Being the Other: The Muslim in India

by Saeed Naqvi

Being the Other is also a lament for the vanished syncretic Hindu–Muslim culture,

Muslims were all given the ‘option’ to go to Pakistan by a specified period—1956.

I tried to avoid the term ‘secular’ where I could, because the word had been profaned too often.

What was surprising was that Muslims in the twentieth century were digging in their heels to prevent the destruction of a mosque where prayers were not being held.

‘khana for Motilal; bhojan for his son Jawaharlal’.

Supposing his surname was not Gandhi but, say, Batliwala or Screwvala, would the history of India have been different?

Awadh was truly God’s own country with the Ganga, Jamuna, Sarayu and Gomti flowing through it.

Their faith was Islam but the culture they exuded had strands in it which were Hindu, not in a religious sense but in its broader cultural connotations.

Allah mian hamray bhaiyya ka diyo Nandlal (Oh my Allah, bestow on my brother a son like Lord Krishna.)

These were Sunnis. There clearly was a system outside the Shia/Sayyid nobility where conversions were effected.

Hospitality was a habit not a function of prosperity.

After Begum Bhutto’s death they proceeded to waste themselves in mutual adoration bereft of any inspiration—a

There was always in Kazim Bhai something of a Walter Mitty, daydreaming, lost in reveries, including

A puerile simplicity was sought to be imposed on a subcontinent of great complexity.

Raghupati Sahay (better known by his pen name Firaq Gorakhpuri) was the finest Ghazal writer of the twentieth century and a Hindu!

A basic rule of thumb was: culture came from Persia, Islamism from Arabia.

The five were Prophet Muhammad, his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima, and his grandsons, Hasan and Hussain.

The extended family is called Ahle Bait, or the fourteen ‘Masoom’, the ‘Pure Ones’, consisting of the twelve Imams,

One of them, which applies to the Shias and Sunnis of India, is simple: Shias are in agreement with the followers of the family of the Prophet on the issue of succession after the Prophet’s death in 632 CE.

Munkunt O Maula, Haza Ali Maula (They who consider me their Maula or leader appointed by God, must also consider Ali their Maula).

‘Qaul’ or declaration of Ali’s prophethood. No Samma (qawwali sessions in Sufi shrines) can be held without the Qaul.

Sunnis believe the Prophet’s real successors were the ‘Sahaba’ or his companions—Abu

Basically, Shia–Sunni differences have their origins in tribal divisions within the overarching clan, the Quresh.

The first Islamic probe into India was Muhammad bin Qasim’s arrival in Sindh in the same year as the Muslim arrival in Spain—711 CE.

At the time that Pope Urban II ordered the First Crusade in 1095, the temple of Somnath in Gujarat was under attack by Mahmud of Ghazni.

It was a Muslim–Muslim conflict. But in the popular imagination it has been allowed to persist as a Hindu–Muslim conflict.

Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti is among the earlier examples of a Sunni steeped in admiration not just for the Prophet but also for Hazrat Ali and the Prophet’s family, Ahle Bait.

Shia seminaries of Najaf in Iraq and Qom in Iran.

‘Twelvers’,

‘victor’s narrative’

Matia Burj, fifty miles from Calcutta.

Tableeghi Jamaat

Najaf, Karbala, and Damascus, where the shrine of Zainab (Imam Hussain’s sister)

tazias (replicas of Imam Hussain’s tomb in Karbala), and Zuljenahs (horses that represent Imam Hussain’s horse)

it was Islam’s interaction with an older civilization that resulted in Dara Shikoh, Rahim, Kabir, Amir Khusro, Raskhan, Nazeer Akbarabadi, Ghalib and Anis.

No Shia was ever a member of Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind of Deoband, Tableeghi Jamaat, Ahle Hadith, or what is known as the Bareli group.

The various militant groups—Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Al Qaeda, Taliban, Jamat-ud-Dawa, Jabhat-ul-Nusra—are Sunni without exception.

The Nehru–Jinnah personality clash was not a negligible factor when it came to events that led to Partition.

Transfer of Power papers published in Britain in 1983—to

Partition, in a way, was the gift the Congress gave to the Hindu right, which in the fullness of time, is today’s Hindutva.

‘Jinnah may have raised the flag of Partition but now the real flag bearer was Patel’,

Twelve volumes of the Transfer of Power papers (covering the period from 1942 to 1947), published in Britain under the editorship of the distinguished historian Professor Nicholas Mansergh, added to this.