Composite Nationalism and Islam - A Review

Raziuddin Aquil 

Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani (trans Mohammad Anwer Husain & Hasan Imam), Composite Nationalism and Islam, New Delhi: Manohar, 2005.

This small tract by an influential and politically active theologian, Husain Ahmad Madani (1879–1957), of the Islamic seminary Darul Ulum Deoband, western Uttar Pradesh, India, was originally published in Urdu as Muttahida Qaumiyat aur Islam in 1938. This English translation, with an introduction by Barbara Metcalf, has been brought out by the initiative of the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, a body of Deobandi scholars once headed by Madani himself. The work has long enjoyed the status of a major articulation of the idea of an inclusive nationalism, defined by the Maulana as a united front of Muslims and Hindus in their struggle to overthrow the yoke of British colonial rule in the first half of the twentieth century. This support of a section of Sunni religious leaders to the movement for Independence led by the Indian National Congress is often contrasted with the campaign for a separate Muslim state advocated and led by utterly irreligious intellectuals and politicians such as Mohammad Iqbal and Mohammad Ali Jinnah. For some, the Deobandi opposition to the demand for Pakistan revealed that there was no contradiction in strictly following the tenets of Islam and working side by side with Hindus to attain the political objective of driving the British from the Indian subcontinent.

Challenged by separatist leaders such as Iqbal, Madani deployed his training as a theologian to justify his political stance in the light of the Quran and examples from the career of Prophet Muhammad. He argued that the word qaum, or nation, was used in the Quran for any group of people having the same kinship, as well as linguistic, territorial, or professional ties, and not for Muslim followers of the Prophet alone. Thus, according to him, nation was not based merely on religious affiliation. In a rather anachronistic formulation, he noted that the ‘foundation’ (p 118) of nationalism was laid by the Prophet when he entered into a covenant with various Muslim and non-Muslim inhabitants, including certain Jewish tribes, of Medina; indeed, for Madani, Muslims and Jews comprised a ‘nation’ (p 113) under the Prophet. Using such examples of tactical cooperation with non-Muslims on the basis of race, colour, language and territory, Madani insisted that a joint struggle of Muslims and Hindus was a legitimate action plan to defeat the enemies of Islam and advance Muslim interests in political and economic fields, without compromising on religious practice and personal law. He called for the destruction of European powers by administering a dose of their own medicine: nationalism—which, he lamented, was used to dismember the Ottoman Empire.

Celebration of Madani’s formulation of composite nationalism as a political ideal, given the diversity of religious beliefs in the subcontinent, is important. Yet, some of the limitations of the project may also be discussed here. The theologian was clear that the duration of the use of such an idea—rising above the considerations of exclusive religious and community interests—was ‘temporal and special’ (p 150). Muslims being in a small minority in India, they could not be expected to fight with the British and Hindus simultaneously. In such a situation, it was advisable to fight against an enemy of Islam with the help of another. In contexts where Muslims were numerically stronger and controlled political power, there was no need to enter into such a political alliance and make compromises. Even though Madani considered India to be a dar-ul-aman, or a land of peace, and Islam to be a flexible and accommodative religion, he castigated the ‘falsehood’, ‘intolerance’, ‘insensitivity’, ‘illegitimacy’ and ‘immorality’ of other religious traditions, including Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism (pp 116–117). Madani also suggested that composite nationalism and pan-Islam were not incompatible. To his credit, he maintained, in principle, that in case of a direct clash of interests between the two, Muslims should go with the political alliance rather than religious solidarity. This last point was the hallmark of a political articulation by a Muslim leader who was rabidly antagonistic towards colonial modern education as well. Condemning the impact of Lord Macaulay’s scheme of English education through colleges and universities, Madani made a dig at the likes of Iqbal and Jinnah, noting that those who ‘wax eloquent about Islam and religion, do not differ in their dress and appearance from the British’ (p 130).

Thus, the scope of the idea of composite nationalism was limited to fighting the British, rather than defining a lasting project of secular public culture in the subcontinent. Moreover, opposition to separatism and the Partition of 1947 stemmed from the understanding that the interests of Islam could be safeguarded better in a united India than in fragmented nation-states. The idea of pan-Islam, fighting against the western/Christian powers, and establishing the diktats of religion as a way of life have been extended in recent times by terrorist groups, often trained in Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan. It may be true that the Darul Ulum Deoband has no control on the madrasas opened by its graduates or by those broadly adhering to the kind of Islam advocated by it, either in India or Pakistan, or for that matter in Bangladesh. Yet Deoband has struggled to distance itself fully from extremist forms of political Islam, and its image as the most puritanical Sunni Islamic seminary has persisted. It lagged behind because of its opposition to Western colonial modernity, but its leaders are seen as politically astute enough to remain relevant even in most hostile contexts.

An earlier version of this review was published in Contemporary South Asia, 15(1), (March, 2006), pp. 102-04.