MUSLIMS & THE STRAIGHT PATH: Part - 1-H - Politics as The Congealing Factor

Muslims & The Straight Path  [Published 2010]

Part - 1-H

POLITICS AS THE CONGEALING FACTOR

The synthesis between Hindus and Muslims that took place on the Hindu side was greater when we see it from the attempts made to reinvent or re-understand the Hindu religion, right from the tenth century A.D. when the threat of a monotheistic religion appeared on the borders and till the time the British missionaries attacked Hinduism as being a religion based on the life incidents of certain pre-historic devatas, whose identity is unknown. Resultantly, several monotheistic and casteless protestant movements like those of Dayanand began which were detached from organized and orthodox Hinduism, and however wide was the psychological and social gap between caste Hindus and Muslims, no definite sense of separate collective “identity” developed. It was left to politics to provide the congealing factor.

Under the Mughals there was no politics and, in the democratic sense, politics can be said to have commenced with the suppression of the Mutiny in 1857 and the consequent assumption of power by the British Government from the East India Company. Under the Mughal feudal rule, the upper ranks of the administration were Muslims, while the lower and the more populous rungs of the bureaucracy were overwhelmingly manned by Hindus. To the descendants of those minor civil servants the assumption of power by the British was little more than a change of non-Hindu masters. Dogma-free, they had no inhibitions about collaborating with the new rulers, whereas the dogma-bound Muslims, deeply resenting the rule of a non-Muslim power, refused to do so till the advent of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. It is generally assumed that the Muslim resentment was due to being displaced by the British, whereas the truth is that what they resented was not displacement but being ruled by Christians. Dogma was more important to them than sovereignty.

It is not strange therefore that, after the Mutiny, it was not the displaced feudal elements but religious leaders who first opposed the new Christian rulers. The Wahabis, inspired by an Arab fundamentalist of the eighteenth century, were the most active and declared as their objective “to undermine and subvert the infidel power of the English.” Theologians who preached resistance and several prominent clerics such as Maulana Ahmadulla Azimabad, Maulvi Abdur Rahim Sadiqupuri, Maulana Fazl Huq Khairabad, Mufti Inayat Ahmad Kakorwi, and Mufti Mazhar Karim Daryabadi were arrested for anti-British activities and deported for life to the Andaman Islands. It is comforting for present-day Muslims to regard such figures as “freedom fighters”; but it was for Islam and not for India that they fought. In fact, at one stage, Islamic militarism even had India declared a Dar-ul-Harb, or a land hostile to Islam. But this was not because of the Hindus, whom they had ruled, but because of the “infidel” Christians who ruled them.

It was such elements who were the ideological ancestors of the latter-day Khilafatists, also known as Nationalist Muslims, even though, in many cases, the two terms were self-contradictory. Even Dr. M.A. Ansari, a famous President of the Congress, found nothing inconsistent in vigorously opposing British imperialism in India, and leading a group of Aligarh old boys to Turkey in the Balkan War. According to Islamic logic, colonialism by Christians of Muslims was bad and Dr. Ansari opposed it. But colonialism of Christians by Muslims was good, and Dr. Ansari supported it!

The impact of Christian rulers on Muslim society was in fact virtually the same as that of Muslim rulers on Hindu society.  Both societies closed their ranks and clung fast to the characteristics of “identity.” But later, politics brought out a significant difference. Whereas the self-assertion of a majority has the attributes of nationalism, the self-assertion of a minority is by its very nature communal. Self-assertion on communal lines puts a minority on the defensive, and therefore the Muslims withdrew into mental and physical mohallas.

Greatly distressed by the backward state of the Muslims, Sir Syed made the correct analysis. “There are numerous classes of Hindus,” he wrote, “who are never in the habit of discussing the doctrines of their faith. They, therefore, had no objection to be educated in that what was even opposed to it. Mohammadans are, however, bound to know all the tenets of their faith, to discuss them, and to regulate their lives accordingly. It is on this account that they have hitherto refrained from availing themselves of an education taught through the medium of a foreign tongue, and which they, therefore, deem opposed to their belief.”

But if the Muslims were not to sink to the bottom of the social scale, they would have to change their attitude and start thinking on modern and scientific lines. This, he thought, they could only be induced to do in a Muslim educational institution. But finding that he could not establish his Aligarh College against the opposition of the Muslim orthodox elements, who termed him a Kafir, he had to discard many of his liberal ideas and was forced into compromises which largely nullified his attempt to inculcate among Muslims a modern scientific outlook.

Sir Syed, even though socially and politically feudal, was a reformist as far as theology was concerned. But, ironically, it was he who most of all widened the psychological gulf between Hindus and Muslims. It will be recalled that after the Mutiny the British greatly distrusted the Muslims and consequently employed increasing numbers of Hindus. In any case, due to their conservatism and withdrawal, Muslims had rendered themselves unfit for employment. Sir Syed, determined to rectify the situation and convinced that modern education was the solution to their general backwardness, founded, as already stated, the Aligarh College, the purpose of which was to equip Muslims to compete with Hindus in all the professional opportunities opening under British rule. But he entirely ignored that participation in all areas of national activity that necessitated secular mentality and behaviour, and this could hardly be expected from the Turk-oriented graduates Aligarh turned out.

At the same time he endeavoured to rehabilitate the Muslims in British eyes so that they could again be admitted into their traditional occupation of government service. This, he believed, could only be done by keeping them entirely aloof from any anti-British activity. At that period a group of educated Indians founded the Indian National Congress. Though the founders were of all communities, were essentially liberal in ideology, extremely moderate in their political demands, and only too anxious to include Muslims in their ranks, Sir Syed believed that the mildest political demand by the Congress implied dissatisfaction with British rule which would bring its members into disfavour with the British. This was exactly what the Muslims had to avoid. Moreover, since the political demands were inevitably for increased self-government through democratic institutions, he looked on majority rule as rule by the Hindus over the Muslims. Born as he was during the Mughal period and a descendant of high Mughal officials, he emotionally could not accept that Muslims should be ruled by their former subjects. He also feared that Hindu rule would result in the imposition of their Aryo-Dravidian culture on the Muslim Perso-Arabic civilization. Stressing therefore that the Hindus and Muslims formed different quams, an imprecise term which could be applied to any social, religious, or professional collective group, but which collectivized the Muslims no less, he launched a violent crusade against the Congress in particular and democracy in general.

The contradictions in the character and actions of Sir Syed, which baffled even his biographers, in fact exemplified the dichotomy that is the Muslim dilemma. In him the educationist constantly warred with the communalist; the nineteenth century with the seventh. There were also other contradictions, less ideological. As is well known he secured donations for Aligarh from Hindus of his own feudal class. When canvassing for their support he expressed such exemplary sentiments as that Hindus and Muslims were the “two eyes of the beautiful Indian bride.” But when addressing exclusively Muslim audiences, especially political meetings, he was militant enough as to threaten civil war. Not being able to find a way out of the dilemma he has earned the dubious distinction of having fathered both Muslim social profess and Muslim political reaction.

Sir Syed’s crusade soon frightened the Muslims out of their inertia and into the belief that democracy was synonymous with Hindu domination. The Muslim intelligentsia consequently began to think defensively and to close their widely separated ranks. Thus the concept of “Muslim identity,” always there, rose to the surface in the consciousness of Muslims, albeit of the upper class.

In contrast to Sir Syed was the attitude of Hali. It was to the grievous loss of Muslims, and of India, that his poetry overshadowed his prose. Had his sane and sensible advice been followed by the post-Mutiny Muslims, there would have been a very different generation at the turn of the century, which may well have influenced the whole course of events. Sir Syed was primarily interested in equipping the sons of his own feudal class to compete with Hindus in securing government employment and cared little for the masses and the education of women. In the result, Aligarh produced an impressive quota of loyal deputy collectors, sub-judges, Khan Bahadurs, and knights. The logical outcome of this was that the first politicians were also of this class; Muslim politics has from then been largely confined to the elite, and right up to partition, in spite of the generally backward state of the Muslim masses, there was the minimum socio-economic content in the Muslims’ political demands. Hali, in contrast, had a social conscience and deploring the obsession of Muslims for government jobs and their lack of will for self-employment, stressed the necessity for technological education. The lack of technologists, industrialists, scientists, and businessmen created in Muslims an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the Hindus, which drew them to the non-Hindu haven opened by Jinnah. There were not only communal but also socio-economic reasons fro the creation of Pakistan. From the standpoint of the frustrated and envious Muslim bourgeoisie, the backbone of the Muslim League, the two nations were the “haves” and the “have-nots.”