Through the eyes of a liberal

It is always a pleasure to read Mushirul Hasan. There is scholarship, erudition, style and all those things that go to make a good read. This book does not disappoint, either.

He starts with a quote from Tagore to the effect that the rulers (the British, that is) neither know their subjects (the Indians), nor do they care. He then says that the same can be said of the present rulers' knowledge of India's Muslims. I would actually go further and include many of the modern city-bred upper-middle classes. Their wish not to know about poverty, about the peasants, about Muslims, about dalits, and so on is frightening.

It is a fact, as he says, that rulers should give expression to popular aspirations. In the days of the freedom struggle, the Congress was innovative, creative, eclectic and above all anti-colonial. It articulated popular aspirations. Can we say the same of it or any other political party now?

Today, he says, politicians pander to the worst, i.e. most backward sections of all communities. Witness the rush to get the views of the mullahs in the case of Shah Bano and for which a minister was sacrificed. They could have gone to town with the full support of the Muslim women and many progressive Muslim males, but they didn't. They developed cold feet. Remember that the Muslims of India did not bat an eyelid when the Caliphate was done away with. We often forget that Indian Muslims are Indian too, not only Muslim.

Perhaps it is easier to deal with communities qua communities. It is true that it is not only the Congress that is guilty of compartmentalising, homogenising and essentialising communities. The whole political class does. As he says, to study the idea of Islam is laudable as an exercise but it should not be at the cost of the liberal and modern stream in Indian Islam. This is why the blurring of the historical role of stalwarts like Azad, Ansari etc is to the detriment of the composite culture that was India.

The book is littered with quotes of a host of writers from Socrates to Sartre, from Tagore to Sarat Chandra. He analyses the works of Nirad C Chaudhuri and the increasingly communal V S Naipaul, who pontificates on Muslims and Islam without any deep understanding. He also deals with the writings of Mohammad Mujeeb, Aziz Ahmad as well as Francis Robinson, along with many others. After a short introduction he assesses their contributions. There is also a good deal of appropriate shairi that is all over the book of the likes of Iqbal, Ali Sardar Jafri and of course Faiz.

Unfortunately the Congress has had quite a few Hindu Mahasabhaites in its fold from its fairly early days. In fact in many a town their meetings were held together. It was this cabal that withdrew the successful Mass Contact Campaign. This was a brilliant strategy started by Panditji to draw Muslims towards the Congress. That it gave sleepless nights to Jinnah was a clear measure of its success. In fact if the Congress had been more open to the Muslim sensitivities, the fate of the sub-continent would have been very different.

He says that in spite of the rich contributions of Islam and Muslims to the culture of India, their voice is a muted one today "" one of the many reasons why we should heed what Mushirul Hasan has to say. A more secular and knowledgeable writer on the subject would be hard to find.

The book deals with the history of the Muslims of India in a manner that is fresh and enlightening. That they were not enamoured of the Muslim League initially was a major problem for it. It was force of circumstance that drove some of them into its arms, or should we say its grip?

The work is eminently readable. Dr Hasan is obviously one of the better products of the composite culture that reigned in North India at least, not too long ago. One question that strikes me is why this work seems more left than his earlier ones. Is it that today's centre has shifted to the right and he is just as before or due to the daily and hourly attacks on Muslims he has become more of a leftist than before?

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MODERATE OR MILITANT
IMAGES OF INDIA'S MUSLIMS

Mushirul Hasan
Oxford University Press
Rs 495, 352 pages