Book Review: Faisal Devji,Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea

This book offers us a very different interpretation of the idea of Pakistan. Instead of evoking the rather known partition debates, the book focuses on the complex relationship between political processes and political ideas. This vantage point helps the author to examine the notion of Zion as a political form as well as an explanatory template to make sense of those claims that are made to justify Pakistan as a legitimate political entity. For Devji, ‘Zion serves to name a political form in which nationality is defined by the rejection of an old land for a new’ (p. 3). He suggests that ‘the Zionist movement leading to the creation of Israel…was simply one example of this political form, with Muslim nationalism, resulting in the founding of Pakistan a year earlier, constituting both its precedent, and….its closer political relation as well’ (p. 3). The ‘Muslim Zion’, hence, is introduced not merely as a reinterpretation of the idea of Pakistan but also as an evolving critique of old forms of nationalism.

Devji identifies a number of similarities between Pakistan and Israel as political project that eventually emerged as ideological states in the twentieth century. Although, a few very direct statements and anecdotes are listed as pointers to explain this close relationship, Devji, as it seems, remains more interested in trajectories of political ideas. Clarifying this point of departure, Devji claims that his chief aim is not to ‘trace causal relationships between interests, ideas and events in some mechanistic way’… nor is he concerned with most common or ‘influential’ ideas in late colonial Indian politics. On the contrary, the study revisits the debate that has emerged as ‘the most important and productive ones in the history of Muslim nationalism’ (p. 8). This conceptual clarification is further elaborated by illustrating a few methodological priorities. Devji reminds us that he does not intend to prove ‘a blow-by-blow account of what “actually” happened in a merely belated fashion’ (p. 9). Instead, he argues, he is ‘interested in the forms of argumentation and lines of reasoning that both transcend and survive…to shape the prose of history’ (pp. 8–9).

The study draws our attention to two distinct ideological constituents of Muslim Zion—an imagined geography and a rejection of the history—to legitimise its claim for a future holy land—Pakistan. Devji makes an interesting analytical move to explain this configuration. He revisits the rather well-known minority–majority dichotomy that seems to define the contours of colonial Muslim politics. However, rejecting the conventional theses such as Congress’ failure to win over the minority or League’s successful and popular campaign for Muslim nationhood that resulted in the partition of the subcontinent, Devji offers a different reading of what he calls, ‘the game of numbers’. He notes: ‘Hinduism with its castes was not a real majority, and Islam with its massive numbers and regional concentrations was not a true minority…the only way to create variable and democratic majorities and minorities organized around a changing set of issues was to raise one community into a merely demographic majority and reduce the other to a similar kind of minority’ (p. 87). Jinnah’s claims in the 1940s, from internal redistribution of power to eventually the demand for the partition of British India, Devji suggests, should be seen in relation to the gradual advancement of various ideas of Muslim political representation. In this sense, it is argued that the adequate representation of minority in local self-government, the policy of weightage and the demand for parity ‘were premised upon an entirely non-numerical argument, for which the idea of the minority was both necessary but also irrelevant. Whether or not it really helped Muslims in any way, this system of protections was unprecedented…’ (p. 68).

The imagined geography, which is stridently evoked by the League in the 1940s, was also contested in a different way. The holy land of Pakistan was a highly obscure idea, yet, it had always been asserted, imagined, argued for in a strictly territorial sense. This contest between assertion and promise, the book seems to suggest, underlines the Zionist nature of the League’s political moves. Devji notes: ‘Whether or not Zion is identified with some holy land, it works… to create a new kind of geography, so that counties like Pakistan and Israel can be said to share more with each other than they do with their immediate neighbors, despite the common histories and geographies that otherwise link them with the latter’ (p. 6).

The chapter, ‘A People without History’, discusses a different conception of the past. In this innovative exploration, Devji underscores the placing of the past in the League’s political project. Like geography, the League, and particularly Jinnah, remained rather apprehensive of history. Instead of evoking the history of Muslim rule in India, the League concentrated on the notion of a Muslim future—a future that could only be achieved by creating an unprecedented and completely ahistorical entity called Pakistan. This was, as it appears, a complicated formulation. Muslim rule as a victorious history of Islam in India could have been used to make a powerful political claim.

Devji, however, offers a nuanced explanation to posers of this kind. Focusing on the speeches of Jinnah and writings of Iqbal, he underlines the fact that the Indian story of Muslim rule was actually seen as an inseparable constituent of the meta-narrative of Islam. Muslims in India or for that matter Muslim rule, thus, eventually became a part of the pan-Islamic world community or umma; at the same time, however, they were also recognised as representative of an enduring Islamic culture. This cultural unity of Muslims, as the argument goes, seems to transform them into a nation. The history, in this formulation, is nothing more than a mere description of certain events and episodes that characterises the cultural expressions of the universal idea of Islam.

This reconstruction of the Islamic past as cultural manifestations, we must note, goes well with the debates initiated by the Islamic reformist movements in the subcontinent especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. From Altaf Hussain Hali to the Deoband School, scholars looked at the stories of Muslim rule in India or elsewhere as pointers to underline the contemporary plight of Muslims. The ‘here and now’ of Muslims, they seem to argue, could only be addressed by embracing the message of Islam in its entirety. This reformist zeal not merely called upon Muslims to become more and truer Muslims, but it also questioned, rather indirectly, the religious legitimacy of Muslim rulers. In this sense, the religious debates on the Islamic past (if not history!), provided a social background to the League’s political project. Devji also makes an important clarification. He reminds us that the League evoked Islam as an empty template and used it primarily to emphasise the Muslim exclusiveness in the colonial context. The League’s responses to the Shariat Act, 1937, as a manifestation of Muslim distinctiveness should be seen in this context.

The imagined geography and the rejection of the Muslim past, Devji suggests, empowered Jinnah to argue for a social contract. Devji notes: ‘he imagined…a social contract, in which all that had been inherited from the past could be abandoned so as to begin afresh. The British Raj, therefore, had to be seen as a state of nature…with India and Pakistan emerging from it as if born for the first time, in a negotiated settlement that the Qaid frequently said was unprecedented in the history of nations’ (pp. 97–98). The emergence of Pakistan as a purely modern ‘Muslim’ nation-state in 1947, in this sense, very clearly underlines the tendencies that Devji calls, Muslim Zion.

The book is provocative—primarily because it offers a radical reinterpretation with remarkable clarity. Yet, it consciously moves away from possible reductionism often seen in the debates on the emergence of Pakistan. This book, on the other hand, makes the reader think and draw his/her own meanings of an idea—Muslim Zion.