I have met Imtiaz Ahmad, eminent social scientist and former professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who passed away recently, only once, in a conference in Jamia Millia Islamia. I think it was sometime in 2016. I had read some of his works by then, but I was nervous to approach him. It was not because he was intimidating, but I was diffident and still learning to muster courage to hit up with someone. I do not exactly remember what I said and what he responded. But I am sure I must have said that ‘I have read some of your works and used them in my MPhil dissertation.’ That was the only time I met him. I still am reluctant to meet with new people. But I do try.

Though he served in the department of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, I consider him as an anthropologist/sociologist. He had the insight that in studying Muslims in India, scholars need to attend to the vagaries of everyday life. Over the last eight years, I have read various writings by Ahmad and used them in my own work. I reckon that he single-handedly changed the scholarly discourse about Muslims by foregrounding ethnography as the necessary component of scholarship on the community in contemporary India. We should remember that he was writing since the 1960s when scholarship on Muslims in India was still revolving around the issues of minority/majority, secularism/communalism and various such binaries.

Imtiaz Ahamad’s distinctness lay in showing that Muslims across India engage in various forms of hierarchical practices, despite their gargantuan claims of Islam being an egalitarian religion. Through four edited volumes, he brought together a set of diverse studies on Muslims across India not only to show the heterogeneity of Muslim community but also to showcase the underlying homogeneity in terms of social structure and its relationships with those of the wider Hindu society.

He enumerated various practices such as endogamy, occupational distinctions, hierarchy and notions of impurity existing amongst Muslims. One should also note that he also highlighted how these practices are unique among Muslims with the added ideological meanings and justifications from Islam. He was at pains to explain the existence of ‘caste’ among Muslims. He often wondered how to reconcile an egalitarian ideology with a hierarchical one. For a solution, he followed his master, Louis Dumont, who had posited in Homo Hierarchicus that Muslims were shaped by ‘caste’ because of the peculiar historical and socio-cultural environment in India.

It was argued that when marauding tribes and kings entered the Indian subcontinent from Persia and ultimately settled in various parts of India, they had to reach a political compromise to be accommodated in the local environment. To be considered native, these rulers and their companions adopted Hindu caste system out of political expediency. Imtiaz Ahmad has adopted and elaborated this Dumontian proposition further. He also noted that in subscribing to the local Islam, Muslims in India have shaped a unique Indian Islam which is tolerant and syncretic. Both Islam and the so-called Hindu practices exist in Muslim social life without any contradictions or tensions. To be fair to Imtiaz Ahamd, let me say that these contradictions and tensions do not threaten the schemas of everyday life in the case of Muslims.

In the 1980s, Imtiaz Ahmad got into an academic tussle with Francis Robinson, Veena Das and Gail Minault regarding the historical development of Islam in India and the suitable method to study it. While Imtiaz Ahamd vouched for an Indian Islam which is syncretic and tolerant, Robinson noted that if we look at the historical development of Islam in India, we can actually see a movement towards a ‘pattern of perfection’ and the so-called non-Islamic practices such as caste will be superseded in the eventual development of Islam when Muslims increasingly learn the correct and true tenets of Islam and discard everything that lies outside its boundary.

Gail Minault proposed a middle ground whereby one should be mindful of both a syncretic and a pattern of perfection in understanding Muslim life. Yet, each time the pattern of perfection becomes visible through some kind of revivalist movements, one cannot see it only as a tendency towards homogenisation. Rather, as history shows, revivalist movements often create divisions within the community. This is evident if we attend to various groups of Muslims among Barelvis, Deobandis, Jamaat-e-Islami and Tablighis. What needs to be kept in mind is the fact that each movement of revivalism is a product of a unique historical conjuncture and they cannot be all seen in a chain of perfection. Veena Das has further urged us to be attentive to the theological arguments that are part and parcel of everyday life in organising rituals and practices. She has argued that Muslim agents are creative in rationalising and justifying their practices and scholars should not view Muslim subjects either as simply showcasing a normative frame or as simply resisting such an impulse.

I have said this much about the debate about Islam in the early 1980s to prove my earlier claim that Imtiaz Ahmad singlehandedly changed the scholarly impulse of studies on Muslims in India. Without at least reading the four edited volumes, one cannot undertake a sociological study on Muslims in India today.

What has been most productive for my own scholarly engagements is the unresolved tension in Imtiaz Ahmad between the egalitarian tendencies of Islam and the hierarchical practices. If we read his arguments closely, one can find two streams. One, Islam, at its heart, is an egalitarian religion, which is evident if we take into account various pronouncements in Koran and Hadith. Second, despite such assertions in Islam regarding egalitarianism, Muslims ‘arrogantly’ practice caste. One wonders why. In my forthcoming book ‘Caste in Islam: Social Hierarchy among Muslims in India’ (under contract with University of Pennsylvania Press), I give some persuasive arguments. As this again proves, Imtiaz Ahmad continues to provoke us to think and be sensitive to the ground.

(P.C. Saidalavi is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi)