Ansari - Secularism, Islam and Modernity

Copyright Forum for Modern Thought and Literature 2001

Copyright of Introduction M.T. Ansari, 2001

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First published in 2001 by

Published by Vivek Mehra for SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Khvundmiri, Alam.

[Essays. Selections]

Se cularism, Islam and modernity: selected essays of Alam Khundmiri/edited by M.T. Ansari.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Islam20th century. 2. Islam and secularism. 3. Philosophy, Islamic.

I. Ansari, M.T., 1965 II. Title.

BP163.K552297.2dc21 2001 00068793

ePub ISBN: 9789351500131

The SAGETeam: Arpita Das, Radha Dev Raj and Santosh Rawat

Kadir Zaman

M.T. Ansari

Asghar Ali Engineer

He performed no miracles, he made no history, yet for many of us he remains no less than a legend. Those who heard him speak in private or in public on any subject were deeply impressed by his scholarship, intellect and zest. Addressing a gathering of learned scholars and religious luminaries he could speak on Sufism for two hours without repeating a single idea. He could also speak with the same ease and finesse on Marxian aesthetics to renowned intellectuals. In both cases the effect was spellbinding.

To some, Alam was a deeply religious person. To some others, he was not at all religious. Founders of religious traditions and philosophers of all periods captivated him; he resonated their ideas with a contemporary charge in conversations. Alam was a true humanist with rare philosophical insight: one of the last in a series of outstanding scholars and thinkers who enlivened various regions of India during the freedom struggle and the immediate post-independence years. If his essays continue to inspire and influence us, as he did people, especially the youth, of his generation, the Forums venture of publishing them would be well rewarded.

Our Forum was formed in December 1980. Its first seminar, held in February 1981, was attended by such celebrated personages as Kaifi Azmi and V.R. Narla. In his keynote address Narla declared: You will, I am sure, agree with me when I say that when we are seeing all around utter cynicism and unashamed selfishness, men of the type of Alam become very rare indeed. The proceedings were subsequently collected and published in book form in Urdu and in English; the latter was released by Shyam Benegal. Thereafter, the Forum has held several meetings and seminars on various issues of vital concern; for instance, Silence is Crime was the theme of a seminar held in 1991. A souvenir listing the activities of the Forum from 1981 to 1991 was brought out at this time. Today its distinguished members include Aziz the artist, B. Narsing Rao, Issac Sequeira, Bhaskar Shewalkar, Pramod Shinde, Syed Sirajuddin and Mughni Tabassum.

In our present endeavour we had help from many sources. A meeting of friends and admirers of Alam Khundmiri was held in Chicago a few years ago and the participants wholeheartedly supported our plan (and provided funds for initial expenditure) to publish a selection of his essays. Khadija Alam and Farrukh Siyer furnished us with manuscripts of most of the essays. Asghar Ali Engineer enriched this collection with his Perspectives on Islam and Philosophy. Javeed Alam, Raj Bahadur Goud and Taqi Ali Mirza were very supportive. Many other friendsparticularly, Shahid Ali Abbasi, Muhammad Zaheeruddin Ahmed, Mehdi Arslan, Ayesha Farooqui, Anwar Mouzzam, Asma Rasheed, Muslehuddin Sadi and Hussain Zishaan went through the ordeal of helping us find bibliographical details. Given the scope of Alams scholarship, it will not be surprising that almost all the academic institutions and libraries in Hyderabad had to be ransacked to cross-check the references in the essays. It was indeed a Herculean task, and we have fulfilled it to the best of our ability. We are deeply indebted to Sage and to these friends without whose cooperation the book would perhaps have not gone to print.

M.T. Ansaris introductory essay as well as his painstaking efforts at editing need a special mention. Susie Tharu, the President of our organization, has been a force to reckon with behind all our efforts and this volume made more demands on her time than ever before.

The Forum extends its sincere thanks to all those who helped in bringing out this volume.

M.T. A NSARI

Verily never

Will God change the condition

Of a people until they

Change it themselves .

(Quran, xiii, 11)

For Europe, Islam was a lasting trauma.

Edward Said

It would be a commonplace to note that writers are, sometimes, more consequential than their writings. In Alam Khundmiris case nothing could have been truer; he was more than a writer and he lived through a time that was formative of Hyderabad as well as indicative, even symptomatic, of the problems constantly being hurled at, that have always beset, our nation. Therefore it is crucial that we ponder on what was said in his writings, and, equally important, on what remains unsaid in his writings, on what is inscribed in the space between these essays. My introduction, then, is an attempt to put this life together from a critical perspective so as to provide a context-sensitive frame for this collection of essays.

Syed Alam Khundmiri was definitely more than a writer. Born in Hyderabad on 7 February 1922, Alam, until his death on 27 September 1983, led a politically, philosophically and aesthetically active life. Those who knew (of) him unhesitatingly declare that he was an as a lecturer in the department of philosophy and as a respected and accepted member of the Hyderabad literati, he was always in the thick of most of the thought and action in Hyderabad.

Despite this Poundian act, of being at the vortex of the active, intellectual as well as political, life of a nation-in-process, his essays stand on their own merit. They are not just important because Alam wrote them, they are important in that through them Alam articulates his uneasealways a shadowy presence, to be read between the essayswith the idea(1)s available for his time. Glancing over the titles of his essays, one can easily pinpoint those nodal points around which his thinking revolved: Islam, reason, self, time, morality, law, knowledge, modernity, secularism, Indian Sufism and, definitely, Iqbal. Given the three different locations of his self, it is understandable that his three major concerns were Marxism, existentialism and Islam.setting. They have to be seen as critical experiments where he plays off the three dominant concerns of his life: Marxismwith its indifference to questions of minorities in nationalism, existentialismas being closed off to the problems of community and to the public composition of the self, and Islamwhich is examined in relation to history and notions of time and change.