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| The Hindu Phenomenon |
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RETREAT AND RAGE |
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| Sir
Sayyid himself was not a separatist for much of his life though he
became one in the last phase. But that issue is not under discussion
here. What is important is that Sir Sayyid proved a failure as a
modernizer. Instead, his efforts to promote Western education among
Indian Muslims produced an explosive mix of nationalism and
Islamic revivalism, of which partition of India in 1947 was only the
first disastrous result. For Pakistan has yet to learn to cope with
it. Islamic fundamentalism is making it extremely difficult for
Pakistan to function as a normal nation-state. In ideological terms,
fundamentalists dominate the scene; only ethnicity is able to offer
some kind of resistance of them.
The second observation I wish to make
in the discussion on Indian Islam follows from the first. It seems
to me that Indian Muslims view themselves, above all else, as a
religious community and a threat to the status, real or imaginary,
is what moves them deeply. By that reckoning I do not see Indian
Muslims as a political community in being or in becoming. This
assessment is contrary to much that has been written on the subject
for a long time, especially since independence which is at once
surprising and unsurprising. Surprising because the survival of pre-
1947 responses and formulations speaks of an incapacity to take into
account so significant a development as the elimination, on the one
hand, of a powerful agency (the British Raj) which could manipulate
the forces at play in the country and, on the other, of the western
Uttar Pradesh-centred Muslim elite which could make common cause
with the agency. Not unsurprising, partly because events leading to,
and following, partition could not but have a traumatic impact on us
and partly because partition violated the very concept of
territorial nationalism which in the secular realm has served as
India's main raison d'etre. |
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