Muslim Zion : Pakistan as a political idea PDF
Preview Muslim Zion : Pakistan as a political idea
MUSLIM ZION FAISAL DEVJI Muslim Zion Pakistan as a Political Idea Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts 2013 Copyright © Faisal Devji, 2013 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PL First Harvard University Press edition, 2013 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Devji, Faisal. Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea / Faisal Devji. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-07267-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Islam and politics—Pakistan. 2. Islam and state—Pakistan. 3. Pakistan—Politics and government—20th century. 4. Pakistan—History—20th century. 5. India—History—Partition, 1947. I. Title. DS384.D43 2013 320.54095491—dc23 2013014319 CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 1. Another Country 13 2. The Problem With Numbers 49 3. A People Without History 89 4. The Fanatic’s Reward 123 5. To Set India Free 163 6. The Spirit Of Islam 201 Conclusion 241 Notes 251 Index 269 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The idea for this book was prompted by an invitation to deliver the Kingsley Martin Memorial Lecture at the University of Cam- bridge in 2009. The project I sketched out in my lecture was subsequently elaborated over many conversations with Shruti Kapila, as well as receiving much productive commentary in workshops and talks organized by Chris Bayly, Sunil Khilnani, Uday Mehta, Henning Trüper, Ravinder Kaur and Thomas Blom Hansen. Some of the book’s themes possessed an earlier incar- nation at Yale, as a paper on Jinnah inspired by the late Carol Breckenridge, which received the careful consideration of Arjun Appadurai, Achille Mbembe and Vyjayanthi Rao, to all of whom I’m very grateful. My thanks also go to those who have generously read and commented on draft chapters. In addition to the two anonymous press reviewers, these include Derek Penslar, Neguin Yavari, C. M. Naim, Ahmed Zildzic and Kelly Grotke. As always, Rachel and Michael Dwyer as well as Chris- tophe Carvalho have made my task as a writer easier and more pleasurable. Faisal Devji Oxford, March 2013 vii INTRODUCTION In an early essay called “Is Judaea, then, the Teutons’ Father- land?” a great philosopher of the modern state wondered if his homeland would ever give rise to a nation. Reflecting upon the patchwork quilt of principalities that was Germany in his day, G. W. F. Hegel noted that its history seemed to provide only fragments for the building of a collective imagination: Thus we are without any religious imagery which is homegrown or linked with our history, and we are without any political ima gery whatever; all that we have is the remains of an imagery of our own, lurking amid the common people under the name of superstition. As a belief in ghosts it retains the memory of a hill where knights once did their mischief or a house where monks and nuns walked or where a supposedly faithless trustee or neighbor has still failed to find rest in the grave. As a product of fancy, drawing nothing from history, it befools weak or evil men with the possibility of witchcraft.1 Instead of turning to their own country and its past, suggested Hegel, Germans were only able to imagine a homeland in the landscape of biblical Judaea, whose image they had inherited from the centuries of Christianity that preceded the politics of nationalism: Christianity has emptied Valhalla, felled the sacred groves, extirpated the national imagery as a shameful superstition, as a devilish poison, and given us instead the imagery of a nation whose climate, laws, cul- ture, and interests are strange to us and whose history has no connec- 1
The list of books you might like
