Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013. xiii, 234 pp. (Map, B&W photos.) US$49.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-3609-2.
It is seldom that one comes across a book that sheds light on a topic long neglected by historians, but of crucial importance to understanding a critical phase in the history of the Indian subcontinent: when different types and forms of nationalism emerged in response to British colonialism. Kavita Saraswathi Datla marshals a great deal of empirical evidence to establish that the political confrontation between Hindus and Muslims that emerged in the 1930s was not driven by primordial religious differences; rather it should be understood as a product of clashing secularisms.
Set in the historical context of the princely State of Hyderabad in South India, one learns about the cultural and identity concerns that informed its educational policy. Although ruled by Sunni nobility, state policy in Hyderabad, including educational policy, was non-sectarian. Nevertheless Sunni-Hanafi principles served nominally as the framework for writing the history of Islam and the content of the theological courses. Those in charge of the university curriculum (some key figures were Shias) strove to project Islam as rationalist and progressive. Osmania University attracted Muslims from all over India, especially the Punjab and northern India, and thus acted as a hub for Muslim intellectualism.
The author concedes that ruling over a vast Hindu majority, the Muslim minority was concerned with establishing its cultural hegemony though without necessarily imposing the Islamic system on all the subjects of the Nizam. Hindus were admitted as students. Schools using Telegu, the main language of the people (47 percent), were established and expanded over time. Other languages spoken were Marathi (26 percent) and Kannada and Urdu (14 percent each). Smaller numbers of people spoke Marwari, Tamil, Gondi and Lambadi.
Some British officials wanted to use the educational system to shape an Islam that was modernistic. Ambitious plans to translate scientific literature into Urdu and use it at the higher levels of education were also pursued with vigour. The author argues that the patronage of the Urdu language by Osmania University (founded 1918) in the capital Hyderabad was an attempt to make Muslim cultural and intellectual forms a part of the larger secular future in which all communities would be included. The debates at the university, particularly in its Translation Bureau as well as in Baba-e-Urdu (father of Urdu) Maulvi Abdul Haq’s standpoint on Urdu’s literary past, were inclined towards proving that Urdu was not the exclusive language of Indian Islam or Muslims.
Reviewing the origins of Urdu, the author asserts that both Hindi and Urdu were once the same spoken language, but beginning in the late eighteenth century the Mughal Court invested Persian and Arabic vocabulary in Urdu. Thus a vintage language began to distinguish itself from the more vernacular forms of it. Such a trend was compounded by the rise of the Hindi movement in northern India in the nineteenth century. Such processes fed into the divisive politics of the 1930s, when the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League entered the contest over the future of India.
Initially the Congress Party’s standpoint was that Hindustani, written both in Devanagari and Persian script, would be the national language of a future, united India. However in 1942 Gandhi began to speak of Hindi as the national language of India while according Urdu the status of a special language with religious importance for Muslims. It made Abdul Haq leave the Congress Party. Gandhi later realized his folly and in 1945 reverted to the original Congress stand that Hindustani should be the national language with Devanagari and Persian as its official scripts.
Meanwhile in the 1930s, the divisiveness which had come to mark the contest between the two main protagonists over the future of India—the Congress for a united India and the Muslim League for a separate and independent Pakistan—was greatly aggravated when the song “Vande Mataram,” written by the Bengali Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, began to be sung in Congress meetings. The Indian Muslims considered it offensive as it was included in a novel, Anandamath(1882), which portrayed both the British and Muslims as foreigners who conquered Bengal. The song went to the heart of the Hindus but alienated the Muslims. Consequently, when Hindu students at Osmania University began to chant it in 1938 as a prayer in the university and college campuses in the state, the authorities banned it and several hundred students were expelled.
The author notes that even within the Hindu student community not all were in favour of that song. The large number of sects and sub-sects among Hindus and then the tension between the religiously-inclined and those of a scientific persuasion also cropped up, but it was retained along with another more inclusive song representing a general spiritual aspiration of all Hindus for divine favours and blessings. In addition, demands to permit the dhoti (loose cloth worn around the waist) along with the sherwani (long coat) that was prescribed uniform were made.
The Hindu nationalist leader, Sarkar, of the Hindu Mahasabha advised the Hindus not to compromise with the authorities. Consequently, many Hindu students shifted to Nagpur and left the university and colleges in Hyderabad. At Osmania University the Hindus began to demand M.A. courses in Telegu, Kanarese and and not just in Urdu and Persian as was then the practice.
After India became independent things changed radically. In 1948 the Indian government launched military action and forcibly incorporated Hyderabad into the Indian Union. With regard to the language question it culminated with English being accepted as the medium of instruction.
The author’s point that Urdu was the language of “secular Islam” is interesting. Datla has provided ample material for debate and controversy in her remarkable scholarly contribution.
Ishtiaq Ahmed
Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
National University of Singapore, Singapore
pp. 368-370