Seeing the ugly confrontation between India and Pakistan and the disgusting acts of violence that it has generated on the Subcontinent it is understandable to see Hindus and Muslims and Indians and Pakistanis as eternal foes with undying hatred for each other. And Muslim mobs in Pakistan and Bangladesh have exhibited similar violent hatred towards their Hindu and other minorities. One might assume that there is nothing but hatred between Hindus and Muslims. This is, however, an incorrect reading of history. As an anthropologist I will share the following personal examples which throw light on the subject and challenge the idea of an immutable confrontation between the two faiths.
The first example is of the esteemed Hindu scholar Nirad C. Chaudhuri. In the 1960s I had read Nirad Babu’s classic The Continent of Circe: Being an Essay on the Peoples of India. Impressed by Nirad Babu’s knowledge of the Subcontinent and attention to detail, I decided to interview him for my own book Resistance and Control in Pakistan (Routledge, 1991) when I was based in Cambridge in the late 1980s. I thought he might have insights into the region of Waziristan to add something new to my perspective. At first those who acted as his minders in Oxford where he lived were reluctant to give me access and asked many questions as to why I wanted to see him. A nonagenarian, he was also something of a celebrity curiosity. Nirad Babu was 5 feet in height but intellectually he towered over those around him. On his hundredth birthday, the Queen and the President of Oxford University sent messages of congratulations.
When I told his minders I had been Sub-Divisional Magistrate or Assistant Commissioner in charge of Kishoreganj, Nirad Babu’s hometown, in Mymensingh District, I was immediately invited to Oxford. Once there he asked intelligent questions based on his readings of Waziristan: he asked about the river Tochi and about the legendary Fakir of Ipi. In between the volley of questions he delivered brief lectures on the tribes and terrain of Waziristan. Nirad Babu had the reputation of being a walking encyclopedia and I was not disappointed.
But it was his hometown at the other end of the Subcontinent in Kishoreganj that was on his mind. He had left his family home in Kishoreganj in what became East Pakistan and found himself a refugee first in India and then in England. To him, I became a link, however weak, with his own past. Again and again, he came back to Kishoreganj, soaking up information like a thirsty traveller gulping water. He asked many questions about his home, which I had visited while on a tour of the area. My visit was a homage to his scholarship, and little did I imagine that one day I would meet him. It was a largish rural house and kept in good condition by the family retainers. Every time I reminded him that it was getting late for my train, he suggested I take a later train. That afternoon, we were two exiles from a beautiful land united by our distant memories of it.
When I requested a blurb from him for my book, he readily agreed. That encounter in Oxford, my reaching out to an old man in exile still yearning for his homeland across the world, was an act typical of the composite culture of South Asia; his response by giving a stranger the gift of a blurb for his book was an equally generous South Asian gesture. His excellent blurb graces the cover of my book: “Akbar Ahmed’s book is in a great tradition of the greatest British administrators-Sir Alfred Lyall, Sir William Hunter, and Sir Denzil Ibbetson. Ahmed is also like them, an anthropologist administrator.”
Another towering Indian intellectual and an ex-Supreme Court judge, V. R. Krishna Iyer, also reached out to me in this spirit of inclusive humanism. He reviewed my 1992 book Postmodernism and Islam: Predicament and Promise thus: “Discovering Akbar Ahmed through his brilliant book Discovering Islam was my first experience … Ahmed is, above all, human and so is his book. I am in love with both” (Iyer in Economic and Political Weekly, 7 November, 1992, Bombay.)
My next examples of the many at hand are of a Sikh and a Hindu. The former was my teaching assistant at American University. I asked her to reflect on our time together. “You have been a mentor, a friend and someone who has led me to view not only Islam, but my own religion, Sikhism, with a new perspective,” she responded. “With you I have learned to discover the commonalities of faith, and the embracing power of human bonding. Our discussions on Sufi Islam, the teachings of Guru Nanak, my time with you teaching the courses of the World of Islam and Judaism and Islam, all have demonstrated the powerful message of humanity, equality and justice that underlines each faith. Some of my fond memories with you include the time you said a prayer at Nankana Sahib, when my daughter was born and you sent me a photograph: the time when we walked into a mosque in DC, with our class of American University students, only to discover how divides dissolve across faiths, identities and culture.”
The other example is of my former undergraduate student. An American Indian Hindu, when she graduated from university in 2014 prior to her joining the University of Cambridge as a graduate student, she wrote me a scintillating farewell letter.
In between the volley of questions he delivered brief lectures on the tribes and terrain of Waziristan. Nirad Babu had the reputation of being a walking encyclopedia and I was not disappointed
A senior colleague said if a professor gets this kind of letter from a student once in a life time they should consider themselves fortunate. Here are the last lines:
“Thank you, Dr. Ahmed for inspiring me. Thank you for encouraging me during moments when I doubted myself the most, smoothed over the bumps, and told me to stay true. I will be back to our fig tree soon, my friend. When I miss you, I will meet you between the stanzas of Rumi. I will meet you in autumn at Cambridge. I will meet you at the bottom of a glass of chai. I will meet you in grainy black and white photographs of brown brigadiers. I will meet you in old history books about civilization. I will meet you in my prayers. I will meet you in our eternal pursuit of ilm. I will meet you there. Yours Always and with my Deepest Respect and Gratitude, Shanti and Salaams.”
There are other examples of this spirit of affectionate inclusion : Srimati Kamala, the widely admired director of the Gandhi Center in Washington, DC, bestowing the inaugural Gandhi Peace Award on me; Manjula Kumar, celebrated Indian director at the Smithsonian taking up the challenge of successfully staging my plays with integrity and being taunted for promoting a Muslim author; and the renowned Indian Professor Julius Lipner, a pillar at Cambridge University, providing a glowing blurb for my academic book, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, which was part of my Jinnah Quartet which featured the movie Jinnah.
The writer is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC, and author of Journey into Europe: Islam, Immigration, and Identity