The liberal humanitarians of Awadh

Given its impact on the lives of South Asians, the partition of India has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. Hasan has examined the story of 1947 through the biographies of the Kidwais (or Qidwis), "a small but well-known family in Awadh".

Hasan's account of the social-family history of the Masauli Kidwais is fascinating. The author explains that his real "object is to emphasize how popular culture formed an important background to and produced a favourable environment for the steady but often contested emergence of assimilative thought and liberal convictions".

The story of the cultured and refined life of Muslims in the qasbas is woven around the generation of the Kidwais that made an impact on not only the politics of Uttar Pradesh but India.

Every available source of historical evidence is collected and the drama of Indian history is presented though the life and times of Wilayat Ali Kidwai, the role of women, and the story continues into post-independence India.

Hakim Ajmal Khan, Dr Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, the Ali Brothers, Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai were the tallest "authentic" leaders and who represented the best values of the Muslim community. Mushir appropriately describes them as practitioners of "the liberal-humanitarian ideology". Where are such leaders in 2004?

The Khilafat and non-cooperation campaigns of the 1920s witnessed a new upsurge in India and it is Ajmal Khan's great influence that restored inter-community peace during the Delhi riots of 1919 and this led Andrews to write: "I saw the Hakim Sahib in all the true greatness of his character. Night and day he laboured for peace...."

The story does not end here. The author says, "What is vividly portrayed in Ajmal Khan's public life is not a moribund or a benign ineffectual pluralism, but the vibrancy of a composite culture." A clear message is that the Muslim community in post-independence India does not have an Ajmal Khan who can stand as authentic and tall leaders of Indian Muslims.

Another Kidwai family star was Rafi Ahmed Kidwai who died in 1956. He "... is still remembered as one of the ablest administrators the Indian government had, a man of swift decisions whose trust in his subordinates made it a stimulating experience," the author writes.

Rafi was an important leader of the Uttar Pradesh Congress and the author describes his activities like the initiation of the UP Tenancy Bill against the backdrop of the intrigues within the Congress party, which gives it a very contemporary colour. Azad himself mentions this in 1923. "Strife has urged beyond its precinct so much that there is hardly any deterrent left to it," he writes.

The UP Congress story of 1937-39 has a contemporary relevance. While Muslim support to the Congress was quite sizeable, a gradual erosion took place principally due to the anti-cow slaughter riots in UP and the activities of the Gauraksha Sabha and the Hindi Pracharni Sabha.

Hindu-Muslim polarisation is the story of the entire twentieth century and the Hindi and Urdu question ""Hindi for the Hindus and Urdu for the Muslims "" laid the foundations for separation of the two communities. The public policies of the colonial rulers and the responses of the political classes only heightened this separatism from the mid-1930s.

The author captures the reality : "The Pakistan movement profoundly influenced the lives of the qasba dwellers. Usually benign and tranquil, Radauli turned volatile with some celebrating the resignation of Congress ministries. The Paradise was lost and Congress Muslim candidates in elections were put on the defensive by the march of the Muslim League."

But everyone was not despondent and people like Anwar Jamal Kidwai continued their efforts to build institutions for secular and modern causes and the growing vicious atmosphere of communalism did not dishearten courageous members of the Kidwai family tree.

Social changes like the abolition of zamindari and hurt feelings of the Taluqdars change the ambience and ethos of Lucknow's vibrant culture. The eclipse of Lucknow as the cultural headquarters of the best of Muslim-Hindu traditions is visible to anyone visiting this city in 2004.

The author is nostalgic about the qasba culture. He writes, "the qasbas of Awadh were the sites where religious loyalties were more often than not fused with an emerging pan-Indian identity in a seamless web of symbols and sentiments. Religious differences and cultural diversities did not necessarily perpetuate separate and antagonist interests."

The book clearly leads to the conclusion that the puritan qasba simplicity of cultural harmony could not have been unchanging because life and politics outside the qasbas impacted everyone. If the Barabanki district had one kind of story, its linkage with Lucknow created new situations and Lucknow, in turn, was influenced by the macro-political developments in the rest of India.

The politics of UP not only influenced the lives of the qasbas, it also influenced the political destiny of the whole of India. It is not without reason that UP continues to be influential in Indian politics because pre-independence political history was to a great extent made in UP.

The most important achievement of Mushir's scintillating narration is his capacity to convey the pleasures of the qasba's cultural synthesis along with the pains of separation which continue till today. Mushir's family histories of Kidwais demolishes the armchair post-modernists who relate every evil with modernity and every bliss with qasbas.

The history of human societies is not static. History is a narration of social dialectics and every generation learns that there was nothing like Milton's Paradise Lost . The qasbas of UP, as part of the making of new history, had to end up in the dustbin of the past.

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FROM PLURALISM TO SEPARATISM:
QASBAS IN COLONIAL AWADH

Mushirul Hasan
Oxford University Press
Pages: 334
Price: Rs 650