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by Hamza Alavi Monday, September 8, 2008 http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/sangat/Pakislam.htm There is a pervasive belief, held more widely outside Quite apart from the fact that the Jamaat-e-Islami never
succeeded in gaining mass public support, a fact that was confirmed by the fact
that it was routed totally even in the few seats that it chose to contest in successive
elections, its fortunes have languished even further since the sudden death of
Gen. Zia, its great benefactor. What much is more to the point in the present
context is the time-serving quality of the Jamaat-e-Islami's political ideology
and that party's demonstrated capacity to turn it upside down, when
circumstances made that more expedient. Before the so-called 'Pakistan Ideology' , an undefinable conception which it has used as a weapon with which to berate and beat down every political opponent. But behind that present image lies the truth of the fact that this was an overnight politically opportunistic conversion of faith, So much for consistency and intellectual honesty. This is but only one of many facets of a cascade of major
contradictions that underlie any suggestion that the creation of powerful populist movement of lower middle class and poor
urban Muslims, mainly of the Punjab, the Majlis-i-Ahrar was implacably
anti-colonialist and equally hostile to the This universal opposition of virtually every significant
religious group in Undivided India, indeed the entire Muslim religious
establishment to the Our people are ignorant about these facts because there has
been a systematic campaign of disinformation over more than four decades. It
reached its peak under General Zia. In a recent work, entitled 'The Murder of
History in Here we have yet another paradox. The men of power in of the state authorities who organise the production and
dissemination of distorted propagandist accounts of our history through the
commissioning of 'approved' textbooks, controlled by a bureaucratic 'Textbook
Board'. Schools and colleges in What then was them. Their motive in asking him is quite interesting. They asked him because of the enormous standing and prestige that Mr Jinnah had in the Congress with which the League leadership had decided to build closer links. It was later that Mr. Jinnah reassessed the situation and recognised the value of an organised Muslim constituency and a role for himself as their spokesman, though that was for a long time with him still within the Indian National Congress of which he remained an active an influential member. For nearly four decades the Muslim League failed to make any significant impact in the Muslim majority areas which were dominated by feudal landed magnates (indeed by a coalition of Muslim, Hindu and Sikh landlords). The main political support of the Muslim League, it will be argued here, derived mainly from the job-seeking educated urban middle classes and professionals (whom we have designated as the ' salariat', although at one stage the Muslim landed magnates of the UP, fearful of radical politics that were developing within the Congress with its commitment to land reform, decided to back the Muslim League as a political counter to the Congress but without fully understanding where the Muslim League politics would ultimately take them. In the 1920s, following the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms,
Hindu and Muslim landlords were allied under the 'Agriculturist Party' (similar
to the Unionist Party of the How did this organisation of a minority of Muslims of India
suddenly become successful in founding a new State ? For an answer to that
question we must examine rather closely developments that took place in the
later war years, the changing hopes and fears of various classes of people, not
least the landed magnates, as the prospects of What do we mean when we say that the The Muslim League in the of tactics to preserve the long term interests of their class by joining the Muslim League and taking over the new state of Pakistan, which was to be the guarantee of their survival as a landlord class which was threatened by the Congress commitment to land reform. Likewise in Sindh, the provincial government were in the
hands of changing coalitions of Muslim and Hindu landlords working together,
their social background being much the same that of the Unionists in the
Punjab. In the Sarhad (NWFP), there was in fact a Congress Government in power
until mass arrests of all Congressmen during the war, which temporarily gave
some room for groups of Khan's to play politics for a while, manipulated by the
British Governor, Sir George Cunningham. In the founding of the Muslim League. It would be a mistake to
read too much into that for soon after its founding conference the leadership
of the League passed into the hands of the urban professionals and the salariat,
mainly of the UP and Bihar. Of this too more later. Finally, Baluchistan was
ruled directly from the centre and the people of If we reflect on the fact that the main strength of the
movement led by the Muslim League came not from the from the Muslim majority
provinces but, instead ,from the Muslim minority provinces of left behind in If we were to answer this question by saying that their
motivation was purely ideological, that they were carried away by a movement of
'Islam' and practical considerations did not matter, at first sight that may
sound to be a plausible answer. No doubt those who wish to represent the exceptions, could hardly be said to have been deeply moved
by religious motives. They certainly did not allow themselves to be guided in
this matter by the Islamic religious establishment. The notion that the Some Alternative
Theories of the Origin of We have begun by recognising that the After the 'Islamic Ideology' thesis, a second argument, that we may consider is one that has been much favoured by Indian Nationalist historians and which was also the official position of the Communist Party before 1942 (when it changed its mind and decided to support the Pakistan movement) and once again after Independence when the CPI again changed its mind and resumed its original argument, is that the Pakistan movement was a movement of Muslim 'feudal' landlords who were hand in glove with the British colonial rulers. They suggest that the Movement was instigated and fostered by the British who hoped thereby to divide the Indian nationalist movement - Divide and Rule ! As we proceed to examine the facts, we will find that this theory too is misconceived and slurs over many facts and aspects of a complex history.1 There is a third explanation of the associated with peripherally the early Muslim League, to support their argument. That view is also mistaken. The predominantly Gujarati Muslim trading communities of India, barring one or two individuals, took little part in the Muslim movement, which was dominated, above all by Muslim professionals and the salariat (see below) of northern India, especially of the UP and Punjab. The Gujaratis were isolated from them linguistically and culturally as well as politically and had no objective class interests of their own that the Muslim movement could then serve. There were a few individuals, especially professionals, drawn from Gujarati business communities, notably Mr. Jinnah himself, a rich and successful lawyer son of a not too successful trader, who did play a part in the Muslim movement. But from this we cannot infer class involvement. The irony of the argument that explain away their earlier stance. Again, the Nationalist Muslims who were in the Indian National Congress not only included secular minded figures like Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, but also, and especially, Muslims educated in the classical tradition who were deeply religious such as their leader Abul Kalam Azad who was steeped in Muslim classical and religious learning. This was in contrast to the modernist education and style of life and aspirations of the Muslim League leadership. A claim that the creation of Pakistan was a fulfilment of millenarian religious aspirations of Indian Muslims would therefore stand in contradiction to the alienation of the principal bearers of the religion of Islam in India from the Pakistan movement and, contrary-wise, the explicit commitment of the leaders of the movement to secular politics. These apparently contradictory aspects of the history of Pakistan are over looked by scholars, mostly foreign, who are mesmerised by the spectre of militant fundamentalist Islam arisen throughout the 'Muslim world'.4 In Pakistan itself history has been systematically rewritten and ideologists of the regimes in power have spared few efforts to present the Pakistan movement as a fundamentalist religious movement. A Theory of
'Ethnicity' in Colonised Societies With an Agrarian Production Base. My contention is that the Pakistan movement was neither a millenarian ideological movement devoted to the realisation of an Islamic state nor was it a movement of feudal landlords nor yet again a movement of an emergent Muslim national bourgeoisie, although it is true that by 1946 the Muslim League reached an accommodation with the landed magnates who ruled over Sind and Punjab, but on their terms. We shall examine their specific role. It will be argued that central driving force behind the Muslim movement was a class that has a distinct place in colonised societies whose role needs to be recognised more fully and explicitly. I have labelled that class as the 'salariat', the urban educated classes who qualify for employment in the colonial state. With them we may take the new professionals, especially lawyers, journalists and urban intellectuals generally who share many of the problems and aspirations of the salariat. In a nutshell the argument of this paper is, to repeat, that
the Pakistan movement was a movement of Muslims rather than of Islam; a
movement in which diverse Muslim ethnic groups from different regions,
representing different social strata and interests, were allied in pursuit of
quite material objectives. At the centre of that movement was a coalition of
the emerging Muslim salariats of different regions of nation. On the contrary, the central axis of Pakistan's political history has revolved around strident affirmations of regional and linguistic ethnic identities that have refused to be set aside, de-legitimised and dissolved by slogans of Islamic ideology or claims of 'Muslim' nationhood raised on behalf of the dominant ethnic groups. Comprised of diverse groups, both regionally and socially,
the unity of the movement that ultimately resulted in the creation of By the late 1940s, as Independence, very likely to be
inherited by the Indian National Congress, was clearly on the horizon, Jinnah
and the All India Muslim League provided the predominantly rural magnates of the
Muslim majority provinces (notwithstanding the fact that hitherto they had been
united with Hindu and Sikh landlords and organised in right-wing 'secular
parties, such as the Unionist Party of the Punjab) a convenient voice and
hopefully influential voice at the centre of Indian politics, in the dialogue
with colonial masters about the fate of independent India, as well as the
Indian National Congress their main rival contender. The landed magnates were
quite cynically prepared to make use of Jinnah and the All India Muslim League
for that purpose. That supported the illusion of a unified Muslim nation in prepared to surrender their local power and autonomy. It was they, rather than the central leadership of the Muslim League, who dictated the terms of their mutual alliance. Nevertheless the idea of a Muslim nation gained temporary currency and Jinnah became the embodiment of that conception. The Pakistan movement, in that sense and to that extent, became a national movement, on the basis of the 'Two Nation Theory' that Jinnah propounded, affirming that Muslims of India were a separate nation from Hindus. Insofar as their politics entailed the establishment of their own state, their objective was the creation of a 'Muslim state', as a nation state; they did not seek an 'Islamic state', as a theocratic conception. The Muslim Salariat
and Muslim Ethnicity I will argue here that there was one particular social group for whom, more than any other, the conception of Muslim' nationhood (and not religious ideology) was particularly meaningful. That class was the product of the colonial transformation of Indian social structure in the 19th century and it comprised those who had received an education that would equip them for employment in the expanding colonial state apparatus as scribes and functionaries, the men ( for few women were so employed ) whose instrument of production was the pen. For the want of a better term I have referred to them as the salariat. The term 'middle class' is too wide and 'petty bourgeoisie' has connotations, especially in Marxist political discourse, that would not refer to this class. The 'salariat' is an 'auxiliary class' (a concept that must be distinguished from that of a 'ruling class ) whose class role can be fully understood only in terms of its relation to 'fundamental classes' (from which the 'ruling class' is drawn); i.e. the economically dominant classes viz. the economically dominant metropolitan and indigenous bourgeoisies and the land owning classes on the one hand and, and the subordinate classes, the proletariat and the peasantry on the other. Given a particular configuration of class forces in the state and society members of the salariat attach themselves to 'fundamental classes' by virtue of their own personal 'class origins' or through 'class affiliation' by virtue of its need and willingness to serve an economically dominant class for career considerations regardless of their individual class origins. . An example of such careerism can be seen in the willingness of the Indian and Pakistani salariat to serve anti-national purposes of foreign (metropolitan) bourgeoisies at the cost of the nation that they purport to serve. The 'salariat' looms large in colonial societies because there the bulk of the population is rural and agricultural. In the absence of a significant number of people clustered around urban industrial activities, and leaving aside a small number of people engaged in petty trading or in the relatively tiny sector of export trade and finance, the urban society revolves mainly around functionaries of the state, and the educated look primarily to the Government for employment and advancement. In some contexts it would be useful to distinguish between different levels of the salariat, for its upper echelons, the bureaucratic and military oligarchies, play a role that is qualitatively different from that of its lower level functionaries. The relative weight of upper echelons of the salariat in the political process vis a vis elected political representatives, is the greater the lower the level of development of the society in question. It is very prominent in many societies of Africa, for example, as it is in Pakistan
which has been ruled over by a military bureaucratic oligarchy since its
inception, with only a temporary interruption during the rule of the Pakistan
People's Party for barely five years. It is less so in post-colonial institutional structures of democratic political control.
This is a striking feature of the political scene of It was the Indian salariat and professional classes who were at the core of the Indian nationalist movement in its early stages during the late 19th century, demanding a rightful place for Indians in the state apparatus, for 'Indianisation' of the services and the creation of popular institutions of representative government through which they could have a share in the exercise of power, or at least some measure of control over the state in the name of 'self-government'.6 It was only later that the Indian bourgeoisie threw in its weight behind the nationalist movement and Indian nationalism mobilised wider sections of the Indian people. Jinnah's 'Two Nations' theory expressed the ideology of the
weaker Muslim 'salariat' vis-a-vis the dominant high caste Hindu salariat
groups. The Muslim salariat was central to the The alliance between the landed magnates of the Punjab and Sindh and the Muslim salariat, such as it was, was effected between its national leader ship, Jinnah and the All India Muslim League, who had something to offer to the regional power holders by way of ensuring that the post-independence government would not be in the hands of the Congress Party but rather a party that was dependent on them which would therefore ensure their own survival as a class. In contrast to the character of the alliance between the
rural magnates of Punjab and Sindh and the organisation of the Indian salariat,
the All India Muslim League, that between the salariats of Bengal and Sindh in
the post-Partition regional ethnic movements in Bengal and The Muslim salariat was not evenly distributed in size and
influence in different parts of ENGLISH LITERATES OVER 20 YEARS OF AGE AMONG MUSLIMS AND HINDUS (Census, 1931) TOTAL POPULATION (IN MILLIONS) U.P Punjab Total: 48.4 28.5 51.0 3.9 Muslims 7.2 14.9 27.8 2.8 Muslims % (14.8%) (52.4%) (54.5%) (72.8%) LITERATES IN ENGLISH OF 20 YEARS AND OVER (IN THOUSANDS) U.P Punjab Total: 266.0 185.0 722.0 34.0 Muslims 49.4 58.8 175.6 4.9 Muslims % (18.6%) (31.7%) (24%) (14.5%) Source: Census of We find that as a class the salariat itself, has a propensity to be easily fractured into different ethnic groups which vie with each other for preference and privilege. Such groups are not defined and determined, once for all, by cultural, linguistic, religious or regional criteria. There is, rather, a process of definition and redefinition of ethnic identity on the basis of perceptions of the distribution of privilege and politically viable options, as they are brought into focus from one stage to the next. Thus in Pakistan Muslim ethnic identity, once it had fulfilled its purpose for the salariats of Bengal, Sindh, Sarhad and Baluchistan, have way to the respective regional ethnic identities. The newly affirmed identities are not of course, constituted out of nothing. They draw on deeply embedded cultural, linguistic, religious or regionally significant symbols around which they can mobilise popular support, symbols that can generate a powerful political charge. Muslim ethnicity therefore was only one stage in such a process of ethnic definition and redefinition. It represented a temporary alliance of various regional groups. Its original thrust came from the Muslim salariat of the UP, where it was especially privileged rather than otherwise but where it was fast losing ground. Elsewhere the Muslim salariat was less developed than the Hindu salariat, so that the interests of the Muslim salariats could be considered to be in opposition to those of Hindus. The Muslim salariat of the The urdu speaking UP salariat was the next largest. In
contrast to The Bengali Muslim salariat was the largest in terms of
absolute size as compared to Muslims of other provinces, although its share of
government jobs was proportionately much smaller than that of Hindus of Bengal;
Bengali Muslims were always an underprivileged majority. The The conception of a unified 'Muslim Nation" of South
Asia did not outlast the day of independence and the creation of Overnight the 'Muslim' identity, behind which they had all
rallied together in the political debate, only after After It was only after the seizure of power by the Zia regime
that Islamic ideology was invoked in a rather more strident manner for a new
purpose, namely the legitimation of state power itself for a politically
bankrupt regime that lacked legitimate authority. It has had to go much further
in affirming, symbolically, its commitments to Islam than any previous regime.
But the question of Punjabi dominance ( urdu speaking migrants from The Formation of the
Structure of Muslim Society in In view of the relatively low development of the Muslim
salariat in general and its uneven development regionally the question has
often been asked why Muslims did not take more to education or to trade or
commerce, i.e. to middle class occupations. Was that due to some peculiarities
of their religion or culture or was it due, as the displaced erstwhile rulers,
to their hostility to colonial rule, that systematically discriminated against
them after the unsuccessful War of Independence, the Indian Mutiny, in 1857 ?
Speculation along these lines most favoured by Muslim nationalist historians.9
But the question is better inverted and we may well ask why in pre-colonial There are clear patterns of conversions to Islam by
different social strata in different regions, which have been little noticed,
let alone explained, although the patterns themselves are not difficult to see.
There are two distinct and contrasting patterns, each related to the route by
which Islam came to a particular region. One route of the advent of Islam was with
the Muslim conquerors - though, this did not mean that Islam was therefore
spread by the Sword; quite the contrary. The other route was by the sea,
through contact with Arab seafarers and traders who for centuries dominated the
A paradox of the advent of Islam with Muslim rule was that
at the heart Before Islam, Buddhism flourished in the two peripheral
regions of the Delhi Empires; the The divergence in patterns of religious belief between the
Gangetic Plain and the two peripheries is paralleled in divergence in many
other aspects of social life. A study by Marriott, for example, plots the scale
of rigidity and fluidity in caste ranking and ritual between different regions
of structure of kinship gives way to 'gotra' exogamy practised by Jat, Rajput, Meo (etc.); Muslim peasants. Parallel to the regional differences in religious ideology there were also regional differences in social structure, which raises questions about the nature of the connections between the two. If we consider the pattern of conversion to Islam along
another axis, we find that there is a fairly clear class pattern of
Islamisation associated with the advent of Muslim rulers. Muslim rule installed
expatriate Muslims brought from themselves in the salariat than elsewhere as descendants of
those associated with the courts at In contrast to the UP and Punjab, Muslims had little share
of urban middle class occupations in Sindh and Bengal or in predominantly based on rural classes, especially the struggle of ( mainly Muslim) 'Occupancy Tenants' (de facto landowners), for abolition of Zamindari over-lordship, a cause upheld by the non-communal Krishak Proja Party led by A.K. Fazlul Haq. Islam that came by the sea, with Arab control of overseas
trade, resulted in a rather different class configuration of Muslims. (Our
concern in this paper is primarily with Northern India and we will ignore for
the moment the logic and patterns of Muslim conversions in southern functionality of such tolerance and goodwill when rival
ports were competing with each other to attract the Arab trade. Contrary to the
Northern Indian pattern no Muslim land lords were installed in these areas and
there were no dependent peasantry therefore to take to Islam, except to the
extent that the pattern was to be modified later when Muslim rule itself was
extended southwards and was established in These Muslim trading communities were isolated, with respect to language and culture, from the northern Indian salariat. Moreover, these trading communities set a low value on higher education, which was functional for those aspiring for salariat positions. In terms of their own values they despised salaried employment, however eminent. Their children were expected to join the family business after secondary schooling. They missed out therefore even the politicising effects of university life. Nor were they impelled as a class into the Muslim movement which at that time had little to offer them. Their role in Muslim movements was negligible, except for one or two individuals, notably, of course, Mr. Jinnah himself who, however, had cut himself off very early from the modest background of his family and community in Karachi and assimilated himself, as an extremely successful and very rich lawyer, into cosmopolitan upper class Bombay society. Much is made by some historians of another exceptional case
of Gujarati businessmen, namely that of Sir Adamjee Pirbhai, a Dawoodi Bohra
industrialist who owned textile mills and the Matheran railway, amongst his
varied interests. As a friend of the Agha Khan, he was made to preside over the
conference of the Muslim League at Karachi in 1907, that is when the Muslim
League had just been launched by the Muslim 'notables' and was about to be
seized by the Muslim salariat who soon pushed the notables aside. Sir Adamjee
Pirbhai himself was soon to get embroiled in an anti-clerical movement within
his own community for which he was to sacrifice his time and his fortune. He
had little interest in or time for the Muslim League. It would be a mistake
therefore to read in his momentary and peripheral participation or similar
participation of a very few such individuals in the Muslim movement, to imply
the class involvement of the There was also a much smaller Punjabi section of the Muslim bourgeoisie which likewise, was peripheral to the Muslim movement. Islamic and Secular Ideologies of Muslims in There is a widespread tendency, in the language of scholars
as well as in the rhetoric of politicians, to attribute political and
ideological positions to 'Muslims' of 'MUSLIM' IDEOLOGICAL
AND POLITICAL POSITIONS IN I 'MUSLIM' POSITIONS ('All-India - but main base in Muslim minority areas). i. Islamic Traditionalism- (I) The Ulema I : 'Deobandis' ii Islamic Traditionalism- (II) The Ulema II: 'Barelvis' & Pirs iii. Islamic Fundamentalism_- Maududi and the Jamaat-e-Islami iv. Jamiat-e-Ahrar Anti-colonial 'nationalist' Muslims-- anti-. Muslim League v. Islamic Modernism - Sir Syed Ahmad Khan & Iqbal vi. Secular Muslim Nationalism - exemplified by Jinnah and the Muslim League II NON-COMMUNAL POSITIONS OF MUSLIMS IN MUSLIM MAJORITY AREAS 4 vii. Secular Provincial Non-communal Transactional Politics: Landlord Dominated Right Wing Punjab Unionist Party and
various landlord political groups in viii. Secular Provincial Non-Communal Radical Politics: The Krishak Proja Party of Bengal, led by A.K. Fazlul Haq,
the ruling Party in x Secular Non-Communal Nationalist Muslims(in Congress Party) in Sarhad, the N.W.F.P. the ruling party was the Congress under Ghaffar Khan It was in the Muslim 'minority' provinces, especially in the UP, rather than those in which Muslims were in a majority, that specifically Muslim political and ideological movements were generated. Until the late 1940s, when Jinnah and the Muslim League managed to form an uneasy alliance with dominant groups in the Muslim majority provinces, their politics were not even Muslim nationalist not to say 'Islamic'. They were, rather non-communal politics of landlord dominated groups and political parties. We have identified eight 'Muslim' ideological-political
positions amongst Muslims in is obviously a quite extra-ordinary and unrealistic demand which expresses Shia fears of being forced to accept Sunni legislation. The main current of Shia opinion in the country however seems to favour the notion of a secular state. Contrary-wise there have been equally strident demands that
Pakistan be declared a Sunni Hanafi republic and the Hanafi 'fiqh', or legal
code, be made the law of the land, that all other sects be declared minorities
and be reduced to second class citizenship. This has led to a great deal of
sectarian violence. These developments are the inevitable logical extensions of
the claim made by the Zia regime that Islamic Law be imposed in There have been numerous other Muslim political movements
during the colonial period, such as Khaksars and Ahrars. The latter were
extremely hostile to the therefore precarious. Each declares the others to be 'kafirs' or infidels. Summing up evidence taken from all major religious groups a high level judicial Committee of Inquiry (into sectarian riots in 1953), which was headed by the country's two most eminent judges, concluded as follows: 'The net result of all this is that neither shias nor sunnis, nor Deobandis nor Ahl-i-Hadith nor Barelvis are Muslims and any change from one view to the other must be accompanied in an Islamic State with the penalty of death, if the State is in the hands of the party which considers the others to be kafirs.12 Traditionalist Islam: The Ulema -'Deobandi' and Barelvi The 'Ulema' (plural of alim, a man of - religious - learning) is a grandiose term, which is often used quite loosely, as for example in the results of a survey recently published by the Government of Pakistan which finds the vast majority of them to be barely literate. To be properly classified amongst the 'Ulema' a person would have been educated at a religious seminary and would have gone through the 'Dars-e-Nizami' a syllabus that was laid down in medieval India and has hardly changed. Generally, they have little knowledge of the world that they live in, nor even perhaps of the world of Islam except for myths and legends. They inhabit little temples of their own uncomprehending and enclosed minds in which they intone slogans, petrified words and dogmas. Affairs of state and society are, generally, beyond their narrowed vision. There are only a few amongst them who have had the benefit of some tolerable education and who, in their own ways, try to follow current affairs. The Ulema of the Sunni Hanafi Mazhab, as mentioned above are themselves divided into warring groups of whom the two main are popularly known as the 'Deobandis' ( after the great seminary at Deoband ) and 'Barelvis', after the town of Bareilly in the UP, which was the seat of their mentor Maulana Ahmad Raza Khan Barelvi. Deobandis and Barelvis differ in many respects, by virtue of their different doctrinal positions, the different classes (and regions) amongst whom they have influence and their different political stances. The hallmark of Deobandi Ulema in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was their unremitting anti-colonialism. Barelvis Ulema and Pirs, unlike the Deobandis, were not involved in anti-colonial ideology and struggle. On the contrary, most of them, with few exceptions, supported the colonial regime and, were in turn, favoured by it. The 'Deobandi' Ulema It took the Deobandi Ulema many decades of British rule before they began to show their eventual deep resentment against it. One should add, parenthetically, that the label Deobandi is not wholly appropriate here, except for brevity, for the eponymous Dar-ul-Uloom at Deoband was not founded until 1867. Very few of these worthies played a part in the Wahhabi movement of the early 19th century which was led by men of the sword, the last defenders of Indian feudalism, rather than the dispensers of law. Be that as it may the belated hostility of these Ulema to British rule was derived from changes that were being brought about during the middle decades of the 19th century by the colonial state, that directly impinged upon their lives and livelihood. There were three contexts in which the changes impinged upon them. Firstly, in pre-colonial India Muslim Ulema and Hindu Pandits played a central role in the judicial system and held lucrative and influential positions. That continued in the early years of colonial rule. But soon a new legal system was being established to meet new needs of the expanding colonial capitalist economy. The old feudal dispensations were no longer appropriate. Along with the new laws and new types of courts to adjudicate them, a new class of English educated lawyers and judges took over from the Ulema and they were pushed out of their influential high status and lucrative jobs. Secondly, the Ulema were also being pushed out of the educational system. That process was a bit more slow, though that was not because the colonial regime spared any efforts to speed it up. Indian clerks were needed who would be educated along lines that would prepare them for service in the apparatus of colonial government. The traditional schools run by Ulemas (and Hindu Pandits), with their emphasis on classical learning, Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit, were no longer suited to that purpose. They were replaced by new Anglo-vernacular schools, with the active sponsor ship and support from the colonial state. The hostility of the Ulema to the colonial regime no doubt owed much to these bread and butter questions, although it was expressed and legitimised in terms of moral out rage. A third factor underlying the anti-colonialism of the Ulema was the plight of Indian weavers, the Julahas, who were their most fervent followers. Indian weavers, once the most prosperous of the Indian artisan classes, were devastated by the colonial impact and consequent destruction of Indian textile manufacturing. Julahas, were therefore amongst the most embittered opponents of colonialism. They became extremely bigoted and developed an uncompromising attitude towards the West. The Ulema's outlook reflected that also. All these factors bound the Ulema to the Indian nationalist cause. They never argued for the setting up of an 'Islamic' state nor a Muslim state. Quite the contrary. They called upon Muslims to join hands with their Hindu brothers in the patriotic cause against foreign rule. To rationalise that position they put forward a theory that constituted an essentially secular public philosophy. They separated the domain of faith, as a private domain, from the public domain of politics and government. This was formulated quite explicitly by Maulana Hasan Ahmad Madani of Deoband who argued that:- (i) faith was universal and could not be contained within national boundaries but (ii) that nationality was a matter of geography and Muslims were bound to the nation of their birth by obligations of loyalty along with their non-Muslim fellow citizens. Hindus, Muslims and members of other communities would live
together in harmony in independent India which, although not 'dar-ul-Islam', as
it would be under Muslim rule was, nevertheless, 'dar-ul-aman', the land of
peace, where Muslims would be guaranteed freedom to practice their faith, where
it would be the duty of Muslims to live as loyal and law abiding citizens. It
was the duty of the Muslim in That contradictory amalgam of ideas came together in the Khilafat Movement (1919-23) in the aftermath of the First World War, which was the climactic moment in the political struggles of the Deobandi Ulema. The aim of the movement, was to resist the removal of the Ottoman Caliph from his high office. It was a bizarre movement of religious obscurantism that unleashed rabid and atavistic passions among Indian Muslims. It ran counter to the aspirations of Turkish and Arab nationalism. It was strongly disapproved by Jinnah. But, ironically, it was backed by Gandhi, leader of secular Indian Nationalism! The movement promised to isolate the Muslim salariat leadership from Muslim masses by arousing their fanatical passions behind a hopeless and anachronistic cause. In 1919, under the leadership of Deoband and in the wake of the Khilafat movement, the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind was formed as the political organisation of the Deobandi Ulema. It was during that movement, that they made their biggest, though somewhat
brief, impact on the Indian political scene. But they left behind a bitter
legacy of narrow communalism especially amongst some sections of the Muslim
urban subordinate classes. In the late 1940s the Muslim League made great
efforts to win over the Ulema to the Barelvi Ulema and
Pirs In contrast to the Deobandi Ulema, Barelvis profess a more
populist Islam, more infused with superstition, and also syncretism, that make
up the religious beliefs of the peasantry. Barelvi version of Islam emphasises
belief in miracles and powers of saints and Pirs, worship at shrines and the
dispensing of amulets and charms, which are all condemned by Deobandis as
un-Islamic. Deobandis and Barelvis detest each other and much sectarian
conflict consists of fights between the two Pirs or Sufi shaikhs, play an
important part in the religious life of the peasantry. Barelvi Islam is closely
tied to devotion to pirs and belief in their powers of intercession (wasilah),
whereas Deobandis emphasise personal redemption by rigorous performance of
religious ritual and avoidance of sin. However, in the course of extended
research in Pirs. He goes to shrines of dead Pirs and prays for his intercession for a variety of purposes. He believes that the spirit of the dead Pir can hear him so that he communicates with him directly and has no need for intermediaries. He may show some deference but not too much reverence for the Sajjada Nashins, the guardians of the shrines, who are usually descendants of the dead saint. The Sajjada Nashins are credited by scholars to have spiritual powers. But the peasant himself does not seem to recognise that. Propositions in the literature about powers of the Sajjada Nashins over the peasant,14 not least in the political arena, are a complete myth which cannot survive close scrutiny in the light of observation of what actually goes on. Where Sajjada Nashins do play a role in local level politics, as they often do, they do so by virtue of their rather more material powers as landowners rather than some spiritual hold that they are presumed to have over the peasants. Living Pirs fall into two categories. Firstly there are Pirs
as petty practitioners, dealers in miracles and magic, at a price. They provide
amulets or anointed oil to protect the peasant from evil or specific remedies
which he buys from them. Such Pirs can make barren wombs fertile, or ease the
pain of incurable disease and so on. They take their lucrative business
seriously and avoid getting involved in politics for, given the factional
division of local level politics, they would run the risk of losing half their
clientele if they were to get politically involved. During my extended period
of fieldwork in to do so. In the event his intervention was totally unsuccessful. Everyone (including the Pir himself) could see who, in the event, were those that disobeyed him. The dissident group, in explaining their behaviour to me, made a distinction between the spiritual domain in which the Pir had powers and the worldly domain in which he did not, so that they were not obliged to follow the Pir's call in a matter which should not concern him. Secondly there are Pirs of an altogether different kind who operate on a a much higher level. Their relationship with peasants is not a direct one based on 'spiritual powers' but is rather a mediated one through landlords and local faction leaders who control the peasantry politically. Such Pirs have mureeds or disciples, who take an oath of allegiance (bai'a, or, in Punjabi bait) to the Pir. At the core of such Pir's coterie of mureeds are powerful landlords, village level faction leaders, and not least government officials, who together constitute a free masonry exchanging patronage and favours, which is tightly organised and controlled by the Pir. They operate with great effect in the political arena, as well as in the dispensing of government favours, through control and distribution of patronage and favours. Their mutual bonds are expressed in the language of kinship and the mureeds consider each other pirbhais, or pir-brothers. The Pir himself, being at the centre of such a structure of 'generalised reciprocity' wields great power. But that is not direct power over the peasantry and it has little to do with religious beliefs of the peasantry. It is a myth to suppose that such Pirs, by virtue of charismatic power, have political authority over the peasants in general, although where their landlords are mureeds. Pirs may indirectly control peasant followers in the political arena. In most cases such Pirs are big and powerful landowners in their own rights and control their own peasants. Political recruitment of peasants by such Pirs therefore takes place on the basis of distinctly non-spiritual powers.15 Deobandi and Barelvi Ulema in Historically, Deobandis have tended to be mainly urban and
from middle and upper strata of society whereas Barelvi influence has been
mainly in rural areas, with a populist appeal. This has changed somewhat in
recent decades, for Barelvi influence has extended to towns and cities, amongst
the lumpen-proletariat (peasants in cities) and an insecure urban petty
bourgeoisie. Traditionally Barelvi influence has been weaker in the UP (with
the exception perhaps of the peasantry of south-western UP ) than in the Punjab
and to some degree in lumpen-proletariat in In Before we leave the Ulema, we must take note of their respective positions on a doctrinal point of Deobandis and Barelvis on the one hand and Islamic Fundamentalists and Islamic Modernists on the other; and further certain crucial differences between the two latter. These doctrinal positions are pivotal to the terms in which the political debate between them is articulated. That debate centres around the concept of ijtihad which we may translate as 'interpretative development of doctrine in keeping with the spirit of Islam', on issues that cannot be decided by a manifest and direct applicability of injunctions of the Quran or the Hadith, or a solution offered by other prescribed rules. Ijtihad is the final remedy and for those who would admit to the possibility of Ijtihad, there are recognised methods by which it may be accomplished. The Traditionalist (Sunni) Ulema do not accept that it is possible to perform ijtihad; as they would put it, 'the gates of Ijtihad are closed'. For the 'traditionalists' Islamic doctrines, as formulated and codified by the 9th century AD, in the form of the teachings of the four orthodox Sunni schools which comprise their received tradition and doctrine is complete and final. For them it is fixed for eternity. Instead of Ijtihad they rely on taqlid, unwavering and unadulterated application of the received doctrine. The Islamic Modernists and Islamic Fundamentalists, on the other hand, each reject this Traditionalist view of the immutability and rigidity of the doctrine of the faith, that admits only the principle of taqlid, or doctrinal conformity. Instead, they insist on both the possibility as well as the necessity of ijtihad, to revivify Islam in keeping with new questions and issues that arise with constantly changing conditions in the world. Their different political positions turn, however, on their different solutions to the question of how ijtihad may be properly carried out, the 'fundamentalist' solution being an authoritarian one whereas the 'Modernist' tradition finds justification for the democratic political process in the search for Ijtihad. Religious Reform
Movements in Background to Islamic Modernism The colonial restructuring of perspectives were opened up by Hindu thinkers, who were the leading elements of that new class. It was much later that these changes reached the UP, the heartland of the Muslim salariat. There Muslims were far from 'backward'. Quite the contrary is true. While the proportion of Muslims in the population of the UP was quite small, nevertheless Muslims held the lion's share of salariat positions, especially in their higher echelons. Not surprisingly it was therefore in the UP that 'Muslim Renaissance' soon got under way, with the colonial transformation of the state apparatus there. The Hindu Renaissance in An opposite kind of misconception about these movements, far
more common, is that these movements simply packaged ideas imported from Europe
in locally made boxes; that these are examples of mere reflection of Western ideas,
a borrowing and mechanical transmission from one culture to another. Such a
view seems plausible, for liberal ideas were in ascendancy in the colonial
metropolis, though it would be difficult to accuse British colonial officials
of being the bearers of liberal ideas which they did not consider suited to individuals, nor of laissez faire, which were the slogans of
triumphant capitalism in Islamic Modernism: Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Mohammad Iqbal The 'Hindu Renaissance', as I pointed out above, was followed by 'Muslim Renaissance' which was pre-figured by writers and poets such as Mirza Ghalib and, later, articulated most clearly and force fully by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in his prolific writings. Sir Syed Ahmad was pioneer and most certainly the outstanding and most influential figure of the 'Muslim Renaissance'. Sir Syed Ahmad was also a very effective practical organiser, as well as a theoretician and major intellectual figure. His role and mission in life was to facilitate the induction of upper class UP Muslims into the colonial salariat. For that it was necessary to encourage them to move out of the traditional system of education (dominated and controlled by traditionalist and backward looking ulemas). Sir Syed Ahmad urged Muslims to take instead to English and Western education that would qualify them for jobs in the colonial salariat. He also preached the beneficent character of colonial rule and the absurdity of opposing it. His own personal life reflects the transition, of a member of the old UP aristocracy to the new salariat. He was from an noble family with long connections with Moghul Imperial rule, now less prosperous. He joined the service of the East India Company, against the wishes of his family, and rose to be a 'munsif', or sub-judge, which at the time, was about as high a position in the colonial state apparatus as an Indian could aspire to. He soon became a pioneer of a new rationalist public philosophy, but one which was expressed in the idiom of Islam. Nevertheless he was much reviled and attacked by the Ulema. Embroidered tales of his persecution by bigots have become a part of the mythology of the Muslim salariat. It is not too surprising that Sir Syed Ahmad, the father of
Islamic Modernism was directly influenced by Raja Ram Mohan Roy the father of
Hindu Renaissance. As an impressionable young man Sir Syed Ahmad met Roy, who
was on a visit to the Moghul court in 1831. He gave much prominence to an
account of in these new movements, as merely different ethnic components of a single class, the salariat; and therefore the respective Hindu and Muslim Reform movements as different strands of a single intellectual movement that was sweeping across India in the 19th century, expressing rationalist ideologies and a commitment to a scientific outlook of the newly emerging Hindu and Muslim salariats, even when they were expressed in their respective religious idioms. Sir Syed Ahmad's political philosophy, as appropriate to the
concerns of the emerging Muslim salariat in the UP, was cast in Muslim ethnic
terms (rather than 'communal', which is a pejorative term). He was striving for
numerical equality of Muslim representation in the services to that of Hindus,
although in the UP Muslims were only about 13 % of the population. He argued
that Muslims, as a community, were entitled to an equal share because for they
made up for their lack of overall numbers by their preponderance amongst the
upper classes. That view did not entail hostility towards Hindus as such, nor
was it a question of religion. The issue was that of equating the two
communities, irrespective of their relative size and demanding an equal share
for each. This was nicely expressed in his much quoted statement that equal. It is evident that in all this Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was not equally interested in the fate of all Muslims; his concern was primarily about the fate of the class from which he himself sprang, the ashraf, or the upper class, Muslims. Sir Syed Ahmad did not argue for a restoration of Muslim
political power over Education was the sovereign remedy for reversing the decline
of the UP upper class Muslim society. The main thrust of Sir Syed Ahmad's
writing and indefatigable organisational activity, therefore lay in the pursuit
of modern education for Muslims. He founded the Sir Syed Ahmad had to fight the bigoted Ulema at all levels, not least on their own ground of theology. His writings on religion were prolific and reflected a high level of scholarship. Without going into details of particular controversies one particular issue can be singled out. That was the burden of the received and congealed orthodoxy, the immutable Traditions of the Four Sunni schools, in the name of which the Ulema fought him. His counter-attack was simplicity itself, the wielding of Occam's Razor. He wiped the slate clean of the hide-bound traditions of the four schools as handed down by the Ulema over ten centuries, by declaring that they had become cluttered with accretions of bid'at (or 'innovations'), in other words misconceptions and misinterpretations.20 The only alternative was to go back to the source, the Quran and the Hadith of the Prophet. By that bold stroke he swept orthodoxy out of the way and gave himself freedom to write on the cleaned slate a new message of a rationalist social philosophy that sought legitimation by invoking the fundamental sources of Islam. Sir Syed Ahmad's work opened the way for a liberal re-interpretation of Islamic political philosophy by Mohammad Iqbal. Iqbal attacked the dogma of the Traditionalist Ulema that the received doctrine was immutable. He passionately attacked the Ulema's commitment to the principle of taqlid, or doctrinal conformity, which he argued had ossified Islam and made it remote from realities of the contemporary world. That was the root cause of the present decline of Muslims. To revitalise Muslim society, ijtihad had to be reinstated.21 That could be done through ijma, or consensus of the community of the faithful, which he considered to be 'The third source of Mohammed an Law (after the Quran and Hadith of the Prophet. H.A.) ...which is in my opinion perhaps the most important legal notion in Islam'.22 He argued further that 'The transfer of (the power of performing) ijtihad from individual representatives of schools to a legislative assembly ... is the only possible form ijma can take in modern times'.23 Iqbal was quite as hostile to the decadent and obscurantist views of the Ulema as they were to his. Referring to provisions of the Persian constitution of 1906 he repudiated as 'dangerous' the idea of giving powers to the Ulema to supervise legislative activity. 'The only effective remedy for the possibilities of erroneous interpretations is to reform the present system of legal education" he added.24 By that formula of securing ijma through a legislative body, he legitimised in Islamic terms the liberal principle of representative self-government, the system that the political leadership of the professionals and the salariat (though not necessarily its bureaucratic and military components) best understood and wanted to have. Islamic Fundamentalism: The Jamaat-e-Islami The Islamic Traditionalism of the Ulema and Islamic Modernism of Sir Syed and Mohammad Iqbal as I have suggested, were each associated with problems and wishes of certain social classes (of Muslims) during the 19th century, whose concerns and aspirations they articulated and expressed. The social roots of the new Islamic Fundamentalism of the Jamaat-e-Islami that was a most insignificant group of Muslim intellectuals at the time of The Partition, but which has gained much notoriety since then, cannot be quite so clearly identified. It originated entirely as an ideological movement and its appeal was initially limited to a small number of dedicated followers whom it offered a dream of an utopian future. It drew to itself a small band of idealists in search of a better society. Many of them were quickly disenchanted and left the Party, often joining left-wing groups and organisations. Their numbers and weight in that party have dwindled steadily. The Jamaat was soon to get generous support from powerful vested interests for whom it began to serve a political purpose. That changed its character radically. The Jamaat-e-Islami was founded in 1941 by Maulana Maududi,
a scholar-journalist with a classical education. Maududi was an opponent of
Muslim Nationalism and the To build an Islamic state the existing state must first be
captured and brought under the control of those who, by Maududi's definition,
were the only true bearers of militant and authentic Islam, namely himself and
his Party. Unlike the Ulema, control of the state apparatus was therefore his
first priority. His conception of the ideal Islamic State was a strongly
centralised one, run on authoritarian lines, with the help of a strong and
effective and dedicated army, under the authority of the Commander of the
Faithful. Democracy was despised, for it gave power to the ignorant and those
whose commitment, and understanding, of the faith could be doubtful. The onus
lay therefore on his Party and on himself as its Guide and Leader, to take
Muslim society forward to its true destiny. The Constitution of his Party
illustrates this authoritarian philosophy for it demands unquestioning and
total obedience from members of the Party to its Amir, its Supreme Head, namely himself. His ideas, justifying
dictatorship in the name of Islam have, not surprisingly, found much favour
with some sections of The Jamaat is not a mass Party but one with selected cadre members. Because of its shallow roots in society, the Jamaat has been quite ineffective as a political Party. The full extent of its isolation from popular support was brought home recently to the Jamaat as well as its surprised opponents, by its debacle in the controlled elections staged by the Zia regime in January 1985, for conditions for its electoral success could not have been made more favourable. All opposition Parties were under a ban and their leaders and local activists were in prison or in exile. The field was therefore clear for the Jamaat to make a clean sweep of it. But it was routed completely. The electorate voted negatively, against Jamaat candidates and for non-entities. The Jamaat's electoral bankruptcy ought not to lead anyone
into under estimating its power and influence in today's After the Partition the Jamaat attracted a new following
among urdu speaking refugees from The leadership of the Jamaat has passed into non-ideologist hands,
although exploitation of their ideology remains their principal political
weapon. The Party bosses seem to feel that its diminishing support from its
meagre popular base, mostly amongst the Muhajirs is of less consequence than
the support that it is deriving from powerful classes in Pakistan for whom its
value lies in its ability to bludgeon radical and left-wing groups, very often
quite literally so. The Party receives generous donations from big businessmen
and landlords and is believed to be a recipient of generous donations from the
Americans and from potentates in the Party, mainly To end our account of the Jamaat-e-Islami, we must return to the central doctrinal issue of ijtihad, or interpretative development of doctrine, around which the political debate about Islamic State has turned. As it was pointed out above, the Jamaat stands for ijtihad, contrary to the position of the Traditionalist Ulema. But at the same time The Jamaat-e-Islami derides the method proposed by the Modernist Iqbal for realising Ijtihad under contemporary conditions, through processes of representative democracy, which is represented as the only possible source of Ijma modern conditions. Maududi contends against this that this could not lead to a reliable interpretation of Islam, for the voters may not be Muslim and even if they are, they may not have a 'true understanding' of Islam, such as only Maududi and his followers are blessed with. Iqbal's exhortation to educate the people was no solution either. Scholarship was no guarantee, for even the Ulema were misled and ignorant. The logic of that argument, leads Maududi to an authoritarian solution, for by his lights there is only one true and reliable interpretation of Islam and Maududi and his Jamaat are the custodians of that true knowledge. They are a gifted and select elite, and amongst them only its great leader, knows what Islam is. 'According to Maududi', writes K.K. Aziz: 'there is always a person (Mizaj Shanas-i Rasool) who alone is competent to decide what the Holy Prophet would have done in a given situation if he were alive. ... He left no doubt in the minds of his followers that he was the only candidate for this supreme pontifical office. And his chief lieutenant, Maulana Islahi declared before the Punjab Disturbances Inquiry Committee that he wholeheartedly and unreservedly accepted Maududi as the Mizaj Shanas-i Rasool'.25 As far as the Jamaat claims and ideology are concerned, there can be no objective or logical criteria by which their validity can be settled. They can be accepted only as an act of faith, by a religious conversion in effect, to the Maududi sect, which may therefore be properly regarded to be yet another sect of Islam which, like every sect, claims to be the only true one. Paradoxically Maududi's elitism itself militates against a principle which would be regarded as a central tenet of Islam, namely that ijtihad by ijma, the consensus of the community, has precedence over ijtihad by the alim, the man of religious learning, because an individual, however learned he may be, is fallible, but Allah in his divine mercy would not allow his community collectively to go in error. This has always been recognised as the principle of democracy in Islam. Maududi's argument contradicts that. The Jamaat-e-Islami ideology while insisting on ijtihad, in effect rejects the fundamental notion of ijma, and offers little more than a personal charter of authority to the head of the Jamaat-e-Islami to lay down the law in the name of Islam. It must be said that by virtue of re-interpretation of Islam
by Ulema of the 8th and 9th centuries AD, to suit the needs of the feudal
Abbasid empire, the concept of ijma was itself narrowed down to that of a
consensus between 'qualified' scholars, which took away the power from the
community that the Prophet Mohammad's Islam had conferred on it. They abolished
the right of the community to be represented in the state. Even today such a
notion is peddled in footnote no. 12 above. So on doctrinal grounds we can see that there are contradictions underlying every position. There is no way of resolving it except by either imposing one sectarian position over all the others or by accepting a secular conception of the political process and the state so that every individual, whatever his or her religious persuasion may be, would be free to participate in the democratic process, following his or her own private faith and conscience, to shape policies of the state. We will refrain from pursuing this arcane and insoluble debate any further for it cannot be resolved by logic. Secular Muslim
Nationalism - Jinnah Most of the salariat in fact, implicitly or explicitly, espoused a secular conception of being part of a Muslim nation. Jinnah their spokesman, was
always quite explicit about it and on this issue he put his position quite
unambiguously. In recent years there has been a systematic attempt by decision to back fanatical Muslim Ulema in launching the Khilafat movement, (1919-23). If there had been any intention to drive a wedge between the secular minded Muslim salariat and the Muslim masses and to shift leadership in the direction of the obscurantist Ulema, the Congress could not have taken up a more potent issue. It is true that it was Muslim notables, so-called 'feudals',
who presided over the birth of the Muslim League in December 1906 at direction and sought co-operation with the larger Indian nationalist movement and the Congress, provided Muslim salariat rights were protected. Jinnah himself was to be brought into the Muslim League by these elements three years later. It would be a mistake to think that the Muslim League was dominated and controlled by the so-called feudals' during the four decades after its inception. That is the nub of a complicated story, of which a most perceptive account will be found in Robinson's excellent study of the early Muslim Movement in the UP.26 Naturally, like all great political and social movements there are many different strands that are interwoven in the tapestry of Muslim history in India during the 19th and 20th centuries. But its leitmotif was engraved on the map of Indian politics by the aspirations and anxieties of the Muslim salariat, the force behind Muslim nationalism. A number of factors contributed to a new turn in the development
of Muslim politics in The Muslim salariat had begun to crystallize its political identity. Its key objectives were, again, defined by the narrow perspectives of the privileged UP Muslim salariat, not least its sharply deteriorating position relative to Hindus. Its demands corresponded to the problems of a beleaguered group in a Muslim minority province. They do not make too much sense when viewed in the context of Muslim majority provinces. Their central demand was for separate electorate for Muslims so that they may not be outvoted by the overwhelming Hindu majority in the UP. Robinson sums up developments in the first decade of the century as follows: 'By 1909 a Muslim identity was firmly established in Indian politics ... (by virtue of ) the creation of a Muslim political organisation ... (and) the winning of separate Muslim electorate. ... The creation of a protected share of power for Muslims ... stimulated the further development of Muslim politics.' 27 Jinnah who was brought into the Muslim League in 1913 reassessed the situation and recognised a role for himself as a spokesman for Muslims in the Nationalist movement on the strength of their independent organisation in the Muslim League. Robinson comments 'He brought to the League leadership important connections with all India Congress circles and the distinction of having been a close friend of Gokhale.' 28 Jinnah eventually began to get disillusioned with the
Congress Party, from the 1920s not because he was a Muslim communalist but
quite the reverse. It was the Congress, rather, which embarked on a course that
encouraged Muslim fanaticism under the leadership of the Ulema, by instigating
and backing the Khilafat movement. Jinnah was quite outraged by this. No
greater disservice could have been done to the cause of inter-communal harmony
in Increasingly Jinnah was disenchanted with the leadership of the Indian National Congress. The failure to reach an accommodation with the Congress after the 1937 elections finally forced him to reconsider his strategy. So far the Muslim League's influence was limited to the salariat; hence its ineffectiveness in elections in a society in which landlords controlled the mainly rural vote. Jinnah decided now to secure Muslim landlord support at any price and he soon set about making deals with those of them who were in power in Muslim majority Provinces, persuading them to accept the Muslim League label, even if it was to be only nominally. In return he gave them carte blanche, and in effect surrendered the local Muslim League organisations to them. Jinnah's objective in this was to secure at least the formal position of the Muslim League as the nominally 'ruling Party' in Muslim majority provinces. That would legitimise his claim that the Muslim League was the sole and legitimate spokesman of Muslims of India. Jinnah looked upon the landed magnates, the political bosses
of the Muslim majority provinces, with contempt and dislike quite as much as
they in turn showed little inclination to allow him and the central Muslim
League leader ship to encroach on their domains of power. In associate was Sir Chhotu Ram, a Hindu. Although he was prepared to patronise members of the Muslim salariat, Sir Fazl-i-Husain and his associates had no intention of letting the urbanites, on whom they looked down with some disdain, encroach on their power. Iqbal complained of Sir Fazl-i-Husain's anti-urban bias in a speech in 1935 and his associate Malik Barkat Ali did so too; both urban stalwarts of the Muslim League.29 Later Iqbal was to protest repeatedly to Jinnah about his pact with Sir Sikandar Hayat, Sir Fazl-i-Husain's successor. In a series of letters in October and November 1937, Iqbal complained to Jinnah that 'Sir Sikandar wants nothing less than complete control of the League and the Provincial Parliamentary Board.30 Jinnah maintained a prudent silence over the matter and did not reply to Iqbal's repeated letters. Having handed over the League to Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan and the Unionists, there was little that he could have said. In Sind the story was no different, for there the local base
of the Muslim salariat was narrower than that in the 'Jinnah made a prolonged stay in All that Jinnah was looking for was pinning the Muslim League label on the Provincial governments and little more. It is not difficult to see the short term calculations of
this strategy for Jinnah, for it legitimised his All-India position and
strengthened his bargaining position. The reason for the decision of the
Provincial magnates for accepting the Muslim League label is less obvious. It
was not the vote pulling power of the Muslim League, for it was the landed
magnates them selves who controlled the mainly rural vote. What the League
offered to the landed magnates of Punjab and patrons they were faced with the prospects of the rule of
the Congress Party, with its commitments to land reform. If they were to
preserve their class position, the only viable option for them was a government
at the centre of the Muslim League rather than the Congress. If that was to
mean When the Jinnah had consistently opposed theocratic ideas and
influences and never minced his words about his commitment to a secular state.
Speaking to students of 'What the League has done is to set you free from the reactionary elements of Muslims and to create the opinion that those who play their selfish game are traitors. It has certainly freed you from that undesirable element of Maulvis and Maulanas' (a derogatory reference to the Ulema).32 Jinnah re-iterated, time and again, that Pakistan would be 'without any distinction of caste, creed or sect.' Aisha Jalal, in her excellent study of Jinnah's political role, records at least two occasions on which Jinnah successfully resisted attempts to commit the Muslim League to an 'Islamic Ideology'.33 Jinnah's memorable inaugural address to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on 11th August 1947 was a clarion call for the establishment of Pakistan as a secular state. From the principal forum of the new state he declared: 'You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the state ... We are starting with this fundamental principle, that we are all citizens of one state. ... I think we should keep that in front of us as our idea and you will find that in the course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual but in the political sense, as citizens of the state'. 34 There could be no clearer statement of the secular principle
as the basis of If Islamic Modernism was the initial ideology of the
emerging Muslim salariat, it has long ceased to be a live intellectual movement
and has been marginalised. It exists in small and peripheral groupings such as
the Tulu-e Islam group which was led by Ghulam Ahmad Parvaiz. Many of the basic
ideas of Islamic Modernism, have passed into conventional wisdom. Insofar as
they still have currency, they are accommodated within secular political
attitudes. It may help to put things into perspective if we quote from an
account by Rosenthal, a renowned Islamic scholar, of his investigations in Rosenthal summed up his impressions of attitudes that he
encountered in 'On balance, I should say that among the academic youth there is a minority in favour of an Islamic state in substance not just in name. The Majority are divided in their allegiance to Islam from personal faith to indifference and outright rejection, as being out of date and dividing men instead of unifying and leading them to a world state'.35 More recently this issue has been dealt with sensitively and perceptively by Sibte Hassan in his influential urdu book Naveed-e-Fikr, which has been translated into English with the title: 'The Struggle for Ideas in Pakistan', where he arrives at similar conclusions.36 Islamic Rhetoric in Muslim ethnicity had outlived its original purpose when There was a fresh process of accounting of regional
privilege and deprivation. Although there were 41.9 million East Pakistanis, as
against only 33.7 million West Pakistanis (1951 census), shares in public
appointments bore no comparison to that, not even remotely. In 1948 East
Pakistanis numbered only 11 % of the members of the CSP, the Civil Service of
Pakistan, the elite cadre that stood at the head of the bureaucracy and
controlled it and thereby the State, in Pakistan.(The CSP was later abolished
by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto). East Pakistani share in the army was even worse, for
only 1.5 % of army officers were East Pakistani. Bengali Muslims owned no more
than 3.5 % of the assets of all private Muslim firms.37 A wave of political
militancy swept through the whole of government employee went on strike. That movement,
significantly, started on the Dacca University Campus. The Bengali Language
movement repudiated the ruling Muslim League's claim to represent the people of
At first in As soon as the regional protest against Punjabi rule began to get under way, the ideological tune changed. Suddenly Islam and the notion of Islamic brotherhood became the order of the day. It was unpatriotic on the part of Bengalis, Sindhis, Pathans and Baluch to make demands in terms of their regional ethnic identities because all Pakistanis were brothers in Islam. The constitutional proposals were quickly redrafted. Choudhury happily reported that 'The Second Draft Constitution (Choudhry's over-enthusiastic title for the Report of the Basic Principles Committee, 1952) was noted for elaborate provisions relating to the Islamic character of the proposed Constitution. The most noble feature of the Islamic provision was a board of ulema which would examine if any law was repugnant to Quran and Sunnah'.40 All that this 'noble feature' added up to was a smoke-screen, for it went little beyond setting up a Board of Talimat-i-Islamia (In other words: Board of Islamic Learning) which formally had some advisory functions but, in the event was to exist only on paper, for the bureaucratic-military oligarchy (with the Punjabi salariat in saddle) which dominated Pakistan, had no intention of giving the mullahs a share in power. The only concrete result of all this, after years of rhetorical Islamisation was a decision to change the name of the Republic to 'The Islamic Republic of Pakistan' and, further, a provision was inserted in the Constitution that the President of the Republic shall be a Muslim. But these were mere symbolic gestures. The ruling oligarchy was in no mood to make any real concessions of substance to the Islamic ideologists. But, for the moment, for the mullahs, evidently concerned far more with some little material benefits than fundamental principles of the State, all this was quite enough to keep them occupied in the business of generating rhetorical steam on behalf of the dominant Punjabis who made it plain that the 'Islamic Pakistan' would not tolerate any regional movements for autonomy or equality. The secular mood of the country was dramatically demonstrated
by the rout of 'Islam Loving' Parties in the first national election of The Bengali movement was eventually to lead to the
liberation of The ideology of Sindhi nationalism too is explicitly
secular. Like the jobs which are monopolised by immigrants from Sarhad and the
With the assumption of power by the Zia regime another
factor has come into play, namely the legitimacy of power (or, more accurately,
its total lack of legitimacy ). Afraid to face a free electorate and having no
mandate to govern, the General turned to Allah. In that he was forced to go
much beyond the outworn old Islamic rhetoric of previous days. He had to show
to a cynical public, who had heard it all before, that he actually means
business. But there was not much that he could do in practice. Being in charge
of running a peripheral capitalist economy, heavily dependent financially on
the not. The Banking system and financial institutions continued to oil the wheels of commerce and industry in the country. In the Act setting up Shariat Courts, under the Constitution ( Amendment ) Order 1980, issued by Presidential decree, to 'Islamise' Pakistan's laws, everything connected with the working of the economy was explicitly excluded from the jurisdiction of these Courts, under subsection (c) of section 203 A. As we shall see his successors were more stupid and ignored this golden rule which Zia never announced publicly but nevertheless carefully followed namely that he must not mess about with the economy, whatever Islamic rhetoric he may employ to bolster up his illegitimate regime. All that was left to the Zia regime to do, in the name of
Islamisation, was to undertake cosmetic measures, although the word 'cosmetic'
is an outrageous word to describe barbaric punishments that were prescribed
under the Hudud Ordinances which were promulgated by him in the name of
introducing an Islamic legal system. The regime has also launched a systematic
attack, both symbolically and practically, on the status and privileges of
women in same goods to the customer, at a higher price. The mark up between the 'purchase' and 'sale' prices was designated as the 'profit' of the Bank that it would receive in lieu of interest ! This was, one might say, Islamisation by semantic jugglery, for what in effect was interest continued to rule under its new designation: 'profit'. This is just cheap petty deception of the public, that left the essentials unchanged. The Zia regime seemed to have reached a dead end by the
mid-eighties. Its strident rhetoric about the Islamic basis of the Notes and References 1A See K.K. Aziz, The Murder of History in 1 See Ram Gopal, Indian Muslims, (London, 1959), Ch XI, for an Indian nationalist view and R. Palme Dutt, (India Today, Bombay, 1970) pp 456-9 and D.N. Pritt 'India' in Labour Monthly, XXIV April 1942 for the Communist view (Mark I).This view was reiterated by R. Palme Dutt, 'India and Pakistan', in Labour Monthly, XXVIII March 1946. 2 G. Adhikari, 3 Yuri Gankovsky and L.R. Gordon-Polonskaya, A History of 4 e.g. Edward Mortimer, Faith and Power: The Politics of
Islam, ( 5 H. A. Alavi, 'The Army and the Bureaucracy in Pakistan
Politics', paper presented at the Centre d'Étude des Mouvements Sociaux, at
C.N.R.S., Paris in 1965. An extended version of this paper written in 1967 was
widely distributed in mimeographed form during the 1960s and was published in
French translation under the title 'Armée et Bureaucratie dans la Politique du 6 B.T. McCully, English Education and the Origins of Indian
Nationalism, ( 7 Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The
Politics of the UP Muslims 1860-1923, ( 8 For an analysis of the role of the bureaucratic-military
oligarchy in the state of 9 Abdul Hamid, Muslim Separatism in 10 McKim Marriott, Caste Ranking and Community Structure in
Five Regions of 11 Aparna Basu, op.cit. p 151 12 Report of the Court of Inquiry...into the Punjab
Disturbances, 1953 (Munir Report) Government of West Pakistan Press, ( 13 Zia-ul-Hassan Faruqi, The Deoband School and the Demand
for 14 David Gilmartin, 'Religious Leadership and the Pakistan Movement in the Punjab' in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 13, No 3, 1979; Barbara Metcalf (ed.) Moral Conduct and Authority, London 1984, articles by David Gilmartin and Richard Eaton. 15 For an account of political factions in the Punjab,
dominated by landlords and Pirs, see Hamza Alavi, 'Politics of Dependence: A
Village in 16 17 Clarence Maloney, Peoples of 18 David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the
Modern Indian Mind, ( 19 Christian W. Troll, Sayyid Ahmad Khan: A Reinterpretation
of Muslim Theology, ( 20 Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Rah-e-Sunnat dar Radd-e-Bid'at,
Tasanif-e-Ahmadiya Vol. I, ( 21 Mohammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought
in Islam, reprinted, ( 22 ibid. p. 173 23 ibid. p. 174 24 ibid. p. 175-176 25 K. K. Aziz, Party Politics in 143-4 26 Francis Robinson, op cit. passim 27 ibid. pp 173-175 28 ibid. p 252 29 Azim Husain, Fazl-i-Husain: A Political Biography,( 30 Mohammad Iqbal, Letters of Iqbal to Jinnah, 31 Dow to Wavell 20th September 1945, Fortnightly Reports -
Sind, L/P&J/5-261, (Jan-Dec, 1945), 32 Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad (ed.) Speeches and Writings of Mr. Jinnah, Vol. I, (Lahore, 6th edition, 1960), p. 43 33 Aisha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, Muslim League
and the Demand for 34 G.W. Choudhury (ed.) Documents and Speeches on the
Constitution of 35 E.I.J. Rosenthal, Islam and the 36 S. Sibte Hassan, Naveed-e-Fikr, (urdu) ( 37 Rounaq Jehan, 38 G.W. Choudhury, op.cit. p 25 39 ibid. p 30 40 ibid. p 31 Posted by Palash Biswas at 12:53 PM http://nandigramunited.blogspot.com/2008/09/pakistan-and-islam-ethnicity-and.html |
