| This dissertation is partially an intellectual biography of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. It focuses mainly on Khan's interpretation of Islam with considerable implications for Indian Muslims as a minority. It attempts to study Wahiduddin Khan's life and intellectual career, beginning with his association with the Jama'at-i Islami in the late 1940's, till the present. In this context, it has been my intent to highlight the ways in which perception of the 'other' has affected the Muslim and Hindu religious discourse of the 20th century. Furthermore I purport to show how this 'otherization' has been contested, on the Muslim (religious) side by Wahiduddin Khan influenced, as he seems to be, by people like Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Abul Kalam Azad. This approach then is posited vis-a-vis Abul'Ala Maududi's view of the 'other' whose thought has also influenced a number of Muslim intellectuals, Khan included, since his rise to the ranks of Muslim religious leadership in the 1940s. In its own logic, Wahiduddin Khan's approach to Islam constitutes a necessary corrective to those other theories of Islam which attempt to explain all religious action in terms of external processes determined by essentially political forces.;Wahiduddin Khan views his intellectual approach as most suited to finding an amicable solution to the Hindu-Muslim problem in contemporary India. The development of his discourse on Islam inevitably leads him to discuss issues such as secularism, communalism, inter-religious dialogue, and the need for multicultural social values. Here I examine the symbolic and mythico-historical elements in the discourse of "communalism" (both Hindu and Muslim) and the ways in which it has been countered by secularist-modernists of the 1950's and 60's and contemporary religious elite, giving cue to Wahiduddin Khan's own solution to the problem of communal/religious conflict. In relation to the discourse on communalism, Wahiduddin Khan's view of pluralism in Islam has been put to test and his theology of non-violence and his ideas on peace in Islam are explored in light of recent socio-political developments in contemporary India. |
