Law and Muslim Political Thought in Late Colonial North India

Offering a striking new perspective on the making of Muslim politics in colonial India, Adeel Hussain argues that law and legal thinking came to comprise its primary site. Rather than sulking in their tents and taking to religion with the establishment of British rule, Muslims deployed the law to shape the colonial state as well as remake themselves into a polity without sovereignty. In the process, Hussain gives us a novel interpretation of political thought in colonial societies. * Faisal Devji, Professor of Indian History, University of Oxford *
A new generation of young historians is redefining history itself as a way of grasping the meaning of certain traumatic political events of the past. Adeel Hussain brings a rare combination of expertise in history, law and the postmodernist innovations in interpretation of what were thought to be 'objective facts' to open up new questions about the nature of nationality and its relation to religion, of the legitimacy of Law as a solvent for disputes, and of the different ways of understanding the nature of the subaltern subjects. The fruits of his efforts are new ways of understanding the traumatic event of the Partition of British India. His book is erudite, compelling and a great read. * Meghnad ( Lord) Desai, Member of the House of Lords, Professor Emeritus of Economics, London School of Economics *
This is a remarkably lucid narration of a very complex phenomena in which law and philosophical discourse intersect in a bid to explicate historical situation. Adeel Hussain unravels the political and legal intricacies that punctuated the last two decades of united India. He has shed fresh light on the twists and turns that Muslim factional politics took in the run-up to partition. It indeed makes a pithy and profound reading. * Tahir Kamran, Professor of History, Beaconhouse National University *