A SMALL Muslim army invaded Sindh as early as the 8th century but arrived as traders in both the Malabar coast and Bengal by the 10th-11th centuries. However, it was only from the 12th that they started arriving as invaders in a big way. Over the next 6-7 centuries, they ruled most of India through several rival monarchies. The key reason they could make such inroads possible in a vast country like India was that it was never a unified state before or after Asoka for more than three millennia. Once Asoka’s empire crumbled, India for most of the next two millennia remained a patchwork of multiple rival regional states, except briefly for a few years under Aurangzeb. These were multilingual, multi-faith and multiracial societies that had cultural similarities but no central authority. That’s why when the Turkish, Persian and Central Asian Muslim armies with superb fighting skills marched into India, they faced little resistance. But the secret of their survival and continuance over nearly a millennium lies in India’s multi-layered, multi-religious, fractious social composition.
The Muslim invasion of India had a multi-pronged permanent impact on its polity. Although they were neither the first nor the last invaders/migrants, they are the most controversial. The reasons are many; some key ones are as follows. Apart from the first African arrivals lost in the mists of time, the next but the most impactful arrival was that of the Aryans, say, between the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE. The age-old caste-ridden Indian polity is their gift. Then a series of invaders arrived between the 2nd century BCE and the 5th century CE from Greece, Bactria, and other Central Asian regions. Then again, sporadically during the 2nd millennium, many a tribe migrated to the eastern regions of India from further east. All of them slowly assimilated with the locals by adopting either Brahminic or Buddhist faith and cultural practices. The Muslims and the Christians (i.e., the British) were exceptions. Both carried the fruits of mature civilisations of their own. This is a key point in understanding the communal issue in the subcontinent. The Brahminic doctrine introduced by the Aryans in ancient times is hostile to all other faiths other than its own based on the caste division. Any new arrivals had to adjust within this overarching structure or get branded as mleccha or, even worse, outcasts. Muslims and the Brits refused to be cowed into either.
So long as the Muslims were politically powerful, they got away with this stance. They also presented a new cultural pattern widely known as Hindustani. But once political power disintegrated, they became a minority in the sea of Hindu populace. What would be their role in a future India with a clearly divergent worldview from the Hindu mainstream? By the time the Muslims, as a political power, gained control of most of India, the egalitarian character of Islam was long gone, and its intellectual drive was rapidly dissipating. It was just another imperial power, except for a weak streak of Sufism’s humility, piety, and syncretism. The Islam the rulers and the Ulemas presented was as rigid as Hinduism. Thus, two faith-based civilisations met but barely mingled. Consequently, an invisible partition based on faith and a few cultural practices became intractable between the two communities. This was not much of a problem until the rise of the nationalist movement. The reasons for this are embedded in Indian historiography, and bits and pieces of it may help to understand the past and present of the disheartening Hindu-Muslim divide in this region.
Between the decline of Harappan civilisation around 2000 BCE and the rise of the Mauryan, i.e., the first Indian Empire in 3rd-century BCE Indian historiography, is quite patchy. There are two main schools of thought on this issue. One uses scientific methods to encapsulate a framework trailing a deductive logic; it asserts the arrival of the Aryans from abroad and a slow but sure reach across India. The second school refutes this claim and also considers the two epics to be India’s factual history. Both schools, however, recognise the caste divisions as a constant fact. At the top of the ladder were the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas, who jointly ruled India for centuries following the precepts of the Brahminic doctrine. All other subordinate castes were looked upon as lesser humans, and a few were even considered ‘untouchables’. This timeframe, say between 1500 and around 600 BCE, of tyrannical rule of the two top castes, was celebrated as the Vedic Age, as a tranquil, prosperous time. But this was obviously not true for the lower castes, who were burdened by an acute exploitative system imposed by the power elites in the name of providence where the latter had no say. A reaction was inevitable. And it came in the form of Buddhism and Jainism around the same time.
Both were anti-caste in social practice and differed widely from the Brahminic cosmology. While Jainism gradually weakened over time, Buddhism remained at the centre of India’s socio-political world for the next thousand years and more, competing with the Brahminic doctrine for socio-religious influence and political power. Once it finally lost the latter by the end of the 1st millennium CE, lay Buddhists were helpless, just like the Muslims when they too lost political power many centuries later. But earlier the Muslims had taken the place of the Buddhists as socio-political contenders to the Brahminic doctrine and political power. This and the Muslim’s refusal to cave in under the Brahminic canopy had long fostered a sense of hostility toward the Muslims among the Hindu elite. That’s why when Indian national aspiration was being articulated, it craved a return to the Vedic age where the Muslims would have a secondary or no role at all. The birth of the Muslim League was the reaction. Several attempts to find a shared vision over four decades failed. The result was the Lahore resolution, i.e., the Pakistan movement. But there was very little clarity on how it would look or be governed. A conflicting idea was also present. The acute pressure of populist politics ultimately prevailed.
The Pakistan conundrum
HOW could the Muslims of India suddenly become a nation? The Muslim League’s logic was if the Hindus could claim to be a nation, why not the Muslims? The latter were more worried about the fate of the Muslims, making up nearly 25 per cent of the Indian population in an independent India without any constitutional guarantees. This made the ML, led by Mr Jinnah, insist on a separate homeland for the Muslims that he gained after some intense bargaining. The Pakistan movement had defined itself more as what it was not or didn’t want to be than on its own merits. It had no claim to ethnicity, geography or history; hence, being born a negative state, it found it extremely difficult to defend itself as a rational or natural choice. It called itself an Islamic state but was ruled by the Western governing doctrines. Consequently, it couldn’t become either. On top of it, since it was born out of fear of the larger Hindu community, it felt under siege all its life and continued to stumble from pitfall to pitfall over the past eight decades.
Trying to balance Islamic statehood with modern democratic practices pushed Pakistan into structural and constitutional turmoil. Just within a decade, due to constant infighting within the political machinery and intrigues of the civil-military bureaucracy, Pakistan turned into a military state. The logic of nation and the role of civil society in creating a democratic polity remained absent. Therefore, dealing with political impasses needed to be dealt with by military intervention. It was demonstrated in the mid-fifties against the Islamic clerics, then against the Baluchis in the late fifties and again against the Bengalis in 71.
Pakistan never even attempted to create a secular state because, first, it never wanted to, except perhaps for Jinnah’s feeble attempt at it initially, and second, it was structurally stuck in its Islamic statehood. Could the two exist in the same body? In the earlier section of Islam and nation, it was argued why a modern nation and a theocracy are a paradox. Experiences of existing theocracies like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Afghanistan are not very inspiring, nor are the ones trying to mix religion with modern state and politics like India, Pakistan or Israel.
Case for Bangladesh
IT WAS this character of Pakistan that did not suit Bengali sensibilities, aggravated further by economic exploitation and democratic deficiencies. Bangladesh for centuries developed a syncretic cultural heritage by the agencies of numerous Sufis showing piety, humility and perseverance, not by firebrand Islamic preachers. In 1971, the Bengalis made a clear choice: Islam is their faith and Bengali their nationality. Two are different entities. The liberation war not only rejected the ‘two-nation theory’, but it also picked up a secular national identity in tune with the ideas of Enlightenment, democracy and rule of law. Were the Bengalis aware of the far-reaching implications of what they were signing for in declaring independence? Perhaps not. Just as the Parisians were unaware that by storming the Bastille they were about to uproot a millennia-old feudal order and all vestiges of power and privilege that came with it, nor could they imagine it would change the course of world history. They, however, had to struggle for the next 75 years to finally create a stable republic based on French nationality as free citizens, not serfs or even as Catholics or Protestants. The logic of history and many socio-economic conflicts creates conditions for such an eventuality. Such is the process of social engineering, an inescapable process in any transformative society.
Awami League, the party that led the war, was either totally unaware as to what they were embarking upon, or the ideological/philosophical implications of the war were beyond their imagination. By seeking statehood based on Bengali nationality, it was not only rejecting the two-nation theory but also taking the first tentative steps on a long journey of trying to step out of Islam’s Dark Age that, as said earlier, had descended upon the entire Muslim world from the 13th-14th centuries onwards. No, it was certainly not spelt out, but by the mere act of rebelling against the Pakistani military junta to defend the Bengali nation, the Bengalis played the role of unconscious agents of history. This was the core spirit and the philosophical foundation of the liberation war. Otherwise, it is little more than splitting Pakistan in two.
Concluded.
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Ali Ahmed Ziauddin is a researcher and activist.