Monday, August 31, 2009

India and Muslim Rennassaince


Jaswant Singh has said some very interesting things, of late. Of course, the funny thing is, as an elder recently put it, there's nothing there that Maulana Azad hasn't already said--or even MJ Akbar, Mr. Indian Patriot himself. But, as I have had occasion to say recenlty, that's not what I wanted to talk about.

The following line is from an interview carred by Al-Jazeera (there's a video, too)
The real renaissance of Islam would have taken place in undivided India if there had not been a partition.
Recently, in a rather heated back-and-forth with an Indian Muslim on Facebook, I had the following to say:
Funny thing is, Indian Muslims are one of the largest and, if you ask me, one of the most important communities in the world in this regard. You have it in you to help find a solution for this issue and make the world a better place for ALL of us: after all, it is Muslim India that gave us Iqbal and Azad and Jauhar--and, yes, Jinnah.
My point, as in a lot of this, being that we now have multiple countries in South Asia--and that's not an exception in history, that region always had multiple geo-political entities in that space, even as there was always a loosely-defined identity to Hind, Hindustan, India, whatever you want to call it. Why should how we're structured politically today get in the way of cultural, I dare say civilizational evolution?

What do y'all think?



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Thursday, August 27, 2009