Abstract
Narrating the multiple histories and memories of partition of the Indian subcontinent serves to both unravel lasting schisms and heal wounds in our fractious society. The lore of partition has had a dominant presence in the political and social discourse of the entire region, which also explains its centrality in mainstream historiography of modern Indian history. Interestingly, despite partition having been researched threadbare as an academic subject, the existing scholarship on this period has curiously little to offer in terms of cultural and intellectual history of the idea of partition, and its historical roots beyond the early European colonial period. Dr Saumya Dey’s latest book titled The Seedbed of Pakistan: Cultural Conflicts, Elite Muslim Anxieties, and the Congress 1885–1906 seeks to bridge this gap in the scholarship by exploring the intellectual and cultural traces of partition as an ideological formulation.
As the title of the book suggests, Dr Dey has attempted to contextualise the emergence of Muslim separatism in the late nineteenth century by initially decoding the cultural nature of the medieval Muslim-ruled states and the cultural ambience of the elite of that period. He then moves on to describe the insecurities that developed among the elite Muslim ruling classes with the shedding of the medieval Muslim-ruled states and the emergence of European colonisation. He laboriously explains the transformation of the anxieties of the erstwhile ruling elite into a quest for a distinct ‘Muslim’ identity and calls for Muslim separatism. Drifting away from the conventional attempts at chalking out the germination of this separatism in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, the book tries to trace its tropes back to the ashraf culture of the Mughal period. Once the book locates the cultural roots of an impending partition, the second half of the book indulges in mapping the political dynamics of the idea of partition with a nascent Indian National Congress, and how the latter ultimately reconciled itself with the calls for Muslim distinctness and separatism as an acceptable political idea, thus laying out the ‘seedbed of Pakistan’ on a solid ground.
In order to build up its central thesis, the book primarily puts forth a couple of persuasive arguments—first, that, ‘states are culture-power formations—they project and broadcast power through cultural symbols or tropes’ (p. 7); secondly, it builds on noted historian Marshall Hodgson’s theory of the ‘Islamicate’ as a ‘cultural matrix rooted in the social body of Islam’ (pp. 35–36) to argue that the medieval Mughal state was an Islamicate formation which manifested its nature in the ruling Indo-Muslim elites, that is, the ruling ashraf class. The book argues that the ruling classes were seen by the non-elite Muslims as an aspirational category and reflected the ‘Islamicate’ ‘cultural paradigm’ which may be lived up to (pp. 69–70). A constituent reflection of this cultural paradigm was also the curtailment of the ‘cultural displays of non-Muslims’ (p. 8) during the Mughal period, which indicated repression of the Hindu cultural expressions in public spaces and an impending political struggle for the occupation of the public spaces. The Indo-Muslim elite were poised as the leaders of the larger Muslim society in the subcontinent, as they ‘seem to have exercised a natural hegemony and cultural leadership in Indian Muslim society in general’ (p. 72). One may note here that this inference of the book may have been better placed if it would have been substantiated in greater detail.
The book further argues that with the withering of the Mughal state and the advent of European colonizers, there was a brief period of non-Muslim, that is, Hindu political and cultural assertion. This assertion in the public and political landscape led to the development of a class of anxious ashraf elite, who had lost their political power but were eager to retain their cultural hegemony (pp. 74–125). The loss of political power led the ashrafs to infuse radical religious reformations into the Indian Muslim society, by discarding the local, syncretic elements and moving towards a purer form of Islam (pp. 84–87). It has been argued that the Indo-Muslim elite were thus able to produce a ‘more self-reflexive, socially and culturally cohesive, and politically and ideologically motivated Indian Muslim society’ (p. 87) by the mid-nineteenth century.
With the self-identification of Indian Muslims by the elite class as a distinct political entity, the Indian National Congress was faced with the challenge of forging a common Indian identity which may be acceptable to all the political stakeholders, which led them to weave a ‘civic’ nationhood based on the acceptance of an umbrella political dispensation and administrative structure, and led them to push questions of social reforms to the restricted contours of concerned communities (pp. 131–132). The introduction of elected political representation further fanned demands for communal representatives by the vocal Indo-Muslim elites, and a fear of marginalisation by the numerically dominant Hindu community (pp. 139–145). To assuage the fears of political marginalisation of Muslims, in 1889 the Congress agreed to the ‘principle of proportional representation of religious communities’, thus giving its approval to the demand for separate electorates (p. 162). This injected a fundamental ‘contradiction’ in its idea of civic nationhood, as it had laid the grounds for Indian nationhood to be ‘a federation of religious and normative groups’ (p. 163). The tacit agreement of Congress to the idea of separate electorates later paved the way for realisation of Muslim interests as a distinct political consciousness and legitimate demands for Islamic separatism. The Indo-Muslim elite were, thus, able to catapult the entire Muslim community to the position of a legitimate interest group, and a distinct ‘nation’ before the British Empire, and were able to envision their re-establishment as a ruling class in the future just as they were during the Mughal period.
The book points towards a critical vacuum in the production of cultural and intellectual history of colonial India’s partition and opens up multiple fora for further research and academic pursuits. It begs us the question as to why has mainstream historiography on partition been more focused on the political discourses of the time and the political trends leading up to partition while examining the European (British) colonial period in silos. It also sheds light on the humbling fact that few attempts have been made towards establishing a teleological continuum in understanding the intellectual history of dominant forces that shaped the political cartography of the modern Indian subcontinent.
Dr Dey’s work also implies the need for further research on communal relations amongst the masses under the ‘Islamicate’ Mughal states, the political positioning of non-elite Muslims during the colonial period and their reactions to the struggle for Islamic separatism, and the failure of Hindu ‘communitas’ (p. 9) to either assuage the separatist sentiments and prevent eventual partition or to build a consolidated Hindu political movement. The book could have surely anchored its arguments on more fertile grounds if it had also attempted to answer the research questions mentioned above.