ABSTRACT
The birth of Pakistan on 14-15 August 1947 undermined, from the liberal and left perspective, the values of religious tolerance and cultural pluralism. The ideological foundations of secular nationalism, the main plank of the Indian National Congress in its mobilisation campaigns, also weakened. For the Muslim communities that remained in India, partition was a nightmare. Islam in India, past and present, unfolds a bewildering diversity of Muslim communities. No statistical data are required to establish their location in multiple streams of thought and interactions with them. Their histories, along with social habits, cultural traits and occupational patterns, vary from class to class, from place to place, and from region to region. The economic profile of Muslims is varied. Traders, businessmen, merchants and industrialists are no doubt comfortably placed, but the vast majority of Muslims, including the impoverished peasants and landless labourers, are the bulk of the rural poor and the industrial proletariat.
