FImtiaz Saab is fine. In your death, I have lost a dear friend and mentor. I have also missed the opportunity of hosting you in Goa. The thought of having you as my guest gave me immense pleasure over the years and I am sorry that fate decreed otherwise. Our calendars could never align. In the next life, sir, you will start with credits.
It is an understatement to describe Professor Imtiaz Ahmed as an insightful sociologist, a secular educationist, a leading scholar of Indian Islam and a caring teacher, as sincerely done by many. These are all correct descriptions, but they do not tell enough. They do not reveal the mind and life force of man. It is this combination of mind and soul that made him special, a man of his times who, in seminars and classes, with a calm tone and an enigmatic smile, described the transformative processes and internal dynamics of power in Indian society. its community. There will be no enthusiasm for idealism. Therefore because of his seminal work it is wrong to see him primarily as a scholar of Islam in India or as a sociologist studying caste among Muslims. Caste and social stratification among Muslims in India, He was first and foremost a scholar interested in the power play in society and what it was doing to communities, institutions and democratic processes in India and South Asia.
secularism and communalism
Imtiaz Saab’s nature was introspective. The traditional categories of political sociologist, sociologist of religion, democratic theorist and contemporary historian do not do him justice, because above all, he was a perceptive mind who understood the times. India and its dynamism attracted him. This helped him formulate research questions in a way ahead of his time. Here are four examples.
In a long-forgotten essay, he described Indian democracy as a “secular state in a communal society”. The description was succinct, and although I liked the beauty of it, it took me years to fully understand its depth. You can read in this the post-colonial project of a secular state trying to transform a communal society into a secular one. In the process, it faced massive hurdles, but it still remains a necessary practice as secularism is the only way for a pluralistic nation like India to become a modern state. You can also see that a communal society is winning the battle and instead a secular state, which apparently has the structure of modernity, has been transformed into a communal state, as we have now sadly found out. . Imtiaz saab was ahead of his time.
The second pragmatic formulation was his emphasis on “living Islam”. He argued that understanding Indian Islam would not come from looking at scriptures, ulema’s interpretations and fatwas, but from studying its everyday practices, the adjustments and compromises that Muslims make. His eventful world was a place to be seen. In this formulation, Imtiaz Saab draws attention to the living world of Islam in India and, by extension, any religious community. Communities are diverse. They adjust according to the demands of the context and place. Caste intrudes, discrimination and regional differences too. His work laid the groundwork for empirical research on Indian Islam.
The third example comes from the classroom. I was lucky to be his student. He taught us a course in political sociology. Being a sociologist among political scientists, he was more attracted to Max Weber than Karl Marx in a department dominated by Marxists. He introduced us to caste issues in Indian politics and to analysts such as Rajni Kothari and DL Sheth. It was a measure of his openness, presented in the 1970s, when it came close to Weber’s heresy against Marx. They asked me to review Kothari politics in india a few years after its publication. Little did I know then that it would grow into a path-breaking text. The conservatives who ruled the department regarded it as ‘behaviouralist’ or, at most, based on ‘systems analysis’. Both the views were considered no-no. He was considered an apologist for capitalism. I struggled with my review, I was too afraid to fully appreciate it and too afraid to criticize it. I submitted a bad review. However, he gave me a good grade not for the substance of what I said, but for the intellectual struggle he saw in my text.
study of democracy
The last example comes from the method he adopted to study Indian democracy. Imtiaz Saab was aptly described as an empiricist, as he tended to emphasize a vibrant Islam, but this would only tell half the story. He moved between the high abstractions of theory and the muddy terrain of the empirical world, and later discovered the corroboration of the abstractions of the former. It was a continuous process for him. He did not impose doctrine; He presented it with evidence. He found theory and empirical data to negotiate. This is what made him a brilliant social scientist. India needs more critical scholars who rise above their ideological commitments.
But more than what he taught me, I am grateful for his generosity. I was awarded a scholarship by the Government of India to study abroad. I needed two guarantors to sign the required undertaking. Being from Goa I did not know anyone in Delhi who would be willing to sign a bond which would require the guarantor to confirm that, if I did not return to India, they would refund the amount spent to the government. Will give I asked him what to do. He asked for the form and signed it.