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Tombs and Dark Houses: Ideology, Intellectuals, and Proletarians in the Study of Contemporary Indian Islam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Peter B. Mayer
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Abstract

Each upsurge of Hindu-Muslim tension in India brings in its wake scholarly and journalistic articles that highlight the frustrations of Indian Muslims and that raise serious questions about their commitment to India's secular democracy. The philosophical and empirical bases of these accounts are challenged by findings that suggest that region, poverty, illiteracy, and the working-class position of Indian Muslims are more significant in shaping their political outlook than religion. In contrast with the “orientalist” orthodoxy, this study finds the views of Indian Muslims to be diverse, complex, and well-integrated into the political perspectives of the linguistic regions in which they reside.

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , May 1981 , pp. 481 - 502
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Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1981

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References

1 The pre-Independence period has been treated extensively by: Ahmad, A., Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan (London: Oxford University Press, 1967Google Scholar); Ali, C. M., The Emergence of Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Azad, A. K., India Wins Freedom (Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1959)Google Scholar; Bayly, C. A., The Local Roots of Indian Politics: A llahabad 1880–1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Binder, L., Religion and Politics in Pakistan (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Engineer, A., Islam-Muslim India (Bombay: Lok Vangmaya Griha [Pvt.] Ltd., 1975)Google Scholar; Faruqi, Z. H., The Deoband School and the Demand for Pakistan (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1963)Google Scholar; Gopal, R., Indian Muslims: A Political History (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1959)Google Scholar; Hardy, P., The Muslims of British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Khaliquzzaman, C., Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore: Longmans, 1961)Google Scholar; Lelyveld, D., Aligarh's First Generation (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Malik, H., Moslem Nationalism in India and Pakistan (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Qureshi, I. H., The Muslim Community of the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent (610–1947) (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1962)Google Scholar, and The Struggle for Pakistan (Karachi: University of Karachi, 1965)Google Scholar; Robinson, F., Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces, 1860–1923 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Sayeed, K. B., Pakistan: The Formative Phase (Karachi: Pakistan Publishing House, 1960)Google Scholar; Shakir, M., Khilafat to Partition: A Survey of Major Political Trends Among Indian Muslims During 1919–1947 (New Delhi: Kalamkar Prakashan, 1970)Google Scholar; Smith, W. C., Islam in Modern History (New York: Mentor Books, 1957)Google Scholar, and Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1946)Google Scholar.

2 The political outlook of contemporary Indian Muslims has been discussed by a number of scholars. See esp.: Ahmad, Imtiaz, “Economic and Social Change,” in Imam, Zafar, ed., Muslims in India (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1975)Google Scholar, “Secularism and Communalism,” Economic and Political Weekly, Special Number, July 1969, pp. 1137–58, and “Religion in Politics: A Comment,” loc. cit., Jan. 8, 1972, pp. 81–86; A. Ahmed, Islam Modernism;). Elder, W., “Religious Beliefs and Political Attitudes,” in Smith, D. E., ed., South Asian Politics and Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)Google Scholar (cited hereafter as SAPR); Z. H. Faruqi, “Indian Muslims and the Ideology of the Secular State,” in SAPR; Ghurye, G. S., Social Tensions in India (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1968)Google Scholar; Gupta, S., “Moslems in Indian Politics,” India Quarterly, No. 18 (Oct. 1962), pp. 355–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hasan, S. M., “Indian Muslims: Have They Transnational Loyalties?” Illustrated Weekly of India 101 (March 30, 1980): 8–13Google Scholar; Hassnain, S. E., Indian Muslims: Challenge and Opportunity (Bombay: Lalvani Publishing House, 1968)Google Scholar; Hussain, S. A., The Destiny of Indian Muslims (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1965)Google Scholar; Hussaini, S. K., “Indian Muslims: A Community of Frustrated Millions,” Illustrated Weekly of India 101 (March 30, 1980): 14–15Google Scholar; Rosenthal, E. I. J., Islam in the Modern National State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Smith, D. E., India as a Secular State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Political Implications of Asian Religions,” in SAPR; W. C. Smith, Islam in Modern History; Spear, P., “The Position of the Muslims, Before and After Partition,” in Mason, P., ed., India and Ceylon: Unity and Diversity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Wright, T. P. Jr., “Muslim Legislators in India: Profile of a Minority Elite,” Journal of Asian Studies 23 (1964): 253–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “The Effectiveness of Muslim Representation in India,” in SAPR, and “The Muslim League in South India since Independence: A Study in Minority Group Political Strategies,” American Political Science Review 60, 3 (1966): 579–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Additional references may be found in the bibliographies of: Seminar 106 (June 1968), “Minority in Crisis: A Symposium on the Present Situation of the Muslims”; Seminar 125 (Jan. 1970)Google Scholar “Secularism in Crisis”; Seminar 174 (Feb. 1974) “Indian Muslims”; and Seminar 240 (Aug. 1979) “The Muslim Condition.”

3 One exception to this observation is a survey conducted by Dr. Gopal Krishna. Although I have discussed his findings with him informally, I have been unable to consult any published account of his work.

4 “Political Implications,” pp. 3–4. Smith uses the same methodology in considering secularism in South Asia. See India, Chap. 2.

5 “Political Implications,” pp. 15–20.

6 Islam, p. 24.

7 Islam, p. 14.

8 Ibid.

9 Rosenthal, Islam, esp. Chap. 2.

10 Islam, p. xii. Others whose writing falls in this tradition are: Gopal Krishna, “Piety and Politics in Indian Islam,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, n.s., 6(Dec. 1972): 142–71; Gibb, H. A. R., “Religion and Politics in Christianity and Islam,” in Proctor, J. Harris, ed., Islam and International Relations (London: Pall Mall Press, 1965)Google Scholar; and Watt, W. Montgomery, Islam and the Integration of Society (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The German Ideology (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1968), pp. 61–63Google Scholar. Italics in original. For an elegant essay that makes a similar argument about Islam and economic behavior, see Rodinson, Maxime, Islam and Capitalism (London: Allen Lane, 1974)Google Scholar.

12 Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), p. 300Google Scholar. See also the symposium, JAS 39, 3 (May 1980), devoted to Said's book. I am grateful to Prof. Robert Kapp for having called Said's work to my attention.

13 E.g., Rosenthal, Islam, p. xiii: “Islam is still to a large extent the one unifying bond amidst ethnic, social and cultural diversity.”

14 Kessler, , “Islam, the Protestant Ethic and the Malay Peasantry,”paper delivered at the 28th International Congress of Orientalists,Canberra,1971, pp. 1–2Google Scholar.

15 Again, D. E. Smith, “Political Implications,” and W. C. Smith, Islam, are prime examples. Rosenthal, Islam, follows a closely parallel method that places more emphasis on the contexts in which Islam has developed historically. See, e.g., his chapter on the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. A. Ahmad in Islamic Modernism, considers Islam in the context of the subcontinent from a formal, elite-oriented point of view; his treatment of contemporary India is brief, spanning pp. 254–59.K. Cragg, in his Counsels in Contemporary Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1965)Google Scholar searches for material on counsels and nations in the writings of Sayyid Ahmed Khan, Amir Ali, Jinnah, Iqbal, Azad, Maududi, and A. A. Fyzee. Finally, one might add G. Krishna, “Piety,” as another scholar working in this tradition.

16 Titus, , Islam in India and Pakistan (Calcutta: Y.M.C.A. Publishing House, 1959), p. 185Google Scholar.

17 Qureshi, Muslim Community.

18 Ali, , “Muslim Culture and Religious Thought,” in O'Malley, L. S. S., ed., Modern India and the West (London: Oxford University Press, 1941), pp. 389–414Google Scholar.

19 Haq, , Muslim Politics in Modern India. 1857–1947 (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1970Google Scholar).

20 Shakir, Khilafat; Hardy, The Muslims.

21 One of the most heartening aspects of current work in Indian social history is the attention at last being given to local Muslim populations. See, e.g.: Seal, A., The Emergence of Indian Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Broomfield, J. J., “The Forgotten Majority: The Bengal Muslims and September, 1918,” in Low, D. A., ed., Soundings in Modern South Asian History (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Brass, Paul R., Language, Religion and Politics in North India (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; the articles by Ferell, D. W. and Masselos, J. (among others) in Kumar, R., ed., Essays on Gandhian Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971)Google Scholar; McPherson, K. I., “The Social Background and Politics of the Muslims of Tamil Nada 1901–1937,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 6, 4 (Dec. 1969): 381–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McPherson, K. I., “The Muslims of Madras and Calcutta in the Early 1920's,”paper presented to the South Asian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand,Perth, Western Australia,August 1973.Google Scholar Some of the best work on the contemporary position of Indian Muslims is being done by anthropologists. See, e.g.: Mines, Mattison, Muslim Merchants: The Economic Behaviour of an Indian Muslim Community (New Delhi: Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, 1972)Google Scholar, and “Muslim Social Stratification in India: The Basis for Variation,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 28, 21 (1972): 333–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ahmad, Imtiaz, ed., Caste and Social Stratification among the Muslims (Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1973)Google Scholar. See also the pioneering studies of Wright cited in n. 2.

22 Regarding language, for example, Rosenthal holds that “Urdu is the language of Islam as faith and culture” (Islam, p. 285), a statement that ignores both those many non-Muslims who contributed and contribute to the development of the language and those many non-Urdu-speaking Muslims in other parts of India. On occasion W. C. Smith seems also to equate Indian Islam with Urdu; he concludes pessimistically that “The community is in danger of being deprived of its language, than which only religious faith is a deeper possession” (Islam, p. 267). And even I. Ahmad, in an unguarded moment, refers to the concern of Muslims at “the decline of their language” (“Secularism,” p. 1152). It is much rarer to find views such as those of Rasheeduddin Khan: “it is doubtful if there is really a monolithic common all-India culture of the Muslims covering all the regions of the country. It might be probably more accurate to speak of several Muslim strands in regional cultures like that of U.P. Muslims, the Malabar Muslims, etc.” (“Perspective and Prospects,” Seminar 174 [Feb. 1974]: 18).

23 For two recent examples, see S. M. Hasan, “Indian Muslims” and S. K. Hussaini, “Indian Muslims.”

24 See W. C. Smith, Islam, Chap. 6, esp. pp. 274ff. For one conspicuous example of this view, see G. S. Ghurye who devotes most of his time in Social Tensions to searching for Pakistani loyalists hiding under the Indian bed. See esp. Chaps. 11 and 12.

25 Gupta, “The Problem,” Seminar 106 (June 1968): 13.

26 Harvani, “Whither Indian Muslims?” Main-stream 6, 22–23 (Republic Day Special, 1968): 17, 18, 33. And see also Zinkin's, Taya chapter, “Muslim Mood” in her Challenge in India (London: Chatto & Windus, 1966)Google Scholar.

27 I. Ahmad, “Secularism,” p. 1151.

28 See n. 22.

29 Karandikar, , Islam in India's Transition to Modernity (Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1968Google Scholar), esp. Chap. 12, “The Nature of Revivalist Politics.” A similar argument is made by Hassnain, Indian Muslims. As mentioned in n. 4, D. E. Smith in India derives this same argument from the Koranic political culture. See also Dalwai, Hamid, Muslim Politks in India (Bombay: Nachiketa Publications, 1968)Google Scholar.

30 Harvani, “Whither,” p. 33.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 It is perhaps in order to make a number of additional comments about the sample data: (1) Medium-sized samples were drawn in each city for two reasons. I desired to draw the most accurate samples possible, and this placed a practical limit on the number of interviews that could be rigorously supervised. At a methodological level, 1 considered samples of this size preferable because they require population differences to be “sociologically significant” before they are “statistically significant”; in a large sample even the most minor differences may produce a somewhat empty statistical significance. (2) I have been asked on several occasions how one can know that respondents gave “honest” replies to the questions that were put to them. This question seems to imply that one group or another to whom I spoke did not give the answers that my questionner knows they “should have.” To this there are two principal responses: at the formal level the answer must plainly be that one an not be sure—but this is an “uncertainty prin- ciple” that applies to virtually all social research, irrespective of its methodology, and at the operational level, I believe the only satisfactory demon stration that the conclusions presented here are incorrect would have to come from a comparably systematic investigation.

34 The Semantic Differential is described in Osgood, Charles E., Suchi, George J., and Tannenbaum, Percy H., The Measurement of Meaning (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967)Google Scholar. Cross-cultural uses of the Semantic Differential can be found in: Osgood, Charles E., “The Cross-Cultural Generality of Visual-Verbal Synesthestic Tendencies,” Be' havioral Science 5 (1960): 146–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Maday, Howard and Ware, Edward E., “Cross-Cultural Use of the Semantic Differential,” Behavioral Science 6 (1961): 185–90.Google Scholar

35 Hemmingway, F. R., Madras District Gazetteers: Trichinopoly (Madras: Government of Madras, 1907), pp. 321–22Google Scholar.

36 Hemmingway, Madras, p. 338.

37 A full translation of the question asked for this and other relevant items presented in this paper will be found in Appendix B. Data are presented in Appendix A.

38 I am indebted to Joseph W. Elder for the rewording of this question and for that of the question that follows it.

39 D. E. Smith, “Political Implications,” p. 19.

40 Ibid. See also the comments of Faruqi, “Indian Muslims and the Ideology of the Secular State,” in SAPR, p. 40, and Hussain, Destiny, p. 163, rewording garding the impossibility of correctly translating the word “secular” into Urdu. 1 personally find this point an unconvincing one. One might note, in passing, that Hindi includes both an incorrect form, dharmvirudh (against religion), and a more accurate one, dharmnirpeksh (unbiased as to religion).

41 A copy of the figures on which the discussions of semantic differential data are based may be obtained by writing to the author.

42 The most exhaustive attempt to document the economic backwardness of the Muslim community and its comparative under representation in government employment is Gauba, K. L., Passive Voices: A Penetrating Study of Muslim! in India (Bombay: Thacker & Co., 1973).Google Scholar

43 These feelings of economic deterioration have a real basis in fact: see Dandekar, V. M. and Rath, Nilakantha, “Poverty in India,” Economic and Political Weekly 6, 1 and 2 (Jan. 2 and 9, 1971): 25–48Google Scholar and 106–146, esp. 34–40.

44 This question was originally used by Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney in The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 For a sophisticated analysis of Muslim voting patterns in Bihar, see Blair, Harry W., “Minority Electoral Politics in a North Indian State: Aggregate Data Analysis and the Muslim Community in Bihar, 1952–1972,” American Political Science Review 67, 4 (Dec. 1973): 1275–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Wright, T. P. Jr., “Muslims as Candidates and Voters in 1967 General Elections,” in S. P. Verma and Iqbal Narain, eds., Fourth General Elections in India (Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1970), pp. 207–224.Google Scholar

46 Because the size of the sample was reduced by those who felt unable to answer the question, this difference, which would otherwise be large enough to be of “sociological importance,” is not statistically significant.