The Nation and Its Other: Muslim Federal Thought in Colonial South Asia

From the 1920s through the 1940s, a chief element of Muslim politics in India was the attempts to safeguard provincial autonomy and secure a federal structure for the country. So much so that Indian Muslims were among the enduring advocates of federalism in colonial India. Yet, Indian Muslims are scarcely thought of as the proponents of federalism in Indian history. Muslim federal ideas have either been placed in the context of pan-Islamism or as a solution to the Hindu-Muslim conflict. While both these frameworks are useful, they still leave us with questions as to how Muslim federal ideas relate to the federalist advocacies of other political minorities (like Indian princely states, Sikhs, and Communists) and impinged on India’s constitutional evolution on the one hand and what global entanglements or influences might be drawn from these ideas on the other. In other words, what was unique about Indian Muslim federal thought both within India and globally? This paper addresses these lacunae and offers a closer and layered look at the Muslim federal thought in India as articulated by a cross section of Indian Muslims in late colonial India. In the process, the paper will argue that examining Muslim federal thought in India helps us understand how provincial autonomy (or its equivalent states' rights) became an article of faith in Indian federal debates, with profound consequences not only in colonial India but also in the making of postcolonial India. Furthermore, such an examination brings to the fore a world of alliances and affinities between seemingly opposite political ideologies and groupings, thereby pointing to the complex world of federal ideas in late colonial India.