Constructing Pakistan - Closing

Pakistan is a nation of over one hundred and sixty million people, and it has, like so many other postcolonial nations, struggled to produce, articulate, and popularise its normative structure. Due to its strategic location, its recent problematic role as a regional US ally in the war against terror, and its national potential as a leading Muslim nuclear power, Pakistan is one of the most important Mulsim nation-states of the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, since the terrorist attacks of 2001, Pakistan has been mostly represented a problem both in the media as well as in the scholarly works produced in the United States. Thus, I hope that my attempt at articulating the formative national history of Pakistan will facilitate a more engaged public debate and academic scholarship on the past, present, and the future of Pakistan.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 137

This is how the narrative of Indian Muslim nationhood finds different expressions. While the early exponents of the Muslim cause desperately needed to create a space for the Muslims within the hegemonic project of the empire, during the terminal stages of the freedom struggle, one important strand of national struggle is focused primarily on cleansing the Muslim consciousness of the residual effects of the hegemonic negotiation of the Western system. Both Iqbal and Mawdudi represent the struggles of two such reformers in retrieving and articulating a Muslim identity separate from the Hindus but also in difference to the in identity-forming imperatives of the British hegemonic project.

Iqbal and Mawdudi are both aware of the pitfalls of purely Western secular nationalism and are skeptical about it. For them Islam must form the basis of everyday life in an Islamic state and must not be reduced to the affair of the individual. It is this public nature of Islam as a way of life that forces the Muslim scholars of this particular path, for there were dissenting views, to make it imperative for the Muslims to seek a separate, autonomous nation-state. Hence, while Iqbal articulates a grand vision of the nation, Mawdudi, highly influenced by Iqbal but also the more conservative of the two, illustrates the tactical details of the Muslim nationalistic vision.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 132

Mawdudi's sundering of the Muslim identity in two proposes a politics different from the politics of Unionist Nationalism, for the Muslims can only be successful if both aspects of their political identity are accommodated. If the Muslims have to alter or abandon their Muslim identity in order to forge a nationalistic alliance, then that, according to Mawdudi, is absolutely impossible. Mawdudi then goes on to challenge the Hinduized Western concept of nationhood:

Those who want us to follow the path of nationhood only as Hindustanis follow the Western concept of nationhood, which has the Hindu view of humanity deeply embedded in it. They aim to eliminate the national differences caused by religious and traditional differences and replace them by one nation united under the mixture of Hinduism and communism ... We can only follow this path if we sacrifice our second condition of nationality, our Muslimhood.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 129

In his second speech, Iqbal is even more confident of his vision and completely aware of the prevailing charged political climate on the question of Muslim nationhood. He begins by putting forward his own idea of nationhood as opposed to the Western concept:

Politics have their roots in the spiritual life of man. It is my belief that Islam is not a matter of private opinion. It is a society, or if you like, a civic church. It is because present-day political ideals [...] may affect its original structure and character that I find myself interested in politics. I am opposed to nationalism as it is understood in Europe [...] I am opposed to it because I see in it the germs of atheistic materialism, which I look upon as the greatest danger to modern humanity. Patriotism is a perfectly natural virtue and has a place in moral life of man. Yet that which really matters is a man's faith, his culture, his historical tradition. These are the things which, in my eyes, are worth living and dying for, and not the piece of earth with which the spirit of man happens to be temporarily associated.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 120

Overall, Iqbal's idea of Muslim identity is trans-historical and trans-national; he sees the Western concept of the nation-state as a divisive force against the Islamic concept of a larger Muslim ummah

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 118

According to Ahmad Mian Mukhtar: 'Iqbal had studied Islamic Sufism deeply including the original writings of all great Sufis. But he had noticed certain un-Islamic practices in Sufisn and was opposed to these unIslamic influences':

This Neo-Platonism is an altered version of Plato that one of his followers (Plotinus) presented as a religion. In Muslims this was spread through Christian translations and became a part of Islam. In myopinion this is strictly un-Islamic and has no relationship with the Qura'nic philosophy. The edifice of Sufisn is based on this Greek absurdity.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 98

There are some obvious differences in the retrieval strategies of Hali and Naumani. While Hali, steeped in the loyalist discourse of his times, focused mainly on the social transformative history of Islam and its mastery of knowledge, Naumani's focus is more on the illustrious martial traditions of Islam. His heroes of the past are Muslim warriors who sacked empires, and changed the world, and as is evident from these lines, 'Received the throne and crown of Kisra/ and collected revenues from the Tartars.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 96

With Shibli Nomani, then, Muslim literature is geared towards the Islamic past and its pan-Islamic present to define the particularities of the Muslims of India. In his popular works he insists upon the need to retrieve the stories of past Muslim heroes. He was, therefore, not necessarily opposed to Western education and viewed Sayyid Ahmad Khan's reformatory efforts in a positive light; but at the same time he did not want the Muslim youth to lose touch with their history. He stresses upon the importance of this aspect in one of his essays:

Someone has aptly pointed out that our misfortune is not only that we have been conquered by the Europeans; but they have also succeeded in conquering our dead. When we speak of courage, strength, honour and knowledge, it is the European heroes we talk of ... not our own. The reason for this does not lie in the fact that we no longer revere our own heroes, but because modern education does not provide us with an opportunity to learn the accomplishment of our ancestors.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 92

The book Ibn-ul-Waqt with these lines. The task of the Muslim loyalist reformer is further complicated by the traditional point of view. The reformer, in order to be effective must also be a pious Muslim. The novel, thus, foregrounds the importance of double negotiation: the Muslim elite will only be able to lead the Muslim masses if they do not lose their sense of self and Muslim identity in the process of dealing with the British. It was this important aspect of the native Muslim identity that forced the British to abandon their universalist project and change their policies specific to the perceptions of the natives. Respecting local religions and maintaining Muslim family law, thus, were a means of creating a hegemonic relationship.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 89

The construction of British hegemony depended upon the failure of its universalist drive in accommodating native differences. It is this aspect of the hegemony that the Muslim elite in the post-rebellion world attempted to highlight. In this process, then, the elite trade-off the popular interest in order to obtain material advantages from the British. This aspect of the Anglo-Muslim relationship is important for my inquiry. The Muslim elite, as I have suggested earlier, having witnessed the post-rebellion deteriorating conditions of Muslims, must therefore, attempt to negotiate a new contract with the British. This new contract must ensure special political and economic advantages for the Muslims in exchange for their loyalty to their British rulers. This loyalty, of course, must be won by the British through a system of rewards, which makes it imperative on the part of the British to create a hegemonic relationship with the Muslims. Hence, they must write the rebellion out of the immediate history and replace it with a promise of loyalty. Their approach to the British power is, therefore, not a capitulation but a complex web of the politics of survival. The Muslim elite must, therefore, write the rebellion out of their history, or at least push it to the edge, and foreground their loyalty in order for Muslims to be included in the British system of power.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 87

This particularity of the novel must be kept in mind: it is a novel written by a Muslim author with Muslim characters, one of whom decides to become a reformer, for the conditions of the Muslims, we are told, are much worse than their Hindu counterparts. We mus tread this particularity of the novel as an example of Muslim exceptionalism within the realm of British Indian politics. It is also important to note that the text does not generate this exceptionalism. The public imperative within the novel -- the Muslim conditions and Inb-ul-Waqt's need for legitimation -- inscribe this need to help the fellow Muslims in the novel.

Another important aspect of the novel is its comparative value with one of its Bengali Hindu counterparts: Bankimchandra Chatterji's Anadamath. Published in 1882, the reason the latter seems so nationalist a work is because it matches our critical expectations of an anticolonial novel: the novel focuses on the Sanyasi rebellion that followed the famine of 1770 and describes the early nationalism of Bengali Hindus within a Muslim Bengal including the defeat of the East India Company troops. Bankim's novel, however, despite the contrary assertions of Julius Lipner, the translator, successfully introduces the idea of a militant Bengali Hindu subject in conflict with its Muslim counterparts.

Nazeer Ahmed's project, however, is much different: he and his contemporary Muslim elite are attempting to create a space for the Muslims within the British system. His work, therefore, must posit itself in the language of loyalty to the British and in opposition to the Hindus but not necessarily in terms of war, for the project is, precisely, to transform the war-like Muslims into loyal subjects of the Crown. It is this project that in itself should be read as a particular form of Muslim nationalistic literature.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 86

Even more important for my inquiry is this emphasis on the degree of Muslim particularity: the Hindu-Muslim differences did not flare-up at the time of the nationalist movement. Here, in one of the early works of Muslim fiction, the Muslims are already expected to make their case with reference to the Hindus. The Muslim struggle, therefore, is not necessarily against the British, but must be juxtaposed with their stronger and more successful counterparts, the Hindus.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 87

what the first Urdu novel teaches us is that the main concern od the novel -- the most nationalistic of the literary genres -- was the possibility of Muslim upward mobility within the British system of rewards. This breaking-in into the British system of governance, as I pointed out earlier, follows a mundane process.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 71

I deem it important to explain the often-used term naheral poetry. Some people think that it means the kind of poetry associated with nacheries, or the poetry that represent the religious ideas of the nacheries. Some also think that nacheral poetry is the kind of poetry that provides an account of the fall of Muslims or nations. But this is not the case. Nacheral poetry means the kind of poetry that corresponds to natural instincts both in its words and its meaning. Words used in nacheral poetry must be taken from everyday spoken language; it must be realistic and people should be able to relate to it.

Muqaddama-e-Shair-o-Shairi

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 69

Hence, Hali has stressed the need for combining Islamic heritage with the imperatives of modernity for the progress of Indian Muslims in his long poem on the rise and fall of Islam. His final message: the Muslims of India must change with the changing times, but for that to happen, they must not forget their glorious heritage, be conscious about their present state of affairs, and chart out a course for the future. Hali, therefore, articulates the idea of nation and its rehabilitation with a combination of memory -- universal ummah -- the present -- the Muslim qaum of India -- and the future through a more nuanced negotiation of British power.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 27

Sir Sayyid is not claiming that Hinduism is static and ossified in custom as compared to a more dynamic Islam. Rather, he finds Hinduism secure in its practices and, therefore, not troubled by contamination from outside. Islam, on the other hand, is based on textual interpretation as well as an idea of a hereafter, thus more insecure and sensitive to any outside threat. This argument also suggests that while Hindus could still exist in their faith despite Christian propaganda, the Muslims saw the same as a threat due to this perpetual sense of crisis. This aspect of Muslim anxiety about their religious way of life later becomes one of the main tropes in the Muslim freedom movement. What Sir Sayyid inaugurates is the specific idea of the Islamic negotiation of the changing political realities.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 17

I have written herein an account of events from May of last year to July 1858. On August first I have laid down my pen. I long for orders from the auspicious sovereign concerning three petitions about which I have written in this book -- that is for title, for robe of honour, and for pension. My eyes and my heart look forward to this order from the Empress whose crown is the moon, whose throne is the sky; who is renowned as Jamshid, as splendid as Faridun, as majestic as Kaus, as noble as Sanjar, as exalted as Alexander ... If through the generosity of the Queen of the World, I obtain some benefit, I will not have left this life a failure.

-- Ghalib

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 3

A private archive, retrieved and inserted into the official rendering of history, has been the most potent critical weapon to unravel the departmental claims of colonial administration, but in Dastanbuuy, we must reverse the order, we must declare and prove beyond doubt, instead of suggesting not to read it literally, that it is instead a public document garbed within the language and nomenclature of the private. Thus, immediately after the rebellion, the main struggle for the Muslim elite was not to preserve the Muslim culture in the private, spiritual realm, but to forge a place within the new hegemonic order, and this movement, in my opinion, could on ly be facilitated through, the language of loyalty.

Constructing Pakistan - Introduction

In post-rebellion India, as the British consolidated their control and established a new regime, the post-rebellion Urdu literature underwent an important change by adopting a utilitarian aesthetic and a loyalist emphasis. Hence, post-rebellion writers produced works -- especially poetry -- more pertinent to the changed state of Muslims. It is within this public imperative and language of loyalty to the British Order that the idea of Muslim particularity and exceptionalism is articulated. As the emergent British regime after the rebellion places Muslims either under suspicion, or completely outside its hegemonic project, the post-rebellion Urdu literature, a priori, becomes intricately linked with the idea of Muslim rehabilitation with the New order. This tendency to appease the power is certainly an elite practice but it is normalised in the name of the people. Hence, as will become obvious in the ensuing discussion, post-rebellion Urdu literature adapts to this new political imperative and literary production becomes more public. Since this public emphasis of literature is expressed in a language pertinent to the New Order, the public becomes inextricably linked to the political. It is in this process that the idea of Muslim particularity precedes the nationalistic politics of the Indian National Congress.

Constructing Pakistan - Introduction

The secular nationalist elite, however, developed a particular language of politics. For them, learning the language of the 'enlightenment' was the only way to reach British rationality, and their legitimacy depended upon the degree of fluidity and prestige accorded to them by the colonial system. Only then could they speak of the material advantages of flirting with the so-called infidel power. This development of a political language also involved developing the concept of the 'other' within the language of Muslim politics. Muslims had to be defined as different from their Hindu counterparts, their needs represented as special. The questions of quotas, separate electorates, and eventually a separate country were all based on a Muslim identity articulate in difference from the Hindus and not from the British.