FOREWORD
The peoples of India are perhaps the most unfortunate on earth. Their modern history is particularly tragic and pitiable. It was in the early seventeenth century that the nations of Europe began their colonial invasion of the Orient. By the middle of the nineteenth century, they had practically occupied the whole of Western and Southern Asia.
These conqueror-colonists had nothing in common with the peoples they encountered. Moreover, since they were the masters, they believed that everything belonging to them was good, beautiful, and noble—while all that was foreign was wrong, ugly, and inhuman. They labeled the Eastern nations as superstitious, uncultured, and barbaric. And as subject races often seek to imitate their rulers, these subjugated peoples of Asia, in due course, began to regard Westerners as the only leaders of human thought and civilization. The rise of this consciousness in the East has, until this day, remained the greatest instrument in the hands of European imperialism.
The most significant aspect of the European worldview is the philosophy of nationalism, which today serves as the backbone of social organization throughout the West. This same philosophy was imported into India—arguably the largest European colony—long ago. For more than half a century, the peoples of this subcontinent believed that their salvation lay in cooperating with, and following in the footsteps of, their overlords.
By the end of this period, a powerful intelligentsia emerged, and the ideas of Western political science—particularly democracy and nationalism—began to influence India profoundly. The movement to gain freedom for the “Motherland” gathered momentum and eventually became the central political issue of India. The driving force behind this “freedom movement” is nationalism—the same ideology that underpins the power of the colonial rulers. However, the presence of ninety million Muslims in India, whose worldview is in direct contradiction with the theory of nationalism, seriously threatens the foundation of this movement.
Syed Abul A‘la Maududi is the first great thinker of this age to define and explain the Islamic ideology and to demonstrate—not only to the leaders and participants of Indian political movements, but also to the broader global audience—that true justice and sustainable human society can only be established on the foundation of Islam, not nationalism.
In this essay, Maududi, after outlining general principles, specifically addresses the case of India and convincingly argues that nationalism can never resolve its unique challenges. Though brief, this thesis stands as one of the most compelling writings on nationalism in modern political literature.
Qamar-ud-Din Khan
