Mushirul Hasan:MODERATE OR MILITANT — Images of India’s Muslims

Book Review



Prevailing perceptions of Muslims

An assessment of India’s Muslims by engaging with the debates surrounding society, polity and history


Balraj Puri

MODERATE OR MILITANT — Images of India’s Muslims: Mushirul Hasan; Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 495.

This book with 648 references to the works of all known and lesser-known scholars, sub-continental and foreign, and litterateurs of Urdu, and to some extent Hindi, Bengali and Punjabi with a glossary of 21 pages would overawe the reader by the range of knowledge and study of the author about the Muslims of India. It traces the multiple influences on Muslims and how they adopted many social and cultural practices of pre-Islamic origin.

The author discusses in detail the role mainly played by Sufi and Bhakti saints and Urdu poets in projecting a syncretic culture in which Hindus could not be distinguished from Muslims. Urdu poetry bordered on heresy which might be considered un-Islamic today. For instance Ghalib, the doyen of Urdu poets, ridiculed the concept of paradise and hell, and calls Kashi Kabha of India and sign of God.

After 1857, a new phase started in India. Among Muslims it manifested in the form of two broad trends: the first led by Syed Ahmad Khan who founded the Aligarh Muslim University, which became the centre of what may be called the first modern intelligentsia of North India; the second, religious seminaries, chief among them was Darul uloom of Deoband. According to Mushirul Hasan, “it was a stronghold of conservatism” and therefore, “Syed Ahmad Khan was a deadly poison to the early Deobandis.”
Diversity

There was a bewildering diversity of Muslim communities. “In 1918, India’s Secretary of State received 44 deputations from Muslim groups; each of them played a different tune,” the author notes. What held together these diverse movements was the idea of pan-Islamism. It manifested in the movement for restoration of the Khilafat which the Congress supported. The towering personality of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad provided a link between various religious scholars, who otherwise too were anti-British, and the Indian national movement led by Gandhiji, whereas Syed Ahmad Khan, a modern liberal Muslim was explicitly loyal to the British rule.
Nationalist forces

The author mentions other nationalist forces among Muslims, including the second generation of Aligarh like Mohammad Habib, K.M. Ashraf and Zakir Hussain. The breakaway group laid the foundation of the Jamia Milla Islamia with Gandhiji’s blessings. Another important secular group was that of the Urdu writers of Progressive Writers Association, who spoke for the poor and hungry, and was socialistically inclined. Congress also had the support of Muslim organisations like Momins, Ahrars, Khaksars and Khadai Khidmatgars led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan.

After the first election in 1937, under the Indian Constitution Act of 1935, the Congress formed governments in six out of 11 provinces while the performance of the Muslim League was lacklustre.

When and how did Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who did not know much about precepts and practices of Islam and could not speak Urdu, emerge as the “sole spokesman” (title of the book by Ayesha Jalal) of the Indian Muslims? The explanation offered in this book is that the Viceroy turned to the Muslim League after the Congress refused to support the war effort. Secondly, when the Congress Government resigned in 1939, after the British Government declared war against the axis powers on behalf of India, without consulting it, the Muslim League organised a day of deliverance from what it called a Hindu Raj.

Partition

The Muslim League passed a resolution demanding a separate Muslim country of Pakistan in 1940. According to the author, “the post 1942 period (when the Congress launched the Quit India movement) yielded success to Jinnah.” Another landmark in his successful journey was the Direct Action he launched on July, 29 1946 followed by large scale communal riots which polarised India along religious lines. Within almost a year he emerged triumphant and achieved Pakistan. As a clue to this miracle the book refers to the awakening in Bengal in the late 19th century which harked back to the predominantly Hindu past. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhay, for instance, looked upon medieval India as a period of bondage. Vande Matram, the song in his book, Ananda math, became the national song of India.

The author regrets that even Tagore did not raise his voice against the slandering of Muslims. The fact however is that Gurudev was one of those who warned against the concept of Indian nationalism. In his novel, Ghaire-Baire (the famous film director Satyajit Ray made a film with the same theme and title), he has described how during the Swadeshi movement, Hindu mobs singing Vande Matram attacked Muslims and looted their shops. M. N. Roy’s attacks on Indian nationalism were far more strident. Though the inference of the book that Indian nationalism did not clearly distinguish itself from Hindu nationalism is valid, far more research is needed than done so far on the causes of the Partition of India, for which the book contains sufficient source material. As far as the title of the book the evidence is rather scanty.