Article

A Genealogy of Identity:
Reflections on post-1857
Islamic Political Thought
in Colonial India

History and Sociology of South Asia

9(1) 119
2015 Jamia Millia Islamia
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2230807514546737
http://hssa.sagepub.com

Muhammad Ali Nasir1

Abstract
There were various political discourses associated with the Islamic community
in colonial India. These included trends that were later understood under the
rubric of Muslim nationalism and Indian nationalism, along with other critical
stances that cannot be subsumed within either nationalism. This article explores
one such trend: it reads genealogically the trajectories of concepts through
which the problematic of Islamic political identity developed in the context of the
post-1857 experience. In order to understand the way these arguments were
formed the article analyses texts that both reflected on and were a reflection of
socio-political dynamics. It concludes with a note on utilising such a genealogical
approach in the study of trajectories in the development of political thought, and
the possibilities of extending this approach to the sphere of entire cultures.
Keywords
Muslims, identity, culture, nation, genealogy, nationalism, colonial India

Introduction
This article is an attempt to explore a genealogy of identity politics associated
with Muslims in colonial India. Here, the primary concern is not to reveal the
dynamic processes by which people come to identify their interests with their
language or their religion, to build associations to pursue those interests, and to
form bonds strong enough to build or destroy states.2 The aim of the present
1

The Institute of Political Science, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.

Paul Brass, Language, Religion, and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1974), 3.
2

Corresponding author:
Muhammad Ali Nasir, The Institute of Political Science, University of Heidelberg,
Heidelberg, Germany. E-mail: muhammad.alinasir@hotmail.com
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History and Sociology of South Asia 9(1)

article is modest. It tries to identify the discursive spaces within which the
problematic of identity was disclosed, and thus to suggest several axes along
which the debates of political identity can be understood. And, this is done by
reading the divergence and tensions within the discourses of Islamic political
thought in colonial India. That is, to understand the trajectories of concepts by
reading back the way those concepts were incorporated and utilised, and impacted
the socio-political domain.
Further, a genealogical approach works in contrast to attempts that use general
social and historical categories to understand political identity. Instead of using
such categories (for example, culture, nature, politics, etc.) as heuristic tools, the
article attempts to extend the debates in a critical and more reflexive way by
trying to understand the conditions through which certain categories were seen as
obvious, contextualised or countered. This point can be elaborated, for instance,
by reading the concept of culture. The concept of culture not simply opens up an
explanatory field within social scientific literature, but it is also permeated with a
specific understanding of meanings and relations. And, the problem then emerges
of developing a connection between an agent and a cultural given as human
condition is rooted in the non-rational foundations of personality, that provide
the basis for an easy affinity with other people from the same background.3
Consequently, the use of culture can be both normative and descriptive.4 Then,
the very act of narrating the likes of communalism, tribalism, patriarchy and
superstition solicits opprobrium, while the description of liberation movements,
modernisation and resistance solicits approval. Here, a deconstruction of the
concept of culture is not attempted. Instead, what is read are the different ways
in which the concept of culture was interpreted, the way such an interpretation
was meant to impact politics, and how such a usage could be contested among
interlocutors of Islamic political identity.
This entails a certain shift of emphasis. Instead of identifying motives and plans
of the political leaders or what they in fact really [did or] did not want,5 the
3

Francis Robinson, Islam and Muslim Separatism, in Islam and Muslim History in South Asia
(NewDelhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 20405.
4
The question of relating the agents to the cultural domain has sparked lively debates even in the
context of Muslim separatism in India. One such engagement can be traced between Paul Brass, who
construes ethnicity to be pursuit of interest and advantage for members of groups whose culture are
infinitely malleable and manipulable by elites on the one hand (Language, Religion, and Politics in
North India, 205) and Francis Robinson who locates the formation of nation in the givens of human
condition that every man carries with him through life attachments (Islam and Muslim History in
South Asia, 204) on the other. For more on the debate between the instrumentalists and primordialists,
see Paul Brass, lite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South
Asia, in Political Identity in South Asia, ed. David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp (London: Curzon Press,
1979), 3577; Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United
Provinces Muslims, 18601923 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Francis Robinson,
Nation Formation: The Brass Thesis and Muslim Separatism, in Islam and Muslim History in South
Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 15676.
5
Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 57 (emphasis added). I take an issue against such
biographical readings of the politics of colonial India, which are not unpopular, that focus on certain
leading figures, and divorce the context within which they operated.
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Nasir

article analyses the way categories were used to make sense of the socio-political
dynamics and through which the interlocutors entered into arguments. This entails
another shift. That is, the social conditions which caused narratives of political
identity to emerge are not explored.6 Less so is the fascination to study the interplay
of politics and interestshowever, one may conceptualise interests. What is
attempted here is the way discourses appeared meaningful to its participants and,
more importantly, in what sense did they create and engage participants. Then, the
narratives are seen as more than narratives, and instead as fields of meaning.
Since I read political identity within colonial India for Muslims, the domain
charted out is from mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. One important
clarification: the paper does not attempt to read the history of socio-political
developments in colonial India, but tries to understand the way arguments were
formed and framed as certain texts reflected on socio-political dynamics. Given
such a broad field with complex historical dynamics, what follows inevitably
relies on a selection from sources to offer a selective reading.

Toward a Politicisation of Culture: Notes on the

Phenomenon of Islamic Nationalism
One can begin from the year 1857. Whatever the decisive factors were, whatever
its appropriate title may be, the general uprising ending in the year 1857 was
unsuccessful in meeting its marked objectives. Instead of narrating the causes of
the Mughal downfall and the expansion of British power, what is notable here is
a certain problematic for Muslims. This relates to the ontological status of
Hindustan as a territory as it was being restructured into British India.7 Then,
the queries were addressed to the spatio-temporal status of (British) India, that
is, if it was a land of Islam (dar ul Islam) or a land of war (dar ul harb).8 Any
response to this query would have had different implications for the associated
status of Muslims. Through this complex interplay of territory and politics,
existence and meaning, varied debates and responses could be ascertained
during this period from the struggle (jihad) to re-establish dar ul Islam from the
6

See A.R. Desais classic work Social Background of Indian Nationalism (Mumbai: Saurabh Printers,
2010); Hamza Alavi, Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology, in State and Ideology in the Middle
East and Pakistan, ed. Hamza Alavi and Fred Halliday (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988),
64111; Hamza Alavi, The Social Origins of Pakistan and Islamic Ideology, in South Asia in
Transition, ed. Kalim Bahadur (New Delhi: Patriot Publishers, 1986), 95132; and Mubarak Ali,
Tareek aur Siyasat (Lahore: Fiction House, 2012).
7
See Shah Abd-al-Aziz, Fatwa-e-Dar-ul-Harb, in Do Aham Fatway, ed. Abu-Salman
Shahjahanpuri (Karachi: Majlis-Yadgar-e-Sheikh-ul-Islam, 1995), 22. All translations from Urdu in
this essay are mine.
8
According to Imam Abu-Hanifa, a dar ul Islam becomes a dar ul harb when: (a) authority lies with
the non-Muslims; (b) its geographical situation renders difficult the possibility of any aid coming to
the region; (c) both Muslims and dhimmis suffer from the loss of former tranquillity; and (d) the
Muslims are not free to perform their duties and forms of idolatry are openly expressed and legalised.
For Imam Abu-Yusuf and Imam Muhammad, the second clause of the fourth condition suffices to
convert a place into dar ul harb.
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History and Sociology of South Asia 9(1)

mountains of the north-western region to the Bengali lowlands, to the debates

on the possibility and practicability to migrate (hijra) to a dar ul Islam and
refresh the endeavours.
If the weakening of Islamic rule, inroads of the East India Company and slow
dissolution of the practice of basing legal and political decisions in accordance
with Islam (or at least not in explicit violation of it), persuaded Shah Abd al-Aziz
to declare Hindustan a dar ul harb, then how to account for the post-1857 scenario
as the supremacy of Islamic rulers and authority of the law based upon Islam had
visibly disappeared?9 To put it simply: Were Muslims now living in a dar ul harb,
and what should the Muslims then do?10 If British India was not a dar ul harb,
then what specific conditions still permitted one to speak of it as a dar ul Islam?
The fundamental problem here is no longer the enthronement of a deserving head
of government or in ascertaining the conditions of legitimacy of a sovereign.
In fact, the conditions that determine the foundation of sovereignty, including
most importantly the ontological status of the territory, are rather important.
This problem had to be answered while taking into consideration both internal
factors (legitimacy, knowledge tradition, historical continuance) and external
ones (plausibility of solutions, practical limits and constrictions).
Any temptation to bypass the issue as a scholastic hair-splitting would be
misguided. An answer to this question defined the sphere of political activity,
the status of Muslims, their relationship vis--vis the British, mode of ongoing
struggles and conflicts, the desirable future directives, and the political behaviour
associated with it. Whereas a number of ulema continued to view colonial India
as a dar ul harb, there were voices thinking otherwise. In one of the lectures
organised by the Muhammadan Literary Society in 1870, Jonpuri argued that
colonial India was a dar ul Islam, since the colonial state extended sufficient
religious freedom to its Islamic subjects.11 Two decades later, Ahmad Raza Barelvi
reiterated the same opinion.12 These overtures, however, were not enough to ward
off the scepticism of observers who were quick to note the working principles of
9

Shah Abd-al-Aziz, Fatwa-e-Dar-ul-Harb, in Do Aham Fatway, ed. Abu-Salman Shahjahanpuri

(Karachi: Majlis-Yadgar-e-Sheikh-ul-Islam, 1995), 13, 19. A number of leading ulema continued to
view colonial India as a dar ul harb, including Maulana Farangi Mahali, Haji Imdadullah Muhajir
Makki, Maulana Rasheed Ahmed Gangohi, Maulana Muhammad Mian and Maulana Madani. Here, I
will not dwell explicitly on the issue of shariah that was one of the loci for the debates within Muslim
political thought, and the impact of the subtle workings of Anglo-Muhammadan jurisprudence, which
had an effect in charting out a certain confined domain for shariah. For a reading, see Scott Alan
Kugle, Framed, Blamed, and Renamed: The Recasting of Islamic Jurisprudence in Colonial South
Asia, Modern Asian Studies, 35 (2001): 257313.
10
It would be simplistic to understand this debate simply with reference to jihad or hijra, since the latter
options are dependent on the possibility of a successful reconversion of dar ul harb into dar ul Islam, the
level of preparedness, proximity and the willingness to help of a dar ul Islam, the overall circumstances,
and so forth, besides the solely political state of affairs. However, as a land is declared from being dar ul
Islam to dar ul harb, a number of obligations and requirements are either revised or transformed.
11
Karamat Jonpuri, Abstract of the Proceedings of the Muhammadan Literary Society of Calcutta on
23rd Nov. 1870, in Inamul Haq, Nawab Bahadur Abdul-Latif, His Writings and Related Documents
(Dacca: Samudra Prokashani, 1978), 8890.
12
Ahmed Raza Barelvi, Alam al Alam baan Hindustan Dar ul Islam (Lahore: Muktaba e Qadriya,
1977), 213.
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Nasir

either necessity (darura) or expediency (hikmah) in those rulingsand thus an

excuse to find a room for recuperation.13
Instead of taking up these extremes, a number of scholars posited graded
levels in between so that colonial India could neither be a dar ul Islam nor a dar
ul harb, but something of both. In Syed Ahmed Khans opinion, a reworking
within a neutral understanding of the territory had a pragmatic worth. For Khan,
this became necessary when one acknowledged the comparable disadvantage of
Muslims. Thus, giving such a neutral status to British India will bar the possibility
of any jihad being directed against the colonial power to channelize the energies
towards revival and mutual coexistencealthough, of course, in an extended
state of submission.14 Such a neutral pointlater categorised by Karamat Ali
and Ashraf Ali Thanvi as a land of agreement (dar ul aman/dar ul ahd) for
peaceful coexistence15could have provided an ample space for socio-political
regeneration of Muslims within the status quo, while simultaneously preserving
the classical formulations of their legal codes (fiqh). The answer, perhaps, was not
so straightforward. For contemporaries, this socio-politicalhence religious
crisis was comparable in its acuteness to the previous Mongol onslaught. Perhaps
the crisis had a different dimension: the colonising powers had uprooted local
praxis, instituted a violent and powerful process of institutionalisation, wrought
normalisation experiments and introduced radical discursive practices among
various other practices.
However, for modernisers, any successful reform within the Islamic community
would have had to address three concerns. First, one had to acknowledge the uneven
power asymmetry between Muslims and the ruling colonial elite. However, this
acknowledgment should foster institutional ties and ideological bridges. Second,
in order to propose a viable remedy for socioeconomic development through
which behaviour, strategies and tactics were to be re-formed, drastic measures
had to address the causes of backwardness. And, third, one needed to overhaul
from within the decay of Muslims which now had a large number of ignorant
scholars, irreligious divines and prostituting gentlemen.16
At such a time of uncertainty, the question to reconstitute the political stance
and rediscover political identity was taken up by journalists, poets, literati,
historians and politicians. Largely through such a motivation, Khan accessed the
public through the print media, Mohsin-ul-Mulk and Waqar-ul-Mulk introduced
themselves as public intellectuals, Shibli Nomani and Ameer Ali reworked the
13

William Hunter, The Indian Musulmans (Calcutta: Comrade Publishers, 1945), 11637. See the
article in the Calcutta-based newspaper The Englishman (27 September 1870) written under the
pseudonym A Wahabee.
14
Syed Ahmed Khan, Risala-e-Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind, in Altaf Hussain Hali, Hayat e Javed
(Delhi: Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu, 1939), 18.
15
Chiragh Ali, Proposed Political, Legal and Social Refoms in Ottoman Empire and Other States
(Bombay: Education Societys Press, Byculla, 1883), 25. Ashraf Ali Thanavi, Tahdeer al-Ikhwan an
Ar-rabu-fil-Hindustan (Thanabavan: Orient Press, n.d.), 9. In another fatwa, Maulana Thanvi
categorised the colonial India as dar ul harb, but where jihad was not obligatory.
16
Abu-Salman Shahjahanpuri, Dibaacha, in Sir Syed ki Kahani un ki Zubani, ed. Ziauddin Lahori
(Karachi: Idara-e-Tasneef-o-Tahqeeq Pakistan, 1982), 14, 18.
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History and Sociology of South Asia 9(1)

traditional historiography, and Altaf Hussain Hali and Deputy Nazir started
making their mark in Urdu literature. Even learned societies, professional bodies,
journals and magazines played an important part in the process. Of course, one
should keep in mind that these varied figures had complex stances, and there
were important differences among them concerning questions of future and ideas
of the past.
What emerges as interesting is a certain shift away from the discourse of
Muslims as umma to that of nation, orat any ratethe efforts to relate the two
notions. And, thus, how a certain conceptual tool may be a substitute for another.
For instance, for Khan, Muslims were a nation in the same sense as the English
had been, and the words nation and qaum were used interchangeably.17
However, the concept of an English nation could have boasted of a particular land
and culture, a shared political memory, and a (hypothetical) common ancestry,
while Muslims-as-a-nation almost had none of these attributes. Conceptually
speaking, how were Muslims as a nation comparable to the English? In addition,
if Muslims can be seen as a nation, how could they be related to other local
communities in India?
With the collapse of the former system, the specific manifestations of a
Muslim past were being associated with practices of a Muslim community
from architecture to poetry, dress code to educational forms. This had another
impact. For instance, when in 1867 some Hindus started advocating the use of
Hindi in place of Urdu as the court language in the north-western region, the
status of Urdu assumed importance. From being a vehicle of inter-communal
communication, Urdu was now viewed as vehicle of a particular communal
identity. For Khan, the rejection of a linguistic bridge connecting different
communities entailed the rejection of any bridge.18 Here, language assumes
extra-linguistic functions: first, as it participates in identity definition; second, as
linguistic compatibility is made to stand for coexistence and harmony, and vice
versa. In a whole stream of literature, consequently, Muslimness did not only
imply a specific religion, but was extended and contracted in complex ways as
it stood for all the other cultural accoutrements (for example, language, dress,
architecture) associated with such an identity.
The etymology of the word culture in Urdu is an edifying case in point.
Before the twentieth century, we have words standing for common practices or
usual conventions (urf, adab). If these were crystallised into collective habits or if
they became authoritative for society as a whole, it was ada or rivayat respectively.
Using such words as conceptual tools, one could study collective entities (umran,
tahzeeb) or civic life (tamaddun). Culture, as an umbrella term, signifying both
17

The thought of these thinkers has been subjected to various interpretations based on their own
conflicting statements. For such an analysis of Syed Ahmed Khans thought, see, for instance,
Hussain Madani where he is able to interpret his thought in line with what later emerged as Indian
nationalism, Mutahidda Qaumiyat aur Islam (Lahore: Maktaba-e-Mahmudia, 1975), 8889. My
reading focuses on Khans role in the formation of separatism, whose precursor Muslim nationalists
believe him to be.
18
Ibid., Vol. II, 140.
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Nasir

material and spiritual traditions, acquired by man as a member of society,19

was clearly not in use. Even its standard equivalent thaqafat, being overlaid with
tangible aspects of a culture, remains ineffective. The loanword is utilised unaltered
as kulchur in current Urdu usage. Hence, a leading contemporary poet, Anwer
Masood, might complain of ongoing archaeological excavation in Harappa:
ujra sa woh nagar kay Harappa hai jis ka naam
us quriya-e-shikasta o shehar-e-kharab sai
cibrat ki aik chatank mayyasar na ho saki
kulchur nikal pada hai manno kay hisab sai.
[That desolate place whose name is Harappa
From that wasteland and ruined town
An iota of lesson was not to be had,
But culture has erupted in tons.]

By beginning of twentieth century, the word culture was frequently invoked to

make sense of things, and the demarcation of whose broad contours became a source
of heated debates for political discourses.20 Therefore, when it was argued that
Muslims were a nation in the modern sense, one was relying on what might be termed
as a cultural argument. Unlike the geographically determined, ethnocentric notion
of a nation, the hallmark of an Islamic nation was its theocentrism: its socio-historic
experience was located in and determined by its relationship to divine knowledge
and its manifestations. And if this was reason enough for demarcating a nation, then
Muslims were clearly a separate nation from the other local communities in India
with whom they would neither inter-marry nor inter-dine21 even after centuries of
cohabitation. In this sense, such neonomers standing as Muslim Interest, Muslim
Welfare and Muslim Progress were perfectly comprehensible, being logical
accompaniments of nationalities constructed by the philosophical discourse
of modernity. However, there exists not simply a borrowing here. Rather, for
Islamic nationalists, the use of such intellectual tools from the colonisers arsenal
stood not simply for passive surrender, but an active and accommodative critical
engagement. It is here that we have a difference. The discourse on colonialism
affords too much importance to colonisation, while ignoring not only the ways
19

Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture: Research into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy,
Religion, Art and Custom (Gloucester: Smith, 1958), 1.
20
Abul-Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006), 21415. Muhammad
Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 1989),
99115. Muhammad Iqbal, Sir Muhammad Iqbals 1930 Presidential Address, Columbia University
Archives (29 December 1930), 1f, 2de, 3b, 3d, 4b, 9a, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/
pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_iqbal_1930.html (accessed 16 February 2011). Choudhary Rahmat Ali,
Now or Never: Are We to Live or Perish Forever?, Columbia University Archives (28 January 1933),
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_rahmatali_1933.html (accessed 16
February 2011). Hussain Ahmed Madani, Mutahidda Qaumiyat aur Islam (Lahore: Maktaba-eMahmudia, 1975), 70, 7374, 81.
21
Choudhary Rahmat Ali, Now or Never: Are we to live or perish for ever?, Columbia University
Archives, 7 (28 January 1933), http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_
rahmatali_1933.html (accessed 16 February 2011).
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History and Sociology of South Asia 9(1)

in which historical continuities existed resiliently or in ways through which anticolonial struggles could be waged through local resources, but also the modes
through which colonial practices remained incomplete/indeterminate precisely
because such resilience could act as a counter-pressure.
In contrast to Gellners observation that modern education strengthens
nationalist sentiment, Allahabadi, Nomani and even Khan predictedand
rightly to a greater extentthat modern education would increase fissures
within the kaleidoscopic Indian community as indigenous Orientalism would
read Orientalism backwards into the mouth of the Orient.22 Like Gellner,
however, individuals associated with Aligarh movements were convinced that
the exigencies of modernising societies require a standardised, homogenous and
westernised education for ever-vaster segments of the community. To keep apace
socioeconomic progress meant producing a Islamic elite, holding the Quran, in
one hand, and Science, in the other.23
However, politics is not enough, and nor is a reinterpretation of politics
sufficient. The metaphysical coherence demanded that the changing notions of
identity, political participation and societal reorganisation be linked to a revised
and reinterpreted theological structure. The disjuncture between the word and work
of God was also conceptualised which was vastly different in motivation from
the previous overlap of deen and duniya. Thus, although there was a difference
between the work and word of God, it was believed that there nevertheless had to be
a one-to-one correspondence between the two.24 Metaphysics was tied to reasonin-form-of-physics, and physics vindicated metaphysics.25 On the other hand, one
can discern an increasing awareness to take the Orientalist literature seriously,
its form of presentation and its critiques. For Khan, this entailed not only a
reworking of the way knowledge is to be imparted through education, but also
to reinterpret the existing forms of theological knowledge of Muslims that in
its present, unrevised form would give way to Western ways of knowledge.26
Later, in a specifically Kantian manner, Iqbal would trace the epistemological
convergence of pure thought and sense experience in the genuinely scientific
spirit of the Quran. Perhaps, both the object of the knowledge and the theoretical
framework required to access knowledge needed a reconstruction.27 The
political comport of such nuanced stance started making it marks even in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century, providing substance to the debates on
political representation of Muslims.
22

Altaf Hussain Hali, Hayat e Javed (Kanpur: Nami Press, 1901), Vol. I, 140. Cf. Ernest Gellner,
Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Backwell, 1983), 5557.
23
Abu-Salman Shahjahanpuri, Dibaacha, in Sir Syed ki Kahani un ki Zubani, ed. Ziauddin Lahori
(Karachi: Idara-e-Tasneef-o-Tahqeeq Pakistan, 1982), 24.
24
Syed Ahmed Khan, Al-Khutbat al-Ahmediya (Lahore: Muslim Printing Press, n.d.), 4, 144, 153, 406.
25
Ibid., 46. Syed Ahmed Khan, Tafseer ul Quran (Lahore: Majlis e Taraqqi e Adab, n.d.), Vol. 1,
19, 30, 49, 119, Vol. III, 29, 38. Syed Ahmed Khan, Aakhri Mazameen (Karachi: Idara e Tasneef o
Tahqeeq, n.d.), 29.
26
Altaf Hussain Hali, Hayat e Javed (Kanpur: Nami Press, 1901), Vol. I, 225.
27
Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Iqbal Academy
Pakistan, 1989).
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If Muslims as a minority in India had a distinct cultural identity then how

should one protect it within the framework of majoritarian politics?28 Was it
possible to maintain the collective will and conscience without securing the
institutional background presupposed by modern nationalism? Within the highly
complex politics of India, the Islamic autonomist movements were not only
functional in few decades but also demanded collective autonomy for collective
self-determination. For these movements, it was only through a free space of
ones own that distinct cultural growth of Muslims became possible. A centralised
India was a colonial creation that had been, in reality, a subcontinent of distinct
nationalities, a patchwork of many nations.29 Muslims were by then also viewed
as a political entity, in addition to cultural one. Logically, if nation meant a
community of sentiment which would adequately manifest itself in a state of
its own,30 then Muslims had already become a nation. Only a centralised state,
therefore, within India or without it, could have provided an outlet for genuine
self-expression of a peculiar Islamic Weltanschauung.31
Further, given the then unpalatable circumstances, it was fast becoming difficult
for Muslims to preserve their culture, let alone develop it.32 How should one aim
at higher things of life or national progress, when provision of the necessities was
becoming more of a problem?33 Being an overall manifestation of abstract Islamic
principles, the growth and development of Muslim culture remained impossible
without a free Muslim state or states.34 Additionally, within such free space, it

28

I will not focus here on the decisive contribution of the Deoband movement per se for two reasons.
First, because the political stance of the movement was closely associated with the Jamiat Ulema e
Hind, a platform in which Maulana Hussain Ahmed had a decisive voice. Second, because the history
of the movement is itself complex as it aligned itself with different political trajectories. My interest
here is in the notions of political identity to which political actors referred, reinterpreted, contested
with and strategised. For interesting works dealing with the Deoband movement, see Zia ul-Hasan
Faruqi, The Deoband School and the Demand for Pakistan (London: Asia Publishing House, 1963),
Peter Hardy, The Muslims of British India (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, India Pvt.
Limited, 2004), Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Ulema in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
29
Choudhary Rahmat Ali, Now or Never: Are We to Live or Perish Forever?, Columbia University
Archives, 6 (28 January 1933), http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_
rahmatali_1933.html (accessed 16 February 2011). Muhammad Iqbal, Sir Muhammad Iqbals 1930
Presidential Address, Columbia University Archives (29 December 1930), 9a, http://www.columbia.
edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_iqbal_1930.html (accessed 16 February 2011).
30
Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London and New York: Routledge, 1948),
176.
31
Muhammad Iqbal, Sir Muhammad Iqbals 1930 Presidential Address, Columbia University
Archives (29 December 1930), 3b, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_
iqbal_1930.html (accessed 16 February 2011).
32
Muhammad Iqbal, Iqbals Address Delivered at the Annual Session of All India Muslim League 21st
March 1932, in Speeches and Statements of Iqbal, ed. Abdul-Rahman Tariq (Lahore: Sh. Ghulam Ali,
1973), 41.
33
Muhammad Iqbal, Iqbal to Jinnah: Two Letters, 1937, Columbia University Archives (28 May 1937),
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_iqbal_tojinnah_1937.html (accessed 13
August 2011).
34
Ibid.
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History and Sociology of South Asia 9(1)

would become possible to overhaul the present spirit of Muslim culture and to
emancipate it from the medieval fancies of theologians and legists.35
Thus, for Iqbal, a concurrence between general will and divine will could
only be maintained through such a centralised and autonomous state of political
affairs.36 For how could general will ever be brought in line with the dictates of
divine will, if the believers in the divine are not in majority? An autonomous
Islamic national state based on this ideological nationalism37 would reflect the
essential rational foundations of [spiritual] principles.38 Further, this would
ensure that a political room exists through which the forces of nature could be
controlled in the nobler interests of a free upward movement of spiritual life.39
If Muslims as such were a separate political entity, why should one not be
concerned with the overall Muslim ummah? It can be argued that since Muslim
Nationalism40 was primarily addressed to the then colonial authorities,41 the cause
of an overall unified Islamic state was not an immediate agenda. However, the
conceptualisation in the Islamic nationalist discourse in colonial India operated
differently. That is, if Islam is to be neither Nationalism nor Imperialism but
a League of Nations,42 then does not this union of nations already presuppose
a particular concept of nationalities? To say that an Islamic League of Nations
would rely on Islam aloneboth for its concept of league and nationswould
be circular. If this argument is to be endorsed, then what makes these nations a
nation is in some sense prior to what makes these nations a part of the Islamic
union: the Nation is prior to the League. In this specific sense, to champion the
cause of Indian Muslims appears theoretically unsound, since their Indianness
in a constitutive sense is prior to their Muslimness.43 On this logic, therefore,
35

Muhammad Iqbal, Iqbals Address Delivered at the Annual Session of All India Muslim League 21st
March 1932, in Speeches and Statements of Iqbal, ed. Abdul-Rahman Tariq (Lahore: Sh. Ghulam Ali,
1973), 47. Cf. Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Iqbal
Academy Pakistan, 1989), 124.
36
One may justly imply from this Lockean assertion that the divine will does not will a specific
political order, and the general will can be seen as articulating the divine will in specific contexts.
37
Iqbals political poems, especially Taraana-e-Milli and Watniyat, are very important in this regard. See,
Muhammad Iqbal, Kuliyaat-e-Iqbal (Karachi: Al-Muslim Publishers, 1994), 13233. Cf. Muhammad
Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 1989), 112.
38
Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pak,
1989), 10.
39
Ibid., 21.
40
The label Muslim nationalist is problematic, since there exists an immense diversity within the
political category itself. Nonetheless, two variables may be considered to be generally held in common
that permit such delineation: the view that Muslims were a separate cultural and political entity, and
the need for a separate Muslim state.
41
Muhammad Iqbal, Iqbals Address Delivered at the Annual Session of All India Muslim League 21st
March 1932, in Speeches and Statements of Iqbal, ed. Abdul-Rahman Tariq (Lahore: Sh. Ghulam Ali,
1973), 41.
42
Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Iqbal Academy
Pakistan, 1989), 126.
43
Priority does not necessarily entail superiority. In the present context, the concept is utilised to bring
out the fact that if national identity constitutively exists, then that identity may also be used to create
bridges with other groups partaking in that identity.
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would not it be possible for Indian Muslims to live peaceably with other Indian
communities, while sustaining and extending their Muslimness, in a free space
provided by the public order? This friction was capitalised by critics.

Towards a Composite Interpretation: A Rejoinder

As culture was being interpreted and politics was being brought more in line
with cultural interpretations, more composite interpretations wrestled for
political allegiance. The point of argument was role of cultural praxis,
constitution of nation and the strategies and behaviours to be set out by such an
analysis. Being critical towards the separatist ideal and its interpretation of
identity, number of questions were raised: If culture is acquired historically,
then does the demand for a separate state have any historical precedent in
Islamic history? Was this idea founded on misconceived notions of Islamic
historiography, intellectual tradition, meaning continuation and political
identity? Or, as Azad had it, was it simply a Islamic counterpart of Zionism,
prompted by a sense of fear and an attitude of defeatism?44 Would not an Islamic
sphere of its own ossify the communal divisions?
What we have here is a different take. The idea is that Islam does not reject
ones specific ethnic identity outright. Within the world, one is always born into
a specific cultural memory, language and history,45 and one inherits contextual
meanings from ones immediate environment, which creates different layers within
a single identity. Although the socio-religious identity of Muslims in India stemmed
from Islam, they remained Indians politically, since these were complementary
identities.46 To explain this viewpoint via Ibn-Khaldun: the delicate balance
among local identities creates a solidarity (asabiya) that acts as the prime factor
in any groups rise or decline on a world-historical stage; the legislator (share)
bridles solidarity through the law (shar) and directs it, as far as possible, towards
true ends.47 This supra-solidarity created by religious tradition (asabiya kubra)
complements local solidarities instead of uprooting them. It was this argument
that ones ethnic identity does not negate ones religious affiliation, which Madani
utilised when he debated Iqbal on the desirability of nationalism of a Islamic sort.
To believe that an extended cultural interpretation based on geographical
variables, in which one identifies oneself with the specific communities in India,
would contravene in any way the trans-geographical spirit of Islam seemed
misguided from such an angle. The dominant form of solidarity mode in the
contemporary world, that is, nationalism, would create perfect synchronisation
among various identity levels. Thus, Indian Muslims would be in a better
44

Abul-Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006), 150.
See early Iqbals seminal poem Taraana-e-Hindi. In this regard, Iqbals thought straddles different
viewpoints, and can also be associated with Indian nationalism.
46
Hussain Ahmed Madani, Mutahidda Qaumiyat aur Islam (Lahore: Maktaba-e-Mahmudia, 1975),
78, 80, 82. Abul-Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006), 150.
47
Abd al Rahman Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah (Urdu), Raghib Rahmani (tr.) (Karachi: Nafees
Academy, 2001), Vol. I, 24446, 24950, 27778.
45

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History and Sociology of South Asia 9(1)

position within a united India to develop cordial relations with other Muslim
nations,48 and, through such a unity, be an important part of a strong and powerful
state. Basing his line of reasoning in classical Islamic sources, Madani argued
that the word nation (qaum) was used in the Quran for a collectivity of both
Muslims and non-Muslims.49 Therefore, national unity should precede the cause
of national independence.50 Evidently, the existence of sub-communities within
India was undeniable, but so was the existence of further sub-communities within
these apparently monolithic sub-communities.51 Should the process of separatism
continue ad infinitum? Azad even went to the extent of justifying the invitation
to compatriot non-Muslims to address the Muslims from a pulpit (minbar) in a
mosque, and thus vindicating his invitation to Swami Shradhanand and Gandhi to
address Muslims from the Jame Masjid Delhi during the Khilafat movement.52
The simple historical fact that Muslims had coexisted with other local Indian
communities for centuries made the autonomist demands groundless to them.
The then seething communal bitterness which was, as per Gandhis statement,
coeval with British advent wouldaccording to Azads optimismdisappear
when India assumes the responsibility of her own destiny.53 Had not Muslims
and Hindus worked in unison for genuine causes historically, especially in 1857
and in the Khilafat movement?
Naturally, the concept of nation for such a composite cultural interpretation
that later stood for the cause of composite Indian nationalismwas derived
from ones land (watn). It was land that transmitted a feeling of belongingness,
spatiotemporal continuity, community and coexistence.54 This also spelt out a
broad cultural parity between different communities in India in which religion
was only a component, albeit an important one.55 Azad was concerned by the
fact that the growth of Islamic separatist ideal was a kind of reaction, an appeal
whose lure swept away such a large section because of the attitude of certain
communal extremists among the Hindus.56 This was because the quiescent
Muslims were believed to be used by the colonisers as a pawn in order to hold
onto their power.57 If nationalism there should be, then it must be the nationalism
48

Cf. Syed Sulaiman Nadwi, Madina Bijnor (13 April 1938).

Hussain Ahmed Madani, Mutahidda Qaumiyat aur Islam (Lahore: Maktaba-e-Mahmudia, 1975),
3149. The stance of Maulana Madani is complex, and his viewpoint evades any strict categorisation.
50
Abul-Kalam Azad, Khutba-e-Sadaarat-e-Indian National Congress, December 1923, in Khutbat-eAzad, ed. Malik Ram (New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 2006), 205.
51
Ibid., 208.
52
For the landmark fatwa, see Abul-Kalam Azad, Jame-al-Shawahid (Lahore: Abul-Kalam Academy,
1960).
53
Abul-Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006), 152.
54
Hussain Ahmed Madani, Mutahidda Qaumiyat aur Islam (Lahore: Maktaba-e-Mahmudia, 1975), 4,
76.
55
Abul-Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006), 21415. Abul-Kalam
Azad, Khutba e Sadaarat e Indian National Congress, March 1940, in Khutbat-e-Azad, ed. Malik
Ram (New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 2006), 297300.
56
Abul-Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006), 151.
57
Hussain Ahmed Madani, Mutahidda Qaumiyat aur Islam (Lahore: Maktaba-e-Mahmudia,
1975), 9, 11.
49

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of the contemporary sort with whose strength one could rebuild oneself: What
appears panacea to the Europeans [i.e. Nationalism] is shown to the Indians,
and...Muslims, as a deadly poison.58
To create the other through religion, distance oneself from him, and then
to solidify the distance, went against the essential spirit of any missionary
religion.59 Others are to be brought closer, not distanced.60 However, the strategy
to separate oneself permanently from the other based on identity was one of
disassociation rather than incorporation. What should one do about it, when the
other too consequently labels the labeller as the other? The separatist tendency
would not only inhibit the expansion of the message of Islam, but would also
enclose Muslims within their four walls.61
Working through the interplay of culture and nation, there is also a strand of
a certain concept of autonomy running here. We may analyse the dynamics of
freedom through two different questions: From whom is freedom desired? For
what is freedom being sought? A yearning to rid themselves of the colonising
power was a general rallying point for all communities. It was only with freedom
for what that differences started to emerge. What the post-British-India might be
was until then not a major concern. In one of his observations, Madani, however,
likened the post-Independence India to a decentralised, Ottomanised, federal state,
wherein a space would be extended for cultural and social growth62 to all the subgroups (or perhaps millet). By prioritising no culture whatsoever, everyone could
live or extend ones specific culture within ones private sphere of existence.63
Thus, to construe Muslims as a mathematical minority, and then be apprehensive
about democratic modes of governance, was immature: the comparative religious
uniformity, social cohesion and sizable population of Indian Muslims made them
a substantive force.64
However, there are also certain overlaps between the aforementioned cultural
interpretations, and between nationalisms founded on these understandings,
and these overlaps make these categories fluid. This is because both these
understandings were fused with understandings of social and political organisation,
truth extraction, observatory analytics, which were being introduced in colonial
India through colonisation/modernisation. For the interpreters, this was possible
58

Ibid., 87.
Hussain Ahmed Madani, Maktubat-e-Sheikh-ul-Islam (Deoband: Maktaba-e-Dinia, n.d.), 146.
60
Arguing on similar lines, Maududi would fault both Indian and Muslim nationalisms with the same
set of contradictions. Abu-al-Alaa Maududi, Islami Riyasat, ed. Khursheed Ahmed (Lahore: Islamic
Publications, 2008), 267.
61
Hussain Ahmed Madani quoted in Fareed ul-Wahidi, Sheikh ul Islam Maulana Hussain Ahmed
Madani (New Delhi: Qaumi Kitab Ghar, 1992), 467, 471.
62
Hussain Ahmed Madani, Mutahidda Qaumiyat aur Islam (Lahore: Maktaba-e-Mahmudia, 1975),
6974. Abul-Kalam Azad, Khutba-e-Sadaarat-e-Congress, March 1940, in Khutbat-e-Azad, ed.
Malik Ram (New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 2006), 28890.
63
See Madanis presidential address to the Annual Session of Jamiat Ulama e Hind, April 1951 in
Hussain Madani, Khutbat-e-Sadarat (Gujranwala: Idara-e-Nashr-o-Ishaat-Madarsa-Nasrat-ulUloom, 1990), 42526.
64
Ibid., 29294.
59

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History and Sociology of South Asia 9(1)

because there were foundational similarities between these two horizons65 that
permitted a neat repossession to strengthen ones own framework, yet disallowed
a complete submersion of one into another. Reinforcing the presuppositions, the
problem to be dealt with was the extent to which specific variables existed in a
distorted form in the West, and to overcome that distortion. In this regard, Madani
questioned the very cause of an Islamic state: why seek a separate Islamic state
when it had to be constitutional, democratic and secular?66 Would not a united
India with the same checks and constitutional safeguards do?
How did a loaded historical baggage make itself susceptible to change?
Would not that imply that a richly documented past, such as Muslims, provided
difficulty in interpretation by opening itself to different but apparently legitimate
interpretations? Further, granted that historically Muslims lived with other
communities, how should one address the issue of recent but bloody communal
riots then?

A World beyond Nationalisms

Instead of answering these questions, one can rather approach the conditions
under which such notions became possible and functional. We can shift to poetical
works here because of their role in providing political slogans, and the strategic
use that that political discourse made of subjects articulations from political
statements, personal affiliations to poetical works. Here, we can take Akbar
Allahabadi. In his social poetry, he criticises the attempts at reform of Islamic
political thought since relying on alien modes of understanding such attempts
had a deformative effect. This happened because fundamental and explicit
dissimilarities existed between the historical tradition of Islam and collective
experience of the Occident, and each one had a different organisation of its
worldview,67 metaphysics,68 form of organisational structures,69 standards of
understanding and analyses,70 and so on. Therefore, the efforts to fuse the
incompatible systems ignored the violence inherent in the historical process that
made such experiments possible, and the drastic institutional reorganisation that
65

Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Iqbal Academy
Pakistan, 1989), 6, 89, 11, 101, 125. Muhammad Iqbal, Iqbal to Jinnah: Two Letters, 1937, Columbia
University Archives (28 May 1937), http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_
iqbal_tojinnah_1937.html (accessed 13 August 2011). Hussain Ahmed Madani, Mutahidda Qaumiyat
aur Islam (Lahore: Maktaba-e-Mahmudia, 1975), 75.
66
Hussain Ahmed Madani, Pakistan Kia Hai (Delhi: Al Jamiat Book Depot, n.d.). See, Jinnahs
statement as to the future state of Pakistan in Dawn (7 October 1945).
67
Akbars later poetry is devoted to social critique, in which this topic is analysed from different
dimensions. To quote a couplet, amongst many, critiquing this viewpoint: Mazhab kabhi science ko
sajda na kare ga/ Insaan udhain bhi tu khuda ho nahi saktay [Religion can never bow to Science/ Even
if they begin to fly, men can never be God].
68
Tu dil main tu aata hai, samajh main nahi aata/ bus jaan gaya main teri pehchan yehi hai. [You
enter hearts, not comprehension/ Now I know what You are].
69
Mashriqi tu sar-e-dushman ko kuchal daitay hain/ maghribi us ki tabiyat ko badal daitay hain
[Easterners annihilate enemies/ Westerners only transform their nature].
70
Masjidain chhod kay ja baithay maikhanon main/ wah kia josh e taraqqi hai musalmanoon main [Have
abandoned mosques for public houses/ How wonderful the spirit of progress among the Muslims is].
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sustained the contemporary order. The disjointed understanding was a product of

disjointed subjectivities straddling a contradictory world of meaningfulness and
meaninglessness. For Iqbal:
danish e haazir hijab e akbar ast
but parast o but faroosh o but garast.71
[Contemporary knowledge is the greatest veil
It is idol-worshipping, idol-trading, and idol-carving]

What therefore constitutes historical tradition, and within the Islamic context
how to legitimise the flow of history? While reviewing history, Ibn-Khaldun
confronted these questions and argued that the parameter to gauge history must
not come from within the history, since then it would be no parameter at all. If
such a tool does appear from within history, then it would be unable to assign
any value to the cumulative historical process since it would itself be subject to
the contingency of historical process. The standard to gauge history must come
from outside it, and for Ibn-Khaldun such a tool in the Islamic tradition was the
meta-historical sources of Quran and Traditions of Prophet (Sunnah).72 Only
those events that fulfil the criterion of such a meta-historical standard could have
amounted to the Islamic tradition, regardless of whether the historical actors
were ancestrally Muslims or not.73 Thus, Maududi74 critiques the use of culture
as an intellectual tool as this-worldly. This is because the concept of culture
signifies every practice of a collectivity, and in trying to account for everything,
accounts for nothing. Problematising the use of such phrases as Islamic/Muslim
culture, he notes:
When they are asked any question regarding Islamic culture75 they promptly pinpoint
the Taj Mahal of Agra as its quintessential embodiment. On the contrary, it has nothing
71

The poetry of the later Iqbal consistently favours an interpretation in line with such a view, and is
markedly different from his earlier poetic and prosaic thought.
72
Abd-al-Rahman Ibn-Khaldun, Muqaddimah (Urdu), Raghib Rahmani (tr.) (Karachi: Nafees Academy,
2001), Vol. I, 117, 203, Vol. II, 266300. See, Abdul-Wahab Suri, The Possibility of Meta-History,
Market Forces: Journal of Social and Management Thought, Vol. II, no. 4 (January 2007): 4560.
73
Abu-al-Alaa Maududi, Islami Riyasat, ed. Khursheed Ahmed (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 2008),
27073.
74
Another interesting line of thought would be the position of Maududi as a maverick within the
Muslim thought, who was not a trained alim but an influential commentator on the debates of
Islamic knowledge. In this sense, at least before the creation of Pakistan, it will be a fruitful line of
research to inquire if and why Maududi was not brought into the fold of the (as Zaman asserts)
custodians of change.
75
Maududi uses civic-lifeworld (tamaddun), civilisation (tahzeeb) and culture indiscriminately; I have
tried to use the accurate term wherever it appears in line with his contextual argument. For some
influential definitions of culture, see Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture: Research into the
Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art and Custom (Gloucester, MA: Smith, [1871]
1958), 1. Roland Burrage Dixon, The Building of Cultures (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1928),
3. T.S. Eliot, Notes Towards a Definition of Culture (New York: Harcourt, 1948). Raymond Firth,
Elements of Social Organisation (London: Watts, 1951). Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of
Cultures (London: Hutchinson, 1975), 5. Bronislaw Malinowski, A Scientific Theory of Culture and
Other Essays (New York: Routledge, [1944] 2002), 36.
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History and Sociology of South Asia 9(1)

to do with the Islamic tahzeeb [civilisation], where there is simply no room for a dead
body occupying permanently a large space of ground, and a government frittering away
its enormous financial and labour resources on such futilities.76

And, in nationalisms, the identity which culture creates is based not only
on overall inclusions but also exclusions. This makes the other stand as an alter
ego. And, these exclusionspolitical or metaphysicalhave no place in a
politics espoused by Islam since, for Maududi, the other was a transitory phase,
viewed not in his essentialness. And, it is because of such a rigid separation
between self and the other in the nationalists pronunciations that the problems
of mutual coexistence, communal toleration or communal justice could be
taken up seriously. On a political level, this means that Muslims are now to be
conceived as minorities, and it is the politics of a minority that would be aimed
at. But, what is wrong with such a politics? For Maududi, two things. First, that
politics would become a politics of numbers where qualitative notions become
unimportant, and it will be the number of Muslims that is given the importance,
which it previously did not have. Hence, Maududis ridicule of politics addressing
ancestral Muslims.77 This meant that to limit a universal message to the
message-bearers was to limit the message itself. Second, that politics becomes
a politics of interests where for the interests of Muslims even explicit historical
norms espoused by Muslims can perhaps be forsaken. Even the phrase national
interest cloaked in an Islamic garb appeared to him contradictory: either it was
a cold, calculating interest of Realpolitik or it was a principled stance of Islamic
Law (shariah). To imply from this that one could in politics for the cause of
people of God ally [oneself with] the devil himself78 would have evoked a
condescending sympathy from Maududi, if not open ridicule. The cumulative
effect is ironical: the politics that is recommended by nationalists is parasitic upon
the historical traditions of Muslims. And, as such, politics becomes contradictory:
while seeing Muslims as a minority in India, the politics aimed at attempts to
give them equal status as citizens in a nation-state, and by implication to produce
a twofold identity: a peculiar identity as Muslims, and a universal identity as an
equal citizen of a nation-state in a world of equal nation-states.
Consequently, the very idea of a revised identity in line with nationalism was
absolutely novel. The acceptance of nation as both an ethnicity and political
identity, of nationalism as a strategy, and the question to expend it properly was
flawed.79 Instead of altering the conditions of colonialism and modernity (or as
76
Abu-al-Alaa Maududi, Islami Riyasat, ed. Khursheed Ahmed (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 2008),
272.
77
Abu-al-Alaa Maududi, Islami Riyasat, ed. Khursheed Ahmed (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 2008),
261. For an almost similar viewpoint, see Madanis, Khutbat-e-Sadaarat-Saharanpur, Jamiat
Conference May 1945 (Delhi: Jamiat Book Depot, n.d.).
78
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Some Recent Speeches and Writings of Mr. Jinnah, ed. Jamiluddin Ahmed
(Lahore: Ashraf, 1952), Vol. I, 87. Cf. Abu-al-Alaa Maududi, Islami Riyasat, ed. Khursheed Ahmed
(Lahore: Islamic Publications, 2008), 272.
79
Abu-al-Alaa Maududi, Islami Riyasat, ed. Khursheed Ahmed (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 2008),
25560.

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Maududi famously put it: jahiliya), such strategies only place Islam adaptively
into reworked spaces. Thus, Maududi abstained from using the word quam for
an Islamic collectivity, preferring umma, jamaat or hizb, as these would signify
the internationalist aspirations of Muslims to an ideal.80 Despite the insistence
on everything Islamic in cultural interpretations, the resultant absence of Islam
was telling. However, as Ataullah Bukhari argued, the socio-political ground
provided to all communities was to be grounded neither in a liberal ontological
framework nor in a secular deontological metaphysics, but in the ontological
foundations of Islam.81
As transfer of power seemed apparent, these varying discourses charted out
different routes, and were read through different political strategies. What is
interesting is the way in this process the territory of politics would be redrawn.
That is: how not only texts reflected on socio-political dynamics, but would
affect it. Perhaps the most important concern later was the creation of a separate
Islamic state. If, for Azad, it was the insufficiency of religious affinity to cement
diversities,82 for Maududi it was exactly the opposite. Maududi remained doubtful
as to the claims of Pakistan movement leaders who as simpletons knew nothing
of Islam.83 Both Maududi and Bukhari doubted the possibility of creation of a
non-secular Islamic state.84 Therefore, if there were to be no execution of Islamic
precepts in the fledgling state, then mundane, ethnic loyalties would necessarily
resurge. How could such a venture ever pay off, Maududi later asked, when its
intellectual roots were located in a newer and unusual interpretation of Islam85
that had nothing to do with the historical tradition of Islam?
The appropriate form of nationalism, its genuine manifestation, its legitimacy
was not an issuea world existed beyond nationalisms. Nevertheless, how did
such an interpretation translate itself onto the political plane in the 1940s, as
Muslim League and Congress became the dominant players? Due to the silence
present in such readings on status of postcolonial-India, and its non-reliance on
adequate institutionalisation, the political manifestation of such readings was
unable to gain much ground. Bukharis political slogan of a government of god
(hukumet ilahiya) required, arguably, a substantive elaboration. Maududi too
had few general precepts and his political position remained quite unclear, at
80

Ibid., 267.
This is, I believe, a fairly legitimate reading of Maulana Bukharis viewpoint. See Abuzar Bukhari
(ed.), Rodad e Ijtima e Saharanpur (Lahore: Maktaba e Majlis e Ahrar Pakistan, 1968). Cf. Syed
cAtaullah Bukhari, Khutbat e Ahrar, ed. Shorish Kashmiri (Lahore: Maktaba e Mujahidin, n.d.).
82
Abul-Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006). Given that the
Muslims in India were scattered throughout in different pockets, any workable separatist solution
for Indian Muslims seemed impractical even to Madani, quoted in Abu Salman Shahjahanpuri,
Sheikh ul Islam Maulana Hussain Ahmed Madani: Aik Siyasi Mutaliya (Karachi: Majlis-Yadgar-eSheikh-ul-Islam, n.d.), 153.
83
Abu-al-Alaa Maududi, Islami Riyasat, ed. Khursheed Ahmed (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 2008),
273.
84
Ibid. Cf. Syed cAtaullah Bukhari, Pakistan Main Kia Hoga (Lahore: Majlis Ahrar Pakistan, 1945).
85
Abu-al-Alaa Maududi, Tahzeebi Kashmakash main Ilm or Tahqeeq ka kirdar (Karachi: Idara
Tarjuman ul Quran, n.d.), 17.
81

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History and Sociology of South Asia 9(1)

least until then. Perhaps, inaction in politics is also an action. This also signifies
the importance of not only an active critique, but also the role of networks of
resistance, and institutional sites in seeking to alter the state of affairs.

In Place of a Conclusion
What is interesting is the way these discourses made sense of and acted upon
social fields. Then, this heterogeneity did not end with triumph of a specific
discourse, rather different trajectories were carved out. Rather than gearing
historical analyses towards hidden essences, we can well begin by reflecting on
the way these reflections later got interlocked with other discourses,86 got detached
from the context in which they emerged, or through what certain contributions
they were extended and reinterpreted. Similarly, the task of the article has been
different from cultural and historical analyses that explore how things appeared
necessary in a given milieu. Instead, what has been attempted is the way interpretive
field remained specific and how within the network of possibilities actualities
emerged. Thus, rather than reading factors that lead to political actions, a
genealogical analysis clears the domain towards understanding why political
actions took this form and not any other.
Such a genealogy can be usefully extended, I argue, to other cultural domains
as well. Given the scope of the journal, we can conclude with a note on the domain
of area studies, and the construction of regional categories (South Asia, East
Asia and Europe). These typologies allow spaces and societies to be clustered
together in particular ways.87 However, the construction of regional categories is
largely beset by two diverging tendencies. On the one hand, is the understanding
that a specific region is historically and culturally determined, and is therefore
peculiar. On the other hand is the understanding that the uniqueness of region is
grounded not in a certain peculiarity but in a specific though fluid territoriality that
is made to emphasise both its uniqueness and certain autonomy. This, of course,
assumes what is unique, peculiar, normal, or cultural in a certain region, to create a
certain sense of innateness. As explained above in our reading of Islamic political
thought, rather than simply deconstructing such regional categories, we can begin
genealogically by reading different postures towards culture and territory, and
different modes of reflections and demarcations. This is necessary if we want to
engage ourselves in the exercise of reading how something specifically South
Asian or European could be disclosed, represented, aimed at, or contested.
This is because knowledge is not formed by objective observers, but by engaged
participants who are at the same time reconstituting and rereading the terrains
they study. Or, as Foucault would say, it may be possible that something (South
86

That is, to see it as a connection within heterogeneous elements, instead of the homogenisation of
the contradictory. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics (Hampshire: Macmillan, 2008), 42.
87
Wendy Larner and William Walters, Globalisation as Governmentality, Alternatives: Global,
Local, Political 29, no. 5 (NovemberDecember 2004): 495514.

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19

Nasir

Asia, North America) may not exist, but it does not mean that it is not real (in its
impact, configurations).88
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to Dr Abdul Wahab Suri, Dr Javed Akbar Ansari, Dr Moinuddin Aqeel,
Dr Abu Salman Shahjahanpuri, the editor of History and Sociology of South Asia and the
anonymous reviewers for their valuable and critical comments on the draft of this article.
Special thanks are due to Mr Khalid Jame who motivated me to work on the article and
helped me locate rare historical sources.

88

Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population (Hampshire: Macmillan, 2007), 239, 118.

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