OVERVIEW

Eminent Historian Mushirul Hasan on Muslim Experience in India

There can be no doubt that individual Muslims felt weak, fearful, insecure, or that some sections were deeply concerned with their identity and the preservation of their religious and cultural heritage. Yet Islam in India was a living and vital religion, appealing to the hearts, minds and conscience of millions, setting them a standard by which to live honest, sober and god-fearing lives. There was no concerted attempt, despite the stridency of Hindu nationalist forces, to undermine their self-perceived interests as a 'community', though Muslim organizations: were inclined to make much of the 'persecution' to which their followers were subjected.

Nehru's government on the contrary, created a climate that was conducive to the political and economic integration of large numbers of Muslims. It could not have been any better. As a result, "the realization is growing that they (Muslims) must sink or swim, and the number of those who find swimming is not too difficult if one decides upon it is gradually increasing". The mood was summed up in 1960 by Maulana Ali Mian, the head of Lucknow's Nadwat-ul-Ulema:

The clouds will disperse, as they are bound to be, and there will be sunshine again. The Muslims will regain the position in the country which is justly theirs. All the schemes for national reconstruction will remain incomplete if they are left to rot and decay. With this frame of mind, large numbers of Muslims could look ahead with a degree of hope and optimism... With more education, with more industrialization of India, with more social reform, the barriers between the two communities must inevitably break down". If such hopes were somewhat belied, the explanations would principally lie in the breakdown of the secular consensus in the post-Nehruvian era.

Contemporary politics in India is characterized by a preoccupation with communitarian identities, chauvinistic ideologies and movements that divide religious communities and exacerbate differences. Attention needs to be paid to ideologies and movements that have historically and contemporaneously tried to unite Hindus and Muslims and further the post-colonial agenda of social transformation.

A big question remains over the tenability of the approaches and interpretations of liberal and secular- minded Muslims. Doubts have been expressed over their reading of Indian Islam and their thesis on the nature of Hindu-Muslim interaction in the subcontinent.

What we need today, more than ever before, is to discover new... interpretations among Muslims that places Indian Islam more firmly in its specific Indian environment. I believe the creative intellectual energy, released in the first two decades after independence, was the outcome of a unique 'Indian Muslim' experience of living in a world that was neither Muslim, Hindu nor specifically western. These experiences and their consequences merit serious consideration, and not whether India was a 'dar al-Islam' (land of Islam) or a 'dar al-harb' (enemy territory), or whether pan-Islamism was an ideal or still a living force.

(Source: The Economic and Political Weekly, 25 November, 1995)

On Muslim Identity in India

Consider the history of medieval rule from 1206 to 1757 (officially 1857), the large Muslim population in the subcontinent and their presence, so to speak, as a major component in the evolution of India's society, polity and economy. Consider, too, the queued history of inter- community relations leading to the partition of the subcontinent on August 15, 1947, and the destruction of the Babari Masjid on December 6, 1992.

Yet the literature on these and other related historical themes is either inadequate and sketchy or marred by a majoritarian perspective. The upper castes, convinced of their own superiority in the realm of ideas and thought, considered Islam as a rather crude approach to the problems of philosophy and metaphysics. There were, consequently, no serious interpreters of Indian Islam, no counterparts of Al-Beruni, Amir Khusro, Abul Fazl, Abdur Rahim and Dara Shikoh. The Muslim intrusion was treated as a break in the continuity of Brahmanical traditions; Indian culture was equated with Vedic culture, Indian philosophy with Vedanta, Puranas and the Upanishads, and Indian religions equated with Hinduism.

Islam had no Max Mueller to detail how its dogmas and tenets were gradually incorporated into regional and local belief structures and rituals; how Muslims, most converted to Islam at different points of time and for different reasons, were integrated with the rest of the population. In the few works that exist, Islam is mistakenly viewed as part of the Great Tradition - codified, rigid and unchanging, insular and closed to external influences. Its followers, whether converted or not, are cast in a specifically Muslim/Islamic mould. Their identity is understood, defined and described, regardless of economic status, caste, language and region, in strictly textual terms.

(Source: The Outlook, 27 Dec, 1995)