Subjects or citizens?

The following column "Subjects or citizens?" by Harris Khalique , source "The News- April 2, 2010".

Some of the Muslim scholars of the subcontinent get angry when it is said that we were ruled by outsiders not for 200 but 1,000 years. The subjugation of the local population by the ruling dynasties of Afghans and Central Asian Turks began in the tenth century. The British were the last of the foreign rulers. Undoubtedly they were different and more harmful in the sense that they militarily colonised, plundered the wealth of the subcontinent and took it all away without settling here. Their predecessors, although hugely prejudiced against the locals and ruthless in their behaviour, could be given some latitude for making it their homeland and their future generations getting naturalised in the Indian subcontinent. Dr Mubarak Ali's writings, including the brief book on the subject, "Barr-e-Sagheer Mein Musalman Muashray Ka Alamiya" (The Tragedy of Muslim Society in the Subcontinent), is a must read for those interested in our history.

We can safely say that for a millennium, our ancestors were subjects of different kings and occasionally queens. They were not citizens, but subjects. The unprecedented awakening of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which came with modernity under the British, inspired local elite coupled with newly emerging intelligentsia to assume a larger role in running their own affairs. We see the birth of the Indian National Congress in 1885 and the All India Muslim League in 1906. Those from the privileged classes of subjects led a struggle for changing the relationship between the monarchic and colonial rulers and the common populace. This struggle led to the creation of two modern states in South Asia.

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