I read with interest the essay by Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi, "The Rank and Status of Indian Muslims," in the Qaumi Awaz of 18 August 1988./1/ It is thought-provoking and worthy of our attention. Its author, after all, is a major Muslim scholar and leader. But it also contains several statements that might not be acceptable to many.

To ascertain what should be the status of Muslims in a country and also their dutiful role in it, Maulana Nadvi looked into the history of Islam and in Islamic Jurisprudence (fiqh), where he found two models. "In the first model," he writes, "the Muslims are rulers, and the country is governed by an Islamic state ... The other situation is where the Muslims form a small, restricted minority at some place, and live in total subjection." For these two situations, according to Maulana Nadvi, Islamic legal and scriptural sources (fiqh and shari'a) provide ample guidance. In other words, the sources which are constantly pronounced by him and others as being totally comprehensive and for all times allow, in fact, for only two options: Muslims should either rule, or be ruled over.

The Maulana, with reference to the first option, mentions the caliphate of the Four Just Caliphs of the first few decades of Islam and also the spread of Muslim rule to distant Spain, but does not point to any country or historical period with reference to the second. We don't learn what, according to him, should be the duties of "subject" Muslims. I imagine the foremost would be to strive to become rulers themselves. Obviously, that would then also be the goal of the non-Muslims in a Muslim state! The real questions, to my mind, are quite different. Does a country automatically become a "Muslim state" if its ruler is a Muslim? Is it not the case that the Muslim kings in history were merely autocratic rulers in the same way as other kings? Does a Muslim state become a caliphate if it happens to control the two holy cities, Mecca and Madina? Does the Maulana really believe that "India was ruled by Muslims for a thousand years?" Was it not really the case that for one thousand years racially and ideologically diverse kings, who did profess Islam as their faith, subjugated and exploited, for their own personal and racial gain, vast numbers of Indian people, including countless Muslims? We indeed have some magnificent monuments of that history still with us, but don't we also know that the same history also contained much that was condemnable? Are our fiqh and shari'a sufficient tools for making sense of these matters of our past, and for drawing guidance from the same for our present?

The Maulana further contends that though the Muslims form a minority in India they should not be called a "minority"; instead they should be referred to as a millat, a community based on a faith. To my mind that is no different from the assertion made earlier by the leaders of the Pakistan movement: the Muslims of India form a separate nation. A second aspect of the Maulana's remark is that it posits India as a conglomeration of diverse such faith-based communities, for he goes on to declare, "We are the only millat in this country to possess God's clear [vazih] message..." These two assumptions on the Maulana's part could be critically essential for his own personal faith, they have otherwise little validity. India is not a conglomeration of millats. Its population does not differentiate itself exclusively in religious terms. There are here many religions and numerous sects, but there are also plenty of diverse regional, linguistic, cultural and racial identities. They all exist here together on the basis of India's "Constitution." That document is not a treaty or covenant between two faith-based communities, which was the case with the treaty between the Muslims and the Jews of Madina, the model implicit in the Maulana's thinking, just as it was many years ago in the thinking of the Jamiat-ul-Ulama. No, the Indian Constitution is a compact between all the citizens of a particular nation, to which they belong as individuals.

Every religion in the world makes the claim that it alone is the sole possessor of God's true message. In that case, if I claim that I, as a Muslim, am the exclusive possessor of "God's clear message," am I not simultaneously proclaiming: "You who believe in other religions, you're all badly mistaken?" And if I believe that all Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Sikhs are utterly mistaken in a matter of such magnitude, how would I grant them intelligence concerning lesser matters? What justification would there be for me to share my life's journey with them? Granted that holding so exclusive a belief might improve my chances in the hereafter, but is not the hereafter itself only a matter of faith after all?

Actually, the society at large in which Indian Muslims live shares an extensively common tenet of faith that all religions strive to reach the same fundamental Reality. That belief may not be acceptable to many a Muslim leader of today, but it has been accepted for centuries in some form or another by most ordinary Muslims. And therein lies the road to a life of peace and equality.

Unfortunately our religious schools produce scholars who know only Islamic Theology and Law. To the best of my knowledge, Firangi Mahal, Deoband, Nadvatul Ulama and other such institutions have never taught a course on Indian religions and philosophies. We have turned away from even the few individual attempts of the past. Al-Biruni's book on these subjects might still get prescribed in some courses at a few American universities, not in India and Pakistan where it is most needed. And any mention of Dara Shikoh and his efforts is only likely to draw our sages' condemnation. That leaves only the words and deeds of our great sufis to guide us. Maulana Nadvi explicitly lists "scholars" [ulama] and "jurists" [fuqaha] as "Muslim leaders," but fails to mention the sufis even once in his essay. Whereas presently -- in fact, at all times -- Indian Muslims -- in fact, all Indians -- need to cultivate the sentiment which centuries ago made Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya exclaim as he watched from the terrace of his hospice devout Hindus going to the bank of the Jamuna: "Every community has its own path and faith, and a direction to which it turns to pray": "har qaume rast rahe, dine va qibla-gahe."

To which his dear disciple, Amir Khusrau, added, "And I set my direction aright by watching the man with the angled cap," and pointed to the cap on his beloved master's head: "man qibla rast kardam bar tarf-i kaj-kulahe."

And it was this sentiment that not too long ago made Ghalib write:

ham muvahhid hain hamara kish hai tark-i rusum
millaten jab mit gayin ajza-i iman ho gayin

"We are unitarians, our practice is to reject all practices;
Faith appears only when separate religious communities disappear"

vafadari ba-shart-i ustavari asl-i iman hai,
mare but-khane men to ka'be men garo birahman ko

"Faith is nothing but unflinching fidelity;
If a Brahmin dies in a temple, honour him by burying him in the Ka'ba."

More than thirty years ago the famous scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith had first pointed out that the Muslims of India were facing a situation for which they could expect to find no guidance from their history: they were now neither rulers nor subjects, but free citizens of a secular democracy. Smith had also hoped that, under the radically new circumstances, Muslim leaders and institutions in India would strive and find a new direction to pursue. His hope, sad to say, has not been fulfilled. Before 1947, M. A. Jinnah and his acolytes declared all Indian Muslims to be one "nation," and then produced the curious example of protecting a "majority" at the cost of a "minority." Likewise, the Jamiat-ul-Ulama of India invoked the concept of a "contract," on the pattern of the contract the Prophet had with the Jews of Madina, as if the Muslims would participate in a free India as a separate religious community or millat, and also behave similarly in every other aspect of their lives. After 1947, Maulana Maudoodi, comfortably secure in Pakistan, announced that he would have no objection at all if the Muslims remaining in India were treated there according to the laws of Manu. While in India, Syed Shahabuddin, Ibrahim Sulaiman Seth, and others continued to declare that Indian Muslims were "one," never specifying one what -- "one nation" or "one millat"? Now Maulana Nadvi says that Indian Muslims are "one millat." If that is indeed the case, what should we then understand from the term, millat-i-islamiya, "the Universal Islamic Community?" If Indian Muslims are all one millat, and so are also Pakistani Muslims and Iranian Muslims, then what exactly does this term mean? On the other hand, if each is an individually distinct millat, what useful purpose is served by invoking the term to differentiate between them?

Whether the Muslims of India call themselves "one nation" or "one millat," politically and otherwise they would only be fatally damaging themselves. No doubt many of the people who hold power in India and numerically belong to the majority community have strong communal tendencies, but surely the proper reaction to a majority's communalism cannot be a communalism of the minority? The latter would only enhance the former. Granted that the Constitution of India gives certain social minorities some special privileges, but it is also well known that privileges, if not carefully defined and monitored, can have serious ill effects. If our true goal is to safeguard the rights of those who are socially and economically oppressed, we can reach it only by invoking socio-economic criteria, not communal and sectarian. In a democracy, a minority can protect itself only by strengthening the democratic structure -- by demanding that the nation's laws and their enforcement should be the same for everyone, and by setting up social and political structures that would allow the citizens of even the smallest unit to come together for the betterment of their lives, thus bettering the life of the nation as a whole. The members of a minority can best do so by participating in all such units as individuals. That used to be the case earlier. It remains an urgent task even now. But the sad truth in India, presently, is that democratic institutions of that nature exist almost exclusively at the Central and State levels. Similar such institutions either do not exist at the level of neighbourhoods, villages, towns and districts -- places where people, or their representatives, can settle "local" affairs through compromises and free give-and-take -- or have been made moribund. Even the political parties, having become highly centralised, provide ordinary citizens no such opportunities. Right now the greatest need is to revive or reclaim these institutions and, once we have them back, to participate in them as "local" representatives, accountable to all the residents of a location, and not run around the country claiming to represent a religion or sect while in fact being answerable to none.

The Maulana concludes his essay by declaring: "The Muslims are the saviours [nijat-dihanda] of this country [India], they are its last hope." We have before us the example of all the so-called "Muslim countries," which contain huge Muslim majority populations and are spread from Indonesia to Morocco. None has an "Islamic" political system or economy that can serve as our final saviour. Anyway, for us to claim that we are the saviours of the world just because we describe ourselves as the followers of the last Prophet is no better than the proverbial boast: "My father was a king." Both could be equally self-deceiving.

The Maulana's final advice to Indian Muslims is: "Do not seek jobs or concessions." I strongly support his position if he actually means that the Muslims should not, qua Muslims, ask for special privileges and concessions in educational institutions and job opportunities. I do so not because I for a moment believe that the Muslims are India's "last" hope, but because I strongly believe that such demands will not solve the problems faced by the weaker elements among Indian Muslims, i.e. those who do not now possess essential educational, financial, and social resources. Experience tells us that "concessions" mostly benefit those who already are in better circumstances. We should also bear in mind that any institution readily giving "concessions" soon begins to decline in status and standards. There is absolutely no reason to believe that if every class at the Aligarh Muslim University contained seventy percent Muslim students -- who are admitted without any reference to other qualifications -- the university's standards and reputation would automatically improve. Nor would it solve the economic problems faced by Indian Muslims. After all, far more Muslim students have always studied at other universities all over India than at the AMU. Blindly granting privileges to all Muslim students at Aligarh would only cast a shadow over the achievements of the worthier and more talented among them.

N O T E S

/*/ The Urdu original appeared in Qaumi Awaz (Lucknow), August 27, 1988.
/1/ For an English translation of Maulana Nadvi's Urdu article, see Appendix 1.