[Reader-list] Indian Islam, nationhood etc.

[Javed]

India's Islam
by Arun Nair

Firstly, I must apologise if this article smacks of an impolite
urgency and prescriptive-ness. I mean not to be arrogant, but as
someone addressing you on a matter of deep concern to us all, I felt
that there was little room for ceremonial apologies before every
sentence. Also, as an Indian middle-class Hindu who grew up in the
Babri-masjid 90s, it is easy for me to say some of the things I say
here.

Secondly, I address you, the reader, as an Indian citizen, not as a
saintly Kabir or Gandhi preaching love for humanity. Our collective
interests are being threatened by communal forces from within and
without. WE MUST ACT. We must not merely lament about our respective
versions of helplessnesses and others' faults. We are free today
because India's greatest generation shook off the ghosts that
bedevilled them, and took action to protect our interests. I implore
you to continue that legacy.

Thirdly, while I will go into what in my opinion are highly plausible
theories of Indian nationhood and nationalism, my primary aim here is
not to write any treatise on politics or sociology, but to protect our
rights to belong equally to India – our common ancestral land – as
Indians, and as free, dignified humans.

Fourthly, my ideas will be presented largely based on first
principles, also known as common-sense.

My thesis is this: India must boldly assert its claim on Islamic
civilisation in the subcontinent. That is the key to end our communal
woes.

This does not mean that India must become Islamic, or that Indian
Muslims must be somehow Hinduised. The idea, instead, is to campaign
relentlessly for India's Islamic civilisational authenticity.

In the Indian psyche, Pakistan stands for Islam. Sadly for us and
admittedly in a weaker form, Islam is also synonymous with Pakistan
and everything Pakistani. This wouldn't have been so bad if Pakistan
wasn't, well, un-Indian. We must use every tool at our disposal as a
people to destroy the entrenched idea of Pakistani ownership of
subcontinental Islam from within India. More importantly, this idea
must be attacked from without it, because that is where it originates.

Our chief weapon to eliminate Islam-Pakistan hyphenation from the
subcontinent will be an authentic claim: the centre of Islamic
civilisation in South Asia has always been undivided India, and after
partition, India is its natural primary heir. The fact that a few
million Muslims left India during partition to settle in our erstwhile
outlying provinces doesn't change this. Neither does the fact that the
Indian people chose a progressive, secular, democratic polity for
their republic.

In our minds and in the world's view, subcontinental Islam is under
Pakistani occupation. The historical Indo-centric nature of
subcontinental Islam should be used to throw off this psychological
yoke. I urge Indians to rally together once again as our greatest
generation did to protect our collective interests as the people of
India. I urge friends of India all over the world to join us. Both in
terms of geography and spirit, Islam in the subcontinent that
coexisted and flourished alongside Indic cultures, has always been
more Indian than Pakistani. If any single country represents
subcontinental Islam as it historically was, it is India. Not
Pakistan.

India's Mughals. India's Qutub Minar, Gol Gumaz, and Taj Mahal.
India's Kabir. India's Tipu Sultan, Shah Jahan, Akbar, and, why not,
Aurangazeb. India's Urdu. India's Ghalib and Khusro. India's Delhi,
Lucknow, Mysore, Hyderabad, Malabar, and Agra.

Good history has to be deliberately written

The people of India inherited thousands of years of history and
associated baggage that we didn't really ask for.

Keep in mind though that history is not a dead object - it is
unfurling even as you read this. We may not be able to change what
happened in India 200 years ago. But 200 years from now when people
look back, they will see the Indian history that our generation wrote.
It becomes then our duty, both as Indians and as sensible humans, to
write it well.

It is a great privilege to deliberately be able to write a part of
something grand like the history of India. The first generation of
Indians who did a coordinated job of writing our history was the one
that won us our independence – our "freedom-generation". They could
have attempted to write their Indian chapter any way they wanted to.
We could have had a dark, China-style communism, for instance. But,
given the Indian context, the freedom-generation chose the most
egalitarian, elegant, and humanist theme they could come up with: a
secular, liberal, constitutional, democratic republic, that takes its
strength from its inherent pluralism and its inheritance of one of
mankind's greatest civilisations.

The freedom-generation's legacy for us is the deliberate and
intelligent manner in which they forged an Indian national identity.
Thanks to their efforts, our nationality is a solid concept. An Indian
from Karnataka has a robust nationalistic bond with Indians say from
Punjab, Gujarat, Assam, or Delhi. Regardless of what languages we
speak, we all recognise Marathi, Tamil, Bengali and Telugu as Indian
languages – ancestral assets that all Indians collectively own.

It is a mistake, however, to think that the nation-building task they
began is complete. Indian nationalism is not an idea frozen in time,
but an evolving one. We, the successors of India's freedom-generation,
must exercise our prerogative to define its finer contours and bring
in new ideas to enrich it. Furthermore, we have an obligation to both
our founding fathers and India's posterity to do this while being true
to our quintessential Indian-ness, the just, egalitarian nature of our
country as embodied in our constitution.

Given that India's situation is not as pressing as it once was, new
nationalist leaders – giants of the stature of Mahatma Gandhi, Khan
Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Subhash Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, Jawaharlal
Nehru, Abul Kalam Azad or Vallabhai Patel – may be difficult to
emerge. There is no need to though. We succeeded them, and we must
take this task upon ourselves. The freedom-generation watches over us
in the form of our fraternity as Indians which they moulded at a great
cost, and our constitution.

Indian Nationalism - the idea of Indian brotherhood

Amidst all this noisy consternation of Taslima Nasrin, Babri-masjid,
BJP-Congress etc., its easy to lose sight of the really big pictures.
Consider, for instance, this question: what really is the essence of
Indian nationalism? Why do we all feel so closely tied to India and to
each other?

My answer is that, to put it simply, without the land we call India,
Indians either have no identity, or very anaemic identities. All
Indians share this same curious relation to India.
When we are born to the same human mother, we are brothers. Our
constitution formed by our freedom-generation explicitly asserts
fraternity among the Indian people. Fraternity – brotherhood. In what
sense are we brothers?

Indians are brothers in the sense that the motherland that birthed my
identity, also birthed yours. India is our ancestral land, and we
should be proud of everything associated with it. Everything in India,
its religions, its good and its bad, its languages, its glories and
struggles, its rivers, its emperors, its heroes and villains,
everything – is intricately weaved into our consciousnesses of who we
are, where we come from, what our place in this world is, and how
other humans see us. Without that identity, we are crippled.

Ours is no ordinary brotherhood. Indian people didn't come into being
merely a few centuries ago. We are an ancient civilisation, and what
we have is a civlisational brotherhood – a bond arising from all of
our belonging to the civilisation that unfolded in the same land,
India. That brotherhood was formally declared through the constitution
in 1949, but it existed much before that. Before our greatest
generation gave it a concrete wording in the 20th century, it was well
moulded in the crucible that is our land, in the fire of the previous
several dozen, if not more, centuries.

Every country of the world has stories that define their national
essences. What is the most essential feature of Indian nationalism? It
is our Indian identity – our being tied to India, and our
civilisational brotherhood to each other in being bonded so. All
Indians, regardless of their religion or language, has this bond with
India and with each other.
Indians must pause for a while and think why our anthem's going over
our landmarks is so emotive. Or why Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Christian
insignia are powerful. Or why merely thinking of our history, or our
Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, UP, Punjab and Bengal moves all of us
equally.

It's because they remind us of our organic ties to India, and the
brotherhood that we have with each other. This natural bond given to
us by our glorious and at times bloody history is important. If we
don't uphold this bond with the ferocity that our greatest generation
did, if we don't use it to protect our common interests, our country
will remain weak.

Our country's nature

What is the nature of our country? What does it mean for something to be Indian?
For one, if all of us Indians could get together today and declare in
one voice that India stands for certain values, then that would be an
authoritative statement. India is what Indians say it is. If, say, the
people of the then-Indian civilisation – Hindus, Muslims, Christians,
Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains – had made such a statement 400 years ago
and preserved its spirit through centuries, that would have probably
have been one of the greatest Indian texts.

If you will recall, a very similar event actually did happen in 1949,
when the founding fathers of the Indian republic adopted, enacted, and
gave to ourselves - the sovereign people of India - our constitution.
The preamble reads,

"WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India
into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure
to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and
integrity of the Nation.
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949,
do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION."

In an absolute sense, the values of justice, liberty, and equality
have an intuitive appeal to all humans everywhere. However, the
formidable authority of our constitution comes from the crushed but
proud people who paid a very high price for our right to live as
equals and as dignified humans in India. We must take their word for
what India is – they must have known and dreamt quite a bit about it.

India's greatest generation definitely realised that divisivism,
self-doubt, and other demons from our past would haunt the republic
they formed. Which is why the constitution is important. It helps us
protect our country from ourselves.

The Constitution. Indian Nationalism. How we will defend India.

Those who doubt the moral power of our freedom-generation, our
constitutional ethos, and Indian nationalism need only look at
Pakistan, which renounced all these in its attempts not to be seen as
Indian. Pakistan's leaders, in trying to defend their divisve national
philosophy, forced the most horrible bankruptcy on its people.

Rather than using Indian nationalism and the constitution to tackle
our communal issues, I am appalled at the general trend to merely
lament that India is on its way to being declared an non-secular state
- the hundreds of millions of Indians fully intent on preventing this
notwithstanding.

Pakistan-style Islamism, Ummah-isation of Hinduism, alienation of Indian Muslims

There are three major trends in India today that are relevant to our topic.

Firstly, India has very serious conflicts of interest with Pakistan.
We have gone to war with that country several times. Its society has
issues with radicalisation and a general religious orthodoxy. Its
regimes have relentlessly attacked India's internal fault-lines over
the past few decades in the name of Islam. Tens of thousands of Indian
soldiers have died defending our country against them. It is
distinctly un-Indian and anti-Indian.

Secondly, Hinduism is, for the lack of a better word, Ummah-ising, and
this at times takes horrifyingly militant forms. I, given my personal
biases, am all for Hindu solidarity and abolishing pseudo-secularism.
However, an argument for Hindu-solidarity should not be allowed to
take the form of an un-Indian religionalism that goes against the very
spirit of India.

Thirdly, Indian Muslims feel alienated from their own country. In
India, Pakistan is synonymous with Islam. Unfortunately, Islam is also
weakly synonymous with Pakistan. This has significantly undermined
Indian Muslims' political standing in India vis-a-vis their fellow
citizens.

The havoc all this has wreaked on our society must not be ignored.
India was home to one of humanity's greatest Islamic cultures for well
over 1000 years. It is not, by any means, a dead part of our culture -
nearly 160 million Indians are Muslims, several national icons are
Muslims, mosques and Islamic architecture litter the country, and
Muslim holidays are shared by all. And yet, to a lot of Indians, Islam
doesn't feel Indian, but Pakistani. Despite their respective religious
majorities, it is odd that Buddhism doesn't feel Sri Lankan, or
Hinduism itself, Nepali.

The partition of India and secular India's deprivation of its Islamic
authenticity

Has anyone thought what has actually happened here? Why is it that in
India, an ancient civilisational land which has a unique Islamic
culture just like Egypt, Iran, and Iraq, Islam is seen as somehow
foreign? That is not because of Islam's being inconsistent with India
– 1000 years and more of history and our combined freedom struggle
should have proven this by now.

During partition, founders of Pakistan expropriated the subcontinent's
Islamic identity for defining their nation, Pakistan. Pakistan's
struggle to keep its ideology alive has robbed us of our Islamic
authenticity. India's secular nature not-withstanding, the ardour with
which Pakistan argued itsideology and pushed its exclusivist national
philosophy within the larger Islamic community ensured that it gained
some traction in the Indian society. Pakistan's military conflicts
with "Hindu" India only amplified this.

It only takes a few of decades of intense activity for a new Zeitgeist
to take root in a society. Consider denazification of Germany, China's
turn into capitalism, and India's own economic liberalisation. 30
years – that is all it takes for a young generation to grow up shaped
by a pervasive ideology.

Though quite smaller than India, Pakistan is by no means a tiny
nation. It is the world's 6th most populous country, one of its major
economies, and a prominent player during the cold war. One cannot find
fault with it - Pakistan had to defend its national philosophy. It has
expended a tremendous amount of national effort over the last 60 years
in achieving a strong association between subcontinental Islam and
itself.

They have succeeded splendidly. Islam in the subcontinent today is
seen as prominently Pakistani and India's secular fabric warped by
that perception. Pakistan is an Islamic nation - this somehow gives
them a stronger claim on everything Islamic in the subcontinent. The
world simply does not recognise India's Islamic authenticity, and
neither do many Indians within. India continues to be associated
primarily with Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, but not Islam.

Does religious brotherhood entirely negate the organic bonds a human
has to his ancestral land and its history, and to his fellow humans
who share the same bonds as him? I don't really know. What I do know
is that this is not the principle on which the Indian republic was
founded, and its definitely not an Indian value. Religious supremacism
and breaking up of Indian people are un-Indian philosophies. It goes
against the very spirit of our freedom struggle, nationalism, and our
constitution.

Indians must remember that new Pakistani generations do not even have
the same right to speak for India's Muslims that their earlier
generations might have had. Indian democracy has proven this
unnecessary anyway.

Indo-Pak culture-drift and attempts at an unnatural bonhomie

There is a delusion among the political class and Indian people that
our shared past can be used to achieve friendly relations between
India and Pakistan. My view is that in doing so, we are only
reinforcing the internal Islam-Pakistan hyphenation.

When historical developments asunder a people, over a period of time
the newly formed groups drift increasingly farther from one another.
Once upon time, Myanmar and Sri Lanka were part of India, just like
Pakistan and Bangladesh. Afghanistan was part of several Indian
empires. Today, though at a national level we have very cordial
relations, they are distinctly unfamiliar to us.

Such a natural drift has definitely taken place between India and
Pakistan. The strongest bond between us that keeps us in each others'
national memories is not anything positive that we share, but the
acrid legacy of partition. It's hard for me as an Indian, for
instance, to imagine such an Islamism taking hold of Pakistan if it
were under Akbar's rule. That is, if it were under genuinely
Indian-style Islamic rule.

I am not suggesting we should actively pursue enmity with Pakistan or
vilify it. However, its being clumped together with Indian Muslims is
simply not healthy for India. What has Pakistan's 'leadership' of
subcontinental Muslims, its advocacy of religious supremacism within,
and its enmity with India effectively accomplished? It has robbed
India of its genuine Islamic authenticity in the world's eyes, and
caused non-Muslim Indians to reject the culture of an un-Indian enemy.
Pakistan has highlighted Indian Muslims' being Islamic and
consistently de-emphasized their being Indian.

Pursuing an unnatural bonhomie with Pakistan and stressing our
similarities with them will only weaken our case for our differences,
which are very real. To uphold our national interest, we must assert
and amplify these differences.

Replace Islam-Pakistan hyphenation with Islam-India hyphenation in the
subcontinent

I urge Indians to spearhead a change of perception of Islam in the
subcontinent. Anything that prevents Indian Muslims' fully asserting
their claim on India as Indian citizens is against the national
interest. The strong association in India between subcontinental Islam
and the present day un-Indian Pakistan must go.

It is tempting to claim that all South Asian countries share Islamic
civilization equally. It may be polite and civil to do so, and it may
even have some historical merit, but it's a weak claim for our
purposes. It doesn't have the necessary boldness and self-conviction
to be effective. It also doesn't forcefully argue for India's Islamic
authenticity. Our aim is to end Islam-Pakistan hyphenation for the
welfare of a billion humans, not to be fair observers of history. We
must hence push the strongest nationalistic claim possible: Islam in
the subcontinent is Indian, and it always has been.

Indian Islam never 'went' anywhere – it is alive and well amidst us.
Our nationalism and constitution are guarantees that it will thrive if
Pakistan would let go of it. When the world thinks of Hinduism in
South Asia, it thinks of India. Sikhism, it thinks of India. Buddhism,
India. When it thinks of Islam in South Asia, it must think of India.
Everyone in the subcontinent will be better off. Everyone.

The idea that Islam in the subcontinent is primarily Indian can gain
currency only through a concerted nationalist campaign. No apologies
should be made for such a movement. No one need be convinced of its
proponents' "patriotism". The obvious worthiness of the cause, its
truth, and its urgency are justifications enough.

What ideas might such a campaign seek to make current?

The countries in our region share an intertwined, messy history. We
have a lot in common - languages, religions, culture, quirks - all
part of our common and colourful heritage.

However, if our historical and religious assets must be divided
amongst us, then the worthiest inheritor of Islamic heritage in the
subcontinent can only be India. Not Pakistan, not Bangladesh, not Sri
Lanka, not Myanmar, not Nepal. India is the only nation that has been
true to the historical spirit of Indian Islam – that of flourishing
alongside other Indic faiths in India.

Slay our demons ourselves

Has it ever struck you that in our country, we have a vicious
circularity of the following sort: we feel dismayed that the
country/political class/leadership has done nothing for us; a form of
apathy and resignation sets in; the country/political class/leadership
continues to do nothing; we feel increasingly more dismayed.

We are a democracy. We individually must act. Things won't happen if we don't.
I urge Indians to assert India's secularism and nationalism to fight
alienation of the Muslim community from Indian mainstream. This battle
is the easier one to win – there are hundreds of millions of
reasonable Indians, the Indian constitution, the liberal press, the
legacy of our freedom-generation, and truth and justice on our side.

I also urge Indians to fight Pakistani supremacy of subcontinental
Islam from the outside. That is the root of all our problems. That is
the key battle in India's war against communalism. We must learn to
say, "Thanks, but no thanks. I understand what you mean, but this is
not really true" to anyone who stresses commonalities of any sort in
the subcontinent.

Who will go first?

Based on the concept of ownership of our destiny, what are the answers
to these questions:

"But how can non-Muslims claim that Islam in the subcontinent is
Indian when it is represented by Pakistan and Indian Muslims
themselves imply so?"

"How can Indian Muslims make the Indo-centric claim when there is a
genuine sense of their alienation in India and rest of Indian society
accuses them of siding with Pakistan. We cannot move against Pakstani
Muslims. There is a lot in common between us."

I don't know! I am definitely going, in my own way. That I know. I
will not ever treat any Indian by as automatically allied with a
foreign, inimical power. I will continue making people aware of the
need to end the subcontinental Islam-Pakistan association and replace
it with Islam-India.

We shall NOT vilify. We shall have faith.

Indians should stop vilifying each other. Not because it would be
saintly to do so, but because it only weakens our unity.

Our nationalism and our constitution are solid stuff. Our greatest
generation did their job well. If we must challenge our fellow
Indians, invoke these instruments. Face with stead-fast stoicism any
slurs, any accusations of you being an anti-Indian Muslim or a
communal Hindutvawadi. Let the diatribe die down. Repeat your
arguments invoking our nationalism, constitution, and your reasoning
again. Do not ask anyone to 'prove' his or her patriotism. It's
demeaning to do so.

Satyameva Jayate – truth alone triumphs. If you are right, you will
win. Have faith in our country and in every Indians' goodness and
genuine attachment to their land.

Augmenting India's ideological basis

Earlier I mentioned that our work on Indian nationhood is not a frozen
process, but a continuing one. We can and must correct any earlier
mistakes that continue to torment India's communal harmony.

If the greatest challenge the freedom-generation faced was ending the
British rule and forming a stable republic, the greatest challenge
before us is to take back leadership of subcontinental Islam from
Pakistan. Our challenge is to do this without sacrificing India's
secular nature.

To tackle our new communal challenges in the 21st century, I propose
the following:
1. Secularism will continue to remain the Indian union's lynch pin. It
should not, however, require any particular religious group's giving
up their right to assert religious solidarity. We should genuinely
address any concerns about hypocrisy in the name of secularism.

2. India is a mature concept, and we should actively use it to tackle
the challenges before us. Secularism is an integral part of our
nationhood and a historically irreversible development. It follows
that religionalism – wherever it is practised – is distinctly
un-Indian. Within India, it is also anti-Indian in the sense that they
weaken India and goes against its spirit.

3. The natural heir to Islamic civilisation in the subcontinent is
India. Subcontinental Islam has always been an Indian phenomenon.
Pakistan's oft-reinforced association with Indian Muslims must be
destroyed.

4. India's brotherhood with its neighbours is dying. Soon there will
be an Indian generation which doesn't have a single Indian born before
partition. Every single human in the subcontinent would have been born
in the countries as they existed after partition. The continuing
attempts to maintain an unnatural bonhomie with India's hostile
neighbours is not a tenable project - Pakistan has moved too far away
from what was once India.

Indian Muslims. India's Islam.

A shockingly large amount of our national energy is wasted in
countering the effects of Islam-Pakistan hyphenation in the
subcontinent.

The solution is simple. Reclaim the part of Indian identity that was
robbed of us some 60 years back. If India is Hindu, then for similar
reasons, it is also Buddhist, Sikh, Christian - and Islamic. Purported
authority over sub-continental Islam by other entities in the
subcontinent is an outrageous farce that must be ended right away.

There is no obligation to do this meekly. India doesn't have merely a
substantial claim or merely an equal claim. It simply has more right
to subcontinental Islamic heritage than anyone else by an
overwhelmingly large margin, period. We must use it for our national
well-being.

Who can assert subcontinental Islam's Indian nature boldly, loudly,
without an iota of self-doubt or hesitation? Who needs this to be done
most urgently? Who suffers from a deprivation of their right to belong
to India the most? The Hindus? Sikhs? Buddhists? Christians? Jains?
Clearly not. Who else?

The Indian Muslims. The others are left distinctly poorer and their
country's communal harmony stressed, but their Indian genuineness is
unquestioned within India and the world over. There is not going to be
an un-Indian leader-nation for India's Sikhs, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists
and Christians in our neighbourhood any time soon.

http://indianmuslims.in/indias-islam/