A plurality of visions and values

Even though all world religions, to use Max Weber's terminology, have resisted modernity, no one has treated modernity with greater contempt or spent more energy in opposing it than Islam.

This tendency of Islam is often understood to have contributed to its ever-growing capacity for breeding religious violence at all levels. Despite its uniqueness, Indian Islam's response to modernity is not significantly different from the Islams of the other parts of the world.

The book under review seeks to explain this polemical puzzle by undertaking historical investigation deploying a rather non-conventional methodology.

It argues that there is some solid evidence in Indian Muslim political discourse of the nineteenth century that advocated multi-culturalism, aspired for enrichment of cultural traditions from non-Islamic sources, and recognised the relevance of modernity, and its received wisdom.

The major factor that inspires the author to conduct research of this kind is the suggestion of Prof. Christopher Hill, the famous historian who worked on 17th century England (1912-2003).

According to Hill, historians should take interest in the history of ideas as much for their capacity to influence societies as for revealing the societies that give rise to them. The author of this book, Mushirul Hasan, had once faced a violent assault by Muslim fundamentalists for his defence of freedom of speech in the premises of Delhi's Jamia Millia, which he currently heads.

In fact, Hasan and Irfan Habib are the only two Indian historians who have met with such unfortunate backlashes for their progressive ideas in recent years. That personal experience, I believe, might have encouraged Hasan to look into the vestiges of tolerance and multi-culturalism in Indian history more passionately.

While the intellectual ambition of the book is huge, the breadth of its analysis remains limited. By focusing on the writings and life experiences of only a handful of prominent intellectuals, the author has deliberately narrowed the significance of his enterprise.

The study is only confined to the intellectual life of nineteenth-century Delhi. The political and cultural visions of major scholars like Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan, Zakarullah, Nazir Ahmed, Hali and Ghalib are examined through their writings.

While the writings and views of the poet Ghalib or reformers like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan have received wide attention, the views of other scholars like Zakarullah or Nazir Ahmed have been slighted ""even by some of the prominent scholars of Indian Islam like Mohammed Mujeeb, I H Qureshi, and Aziz Ahmed.

Seen in this background, the effort by Hasan to revisit their ideas, and contextualise them in the large debate of multi-culturalism and pluralism is indeed a praiseworthy one.

Furthermore, this endeavour to look at the history of ideas with a fresh perspective serves the objective of rediscovering the lost messages of history better.

The scholars whose lives and writings are examined here were convinced that their time was not of moral or intellectual decrepitude with a few voices crying in the wilderness, but of healthy intellectual activities. Of course, these individuals were aware of the importance of their intellectual interventions.

While each individual story has a fascinating tale to share, the friendship of Zakarullah and C F Andrews is almost exceptionally bold and unique. Using Andrews' book on Zakarullah as a source, Hasan tells us how a leading Muslim intellectual was supportive of and respectful to Western/Christian intellectual tradition, and how he recognised the importance of their synthesis.

Each of these scholars, according to the author, was a proponent of pluralistic political and intellectual culture. They were open to ideas of rival interpretations, theologies, and even appreciated them for their openness, and civility by others.

Throughout the text, the author has shown how best these scholars attempted to reconcile and integrate the religious and secular discourses, and how they brought a secularised twist to communitarian debates.

Yet, these intellectuals barely dreamt of a unified society where everyone shared same beliefs and practices. Without advocating the synthesis of religious traditions or dissolutions of religious boundaries, they were willing to advocate the idea of "let a hundred flowers bloom" (p.250.) One wonders whether such imagination could ever be realised as feasible political projects in real world because they appear so under-developed, disconnected, and rather loose in their shape.

One noteworthy aspect of the analysis is the author's attempt to show how there has been enormous stress on the study of Muslim politics but not much analysis of Muslim political discourse (p. 40). Readers would have definitely profited more if the author had elaborated on this observation instead of just making a passing note.

On the positive side, this study deals with Islam as experienced and interpreted by some learned men in a localised environment. In contrast to those who see Muslim culture and tradition in the singular, the study stresses the plurality of visions and heterogeneity of their core values, and beliefs.

Through this, it contributes to the never-ending debate on whether the commonality of faith or the diversity of expressing and living Islam is stronger.

The never-ending collision between fact and fiction about India's so-called Muslim era has been a perennial source of confusion for scholars, especially for those historians who are reluctant to endorse sweeping generalisations about its Muslim community.

For the last two decades or so, this community has entered into another era of troubled times, and September 11, 2001, has added a global dimension to it. At a time when the widely shared dark images of medieval atrocities have become dominant facts in India's political discourse, this book has offered something fresh about Indian history.

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MUSLIM INTELLECTUALS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY DELHI

Mushirul Hasan
Oxford University Press
Price: Rs 575; Pages: 313