A friend from Twitter (@kartheeque) has written a nice detailed post about the inward turn in Muslim politics in India and its various consequences. It is well worth a read. The full text is available at Substack as “The Inward turn..” (he goes by Viduracounsel), I am posting some portions here…
Muslim political movements in the Indian subcontinent – from the first reformist stirrings after the Mughal collapse to the institutional politics of today – have been overwhelmingly characterized by an inward orientation. Whether the mode was militant restorationism, separatist nationalism, or the quieter but equally consequential demand for communal legal autonomy, the dominant tendency has been to organize as Muslims first, often in opposition to the larger society, rather than as citizens of a shared polity.
This is not to say that individual Muslims have not been patriots, secularists, and integrationists – many have, heroically. Nor is it to pretend that the subcontinent’s communal history has been one-sided. Hindu-Muslim violence has always run in both directions, and any honest account must hold that truth. But intellectual honesty also requires acknowledging that the structural failures of mainstream Muslim political organizations to embrace genuine secular citizenship are real, longstanding, and consequential – independent of whatever provocations have existed.
What follows is an attempt to trace the full arc of that inward turn Continue reading The Inward Turn: Muslim Politics in the Indian Subcontinent from the Fall of the Mughals to the Present