Being the Other: The Muslim in India

by Saeed Naqvi

Akbar Allahabadi succinctly summed up the Muslim social hierarchy in the late thirties: Council mein bahut Sayyid; Masjid mein faqat Jumman (The Viceroy’s executive council is full of Sayyids, But the mosques are packed only with the Jumman.) It is a sensitive social detail to dilate on. Jumman is a common name for a low-caste Julaha or weaver. It is also shorthand for the largest number of converts at the hands of proselytizing groups. At the heart of it all was the tension between the liberal Muslim, Persianized and broadminded and the majority of Indian Muslims, the newly converted ‘Jummans’, Arabized and focused on the mosque. A basic rule of thumb was: culture came from Persia, Islamism from Arabia. The Persian stream had tributaries of Sanskrit, Awadhi, Brajbhasha flowing into it, enriching it to a point that it became something organically new. It came to be known as Urdu culture, totally independent of religion. Arabic remained the language of the Quran, and, therefore, the language of prayer and of religious reform.