The creation of a Muslim identity .
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www.asianage.com May 5
The creation of a Muslim identity
Rejecting the widely held view that Partition was mainly the
result of British manipulation, Bimal Prasad states in his
new book that the renaissance of Islam in 19th century India
by the Muslim elite was responsible for sowing the seeds of
the two-nation theory
The point whether Syed Ahmad Khan believed in a Muslim
nation or in an all-inclusive Indian nation has been debated
for a long time. The confusion is made worse confounded by
his use of the Urdu word kaum, which can mean both community
and nation, sometimes only for Muslims and sometimes for all
persons residing in India. It should suffice to point out
that he opposed the Congress not only on the ground that its
demands, if accepted, would harm Muslim interests, but also
because he thought it premature to start such an
organisation at that stage. In the beginning, he founded an
organisation consisting of Hindus as well as Muslims (United
India Patriotic Association 1888) to oppose the Congress. It
was only at a later stage, in the wake of the widespread
movement against cow-killing and the Hindu-Muslim riots in
India, that he founded a purely Muslim organisation
(Muhammedan Defence Association, 1893). On the other hand,
it is also true that he had spoken of Muslims as a nation
much earlier and indeed called his journal Tahzib-al-Akhlaq
which he had founded in 1870, as Muslim National Reformer.
Though he always remained a strong supporter of Hindu-Muslim
cooperation and friendship, to the extent possible, the
central objective of his public activity was to safeguard
the future of the Muslim elite in India. He strongly
believed that their interests would not be served by joining
the Congress. The best thing for Muslims, according to him,
was to concentrate on English education and rely on the
British to safeguard their future.
This strand in the thinking of Syed Ahmad Khan became much
stronger after the foundation of the Congress in 1885.
Although he continued to advocate Hindu-Muslim cooperation
in educational and cultural fields, he now completely
stopped talking about Hindus and Muslims constituting one
nation. On the contrary, he again and again asserted the
separate nationhood of the Muslims and completely ruled out
the possibility of the Hindus and Muslims cooperating
together to run the country harmoniously if the British
ceased to rule over it.
When Badruddin Tyabji wrote to Syed Ahmad Khan expressing
his inability to understand how the later justified his
stand in asking the Muslims to keep away from the Congress,
Syed Ahmad Khan said in his reply that as India was not the
home of one nation it could not have an organisation like a
National Congress. To Tyabji’s argument that there were
certain matters which touched the interests of all the
communities living in India and the interests of Muslims
would be better served by joining the Congress rather than
keeping out of it, Khan replied that Hindus and Muslims
belonged to two different nations, and could never cooperate
politically.
In the light of such assertions, one feels compelled to
accept the view of the noted Pakistani historian, S.M.
Ikram, that Syed Ahmad Khan was the "Father of Modern Muslim
India" and "the first prophet of their new nationhood." His
contribution to India’s future political development,
therefore, lay not so much in his characterisation of
Muslims as a nation, as in his stand that there could be no
political union between Hindus and Muslims and his advice to
the latter to keep away from the Congress and work for the
advancement of their interests through alliance with the
British.
The same dual attachment to the community and the country
marked the attitude of some of the close collaborators and
disciples of Syed Ahmad Khan. Munshi Zaka Ullah (1832-1911),
a great educationist and a member of the Board of Trustees
of the M.A.O. College at Aligarh. He attached great
importance to education through the mother tongue and worked
hard to spread new learning among Muslims by writing and
translating textbooks on various subjects in Urdu for use in
schools. He had absolutely no ill-will against the Hindu
community and ardently hoped that relations between Hindus
and Muslims would gradually improve, particularly as a
result of the spread of modern education among them.
However, he could not visualise this improvement to reach
the level of a permanent union between the two and
considered the presence of the British in India, as a
neutral, mediating power, absolutely essential.
Maulvi Nazir Ahmad (1836-1912), who was born in the district
of Bijnor in UP and educated at Delhi College, was another
distinguished disciple of Syed Ahmad. Considered the father
of the Urdu novel, he used his novels to spread the message
of the Aligarh School, particularly its emphasis on social
reform and education. At the same time, just like Syed Ahmad
Khan, Nazir Ahmad also, while strongly opposed to
Hindu-Muslim union for political purposes, continued to
believe in the desirability of Hindu-Muslim friendship.
The man who made the most significant contribution to the
spread of the message of Muslim awakening and solidarity,
symbolised by Aligarh, was the biographer of Syed Ahmad Khan
and one of the greatest poets of Urdu literature, Altaf
Husain Hali (1837-1914). Musaddas-e-Hali (1879) is his most
important work and his chief passport to fame. As has been
aptly observed, "What gave the Mussaddas its enormous vogue,
was not its style, admirable as it is, but its subject
matter." It presents a moving account of the rise and fall
of Islam, draws attention to the sad plight of Muslims in
India in the second half of the 19th century and emphasises
the urgent need for their awakening and revival through the
path shown by Syed Ahmad Khan. It was indeed at the latter’s
instance that Hali had undertaken this work and he duly
mentioned it in his preface.
Islamic revival received a great boost also from the
writings of Syed Ameer Ali (1849-1928), the most prominent
among those who were working for Muslim awakening in the
second half of the 19th century in Calcutta and one of the
leading figures in the history of Muslim renaissance in
India in modern times. Shedding the defensive or apologetic
tone adopted by Syed Ahmad Khan, he adopted an assertive,
almost aggressive tone vis-à-vis Christianity. He had
absolutely no doubt about Islam providing the surest guide
to progress in modern times. While Syed Ahmad Khan
emphasised that Islam was not inimical to progress, Ameer
Ali emphasised that Islam itself represented progress. He
analysed and interpreted Islam’s teachings on such topics of
contemporary discussion as war, religious tolerance,
position of women, slavery, rationalism and democracy in a
way as to show not merely that it was not opposed to trends
in contemporary liberal thought, but that it was "the first
religion to proclaim all the virtues." He took particular
care to compare Prophet Muhammad with Jesus Christ wherever
possible in order to show the superiority of the former.
Glorification of the Islamic past also marked the works of
Shibli Numani (1857-1914), a great historian, essayist, poet
and theologian. He came into close contact with Syed Ahmad
Khan and became a supporter of the Aligarh movement, but
after the passing away of the latter, charted a path of his
own. He adopted a middle position between orthodoxy and
modernism, and showed interest in both Pan-Islamism and
Indian nationalism. Even during his Aligarh days, he
developed his own approach to the study of Islam which was
quite different from that of Syed Ahmad Khan. As has been
aptly observed, "Sir Syed approached Islam from the values
of the modern West; Shibli approached Western values from
the viewpoint of Islam."
During his post-Aligarh days, Shibli wrote several articles
and poems criticising the work at Aligarh and describing the
M.A.O. College as "An Institute for Training in Slavery." He
also criticised the policy being followed by the Muslim
League and exhorted the Muslims to join hands with the
forces of Indian nationalism. The main factor drawing him
towards Indian nationalism, however, was Pan-Islamism which
was creating a spell over the minds of a growing number of
Muslims in India, both educated and uneducated, in the wake
of the decline of the Turkish empire, the most powerful
Muslim political entity still extant, the unsympathetic
British attitude towards it, and the reform movements going
on not only in Turkey but also in Persia. Unlike Syed Ahmad
Khan who, though working for Muslim regeneration, wanted
religion and politics to be kept apart, Shibli believed that
religion would be a more potent factor in bringing about
such regeneration than mere emphasis on political and
economic issues.
The glorification of Islam contained in the works of persons
like Ameer Ali, Shibli and Sharar were spread among the
middle and lower middle class Muslims in the last decade of
the 19th and the first two decades of the 20th century by
innumerable known and unknown writers through "thousands of
small pamphlets, each with a small circulation, through
little lectures by little men, through local editorials,
neighbourhood gatherings, small clubs and societies, through
articles and discussion groups." The most important ideas
emphasised by these publications and lectures were the great
civilising role of Islam and the unique personality of
Prophet Mohammad. Particular care was taken to highlight the
patronage of art and learning by the rulers belonging to
Islam, and the maintenance of large libraries and the famous
universities of Basrah, Kufah, Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba.
Almost all scientific advances in medieval and modern times
were ascribed to the efforts of the Islamic pioneers. It was
further claimed that the Islamic rulers had set a unique
example of religious tolerance, and Islamic societies had
treated their poor and destitute with great sympathy and
compassion. The advances made by early Islam in art, science
and social organisation were contrasted with the backward
conditions then prevailing in Europe, and it was claimed
that it was only by borrowing from Islam that Europe finally
became civilised. That Islam was superior to Christianity,
of course, went without question and was emphasised in
several writings. Surprisingly, the contribution made by
Islamic culture to India was less often glorified.
As Rafiuddin Ahmed has shown with a profusion of details,
controversies between traditionalists and reformers and
between the different groups of the latter contributed,
during the second half of the 19th century and early years
of the 20th, to the heightening of Islamic consciousness
among the rural masses in Bengal and in making them feel
that they were fundamentally different from the Hindus. The
wide interest created by meetings held for bahas (debate)
between the spokesmen of various groups contributed
significantly to this development, for it helped to break
the isolation of Muslims living in remote rural areas and
made them aware of their bond with other fellow-Muslims and
of the vital issues connected with their religion. The
growing production of cheap books and pamphlets in Bengali
containing instruction regarding religious beliefs and
practices, known as Nasihat Namas, further contributed to
this process. These books invariably called upon the Muslims
to order their lives strictly according to the tenets of
their religion and to give up the practices alien to it.
Muslims now became keenly interested in differentiating
themselves from the rest of the local population and
identifying themselves with Muslims in West Asian countries
and those living in upper India. Indeed, it became now a
vogue to describe a Muslim Bengali as just a Muslim and only
a Hindu Bengali as Bengali. The Muslims began now to give up
such elements of dress as dhoti and chaddar which made them
indistinguishable from Hindus, to change their names from
Bengali to Arabic and Persian, and to introduce more and
more Arabic and Persian words into the Bengali language
which they were using, calling it Mussalmani or Islamic
Bengali. These developments helped to bridge the gulf
between the Muslim elite and the lower middle classes and
masses in Bengal, and made the latter receptive to the call
of Muslim solidarity.
Extract from the chapter: Ideological and Emotional
Environment of the Muslim Elite
Tomorrow: Growth of Pan-Islamism in 19th century India