Can a Muslim Be an Indian?

Can a Muslim Be an Indian?

“Can a Muslim Be an Indian?” is an essay written by Gyanendra Pandey, an Indian historian, in 1999 for Comparative Study of Society and History . He questions the notions of nationalism harbored in India, particularly regarding Muslims. He traces the trajectory of the alienation of the Islamic community from the conception of India as a nation, with an emphasis on the partition that took place within the subcontinent in 1947.

Summary

Part I

The essay explores the term ‘nationality’ and the various contexts it is used in, mainly in the case of the minorities inhabiting any nation such as India. It talks about how the terms nation and nationalism differ due to the different usage of the words. The author points out that in the discussion of nationalism, the members from the Islamic community are referred to as “Nationalist Muslims”, however the Hindus are called “Hindu Nationalists”.. It indicates that the “brand of nationalism” of the latter is the one which is given substantial weight. He talks about how politically aware Hindus were branched into two types of nationalists: secular nationalists and Hindu nationalists, yet “Muslim” nationalism, which was also growing simultaneously was not divided into "Muslim nationalists" and "secular nationalists”. Instead, they were divided into "Nationalist Muslims" and "Muslims”. Pandey refers to Jawaharlal Nehru’s idea of nationalism – the Indian Nationalism, which eliminates the Hindu centric aspect from the term in his book ‘Glimpses of World History’. He makes this point to show the contrast between ‘Hindu nationalists’ and ‘Indian Nationalists’. The author also says “nation and nationalism are created by establishing boundaries” but he also says that they often favour the mainstream and not the minority. He makes this point in reference to Brackette F. Williams’s discussion of ethnicity where she claims the border to be an ‘ideologically produced boundary’ and identifies those who are at the borders of the nation. The other terms which the author has focused on are "minority" and "majority". ‘When used in conjunction with "religion" or "ethnicity" or "culture, "these terms result in a curious ambiguity" as Talal Asad points out in his essay Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Pandey goes back to refer to the conflicts that the Muslims faced during the India-Pakistan partition where they were quite angry and taken aback by Jinnah’s declaration of Pakistan being a secular state. This was totally against the whole point of demanding a separate Muslim state as a result of which the partition happened. Many Muslim were suspected of being open or “closet” Pakistanis during this time as they were seen in support of wanting to be a part of the Muslim Nation State and people doubted whether they’d change their sympathies overnight.

Part II

The partition also led to the driving out of minorities in certain areas of both the nations. These minorities spread across the country territory residing in towns here and there. It was observed by lots of Hindu nationalist press that Pakistan was on its way to establishing itself as an "ek jatiya rashtra". There was a lot of confusion on both the sides as political leaders made statements that sensationalised the whole act of partition.

Part III

Muslim leaders who stayed back in India had to prove their loyalty and had to take responsibility of the Muslim Indians who the leaders of The Muslim League had abandoned. Hence the essay’s title “Can a Muslim be an Indian?” puts forth the major argument in the essay. Newspapers went on to reason out why Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs etc. all considered India as their “janmabhumi” which rendered them as being the “original” or “natural” Indians.

Part IV

The conditions created by the nationalists affect the state that we live in. All of this tested and questioned the loyalty of the minority groups especially Muslims living in India. However a paradox existed in the way ‘nativity’ was dealt with Anglos, Parsis and Muslims on the other hand. The newspaper Vartman attacks Muslims by saying that due to mass conversion of Hindus changing their religion to Islam they also wanted to change the rule in the country. Anglos and Parsis were still said to have aided in to the ‘economic development’ of the nation. The same doesn’t apply to Muslims however, Pandey says. The main reason that the Muslims aren’t considered as ‘Indians’ per se is because they as a community hadn’t accepted “the concept of India’ that the nationalist struggle had propagated unlike the Anglos or the Parsis. A clear us versus them theme had evolved where Hindus as we, the overall majority and the Muslims as the constituent who were expected to learn to live with the ‘we’. The author talks about the new evolving idea of nationalism which sidelined Muslims, Dalits and only those were kept in the forefront who cared about the ‘general interest’ of the nation. There is a subordinate category where the Muslims are invisible. The colonial governance, the nationalist struggle, the divide is what gave rise to the ‘we’ of Hindus and the ‘they’ of the Muslims, according to Gyanendra Pandey.

Part V

Pandey explains that how the partition, national struggle, independence and Muslim invaders raiding lands played its role in the current prevalent divide that we see and the more elaborate construction of the ‘we’. He gives an example of America where ‘whiteness’ comprises of the majority and the other groups get side-lined and compares it to India with a similar setting. The minority groups or castes which were broadly and extensively divided earlier now just got categorized under ‘Hindu’ or ‘Muslim’. The divide that happened geographically took its time to register itself in the minds of the people. The fact that Pakistan is now equal to a foreign nation took its time settling in. Jawaharlal Nehru also made a surprising statement that only those Muslims were allowed to live in India who considered it their own nation and would be ‘loyal’ to the state. The departure of a lot of prominent Muslim League leaders to Pakistan also contributed deeply in widening the divide. Gyanendra Pandey says “History is nothing if it is not a process of contamination: and a visionary politics has to be a continual process of negotiating new beginnings”. History gave rise to the divide between the Muslims and Hindus and the aftermath succeeded in dividing it in our minds.

History

The essay is a synchronic analysis of the situation of Muslims in India in the aftermath of the partition. Pandey relates the events that took place during the partition and the emotions that arose then to understand how the discourse of nationalism, particularly the one surrounding Muslims, was shaped post-independence. The Muslims of India constitute the second largest community in the world. Yet, popular extremist Hindus portray them as outsiders. This belief is driven by the emphasis on the notion of Muslim rulers invading Hindu lands and establishing dominance over Hindus. Romila Thapar, in her essay ‘On Partition’, explains though that during this period the Hindu culture, in fact, thrived greatly. The communal rift that arose between the two communities was triggered by the British with their divide and rule policy. They made out the difference between Hindus and Muslims to be a chasm that was impossible to cross. According to a report by The New Yorker, “Across the Indian subcontinent, communities that had coexisted for almost a millennium attacked each other in a terrifying outbreak of sectarian violence, with Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other—a mutual genocide as unexpected as it was unprecedented”. The movement that was fuelled by hatred and rage has had real consequences in shaping the identities of people in the subcontinent for generations to come. Ayesha Jalal, an eminent Pakistani historian, writes, “[a] defining moment that is neither beginning nor end, partition continues to influence how the peoples and states of postcolonial South Asia envisage their past, present and future”. Pandey’s essay builds on this claim as he explores the struggles of an Indian Muslim in the contemporary scenario with issues related to nationalism, loyalty, and identity. Balraj Puri, in his paper, quotes Khaliq-u-Zaman saying that the “proved positively injurious to the Muslims in India, and on a long view basis to Muslims everywhere”. Moin Shakir, in his book Muslims in Free India, also laments that the Partition left the Islamic community with a sense of “insecurity, frustration, and uncertainty”. Pandey’s essay is thus significant in understanding the plight of the largest minority group of the country to gain insight to the current political situation as well. The essay deals with themes of partition, diaspora, violence, and hybridity. Partition left a conflict in the minds of people and an irreplaceable memoir of the homeland. Violence was a result of the Hindu-Sikh-Muslim riots that was a by-product of partition. Hybridity also happened as a cross between two separate races, plants or cultures. Hybridity is not a new cultural or historical phenomenon.

Related Concepts

Religious Nationalism

India claims to be a secular nation, but Pandey through his essay reveals the deep underlying relationship between Indian nationalism and religion. The nationalist discourse in India has been dominated by a Hinduist ideology (Hindutva) and is largely exclusive of the Islamic community. In the current scenario, there is an evident marginalization of the minorities in India, especially of Muslims, with a clear imposition of the Hindu way of life on all citizens of the country.

Islamophobia

In India, the cultural differences between Hindus and Muslims, emphasized upon by the colonizers, gave birth to a hatred between them. In recent times though, especially after 9/11, a hateful discourse has emerged in several parts of the world that considers Islam to be synonymous with terrorism. It homogenizes all Muslims and reduces their entitlement to several basic human rights. For example, in June 2017, ACT! for America organized a march for people against Islam in the United States. The recent travel ban in the United States that is affective for people from six Muslim majority countries is also an evident step by the State in an anti-Muslim direction. In India as well, the assaulting and lynching of Muslims is increasing day by day. For instance, many cases of cow vigilantes and supporters of Hindutva have been recorded to incite violence against Muslims. Pandey’s essay sheds light into understanding this phenomenon of Islamophobia in the Indian nationalist discourse.

Other works that Refer to the Essay

There are a lot of academic works which have a mention of this article or have referred to this article for example, Abdul Shaban in his paper ‘Muslim girls in Urdu medium schools of Maharashtra: Progress, retention and aspirations’ quotes Pandey’s statement regarding the term ‘Hindu Nationalist’ and relates it to having considerable weight which connotes a particular brand of nationalism in the country. In ‘Islamaphobia in India: a case study of Gujarat 2002’ Kandala Singh makes a reference to Pandey’s work as well where she looks at the Gujarat Muslim violence of 2002 from the perspective of ‘the self’ and ‘the other’. It focuses on the Hindu community’s problem in communication during a case of targeted anti Muslim violence in Gujarat, India 2002 to understand the role of dehumanization and prejudice in causing and legitimising such violence. Vazira Fazira Yacoobali in her work, ’Yeh mulk hamara ghar : The 'national order of things' and Muslim identity in John Mathew Mattan's 'Sarfaroosh’ also makes references to “Can a Muslim be an Indian?” where the author talks about the politics surrounding the word ‘ghar’ i.e. home in relation to territory being associated with identity and culture. Yacoobali argues whether Indian Muslims really do have a ‘ghar’ in India or not which is quite similar to the point Gyanendra Pandey is trying to make in his essay

Can a Muslim Be an Indian?

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