Muslim Nationality in Late Colonial India: From Law to Sacrifice

By way of retracing the 1935 Shahidganj mosque dispute, I explore how Indian Muslims transformed their vision of community from one seeking moral legitimacy within colonial law to a vision geared towards political action outside of the colonial legal order. This represented a radical departure from Muslim politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century where liberalism - while circulating around ideas of mysticism and moral community- remained largely deliberative. By piecing together the legal micro-history of the Shahidganj mosque dispute and by mapping native responses to colonial law, I show how Indian Muslims, under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, located and shaped their political identity by moving beyond colonial legal prescriptions of legal pacts based on interests.