The Illusion of Security: The Background to Muslim Separatism in the United Provinces

Abstract

One of the most intriguing questions in the modern history of North India is why the Muslims of the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh, and referred to hereafter as U.P.; see Map 1) supported the demand for Pakistan when it was obvious that if they were successful they would have either to remain in a Hindu dominated India, or suffer the upheaval of migration. In recent years Paul Brass and Francis Robinson have debated the general question of Muslim separatism in U.P., taking positions which Brass has described, respectively, as ‘instrumentalist’ and ‘primordialist’. Brass argues that the Muslims were modernizing at a faster rate than Hindus, that they had a larger share of government jobs than their fourteen percent of the population would warrant, that Muslim politicians erected a myth of ‘the backward Muslim’ to protect this privilege, and then selected communally divisive symbols to mobilize support for their own drive to power. In short, the ‘instrumentalist’ position argues the autonomy of the ‘game of symbol selection’ on the part of the politicians, and therefore of the significance of symbol response on the part of those who supported the Muslim League and its demand for Pakistan. Robinson, on the other hand, first disagrees that the backwardness of the Muslims was a myth, especially relative to the role they perceived they had played in U.P. society for many centuries, and secondly, he seeks to demonstrate that the religious and cultural assumptions of the Muslim political leaders shaped and directed their actions.