The Ideological Blueprint of Pakistan: The Reformist Movements That Sowed The Seeds of The Two-Nation Theory

India-Pakistan relations, marred by historical rivalry, extend beyond the creation of the Radcliffe Line. The roots lie far deeper, predating the partition by almost a century. The Two-Nation theory, often regarded as the ideological framework that stemmed from the idea of a separate nation, with Mohammad Ali Jinnah as its key proponent, has a civilisational history of a series of movements that contributed to institutionalising the concept of Pakistan.

Illustration by The Geostrata

The Wahhabi movement, one of the key movements under colonial rule, further reshaped the Muslim identity, enforcing cultural divisions amongst communities, drawing significant lines between communities.

The hardened conviction of the movement, rejecting the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb and reinforcing the belief that Hindus and Muslims are separate entities, incapable of living in the same region, contributed to the ideological blueprint of the Islamic nation Pakistan, which was then translated into a political demand by Jinnah.

THE MOVEMENT THAT INSTITUTIONALISED PAKISTAN

The Wahhabi movement draws its roots from the Central Asia region, popularised by Muhammad Ibn Abd al Wahhab, characterising the movement as an Islamic resurgence. Amidst the heightened concerns amongst the Muslim intellectuals over the diminishing relevance of Islamic power, which once held the helm of affairs across the globe, as the Mughal empire and the Ottoman empire fell, Wahhabism called for an Islamic reformation.

He reinforced the idea of taking Islam back to its golden era, to rid Islam of all the cultures accumulated through interaction with the ‘infidels’, thus building the framework for an exclusive Islamic identity.

Influenced by the Hanbali movement, emerging in Baghdad and Syria, the movement stressed literal acceptance of the Hadith, repression of popular Sufi practices, and justification of jihad waged against un-Islamic states.

Attributed to similarities with Ibn Taymiyyah, the Wahhabi movement is often regarded as posing great similarities to Taymiyyah and the Hanbali school of thought. Scholars noted the increased exposure of Shah Waliullah Dehlavi to the Hanbali and Tayyimist school of thought that later institutionalised the Dehlawite movement in India.

The Wahhabi school of thought is centred around four core principles:

Monotheism - The school of thought propagated the idea of strict adherence to God's commands as enunciated in the Quran and the Hadith, without fostering communion or mystical feelings towards God.

Ijtehad- Rejecting the blind following of the four imams, or the four major Sunni Islamic jurists, the idea promoted return to the quran and hadith, often regarded as the supreme authority and proponents that steered the concept of ‘original Islam’.

Intercession- Wahabis completely disregarded the concept of intermediaries between god and the believer in the form of saints, and pirs, they considered it inorganic to the culture of Islam, emphasising that passive belief is insufficient.

Bid’a- The doctrine of the Wahhabi school of thought completely disregarded innovation and rejected practices which had no shariat precedent, including practices such as tomb worship, veneration of pirs, pompous celebration of occasions such as the Islamic Prophet’s Day.

This staunch and hardline framework of the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia, through hajj and pilgrims, travelled across boundaries and reached South Asia, where the Wahhabi school of thought grew in prevalence in India.

The ideological framework of Wahhab and Shah Walliullah Derhlawi was systematised under Syed Ahmed Barelvi through the Tariq-i-Mohammadiya movement.

With core similarities to the Wahhabi ideology, the movement aimed to tackle the military setbacks under British rule, with its core objective of restoring Islamic sovereignty over Bharat. The movement transformed the means adapted, moving away from armed jihad and transitioning into intellectual manoeuvring and political subversion.

THE HARDENED IDEOLOGY

The popularisation of such movements emerged from a series of interconnections, political, social, and cultural factors. As the sun dawned on the Mughal Empire and the British claimed control over the Indian subcontinent, with the Ottoman Empire facing brutal defeat, the Islamic supremacy and political dominance stood questioned, and alarmed Muslim scholars called for a movement to revive the Muslim identity.

As the British Empire further gripped its control over the Indian subcontinent, Hindus started replacing Muslims in key positions, including government posts and the education sector. Muslim scholars, understanding the grave reality of intellectual limitations of Muslims and their limited approach due to madrassa schooling, putting them at a disadvantage, perceived increasing Hindu representation in government posts as a grave threat to the muslim identity.

The social and political upheaval that the Indian subcontinent experienced during the 18th century, therefore, laid the groundwork for the key movements that later shaped the ideological framework of the idea of Pakistan.

THE MOVEMENTS THAT INSTITUTIONALISED PAKISTAN

The Wahhabi and Deobandi school of thought continuum further steered three distinct reform strategies, including the traditionalist education, militant puritanism and pragmatic institutionalism, which further built the framework for distinct ideological movements in India that concretised the two-nation theory.

The Deobandi movement, often regarded as the greatest achievement of the Walliullah school of thought, traces its roots back to the Dar Al-Ulum seminary, with the founding father, Maulana Mohammad Qasim.

Garnering education at the Dehlawi's school and claiming themselves to be the true claimants of the Dehlawi thought, they drew largely from Shah Walliullah Dehlawi and Syed Ahmed Sir Hindi. The proponents believed in the active rejection of Sufism and mystic thoughts due to increased synthesis of Hindu and Muslim beliefs, thus reinforcing the supremacy of the Quran and the Hadith.

As the continued armed struggle faced setbacks, the Deobandi movement shifted its strategic posturing towards ideological Jihad, under the guidance of Shah Mohammad Ishaq Dehlawi. Focusing towards intellectual supremacy through systems that focused on religious education, it launched the training of the elite class that pursues and popularises the Islamic ideology and immunises the muslim mind against Western culture.

Although scholars argue that the Wahhabi movement and its growing impact on the Deobandi movement, some view it as a revival of the Hanbali school of thought, it emphasises purification and drawing parallels from broader Wahhabi currents. 

THE AHL-I-HADITH MOVEMENT

Parallel to the Deobandi movement, another strand of thought emerged in the form of the Ahl-i-Hadith movement. The Ahl-i-hadith movement is considered to be one of the most stringent and direct ideological continuations of the Wahhabi movement, which distinguished itself as a separate group in 1864 from the Wahhabi movement under the guidance of its founder, Maulana Syed Mohammad Nazir.

Spending his formative years at the Patna Centre of the Ali brothers, Mohammad Nazir was influenced by the Wahhabi school of thought and later became a disciple of Shah Muhammad Ishaq Dehlawi.

The followers, claiming themselves to be the true successors of the Dehlawi movement, vehemently opposed shrine-based Islam, veneration of Muslim saints and pirs.

Following the Revolt of 1857, the movement recalibrated and avoided association with the Wahhabis. While they did not reject the doctrine of Jihad, they recognised that armed warfare against the British was suicidal. 

While the Ahl-i-hadith movement doctrine of overt confrontation, the reformist impulse did not disappear, but rather re-emerged along a different trajectory, with a more politically and institutionally driven movement under the leadership of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the Aligarh Movement.

THE ALIGARH MOVEMENT

Unlike the Ahl-i-Hadith movement, which pursued religious purification, the Aligarh Movement translated the same reformist belief into a movement focused on political reorganisation and institutionalising power. 

Founded by Syed Ahmed Khan in 1879, the movement integrated the Wahhabi school of thought with Western methods, representing a pragmatic and modernised movement, which at its very core held the same belief of reinstating the Islamic supremacy.

A student of the Dehlawwite school of thought, Syed Ahmed Khan, alarmed by the popular concerns of pollution of Islam from practices borrowed from other religions, his objective, garbed under a westernised belief, remained clear: to restore the Islamic state power while ensuring distance from official labels, especially after the British annexation of Punjab.

Khan's Dehlawite worldview is prevalent from his firm belief that a Hindu-majority democracy must not be tolerated, and it infringes upon Muslim's individual liberty.

He vehemently opposed representative institutions, fearing that the larger community and their interests would override the demands of the minority community.

Regarded as one of the earliest proponents of the two-nation theory, he stressed that India comprised two or more communities that cannot co-exist together, objecting to regarding India as ‘one nation’. He articulated his firm belief that Hindus and Muslims are inevitably different beings and could not live together, building the very blueprint that then led to Jinnah's political demand of a separate Islamic nation, Pakistan.

THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE OF PAKISTAN

These movements successfully created a strong Muslim identity amongst the Indian Muslims and established the framework of the two-nation theory. With the successful establishment of key educational institutes such as the Aligarh Muslim University, which blended Islamic education and westernised thinking, it equipped Muslims to reinstate their significance under colonial rule, countering the growing concern of increased Hindu representation in government positions.

This movement further marked a significant shift in their approach towards the British, who were now viewed as the ones safeguarding the muslim identity against the Hindus, emerging as an ultimately beneficial alliance between the muslims and the British to counter the Hindu political influence.

The Aligarh Movement further succeeded in establishing national muslim identity amongst the Indian muslims that transcended the Shia-Sunni divide and regional variations, emerging as one of the key movements that succeeded in unifying the muslim identity.

The movement is often regarded as the road that paved the way towards the establishment of the Muslim League, with Jinnah recognising the Aligarh University's central role in the partition of India, regarding it as the ‘Muslim arsenal of India’.

The combined successes of these movements laid the framework for regenerating the Islamic consciousness, serving as a political and ideological engine that drove Muslim ideology and separatism, leading to the demand for separate electorates, which Ambedkar recognised as the ‘direct consequence of the two-nation theory’. 

The Wahhabi ideology was the movement that led to increased differences amongst the communities, which, when watered by increased British favouritism, was destined to grow into a separate religious and political entity, Pakistan.

MUHAMMAD ASAD AND THE CONTESTATION ON THE TWO-NATION THEORY

A similar school of thought finds mention in the works of Muhammad Asad and his conception of the two-nation theory, which he regarded as rooted in the firm Islamic belief that for muslims to lead a truly Islamic life, a sovereign state becomes indispensable. He reiterated how, despite the community’s willingness to cooperate on Islamic terms, it remains largely theoretical unless the state is capable of enforcing Islamic law.

Asad's theory was deeply influenced by Allama Iqbal, who had convinced him to stay in India in 1932 and pursue the creation of a muslim confederation. With the creation of Pakistan, Asad viewed a unique opportunity to practice Islamic principles of statecraft. Asad was a vocal critic of the modern secular state, which cannot differentiate between right and wrong.

He argues that a secular state rooted in the concept of ‘nation’s interest’ will inevitably lead to moral chaos. Unlike a religious state that offered ‘infinitely better prospect of national happiness’.

While his own son, Talal Asad analysed his father's work in great detail, reflected on how the formation of a nation-state based on religion is a continuation of the modern Western template of the definition of a nation. He stressed how binaries such as ‘nation’ and ‘religion’ are a historically produced framework and not the universal truth, as meant to exert power.

He further stressed how any state created out of the two-nation theory will struggle to remain ‘religious’, as it follows the administrative and legal footsteps of the modern nation-state. Thus, he viewed the creation of an Islamic state with the notion to protect and propagate Islam would inadvertently secularise the very tradition it seeks to protect.

SIGNIFICANCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The Wahhabi movement has left its imprint on India's social fabric and continues to shape the geopolitics of the South Asian region even today. The Wahhabi movement laid the fertile ground for increased Islamic militancy, with Balakot as a region of grave significance.

Often regarded as the hub of the Wahhabi movement under Syed Ahmed Barelvi, the region continues to remain relevant for Bharat and the subcontinent region for its role in indoctrinating muslims and emerging as the hub of a terror network.

Ayesha Jalal regarded Balakot as the ‘epicentre of Jihad in South Asia’. The 2019 airstrikes in Balakot in response to the horrific terror attack in Pulwama underscore the region's terror networking, which traces its roots back to the 18th century.

Scholars have drawn ideological parallels of the Ahl-i-Hadith movement to frequent terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiyabba, and scholars often regard the movement for introducing pro-wahhabi doctrine in Kashmir, inevitably leading to heightened tensions that came to life with the 1990s exodus of Kashmiri Pandits.The organisational system established by the Wahhabis continues to indoctrinate Muslims and lead to a shifting political and social civilisational landscape of the subcontinent.

CONCLUSION

While the voices today echo Jinnah as the pioneer of the two-nation theory, it was not an ideological belief that sprang up under heightened control by the British, but was rather a result of continued movements that shaped the framework and belief system of muslims for ages to come. India was perceived as a fractured state, home to two different communities, which eventually led to the birth of Pakistan, a brainchild of countless movements with the sole ambition of re-establishing the Islamic empire. 

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BY ANANYA SHARMA

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