Author: Faizan Akbar, University of Kashmir
Editorial Summary
This paper introduces Mawlana Muhammad Hifz al-Rahman Seohārvī (1901–1962), an Indian Muslim scholar, jurist, economist, and anti-colonial politician, to the field of Comparative Political Theory, arguing he suffers “double epistemic marginality”: ignored by both South Asian and global academia because he wrote in Urdu. Tracing his Deoband education, prolific scholarship (ethics, Qur’anic exegesis, early Islamic economics), and parallel political career as Gandhi’s associate, Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind General Secretary, and post-Partition Congress parliamentarian, the author shows that theory and praxis were inseparable in his life. Two claims anchor the piece: a philosophical parallel between Seohārvī’s 1940 critique of modern moral philosophy and MacIntyre’s later, similar critique; and a historical argument that today’s crises of Indian secularism trace back to 1940s–50s constitutional debates, especially over national language. The paper ultimately frames the “liberal condition” itself as what erases such thinkers, positioning Seohārvī’s recovery as both corrective and invitation, though it functions more as advocacy and introduction than critical assessment, drawing heavily on commemorative and hagiographic sources.
Introduction
The practice and discipline of Political Theory has historically evolved through various, often conflicting, paradigms. It has wavered between the normative quest for the good life, the behaviouralist quest for empirical rigour, the post-behaviouralist championing of social relevance, or the linguistic turn focusing on the constructed nature of the political world. These conflicting paradigms played out in a discursive field whose categories were self-referentially produced, thus limiting the frame of reference of knowledge production to the Euro-American Imaginaries. For instance, from the Greeks to the modern period, the figures that have consistently ‘figured’ in the seemingly teleological chain have been predominantly, if not exclusively, Western. Hence, the charge that the history of Political Theory as a discipline has been a history of Western Political Thought (Tully 2020; Said 1978). This lopsided view of Political Theory has therefore been contested by various scholars in the recent past, deriving their succour from Decoloniality, Postcolonialism, and Critical Theory. Within the discipline of Political Theory, this task has been assumed by the burgeoning field of Comparative Political Theory.
This paper intends to build on this ‘Comparative turn’ (Idris 2016) within Political Theory, and contribute towards the ‘recentering’ of Political Theory (Jenco 2020). Emerging within Anglophone academia, CPT offers a platform for scholars of varied disciplines who share many common questions, the most important being: how to understand, and engage with ‘alterity,’ and how can the enterprise of knowledge production be extended beyond the Euro-American imagination? (Dallmayr 1996; Euben 1999; Jenco 2007; Godrej 2009). As one of its pioneers has argued, it is an approach ‘beyond orientalism’ that seeks to de-essentialize the East-West divide, yet not lose sight of the crucial differences between the various modes of being in this world that exist across cultures and contexts (Dallmayr 1996). It is, in a way, an approach that seeks to understand every tradition ‘on its own terms,’ and frame its dialogues through its own ‘categories.’ In doing so, it is acutely reflexive and, therefore, takes enough precautions to not reduce this meaningful endeavour to a mere ‘cannon expanding’ exercise (Jenco et al. 2020, 25). Rather, it seeks to expand the canon in order to include various traditions—largely non-Western—to offer avenues of equitable engagement with their insights, with a hope to democratise dialogue in its proper terms. Thus, the foundational axioms of CPT encourage us to locate and foreground knowledge that might not have hitherto enjoyed the problematic of a dominant tradition, and hence been subjected to epistemic marginality.
This paper intends to highlight the double epistemic marginality of a thinker whose contributions to the field of Ethics, Political Economic Thought, Anti-colonial Movement, and South Asian literature seem to have been a victim of brutal cultural memory amnesia. The marginality is ‘double’ because his work has been caught between local amnesia and global exclusion. It has received little to no engagement by his own fellow country people, while simultaneously facing exclusion from the larger global academic world, for he wrote in a language that fell outside the epistemic borders of the dominant Euro-American imaginary. Hence, this introductory paper seeks to address this ‘silence’ of the canons—both South Asian and Global—by taking this much-needed step of introducing Mawlana Muhammad Hifz al-Rahman Seohārvī (d. 1962) to the academic world.
Mawlana Muhammad Hifz al-Rahmān Seohārvī (1901-1962)
Mawlana Muhammad Hifz al-Rahmān Seohārvī[1] was born on 10th January, 1901, in the town of Seohāra located in the Bijnor district of the United Provinces of Colonial India.[2] (Bhaṭṭī 1964, 24; Rizwī 1981, 107). Born into a prominent zamindar family, his father was formally educated and served as an Assistant Engineer in the then provinces of Bikaner and Bhopal. Consequently, Seohārvī had the privilege of being homeschooled for his initial years. Unlike his other siblings, who pursued fields like Law and Medicine, he was encouraged to pursue traditional Islamic knowledge. Thus, his elementary training in Arabic began at the Madrasah Shahi of Moradabad (Khan 1999, 24). Afterwards, Seohārvī completed his graduate studies in the traditional curriculum (Dars-e-Nizāmi) from the Madrasa Faiz-e-Aam that was located in Seohāra. In 1922, Seohārvī went to Darul Uloom Deoband—the most eminent Muslim Seminary of his times in the entire South Asia—where he specialised in Hadith studies[3] under the tutelage of Mawlana Anwar Shah Kashīmrī (d. 1933). Eventually, graduating from Deoband in 1924 (Hijri 1342) (Rizwī 1981, 107; Shahjahānpurī 2001, 27-39; Qāsmi 2025, 28).
Upon graduating, Seohārvī took several teaching assignments in different parts of the country. After spending a year in Madras in 1927, he relocated to Jamia Islamia Talimuddin in Dabehl, Gujarat. This move happened in the backdrop of an administrative rift between Mawlana Anwar Shah Kashmāri—along with several other prominent scholars—and the management of Darul Uloom Deoband (Nu‘mānī 1977, 18). Spending around seven years in Dabehl, this period proved crucial for grooming his political imagination as it facilitated Seohārvī’s transition from the ‘micro-politics’ of Deoband, to the ‘macro-politics’ of the anti-colonial movement.[4] It was during his stay in Dabehl that he met with M.K. Gandhi and developed a lifelong friendship (Bhaṭṭī 1964, 14). Subsequently, Seohārvī moved to Calcutta in 1934 on the invitation of Anjuman e Tablīgh e Islam (Rizwī 1981, 107). This sojourn saw another important transition in Seohārvī’s life, as it was here that he began his prolific writing career (Bhaṭṭī 1964, 14). Witnessing a positive response to his writings, Seohārvī, alongside his friend Mufti ‘Atīq al-Rahmān Usmānī (d. 1984), decided to establish the academy Nadwat al-Musanifīn (The Council of Writers). The objectives underpinning this academy included, inter alia, confronting the ‘Colonial question,’ contextualising ‘Islam in the modern world,’ and producing critical scholarship to counter the ‘Orientalist distortions of Islam’ (Burḥān 1938, ‘introduction’). Other prominent members who actively contributed to the establishment and working of this academy were Mawlana Badr-i ‘Ālam Mīrathī (d. 1965), Mawlana Sa‘īd Ahmad Akbarābādī (d. 1985), Mawlana Hāmid al-Ansārī Ghāzī (d. 1992), and Zayn al-‘Ābidīn Sajjād Mīrathī (d. 1991). Operating from a small office at Karol Bagh, Delhi, the academy started publishing al-Burhān (The Clear Proof), a monthly magazine featuring essays on social, economic, political, and religious issues (Rizwī 1981, 108).
Seohārvī as an erudite scholar
Seohārvī’s scholarly career was short, yet very illustrious, and produced several prolific texts. Writing intensively between 1930 and 1947, his published work spans over thousands of pages wherein he has engaged with diverse questions of Ethics, Politics, Economics, History, and Literature. His peers often marvelled at his scholarly genius, testifying that his name could have been among the most successful authors in history, had it not been for his involvement in active politics in the later part of his life (Nu‘mānī 1977, 30). His first work to be published in the form of a book was Hifz al-Rahman li Maḍhab al-Nu‘man (Hifz al-Rahmān for the School of Nu‘mān[5]) (Nu‘mānī 1977, 29). His second major scholarly work was Balāgh al-Mubīn (The Clear Message), which was a sui generis attempt, at least in the South Asian world, at compiling the letters of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) written to different rulers and kings of his time, inviting them to the message of Islam. This is not merely a compilation but offers elaborate commentaries around the content and the context of the letters. At the Nadwat al-Musanifīn, Seohārvī produced an encyclopaedic work on the stories of the Qur’ān, titled Qaṣaṣ al-Qur’ān—first published in four volumes in 1944. This work spanned more than 1700 pages, offering an elaborate exposition of the Islamic tradition by way of the stories of the prophets related in the Qur’an.[6] At the beginning of World War II, the world, especially the developing world, was confronted with the emerging binary of capitalism and socialism. Seohārvī chose this time to produce a very important text, titled Islām ka Iqtisādi Nizām (The Economic System of Islam), first published in 1939. This work is considered to be the ‘first book [written] exclusively on Islamic economics in the modern period’ that endeavoured to chart out a ‘third-way’ beyond the capitalist-socialist binary in imagining the questions of Political Economy (Islāhi 2017, 2). Gladly, a research work is supposedly underway on this important text at the King Abdul Aziz University, Saudi Arabia (Hijāzi 2017).
Seohārvī’s engagement with the categories of Morals and Ethics crystallised into Akhlāq aur Falsafah-i Akhlāq (Morals and Moral Philosophy), a very crucial and timely—and hence, timeless—work that probed into the possibility and the necessity of morals. First published in 1940, this text saw two major revisions, the second and third editions being published in 1950 and 1963, respectively. In this work, Seohārvī raises essentially important questions about framing the very categories of Ethics. Situating this work primarily within the Islamic tradition, Seohārvī seeks to disrupt the privileging of Eurocentric discourse, and therefore, argues forcefully, that ‘the progress that moral philosophy especially in Ethics (ijtimā’iy akhlāq), has come to be seen as a sole inheritance of the modern western knowledge systems, as if ethics were never a topic of discussion in the traditional religious discourses’ (Seohārvī 1940, 425).[7] Thus, he sets upon the task of explicating the comprehensive ethical principles of the Islamic tradition, as opposed to the Modern Moral Philosophy (jadīd ‘ilm al-akhlāq), and attempts to prove the superiority of the former at the very level of foundations (asās wa bunyād) (Seohārvī 1940, 428). This bears a striking resemblance to Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of Modern Moral Philosophy that came some forty years later. Since both Seohārvī and MacIntyre make the content of Moral and Ethical categories contingent upon the specific epistemological resources of a particular tradition, the inter-tradition dialogue and transformation are only possible when one particular tradition is able to foreground the superiority of its epistemological resources (MacIntyre 1988, 366; Mulhall & Swift 1992, 92). Among Seohārvī’s other works, Nūr al-Baṣar fī Sīrat al-Khayr al-Bashar (The Light of Vision in the Biography of the Best of Mankind), Dastūr-i Asāsī Jamiʿat-i ʿUlamā-i Hind (The Foundational Constitution of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind), and K͟huṭbah-i Istiqbāliyah (The Inaugural Address of the Muslim Convention of 1961) are noteworthy. Following the country’s independence, Seohārvī became so deeply involved in national politics and minority rights advocacy that he could hardly find time to continue his scholarly ventures. Nonetheless, in his culminating years, he managed to spare some time to revise some of his earlier writings—most notably, Qaṣaṣ and Akhlāq aur Falsafah-i Akhlāq (Nu‘mānī 1977, 30).
Seohārvī as an invested Political Thinker
Hifz al-Rahman played a major role in the anti-colonial struggle against the British Government, spending around eight years of his youth in incarceration. Seohārvī’s political life is a manifestation of his deep conviction in the unity of theory and praxis of the Islamic tradition. After undergoing rigorous training in the Islamic tradition across different institutions, Seohārvī took an active part in the formation of the social and political fabric of an emerging society. Though, it might seem that Seohārvī’s politics began after joining Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind[8]; however, in reality, the articulation of his mature political subjectivity goes back to his time as a student at Deoband. It was as early as the 1920s, when the atmosphere of the country was filled with slogans of independence, that Seohārvī began taking an active interest in politics. The double binding of Deoband’s politics and the country’s anti-colonial movement framed Seohārvī’s political subjectivity (Bijnorī 1996, 37). As public rallies and meetings had become commonplace, a grand rally was organised in Seohārvī’s town under the aegis of Deoband, where the public witnessed, perhaps for the first time, Seohārvī’s political fervour and acumen (Bijnorī 1996, 37). Following the establishment of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind in 1919 by prominent Muslim intellectuals like Mawlana ‘Abdul Bārī Farangī Maḥallī (d. 1926), Muftī Kifāyatullāh Dehlawī (d. 1952), and Shaykhul-Hind Mawlana Maḥmūd Ḥasan (d. 1920) for fighting against British rule, Seohārvī immediately joined their ranks after graduating from Deoband. Owing to his sharp political acumen, Seohārvī soon became a crucial member of its working committee. Subsequently, at the annual session of the Jamiat in the year 1942, attended by grand figures like Mawlana Ḥussain Aḥmad Madanī (d. 1957), Muftī Kifāyatullāh Dehlawī (d. 1952), and Mawlana Abul Kalām Āzād (d. 1958) among others, Seohārvī was nominated as its 4th General Secretary, a position that he held gracefully until his demise on August 2, 1962 (Bhaṭṭī 1964, 16; Bijnorī 1996, 38).
Since Seohārvī was centrally invested in the independence movement after the mid-1930s, he endeavoured to maintain a strong association with the All-India Congress Committee (Bijnorī 1996, 45). Additionally, he had also met with Gandhi at Dabehl in the early 1930s and participated in the Salt Satyagraha under his leadership (Nu‘mānī 1977, 19). His association with Congress continued in the post-independence era, during which he was elected as an assembly member and a parliament member on Congress tickets for roughly fourteen years. His role in the 1952 and 1957 General Elections is considered crucial, as he had come to be counted among the main leaders of the Congress party, thereby serving as a very important conduit between the then Muslim community and the Indian National Congress (Bijnorī 1996, 47). As per Mawlana Manẓūr Nu‘mānī, Seohārvī’s ‘greatest service’ for the Muslims of India was the role that he played in the aftermath of the partition. Muslims who had chosen to stay back in India found themselves thrown into precarity, with the fires of communal hatred blazing all around. In this context, Seohārvī worked tirelessly across the fractured state lines, appealing to the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Abul Kalām Azād, and the Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Patel. He also presented a searing indictment of the administrative failure in front of Gandhi when the latter visited Delhi to take account of the extent of destruction wreaked by communal violence (Nu’māni 1977, 24). In fact, this is what earned him the title ‘Mujāhid-i Millat’ (The Warrior of the Community) (Rizwī 1981, 109). Tasadduq Hussain Bijnorī (1996, 48) quotes a very instructive statement of Seohārvī that was made in the aftermath of partition:
“None of our genuine complaints should be rejected by branding them with the monikers of ‘Pakistan’ or ‘League’. We [the Muslim community] have laid down our lives for liberating the country just like other [communities]. Our names are etched on its walls and boundaries. If Jawaharlal Nehru, and Sardar Patel have a right to live on the land of Hindustan, then Hussain Ahmad, Kifāyatullah, and Hifz al-Rahmān are equally deserving of this right—if not more.’’
This statement captures Seohārvī’s imagination of an independent Hindustan,[9] and the place that Muslims deserved in it. Seohārvī frames the claim to territory and the nascent political order that was being welcomed in the aftermath of partition in terms of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘struggle’ that the people of Hindustan had undertaken in the past century. It was not an argument based on ‘descent’ or the ‘accident of birth’, rather, one that stemmed from ‘agency’ and ‘active’ imagination. The decision to stay back in the country on the eve of partition was for Seohārvī a conscious and principled choice, and not a result of mere political expediency. Thus, demanding an equal right for people across the religious divide who had equally partaken in the liberation struggle of Hindustan.
Seohārvī’s politics was invariably imagined through categories which were essentially designed to accommodate the plurality—religious and cultural—that had historically characterised the sub-continent. For instance, during the period of 1922-29, the political climate of the subcontinent had grown internally bitter. The Muslim community had become distant from the majority Hindu community in the wake of events like the Shuddhi movement (1923) and the Nehru Report (1928). Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind had also withdrawn from the INC-led independence movement. In such a precarious state of affairs, Seohārvī chose to introduce a resolution in the annual committee of the Jamiat vouching for a rejoinder with the INC against the British. After much heated contestations, Seohārvī’s resolution was passed, and Jamiat found its way back to the Congress camp (Nu‘mānī 1977, 21). Mawlana Manẓūr Nu‘mānī (1977, 22) quotes some oft-repeated lines of Seohārvī in this context:
“The fight for Hindustan’s freedom is destined to succeed. Sooner or later, the Britishers will have to leave from here. If we [the Muslim Community] do not partake in this fight, and evade from offering sacrifices, then we shall have no share in the fruits of freedom when it finally arrives. We will then find ourselves at the mercy of others. However, if we partake in this fight today, and offer sacrifices, then we shall have an equal right of this country once it becomes free–we will have the right to stand with batons [power] in our hands.”
Seohārvī served as a member of the constitution assembly, and therefore, he was heavily invested in the questions that confronted the emerging idea of Hindustan—many of which persist to this day. On the question of the national language, Seohārvī constantly appealed to the Gandhian model of a language that could accommodate a duality of scripts. The idea was to codify a language, predominantly spoken in the Northern Hindustani vernacular, into a structured language that could be written in both the Devnagari and Nastaliq[10] scripts. However, on witnessing the proclivities of certain members of the Constituent Assembly towards adopting Hindi in the Devnagari script as the National language of the country, Seohārvī vehemently submitted his contestations by invoking Gandhi, stating;
“For [the past] thirty years, it was being proclaimed from the Congress forum’s platform that the National language of the country would be Hindustani, that is spoken and understood in the Frontier Province and Northern India, and the script of this language would be both Hindi [Devnagari] and Urdu [Nastaliq]. Even Mahatma Gandhi was a proponent of this language throughout his life. However, today it is astonishing to witness that we are adamant on rejecting the principles of Gandhi and Congress, and have begun to insist on adopting only Hindi as the National language” (Shahjahānpurī 2001, 389).
The dialogic imagination that governs Seohārvī’s idea of ‘nation’ as a composite category informs the import of virtually every category that mushrooms within the idea of nation. This dialogism is similarly evident in his intervention on the question of national language. He intended to solve this question by an appeal to a composite linguistic category then known as Hindustani. For Seohārvī, the idea of adopting Hindi—in its Devnagari script—as the national language stemmed from an exclusivist temptation. He therefore raised the question of redrawing the lexical boundaries of the proposed national language. Given the absence of certain phonemes in Devnagari Hindi, Seohārvī passionately questioned whether this would not mean that words like ‘taqat,’ ‘qalb,’ ‘aiwan,’ or ‘majlis’ would be subjected to erasure, leaving only their purely Hindi equivalents like ‘shakti,’ ‘hirday,’ ‘bhawan’ and ‘samaj’ to endure in the public memory. Alternatively, Seohārvī argued that Hindustani offers a unique linguistic arrangement to accommodate all these words, where ‘qalb’ and ‘hirday’ can both exist harmoniously, and thereby escape the temptation of establishing a linguistic hegemony. Thus, Hindustani, following Gandhi, was imagined as a composite category whose grammar would be inclusive, and therefore, corresponded to the idea of an independent Hindustan where different communities were expected to coexist harmoniously (Constituent Assembly Debates, 1949, 9.138.475).
On the importance of recentering Seohārvī’s thought
Upon his demise in 1962, the country’s leading figures, such as Dr Rajendra Prasad, Aruna Asif Ali, Indira Gandhi, and Jawaharlal Nehru, among others, came forward to offer their heartfelt condolences (Roznāmah al-Jamīʿat 1962, 17-18). Various magazines/newspapers—for instance, al-jamī‘at and mashrab—dedicated special issues to Seohārvī, wherein he was celebrated as a paragon of pluralism and anti-Colonial Struggle. Nehru’s condolence message published in al-jamī‘at’s special issue reveals an important paradox. Nehru wrote that ‘while we express grief and sorrow, we should also ponder upon the man and his methods, and try to learn from his example, and walk in his footsteps’ (Roznāmah al-Jamīʿat 1962, 18). In hindsight, how do we make sense of this statement while being aware of the amnesia to which Seohārvī has been subjected? Seohārvī’s concern over the erasure of Urdu vocabulary is instructive, for he must have foreseen that language signified more than mere words. The Urdu language carried the weight of Muslim history that had unfolded in this part of the world. When Urdu was provincialised as the language of the ‘other,’ it gradually, and quite naturally, became convenient to allow the Muslim past of this country to slip through the finger webs. Complicating Nehru’s suggestion, how do we then learn from a thinker who has not just himself been forgotten, but whose very language has been subjected to erasure? As Asad (2003, 184) puts it, the ‘freedom of speech’ does not necessarily mean that one will have an equal right ‘to be heard.’ Perhaps Seohārvī’s text met the same fate; it did not have the right to be equally heard. By losing the vocabulary of a language that was shared between communities, the public gradually lost the memory of the joint struggle. Hence, a turbaned thinker like Seohārvī, despite an illustrious career in mainstream politics and despite his erudite scholarship, somehow confronts the public memory of his own country as an anomaly. When the idiom of the traditional Ulama was pushed to the margins, their contributions to the anti-colonial struggle were gradually unremembered. The act of forgetting was, therefore, a political act of sanitising the public memory of the internal other. It becomes imperative to ask and ponder, what then, could be a way out from this amnesia, and what might a reading of Seohārvī within Comparative Political Theory–not Western or Indian—look like? I will try to answer this question by way of conclusion to this essay.
In the year 1961, a historic Muslim Convention was held, attended by virtually all segments of the Muslim Community.[11] Its inaugural address was delivered by Seohārvī, wherein he expressed grave concern about the failure of secularism and the rising communal violence in the country. Seohārvī declared that ‘the group that has become the greatest victim of the rising ‘communalism, narrow-mindedness,’ and ‘poisonous sentiments’ is the largest religious minority—namely the Muslims. The continuous efforts of the ‘noble and serious-minded members of the majority community to grant the former equal rights within the democratic constitution have not been successful yet’ (Seohārvī 1961, 4). He then exhorted the audience to think of ways that could be employed to prevent any future instances of ‘unconstitutional, discriminatory practices, injustices and infringement of rights’ vis-à-vis the Muslim community. All the while, he reminded the audience of their equal stake in the preceding thousand years of this country’s history (Seohārvī 1961, 6-8).
Seohārvī becomes an important thinker to be read in contemporary times. The reason for the same is the persistence of the ‘condition’ that Seohārvī and many of his interlocutors found themselves thrown into. The ‘condition’ has been named variously in the past several hundred years of history. For some, it is the ‘colonial condition,’ while for others it makes sense as ‘western modernity’ that is essentially tempered by Eurocentrism. I prefer to purposely name it as the ‘liberal condition.’ It is a condition that is internally constituted by Colonialism, Enlightenment rationality, Eurocentric Modernity, and the rise of the Nation-state and its associated knowledge forms—a matrix stealthily clubbed under the signifier of liberalism.[12] An interesting parallel to this category would be Talal Asad’s (2003) usage of the ‘Secular’ or David Scott’s (2006) usage of the ‘Secular Modern.’
Reading Seohārvī’s text in our—to borrow Ernst Bloch’s (1991) phrase— ‘non-contemporaneous contemporaneity’ can offer us new insights for doing a history of the present. Coming face to face with the anxieties that his text entails helps us bridge the gap between his times and our times, and therefore, first, helps us understand the liminality of our times, and thereby, enables us in ‘de-exceptionalising’ the current political moment (Wani 2025). The critique that insists on locating the failure of Indian Secularism in the post-2014 moment seems to hold little water when read against Seohārvī’s text. Rather, Seohārvī’s text is instructive for locating cracks in the institutional setup of the country in its very formative years.
Further, a reading of Seohārvī’s text also helps us realise the powers of the liberal condition that he was inadvertently responding to. From his language to logic, Seohārvī’s project of translating, and subsequently fitting the universalistic thrust of the Islamic tradition within his context, is essentially tempered by the limits of this condition. And thus it is no surprise when the reader, embedded in our times, finds Seohārvī invested in familiar questions; rather, questions that continue to carry a sense of urgency and centrality for our lives. What does it mean to be free, and why is freedom a ‘birthright’ for the human being? What does it mean to be ‘ethical’ and what is a way of thinking about the possibility and necessity of ethics beyond the Western discursive hegemony? What is the Muslim question, and why are the modern institutions—even when they are supposedly a product, at least partially, of Muslim agency—suspicious of the Muslim presence? These are some of the questions that are germane in Seohārvī’s oeuvre, and it is for the continued relevance of these questions, and many others of its ilk, that reading Seohārvī in the current times is as necessary as it was to read him in his own.
Furthermore, recentering his political thought would also help us in enriching the canons of Political Theory. As Loubna El Amine (2016) cautions, Comparative Political Theory must not fall into reifying the East-West divide, by essentializing the East into an ‘exotic other.’ It therefore becomes imperative for its practitioners to actualise meaningful, cross-traditional dialogues. Seohārvī’s corpus offers us an ideal textual site for this methodological intervention and thereby helps us in conceptualising a grammar that unsettles the rigid Eurocentric epistemic borders. As highlighted earlier, reading Seohārvī’s intervention in the field of ethics in parallel with Alasdair MacIntyre’s indictment of Modern Moral Philosophy may reveal interesting overlaps. Despite a disjuncture in their traditions—a combination of history and location (Kaviraj et al. 2017)—they seem to be invested in raising and answering very similar questions. By foregrounding this virtual dialogue, we could foreground the limits of Eurocentric disciplines, and thereby the limits of the liberal condition. Since this condition has, in a sense, contributed to the flattening of the earth, its impact is experienced equally across the East and West, the North and the South divide. The crises of this condition generate similar diagnostic impulses across the temporal and cartographic divides—similar, not the same, lest these answers are read with an assimilationist gaze. Therefore, reading a thinker like MacIntyre in order to understand the predicament of this condition can be furthered by incorporating a reading of Seohārvī’s text into the mainstream canons of Political Theory. Perhaps, another reason for Seohārvī’s subjection to amnesia is that his thought represents exactly what the modern, Eurocentric, liberal condition has been historically insistent on erasing.
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Footnotes
[1] He was originally named Muiz al-dīn. See (Bhaṭṭī 1964, 13).
[2] The United Provinces were subsequently named as Uttar Pradesh upon the adoption of the Constitution in 1950.
[3] Hadith studies (‘Ulūm al-Ḥadīth) is a rigorous academic discipline dedicated to the preservation and understanding of the words, actions and approvals of Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
[4] I employ the terms ‘micro-politics’ and ‘macro-politics’ to properly understand Seohārvī’s positionality. Since he took a keen interest in the administrative affairs of Deoband, it functioned for him as a micro-political arena. However, his stay at Dabehl, resulting in engagements with pivotal figures like M.K. Gandhi, propelled him directly into the macro-political arena of the anti-colonial struggle. Hence, this period was transitional, enabling Seohārvī to manoeuvre the internal politics of Deoband, while also transitioning to the broader, macro, political context of the anti-colonial movement.
[5] It is the real name of Abū Hanīfah, 8th Century theologian who founded the Hanafī School of Jurisprudence, and this text is a work on Hanafī Jurisprudence.
[6] This work was rendered into English in 2001 by Shakir Rizwani and Khalid Mahmood, titled Stories from the Qur’an, in two volumes spanning around 1370 pages, see Seohārvī (2001).
[7] All translations from the original Urdu sources of (Seohārvī 1940; Bijnorī 1996, Nu‘mānī 1977; Roznāma al-jamī‘at 1962) are my own.
[8] Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, founded in 1919, represented the organised political front of the Deoband ‘Ulāma. Maintaining an active alliance with the Indian National Congress (INC), the organisation played a pivotal role in the anti-colonial struggle against the British Empire.
[9] Seohārvī employs the term ‘Hindustan’ and not ‘India,’ because the modern construct of ‘India’ had yet to percolate into the subcontinental imagination. For a genealogy of the idea of ‘India’ and erasure of ‘Hindustan’ within colonial and nationalist historiographies, see Asif (2020).
[10] Perso-Arabic Script
[11] Barring a few who were excluded from the list of invitees—most notably the Ameer of Jamaat-i-Islami Mawlana Abul Lais Islāhi and his associates, and the leaders of Muslim League due to Congress’s disapproval. To understand the context of the Convention and Nehru’s anxieties related to it, see Nehru (2017, p. 395-400) and Khan (2016).
[12] For an incisive critique of Liberal Imperialism see Massad (2015) and Losurdo (2011).