Make Yourself Eligible,
Don’t Make Demands
The Quran reveals the secret of a successful life. And the secret is: Be beneficial to others. In this world, only people or communities who prove to be beneficial to others earn their respect. The world rejects those who are not beneficial to others.
This principle of life is referred to in the following Quranic verse (13:17):
He sends down water from the sky that fills riverbeds to overflowing, each according to its measure. The torrent carries along swelling foam, akin to what rises from smelted ore from which man makes ornaments and tools. God thus depicts truth and falsehood. The scum is cast away, but whatever is of use to man remains behind. God thus speaks in parables.
Using an analogy, this verse expresses an important principle of life. In a flood or when something is subjected to intense heat, useful substances remain, while unwanted substances get separated.
The same holds true in the case of human beings. People and groups gain a position of respect if they prove to be useful. In contrast, those who lose their usefulness are dumped into the dustbin of history and the world moves on.
The whole of human history supports this Quranic declaration. For instance, around the mid-20th century, various European colonial powers were forced to relinquish their control over most of Asia and Africa. But when the former European colonies in Asia and Africa won political freedom, they discovered that they had no one to man their educational institutions. And so, many of these countries invited ‘experts’ from the very same European countries that they had earlier been colonized by. Things went to such an extreme in some cases that political independence soon turned into technical servitude! Today, Western countries control these states by controlling their economies and through their domination in the field of science, in just the same way as they once controlled these states politically.
Like Muslims, Christians, too, are a minority in India. They could have had the some complaints with regard to the majority community as Muslims keep talking about. Yet, Christians do not face the same issues in India as Muslims do.
Why?
Christianity is a missionary religion. It is engaged in missionary work in a very organized way. Many Christians believe that salvation is possible only through Christianity, not through any other religion. They also think it very important to maintain their separate identity. Co-religionists of the Indian Christians from Western countries—Western colonial powers—invaded and conquered India and exploited it for centuries. A Christian colonial power sided with the people who wanted to partition India. The centres of religious loyalty for Indian Christians are located outside India. Christians are sometimes accused by some people of being agents of imperialist powers.
Yet, despite all of this, the Christians’ interests are fully preserved in India. This is because as a community, they benefit others. They are givers, not just takers.
Christians number just a few million in India, around 2 per cent of the country’s population. The country’s Muslim population is much more than theirs. Yet, there is a tremendous difference between the two communities. In this country, Christians have established hospitals, schools and social service centres on a vast scale. A sizeable proportion of government officials and employees have studied in Christian schools. Christian hospitals are considered to be among the best in the country. There are thousands of social service centres run by Christians all across India, helping the sick and the needy. And so on.
On the other hand, Muslims in this country are a community that knows only how to protest and make demands. They have hardly any educational institutions, hospitals and social service centres—certainly far from enough for serving even their own needs, leave alone for serving others.
This situation is completely against the law of nature. In such a situation, the biases or discrimination that Muslims complain about are actually in accordance with divine laws, and not, as they allege, a result of discrimination by perceived oppressors.
God has created this world. In this world, whatever God wants, happens. God has made water to quench thirst. He has made petrol so that people can use it as fuel for vehicles. And so, your success lies in availing of God’s bounties in the appropriate manner—by using water for quenching your thirst, and using petrol for your car, for instance. But, if you behave contrary to this and try to quench your thirst by drinking petrol or try to drive your car on water, you are, needless to say, bound to fail!
God has made this world as a world of competition. Here, everyone enjoys freedom of choice. Everyone is trying to move ahead, through hard work and skill. This principle of competition has been established by God Himself. You simply cannot destroy it. And so, you have just one choice: and that is that in the field of competition, you need to prove your capability and win your place. If you want that the world should stop functioning on the basis of competition, and that, instead, it should start running on the basis of your making demands on others, you are living in a fool’s paradise, because this can never happen. If you want to lead your life by simply protesting and demonstrating against others and demanding things for yourself, you will have to make a different world of your own other than this world of God’s, for this simply cannot happen in this world.
God has made this world a testing-ground. Here, everyone enjoys freedom of action. This is the reason why the world is characterized by constant competition between individuals and communities. This environment of competition can never come to an end. Now, there are two ways of thinking and responding in this regard. One way is by being overwhelmed by the conditions one faces. The other way is by rising above these conditions. Because this world can never be free from unfavourable conditions, people whose thinking is overwhelmed by the unpleasant conditions they face always think in terms of complaints. They have a complaining mentality. Their thinking is reactionary, because they always react—negatively—to unfavourable conditions. Instead of working positively, to help themselves and their communities, they simply engage in completely useless agitations and demonstrations against other people and communities, foolishly imagining that in doing so they are doing great work.
In contrast to this, people who rise above the conditions they are faced with and exercise their minds soon realize that unfavourable conditions and factors that they sometimes face are actually in accordance with the law of nature, rather than as a result of other people’s oppression or discrimination. This realization makes them realistic. They accept reality as it is, and then make realistic plans for their lives. Instead of ranting and raving against others, they try to succeed on the basis of hard work.
The Indian Muslims have become habituated to thinking in terms of ‘discrimination’. That is why they have developed an extremely narrow and confined ghetto mentality. But if, instead, they start thinking in realistic terms, they will experience a profound sense of freedom. No longer, they will realize, would they want to blame others for their woes. While in the first case, they are led to view all roads as blocked, in the latter case they will find vast vistas opening up all around them.
Take, for instance, the case of the Urdu language. Muslims complain that the Urdu language is being discriminated against in India. But if you study the matter deeply, you will realize that the problem of Urdu is actually because of the limitations of this language, rather than as a result of it being discriminated against. In other words, it is an internal, rather than external, problem. The actual problem lies in the fact that the Urdu language has failed to establish its importance in the contemporary world. That is why even the most passionate advocates of Urdu think it necessary to send their own children to English-medium schools!
Before 1959, the Russian language was given hardly any importance in America. But when in that year Russia sent a rocket into space, travelling at the speed of 7000 miles per hour and reaching the moon in a little more than 30 hours, all of a sudden the Russian language acquired great importance in intellectual circles in the West. This rocket signified that Russia had surpassed America in space technology. It led American experts to believe that their knowledge of space technology was incomplete until they had read all the available literature on the subject in Russian. This engendered a sea-change in attitudes towards the Russian language in America. America began to arrange to obtain Russian scientific journals and to translate them into English. All important scientific treatises in Russian were rendered into English.
This sudden importance that the Russian language acquired in America was not a result of any group staging demonstrations or making demands. Rather, it was because the language was able to prove that it was useful and, therefore, deserving of such attention.
The same is true for the Japanese language today. Till the mid-20th century, not many people in the West cared to learn Japanese. But today, scientific treatises written in Japan are quickly translated into Western languages and enjoy great respect and popularity in Western countries. This is because of Japan’s amazing progress in the field of electronics. Western scholars realize that their understanding of electronics will remain far from complete unless they are able to read the latest researches being conducted in this field in Japan. This is one reason why there are so many scholars of the Japanese language in the West today. By proving its importance and usefulness, the Japanese language has won for itself a very respectable position in the West that it did not enjoy before.
The actual problem with Urdu is that the corpus of Urdu writings consists largely of just two genres: one is poetry, and the other is religious sermons, written in a preachy mode. In today’s scientific age, these two genres have lost their importance. There is now no area of research where high-quality books are being written in Urdu, books that people think that if they do not read, they will not be able to get a complete and proper understanding of their subject of interest. In any discipline, be it philosophy, history, sociology or technology or whatever, there are no books in Urdu which are impossible to ignore if one wants to gain such an understanding. In a climate of such utter intellectual poverty, the ‘inheritors’ of Urdu themselves cannot give it adequate importance, leave alone others. And so, to expect others to give it importance is simply wishful thinking.
According to the Quranic verse cited earlier (13:17), the key to a successful life in this world is to be beneficial to others. Here, the giver receives. Here, success comes through proving oneself capable, not through making demands, protesting and stirring up a big hue and cry. This principle, according to which the world functions, has been devised by God, the Creator of the world. People who refuse to accept this God-ordained principle, on the basis of which His world runs, can make an imaginary world of their own if they want to. They need to remember, however, that in this world, success can only be had by abiding by God’s will, not by following their own.
