On the second video, early on there is a screenshot of the Bannu resolution, from 21 June 1947. The resolution calls for a “free Pathan state” one where the “Constitution of the state will be framed on the basis of Islamic conception of democracy, equality and social justice.”
For the Muslim League leadership, history - in the sense of blood ties - and geography were not central to its propagation of the idea of Pakistan. In Jamal Elias’s words, “In its own history books and its own rhetoric, Pakistan is not a land but an idea.” The Khudai Khidmatgars on the other hand stressed the centrality of Pakhtun ethnicity and territory which led them to oppose the Muslim League and its vision.
Yet as the Bannu resolution quoted above shows, religion was not unimportant to Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) and his supporters. The very name, Khudai Khidmatgar meant Servants of God. A large number of ulama were part of organisation. Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a pious Muslim by all accounts, grounded notions of non-violence, brotherhood, fraternity within Islamic tradition. In supporting the Congress they envisaged a future where the Frontier would be largely autonomous rather than one where their ethnic and religious identity would be sunk into an Indian whole.
The point here is that when we think of those Muslims in the colonial period that emphasised the importance of religious community we normally think of Muslim separatists or those that came to support the Muslim League and opposed the Congress. Yet there is much to learn from the ideas of Muslims that supported the Congress.
The point is further illustrated if we turn away from the Frontier and look briefly at two very different figures from northern India: Hakim Ajmal Khan (1863-1927) and Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani (1879-1957). Both these figures were supporters of Congress.
Ajmal Khan was a ‘modernist’ influenced by the Aligarh movement while Madani was an eminent alim of Deoband. If for Ajmal Khan, religious identity rested largely on Muslim culture and symbols of Islam, for Madani it related more directly to religious behaviour and faith.
For Ajmal Khan, I am relying on the work of the distinguished historian Barbara Metcalf. Ajmal Khan like other aristocratic Muslims valued the various aspects of ‘sharif’ culture embodied in Urdu literature, in mushairas and mahfil, by a certain style of deportment and increasingly by the sherwani and fez. In his case as a physician he particularly sought to defend, reform and promote Muslim medicine, unani tibb. Later in life as he became more anti-colonial, he urged his fellow Muslims to “Prove that in your veins, by the grace and generosity of God, even now Islamic blood flows.” That a true Muslim undertakes work with enthusiasm and emotions for their faith: “islami josh aur imani jazbat.” He worked closely with the Congress, of course, but the point is that throughout his life Muslim identity remained vital to him and that the language of Islam was not marginal.
For Madani I turn to the work of Muhammad Qasim Zaman. Madani was one of the most influential of the ulama to reject the idea of Pakistan. He argued a nation (qaum) was not defined by religion. The Muslims of India formed rather a millat bound by the ties of faith. But even as a millat they were not unique for they were part of a universal Muslim community. Therefore as Qasim Zaman so succinctly put it, “That Hindus and Muslims could not form a single nation was to him as insidious a notion as the idea that the Muslims of India were separate from the global Muslim community.”
Madani was directly critiqued by the modernist Iqbal, Islamist Mawdudi and more indirectly by fellow Deoband alim, Zafar Ahmad Usmani. Yet, whether he was right or wrong, what is relevant to us is that Madani saw the Muslims as a distinct religious body that would enjoy full autonomy within a united India. It was not that Muslims would forgo their religious identity or make it negligible next to national identity. In his mind it was to be an India of federal communities. It would be, in Peter Hardy’s words - a sort of ‘jurisprudential apartheid’.
These lives - Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani - remind us of the centrality of religious community for most Muslims in politics, whether nationalist or separatist, during the era of colonial rule. It shows us how facile the nationalist-communalist binary can be. Muslims were of course deeply divided on a range of political matters as the lives of these men show. Yet the language of Islam often remained prominent across the spectrum, though often meaning different things to different people. It reminds us that it was not inevitable that for those to whom religious identity resonated they would support the Muslim League and the Pakistan idea. Nor is it the case that those that supported the Congress were willing to dilute their sense of religious identity.
Why a religious identity - however expressed - should have been so paramount in this period is subject to debate. Perhaps it was the nature of British rule and of British perceptions of Indian society which elevated the importance of religion. Perhaps it was the deep-rooted resources within the Islamic tradition which pointed to the importance of the umma. Perhaps it was the impact of revivalist movements across religions which sharpened distinctions. Most likely it was combination of all these.
