Mushirul Hasan, who passed away on the morning of 10th December in New Delhi, was one of India’s most distinguished historians and educationists. He served on a host of national bodies — including the UGC and the ICHR — as an articulate member — and worked with the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund. He was Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, where he was Professor of History for most of his professional life. And he was Director General of the National Archives to which he lent distinction.
At Jamia Millia Islamia, he added to the achievement of Mujeeb and Kidwai to give the university a fillip and drew to it some of the finest scholars of the world even as he was able to endow it with a host of new institutions and activities that earned the body international respect.
Much of this achievement came from a vision born from assiduous research and the sensibilities, exposure and networks that went with it.
The record of that research is evident in Hasan’s profile as one of the post-Independence generation’s most prolific historians, respected at home and abroad. Trained at Aligarh, Delhi and Cambridge, and beginning his career early (barely 20), the basic focus of Hasan’s many respected monographs, large studies and document collections was the history of India’s Muslims under colonialism. Here he excelled in accounts of communities in U.P. and Delhi, tracing their story during the Khilafat movement in an initial monograph and going on to deal with larger histories of Partition and its impact as well as moving back into the 19th century for the history of Muslim intellectuals and then looking to their links beyond India. The result was etching of a landscape on a massive scale, guided by skilful use of sources, a deep range of literary reference and a cosmopolitan frame that spanned the world of the Indian Ocean and the Ottoman Empire.
While quick to learn from methodological debate, it was the human enigma (the juxtaposition and interaction of Gandhi and Jinnah) and the complex experience (the prison lives of nationalists) that drew Hasan as he evolved as a historian. Almost relentlessly, he pursued the omnipresence of History, seeking it in remote villages and small townships in many expeditions, enthusiastically sharing his discoveries in public writing.
Hasan was firm in his views that social and cultural ethos guided India’s Muslims along a tolerant road unless directed by the exigencies of politics: and he sought to rescue their record early in his career from reductionism to economic or religious stereotypes that research guides in India and abroad were keen on.
Symbol of tolerance
His own firm support of this “openness” marked him out as a liberal in India’s political landscape; and his personal espousal of such values publicly, independent of political party, led to one of the most turbulent periods of his life. His assertion of his support for Salman Rushdie’s right to speak, despite his own disagreements with what was said, at the height of the controversy that surrounded publication of Satanic Verses , led to his emergence as a symbol of tolerance in a manner that is worth remembering in today’s troubled times.
Hasan had a deep sense of standards and quality and a commitment to his ends: and this did not always endear him to those whom he valued, let alone those with whom he had little in common. However, his innate kindness and gregariousness, and the geniality and hospitality that came with the comradeship and intellectual companionship that he shared with his wife, Zoya Hasan, tempered the sharpness of disagreements and made for respect and affection along a broad spectrum.
(The author is a Professor in the University of Calcutta)
