Brothers in Arms: Tracing the Trajectory of Colonial Muslim Politics in Zeenuth Futehally’s Zohra

Abstract

One area of the discourse of nationalism that is receiving increasing attention from postcolonial scholars, especially from those who have contributed to the Subaltern Studies Collective, is the problematics of the relation between the nationalist elites and the masses in colonial India. It foregrounds the undervaluing and omission of certain sections of people in the narrative of Indian nationalism. Representations of nationalist struggle almost always celebrate the inspiring acts of the individual members of the upper stratum of society. The contributions made by the weaker communities and unprivileged individuals are either overlooked or are inadequately represented. The Muslims have been no exception. The marginal role ascribed to the Muslims in the anticolonial movements have been one of pores through which the seeds of separatist politics germinated resulting into a fractured independence of the country. Zeenuth Futehally’s novel Zohra (1951) while offering a nuanced view of the Muslim life of colonial India during the 1920s and 1930s underscores the contradictions embedded in the nationalist thoughts and political movements of the Muslims of the country. The representation of the simultaneous presence of nationalist and separatist politics among the Muslims in Futehally’s novel receives an added edge as it is presented through the eyes of a Muslim woman. This article, in re-reading Zohra, would draw primarily on Partha Chatterjee’s ideas on the pitfalls of nationalism to trace the uneven contours of nationalism that kept the Muslims almost always at the margins of nationalist movements and thereby led to their leaning towards a separatist politics. In doing so, the article will also try to configure the location of Muslim women as mere bystanders and trebly marginalized in the nationalist project.