Muslim Intellect

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Muslim Intellectuals, Institutions and the Post-Colonial Predicament

Author(s): MUSHIRUL HASANSource: India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1, SECULARISM IN CRISIS (SPRING1995), pp. 100-122Published by: India International CentreStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23003714.

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MUSHIRUL HASANMuslim Intellectuals, Institutions and the

Post-Colonial Predicament*

Much

research on the Muslims since Independenceis still conducted within the framework bequeathed by the British and some nationalistwriters. The categories used to define them havebeen questioned but not changed. There is stilltalk of a 'Muslim mind', a 'Muslim outlook', and an inclination to

construct a 'Muslim identity' around Islam. A sense of Othernessis conveyed in such images. Muslims are made to appear differentin the print media, in some literary works, and in the world ofcinema. In this respect, there is often a striking convergence between the secular and the communal perspectives.It is also assumed that orthodoxy represents true Islam andthe interests of its adherents; and that liberal and modernist currents are secondary or peripheral to the more dominant separatist,communal and neo-fundamentalist paradigms. It is time to underline, along with the dominant orthodox paradigms, the heterodoxtrends which contest the definition of Muslim identity in purelyreligious terms; and to refute the popular notion that Islamic valuesand symbols provide a key to the understanding of the 'Muslimworld view'

Much is made of the fact that Muslims, more than any otherreligious entity, attached greater importance and value to theirreligio-cultural habits and institutions; hence they were moreprone to being swayed by the religious/Islamic rhetoric. There isirrefutable evidence to substantiate this view. But if the inferencesdrawn are specific to a community, what does one make ofnineteenth-century religio-revival movements in Bengal,Maharashtra and Punjab, and their deepening anxieties over thefuture of the Hindu identity.* An abridged version of the original paper submitted to the IIC.

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MUSHIRUL HASAN / 101

At the heart of the Arya Samaj's brand of reconstruction andreform was the restoration of the pristine purity of the Vedic cultureand civilisation. The 'Tilak school' in Maharashtra and the leadingarchitects of the swadeshi movement in Bengal, includingAurobindo Ghose and B.C. Pal, were constructively rethinkingtheir Hindu heritage and meeting the challenges of modernthought by assimilative-creative processess. The cow question wasnothing but an evocative symbol of Hindu resurgence in northernand western India. The crusade for Hindi in opposition to Urduwas as much linked with government employment as with awidely perceived symbol of a Hinduised identity.1 Finally, theemergent national consciousness appropriated the Orientalist construction of Hinduism, as well as what it regarded as the heritageof Hindu culture. The need for formulating a Hindu communityalso became a requirement for political mobilisation, when representation by the religious community gave access to politicalpower and economic resources.2It must be borne in mind that a Muslim, like his counterpartin any other community, has many diverse roles to play. He is notcast in the role of a religious crusader or a relentless defender ofthe faith. Besides being a follower of Islam by birth and training, aMuslim, and for that matter a Hindu or a Sikh, is a peasant or alandlord, an agricultural worker or a landless labourer, a workeror an industrialist, a student or a teacher, a litigant or a lawyer, aShia or a Sunni, a Deobandi or a Barelwi. Should we then harp onhis Muslim/Islamic identity at the exclusion of everything else,including the secular terms in which he relates to the more immediate socio-economic needs and his wide-ranging interactions withhis class and not just his Muslim brethren? The depth and natureof this interaction is a matter of dispute; but does that justify adiscussion in terms of an absolute Muslim/Islamic consciousness?If centuries of shared experiences could not create compositesolidarities, how could a specifically Muslim self-consciousnessemerge out of their diverse experiences?Mohammad Ali Jinnah believed he had all the answers. So didthe Jamaat-i Islami. But there were other explanations as well,boldly constructed around secular and pluralist conceptions, andcounterposed to an essentialist view of Indian Islam. Scholars,artists and creative writers, in particular, continued to contest thetwo-nation theory, unfolded the past to discover elements of unity,



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102 / India International Centre Quarterlycohesion and integration, and to provide historical legitimation formulti-culturalism and religious plurality. Prominent amongstthem were people with pronounced socialist and Marxist leanings.Muslim intellectuals, both independently and as part ofliberal-left formations, were doing much the same. Acting not asMuslim intellectuals per se, they nevertheless saw themselves astransmitters of a certain historical tradition. They carried forwardthe inconclusive debates of the post-1857 decades, when the ulamaand the liberal intelligentsia were constrained to sketch out a rolefor themselveswithin a religious tradition that had strongrevivalist precedences as well as liberal and reformist tendencies.They did so because certain key aspects in those debates borecontemporary relevance, and related to how Muslims situatedthemselves in a world that was brutally shattered by the partition.The nature of this engagement in post-independence India isthe central theme of this discussion, though it is mainly confinedto the realm of ideas mirrored through the Jamia Millia Islamia andthe Aligarh Muslim University.

Thenineteenth century, commented Maulana Abul Kalam

Azad, marked a spirit of renaissance for the Indian spiritand Aligarh was one of the centres of such renaissance .3Zakir Husain, author of the Wardha scheme of education andAligarh's Vice-Chancellor, told Nehru on his visit to the campus inNovember 1955 that the way Aligarh works, the way Aligarhthinks, the contribution Aligarh makes to Indian life ... will largelydetermine the place Mussalmans will occupy in the pattern ofIndian life .4 Such magisterial generalisations do not stand the testof historical scrutiny; but they certainly offer a clue to the roleassigned to this university in the Muslim intellectual resurgence.It is appropriate to concentrate on the main reformist strands in thelast quarter of the nineteenth century, a phase dominated by theideas of Syed Ahmad Khan and the 'Aligarh movement'.The post-mutiny era witnessed two kinds of reactions: atraditionalist backlash which was sometimes militant but moreoften muted, and a modernist response typified in the Delhi schooland the Aligarh movement. There were first and foremost thosewho, in the footsteps of Shah Waliullah, attributed the political,social and moral decline of the faithful to Hindu and Shia



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accretions, to their straying from the straight path of Islam. Thefuture of Muslims and of Islam was in jeopardy, because theWestern concept of life, with its excessive individualism andmaterialism, constituted the very antithesis of the basic values oflife as formulated by the Quran. That was the message from theMujahidin in the north-west frontier region and the Faraizis in ruralBengal. They argued, just as their counterparts did in Egypt, Sudanand Turkey, that a programme of religious purification, togetherwith religious education and of 'Islamic conscientisation' in theform of publications,5 was an alternative to the degeneratingWestern ideologies which had placed the umma into its gravestcrisis.6

Some of their ideas, though fairly worn-out, went down wellin north India and Bengal, where British rule had disturbed thestatus quo most of all. Their protagonists secured a following inrural Punjab and Bengal through established networks of mosques,dargahs and madarsas. Yet neither the Mujahidin nor the Faraiziscould generate a countrywide movement comparable to, say, theKhilafat campaign in the nineteen-twenties. The social equilibriumwas disturbed in some areas, but not everywhere. Islamic revivalbecame an obsession with some, but not all. The message fromDeoband's Dar al-ulum reached far and wide; yet not many, solamented the high priests at this major site of Islamic revival, livedtheir lives in accordance with their fatawa. The colonial government, especially after 1857, thwarted the orthodox challengethrough conciliation and compromise and a policy of balance andrule between what they conceived as the two great communities,the Hindu and the Muslim.

The upsurge in 1857 offered a rallying point to the disgruntledelements in the ruling and service classes; but the banner of revoltwas not raised everywhere.7 In most areas, Muslims seemed inclined from the days of Company rule to arrive at a workable modusvivendi with their new rulers, and carve out new channels ofaspiration and of spiritual creativity. Having read the writing onthe wall, they accepted British rule much more gladly than others.There were no doubt a few hard nuts to crack; but most were notrepelled by but attracted towards the West. Because they found, asdid Mirza Abu Talib and Lutfullah during their stay in England, astable political system, an affluent industrialised economy, and acivilisation with a strong material and cultural foundation.8



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104 / India International Centre QuarterlyIn Delhi College, subsidised by the British since 1827 and

always headed by a British principal, there was much creativethinking and many systematic endeavours to demonstrate Islam'scompatibility with Western thought and values.9 In the presidencytowns, Abdul Latif and Ameer Ali in Calcutta, and the Tyabji familyin Bombay, set the tone. Tyab Ali, head of the Tyabji family, was thefirst Muslim to send his sons abroad for education, and the firstladies of the Tyabji-Fyzee family left purdah in 1894. His son,Badruddin Tyabji, was the first Indian barrister in Bombay, the firstIndian judge on the Original side of the Bombay High Court, andthe first Indian to act as Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court.10The rapprochement with the British, the guiding principle ofmost Muslim reformers, went along with much soul-searching andself-introspection. Newly-founded organisations like the Anjuman-i Himayat-i Islam in Punjab, the All-India Muslim Educational Conference, and the Anjuman-i Islam in Bombay began towonder why the Muslims were not able to integrate their systemof education, family structures, economic enterprises and evenpolitical aspirations into the 'national mainstream'. Why the resistance to change and innovation? What were the deeper causes ofthe social malaise? What was the remedy? Thus Hali devoted hisMajlis un-Nisa to the plight of Muslim women.11 Syed Mumtaz Alicommented on polygamy, the age of marriage, purdah and theempowerment of Muslim women.12 Nazir Ahmad, a civil servant,set a model for writers in the Mirat al-urus (The Bride's Mirror),detailing the evils of polygamy and the virtues of women education and widow remarriage.13

Justice Shah Din in Punjab advocated specialised training forMuslim girls, if not in scholarly pursuits, then at least in the basicskills of reading, writing, arithmetic, hygiene and home economics.He was the first president of the Muhammadan Educational Conference in 1894, and he and Mohammad Shafi were the first Muslims to send their daughters to study at the Queen's Mary Collegein Lahore.14 In Bombay, Badruddin Tyabji helped found and thenran for many years an educational foundation. The major focus ofhis career was the education of Muslim boys, along with othersocial reform measures like the removal of purdah and getting theAge of Consent Bill passed in the teeth of both Hindu and Muslimopposition. At the Muhammadan Educational Conference in 1903,



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he pleaded for the abandonment of the purdah system and for aliberal education for Muslim women.15During most of his adult life, Hakim Ajmal Khan, a senior andvenerable citizen of Delhi, wore the sherwani and Turkish fez, the

former an adaptation of the Western coat and the latter a symbolof admiration for Ottoman social change.16 His life-long friend andcomrade, M.A. Ansari, witnessed the impact of the Young TurkRevolution, led by the Committee of Union and Progress, and wasvastly impressed by the strength and vitality of the modernisingforces in Turkey.17 Others were equally impressed that Turkey wason the move, competing with the West for an equal status in thecomity of modern nations. This led Iqbal, who was among the fewMuslim intelletuals in India to welcome the abolition of theKhilafat, to comment: If the renaissance of Islam is a fact, and Ibelieve it is a fact, we too one day, like the Turks, will have tore-evaluate our intellectual inheritance. 18

Syed Ahmad was of course the trailblazer. He alone possessedthe intellectual resources to reconcile matters of faith with the moreimmediate task of rescuing Muslims from their downward spiral.He set high value on the social morality of Islam and justified theadoption of Western ideas and institutions in Islamic terms. It wasnot necessary to imitate the West, but only to accept some of itsvalues as, at least, a second-best substitute for the vanished Muslimglories.19With his sharp, analytical mind and his acute sense of theworking of historical forces in the shaping of contemporarysocieties, the Aligarh reformer was able to recognise change, fluxand movement in history. He knew his Islamic history well. Heknew his Islam better. He could thus comprehend the scale anddepth of reformist ideas and currents, identify elements of changeand innovations, and discover a sound theoretical basis for aconstructive dialogue and interaction with the West. The conclusions drawn by him and the message communicated weredirected against the ill-founded assumptions about the West andthe ill-informed criticism of his own project by the theologian. Hedescribes in his letter to Nawab Mohsinul Mulk, his esteemedcolleague at Aligarh, how he became concerned after the Mutinyfor the reform of his community, which he saw to be impossibleapart from their education in the modern sciences and in theEnglish language.



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106 / India International Centre QuarterlyDespairing of existing commentaries with their preoccupationwith trivia, he deliberated on the Quran itself and tried to under

stand from the Quran itself the principles on which its compositionis based .20 He found that if the Quranic principles were adoptedthere would remain no incompatibility between the modern sciences and Islam. He tried to resolve the difficulties inherent in thefour traditional sources of Muslim law, by a dialectical rationalistexegesis of the Quran; by scrutinising the classical data of theHadith; by an almost unlimited emphasis on ijtehad as the inalienable right of every individual Muslim; and finally by rejectingthe principle of ijma (consensus) in the classical sense which confined it to the ulama.21

There was strong resistance to and criticism of Syed Ahmadfrom identifiable quarters. But in the long run, his modernistagenda was acclaimed and endorsed by a new generation of Muslims, many of whom were alienated by the formalism of thetraditional theologians. They were, moreover, convinced that thepursuit of modern education and the raising of intellectual standards would not undermine but only vindicate the message of Islam.His reformulation of doctrine in modern instead of medieval terms,as also his eclectic world-view, became part of the furnishing ofmind of educated Muslims. He inspired some to set up educationalcentres modelled on the Aligarh College. Thus a Madrasatul-Islamin Sind and the Dacca College were set up, the latter gaining, likeAligarh, university status after World War I.22 Following theMuhammadam Educational Conference held at Madras in 1901,the Muslim Educational Association of South India was founded.

In his 'Preparatory Years', Syed Ahmad unveiled to the youngAzad the true spirit of the Quran and the genuine teachings ofIslam.23 The Maulana compared him with Raja Rammohun Roy,both of whom left the stamp of their personality in all spheres ofintellectual activity, and emphasised that the Syed, who used themetaphor that Hindus and Muslims were the two eyes in MotherIndia's face, was a believer in inter-community harmony. He, thepresiding spirit of the university, represented the forces of changeby challenging traditional values and outmoded beliefs. The battlewas fought here in Aligarh and Aligarh is the visible embodimentof the victory of the forces of progress .24 Iqbal, too, described SyedAhmad as the first modern Muslim to catch a glimpse of thepositive character of the age that was coming and the first Indian



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Muslim who felt the need for a fresh orientation of Islam andworked for it .25

Inthe early twentieth century the political landscape underwenta change, in response to major national and transnational

developments. A closing-up of the ideological split between theulama and the liberal intelligentsia, and a gradual reassimilation ofthe traditional and western values, were the immediate consequences. Deoband's Dar al-ulum and the Aligarh College were no longerarrayed against each other; in fact, vocal sections at both placesdialogued to bridge the gulf and narrow their differences. This wasnot on account of any basic ideological compatibility or the suddenmeeting of minds on matters of faith and dogma.26 It was becausemore and more Muslim divines, especially from Deoband andNadwa, and the men of 'New Light' discovered, as in the case ofthe Mussalman Waqf Validating Act of 1913, new areas of cooperation.27 Yet what engaged them most and spurred the efforts at unitywere not just legal, educational or religious matters, but their placein the political arrangements that were being hammered out inDelhi and Whitehall. Their main preoccupation, if not the soleconcern, was to define the community afresh in order to suit theirgodly as well as the more attractive temporal interests. Theirspirited endeavour, for which they revitalised an otherwisedefunct Muslim League, was to locate the wider communitarianconcerns outside the framework of Congress nationalism.Once the ulama and their erstwhile bete noire, the westerntrained professional politicians, put their heads together, they cameup with a definition which was developed in the context of colonialinstitutions and their own scripturalist rhetoric. This definitionsought to create a corporate identity and set Muslims apart fromtheir own class, region and linguistic unit. An Islamicate identitywas thrust on Muslims, many of whom were not accustomed toliving in accordance with the Shariat or the diktat of thetheologians. In the end, the coming together of the men of religionand the modern-day publicists backfiredin so far as it aided thecause of 'Muslim nationalism' and stifled liberal, reformist andsecularising trends. This was a cause of celebration in somequarters; but not everyone had reasons to rejoice over this ominousdevelopment in Indo-Muslim history. The worrying thought was



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108 / India International Centre Quarterlythat the contours of a community were being delineated in completedisregard of and with no reference to its local, regional, class, casteor linguistic specificities.What did the enumerators find when the first all-India censuswas tabulated and analysed in 1881? They found that Muslimsnumbered but 19.7 per cent of the population. They uncovered ageographically-dispersed aggregate of Muslims, forming neither acollectivity nor a distinct society for any purpose, political,economic and social. They found Muslims whose religious ritualshad a very strong tinge of Hinduism, and who retained caste andobserved Hindu festivals and ceremonies.28 In the Bengalcountryside, in particular, pre-Islamic ceremonies relating to birth,marriage and death continued to be observed.29 In fact, the entryof Muslims in South Asia by so many and separated doorways,their spread over the subcontinent by so many different routes,over a period of centuries, and the diffusion of Islam in differentforms from one area to the another, ensured that this religion wouldpresent itself in many different epiphanies seen from differentangles. Neither to its own adherents nor to non-Muslims did Islamseem monochromatic, monolithic or indeed mono-anything.30 Yetby the close of the nineteenth century, the community, separate anddistinct from the Others, had arrived with its accompanying baggage of concepts which bore no relationship with the groundrealities.

This is where the Simla deputation of 1 October 1906 and theViceroy's response to the command performance appears to be asignificant landmark.31 From now on the Muslim elites and theirspokesmen knew where their priorities lay, and to whom who toturn for political legitimation. They had a three-fold project: to tracethe historical evolution of an imaginary community, as an antithesisto the Congress theory of Unity in Diversity; to emphasise thedistinct identity and separateness of this community in order tobargain and extract concessions from the government; and toinvoke Islamic symbols of unity to mount a movement that would,in its essential thrust, delink specific Muslim aspirations from thebroader concerns of the countrywide nationalist struggle. This ishow Muslim nationalism gained legitimacy in government eyes.This is why it appealed to the landed and the urban-based professional classes, who were apprehensive of their position in thenewly-created power structures. So that every single step towards



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the devolution of authority to Indian hands was accompanied withinitiatives to cement bonds of religious solidarity, on the one hand,and exacerbate inter-community differences, on the other.The British had no reason to challenge sectarian nationalismso long as it could be pressed into service to counter nationalistaspirations. Having already created a Muslim identity in Indianpolitics, they could draw comfort from Jinnah repeating, at theheight of the Muslim League movement, much the same arguments that had prompted Morley, Minto, Montagu andChelmsford to concede to the Muslims separate electorates,weightages and reservation in the councils and public services.During World War II, Jinnah could play any tune he liked. Officialsin Delhi were prepared to give him a patient and sympathetichearing and support his Pakistan project. He emerged strongeronce the guns were silent on all fronts and the Allies had extractedtheir pound of flesh from Germany. The British government feltobliged to reward him for dutifully supporting the war-efforts.While these games were being played out on the Indian turfwith utmost cynicism and insensitivity, a fair number of Muslimdominated organisations and institutions sensed the dreadful consequences of political solidarity being built on religious ties. Theyquestioned the conviction, or myth in certain Muslim circles thatthe future of Islam in South Asia was endangered by Hindunationalism, they disputed the notion of a monolith and homogenised community, and they challenged the constitutional arrangements that lay the seeds of discord and disunity. Many peoplewrote and spoke from these perspectives, about composite livingand plural nationhood. Many were moved by a high sense ofidealism and worked for inter-community unity and harmony.Their banners and flags did not flutter on housetops. Their audiences or readership did not run into thousands but this did not deterthem from making their point of view known. They were men ofconviction and envisaged, even when Pakistan's creation wasimminent, a future that held out hopes for the beleaguered Muslims in India. Their optimism was summed up in the narrative aswell as the title of Tufail Ahmad Manglori's book Mussalmanon kaRaushan Mustaqbil (A Bright Future for the Muslims), and in thereflections of others who, after independence and partition,renewed their intellectual quest and commented on their historyand destiny with poise, dignity and self-confidence.32



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110 / India International Centre Quarterlyhe Jamia Millia Islamia (National Muslim University) inDelhi was, in the words of Nehru, a lusty child of the

JL non-cooperation movement ,30 and a living symbol of amodest but significant endeavour to experiment with the underpinnings of multi-culturalism. It encapsulated two dominanttrends, each finding several points of covergence in the postKhilafat era: the reformist inclination of some ulama who, likeMaulana Mahmud Hasan of Deoband, were also profoundly antiBritish, and the political radicalism of Aligarh-based students whorejected their institution's pro-British proclivities and gravitatedtowards Gandhi and Nehru for political leadership. The Turkishauthor, Halide Edib, found the Jamia to be much nearer to theGandhian movement than any other Muslim institution. It seemed,in its political aspect, like an attempt to understand the inalienabledemocracy of Islam as it was in the earlier Islamic society .34 SturdyCongressmen could thus mingle with ardent socialists and fierycommunists, and individually and collectively fashion a compositeand secular ethos. Hence, the League's criticism of Jamia's nationalist complexion.

Whether others agreed or not, the Jamia biradari at Okhla inSouth Delhi was convinced of its quintessential role as a nationalistinstitution, devoted to the service of the nation and destined tocontribute to the shaping of modern India. Though founded byMuslims, it was Muslim only in name. The atmosphere was mixedand cosmopolitan, thanks to the presence of several Hindu andChristian teachers, including a few from Germany, a country wheresome of Jamia's founders learnt their first lessons to develop theirantipathy towards British colonialsm. The theological disputationsbetween the Barelwis and the Deobandis, and the doctrinal differences between the Shia and Sunnis, which marrred campus lifein Aligarh, were alien to Jamia's culture where no one wished toserve as a proper example of religiosity.

Jamia's social and intellectual manifesto was the outcome ofenlightened political and intellectual currents sweeping across thecountry. Its educational programmes, embodied in the Wardhascheme of education, bore the imprint of Gandhi's ideas on primary education and incorporated some of Tagore's innovations atVishwa-Bharati in Shantiniketan. Its liberal orientation owed muchto Syed Ahmad who, according to Mohammad Mujeeb, had alarger view of life than any of the purely religious leaders, and one



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must be grateful to him for having given commonsense its rightfulplace in religious thought .35 Its own reconstruction of the Islamicideal of an active political life was inspired by Azad, whose neointellectual modernism, religious universalism and commitmentto composite Indian nationalism, represented the essence of whatthe Jamia stood for. Zakir Husain, Vice-Chancellor from 1926 to1948, recalled:

When I was a boy I was anxious to light the dusty lamp of my life, andlike other people, I too had prepared the cotton wicks and had putthem in the oil of my soul, and was roaming about to find out fromwhere I could ignite them. The first wick of that soul, the first wick ofthe lamp, I lit from the lamp of the Maulana. As a student I used toread Al-Hilal, and when I read it in the company of my friends, it wasat that time that this wick got the fire. Although I have ignited myselffrom other sources as well, but I do confess today that the firstignitionhad taken place only from him. 36

The Jamia fraternity was dumbfounded by the rhetoric of theMuslim League. Iqbal's plea for a Muslim state in north-westernIndia was against their cherished ideal that Muslims must live andwork with non-Muslims, for realising common ideals of citizenship and culture. Mujeeb, the Vice-Chancellor, said so to the poetwhen he visited the campus early in 1935 to preside over HalideEdib's lecture.37 The two-nation theory was anathema to an institution whose sole raison detre was to promote cultural integration,foster composite and syncretic values, and cement bonds of intercommunity friendship and understanding. As the first Amir-i Jamia(chancellor), Hakim Ajmal Khan expected the students to knoweach other's culture: the firm foundation of a united Indian nationhood depends on this mutual understanding .38 M. A. Ansari, whonursed Jamia when it was threatened with closure, did not believein a politically separate Muslim community. He often said thatfuture India must be a field of cooperation between men of differentfaiths. Writing to Halide Edib, who was Ansari's guest in Jamia,the chancellor observed: I consider the brotherhood of man as theonly real tie, and patriotism based on race and colour are, to mymind, artificial and arbitrary, leading to division and factiousfights .39

Jinnah's political agenda in the nineteen-forties ran contraryto the Ajmal-Ansari project. There were other huge differences as



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112 / India International Centre Quarterlywell. The Jamia biradari lionised Gandhi, their chief benefactor, andadmired Nehru's intellect, broad vision and progressivism.40 Theywere regarded as models of impeccable political conduct. The moredevoted, Shafiqur Rahman Kidwai being one of them, took towearing khaddar and the Gandhi topi and participated in civildisobedience campaigns.41 Jinnah and his colleagues were, on theother hand, highly critical of Gandhi, Nehru and the Congressbrand of nationalism. Not surprisingly, they fired their salvoagainst Ansari and Zakir Husain, chided them for turning theinstitution into a Hindu stronghold and criticised the syllabi whichcultivated patriotism at the exclusion of Islamic worship. Jamia'sethos and orientation, stated in a well-publicised letter, wasprejudicial to Islam.42An institution with a secular and nationalist record, testifiedto by a Muslim, could not escape the fury of the angry mobs thatstruck terror in Delhi during the communal holocaust in AugustSeptember 1947. Jamia's property at Karol Bagh in old Delhi, wherethe institution was first headquartered after its brief and lazyexistence in Aligarh from 1920 to 1925, was looted and destroyed.The Vice-Chancellor, Zakir Husain, ran for his life and escapedmiraculously. The husband of Anis Kidwai, a friend of Jamia, waskilled. There were other tragedies as well, but Jamia lived throughsuch harrowing experiences to provide the healing touch. Amidstincredible savagery, dedicated teachers and students were, in thewords of Gandhi, like an oasis in the Sahara .43 Nehru commented:

Few institutions succeed in retaining for long the impress of the idealthat gave them birth. They tend to become humdrum affairs, perhapsa little more efficient, but without the enthusiasm that gives life. TheJamia,. more I think than any other institution that I can think of,retained some of the old inspiration and enthusiasm.44The university, in its search for moral and political supportafter independence, could have turned into a quasi-religious or

quasi-communal institution. But this did not happen. It remained,and rightly projected itself as secular and nationalist to the core.Wedded to the values of liberal humanism, it allowed no space toreligious intolerance and communal allegiances. I look on this ,claimed Mujeeb proudly, as a secular school .45 Such traditions



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were exemplified in the writings of Mohammad Mujeeb and SyedAbid Husain, both connected with Jamia since 1925-6.In his magnum opus published in 1966, Mohammad Mujeeb,the Oxford-educated Jamia Vice-Chancellor, identified various

constituent elements of Indian Muslim religious, political andsocial life, revealed some of its essential qualities, and questionedthe fallacies and illusions that arise out of an identification of the whole... community with some element of its belief or practice, with somepolitical figures or military or political achievements, with particularsocial forms and patterns of behaviour, with some historical tendency.He brought to light, a fact that is now adequately known

through perceptive historical and sociological studies: the diversityof beliefs, the variety of social forms and the multiplicity of ideasand movements among Muslims. The only common factor, heargued, was common allegiance to Islam; though it was easy toconfuse the Islamic identity of the Muslims as a distinct bodypolitic, as a nation, which they never were and never wanted to be.He questioned the ways in which educated Muslims saw themselves, arguing that their judgements were either inspired by selfpraise or self-pity, and by an idealisation of themselves as theembodiment of religious truth.

Mujeeb underlined, in the spirit of liberal-left historians likeTara Chand, Beni Prasad, R.P. Tripathi, Mohammad Habib andK.M. Ashraf, the weight of composite and syncretic forces in Indianhistory. If the Indian Muslim State is divested of its pseudoreligious guise , he observed, the spirit of the political system willappear to be in accordance with what is recognised as the nationalinterest today .47 He diligently traced the evolution of those ideasand movements that reinforced bonds of inter-religious unity andunderstanding. He concluded that there were far more convincingreasons for Hindus and Muslims to stay together than to be dividedon the basis of religion. He was attracted, for these reasons, to theenlightened world view of Abul Talib, Ghalib, Syed Ahmad, Hali,Ajmal Khan and Azad, and his sympathies therefore lay with theprotagonists of composite nationalism, chiefly the Congress Muslims.



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114 / India International Centre QuarterlyThe message for his generation was:

Indian Muslims can serve Islam and themselves best by associatingthemselves with persons and parties who aim at making democracyas real as possible and at achieving the maximum of social justice andsocial welfare through the legislative and administrative action of theState.48

Abid Husain, a Shia married to Swaliha Abid Husain, a frontrank Urdu writer and a descendant of Hali, studied at Allahabad,Oxford and Berlin. He taught philosophy and literature at theJamia from 1926 to 1956, authored a number of books, and translated German, English and French works into Urdu.49 His forte layin analysing and evaluating movements outside the conventionalcategory of religion. He held the view that the work of integratingthe various communities into a nation ... cannot be and should notbe done on the religious but on the secular plane .50 To combatdivisive tendencies, it was necessary to impart practical training inschools and colleges in citizenship based on the high ideals ofnationalism, secularism and democracy .51The Destiny of Indian Muslims, along with Abid Husain's otherworks, helps to comprehend how educated Muslims saw their ownrole and their community's place within secular paradigms.52 Thejournals Islam and the Modern Age and Islam and the Modern AgeSociety reflected his larger intellectual concerns.The Destiny of Indian Muslims, published in 1965, was a wellconceived statement of a Muslim steeped in the nationalist valuesand traditions of Ajmal, Ansari and Azad. He dwelt on a commonnational culture, based on the secularism of the Indian State, andon religious awakening and a spiritual renaissance among Muslims.53 His concern was to prevent Muslims from drifting awayfrom the mainstream of national life ,54 though the agenda he setfor himself and the secular and religious leadership was simpleenough: drastic changes in the curriculum of maktab and madarsas,reforms in other Muslim institutions, and the exercise of ijtehad tocope with the demands of the new age. He observed: For the lasthundred years things have changed and the modern ulama mustgive a fatwa giving a new ijtehad to the provisions of the Muslimlaw 55



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Scholars at the Aligarh Muslim University, especially in thedepartments of history, geography, Islamic studies and Urdu, werealso engaged in constructing the past in secular terms. This was atask undertaken by Professor Mohammad Habib, brother ofMujeeb, and some of his fellow-historians.56 The tone was set byZakir Husain, who departed from the Jamia Millia in 1948 to jointhe Aligarh Muslim University as its vice-chancellor. When hejoined Aligarh an atmosphere of gloom and uncertainty prevailed,because of the university's close identification with the MuslimLeage and the Pakistan movement. But he changed it all. Imbuedwith a mission of great national significance , his task was tobuild a united nation in a democratic secular State and the role andstatus of its forty million Muslim citizens within it , weld togetherdiverse cultures into a harmonious whole and promote its growthin such a manner that each culture shines and lends beauty andstrength to the entire whole . 57

Therewere other visible signs of change on the horizon.

Scholars debated the highly emotive and contentious issueof reforming Muslim family laws. What is there to reform inthe Muslim Personal Law? Is reform possible in Islam? Is theIslamic law a product of human intelligence and adaptation tosocial needs and therefore amenabale to modifications and changes? Or, is it of divine inspiration and hence immutable? If so, whatlessons should be drawn from the history of reforms in Muslimcountries? Or, what weight should one attach to the views ofMuslim thinkers in India such as Iqbal, who believed that theMuslim liberals were perfectly justified in reinterpreting the fundamental legal principles in the light of their own experience andthe altered conditions of modern life ? 58

There were no simple or straightforward answers. The keyissues that figured, for example, at the International Congress ofOrientalists in 1964 and at a seminar held also in Delhi five yearslater, related to the Shariat's divine and sacrosanct character, thepreservation of Muslim identity and the fear of their social systembeing 'Hinduised'.59 Traditional or conservative opinion, articulated by the Jamaat-i Islami and the Jamiyat al-ulama, wasprofoundly indignant at the prospect of a change or modificationin the personal law. Changing laws based on specific injunctions



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116 / India International Centre Quarterlyof the Quran or the Hadith was unimaginable. Attempts to persuade Muslims to substitute man-made laws for the universal andfaultless laws given by God is a waste of time .60 The Quranicregulations were authoritative and final for all occasions, and forall epochs between the time of revelation and doomsday. Thosewanting to tamper with them were enemies of Islam and its followers. Thus the Jamiyat al-ulama leader, Maulana Asad Madani,viewed the plea for reforms as a mask for the Jana Sangh's sinisterdesigns to exterminate the Muslim community from India .61A section of the reformist ulama were not swayed by therhetoric of their more diehard colleagues. Maulana Said AhmadAkbarabadi, editor of Burhan was one of them. He was educatedat Deoband, served as principal of the Madarsa-i Aliya in Calcutta,and retired as professor of theology at the Aligarh Muslim University. He was one of those who made a distinction between thoseQuranic injunctions which are specific to Arab customary law ofthe time, and those applicable to Muslim and human societies inother times.62 He insisted, moreover, that the ulama take note of thechanges taking place around them, to formulate their ideas in thelight of modern thought. The fact that they did not do so waslargely because they did not pay heed to the admonition ofDeoband's illustrious co-founder, Maulana Qasim Nanotawi's,that traditional education should always be combined withmodern knowledge.63 And he rigorously argued that the conceptof tauhid (Unity of God) implies the Unity of all people and allnations. So also was Divine revelation or the Divine guidance(Al-Huda).64 It was not only Universal but one and the same also .He quoted Azad approvingly who had pointed out in the Tarjumanal-Quran that the great emphasis that the Quran lays on this truth,the stronger has been the inclination on the part of the world torelegate it to the background .65A. A. A. Fyzee, a well-known scholar of jurisprudence, held theview that Islam had ceased to be dynamic, religious practices hadbecome soulless rituals , the spirit of the Prophet's message wasthrottled by fanaticism, its theology was gagged by history and itsvitality was sapped by totalitarianism. He made a strong case forreleasing the spirit of joy, compassion, fraternity, tolerance and



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reasonableness .66 More importantly, he positioned himself againstthe traditional view that in Islam law and religion are coterminous,because law is a product of social evolution and must change withtime and circumstances. He was convinced that

gradually all individual and personal laws, based upon ancient principles governing the social life of the community, will either beabolished or so modified as to bring them within a general scheme oflaws applicable to all persons, regardless of religious differences.Such a development, he pointed out, will not destroy the

essential truth of the faith of Islam .67 To an independent Muslimobserver, himself a Muslim, it would seem that no one can changethe fate of the Muslims of India, except the Muslims themselves .68Some of these ideas were inspired by Azad's Tarjuman alQuran and his emphasis therein on the rudiments of religiouspluralism, which constituted the basis of the Maulana's modernism. Fyzee regarded this as the only pragmatic solution to theIndian Muslims, and for the preservation and progress of Islam ina composite society.69 M.H. Beg, a distinguished jurist, boldlysuggested that Muslim jurisprudence could contribute valuableideas on formulating a uniform civil code of personal laws. Muslimjurisprudence has acted and could still act as a part of that common stock of juristic ideas which have acted and reacted upon eachother to produce a composite culture in this country which sustainsthe secular state .70

There was, predictably, criticism of and strong opposition tothe liberal and secular credo. In fact, some analysts pointed out thatthe Muslims after 1947 could neither come to terms with the'newness' of the situation nor did they feel at home with the newcreative upsurge of Indian construction: Indian freedom they sawrather as the unchecked opportunities for their enemies to holdthem down or indeed to crush them . He concluded that 'only invery limited numbers did Muslims evaluate with true appreciationthe ideals and announced objectives of the nation to which theybelonged . 71

Evidencemarshalled in this paper leads to slightly differentconclusions. There can be no doubt that individual Muslims

felt weak, fearful, insecure; or that some sections were deeply



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118 / India International Centre Quarterlyconcerned with their identity and the preservation of their religiousand cultural heritage. Yet Islam in India was a living and vitalreligion, appealing to the hearts, minds and conscience of million,setting them a standard by which to live honest, sober and godfearing lives. There was no concerted attempt, despite the stridencyof Hindu nationalist forces, to undermine their self-perceived interests as a community, though Muslim organisations were inclined to make much of the persecution to which that theirfollowers were subjected.Nehru's government, on the contrary, created a climate thatwas conducive to the political and economic integration of largenumbers 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 ifone decides upon it is gradually increasing .72 The mood wassummed up in 1960 by Maulana Ali Mian, the head of Lucknow'sNadwat al-ulama:

The clouds will disperse, as they are bound to be, and there will besunshine again. The Muslims will regain the position in the countrywhich is justly theirs. All the schemes for national reconstruction willremain incomplete if they are left to rot and decay.73

With this frame of mind, large numbers of Muslims could lookahead with a degree of hope and optimism. We must not despairof the future , admonished M.C. Chagla. With more education,with more industrialisation of India, with more social reform, thebarriers between the two communities must inevitably breakdown .74 If such hopes were somewhat belied, the explanationswould principally lie in the breakdown of the secular consensus inthe post-Nehruvian era.

Contemporarypolitics in India is characterised by a

preoccupation with communitarian identities, chauvinisticideologies and movements that divide religious communities and exacerbate differences. Attention needs to be paid toideologies and movements that have historically and contem

poraneously tried to unite Hindus and Muslims and furthered thepost-colonial agenda of social transformation.



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A big question remains over the tenability of the approachesand interpretations of liberal and secular-minded Muslims. Doubtshave been expressed over their reading of Indian Islam and theirthesis on the nature of Hindu-Muslim interaction in the subcontinent.75 These doubts will stay as long as scholarship on IndianIslam, as also on its adherents, is confined to the realm of speculation, and tied to a conventional but stereotyped framework.What we need today, more than ever before, is to discover newschools of thought and interpretations among Muslims that placedIndian Islam more firmly in its specific Indian environment. Ibelieve the creative intellectual energy, released in the first twodecades after independence, was the outcome of a unique IndianMuslim experience of living in a world that was neither Muslim,Hindu or specifically Western. These experiences and their consequences merit serious consideration, and not whether India was adar al-Islam (Land of Islam) or a dar al-Harb (Enemy territory) orwhether pan-Islamism was an ideal or still a living force.

Notes1. Susobhan Sarkar, Presidential address to the Indian History Congress, Decem

ber 1971; Kenneth W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movement in British India,Cambridge, 1993; Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement,in Bengal 1903-1908,Delhi, 1973; J.R. McLane, Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress, PrincetonUniversity Press, 1987.

2. Romila Thapar, Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and theModern Search for a Hindu Society , Modem Asian Studies, 23,1989, pp. 209-32;and Arjun Appadoari, Number in the Colonial Imagination , in Carol A.Breckenridge and Peter Van der Veer (ed.), Orientalism and the PostcolonialPredicament, Delhi, 1994, pp. 314^41.

3. Convocation Address at the Aligarh Muslim University, 20 February 1949,Speeches ofMaulana Azad, Delhi, 1950, p.78.

4. Quoted in Mohammad Mujeeb, Dr. Zakir Husain, Delhi, reprint 1991, p. 160; seealso Saiyid Hamid, Aligarh Tehrik [Aligarh Movement] in Urdu, Patna, KhudaBakhsh Library,1989.

5. Francis Robinson, Technology and Social Change: Islam and the Impact ofPrint , Modern Asian Studies, 27,1, February 1993, pp. 231-45.6. S.A. A. Rizvi, Shah Abdul Aziz: Puritanism, ectarianPolemics, nd ehad,Canberra,1982, and his Shah Wali-Allah and His Times, Canberra, 1980; For Faraizis, seeMoinuddin Ahmad Khan, History ofthe Faraidi Movement in Bengal 1818-1906,Karachi, 1965, and Mohiuddin Ahmad, Saiyid Ahmad Shahid, Lucknow, 1975;Qeyamuddin Alimad, The Wahhabi Movement, Delhi, 1993, revised edn.; Barbara



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India International Centre QuarterlyMetcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband 1860-1900, Princeton UniversityPress, 1982; Ahmed, Bengal Muslims 1871-1906: A Quest for Identity, Delhi, 1981;Asim Roy, The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal, Princeton University Press,1983; S.F. Dale, Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier: The Mapillas of Malabar1498-1922, Delhi, 1980.

7. See E.T. Stokes, Peasants and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and PeasantRebellion in Colonial India, Cambridge, 1978.

8. Mushirul Hasan, Resistance and Acquiescence in North India: MuslimResponses to the West , in Mushirul Hasan and Narayani Gupta (eds.), India'sColonial Encounter: Essays in Memory of E.T. Stokes, Delhi, 1993, pp. 39-64.

9. Gail Minault, Sayyid Ahmad Dehlavi and the Delhi Renaissance , in R.E.Frykenberg (ed.), Delhi Through the Ages: Essays in Urban History, Culture andSociety, Delhi, 1986, pp. 289-98; C.F. Andrews, Zakaullah of Delhi, Lahore, 1976reprint.

10. Theodore P. Wright, Jr., Muslim Kinship and Modernization: The Tyabji ClanofBombay , in Imtiaz Ahmad (ed.), Family,Kinship nd Marriage in Indian Islam,Delhi, 1976, pp. 217-38.11. Gail Minault, Hali's Majalis un-Nisa: Purdah and Women Power in Nineteenth

Century India , in Milton Isreal and N.K. Wagle (eds.), Islamic Society andCulture: Essays in Honour of Professor Aziz Ahmad, Delhi, 1983, pp. 39-50., andKhwaja Altaf Husain Hali, Voices of Silence. English translation of Majalis unNisa by Gail Minault, Delhi, 1986 edn.

12. Barbara Metcalf, Reading and Writing about Muslim Women in British India ,in Zoya Hasan (ed.), Forging Identities: Gender, Communities and the State, Delhi,1994, pp. 10-11.13. Mohammad Mujeeb, The Indian Muslims, London, 1967, pp. 531-3.14. Eminent Mussalmans, p. 381, and for Shafi's educational activities, see pp.229-30.

15. Ibid., pp. 107, 111.16. Barbara Metcalf, Nationalist Muslims in British India: The Case of Hakim

Ajmal Khan , Modern Asian Studies, 19, 1, 1985, p. 15, and her Hakim AjmalKhan: Rais of Delhi and Muslim Leader , in Frykenberg (ed.), op. cit., pp.299-315.17. Mushirul Hasan, A Nationalist Conscience: M.A. Ansari, the Congress and the Raj,Delhi, 1987, pp. 45-7,131-3.18. See Annemarie Schimmel, Gabriel's Wing:A Study into theReligious Ideas ofSirMohamed Iqbal, Leiden, 1963, pp. 47-8.19. Hodgson, op. cit., p.335; C.W. Troll, Sayyid Ahmad Khan: A Reinterpretation fMuslim Theology,Delhi, 1978.20. Ahmad and Grunebaum (eds.), Muslim Self-statement, p. 40.21. Aziz Ahmad, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan 1857-1946, London, 1967,

p. 54.22. Schimmel, Islam in the Indian Subcontinent, p. 201.23. Quoted in Douglas, op. cit., p. 52.24. Speeches ofMaulana Azad, pp. 78-9.25. Quoted in Schimmel, Islam in the Indian Subcontinent, p. 198.



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MUSHIRUL HASAN26. Rizvi, History of the Dar al-Ulum, vol. 1, pp. 234-5.27. Gregory C. Kozlowski, Muslim Endowments and Society in British India,

Cambridge, 1985, p. 182.28. Census of India, 1921, vol. 1, p. 115.29. Ahmad, Bengal Muslims, p. 134.30. Peter Hardy, Islam and Muslims in South Asia , in Raphael Israeli (ed.), The

Crescent in the East: Islam in Asia Minor, London, 1988, pp. 39-40.31. Matiur Rahman, From Consultation to Confrontation: A Study of the Muslim Leaguein British ndian Politics 1906-1912, London, 1970.32. The book was first published in 1937. Its fifth edition appeared in 1945 (Kutub

Khana-i Aziziya) with an added section Raushan Mustaqbil Kyon hai? [Why abright future?]. The book was commended by, among others, Azad, HusainAhmad Madani and Khwaja Hasan Nizami.33. Message on the Silver Jubilee of Jamia Millia, 10 September 1946, S. Gopal (ed.),Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 2, p. 386.

34. Halide Edib, Inside India, p. 322; and A Note on the JamiahMilliyah Islamiyah ,in W.C. Smith, Modern Islam in India, Lahore, 1947, pp. 147-54.35. Mujeeb, Indian Muslims, pp. 447-52.36. Quoted in Sheik Ali, Zakir Husain: Lifeand Time,Delhi, 1991, p. 49; and AbidHusain, Modern Trends in Islam , in Islam, Patiala, 1969, p. 98.37. C.H. Philips and D. E. Wainwright (eds.), The Partitionof ndia, p. 406.

38. Barbara Metcalf, Nationalist Muslims in British India , p. 25.39. Edib, Inside India, p. 323.40. See, for example, Abid Husain, The Way of Gandhi and Nehru, Bombay, 1959, and

his Gandhiji and Communal Unity, Bombay, 1969. He also translated Gandhi'sThe Story of My Experiments with Truth and Nehru's Autobiography, The Discoveryof ndia and GlimpsesofWorldHistory;K.G. Saiyidain, Andhi meChiragh,Delhi,1982 edn., for his essays on Gandhi and Nehru.

41. Abid Husain dedicated one of his books to Shafiqur Rahman Kidwai, wholived and died following The Way of Gandhi and Nehru .

42. Millat-i Islamia aur Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, Calcutta, 1941.43. Speech at prayer meeting, 6 April 1947, The Collected Works ofMahatma Gandhi,

vol. Ixxxvii, p. 218.44. Nehru to Zakir Husain, 16 February 1948, SWJN, second series, vol. 5, p. 561,

and his message on the Silver Jubilee of Jamia Millia Islamia, 10 September 1946,SWJN, second series, vol. 1, pp. 385-6.

45. Quoted in Greighton Lacy, Indian Insights, Delhi, 1972, p. 288.46. Mujeeb, Indian Muslims, p.55547. Mujeeb, Indian Muslims, p. 557.48. Mujeeb, Islamic Influence on Indian Society, p. 176.49. See Abid Husain FelicitationVolume, Delhi, 1974, and Sheila McDonough, The

Spirit of Jamia Millia Islamia as Exemplified in the Writings of Syed AbidHusain , in Robert D. Baird (ed.), Religion in Modern India, Delhi, 1981, pp.287-93. Commenting on The Destiny of Indian Muslims (Hindustani Mussulmanaina-i ayyam men, in Urdu) and The Indian Muslims, A.A.A. Fyzee wrote: Theformer is a fresh spring of water: lucid, sane and deep; the latter is an encyclopedia



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India International Centre Quarterlyof factssocial, cultural, historical and religious . A.A.A. Fyzee, The MuslimMinority in India , Quest, Bombay, 1967, p. 4.

50. Husain, Destiny of Indian Muslims, p. 12.51. Ibid., p. 8.52. For example, The Way of Gandhi and Nehru, 1959; and National Culture, i965;

Gandhiji and Communal Unity 1969; Mussulman aur Asr-i Masail, Delhi, 1972.53. Ibid., p. 7.54. Husain, National Culture, pp. 63-4; see also Ahmad, Islamic Modernism, pp.

257-8.55. Interview, National Herald, Delhi, 2 June 1970.56. For his presidential address to the Indian History Congress in 1948, see K.A.Nizami (ed.), Collected Worksof ProfessorMohammad Habib: Politics and Society

During EarlyMedieval India Delhi, 1974.57. Quoted in A.G. Noorani, President Zakir Husain: A Quest for Excellence, Bombay,1967.58. Mohammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Lahore, 1934,

pp. 150-60.59. J. Duncan M. Derret, Religion, Law and the State in India, London, 1968, p. 532;

Robert T. Baird (ed.), Uniform Civil Code and the Secularization of Law , inBaird (ed.), Religion in Modern India, op. cit.pp. 414-46.60. A.A.K. Soze, Emancipation: The Two Extremes , National Herald, 3 June 1970.61. Ibid., 1 June 1970.62. Ahmad, Islamic Modernism, pp. 254-5.63. Saeed Ahmad Akbarabadi, Zamane ke ilmi taqase aur afkar-i-jadida , in

Naseem Qureshi (ed.), Aligarh Tehrik: Aghaaz se Anjaam tak, Lucknow, 1960, p.238.64. Said Ahmad Akbarabadi, Islam and other religions , in Islam, op. cit., pp. 103-4.65. Tarjuman al-Quran, quoted in ibid., p. 105.66. A.A.A. Fyzee, A Modern Approach to Islam, Bombay, 1963, p. 112.67. Ibid.68. Fyzee, The Muslim Minority in India , op. cit., p. 7.69. Ahmad, Islamic Modernism, p. 265; see also Gopal Krishna, Piety and Politics

in Indian Islam , in T.N. Madan (ed.), Muslim Communities of South Asia: Cultureand Society,Delhi, 1976, pp. 165-6.70. M.H. Beg, Islamic Jurisprudence and Secularism , in G.S. Sharma (ed.),Secularism: Its Implications orLaw and Life n India, Delhi, 1966, p. 152.71. W.C. Smith, Islam in Modern History,pp. 260. 265, 266.72. Mujeeb, IndianMuslims, p. 561; see also, Abid Husain, Destiny of ndianMuslims,

p. 166, and Rafiq Zakaria, What have the Muslim done for India andSecularism , in Malik Ram (ed.), Hakeem Abdul Hameed Felicitation Volume, Delhi,Hakeem Abdul Hameed Felicitation Committee, 1981, pp. 87-101.

73. A.H.A. Nadwi, Muslims in India Lucknow, 1980, p. 139.74. Typescript, 6 January 1962, M.C. Chagla papers, Nehru Memorial Museum andLibrary.

75. Francis Robinson, Islam and Muslim Society in South Asia , Contributions toIndian Sociology, 17 February 1983.

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