EVERY Sunday evening it strikes me how difficult it is to write a weekly opinion piece, especially for those of us who are not natural writers. But more than the writing, it’s the process of deciding the topic that is difficult, for there are weeks when it seems nothing much is happening and then days when events seem to hurtle at breakneck speed — which also ensures difficult decision-making. The past seven days fall into the latter category; so much has happened that it is overwhelming. The no-confidence move and the hectic social life of the opposition; the over-hyper government; the performance awards given to the ministries and then the media fiasco that followed; a spate of court and ECP judgements and then a lynching, to our everlasting shame and despair.

There was so much to write about and so little that I had to say. The mind was a blank canvas, which happens more frequently than I would like to admit. And then the newspapers on Monday morning offered a story about President Arif Alvi’s reading recommendations. With due apologies to the president, not a single one of them sounded too tempting. But it did help me put fingers to the keypad about reading and book titles and what is on my proverbial side table: The Loss of Hindustan by Mannan Ahmed, which I chose to read only and solely because I saw the title on Twitter. That was enough, for sometimes a good title is all one needs.

It is seldom that one comes across a history or political book with a title so evocative. But it was so with The Loss of Hindustan. Without any reviews, a back flap or a recommendation from a friend or acquaintance, the name made it hard to resist the book. The last time perhaps a title felt so promising and so personal was The Long Partition (and The Making of Modern South Asia). That what lay beyond the title was so enriching and satisfying is perhaps why the earlier enchantment with the title remains.

The book poses a question we should have asked long ago: when did Hindustan become India?

It also got me thinking about another book I have been recommending enthusiastically to those around me, No Good Men Among the Living. For the life of me, I can’t remember if I picked it up because of the title or because I had come across the reference in the wake of the US departure from Afghanistan. Regardless, it was worth the read.

But these days, it is The Loss of Hindustan, which asks a question we should have asked long before Ahmed came along with this book — when did ‘Hindustan’ became ‘India’? The Hindustan of Iqbal, when he wrote Saarey jahan se acha or even earlier when the Mughal kings were called Shahanshah-i-Hindustan? The last one who claimed this title was Bahadur Shah Zafar, and when he was deposed by the British, Queen Victoria became the empress of India. In other words, Hindustan became India as a result of the colonisation and the history being written by those who colonised it.

However, it is far more than a change in name as Ahmed traces it. He links it to the new history of the subcontinent that the British introduced — in which ‘India’ could trace its history to 5,000 years ago and Muslims were the outsiders, the invaders and despots. He writes that this 5,000-year-long history included a golden period which was epitomised by Asoka, who ruled over the entire subcontinent and that it was disrupted by Mahmud Ghaznavi and his 17 invasions, beginning a period of Muslim despotic rule, in which the only respite was provided by Akbar’s enlightened reign.

This history does not just create a ‘before’ and ‘after’ but also places the Muslims as invaders and outsiders whose history could be linked to the Arab world and not India itself. And in the process, the author also explores where these figures of ‘5,000’ years and even the ‘17’ raids of Ghaznavi came from.

Interestingly, Ahmed also provides an account of a rather different interaction between the Arab world and Hindustan, of the gentler relationships of mutual respect between the rulers who are mentioned in Arabic and Persian histories. Narrating one such account, he tells his readers of a raja in Kashmir who asks a Muslim ruler in Sindh for “laws of Islam in the language of Hind” or another that lists the gifts exchanged by the courts of Iraq and Hind. These letters and gifts, says Ahmed, “demonstrate ways in which the littoral Indian Ocean World is connected in an economy of exchange at the courtly level”. The letters exchanged between Harun al Rashid and Dahmi, a king in Hind, points to an “awareness and recognition of each other’s polity, religion, and customs”.

It is not just a different relationship that these books and accounts portray but also a history which is not based on violence and conquest. As Ahmed points out, it provides a picture of rulers in Hindustan which is different from the ‘India’ visualised in colonial history. Ahmed points out that this is not simply a matter for academics, for history at the end of the day shapes how we think now. As he says, “The majoritarian politics that has come to the fore in the last decade is predicated on finding historical roots for imagined trauma.”

And these are words equally important for us, as we watch mob lynchings on mere allegations or the attacks of banned organisations which want Sharia imposed in Pakistan. What if we too had been taught a history in which Muslims were not invaders who came to ‘India’ to spread Islam? What if our history books also began with accounts of letters and gifts exchanged and relationships based on equality, with no before and after? The loss of Hindustan is ours too.

The writer is a journalist.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2022