An Essay on Muslim Exceptionalism

Written by A. R. Siddiqi • March 2011

Book1 The bedrock of the author's thesis is a critical study of Muslim 'exceptionalism' and 'separateness' leading eventually to 'nationhood' and Partition. The author admits nevertheless that 'constructing Pakistan' does not offer the history of Muslim nationhood as a 'unitary progressive narrative.' Nor does it pretend to be a comprehensive chronicle of the Congress-led and Muslim League-seconded freedom movement leading to the end of the British Raj.

In terms of the end-result, the Partition of the country, the freedom movement would have less to celebrate and more to reflect on the disastrous consequences of Partition.

Why should the All-India National Congress resist the redistribution of the Hindu and Muslim majority areas into autonomous Pakistan and Hindustan (India) as an enlargement of provincial autonomy with a single Centre? Why would Jawaharlal forestall the British Cabinet Mission Plan (1946) accepted both by the Congress and the Muslim League? The Plan offered the last chance for a confederal India wantonly thrown away.
The term Muslim Exceptionalism did not necessarily embrace the urge to create separate homeland on the basis of a divided India. It was much like the natural urge of a Bengali to look, dress, and speak like a Bengali and still to co-exist with a Pathan and Punjabi as fellow citizens.

Pakistan, as a separate nation state had been contrary to the Ulemas' idea of a universal Islamic state without frontiers. They would 'legitimate' statehood only in the name of Islam-ummah. Hence the constant opposition of the theologians and Ulema to the creation of Pakistan.

That would include Ulemas on both ends of the spectrum – a religious reformer like Maududi, on the one end, and a nationalist Hussain Ahmed Madni on the other. Nevertheless Maududi was as much as opposed to Pakistan as Madni. Both had been bona fide Indian nationals and accepted their status as such. Madni in his Composite Nationalism and Islam argues that “Partition was the handiwork of the secular elite of the two communities and not of religious leaders.” Nothing but the truth will compromise the very Islamic basis of Pakistan.

What was then the driving force behind the making of Pakistan? What the Quaid was actually fighting for? A theo-centric or a theocratic state? Was it Muslim Exceptionalism or the Hindu irrepressible thrust for the reconquest of India and its reconversion into a sort of Bharatvarsha after centuries of foreign domination?
It could be either: in fact much more than could be explained in metaphysical rather than in simple physical and political terms. There had never been any lack of 'discourse or 'complementarily' of social communication between the two communities.'

Who was Khusrau? Who was Nizamuddin Auliya and the entire panoply of Muslim saints from all those medieval luminaries down to Delhi's Khawaja Hassan Nizami – a rare combination of the spiritual and the temporal.
The Hindus had their own pantheon of Bhagat Sur Das, Tulsi Das, Meera Bai and of course Mahatma Gandhi intonating Ram and Rahim in the same breath.

The term Muslim Exceptionalism in the pre-partition usage was only the other word for the All-India Muslim League demand for the independent Muslim State of Pakistan. The demand for Pakistan rose entirely from the prospect of a brute Hindu majority ruling over a Muslim minority and the ensuing inequalities and possible repression.

As for Muslim Exceptionalism it arose mainly from sense of the loss of the ancient glory that was theirs and the last hope to revive it in an independent Muslim Pakistan.

Muslim Exceptionalism, if any, remained blissfully untainted by the rabid communalism of Bunkam Chandra Chatterji, Swami Dayanad Saraswati, Swami Shadhanad down to Tilak, Dr. Shayama Murkerjee and a whole lot of others like them.

Masood Ashraf Raja based his Muslim Exceptionalism postulate on 'Foundational' literary texts of great Muslim writers/intellectuals of 19th century. He mentions Mohammad Hussain Azad, Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali, Maulvi Nazir Ahmed, Shibli Naumani, Akbar Allahabadi etc. as the pillars of Muslim exceptionalism.
Professor Mushirul Hassan, in his classic 'A Moral Reckoning: Muslim Intellectuals in Nineteenth Century Delhi simply overturns the argument by highlighting the patriotic sentiment underlying and galvanizing their work. They attest to Islamic and Hinduism assimilative characters.

Even Sayyid Ahmed Khan, wrongly said to be the pioneer of the two-nation theory had been a great Indian Patriot. While apprehensive of the status of Muslim minority under Hindu majority in the post Raj independent India, he remained dedicated to the idea of an undivided free India. Prof. Hassan goes on to quote, at length, from the works of Farhatullah Beg, Zakullah, Nazir Ahmed to demonstrate their love of the land even if in the specific context of the Delhi culture and literary writings.

Finally, how a community of such devoted and creative Hindustanis as Amir Khusro and Ghalib and the King, Bahadur Shah himself, a thoroughbred Hindustani, be ever a part of Muslim exceptionalism least of all separatism?

Even Iqbal composed the Tiran-e-Hindi and hymns in praise of Raja Bharatahari and called Lord Rama 'Imam-ul-Hind.' Muslims accepted India as their homeland. They interacted with the Hindus to produce the Indo-Muslim culture, dress, cuisine, architecture and Urdu as a rich literary medium and the only lingua franca of the sub-continent. Where then was scope and rationale for Muslim exceptionalism? Would it make any sense at all in respect of the 215-16 million Muslims as bona fide Indian citizens?

Title: Constructing Pakistan
Foundational Texts and the Rise of Muslim Identity
(1857-1917)
Author: Masood Ashraf Raja
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Pakistan (2010)
Pages: 156 pages, Hardcover
Price: PKR.495
ISBN-10: 0195478118
ISBN-13: 978-0195478112