Nations, nation-state and politics of Muslim identity in South Asia

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Volumn 22, Issue 1-2, 2002, Pages 53-58

  Riaz, Ali ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33745628303     PISSN: 1089201X     EISSN: 1548226X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/1089201X-22-1-2-53     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
2. In 1772, Hastings ordered that, "in all suits regarding inheritance, marriage, caste and other religious usages and institutions, the laws of the Koran with respect to the Mohammedans and those of the shaster with respect to the Gentoos (Hindus) shall be invariably adhered to; on all such occasions the Moulvies or Brahmins shall respectively attend to expound the law, and they shall sign the report and assist in passing the decree" (Proceedings of the Committee of Circuit at Kasimbazaar, 15 August 1772
3. quoted Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Lloyd I Rudolph, "Living with Difference in India: Legal Pluralism and Legal Universalism in Historical Context," in Religion and Personal Law in Secular India: A Call for Judgment, ed. Gerald James Larson , Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001, 390. This was initially known as Bengal Regulation Law 1772. In 1793, it was amended to Mohammedan Law and Hindu Law.
4. Rudolph and Rudolph argued that Hastings and Jones "treated Sanskrit and Persian civilizations as equivalent to those of Greece and Rome. Their sense of being local rulers led them to do what they thought local rulers did, rely on the laws of the peoples under their authority to administer justice." Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Lloyd I Rudolph, "Living with Difference in India: Legal Pluralism and Legal Universalism in Historical Context," in Religion and Personal Law in Secular India: A Call for Judgment, ed. Gerald James Larson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 39.
5. The changes in Muslim education initiated by Mayo and continued by Northbrook in 1871 demonstrate that the Raj was trying to reach out to Muslims. On 23 October 1882, the secretary of state told the viceroy, "if there be any real special grievances which affect the Muslim population which can be fairly remove by all means let it be done."
6. One example of such differences is the positions taken by Syed Ahmed Khan and Syed Akbar Husain Illhabadi (1846-1921) with respect to cooperation with the British Raj and participation in congressional politics. Syed Ahmed Khan also faced the wrath of coreligionists when he emphasized ijtihad, independent reasoning, as opposed to taqlid, adherence to the four authoritative schools of Islamic jurisprudence.
7. The variation was more pronounced between the mostly North Indian articulation of Muslim identity and the syncretistic expression in Bengal. This variation is often described, in my judgment inaccurately, as the difference between ashraf, higher class, and ailif/ atraf, lower class, interpretations of Islam.
8. The differences remained in subsequent years, even as late as 1940. Various drafts of the Lahore Resolution of 1940 also reflected these differences. The first draft of the resolution by the Premier of Punjab Sikandar Hayat Khan mentioned the presence of a Center to accommodate the two different entities. However, the later version omitted the reference. For two versions of the resolution, see Syed Sharfuddin Pirzada, Evolution of Pakistan (Karachi: Royal Book Co, 1995).
9. Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of a Divided Nation: India's Muslim Since Independence (London: Hurst & Company, 1997) 35.
10. Ayesha Jalal, "Exploding Communalism: The Politics of Muslim Identity in South Asia," in Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics in India, ed. Suagata Basu and Ayesha Jalal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).
11. These developments should be juxtaposed with the rise of Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, two Hindu nationalist organizations in the 1920s. RSS mentor V. D. Savkar, propounded "two-nation" theory in his essay "Hindutva" in 1923, and Hindu Mahasabha leader Lala Rajpat Rai professed for the "partition of India into a Muslim India and a non- Muslim India" in 1924 (A.G. Noorani, "The Partition of India", The Frontline, 18, no 26 (2002): 18.
12. Mushirul Hasan, "Minority Identity and Its Discontents, Ayodhya and Its Aftermath," South Asia Bulletin 14, no.2 (1994): 26.
13. Ayesha Jalal, Exploding Communalism: The Politics of Muslim Identity in South Asia, in Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics in India, eds. Suagata Basu and Ayesha Jalal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).
14. The political developments leading to the partition are well documented: the opposition by the congress to the Gov ernment of India Act 1935 and its outright rejection of the Cabinet Mission's Plan of 16 May 1946 resulted in the partition of India. The congressional leadership's project to have a centralized state based in Delhi ran counter to acknowledging Muslims as a nation and according them a place in power sharing. Jinnah, on the other hand, miscalculated the end game of the Raj and failed to contain the 'secessionist' trend within his own party. Descriptions of these events abound, but for a revisionist history see Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
15. Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of a Divided Nation: India's Muslim Since Independence (London: Hurst & Company, 1997)
16. K.K. Aziz, The Murder of History in Pakistan, (Lahore: Vanguard, 1993).
17. By Nerhuvian India, I am referring to a period from 1947 to the 1980s. The beginning marks the ascendancy of Nehru as the policy maker of postcolonial India and ends when the congress lost its stature as a national party and was ousted from power. The policies pursued by the congress for almost four decades reflected the vision of Jawaharlal Nehru enunciated in the early days of independent India.
18. For a detailed analysis of the Bangladesh movement see Ali Riaz, State, Class and Military Rule: Political Economy of Military Rule in Bangladesh (Dhaka: Nadi New Press, 1994).
19. Vallabhbhai Patel's comments on 6 January 1948; For a United India: Speeches of Sardar Patel, 1947-1950 (Delhi: Publications Division of Government of India, 1989), 64-69 Patel was the first home minister of India.
20. 17The statist economy, a hallmark of Nehruvian policy, also had to be discarded in 1991, under pressure from IMF and the World Bank and as a consequence of the shift in the domestic political arena.
21. The challenges to the legitimacy of the Nehruvian vision came both from within the congress during the Indira Gandhi era and without from various Hindu communalist parties. This did not go unnoticed by the Muslims in India. While the Indian congress was maneuvering to return to power on the religion card, Hindu militants popularized their call for a reassertion of Hindu identity. Muslims became victims of repeated riots, organized and engineered by Hindu militant activists in cooperation with law enforcement agencies.
22. Even neorealist policy analysts like Stephen Cohen and fervent supporters of the military regime are acknowledging the need of such a transformation of Pakistan. Stephen Philip Cohen, "The Nation and the State of Pakistan," The Washington Quarterly (Summer 2002): 109-122.
23. Kamal A Mitra Chenoy, "Citizen's Inquiry Reports on Ayodhya and Its Aftermath," South Asia Bulletin 14, no.2 (1994): 1-9.
24. Mohd. Zeyalul Haque, "The Muslim Psyche in a Twilight Terrain," The Nation and the World 8
25. quoted in Mushirul Hasan, "Minority Identity and Its Discontents, Ayodhya and Its Aftermath," South Asia Bulletin 14, no.2 (1994): 29.
26. Among Uttar Pradesh voters, Harijans were about twenty-one percent, Yadavs were about seventeen percent, and Muslims about nineteen percent. In 1991, a split among these voters allowed the BJP to secure 211 out of 425 seats in the state house and form the government. But in 1993, the undeclared electoral alliance against the BJP brought their number of seats to 177. An alliance of Samajbadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samajbadi Party (BSP) won 176 seats, as opposed to forty-two in 1991, and subsequently formed the government.