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ISLAMIC MODERNISM IN '
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INDIA AND PAKISTAN
1857-1964
AZIZ AHMAD
Professor of Islamic Studies
in the University of Toronto
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Issued under the auspices of the
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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TO
GUSTAVE E. VON GRUNEBAUM
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CONTENTS
Preface 1X
Acknowledgements Xll
System of Transliteration Xlll
Abbreviations XIV
I Introduction I
Early contacts and influences, I
Early impressions of western ~ivilization: Abu Talib
Khan, 6
The impact of the British judic:al system, 12
.. \h
Religious rea.c tions a~d the 'Mutiny' of l857, 19
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~ II Sayyid A}:imad Khan and the Aligarh movement
Loyylism and political sepa~atism, 3 I '
'\ '~:-J· ! Occidentalism, 34
Education and culture, 36
'-" Methodology of historiography, 39
Theological speculation, 40
Comparative religion, 54
57
)
77
\
V The traditionalist revival
103
t,V The great schools, 103
l Neo-tra<litio;;alism: the AJ.:1-i J:Iadi~, 1 ~~/
I
.,··
CONTENTS
VI Caliphate and yan-Islamism 123
( First phase (1870-1910 ), 123
Second phase (19u-1924), 131
VII !.gJ2il: Speculative neo-modernism 141
Choice of values, 141 ,_ B
\ Religious speculation, 147 ·--;)-
lil 1
VIII The genesis of Pakist.m_
ot
!qbjil's th.§.OIY of Pakist~.n. 156 -:?
Mul_iammad 'Ali Jinnal). and the two-nation
theory, 164
rt:. moc
/ Cross-currents in the Pakistan movement, 167
4
~"}( ~?~l~-~ala;ffi ~:~~: Exegetical eclecticism
tran
X Composite nationalism
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XI Three theories of _Isla_mic_ so_cial ism Pror
_:} XII Mawdiidi: Orthodox fundamentalism
terp1
XIII Parwiz: Ex'e-getical neo-moderni.. sm 224
l:u1d
J-,.al
XIV The dilemma of modernism and orthodoxy in
(Tl
Pakistan 237
· ke
XV Trends in Islam in India (1947-64) 254
is epi
XVI Conclusion ..._... --z6o J;._.ffi:
eni.pl
Glossary
al!Ci l'.
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Select Bibliography 'iti.
in th(
Index
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; PREFACE
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, ;I TH'.IS work has been undertaken primarily~o introduce to the
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western student the landmarks of religious and political thought
~;11.
in Islamic India and Pakistan from 1857 to the present daY) It is
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not planned as a comprehensive or detailed survey; conse
quently it deals mainly with individual thinkern and their works.
'f
) ~ ('.J:'he principal chapters deal with the long ;truggle between
., modernism and orthodoxy, which continues unabated to the
·.\ present day) The problem is whether Islamic law, which also
~
/ I shapes political institutions, should continue to reject all ex
traneous stimuli and confine itself to the four traditional orthodox
sources, the Qur'an, 'f:iadi§, or the dicta attributed to the
Prophet, the ijmit, consensus of the 'ulamii.' (theologians), and
qiyii.s, juristic reasoning by analogy,1 or whether it should rein
I
terpret the first two sources, either apologetically or otherwise,
t
and transform the last two to become the vehicle of modern
legal, ax:id later, political notions.
(!'he most forceful challenge to traditionalism came in the
wake of the devastating consequences of the 'Mutiny' of l 8 57-8. It
is epitomized in the thought, analysis, and apologetics of Sayyid
Al).mad Khan (1817-98), his movement, and the variations of
emphasis in the modernist trends of his associates, Chiragh 'Ali
. and Mahdi 'Ali Khan Mul).sin al-Mtilk. The problem of legal and
political reform led to vnying r~interpretatiom: of Islamic history
in the writings of Shibli Nu'mani (1857-1914) and Amir 'Ali
(1849-19z8) a7.1d to an emotional involvement with the contem
porary world nf Islam reflected in the Caliphate movement.
The traditionalist response to modernist challenges entrenched
itself behind the bastions of orthodoxy, the great theological
schools, as well as in the neo-traditionalist movement of the Ahl-i
I:Iadi§. 2
1 The last principle has been largely replaced in modem Indian Islam by that
) of ijtihii.d, or the use of individual reasoning.
' 2 See below, pp. II3-22.
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x PREFACE
The key figure in twentieth-century modernism is that of the \ ~· re
poet and thinker Mul;ammad Iqbal (1875-1938), as in the nine st
teenth century it was that of Sayyid A~mad Khan. In the com a
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plex of his metaphysical approach to the redefinition of Islam in cl-
"
terms of modern values, a middle-of-the-road position emerges.
Much more significant in the history of Islamic India was his g1·
political thought, which equated the Islamic notion of ijma' with ov
parliamentary democracy and worked out a new theory of
D
Muslim nationalism which marked the theoretical beginning of of
the Pakistan movement. This view was given a more tangible ~h
shape in practical politics in Mul;ammad 'Ali Jinnal?'s two-nation .., or.
·.~·
theory~ which regarded Hindus and Muslims of the sub-con 1 rei
tinent as two separate: nations. Tf
1
The figure of Abu'l-Kalam Azad (1888-1958) is partly com oi;
plementary and partly antithetical to that of Iqbal. Azad's exe .Yh
getical eclecticism leads him to some extent towards religious Vo
pluralism, making it easier for him to develop, sometime later, a
theory of composite nationalism, as opposed to the two-nations Ah
theory. gn
Islamic socialism, which makes its first appearance in Iqbal's
~as
verse, developed as an eccentric growth in the Islamic modernist bet
thought of 'Ubayd-Allah Sindhi and others; and is represented
10~
· in this book by three of its theoreticians. ins<
In Pakistan the polarization of traditionalist and modernist .....o t
thought has been studied in the principal works of Mawdudi 1'
"'
(b. 1903) and Parwiz (b. 1903). Both of them base their argu
ments on the data of exegefr:al fundamentalism, in the inter
pretation of which they diverge in the antithetical directions of
rigid c:xtemalisrn and speculative extravagance. The heritaw~ as )
well as the conflict of these cross-currents is reflected in the pro
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cesses of constitution-making, legislation, and reform in Pakistan, ·
where the trend has been, and still is, to find a middle-of-the
J )
road solution of an Islamic pattern of state on the one hand, an~
its development and adjustment in accordance with the chal )
lenges and requirements of the modern world on the other.
:1
In the case of India since 1947, specimens of the varieties of )
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. PREFACE
XI
~;'~J religious and political adjustment of Islam in diaspora have been
studied in a society which is predominantly non-1\!Iuslim, and in
~~}-\ a state where certain measures offer and may continue to offer
....."
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challenges of religio-cultural identification.
J
I have tried as far as possible to summarize the views of reli
gious and political thinkers rather than offer judgements of my
own, which have been reduced to the minimum. l\:Iy objective
h
has been to place in the hands of the \Vestern Islamist or student
of international affairs a handbook of religious and political
thought, as faithfully as possible rendered into English from
primary sources, leaving him to draw his own conclusions and
relate the problems raised to his ovm particular field of study.
l-
This purpose has been complemented to some extent in an antho
logy, Readings in Nluslim Self-Staiement in India and Pahistan,
l·
which I have edited in collaboration with Professor Gustave E.
Von Grunebaum for Otto Harrassowitz.
An omission which may strike the reader in this book is the
a
Alfmadiyya movement. My reasons for omitting it 2re that a
great deal of literature published by and on the movement is
easily available in the west; that its theological messianism is
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heterodox, whereas in its political thought and in its modernist
~~
posture it is not clearly distinguished from the works of other
~d
institutions and groups studied. The position of the Alfmadiyya
in the 1953 Punjab riots has, however, been discussed.
ist
. Most of the quotations from the Qur'an are from Professor
u- r:- ·I --- A. J. Arberry's lucid version The Koran Interpreted.
A.A.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I AM deeply grateful to the Royal Institute of International
Affairs for sponsoring this study. My thanks are due specially
to i\'Ir A. S. B. Olver and Miss Hermia Oliver of the Institute
for the help I have received from them.
I am grateful for the generous financial help extended in the
way of travel and research grants during 1963 and 1964 by the
Canada Council, the University of Toronto, and for supple ·-
mentary grants to the American Council of Learned Societies •.
and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, providing me
with the opportunity of collecting material in the libraries of
the United Kingdom.
I am grnteful to Professors Bernard Lewis and Hugh Tinker
and to Canon Cragg for reading the MS. and for verj helpful
suggestions. I am also grateful to Mr John Burton-Page and l
Mr C. Shackle, of the School of Oriental and African Studies, t
University of London, who have made themselves responsible e
for the system of transliteration and have also made other
t
helpful corrections.
Parts of this book are based on matter previously published 11
in the forms of articles in the Archives de sociologie des religions, ·\' l
Journal of World History, The Middle East Jounzal, and n
Saeculum. I am obliged to their edito1s for agreeing to its u~e a1
in this work.
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