| Peer-Reviewed

Religion as Nation: The Muslims of India and the Debates on qaum, millat, and umma in the 1930s

Received: 15 September 2021    Accepted: 13 October 2021    Published: 23 November 2021
Views:       Downloads:
Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the current debates about the role of religion in the political process, and its importance for the creation and cohesion of different national communities’ identities. It will analyse the discussions occurred around the concepts, and conceptions, of Nation, National Community (qaum), Religious Community (millat), and the Community of Believers (umma), exploring the different, and sometimes opposing, ideas and political doctrines in the 1930s in the context of India’s struggle for the independence and creation of a new (Nation-)State. The focus will be on Muslim Indian thinkers and politicians such as Muhammad ‘Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), Hussain Ahmad Madani (1879-1957), Abu al-Kalam Azad (1888-1958) and Sayyid Abu’l ‘Ala Mawdudi (1903-1979), as well as political and religious organizations such as the All-India Muslim League, the All-India National Congress, the Jamia’at-i ‘Ulama-i Islam and the Jamia’at-i ‘Ulama-i Hind.

Published in Social Sciences (Volume 10, Issue 6)
DOI 10.11648/j.ss.20211006.15
Page(s) 286-293
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Religious Nationalism, National Religion, Nation, Community

References
[1] Al-Ahsan, Abdullah (1992). Ummah or Nation: Identity Crisis in Contemporary Muslim Society. Leicester: The Islamic Foundation.
[2] Anderson, Benedict (1991). Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
[3] Berger, Stefan, and Lorenz, Chris (eds.) (2008). The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave-MacMillan.
[4] Brubaker, Rogers (2012). Religion and nationalism: four approaches. Nations and Nationalism, 18 (1), 2-20.
[5] Brubaker, Rogers (2015). Grounds for Difference. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
[6] Chand, Tara (1968). National integration and secularism. Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University.
[7] Devji, Faisal (2011). The idea of a Muslim Community: British India, 1857-1906. In Maussen, Marcel; Bader, Veit; and Moors, Annelies (eds.), Colonial and Post-Colonial Governance of Islam: Continuities and Ruptures (pp. 111-132). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
[8] Devji, Faisal (2013). Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea. London: Hurst & Co.
[9] Dhulipala, Venkat (2015). Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[10] Dumbrava, Costica (2014). Nationality, Citizenship and Ethno-Cultural Belonging: Preferential Membership Policies in Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[11] Eickelman, Dale F., and Piscatori, James (1996). Muslim Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[12] Eley, Geoff, and Suny, Ronald Grigor (eds.) (1996). Becoming National: A Reader. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[13] Goodwin, Barbara (1995). Beyond Ideology: Nationalism. In Using Political Ideas (pp. 199-216). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
[14] Gordon, Adi (2017). Toward Nationalism’s End: An Intellectual Biography of Hans Kohn. Waltham: Brandeis University Press.
[15] Gupta, Swarupa (2009). Notions of Nationhood in Bengal: Perspectives on Samaj, c. 1867-1905. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
[16] Gupta, Swarupa (2017). Cultural Constellations, Place-Making and Ethnicity in Eastern India, c. 1850-1927. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
[17] Haupt, Heinz Gerhard, and Langewiesche, Dieter (eds.) (2004). Nation und Religion in Europa. Frankfurt: Campus.
[18] Hobsbawm, Eric (1983). Introduction: Inventing Traditions. In Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (pp. 1-14). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[19] Hobsbawm, Eric (1990). Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[20] Hussain, Adeel (2018). Muhammad Iqbal’s constitutionalism. Indian Law Review, 2 (2), 135-158.
[21] Kausar, Zeenath (2008). Islam and Nationalism: an analysis of the views of Azad, Iqbal and Mawdudi. Second revised edition. Batu Caves: Thinker’s Library.
[22] Lelyveld, David (2020). Next year, if grain is dear, I shall be a Sayyid: Sayyid Ahmad Khan, colonial constructions, and Muslim self-definitions. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 1-16.
[23] Llobera, Josep R. (1994). The God of Modernity: The Development of Nationalism in Western Europe. Oxford: Berg.
[24] Madani, Maulana Hussain Ahmad (2005 [1938]). Composite Nationalism and Islam. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers.
[25] Metcalf, Barbara D. (2009). Husain Ahmad Madani: The Jihad for Islam and India’s Freedom. Oxford: Oneworld.
[26] Miller, David (2008). Nationalism. In Dryzek, John S.; Honig, Bonnie; and Phillips, Anne (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory (pp. 529-545). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[27] Murad, Mehr Afroz (1996). Intellectual Modernism of Shibli Nu’mani: an exposition of his religious and political ideas. New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan.
[28] Pernau, Margrit (2013). Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims in Nineteenth-Century Delhi. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
[29] Pritchett, Frances (2019). Defending the ‘Community’: Sir Sayyid’s Concept of Qaum. In Saikia, Yasmin, and Rahman, M. Raisur (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Sayyid Ahmad Khan (pp. 159-174). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[30] Raja, Masood Ashraf (2010). Constructing Pakistan: foundational texts and the rise of Muslim national identity (1857-1947). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[31] Rasheed, Shahid, and Ahmad, Humaira (2019). Discourse on nationalism: Political ideologies of two Muslim intellectuals, Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani and Allama Muhammad Iqbal. Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization, 9 (2), 127–147.
[32] Rehman, Mohammad Adnan (2018). Nation as a Neo-Idol: Muslim Political Theology and the Critique of Secular Nationalism in Modern South Asia. Religions, 9 (11), 355.
[33] Saikia, Yasmin, and Rahman, M. Raisur (eds.). (2019). The Cambridge Companion to Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[34] Sanyal, Usha (1996). Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1870-1920. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
[35] Sanyal, Usha (1998). Generational Changes in the Leadership of the Ahl-e Sunnat Movement in North India during the Twentieth Century. Modern Asian Studies, 32 (3), 635-656.
[36] Sevea, Iqbal Singh (2012). The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and Nationalism in Late Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[37] Shah, Sayed Wiqar Ali (1999). Ethnicity, Islam, and Nationalism. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
[38] Shils, Edward (1981). Tradition. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
[39] Smith, Anthony D. (2003). Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[40] Smith, Anthony D. (2009). Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach. London/New York: Routledge.
[41] Stepaniants, Marietta (1979). Development of the Concept of Nationalism – the case of the Muslims in the Indian sub-continent. The Muslim World, 69 (1), 1-7.
[42] Wessel, Martin Schulze (ed.) (2006). Nationalisierung der Religion und Sakralisierung der Nation im östlichen Europa. Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag.
Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Carimo Mohomed. (2021). Religion as Nation: The Muslims of India and the Debates on qaum, millat, and umma in the 1930s. Social Sciences, 10(6), 286-293. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ss.20211006.15

    Copy | Download

    ACS Style

    Carimo Mohomed. Religion as Nation: The Muslims of India and the Debates on qaum, millat, and umma in the 1930s. Soc. Sci. 2021, 10(6), 286-293. doi: 10.11648/j.ss.20211006.15

    Copy | Download

    AMA Style

    Carimo Mohomed. Religion as Nation: The Muslims of India and the Debates on qaum, millat, and umma in the 1930s. Soc Sci. 2021;10(6):286-293. doi: 10.11648/j.ss.20211006.15

    Copy | Download

  • @article{10.11648/j.ss.20211006.15,
      author = {Carimo Mohomed},
      title = {Religion as Nation: The Muslims of India and the Debates on qaum, millat, and umma in the 1930s},
      journal = {Social Sciences},
      volume = {10},
      number = {6},
      pages = {286-293},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ss.20211006.15},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ss.20211006.15},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ss.20211006.15},
      abstract = {This paper aims to contribute to the current debates about the role of religion in the political process, and its importance for the creation and cohesion of different national communities’ identities. It will analyse the discussions occurred around the concepts, and conceptions, of Nation, National Community (qaum), Religious Community (millat), and the Community of Believers (umma), exploring the different, and sometimes opposing, ideas and political doctrines in the 1930s in the context of India’s struggle for the independence and creation of a new (Nation-)State. The focus will be on Muslim Indian thinkers and politicians such as Muhammad ‘Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), Hussain Ahmad Madani (1879-1957), Abu al-Kalam Azad (1888-1958) and Sayyid Abu’l ‘Ala Mawdudi (1903-1979), as well as political and religious organizations such as the All-India Muslim League, the All-India National Congress, the Jamia’at-i ‘Ulama-i Islam and the Jamia’at-i ‘Ulama-i Hind.},
     year = {2021}
    }
    

    Copy | Download

  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Religion as Nation: The Muslims of India and the Debates on qaum, millat, and umma in the 1930s
    AU  - Carimo Mohomed
    Y1  - 2021/11/23
    PY  - 2021
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ss.20211006.15
    DO  - 10.11648/j.ss.20211006.15
    T2  - Social Sciences
    JF  - Social Sciences
    JO  - Social Sciences
    SP  - 286
    EP  - 293
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2326-988X
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ss.20211006.15
    AB  - This paper aims to contribute to the current debates about the role of religion in the political process, and its importance for the creation and cohesion of different national communities’ identities. It will analyse the discussions occurred around the concepts, and conceptions, of Nation, National Community (qaum), Religious Community (millat), and the Community of Believers (umma), exploring the different, and sometimes opposing, ideas and political doctrines in the 1930s in the context of India’s struggle for the independence and creation of a new (Nation-)State. The focus will be on Muslim Indian thinkers and politicians such as Muhammad ‘Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), Hussain Ahmad Madani (1879-1957), Abu al-Kalam Azad (1888-1958) and Sayyid Abu’l ‘Ala Mawdudi (1903-1979), as well as political and religious organizations such as the All-India Muslim League, the All-India National Congress, the Jamia’at-i ‘Ulama-i Islam and the Jamia’at-i ‘Ulama-i Hind.
    VL  - 10
    IS  - 6
    ER  - 

    Copy | Download

Author Information
  • Centre of Religious History Studies, Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal

  • Sections