 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Neelanjan Mukhopadhyay. You are watching Present, Past and the Future. According to the 2011 census, there were more than 14% Muslims in India. This number may have increased marginally since then. The newly elected 17th Lok Sabha has 27 Muslim members. They account for barely 5% of the total house. I do not want to bore you with more historical data because they always tell half the truth. In any case, you can Google these figures. The moot point, however, is that Muslim representation in Indian legislature does not match their proportion in the population. But representation in parliament or state assemblies is not the only yardstick to evaluate if Muslim voice is being heard. There are other ways too. They are presence in politics, exhibited in electoral turnout and presence in political parties and most importantly in protests. The ruling BJP provides space for only those Muslims who go along with the party and its party line. Being asked to shout, Jayashree Ram is fine but politely not by use of violence. You cannot say why should I say something which is antithetical to my belief. Plot an imaginary index of Hindutva over the years. The X axis plotting the years after independence and the Y axis depicting the value of Hindutva. You will agree that the graph has risen steadily since the late 1980s. It has shot up dramatically since 2014. Mirroring this is the increase is a sense of alienation among Muslims. We all know the reasons behind these and today I shall not talk about these. Instead, we will go deep into the past and look at two streams that were available and pursued by Muslims in almost equal numbers before independence. Before partition, almost a quarter of India's population was Muslim. After popular partition, this fell to 10%. Another way to present the same numbers is to say that almost 42% of Muslims in India, that is British India, chose to make secular India their home. The majority of these were living in provinces where Hindus were already in a majority. These Muslims stayed back and their descendants make up today's Indian Muslims. They continue to remain in the country of their birth because of the political call of nationalist Muslim leaders. The story of Muslim politics in pre-independence India can be traced in brief by tracing the parallel lives of two towering Muslim leaders. The first is obviously Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the originator of the two-nation theory. And the other is Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, certainly the tallest nationalist and the congress leader, who was also a devout Muslim. To discuss these two parallel lives and their politics, I am joined by the famous historian S Irfan Habib, a scholar of modern Indian history. He is now further researching Maulana Azad's life and politics. After spending decades as a historian, he still believes in the dictum that there is no end to research. Welcome Irfan Habib. Let me begin with a very peculiar paradox. On the one hand, you had the Maulana who was a religious scholar, yet in the congress party, a secular party, committed to an inclusive India. On the other hand, you had quote-unquote a liberal or a secular Jinnah who was in a communal outfit, the Muslim League. Does it not appear a bit of strange? Would it not have been better if the political beliefs of the two had kind of got interchanged with each other? I think communalism has nothing to do with belief, because you can be a believer but still be very secular, very progressive. And you can be an atheist but still be a Jinnah or still be a sub-worker. So you don't have to be a believer to espouse the cause of divisive politics. And that's what Jinnah did. So he didn't need Islam at all. He was not a practicing Muslim. You called him like liberal or whatever, secular. That is what a large number of people say. He was a proclaimed atheist. He had nothing to do with Islam at all. He never practiced it. So he was one who actually upheld the cause of communal divisive Islamic politics at a very late stage. He was actually called, as Saroj Dhanadu called him, the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. And she was so fond of him. And look at his writings in the beginning of the 1910s and 1920s. You will see what sort of opinion senior communist leaders like Saroj Dhanadu held about him. But this man changes later on. And we know what are the reasons why he changed and all. So he didn't really espouse the cause of two-nation theory. He espoused it much later when this two-nation theory was already established by so many others than Jinnah. Jinnah, of course, became the foremost voice later on. And he can't be condoned for what he did. So he obviously represented the idea of Pakistan from late 1920s onwards till 1947. So are you in some way trying to also argue that religious belief does no way influence political outlook? That is at least in the context of Molana Azad. Absolutely. Because Molana Azad was a believer. I don't know whether we have that sort of time, but Molana Azad actually went through very, very different stages in his life, even in terms of belief. Like he was born in a family which was a very, very, like Islam was a very rigorous faith in the family. His own father was a great scholar and a great, like, huge following. He was the Nashbandi Sufi. So he had a large number of followers. Nashbandis are a little more, like, puritanical than the Chishti order. So he belonged to that. Molana Azad decided at a very early stage not to follow his father's Islam. Because he didn't agree with lots of things. So in his teens, he decided to do away with that faith, rejected that faith. According to Molana himself, he stayed without faith for more than eight, ten years. He did not feel like praying. He did not feel like saying, Namaz. So this was the stage. Now he comes back to Islam, which he thought was actually a better Islam for himself. The way he conceived it. The position, you know, his view towards Islam, the Islam that he followed, you know, kept on evolving as you're saying. But as far as political ideology goes, his political outlook goes, he was steadfast in it right from the beginning. He believed that this is a country where he was born, where there are Hindus and Muslims in equal numbers and they have to stay together. Now a question which arises is that both Molana Azad and Jinnah were probably the bitterest critics of each other. Jinnah shot of calling names to Molana Azad, which can be termed on being on the border of being unparliamentary. He used every word that possibly exists in the dictionary. Despite this fact, you know, that Molana Azad realized, you know, that he was fighting a losing battle, you know, especially in the 1940s. You know, later on we discovered in his writing that he was critical about the way the Congress leaders also went about partition. He felt that they should have possibly resisted it. Why do you think that despite seeing that where they were already in a minority, they would become a further minority? I am talking about those provinces in India where the Muslims were not in the majority. So despite that, why did Molana Azad continue to pursue the idea of united India against partition and then decide to stay on in India and not move to Pakistan? You see, the idea was not, his idea of inclusive India was not based on the number of Muslims living in different provinces. He did not really calculate his, formulate his strategy on the basis of population or demography for that matter. For him, Muslims were part of India. Whether they are minority in some parts, they are majority in some parts, that is a different issue. That was the issue which was being discussed by people who were thinking in terms of dividing the country. He never thought on those lines. He thought as an Indian, as an Indian Muslim. So he never, this idea never got into his head. So he wanted a composite inclusive India because he gave an example of, like many times he cited the example of the Prophet himself. He said, Prophet moved from Makkah to Madina. When he goes there, he establishes the first government in Madina after finding his new Muslims in that area. And he lived amidst the Jews. There was a Jew population in Madina mostly. So he had to establish a state, a nation, a new nation, a Muslim nation in that place called Madina. And which could be possible only when you talk in terms of togetherness, in terms of compositeness. And he defined it. He said the new nation cannot be run without the support of the Jews. So Muslims and Jews have to come together to form this new nation. So Manan Azad used to give this example, which was given by Hussain Ahmad Madini later on in 1938 in one of his beautiful pamphlets, which I have used in one of my books recently, on composite nationalism. He said exactly this. Prophet could formulate composite nationalism to form a new government. Why can't Muslims do that today with the Hindus? You know, there's something which comes to my mind which, you know, need to understand from somebody like you. To that there were a large number of Muslims led by Maulana Azad who were against partition, who believed that the nation cannot be divided on religious lines. But once it became inevitable, questions would have surely come in their mind that whether Muslims are going to be safe and secure within the India despite the promise of the Congress leaders that we shall remain a secular country. Despite this fears, from where did they get such courage? Not just leaders, but also this overwhelming number of people in the heart of what we call the Hindi heartland. You know, UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, you know such. Where did they get so much of courage to stay on in a land and not move away to Pakistan? Lured by that, we have seen instances like, you know, Garam Hawa. No, let me give you the example from... Your family, for instance. My own family, for example. Like, in my own family, large number of people moved to Pakistan. Yes, but those who stayed must have been a very brave decision. My grandfather, both grandfathers, paternal and maternal, both of them decided to stay back. Now, our maternal grandfathers and our landed property all belonged to a place where the village was surrounded by the Hindu Gujarats, even now, even today. That was the only village where there were Sayyads who were owning most of the land. Gujarats were just stillers of the land. But despite that, and despite all sorts of tensions and fears and being circulated in those times, both my grandfathers, they decided to stay back. Their own sons actually left, even daughters left, but they stayed back. My mother stayed back. She didn't go. Her two sisters went away. She didn't go. So, the point is, the families were divided. There were decisions taken by families and my family is just one example. There are so many families like that who decided courageously that we need to stay back. This is our home. This is a temporary phase and we will pass through it successfully, despite all the tensions around. So, now, coming to the politics you were talking about. See, the Muslim League politics was based on the fears of the professional Muslims, the business class, all those who felt that after independence, the Hindu majority will actually deprive them of their rights. They will run roughshod over there. They would have been that feeling, definitely. That was the feeling. This feeling was used by a Muslim League in all their writings, all their speeches. Look at, this is a continuous sentiment which is spread regularly. And a lot of people succumbed to it because if you actually look at it, there were approximately 72 lakh people who went. I will come to that. Now, to present what is happening today. Now, Maulana Zahar and Jamatul Ulumay Hind, they went to school. They stayed away from Muslim League. People say different reasons. One is that Muslim League leadership was actually of leadership of the professionals and upper class Zamidars and you know, sections. While Jamatul Ulumay Hind represented the refraff. Right. That is the way they were depicted most of the time. Mostly. Those were the words. The elite Muslims used that word for their fellow Muslims, even now. So, most of the people, because the majority was of the so-called refraff, they stayed away. Because I have checked it with so many of my friends. So many of my Ansari friends who are the VV community. And when I talk to them, I find that they do not have a single relation living across the border. Right. But nobody crossed. They all stayed back. So, they never feel the need of actually going back to Pakistan to meet their cousins. You know, what you are saying is very important. And, you know, there's something, you know, in the last few years, we have had a lot of political developments here. We were talking about that, especially since the 1980s, there has been a certain amount of resurgence of what we call the spirit of Hindutva, which has made more and more Indians majoritarian in their outlook. This is quite often a question which I ask, you know, that would today's Muslims, even if in small numbers, feel that the way things are going, possibly their ancestors made a wrong choice in 1947? This is a feeling which is creeping in, not in a very huge way till now. But there is a feeling that majoritarian sentiment is prevailing and time may come when their voice may not be heard. So, this is a feeling which is creeping in. And I hope this is just a passing phase, because this is a very, very dangerous feeling, because Muslims are not just a minority. They are deliver in huge numbers. So, if a huge section of our population lives in fear, then obviously that fear can lead to all sorts of problems. So, we have to get over it. And I don't know how we can get over it, but this is something which again is very, very historical, because this resonates the sentiment of the ancestors, people who made the choice this way or the other way. People who left and people who left behind, people who left because they felt the fears of in the majoritarianism, who stayed back. You know, to settle this feeling of disquiet among contemporary Muslims, regardless of the way political developments have taken place, how important is the memory of Maulana Azad? If we actually take a walk around India and go through various discourses, in contemporary political discourse, Maulana Azad simply does not exist. So, how important it is to bring him back into our discourse to tell both Hindus and Muslims that there was a man like him who walked amongst us and who fought for a united country. It is very important. We need to do it. The point is, why Maulana Azad? I am sure there will be many others. Whose voice is heard today? We use just names. We use names. We use their sacrifices. We don't go and see what they actually wrote, what they actually did, what sort of politics they pursued. So, Maulana Azad is one of them. We need to, actually, a large number of people know about what Maulana Azad did. People know that he was the last man standing when the issue of partition came. People like Gandhi agreed, Nehru agreed, Patel agreed. He was the last. It was already Maulana Azad. Was that one of the reasons as to why he said that some pages of his book, you know, of his autobiography, would be released? Those pages had nothing. I don't know. Why was there so much? Can you tell us what was there in those 30 pages? There was nothing. There was nothing. There was nothing very incriminating. There was nothing very revealing. I don't know why it was said, whether he said it at all. I don't know. I have no idea. But this was something. So, as a serious scholar, as a historian who studied that, you really do not think that there was any fresh juice, as they say. Nothing, nothing. Had there been any juice, then we would be talking about it. There's nothing. This is like, watch on the post papers, you know. What did the papers of the post tell us? Nothing very much. The only thing is, when you hide something, the curiosity rises. So, those, that curiosity led to all sorts of speculations. But nothing very, very much came out of it. Maulana Azad still has a lot of relevance in contemporary India. Of course, of course. Huge relevance, Maulana. He is a man who should be seen as one of the actually true builders of composite India. He was one of those people who stood against the major sentiment which divided our country. It's not that other people didn't fight. But he was the man who fought against the severest odds. Something which questioned his faith, not only his politics. People questioned his Islam. So all sorts of things. So abuses were heard not against his own person, against his faith, despite being a scholar. But he faced all that. So he sacrificed a lot. When he died in the late 50s, did he die a settled man or a highly troubled man? I think he was both. He was satisfied in the sense that we don't see any, because one, not a very good thing about him is that he did really write very much after he became a minister. He stopped writing. He concentrated more on government works. So this is something which everybody talks about. All scholars of Maulana Azad talk about, except for letters, except for all sorts of odd things. Maybe you can find hidden or unstated things in these letters. I have seen lots of records in the archives. There's nothing much. There are notes, detailed notes, comments on files, which speak about other things, not really about his mind. So he didn't write anything like Obar-e-Khatir, which he wrote in 1942, where he speaks his mind. His personal likes and dislikes, his politics, his faith, his choices, what sort of tea he was to drink, what music he has to hear, all sorts of things. So he didn't really open up after he becomes a minister. And that is a long period, 10 years. He died at the age of 68 or 69. He didn't live very long. He was not even 70, which means he stopped writing at the age of 50, 51. There was also this very peculiar anomaly. I think it kept into our politics right from the beginning that you are a Muslim leader. You are a great nationalist. You have support across communities, but you will contest only from a seat where there are a sizable number of Muslims. He could not stop the Congress from putting him from Rampur. Rampur, yes. So this has been a cruel paradox? Yeah, absolutely. It is a cruel paradox. And it actually speaks not very well about the Congress party itself. If Congress claims that it is a party of all, Muslims, Hindus and everybody else. So the party for whose ideals Maulana Azad fought for, possibly he felt that it betrayed him and his prophecy for India, it has turned out to be true to some extent. Yeah, to a great extent. There is no doubt about it. Thank you, Ifan. There is much to learn from you always. Thank you. I would like to conclude by a statement of Maulana Azad. If India does not get freedom, it would be India's loss. But if Hindus and Muslims do not unite, it would be entire humanity's loss. We certainly owe it to everyone to remain a country that we pledged to be when India became independent. I hope we all keep this in mind as we go through our daily routines. Thank you for watching this program.