association in an environment where Islamist or separatist narratives enjoy social legitimacy can cultivate the same mentality of accommodation. Over time, people begin accepting what they would once have challenged. What would once have appeared unacceptable gradually comes to seem normal.
If the concept sounds unfamiliar, I would suggest beginning with The Dossier‘s documentary-style explainer on the twenty-two rules governing the life of a dhimmi under an Islamic state, which can be watched here.
I remember my brother once telling me, ‘Dhimmitude corrupts the soul and corrodes the brain.’ The older I grow, the more I think he was right.
The books have been withdrawn. The officials have been suspended. But whether the mindset that made those books possible has also been withdrawn is another question entirely.
Because once a man learns to accommodate an ideology instead of confronting it, he always remains a dhimmi.
