He once told me that if one does not have intellectual honesty, then there is no point in doing academics. I understood the full import of this comment very gradually. Over the years, I realized why he was not feted like other academic dons and why no government recognition was ever conferred on him. His intellectual honesty always meant that he was on the wrong side of the political establishment. Today, when I understand how leading academics tailor their research to be “politically correct” or remain loyal to a “network”, I understand Prof. Ahmad’s comment with more clarity. It is painful that a scholar of his stature was ignored not just by various governments but also by the academic establishment.

Prof. Ahmad’s oeuvre spans original writings on caste and religion in Indian Muslims, the specter of communalism, education, kinship systems, etc. It was through his writings that we understood the multiple identities which Indian Muslims inhabit. His edited volume on caste amongst Muslims is still the best resource for any researcher willing to interrogate the category. Towards the later phase of his life, he devoted special attention to the question of backward castes amongst Muslims. Today organized under the umbrella of Pasmanda movement, many consider him the most important reason why the talk of Muslim caste permeated the Indian academia and civil society. He not just wrote on the issue but also toured different parts of country to deliver lectures. He would invite empirical pieces on caste and collect them in an edited book in which he would write a long introduction laying thread bare the problem at stake. At times, some of the pieces would argue the exact opposite of what he was proposing in the introduction but like a true scholar, he would include the contrary view also. He argued that caste discrimination existed with the Indian Muslim society and that there was no point denying it. This certainly did not go down well the Muslim establishment whose politics, academically or otherwise, depended on the denial of caste within their society.

I remember his interjections when the Sachar Committee Report was published in 2006. The Report showed that as a community, Muslims lagged far behind others in crucial indicators like education, representation, etc. The reception of the Report among Muslim intellectuals and those on the left was along predicted lines. Both made common ground in accusing state discrimination as the primary locus responsible for Muslim backwardness. It was only Prof. Ahmad who brought some nuance to the debate. He reminded the upper caste Muslim intellectuals how their forefathers had declared English education to be the work of the devil and hence had shunned modernity for nearly 150 years. He reminded them that Muslims were late starters in accessing modern education and that historic lag was bound to show as inequality between different communities. He reasoned that since there is a very small percentage of Muslims who can be called middle class, higher educational attainments will continue to be low.

To those on the left, he subtly pointed out that the indices for West Bengal (which was ruled by the CPM for the longest time) was far worse when compared to Gujarat (which had a BJP government). He reasoned that it was not the government or the state which was solely responsible for Muslim backwardness but rather matters internal to the community should also inquired into. But then discrimination and exclusion were the buzzwords of the time and no one paid any heed to what Imtiaz was arguing. I must also add that he was one of the few scholars who had actually read the Report; others were just fluffing.

Indian Islam was another area which retained his abiding interest. In his Ritual and Religion in India, he had stipulated that Indian Islam was simultaneously local and universal. The local elements could be seen in the practice of visitation to various dargahs, use of amulets and even rituals and practices in common with Hindus. At the same time, Indian Islam was also part of the universalism of the faith, seen in practices like Salat, Saum, Hajj, etc. This was not an idea which was original to Prof. Ahmad; such theorizations had an old history in the discipline of social anthropology. But his original formulation was that both these tendencies will continue to co-exist in what he called “Indian Islam”. In other words, he was arguing that the average Indian Muslim was perfectly happy to co-exist in two simultaneous and at times contradictory worldviews: those of the local Hindu cosmology and that of the great tradition of Islam. The historian of Islam in South Asia, Prof. Francis Robinson got into a detailed argument with him over the issue. Other scholars weighed in with the result that today no serious researcher of Islam in India can overlook the debate initiated by Prof. Ahmad.

Prof. Ahmad always encouraged difference and plurality of views. In that spirit, I must say that he was too much wedded to the idea of Nehruvian secularism and a linear view of modernization. Many a time, he assumed that modernization will take care of the orthodoxy within the Muslim community. Today, we know that things are far more complex: that Muslim orthodoxy is on the increase even as the educational levels of the community are going up. He also assumed that religious pluralism was inherent in the Indian ethos. While this might be true, placing too much emphasis on it makes us oblivious to the processes, internal to religious communities, which lead to the very subversion of that pluralism.

After he retired from the university, he was regularly seen on television adding nuance to otherwise drab debates. He weighed in on the majoritarian turn which the country was taking but was always optimistic that this was a passing phase. Sadly, his belief in the innate moderation of Indian normative psyche might not have too many takers. But the conviction with which he uttered those words could only come from a man deeply weeded to the idea of India.

Anyone writing the story of Indian Muslims post-Independence will have to engage with Prof. Ahmad’s ideas. And that’s a legacy that very few academicians leave behind.

A regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia. 

Courtesy: New Age Islam

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Prof. Ahmad was a pioneering sociologist that set the terms of the debate on the sociology of Indian Muslims by bringing in a more empirical focus from the 1970s onward. He was mainly known for opening up the Muslim caste question within academia. A great conversationalist with a very sharp sense of humor and wit, he was also a scholar deeply engaged in defining the word, secularism.

Professor Imtiaz Ahmad, who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for three decades, has been abused by Hindu fanatics for his comments on the Gyanvapi Masjid. This is yet another indication that our society is becoming more and more intolerant, irrational, communal and illiterate. The way Prof Ahmad is being trolled by hatemongers is shocking. His religious identity has been targeted, although he has never let his religion restrict his thinking and actions.

Those who are attacking Prof Ahmad and reducing him to his religious identity do not have any idea about his contribution to nation-building. From 1972-2002, he taught Political Sociology and Minority Politics at the Centre for Political Studies (CPS), JNU. The JNU alumni regard him as one of the most creative and original thinkers of his time. I joined JNU only in 2009 and even today my seniors tell me that he was perhaps one of the best teachers of the university. They say his comments during tutorials, discussions and seminars were sharp and eye-opening.

Even though I wasn’t fortunate enough to attend his classes, I would spend hours with him in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Those days, he had retired from teaching but he used to come to Jamia to participate in seminars and we, as students of Jamia, used to reach out to him at lunch and tea break with our questions. He would take all our questions, so much so that he often forgot he had to go back to the seminar room.

I have been witness to the fact that Prof Ahmad is not only a learned person but also a very bold intellectual. He does not believe in playing to the gallery. He does not change his tune with the changing nature of the regime. Nor does he believe in forging a vicious cycle of sycophant scholars, which most academicians are prone to doing.

His brilliance and his boldness even invited the envy of his colleagues at the Centre of Political Studies. As a result, they conspired against him and this led to his suspension. For several years he remained suspended but he kept fighting. Finally, the truth prevailed and his suspension was revoked. All those who put hurdles in his path are intellectually dead and forgotten, while the work and contribution of Prof Imtiaz Ahmad has become immortal. His work has become part of our historiography and intellectual debate.

Sadly, the same Prof Imtiaz Ahmad is being trolled by Hindu fanatics. If India has survived and is known in the world for being a society of composite culture, people like Prof Imtiaz Ahmad have dedicated his life to providing the intellectual glue.

All those illiterates who are trolling Prof Ahmad, why don’t you spare a few hours of your time and read some of his works and cleanse your prejudice? If you do not have the time to do that, you can still watch some of his lectures online.

Unlike Hindu and Muslim communalists, Prof Imtiaz Ahmad’s work has stressed the composite culture of India. Not only that, he has also underscored the Indianness of Islam in India. He cannot emphasize enough that from a scholar’s point of view, the textual part of religion is important but how the religion is lived out every day is more important. It is in the real world that a scholar can find complexities, while the religious texts are often written to give the ideal picture.

That is why he has always warned scholars against considering the textual reality as the total reality. For him, a scholar has to go to the field – if they rely on the textual understanding or common sense, they would run the risk of making gross generalizations.
Besides, Prof Imtiaz Ahmad has questioned the unequal elements within a religion, for which he has been criticized by the orthodox sections. His major work aims at problematizing the monolithic and homogeneous character of a religion. According to him, religion is never monolithic nor is it homogeneous. He maintains that religious scholars through their didactic texts try to paint an ideal and homogenous picture of religion, while the reality is that the followers of religion are deeply divided along class, caste, gender and regional lines.

In the late 1970s, Prof Ahmad changed the discourse in academics by showing social stratification among the Indian Muslim community. The earlier discourses, both secular and communal, looked at Muslims as a monolithic community. However, Prof Ahmad fearlessly says that Indian Muslims do have a caste-like feature. In the introduction to his pioneering book, ‘Caste and Social Stratification among Muslims in India’ (1978), Prof Ahmad argues, “It is clear that caste exists as a basis of social relations among them but its form has been greatly weakened and modified and it differs from the Hindu caste model in certain details.”

It is his work that intellectually provided strength to lower-caste Muslims to fight for their rights. Some call themselves Dalit Muslims while others identify as Pasmanda Muslims. However, their basic arguments is that lower-caste Muslims face discrimination at multiple levels. They are discriminated against by the majoritarian State and the upper castes, be they Hindus or Muslims. One of their main demands include granting Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Muslims who were excluded from schedule though a presidential order by the Jawaharlal Nehru government in the 1950s. To deny the legitimate rights to Dalit Muslims, the Hindu right-wing within the government argued that Islam does not have a caste system, hence Muslims do not deserve to be included in the schedule. However, the work of Prof Imtiaz Ahmad challenges this communal narrative. Ironically, the Muslim elite and religious leaders have hardly shown any interest in his work. Their self-interest in presenting the community as monolithic influenced their approach towards him and they largely brushed aside his arguments.

A few months ago I was able to visit Prof Imtiaz Ahmad’s place in Delhi. When I entered his room, he was sitting on the bed and looking at his mobile phone. On seeing me, he asked me to sit and offered me sweets. Our discussion began and his first comment was this: “True, Hindu communalists are provoking Muslims. But the way a section of a Muslims is reacting is also not the best thing to do”.

On hearing this, I was moved. Never has communal polarization been so sharply felt or have Muslims been so demonized, yet here is an old man who is not under the sway of any passion. Like the Buddha, he speaks rationally. While he is critical of the Hindu fanatics, in the same breath, he also brushes aside any unwanted reactions from Muslim community.

During our conversation, he remained optimistic. He said that India would very soon overcome this phase of religious frenzy: “Whatever we are seeing today will soon pass. Secular democracy and composite culture will last. … Yes. This difficult time will soon pass.” If one gets acquainted with his work and ideas, they will be left with no doubt that Prof Ahmad is the epitome of what is good in India – secularism, composite culture, rationality and a quest for equality.

This article was first published on FORWARD Press on May 28, 2022.

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