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Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India
Monuments Memory Contestation 1st Edition Hilal
Ahmed Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Hilal Ahmed
ISBN(s): 9781317559542, 1317559541
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 9.73 MB
Year: 2014
Language: english
Muslim Political Discourse
in Postcolonial India
Hilal Ahmed’s book is a pioneering exploration of the politics of historical
monuments, an interdisciplinary work linking the analysis of law, history and
politics. It offers a remarkable analysis of the ways in which reinterpreted images
of the past work as resources for mobilization and action in the political present.
The book also offers a fascinating analysis of the politics around the Jama Masjid
in Delhi – showing how religious monuments transform into sites of the political
public sphere. Ahmed provides an insightful examination of the construction
of historical memory and a sophisticated exploration of the complex effects of
democratic mobilization on the political identity of Indian Muslims.

Sudipta Kaviraj
Professor of Indian Politics and Intellectual History, Middle Eastern,
South Asian and African Studies, Columbia University, New York

What could be more concrete, more singular in meaning than a building? In fact,
many different actors have made signage, use, disputation, and rituals have made
India’s built past centrally important in defining nationalism and belonging.
Citizens absorb the assumptions of national identities as wholly natural, and the
historical meanings attached to sites and buildings are part of those identities. Hilal
Ahmed’s book provides a fresh and original analysis to understanding cultural
and political life in India’s culturally plural society today.

Barbara Metcalf
Professor of History Emerita, University of California, Davis

Hilal Ahmed analyses the way in which political groups, both Hindu and
Muslim, have used the great monuments of the Indo-Islamic tradition for political
mobilisation. His book is one of the most important and innovative pieces of
research of recent times. No scholar in the field should ignore it.

Francis Robinson
Professor of the History of South Asia, Royal Holloway,
University of London
 Muslim Political Discourse
in Postcolonial India
Monuments, Memory, Contestation

Hilal aHmed
First published 2014
by Routledge

Published 2015 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2014 Hilal Ahmed

Typeset by
Solution Graphics
A–14, Indira Puri, Loni Road
Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh 201 102

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage
and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-02016-0 (hbk)

 For
Nazima, Sarmad, Maaz and Raheel
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents
Tables and Figures ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xiii

1. Introduction 1

2. Monumentalisation in Colonial India: Discovery of

‘Indian Muslim Architectural Heritage’ 50

3. Monumentalisation in Postcolonial India:

Conservation, Law and Muslim Politics 97

4. Jama Masjid and the Political Memory of a Royal

Muslim Past 140

5. Babri Masjid and the Muslim Politics of Right

to Heritage 192

6. Conclusion 275

Appendices 284
Select Bibliography 290
About the Author 316
Index 317
This page intentionally left blank
 Tables and Figures

Tables
4.1 Imam’s Politics Compared: Memory, Law and History 184

5.1 Narratives of the Babri Masjid–Ram Temple

Dispute 205
5.2 Legal Issues and Political Implications of
Babri Masjid Case: 1949–94 225
5.3 Internal Dynamics of Muslim Politics on Babri Masjid
in 1986 236
5.4 Positions of BMMCC and AIBMAC on Babri Masjid 255
5.5 Negotiation on Babri Masjid Dispute 271

Figures
2.1: Legal Classification of Indian Buildings (1810–63) 68
2.2: The Process of Monumentalisation and the 1904 Act 82
2.3: Classification of Ancient Monuments
by The Conservation Manual (1923) 86
2.4: Conservation of Religious Places of Worship (1904–47) 87

3.1: Powers of the Central Government 105

3.2: ASI’s Version of Qutub Mosque 109
3.3: Right to Heritage: A Legal Interpretation 118
3.4: Secularism(s) Compared and a Few Unsolved Issues 125

4.1: Erstwhile Office of the Archaeological Survey

of India (ASI) at Jama Masjid 141
4.2: Sunni Majlis-e-Auqaf Board 142
4.3: Jama Masjid ‘Speaks’ 144
4.4: Clearance of Shops Near the Wall of Jama Masjid
by the DDA (1975) 152
4.5: Bullet Marks at Jama Masjid 155
4.6: Black Banner at the Jama Masjid 168
4.7: Jama Masjid in June 1987 168
4.8: Reopening of the Jama Masjid 170
x Tables and Figures

4.9: Jama Masjid 173

4.10: The Wazukhana of Jama Masjid 176
4.11: Pamphlet Distributed in Different Mosques by the
YWS Activists against L. K. Advani’s Visit 179
4.12: PAS of the Jama Masjid 185
4.13: Imam Abdullah Bukhari in Tahmad and Kurta 189
4.14: Ahmad Bukhari and Abdullah Bukhari Wearing
Robes 190

5.1: Kar Sewa Puram Ayodhya 197

5.2: Babri Masjid Site in 1858 210
5.3: Site Plan Submitted by the Mahant in 1885 212
5.4: Babri Masjid in 1949 215
5.5: Babri Masjid (1986) 220
5.6: Babri Masjid (1990) 223
5.7: Babri Masjid Agitation: February to November 1986 238
5.8: The Ideological Composition of the Coalition 241
5.9: The Imam Formula 265
 Preface
T his book has emerged from my doctoral thesis, Politics of
Monuments and Memory, which was submitted to the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2006–07.
Unlike other conventional studies on the history of ‘monuments’/
archaeology or Muslim politics, communalism/secularism, the
book makes a modest attempt to establish a link between two very
different sets of issues: the questions related to the process by which
historic buildings become monuments — primarily in historical and
legal terms or what I call the process of monumentalisation; and the
manner in which these historic/legal entities are transformed into
political objects. From this vantage point, I try to understand the
postcolonial Muslim political discourse. Concentrating on multiple
ways by which Indo-Islamic historic buildings are interpreted as
‘political sites’, I explore the political construction of a collective
memory of a royal Muslim past.
The book simply offers an ‘introduction’ — a slight reframing
of issues in relation to a particular kind of contextual Muslim
politics of 1970–90. For that reason, it follows a very different style
of writing. Each chapter asks a few conceptually conscious and
empirically rooted questions; the subsequent discussion offers a
possible interpretation to these questions based on a re-reading
of various sources; and finally an analysis is offered. I adopt this
style simply to arrange and produce the vast empirical information
that I managed to collect during the course of this research. It
does not mean that the empirical details are given priority over
the conceptual treatment of the subject. I do take up the complex
issues of theoretical kind such as the discursive nature of Muslim
political discourse. However, I admit that the arguments offered
in this book, from my point of view, can be treated as ‘first-level
generalizations’ — which can further be developed into a more
sophisticated intellectual position on Muslim political engagement
in south Asia.
In any case, the significance of these ‘first level generalizations’
on postcolonial Muslim politics need to be emphasised for two
obvious reasons. First, the specificity of Muslim politics in India
xii Preface

has not been adequately studied. As an inseparable constituent of

a larger conceptual package called ‘Muslim issues’, Muslim politics
is always understood either in relation to Muslim backwardness
or communalism. It is, I believe, important to look at the ways in
which a Muslim issue is articulated politically. The book tries to
offer a historical explanation to modern Muslim politics in this
sense, especially its north India-dominated version, simply by
moving away from the prevalent notions such as Muslim separatism,
Muslim communalism and for that matter Muslim secularism. In
my view, such frames of analysis, distract serious empirical and
theoretical studies and might lead us to an unnecessary discussion
on ‘political’ correctness.
Second, the linkage between ‘official history’, law and political
action, which I try to make in this book, has its own explanatory
importance. The book offers an ‘analytical angle’ to approach
these vast areas by concentrating on a few identified questions that
revolve around a discursively constituted historical practice called
‘Muslim politics’. One may criticise this ‘selective treatment’ on
the basis of the vastness of the subjects like archaeology, law and
above all, history. However, I do not find such rather predictable
refutations useful. If we are ready to accept the ‘interdisciplinary
research’ in the true sense of the term, we have to recognise the
selective preferences of a researcher in dealing with his/her
research questions. This is precisely what this book underlines. To
put it rather polemically, I would say that this intellectual attempt
is simply a reply to those political scientists and historians, who
still do not deviate from set disciplinary questions!
To deal with this rather unconventional take on Muslim politics,
I draw on a variety of sources: archival material, interviews,
speeches of political leaders, legal documents and visual sources
such as pictures of mosques, etc. These sources are put together to
construct a narrative, which is simply an interpretative exercise. I do
not suggest that this is the only and/or fixed explanation of these
sources. Of course, there could be various possibilities to explore
them. But, I urge the readers not only to look at the narrative critically
but also pay equal attention to the sequence of various sources,
which gives a structure and flow to the arguments I offer.

2 May 2013 Hilal Ahmed

Wellington
 Acknowledgements
Writing an ‘acknowledgement’ could possibly be one of the most
difficult tasks for any researcher. No one can draw a clear dividing
line between what exactly has been borrowed from sources —
individuals, institutions or society — and what precisely has been
his/her own original contribution. Thus, in my opinion, the best
feasible way to acknowledge the social nature of academic research
is to pay tribute to a few processes by which ideas are generated,
systematised and shaped in different forms.
The present research, in this sense, is also a product of a few
specific, though highly peculiar social processes — it could be my
mother’s favourite bedtime stories in which many jinns came out
from Viran Masjid and Khandathar and hid in the dark corners of our
gali (street); it could be my Hindi teacher’s lecture at the Arya Samaj-
run DAV school on Musalmano Dwara Hindu Mandiron Ka Vidhwans
(desecration of temples by Muslims in medieval India); it could be
those post-Isha salat discussions in our mosque (particularly during
the time of curfew) in which elders used to talk about Masjid ki siyasat
(Politics of mosques), Asar-e Kadima (old buildings), and Muslamone
ki wakf milikiyaten (wakf properties of Muslims); it could be the
reminiscences of those ‘encounters’ when the chowkidars (guards)
of the protected monuments did not allow us to offer Namaz inside
the historic mosque; or even it could be those sweetest memories
when I went for my first date with an intention to propose to my
girlfriend for a lifelong association and our hunch for a romantic
place brought us to the Safdarjung’s Tomb — again a protected
monument of national importance! All these ‘critical’ events shaped
my interests in historical buildings and finally I found myself
working on a book on ‘politics of monuments’!
The transition of these varied processes into an academic
research project is also very interesting. In fact, the entire credit
goes to my teachers, colleagues, friends, and students, who
actually shaped my personality and helped me in contextualizing
my own interests, anxieties, apprehensions, issues, and problems
into a rather sophisticated discourse of academic research. I am
thankful to late I. P. Sharma, Nafis-ul-Hasan, Maninder Nath
xiv Acknowledgements

Thakur, Deepak Verma, Manoranjan Mohanty, Riaz Ahmad, John

Sidel, Louiza Odysseos, Francis Robinson, Ian Talbot, Barbara
Metcalf, Imtiaz Ahmad, Mathew Nelson, Mukulika Banerjee,
Emma Tarlo, Markus Daechsel, David Washbrook, Peter Robb,
Daud Ali, Nivedita Menon, S. K. Chaube, Ashish Ghosh, M. P. Jain,
Manish Jain, Ruma Dutt, Jinee Lokaneeta , Munaf Zeena, Azimudin
Sayed, Nilanjana Kaviraj, Syed Zahid Ali, Bilal Ahmed, Javed
Ahmed, Mohammad Usman, Arif Anjum, Mohammad Ahmad,
Mohammad Arshad, Mushir Ahmed, Bushra Sultana, Azra,
Sultana, Mohammad Ashiqueen, Mohammad Naseem, Mazhar
Ahmed, Mohammad Irfan, Mohammad Rashid, Mahjabeen Rashid,
late Qamar Jahan, late Faiz Ahmed, Zumrud Jahan,Sartaj, Tani
Bhargava, Abhay Prasad Singh, Mohammad Nadim, Shafiquddin,
Ujjawal Kumar Singh, and Anupama Roy for their help, comments
and criticisms.
A special thanks to Sudipta Kaviraj, my thesis supervisor and
one of the best minds of our time, for encouraging me to think
critically and innovatively, and of course independently. I do not
have adequate words to express my gratitude for his contribution
as a teacher.
The practical help given by a number of people in India,
particularly during the time of fieldwork is priceless. I am grateful
to my respondents at Delhi, Ayodhya, Kanpur, Lucknow and other
parts of north India for their readiness to discuss political issues
with me. Hashim Ansari, Zahid Raza Rizvi, Yunus Siddiquie,
Zafaryab Jilani, Nawabuddin Nakshabandi, Shankrachraya Mahant
Adhyoshnadji, and N. K. Sharma deserve special thanks. This study
is highly indebted to Syed Shahabuddin and his journal, Muslim
India, which he published for two decades.
Over the years, I have realized the intellectual significance of the
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) — the ‘Centre’
in my academic and personal life. My brilliant colleagues at the
Centre — Abhay Kumar Dubey, Awadhendra Sharan, Peter R.
deSouza, Prathama Banerjee, Priyadarshini Vijaisri, Rakesh Pandey,
Ravi Sundaram, Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Kant, Hemachandran
Karah, Sanjay Kumar, Sarada Balagopalan, Sanjeer Alam, Madhu
Purnima Kishwar, Ananya Vajpeyi, Avinash Jha, and Praveen
Rai have helped me in reshaping my arguments. A special thanks
to Ashis Nandy, D. L. Sheth, Shail Mayaram, Rajeev Bhargava
and Aditya Nigam — who read various drafts of my work very
 Acknowledgements xv

critically and suggested ways to improve it. I am also grateful to

the CSDS library and staff — late ‘Dada’— Sujit Deb, K. A. Q. A.
Hilal, Himanshu, Ghanshyam, Manoj, T. K. Singh, and others for
their love and support.
I am grateful to the Ford Foundation International Fellowship
Program (IFP) for giving me the IFP fellowship for my doctoral
research. Especially I am thankful to Joan Dassin and Mary
Zurbuchen for their personal interest in my work. I must express
gratitude to IFP India office, particularly to Vivek Mansukhani,
Neera Handa, and Akta Sawhney. I am also thankful to the School
of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Registry and the Faculty of
Law and Social Sciences, SOAS for providing financial support. The
institutional support extended by the Faith in the Future Limited
(London) and the North London Muslim Community Centre was
extremely useful.
I am also thankful to the library and staff of the Oriental and
India Office Collections (Asia Pacific and Africa Collection) at
the British Library, SOAS Library, the Senate House Library,
Hackney Central Library, Stamford Hill Library, North London
Muslim Centre Library, Impact International Document Collection
(London), Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (Delhi), National
Institution of Urban Affairs Library, Delhi Urban Art Commission,
INTACH Library (particularly Ms Nasreen Begum and Mr. O. P.
Jain for their help), Ratan Tata Library, Central Reference Library
(Delhi University), Supreme Court of India Library, Delhi High
Court Library, Delhi Public Library, National Archives (India),
All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat Library, Jamiat Ulema-e-
Hind Library (special thanks to Salem Saheb and Mazhar Bhai),
and Raza Library, Rampur.
I am also thankful to the editorial team of Routledge, New
Delhi, for their careful reading of the manuscript and professional
attitude.
The final version of the manuscript was completed during
my stay in Wellington. I am thankful to the New Zealand India
Research Institute of the Victoria University of Wellington,
especially its Director, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, for inviting me as
Visiting Fellow for the academic year 2013–14.
My ideas have been shaped and influenced by four individuals
in the past few years in a significant way. Yogendra Yadav, one of
the most energetic and creative contemporary social scientists, is
xvi Acknowledgements

one of them. As a superb teacher, he taught me how to collect and

analyse micro-level data/information; and as a colleague, showed
me the political value of intellectual labour. Madhulika Banerjee
has always been a source of inspiration for me. She has taught me
how to establish a balance between intellectual labour and family
commitment. M. Ghazali Khan gave a new direction to my thinking
during my stay in London. He encouraged me to look at the idea
of politics from different vantage points. Finally, Maulana Athar
Hussein Dehlavi — a friend and philosopher — who has been
guiding me in almost every aspect of my life. I must say that he
made the fieldwork, particularly the interviews with politicians
and bureaucrats, so smooth and easy.
My children — Sarmad, Maaz and Raheel — have always been
central to my personal and professional life. Actually, Sarmad
worked very hard to read many drafts of this manuscript and
helped me in typing at various levels. In fact, he asked some very
interesting questions about my research. Maaz and Raheel took
some time to understand that ‘Papa was doing some work’. But
after this realization they also started contributing in this research
in their own sweet ways.
My wife Nazima Parveen has been travelling with me since
the very day when we visited the Safdarjung’s Tomb and agreed
for an enduring bond. As an intellectual she provided valuable
comments, as a friend shared every problem of life, as a responsible
companion worked very hard to provide time so that I could finish
my work, and as the administrator of the family set out some rules
to systemize the life of a highly unorganized person like me. I must
confess that my life is still lyrical, just because of her! In recognition
of our shared dreams, anxieties, and differences, this study is
dedicated to my family: Nazima, Sarmad, Maaz, and Raheel.
 1
Introduction
The academic literature on Indian Muslim communities discusses
the term ‘Muslim politics’ in a number of ways. Popular demands
such as the protection of Urdu or Muslim Personal Law, the
programmes, policies and activities of Muslim organisations or
pressure groups, sermons, speeches and statements of influential
Muslim personalities and the Muslim voting pattern in elections
are often studied as the constituents of Muslim politics in postcolo-
nial India. A few illuminating studies have already made attempts
to conceptualise the political power structure among Muslims
by employing a Marxist and/or elitist framework of analysis.
However, despite such a variety of academic writings, our know-
ledge of different forms and trajectories of post-1947 Indian Muslim
politics is rather limited. A strong conviction that there is only one
form of Muslim politics in India, which eventually characterises an
indispensable dichotomy between Western modernity and Islam,
seems to dominate academic discourses. It is believed that Muslim
politics as a manifestation of minority communalism could either
be juxtaposed with secular politics or completely ignored as a kind
of reaction to assertive Hindu nationalism also known as Hindutva.1
There is an underlying assumption that an upper-class, upper-caste,
male Muslim elite divert common Muslims from secular/national
issues for the sake of their vested interests. This assumption is
often accepted uncritically. As a result, the internal complexities
of Muslim politics and the ways in which Muslim political actors

1
The term ‘Hindutva’ refers to the politics of Hindu rightists that has
emerged in the mid-1980s. Interestingly, the Supreme Court of India has
taken it too literally and conceptualises the ‘Hindutva’ as a way of life
(AIR 1996 SC, 1113). However, it should be noted that the rightist Hindu
groups, which are often called the constituents of ‘Hindutva family’
popularly known as the Sangh Parivar, do not follow any single political
ideology. In fact, the Ram Temple issue gave them an opportunity to form
an informal political coalition.
2 Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India

function become less important and intellectual energies are

devoted to reproducing the existing intellectual and political divide
between secularism and communalism.
The present study is a modest endeavour to go beyond this
dominant and all-inclusive view of Muslim politics. Instead
of examining wide-ranging issues such as the acceptable role of
Muslims in a secular environment or the strategies for their
political empowerment, this study narrows down its focus. It iden-
tifies the political reception of Indo-Islamic historic architecture as
a vantage point to enter into the contemporary Muslim political
discourse in north India.2 Concentrating on the multiple ways in
which Indo-Islamic historic buildings are interpreted as ‘political
sites’, this study explores the political construction of a collective
memory of a royal Muslim past.
This work deals with three different kinds of contestations.
The first contestation is characterised by the clash between the
modern concept of a secular monument, which looks at historic
sites as dead entities, and various Islamic traditions, which com-
memorate these buildings as living sites. This study examines how
these two very different approaches to the past overlap each other
and shape the idea of an Indian Muslim architectural heritage
in colonial and postcolonial India. The placing of Indo-Islamic
buildings in the official discourse on national heritage is the sec-
ond kind of contestation. I try to examine a few popular images
of such buildings such as dead historical monuments, symbols of
Islamic conquests, emblem of Indian’s shared heritage and so on
to find out why an additional explanation is always attached to
describe these sites. The appropriation of Indo-Islamic buildings
by Muslim leaders as political symbols, illustrates the third kind of
contestation. The study looks at the ways by which historic sites are
used as political symbols for fashioning appropriate mobilisation

In general, the term ‘historic’ signifies a momentous, well-known and

2

important date in history, while ‘historical’ refers to a kind of belonging

to, or dealing with the past. In this sense, important events and dates are
historic and information and data from the past are historical. However,
I use historic and historical interchangeably for describing Indo-Islamic
buildings in this study because: (a) these buildings signify important
events or phases in a historic sense, and (b) these buildings are treated as
historical source/information to deal with the past.
 Introduction 3

strategies. Reconsidering the secularism versus communalism

debate and the Muslim homogeneity versus Muslim plurality
debate, this study tries to understand how the contested images
of Indo-Islamic buildings are re-invented by the Muslim political
groups in postcolonial India. In this sense, instead of arguing for
or against the notion of a single Muslim community in India, the
purpose of this endeavour is to look at how the collective political
existence of India’s Muslims is conceptualised as a ‘political com-
munity’ in variety of ways. In other words, I intend to study the
structure of postcolonial Muslim political discourse — an intellectual
process by which specific notions of Muslim identity are produced
and meanings of political acts are determined.3
The study of Indo-Islamic historic buildings as political sites
is also very relevant to understand the shifting nature of Muslim
politics in postcolonial India. In fact, if we look at the Muslim politi-
cal demands in the post-1947 period, the proper management of
the wakf properties including the non-functional historic mosques
had always been recognised as an important issue.4 Although,
the demands such as freedom to offer Namaz inside the declared

3
Sudipta Kaviraj reminds us: ‘[t]he first step in developing the critique
of any ideological discourse . . . must be to disbelieve its autobiography,
the history, it gives to itself’ (2010: 88). Following this suggestion, I also
try to avoid the ‘secular-communal’ binary. In my view, these ideological
labels are intrinsically associated with the dominant narrative of modern
Muslim politics.
4
The term ‘functional site’ referred to those buildings, which were being
used for a variety of purposes including, religious worship. On the other
hand, the term ‘non-functional site’ was employed for those buildings,
which had been almost abandoned by local communities such as non-
functional religious places, ruins and/or dilapidated structures. However,
the distinction between functional and non-functional sites should not
be confused with a similar kind of difference between ‘living sites’ and
‘dead sites’. In fact, this clarification is very crucial to understanding the
local reception of officially declared historical monuments in postcolonial
India. It is true that the non-functional sites are ‘dead sites’ in the actual
physical sense. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the local religious meanings
of these sites, which are very different from objective secular meanings. In
this sense, these non-functional buildings are supposed to possess certain
historical values, but in more subtle metaphysical terms.
4 Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India

and protected historical monuments and the right to manage and

control all functional and non-functional Islamic religious places
of worship were not portrayed as crucial political issues before
1970s, their significant presence in the dominant Muslim political
discourse cannot be ignored.
However, in the 1970s and 1980s, the right to worship and con-
trol over the Indo-Islamic historic sites emerged as one of the main
Muslim political issues. For instance, the Delhi riots of February
1975 transformed the Jama Masjid of Delhi and its Shahi Imam
into a symbolic Muslim political authority. In the same manner,
in 1979, an organisation, the Masjid Basao Committee (Rehabilitate
the Mosques Committee), was formed in old Delhi to restore the
religious status of abandoned historic non-functional mosques.
These efforts were given an organised form in 1984, when the
All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM) submitted a
memorandum to the government and demanded that all pro-
tected historical mosques, which had been under the control of
the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as protected monuments,
should be opened for regular prayers. Even, after the emergence of
the Babri Masjid issue in 1986, a private bill was introduced in the
Parliament to amend the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological
Sites and Remains Act (1958) for expanding the scope of right to
worship inside the protected historical monuments. All these devel-
opments clearly demonstrate the fact that the ‘right to heritage’
had been recognised as a point of reference to redefine Muslim
claims in this period.
This interesting shift in Muslim demands has not been studied
so far. In fact, in the last 20 years, especially before and after the
demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992, Hindutva has acquired
a central place in the academic research on religious revivalism,
fundamentalism and communalism. However, the response of the
Muslim political groups, their political strategies and the emerging
configurations of power relations among the Muslims of north India
are not adequately analysed. The present research is an attempt to
understand these issues.

I
WHaT is muslim PoliTics?
What is postcolonial Muslim politics? This question is directly
related to different approaches to Muslim politics and the manner,
 Introduction 5

attitude and perceptions by which this term has been conceptual-

ised. In fact, this kind of exploration is useful in two senses. First, it
would help us in situating the research agenda of the present study
in the existing literature on this subject. Second, such a review will
also help in highlighting the strengths, problems and weaknesses
of these ‘positions’ in detail.
I identify two dominant perspectives on Muslim politics —
the Muslim homogeneity perspective and the secular heterogeneity
perspective. The vast literature that conceptualises Muslim com-
munity as a single political unit and concentrates on the Indian
legal-constitutional discourse of minority rights could be called
the Muslim homogeneity perspective. The writings of Iqbal
Ansari and Syed Shahabuddin are examples of this trend. In
contrast, the secular heterogeneity perspective rejects the idea of
oneness of Muslim community and asserts that Muslim politics
represents a kind of communal politics. I discuss four versions of
this thesis: (a) social assimilation and Muslim politics, (b) class
analysis of Muslim politics, (c) the instrumentalist approach to
Muslim politics, and (d) the modern-liberal explanation of Muslim
politic.5

Muslim Homogeneity and the Legal-Constitutionalist

Explanation of Muslim Politics
Let us begin with the legal-constitutionalist position which concep-
tualises Muslim politics as politics of minority rights. This position
is based on two general premises. First, there is only one homo-
geneous Muslim community in India, which has some particular
collective interests. Second, these interests are legitimate because
the Constitution of India recognises the Muslim community as a
legally identifiable religious minority and Muslim demands are
nothing more than a claim for the proper implementation of given

5
The literature on Indian Muslims does not deal with the question of
Muslim politics directly. These studies raise diverse issues and propose a
number of distinct, and even, contradictory arguments. However, despite
several conceptual and methodological differences, almost all major studies
make very explicit observations and comments on Muslim politics. In fact,
the clear adherence of these scholars to define ideological positions gives us
an opportunity to classify various interpretations of Muslim politics.
6 Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India

minority rights. These two premises are linked to make a general

argument that the Muslims in India are socially and economically
backward and in order to tackle this multidimensional backward-
ness, there is a need for a Muslim politics of rights. I discuss the
writings of Syed Shahabuddin to elaborate this position.
According to Syed Shahabuddin, the religion and caste deter-
mine the basic logic of Indian identities. He writes: ‘[w]ithin the
territorial framework of the Indian state . . . our primary identity
is still defined by religion; our secondary identity by caste; our
tertiary identity by our social function’ (1987: 435–36). The basic
framework of the Indian state, he says, was established to accom-
modate these identities and to ensure plurality of Indian social life.
In his opinion, the state in India adopted an India-specific secularism
that on the one hand respects all religious traditions, but at the
same time, maintains equidistance from all religious groups. It has
created a federal structure and re-organised states on linguistic
bases, identified rights of distinct ethnic and social groups and
granted religious freedom to minorities, and applied the concept
of protective discrimination to provide reservation to backwards
classes. In Shahabuddin’s view these examples show that the Indian
constitution established a system for the specific needs of Indian
social life. He argues that the Indian legal constitutional framework
is capable of producing and sustaining the social equilibrium of
Indian civil society.
Now the question arises: if the system is well-equipped for
dealing with any kind of social disruption, what is the signifi-
cance of mass politics? For Shahabuddin, the centralisation of
power is the most important problem of the Indian political
system, because of which the established institutions are not
performing the required functions. Shahabuddin identifies two
aspects of this centralisation. First, there is a lack of adequate rep-
resentation of different groups in the democratic institutions and
therefore power gets centralised. Second, the dominant group is
not only using the state apparatus for its own vested interests but
also trying to demolish the fundamental structure of Indian state
(ibid.: 437).
Within this broad framework, Shahabuddin explores the conten-
tious issue of religion and politics. He argues that: ‘[r]eligion stands
for eternal and universal values . . . provides ethical foundation of
 Introduction 7

human existence . . . gives a Man a permanent value system . . . a per-

manent set of principles to determine our conduct and behaviour
in changing situations and circumstances’. On the other hand, he
notes, ‘politics is the management of human society. Management
means dealing with problems and situations as they arise and with
demands of consumption with available resources and technolo-
gies’. For him: ‘[t]here is no logical basis for comparing or contrasting
religion and politics. People and societies go on changing; religion
remains changeless. Religion is constant, politics is variable’. In
this sense, ‘politics without the anchor sheet of religious values can
only be tyrannical and oppressive’. Therefore, Shahabuddin seems
to assert that there should be a principled separation between the
boundaries of the state and religion. He says: ‘[a] secular state in
a multi-religious society must not only guarantee freedom of reli-
gion and of conscience but act as an umpire in the case of conflict
between one religious group and another and lay down norms for
the reconciliation of conflicting claims’. In this framework, the state
should not interfere with the internal religious issues of religious
communities. These groups should be given freedom to define the
essentials of their own religions.6 At the same time, Shahabuddin
suggests, ‘we should begin by stopping religious penetrations in
the state affairs’ (1987: 435–37)
According to Shahabuddin, the ‘Muslim community’ is a polit-
ical community in India because all the basic characteristics of a
political community apply to Indian Muslims. He notes ‘it is
a pan-Indian community which sometimes reacts uniformly to a
given stimulus but it is by no means a monolithic or homogeneous
community, linguistically, ethnically or culturally’ (ibid.: 435). He
further argues that religion provides a basic logical unity to the
Indian Muslim community; however, the external push such as
anti-Muslim violence gives it the momentum to speak the language
of a political community. He writes that, ‘no doubt Muslim Indians
see themselves, above all as a religious community, but they have

6
He argues: ‘[e]very religious community must be free to define the
essentials of its faith and the secular state must respect these essentials
and protect them from external interference. A secular state should not
take the task of religious reforms even in the name of social reforms’
(Shahabuddin 1987: 435–36).
8 Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India

to realise that they can protect their religious status or religious

rights flowing from the constitution only through political action.
Once they are conscious of this imperative, they become a political
community’ (Shahabuddin 1988: 146–47).
Shahabuddin highlights an important sociological aspect of the
Indian Muslim community. He draws attention to the fact that
the Muslim community in India is highly diversified. In his opin-
ion there are different social and linguistic communities in India
that follow Islam as a religion. In fact, the understanding of Islam
among these communities is also not at all homogeneous and there
are several Muslim sects and sub-sects. However, at the same time,
he forcefully argues for the common concerns of this plural Muslim
community. In his opinion, it does not mean that these Muslim
communities do not recognise Islam as the primary marker of their
identity. He notes, however: ‘[ c]ommon concerns and priorities are
more often overshadowed by local preoccupations and problems’
(ibid.). In his opinion, the question of being a political community
and becoming a political community is contingent upon the ways
by which Indian Muslim communities react to the ‘external pushes’
and internal self-perceptions. Thus, for Shahabuddin ‘being a reli-
gious community and becoming a political community, in larger
and in national sense, are indeed, only two faces of the same coin-
inseparable from each other’ (ibid.).
Thus, Muslim politics could have four possible aspects from
this perspective:

(a) There is one collective Muslim politics, which represents

the collective interest of Indian Muslims.
(b) The Indian Constitutional framework is capable of protect-
ing the plural character of Indian social life.
(c) Collective Muslim politics functions as the first push to
the political systems so that they can work effectively
without any failure. The active participation of Muslims in
free, fair and regular elections at every level of the polit-
ical system could be an example of this kind of democratic
politics.
(d) Collective Muslim politics also ensures that the broad objec-
tives of India-specific plurality are achieved. This is the kind
of mass participation that Shahabuddin calls mass politics
for social justice.
 Introduction 9

This position on the collective existence of the Muslims in India

as a political community can be criticised on two counts. First, it
is true that despite several kinds of differences, there can be a few
common issues that could affect the entire Muslim community in
India. It is also true that the community does/can respond and
behave collectively as well as politically at certain points of time.
But these momentary and short-lived ‘political’ reactions cannot
be taken as evidence to justify the homogeneity and oneness of
Muslim political behaviour.
Second, this position does not accord much importance to
the ideological stands of different Muslim organisations and
political leaders. It assumes that an Islamic content in the ideo-
logies of Muslim organisations or political leaders always
influences their political actions. However, it would be inap-
propriate to assume that universally-accepted Islamic religious
practices and ideals such as performing Namaz or paying Zakat
as prescribed by the Quran could be taken as salient features to
assess the Islamicness of any organisation or individual. On
the contrary, we find a variety of political interpretations of
these ideals at different levels. The Islamic content in the activ-
ities of Muslim organisations or the politics of Muslim leaders
swings like a pendulum. The ideal-textual-high Islam which
evokes the Quranic logic of umma and the conception of a single
Muslim community in India is one extreme end of this swing, and
the immediate cultural-local political considerations are at the
other end.

Social Assimilation and Muslim Politics

In the early 1970s, sociologists like T. N. Madan and Imtiaz Ahmad
started questioning the prevailing notions of Muslim identity in
India and the ways in which Indo-Muslim communities had been
analysed in sociological studies. Indicating the limitations of these
writings, Imtiaz Ahmad argued that sociological studies on India
did not give importance to the social structures of non-Hindu
Indian communities and consequently generalised the socio-
logy of Hindus as the sociology of India. In the absence of such
sociological researches on non-Hindu communities, Ahmad wrote
emphatically: ‘We may have Hindu, Muslim or Christian sociology,
10 Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India

but hardly a sociology of India (Ahmad 1972: 177).7 This search

for an ‘Indian sociology’ became the theoretical foundation of four
volumes of essays by various authors on different social aspects of
Muslim communities of South Asia, which were edited by Imtiaz
Ahmad in the 1970s and 1980s. These essays provide a broad ana-
lytical perspective on the social and religious aspects of Muslim
communities. These studies substantiated a broad argument that
a synthesis has been worked out in South Asia between the high
Islamic ideals and custom-centric traditions and therefore, these
two components co-exist as complementary and integral parts of a
common religious system.8 Ahmad’s various introductions in these
volumes very clearly reject the political agenda of Islamists who
always define Indian Muslims as a distinct religious and political
community. In the third volume Ahmad (1981: 18) writes:

Muslim fundamentalists may assert and maintain that there is one,

only one version of what is orthodox from the Islamic point of view

7
In my view, Ahmad’s work highlights three limitations of sociological
researchers on Indian Muslim communities — the limits of historicism, which
questions the tendency to employ historical facts/categories available in
historical literature to understand contemporary Muslim societies; the
limits of macro generalisations, which somehow make a conscious endeavour
to identify a fixed ‘model’ for analysing diverse Muslim social groups in
India; and finally the limits of grand India specific explanation that does not
allow the study of specific social formation(s) (Ahmad 1972). This is an
interesting critique. It points towards the rigid boundaries of conventional
sociological thinking about Indian Muslims. At the same time, Ahmad
seems to suggest that the social and cultural linkages between ‘India’ and
its non-Hindu communities ought to be studied to compile a sociology
of India. Thus, Ahmad’s prime intellectual objective has been to examine
the complex sociological ‘merger’ between the ever-evolving local cultures
(which should not be entirely understood as Hindu culture) and the non-
Hindu communities. In this sense, Ahmad’s work introduces us to a highly
complex process of social assimilation.
8
It is important to clarify that the authors in these volumes do not take
any given ideological position. In fact, Imtiaz Ahmad’s introductions are
very carefully written. These introductions do not attempt to divert the
basic thrust of different essays despite upholding and endorsing a basic
theoretical formulation. Consequently, these volumes not only introduced
the Islamic assimilation in India and its various shades as a strong
intellectual position but also helped in generating a healthy academic
debate on Indian Muslims.
 Introduction 11

and whatever does not conform to it is to be dismissed as hetero-

dox . . . Clearly it seems to me that Islamists’ vision has tented to
obscure the inherent and underlying pluralism within Indian Islam
as a practised religion.

Does this plurality of Indian Islam as a finding help us in under-

standing different forms of Muslim politics in India? Obviously,
a simple reading of the broad argument presented in these four
volumes can legitimately be employed to refuse the agenda of
those Islamists who purposefully project Indian Muslims as a
single and politically identifiable religious community. But, for
a profound understanding of the implication of this argument one
has to examine the manner by which the sociological plurality of
Indian Islam is applied to understand Muslim politics.
We now turn our attention to the writings of Imtiaz Ahmad.
In an article published in 1972, he writes: ‘[o]bjective scholarship
would require that Hindus and Muslims [and I should say other
religious communities as well] should be seen as constituting a
single social field and analysis should concentrate on the social and
political processes among them in constant interaction’ (Ahmed
1972a: 85). This argument very clearly suggests that Muslim politics
is inextricably linked to the wider socio-political processes in India
and therefore has to be analysed contextually.
Imtiaz Ahmad identifies a process of Islamisation among
Muslims, which, in his opinion, is similar to the process of
Sanskritisation among the Hindus and illustrates the basic thrust
of collective Muslim politics in postcolonial India. The process of
Islamisation, he writes:
‘[i]nvolved the spread of the custom, ideology, and practice of the
orthodox Muslims belonging to the upper strata of Muslim society . . .
like Sanskritisation, Islamisation helped in the spread of a relatively
uniform Muslim culture throughout the country and it was aided
by the presence of certain orthodox movements, such as tabligh and
tanzim’ (Ahmad 1969: 1142).9

9
The concept of Islamisation, in this case, is seen on historical and social
bases. However, Ahmad does not clarify the exact meanings and historical
significance of the terms like ‘tabligh’ or ‘tanzim’ in medieval India.
These words originated in the later colonial period when organisations
like Tablighi Jamaat and the Jamaat-e-Islami came into existence. Later
in this article, the words like ‘communal’ and ‘Islamisation’ are used
interchangeably, particularly to describe the Muslim political attitude in
postcolonial India.
12 Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India

According to Ahmad, the process of Islamisation in postcolonial

India is a result of the growing Sanskritisation of Hindu society.
The increasing Hindu communalism in India created a sense of fear
among the Muslims and consequently the Islamisation became a
form of political and social expression of Muslim grievances. He
notes (Ahmad 1969: 1152):

[ i]t is a matter of common knowledge that when a religious minority

feels seriously threatened, the machinery of its faith begins to wear out
and its traditions begin to falter against those of the majority, it turns
worriedly in, upon itself and its members cling even more intensely
to the faltering traditions. That something like this has happened in
the case of the Indian Muslims seems quite certain.

Imtiaz Ahmad gives another and quite different analysis of Muslim

politics in an article published in 1974. He identifies two main
political approaches adopted by Muslims in postcolonial India —
(a) ‘Muslims sought to participate in the political system through
consolidating themselves as a communal pressure group and using
their combined strength in the population as a basis for political
horse trading’ (Ahmed 1974: 24–27). The formation of the Muslim
Majlis-e-Mushawarat could be the example of this approach;
(b) The participation of Muslims through secular national politics.
In this case, Ahmad notes, supporting a particular party was the
main tactic. Ahmad rejects these political approaches. He writes
that, ‘given the segmented character of their community and the
presence of a number of distinct strata within it, each with its own
specific problems and grievances, a third possibility for the Muslims
to participate in the political system would have been for each
distinct strata to create a solidarity of social and economic interest
with corresponding segments in other religious communities, and
to work for their common problem in a collective fashion’ (ibid.).
In his view this approach would reduce communalism, secularise
Muslim demands, and enlarge the support base for Muslims.
But, why did Muslims actually fail to adopt such a well-defined
political approach? Ahmad finds a few reasons for this failure,
which not only outlines his understanding of Muslim politics
but quite significantly contradicts his own theoretical position.
First, he talks about the Muslim self-view. According to him, ‘the
Muslims perceive themselves as an undifferentiated monolithic
community sharing common interests and aspirations all over the
 Introduction 13

country’ (ibid.). Therefore, he suggests that they could not recog-

nise their own multiple identities and thus, failed to take up a truly
‘secular’ political strategy. Second, the ‘continued involvement of
the Muslims with the idea of Pakistan and the attraction for the
politics that led to its creation’, he writes, had been an important
reason for the failure of Muslim politics. He notes that, ‘the Muslims
or at least a sizeable section amongst them began to see Pakistan as a
source of their identity as well as security in a predominately Hindu
India’ (ibid.). After the 1965 War, Ahmad further notes, a section of
young Muslims were attracted towards separatist politics.10
So, what is Muslim politics? Is it a kind of separatist politics? Is
it reflecting a general trend of Indian politics? Or is it something
that emanates from social Islamisation? We do not find answers
to these questions. Instead, we could identify a broad perspective
on Muslim politics, which is based on the following six proposi-
tions:

(a) The social hierarchies among Muslims and the Islamic plu-
rality in India are the constant and uniform factors which
could legitimately be employed to study Muslim politics
in India.
(b) There is only one Muslim politics in India, which promotes
separatism and communalism in the country and conse-
quently is an anti-thesis of secular politics.
(c) This Muslim politics is a direct result of Islamisation.
(d) Islamisation is a process which has emerged because of
increasing Sanskritisation.
(e) There is no independent agenda of Muslim politics. It does
not invent potential issues for itself. Instead, it simply
responds either to the agenda of the state or the politics of
Hindu rightists.
(f) There is no problem with the constitutional ideal as well as
legal structure related to secularism in India. However, for
achieving a truly secular state, a secular society is needed.

10
Interestingly Ahmad justifies this point by pointing out the increasing
mass base of the Muslim League in north India. He writes in a footnote
that the bulk of the League’s workers ‘are still not voters or have become
voters recently’ (Ahmad 1974: 27, n. 2). With this additional observation
he rationalises the existence of Muslim separatism!
14 Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India

Therefore, there is no need for Muslim politics of any

kind.

The writings of Imtiaz Ahmad repeatedly tell us that ‘Islam’

and ‘Muslims’ are plural concepts in the Indian context. In this
framework, Muslim politics is taken as a ‘static entity’ which is
juxtaposed with the Islamic religious plurality. In this sense we
can point out two basic limitations of Imtiaz Ahmad’s works on
Muslim politics.
First, it seems that Ahmad takes two different positions
on Muslim politics. In the first case, he analyses the causes of
Islamisation and locates this trend of Muslim politics in a more
general context of Indian politics. In his later analysis, Ahmad finds
a few separatist tendencies among Muslims and conceptualises
Muslim politics as communal politics. However, despite drawing
two very different conclusions, Ahmad applies the notions of plu-
rality of Indian Islam and caste division among the Muslims as the
fundamental principle in both the cases to understand the Muslim
political responses. In this sense, Islamisation is introduced as a
kind of political orthodoxy in the first analysis, which is severely
criticised and refuted by taking a more rational, progressive and
secular political approach in the latter case. Ahmad suggests that
‘one will have to launch a mass programme of social reforms to
effect the changes required for the acceptance of a broad based
secular approach to organised politics’ (1974: 27).
Second, we find a strong adherence to secularism in Ahmad’s
writing that eventually does not allow him to appreciate the
fact that political ideologies of Islamic organisations and their
polit-ical actions do not always follow similar trajectories. He
strongly assumes that the political ideologies are fixed and cannot
be changed. A strict dividing line is drawn between the Muslim
communalism and secularism without analysing different forms
of ‘communal’ or ‘secular’ politics.11

11
His criticism of Theodore Wright’s study of Jamaat-e-Islami can be a
good example to further illustrate this point. Wright analyses the role of
Jamaat-e-Islami in the process of modernisation of Indian Muslims. He
compares the activities of the Jamaat with the Bilalians, a movement of the
Black Muslim communities in the United States (US) in the 1960s. Introducing
the concept of ‘inadvertent modernisation’, Wright argues that the activities
 Introduction 15

Class Analysis of Muslim Politics: A Contradiction between

‘False Consciousness’ and ‘Liberation Theology’
Let us move on to the class analysis of Muslim politics. As pointed
out earlier, one finds a few very comprehensive studies on Muslim
politics in the 1970s which discuss the political power structure
among Muslims and the nature of the organised Muslim demands.12
The term ‘Muslim elite’ is used by these commentators to underline
the internal division between Muslim masses and Muslim leaders.
I focus on the writings of Moin Shakir and Asghar Ali Engineer
to show two different Marxist approaches to the study of Muslim
politics.13
Moin Shakir’s books Muslims in Free India (1972) and Islam in
Indian Politics (1983) are relevant for us. Broadly speaking, Shakir’s
understanding of Muslim politics is based on two general assump-
tions. First, that the ‘politics of the Muslim community has been
the politics of Muslim elite which cannot be equated with the
entire community . . . elite competition, elite solidarity and elite
mobilisation of larger population determines the tones of “Muslim

of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical Muslim group in Indian subcontinent,

could also be seen as a kind of ‘inadvertent modernisation’ (1983: 83–95). In
this sense, Wright’s essays very clearly question the ways by which Jamaat
or the radical Islamic politics is understood in India. Rejecting his argument
about inadvertent modernisation of Jamaat-e-Islami, Ahmad argues that:
‘[a] nascent democracy still struggling to achieve the goals of secularism
and communal harmony when these goals are daily threatened by the
propaganda carried out by communal and obscurantist organisations
cannot look upon them as secular organisations merely on the hope that
their operation might potentially promote inadvertent modernisation’
(Ahmad 1983: xlii). This criticism simply does not pay attention to the
complex interplay of law, politics and religion in India.
12
Zafar Imam’s essay, ‘Some Aspects of Social Structure of the Muslim
Community in India’ (1975) is also very relevant here. Although the essay
is primarily concerned with the social structure of Muslims in India, with
particular reference to urban–rural divide and the impact of different laws
on Muslim class structure, it offers us a short and systematic class analysis
of Muslim politics.
13
It is important to mention Ali Ashraf’s book The Muslim Elite (1982).
His objective is not to show the power structure among the Muslims of
Bihar. Rather, he wants to look at the growth patterns of a few influential
individuals. In this sense, this book does not analyse Muslim politics.
16 Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India

Politics”’ (Shakir 1983: 1–2). He further writes, ‘the position of the

elite is strengthened by an emphasis on the identity of religion,
choice of symbol of disunity, and an urge for the solidarity of com-
munity’ (ibid.). Second, this sort of Muslim elite politics as well as the
situation of common Muslims in India cannot be understood
without analysing the working of Indian bourgeoisie democracy
(ibid.).
Applying a Marxist perspective, Shakir offers a critical over-
view of the class character of the politics of the Muslim elite. In
his opinion, there are two important characteristics of the Muslim
elite: (a) they come from the upper Muslim castes, and (b) they are
economically well-off (ibid.). In his opinion, these elites can further
be divided into two broad categories — the religious leaders and
the Muslim leaders in other secular parties and organisations.14
However, Shakir does not find any political hostility between these
two types of elites. Instead, he notes that the religious as well as
political leaders follow a similar kind of non-democratic reaction-
ary politics (ibid.: 89–90).
Shakir argues forcefully that the majority of Muslims are eco-
nomically backward and belong to the lower classes of Indian
society. To prove this point, he does not give us any data or
statistics. On the contrary, he offers us a long descriptive analy-
sis of the Indian capitalist system, its political manifestation as a
‘bourgeois democracy’ and its relationship with foreign capital/
international capitalist system. And finally we are told that the
‘rich in the Muslim community are bound to get the benefits’ out
of this sort of capitalism. In this formulation, the actual emphasis
is on the functioning of capitalism in India, which is taken as ‘the
explanation’ to demonstrate the class position of poor Muslims.
Shakir does not see any kind of specific impact of postcolonial
Indian capitalism on poor Muslims (ibid.: 20).
According to Shakir, common Muslims are secular and do follow
secular politics. On the bases of Muslim voting patterns, he declares
that the common Muslims have rejected the communal politics of
the elites (ibid.: 96). He again does not analyse any specific survey
on Muslim voting pattern. Instead, he describes a very general
political picture to prove this point.

14
According to Shakir, the Muslim communist leaders or the Muslim
leaders in communist parties do not follow this kind of politics (1983: 89).
 Introduction 17

He makes two arguments: (a) In order to ensure cultural security

to the different minority groups, secularism, in the true sense of
the word, should guide the state’s policy. There should be a real
separation between religion and state, i.e., depriving all the reli-
gious communities of any support from public funds’ (ibid.: 117);
(b) For the poor Muslims as well as the other deprived sections of
Indian society, the hope lies only in politics, not the politics of an
elitist nature; not the politics which serves the aims of establish-
ment; but the politics of emancipation; politics of scrapping the
capitalist framework with such a framework which is capable of
serving the interests of the entire society (ibid.: 119).
Activist-scholar Asghar Ali Engineer takes a different position.
In fact, he offers us a more creative Marxist analysis of Muslim
politics. His criticism of the Muslim elite focuses more on the
misuse of true Islamic principles. In his opinion, the Muslim elite
mobilises Muslim masses by propagating a pro-upper class per-
spective of Islam. As a result, Islam, which primarily emerged as
a political movement for the liberation of poor, women, needy and
destitute of Arabian society in the 7th century, has become a tool
in the hands of these upper-class Muslim elite. Engineer force-
fully argues that a pro-poor Islamic understanding can be used
as a political strategy to counter the hegemony of Muslim upper
classes. Therefore, he goes on to develop a liberation theology in
Islam (Engineer 1990: 1–16).
Liberation theology in Islam, he argues: ‘[c]oncerns itself primar-
ily with here and now . . . it does not support the status quo which
favours those who have as against those who do not (ibid.: 1). He
further writes (ibid.: 1–2):

I am afraid the theology in its received form does not imply human
liberation . . . it concerns itself exclusively with liberation in purely
metaphysical sense and outside the process of history . . . it is because
the received theology has been an ally of establishment and the theo-
logians benefactor of status quo . . . Hence it is necessary to develop a
liberation theology if religion has to be meaningful to the oppressed
and weak who follow it most.

Engineer’s search for a liberal, democratic and radical Islam thus

becomes a theoretical tool to examine the historical evolution of
Muslim politics in India. In his book, Lifting the Veil: Communal
Violence and Communal Harmony in Contemporary India (1995), he
18 Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India

looks at the question of Muslim politics and the legitimacy of the

so-called Muslim issues. Instead of evaluating the specific Muslim
issues and their validity, Engineer offers us a grand analysis of
Muslim politics.
Discussing the sharpening sense of Islamic identity in post-
Independence India, particularly after the 1980s, Engineer points
out that, ‘the increasing awareness among different sections of
Indian society about their social situation’ is an important factor.
‘This increasing awareness has become possible on account of the
broadening and deepening of democratic processes’ (Engineer 1995:
51). According to him, after Independence, ‘a section of Muslims
too, benefited from economic development and began to acquire
higher social status. They too became aware of their political bar-
gaining power and used it in exchange for some benefits, though
they were more in the nature of emotional gratification. As Dalits
and Muslims became more aware of their bargaining strength and
began to assert, the upper caste Hindus felt uneasy at the erosion of
their monopoly over power and began to retaliate violently’ (ibid.:
52). As a result several inter-communal riots against Muslims took
place in India in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The international assertion of Islam in the 1970s gave more
strength to the Muslim identity. During this period, the Muslim
leaders in India adopted a more radical approach and continued
to mobilise the (Muslim) masses in the name of Islam. Engineer
notes that the Shah Bano case is the best example to show this kind
of politics. The Shah Bano controversy gave a new impetus to the
Hindu rightwing forces. In this regards, the Babri Masjid–Ram
Janam Bhoomi issue further communalised Indian society. At the
same time, the Indian ruling establishment continued to encour-
age communal polarisation and provided legitimacy to communal
organisations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Babri Masjid
Action Committee and the Bajrang Dal. Thus, for Engineer, there
is one communal politics in India and Hindutva and Muslim poli-
tics are its two different forms. The politics of secularism based
on the notion of rights and liberties can be the best vantage point
to counter this communal politics. As an activist, the intellectual
agenda of Engineer has changed quite rapidly in later recent years,
becoming more concerned with the erosion of secular values and
the inter-communal riots.
 Introduction 19

Let us now summarise the Marxist position(s) on Muslim poli-

tics. A broad overview of these two positions suggests:

(a) There is a ‘communal’ Muslim politics in India.

(b) There are several kinds of Muslim elites; practically there is
no difference among them. They use the religious ideology
of Islam for their own vested interests.
(c) There are options for Muslims: they should join the ‘struggle
for emancipation’ with other deprived sections of society.
(d) Islamic adherence is a personal affair of Muslims therefore it
has no role to play in public life (Moin Shakir’s position).
(e) Islam emerged as a social movement. It can be reinterpreted
from a rational modern point of view for, (i) exposing the
false Islamic agenda of Muslim elite, and (ii) mobilising
common Muslims effectively for the wider politics of eman-
cipation of the Muslims in India. This ‘liberated’ form of
Islam will eventually follow a secular agenda (Asghar Ali
Engineer’s position).

The class analysis of Muslim politics suffers from two kinds of

conceptual problems. First, it is assumed that the ideological dif-
ferences between different Muslim leaders or organisations are
not at all important. For example, Moin Shakir’s analysis very
clearly tells us that Muslim politics is a communal politics of the
Muslim elite. He even makes an attempt to locate the agenda of
Muslim politics within the general Marxist framework. But, in
order to take a Marxist position on this kind of politics, Shakir
deliberately avoids studying the complexities and varieties of the
political discourse of Muslim elites. For example, to empirically
prove his generalisations, Shakir analyses three Muslim organisa-
tions — the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat
and the Muslim League. Interestingly, Shakir does not tell us
about his methodological priorities in focusing only on these three
Muslim organisations. The Jamaat-e-Islami is a pressure group,
the Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat is an umbrella organisation of
different Muslim groups and the Muslim League is a registered
political party. In any case, these organisations cannot be taken as
the representative sample to make a general argument on Muslim
politics. On the basis of these generalisations, we cannot find any
specific assessment of the activities of the Jamaat-e-Islami in the
20 Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India

1960s, the political pact between the Imam Bukhari of Jama Masjid
and the Janata Party in 1977 and the political agenda of Muslim
Majlis-e-Mushawarat in 1962. Shakir’s study does not look at the
changing political forms of Muslim politics.
The second problem is related to the application of Marxism.
Moin Shakir points out that the difference between the organic intel-
lectuals and the traditional intellectuals, as described by Gramsci,
is absent among the Muslims in India. At the same time, Shakir
notes, the Muslim leaders have a considerable influence over the
Muslim masses. They are the defenders of traditional values and
religion. In this situation, therefore, Shakir suggests, we need to
see the politics of the Muslim elite in entirety (1983: 6–7).
It is important to note that Gramsci’s distinction between
organic and traditional intellectuals is based on a concrete histori-
cal context. He discusses the ways by which the hegemony of a
class/group is crystallised by these two kinds of intellectuals in
different historical moments.15 Thus, for applying this distinction
between organic and traditional intellectuals on Muslim politics,

15
The term ‘intellectuals’ in Gramsci’s analysis, refers to those indi-
viduals in a social group, who play a particular organisational role.
Gramsci identifies two types of intellectuals: the ‘traditional’ and the
‘organic’. The organic intellectuals are those who formulate the ideology
and interests of a particular class or social group. Gramsci writes, ‘every
social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential
function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself,
organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity
and an awareness of its own function, not only in the economic but also in
the social and political fields’ (1971: 5). On the other hand, the traditional
intellectuals are those intellectuals who have been formulating the
ideology of that particular social group for sustaining an older hegemonic
project. Gramsci sees an interesting relationship between the traditional
and organic intellectuals. He notes, ‘one of the most important
characteristics of any group that is developing towards dominance is
its struggle to assimilate and to conquer “ideologically” the traditional
intellectuals, but this assimilation and conquest is made quicker and more
efficacious the more the group in question succeeds in simultaneously
elaborating its own organic intellectuals’ (ibid.: 10). In this sense, the new
organic intellectuals assimilate within the given hegemonic project, but
at the same time, conquer it by re-formulating a new hegemony for the
social group.
 Introduction 21

we need to seriously look at the traditional hegemonic project of

Muslim politicians in postcolonial India and at the same time find
out the internal dynamics of Muslim politics for understanding
the process of assimilation and contradiction at the level of lead-
ership. On the contrary, Shakir gives a static image of Muslims as
a social group. He does not go into the complexities of Gramsci’s
argument. Instead, he proposes that his adherence to a particular
understanding of Marxism, or in this case Gramsci, can be used as
‘the theory’ to explain everything.
These problems can also be found in the writings of Engineer,
though in a different form. Despite applying a very creative under-
standing of Marxism, he also seems to believe that the there is
only one Muslim politics in India. We do not find any systematic
analysis of the functioning of this politics in his writings. In fact,
there is a missing link between his theory of liberation theology
and his analysis of Muslim politics. In contrast, Engineer’s several
fact-finding reports on riots have generated a huge empirical data/
information on communal politics in India, which indicates a strong
possibility of an alternative kind of analysis of Muslim politics.

The Brass Thesis: Muslim Politics as an Instrument

of Muslim Elite
It is important to clarify that Paul Brass has never worked exclu-
sively on Indian Muslims. His earlier work was on the role of
religion and language in the process of nation formation. Similarly,
his later works on ethnic violence identify a few socially institu-
tionalised communal networks that promote different forms of
collective violence in India (Brass 2002). In both the cases, Muslim
politics has been taken as a case study to comparatively analyse a
few wider theoretical concerns. However, despite this fairly com-
parative focus of Paul Brass’s writings on Muslim politics, his gen-
eral thesis on symbol manipulation has been frequently employed
by several authors for explaining the role of Muslim elites.
Brass offers a historical analysis of Muslim separatism in Uttar
Pradesh and links it to the Muslim politics of 1950s and 1960s.16

16
Brass’s two major works, his book Language, Religion and Politics in
North India (1974) and his essay, ‘Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and
Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South Asia’ (1977) are noteworthy.
These two studies discuss the complexities of Muslim politics in post-
Independence India in great detail.
22 Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India

He suggests that the Muslim demand for the protection of Urdu

could possibly be connected to an unwritten ‘informal rule’,
which marks the attitude of the central government towards the
political demands in post-Independence India. In his opinion,
the demands, particularly the regional demands based on language
and culture are accommodated easily. However, the demands that
are explicitly based on religious differences are not accepted by
the Indian political system (Brass 1974: 17). Therefore, instead of
Islamic uniqueness of Muslim culture in India or the political rights
of Indian Muslims, Urdu as a political symbol was adopted by the
elites to mobilise Muslim masses for political action (ibid.: 183–85).
Therefore, in post-Independence India, Brass suggests, Muslim
political demands are consciously linked to cultural issues.
Brass identifies three kinds of Muslim leaders (elites) in post-
Independence India: (a) the educated elite such as middle-class
lawyers, doctors, teachers, and journalists who are further divided
into two broad categories — one, the secular and Marxist Muslim
elites who tended initially to work with Congress and later join
other leftists and secular parties. Second, the educated conservative
Muslim elite who remained less concerned with secularism than
with the interests of the Muslim community; (b) The Ulema from
different religious schools, and, finally (c) the backward caste/class
Muslim elite (ibid.: 235–36).
Brass locates these elites in four kinds of socio-political Muslim
organisations: the religious political associations such as the Jamaat-
e-Islami, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind; the non-economic interest organisa-
tions such the AnjumanTaraqqi Urdu; the occupational and class
association such as the Bihar Momin Conference; and inclusive
political organisations such as the Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat
(ibid.: 235–53). He discusses the attitude of national and regional
political parties on the question of Urdu in Bihar and UP and the
role played by Muslim elites. He concludes that the political reali-
ties of post-Independence India, particularly the legal system based
on constitutional democracy and a few ‘unwritten’ rules, radically
affected the nature of Muslim political demands.
Thus, Brass’s work on Muslim politics suggests that:

(a) The Muslim politics becomes defensive in nature and thus

converted into a kind of politics of minority rights in post-
1950 India.
 Introduction 23

(b) ‘There was no effective Muslim leadership available to

protect and defend the rights of Muslims’ in this period
(ibid.: 273–74).
(c) The defensive Muslim politics which has been revolving
around the cultural issues such as the protection of Urdu
virtually failed to effectively mobilise Muslims for political
action in postcolonial India.

It is true that Brass’s work recognises the political agendas of dif-

ferent kinds of Muslim elites in India, yet, his analysis suffers from
other types of problems. I identify three problematic issues. The
first problem is related to the application of instrumentalism for
exploring the dynamics of Muslim politics. This question has been
discussed and analysed more systematically by Francis Robinson
in a decade-long debate with Paul Brass. Robinson argues that
Brass’s overemphasis on instrumentalism does not allow him to
look at the significant roles played by political ideas and ideolo-
gies in the wider context. He also points out that Brass’s analysis is
based on the assumption that the elites, or in this case the Muslim
elites, always function rationally and select political symbols for
mobilising the masses. Robinson argues that the Brass thesis does
not examine the ideological framework of Muslim elites. He further
notes that in this construction, the Muslim elites seem to stand
apart from their societies and their cultural tradition (Robinson
1979: 84).
The second problem is, if we focus on Brass’s work on the Urdu
movement in postcolonial India, we find that he simply describes
the major Muslim political demands and different kinds of Muslim
leaders. He concentrates on political responses of political parties,
legislative bodies and other institutions to the Urdu movement
to substantiate his general argument about the role of language
and religion in Indian politics. The strategies of Muslim leaders
and their relationship with local Muslim communities is virtually
absent in his analysis. As a result, Brass concludes that Muslim
politics has become defensive in postcolonial India. This kind of
limited analysis prevents Brass from seeing the radical agenda of
Muslim leaders that was further reflected in the political demands
of the 1970s and 1980s.
The third problem relates to the need to see Brass’s treatment of
political symbols critically. In Brass’s opinion, the existence of a pool
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
insulated coil, the crablike puppet was doing its best to flake off some
of the outer substance for testing.
McAllister laughed. "Look at those mixed-up machines! They're trying
to analyze the ship!"
"That's what I mean," Randall pointed out soberly. "One of their
inhibitions is to ignore refined metal. That's how we keep their barges
from being pecked to pieces."
"You don't think we can run into trouble out there, do you?" Mortimer
asked, concerned.
Randall hesitated. "No, but we won't take any chances, although it's
doubtful that loss of contact has obscured their basic inhibition."
"Of course it hasn't. Nothing like that's ever happened."
"In that case, you won't mind accompanying us outside."
Mortimer stabbed his chest with a pudgy thumb. "Me?"
"Right."
McAllister, Stewart noticed, was frowning in front of the screen as he
watched the Flora C&A munching away at the subspace drive coil.
"That thing can't do any damage, can it?"
"Not as long as the current's off," Stewart assured.
Mortimer paled as he lunged for the subspace drive switch.
But just then there was a thunderous concussion and the Photon II
lurched and swayed on its hydraulic fins.
Randall shrugged. "Well, there goes our subspace drive."
"And our long-range transmitter too," Stewart added. "They both
work off the same generator."
Outside, the puppets were withdrawing.
Mortimer, pulling up short of the switch, spread his arms
apologetically. "I forgot to turn the circuit off."
Stewart grimaced. "Well, one thing's for sure: We're not going to
finish up in a couple of hours and head for home."
Aiming the pickup lens more directly at the damaged area, Randall
filled the screen with an image of shredded cable and shattered
ceramics. "It'll take a week to repair that."
McAllister's face had whitened, causing the veins in his forehead to
stand out under taut skin. "You mean we're stuck here?"
"As far as subspace is concerned. And I can't think of any lively spot
we might want to visit in the Aldebaran system."

Keeping a ridge of hills between themselves and the robots, Stewart

trailed the telepuppet team towards their working area.
Randall stumbled and fell against him. Glancing back, he saw that the
director had lost his footing because he was still staring at the sky.
Within the helmet, his face appeared harsh and grim in the profuse
coral planetlight.
Stewart shrugged, deciding to let the other wrestle in silence with his
phobias, whatever they might be. As for himself, he had his own
brand of jitters to worry about. And what made things worse was
that he had no idea what was behind them.
Not that he hadn't been afraid before. One could hardly put in twelve
years with the Bureau of Interstellar Exploration without getting his
courage sullied somewhere along the way by a cliff-hanger or two.
But, in each of those cases, the menacing factor had been vivid,
easily recognizable, something he could put his finger on.
The apprehension that lurked in the back of his mind now, however,
was something he had never encountered before. Vague to the point
of being mysterious, it seemed to be hardly more concrete than a
fear of fear itself. But he felt that at any particular moment, if he
found the right curtain to draw aside, he would expose a darkened
recess filled with horror.
Was this dread something that was reaching up from the depths of
his phantasmagoric nightmares? Was his subconscious, for some
reason, handing up reservations on the acquisition of the Hyades as
pearls on the string of galactic expansion? Intuition? Hunch?
Whatever it was, he didn't like it. And he cared for it even less now—
as he trod the surface of this remote satellite and stared hypnotically
ahead at the brilliant stars of the Hyades, well above the horizon. For
how could he be certain this wasn't a nightmare and that in the next
instant the stella ova wouldn't hatch and hurl their fierce Harpies at
him?
"Why don't you try the big boy with a few commands?" Mortimer's
voice rasped in his earphones. The ship systems officer, pulling up
the rear, resembled an overinflated balloon as he gestured at the line
of telepuppets through a breach in the ridge.
Satisfied with the concealment their present position offered, Stewart
flipped on the command transmitter and intoned, "Supervisor to OC.
Stabilize and remain where you are."
The master robot didn't even break stride.
He tried the order again, then repeated it several times as he tuned
slightly up and down the band.
"It's no use," he said finally. "Either the thing's slipped frequency, or
it's not receiving at all."
"Carol will spot any new wave length," Randall assured.
"What we ought to do," Mortimer proposed impatiently, "is show that
thing who's boss."
Then Stewart caught the motion in the corner of his eye as the ship
systems officer struck out for the marching file of puppets.
He intercepted the line near the tail end and tried to force his way in
between the Solar Plasma Detector and the Magnetometer so he
could close in on the OC. But the SPD kicked out with a stiff pedal
pad and sent him sprawling in the path of the Magnetometer, which
simply strode over him.
The Atmosphere Analyzer nudged him aside with an inflated air
pouch and, in its turn, the Radiometer Complex compounded the
indignity by planting a motor appendage in his abdomen. Mortimer
rose screaming, circled wide around the Micro-organism C&A and the
Subordinate Mineral Specimen Collector and raced for the ship.
"This," said Stewart, "may not be as simple as we thought. Evidently
some basic inhibitions have faded."
"We can't risk getting in range of one of those larger puppets,
especially the OC," Randall agreed.
Abruptly the master robot stabilized, swung sharply to face the
horizon and adjusted its parabolic antenna.
"Look!" Stewart pointed. "The thing's transmitting! But it's not
properly oriented! It's beaming in the wrong direction!"
"Where's it transmitting to?" Randall asked anxiously.
"Can't tell without point-to-point astrographs. Anyway, what
difference does it make? It's only a random misorientation."
On the way back to the Photon II, Stewart lost himself in confusion.
Random misorientation? Of course. What else? But why should he
even consider the alternate possibility—that the misorientation was
not random, as suggested by the director's question?

Bigboss completed transmission and burst into an instant fury of

thwarted purpose. He leveled his blaster and annihilated the ridge
behind which the defiant mobiles had recently hidden.
He swiveled his central section, redirecting the blaster at a boulder
that lay between him and the needle and destroying it in a fiery
eruption of light and heat and pulverizing forces.
Fuming, he paced forward, stopped and paced back again. He had
seen the audacious creatures who were bold enough to invade His
Realm! But He had been able to do nothing about them. For at that
moment the irresistible compulsion of function had taken over and He
could only orient and transmit all the data from his master tape.
Surlily, he bled off excessive current in his reaction circuits and
watched his workers going dutifully about their business. Inactivity
was frustrating, of course, but it was not entirely unwelcome. For
there was much now that demanded evaluation, even though his
urge to pursue the contemptuous mobiles and blast them from their
needle was almost overpowering.
For one thing, there was the needle itself. Had He made it? (Oh, why
couldn't he remember these things?) Of course, He must have,
although he couldn't recall the specific act of Creation. And he must
have produced the arrogant mobiles too, even though they would
probably claim they had created Him.
But the needle itself was metal! Even a precursory analysis with
Minnie's high neutron flux tools had established this. It was so much
like the clan's Totem it must be Totemic.
The evidence was undeniable. Every member of the clan was metal.
The clan's Totem was metal. Therefore the new thing from the sky
was to be revered as the traditional Totem was.
Hence he had been justified, he assured himself, in issuing the
"cease-and-desist" order that had brought an end to destructive
analysis of the needle.
But, still, it was providing sanctuary for the detestable little mobiles.
Which comprised a frustration that was almost unbearable. A
venerable Totem offering protection to the arrogant non-Totemic
creatures that had to be destroyed so His Universe would be cleansed
of their blasphemous impudence!
The demands of logical deduction fully served, he published on each
wave length an order that amounted to: "Vigilance is to be
maintained against the non-Totemic mobiles. Report instantly on their
reappearance."
That taken care of, he reduced current in his rationalization pack. But
the pleasant calm of abstraction did not last long. Peter the Meter
began flooding his allocated frequency with eureka signals from an
infrared photometer. And once again the source of disturbance was at
a remote distance in the sky.
Oh Bigboss, he invoked Himself. Not another Totemic-non-Totemic
complication!
As before, Sky Watcher accepted the reported co-ordinates and
trained a visual telesensor on the indicated position. But nothing was
there. His doppler radar gear, however, did manage to pick up a blip
at many hundred kilometers' distance just as it vanished.
Only a meteor, Bigboss decided, relieved. He let the evaluation stick,
even though Peter the Meter had detected no ionized trail that would
have verified that type of disturbance.
And Bigboss generated a good deal more easily, satisfied that the
new manifestation had not, after all, been another needle.
His peace of rationalization pack was fleeting indeed, however. For in
the next moment it required the full versatility of all his
servomechanisms to maintain balance against a sudden upheaval of
the ground beneath one of his appendages.
Tottering precariously, he engaged his underslung illuminator and
video sensor. Screw Worm, having evidently bored a great distance,
was emerging at the spot where his foot pad had been planted.
Fifty meters off, Minnie was expectantly rigid, her lens aimed in his
direction. She was poised for a running start toward him should the
opportunity present itself.
Screw Worm finally surfaced. Angrily, Bigboss kicked him back toward
Minnie, who returned—disappointed, it seemed—to her work.
The huge Tzarean ship, bristling with the most formidable weapons
its makers had devised in millennia, recovered from subspace
emergency, adjusted its concealment shield and slipped into orbit.
Assemblyman Mittich, second in command, used a stout tail to brace
himself against shifting inertia and watched Vrausot, Chancellor of
the Tzarean Shoal, hiss his nagging instructions.
"The data, Kavula!" he demanded. "Punch out the data!"
Cowering before the impatience of the Tzarean World's highest
authority, the pilot beat upon the control computer with a taloned
fist. "It will be feeding out soon—I hope."
Mittich pressed forward into the anxiety that filled the compartment
with hydrostaticlike intensity. It was well past time for his isotonic
saline soaking and already the coarse drying process was chafing his
chitinous skin. He was even sensitively aware of each scale as it
grated against the one beneath it.
But he couldn't withdraw. Not when they were so close to
determining whether an eons-old culture was doomed to
extermination.
The computer clacked its readiness and belched out the new data.
Vrausot snatched up the perforated strip and his massive head swung
up and down in satisfaction.
"The orbit's absolutely synchronous," he disclosed. "We can keep the
alien landing site under constant observation. And our position is
additionally camouflaged by those peaks."
He used the scales of an abbreviated forearm to scratch his lower
jaw. With all the authority vested within him as Chancellor of the
Shoal, Adviser to the Curule Assembly and leader of the current
expeditionary force, he directed the pilot to order gunnery practice.
Assemblyman Mittich swallowed incredulously. "But the aliens! Aren't
we going to observe them? That's what we came for!"
"Not now." Vrausot waved him off. "Preparations first. Anyway, we
know they're aggressive."
"We don't. That's what we have to establish."
The Chancellor shifted his tail from left to right. "We've observed
their machines. They fight among themselves, don't they? And isn't it
a fundamental fact of design that automatons are fashioned mainly
after their creators, even in matters of temperament?"
"Yes," Mittich admitted. "But we interfered with those machines. We
interrupted basic behavioral patterns. Our automatons, too, would
show primitive social tendencies if the same thing happened to
them."
Vrausot exposed a jagged array of teeth that conveyed his
displeasure. "I'm in no mood for interference, although I might have
expected only forensic exercise from the Leader of the Opposition."
"In that capacity, I'm here to offer suggestions." But it was more than
that, Mittich reflected. The Assembly had been quite leery of the
compromise plan. The Chancellor had wanted an awesome display of
force; the Opposition, a try at peaceful contact.
They finally concurred in: observation, evaluation and application of
force only if required. And it was hoped that, on the expedition, the
Chancellor and Assemblyman would restrain each other.
But how could anyone restrain Vrausot?

"Prepare for gunnery practice," the Chancellor directed.

"But," Kavula protested, "that will produce observable emissions
beyond the concealment of our shield."
Disappointed, Vrausot leaned back upon his tail. "Very well, then—
we'll go through the motions. Order a wet run."
Kavula relayed the order and scores of hatches swung open, baring
to space the glistening intensifiers of high-powered weapons. The
ship reverberated with the hiss-click articulation of military command
and response.
Pivoting on his massive tail, Mittich went over to the teleview screen.
"I have your permission, of course, to take a look at the alien
vessel?"
"Suit yourself," the Chancellor grumbled.
The screen hunted out and steadied upon the alien ship.
"It's clean!" Mittich exclaimed. "They're not armed!"
"Nonsense," Vrausot said, coming over to see. "They've got to be.
Why else would they come here?"
"The hull is sleek." The Assemblyman pointed with his long snout. "I
see no gun-hatch outlines."
The Chancellor produced the Tzarean equivalent of a humorless
laugh. "They're aliens, Mittich—with an alien technology. Perhaps we
wouldn't even recognize their weapons if we saw them."
"But, as if they were hostile and furtive, would they have exposed
themselves helplessly on that plain—like sitting uraphi?"
Vrausot's eyes intensified with resolution. "We're going to strike them
—now! We're not going to wait and take the chance of having them
slip from our grasp."
Appalled, the Assemblyman drew back. "But that's just what we're
not supposed to do! We might touch off a war that will annihilate
either or both of two cultures!"
"If we don't strike now it'll be our culture that will be annihilated. I
wouldn't want that, Mittich. Just think of the glory and honor and
tradition of conquest that would be lost forever. What we do here is
being watched, indeed, by our ancestors who gave their lives in the
final battle for total consolidation of the Tzarean Shoal!"
"But—"
"Our opportunity now is to live up to the finest military examples set
by all Tzarean heroes who ever aimed an intensifier out of love for
homeworld. Mittich—This is a time for empire!"
It was no use, the Assemblyman saw. Vrausot would have his way.
He would wear his shining, imaginary medals and order his attack
and bring doom to—oh, how many worlds? And the Curule Assembly
could only give his leadership the support it would need after he
presented them with the fait accompli of this treacherous deed.
"Kavula!" the Chancellor hissed. "Order the gunners—"
But Mittich nudged him in the back. "It could be a seine."
"I—what?"
"We may be swimming into a seine. Perhaps they're just toying with
us—waiting to see if we are foolhardy enough to attack."
The scales above the Chancellor's eyes stood on edge as he
pondered the ramifications of the other's suggestion. Finally, "We'll
hold off a while, perhaps."
Mittich had put him off for a moment. But no gain against Vrausot,
political or otherwise, was ever more than temporary.
The Assemblyman was jarred from speculation as one of his major
scales split with aridity. He hurried off to his isotonic saline tank.

IV
Rested, although no nearer a definite plan for resubjugation of the
telepuppet team, Stewart cautiously watched the robots from behind
an outcropping. To this concealed vantage point he had led Carol,
Director Randall and McAllister while the automatons had been
occupied with recharging.
"You're going to try some more voice commands on the OC?" Carol's
voice came softly through the earphones as she squirmed to find
more comfort within the folds of her oversized sheath.
"We're not doing anything," Stewart said firmly, "until that thing is
well occupied with transmission."
McAllister's boot came in contact with something hard and he bent
down to inspect it. "Say, what's this?"
Randall went over to see. "A burnt-out telepuppet, obviously."
Stewart had a look too. "It's an Algae Detector. But, since there's no
water around here, it hasn't had a chance to exercise its function.
Electronic atrophy must have set in."
"It's riddled with drill holes," McAllister noted. "Looks like one of
those other puppets worked it over."
Stewart examined the thing. The pilot was right.
"At least one of our robots seems to have overcome its inhibition
against analyzing pure metal," Randall observed, prodding it.
"Or maybe something else has been around here," McAllister said.
The director looked up sharply.
"Something else? Like what?" Carol laughed at the pilot's
unreasonable concern.
McAllister only hunched his bony shoulders.
It was not difficult for Stewart to see that McAllister was afraid.
Neither the pilot nor Mortimer was generally known in the Bureau for
his courage. That their apprehension had grown to visible proportions
out there on this Godforsaken edge of infinity was merely an
expected extension of their characters.
Rather, it was Randall's fear—Randall's and his own—that concerned
Stewart. Both seemed incommunicable. Stewart's reticence was
involuntary, stemming as it did from his inability to find words for his
incomprehensible dread. And he wondered whether the director's
fear, too, was that inexpressible.
He picked up a clod of soil and crumbled it in his gloved hand, as
though symbolizing his anxious desire to come to grips with whatever
it was that hid behind a veil in his mind.
Randall lowered himself on his haunches. "Don't we have any
emergency means of bringing that machine under control?"
"Oh, there are a couple of tricks. Manhandling it is one."
Carol hugged her knees and laughed skeptically. "That thing?"
"There's a recessed deactivation switch in its lower section. All I have
to do is get my hand on it."
"And all it has to do," she retorted dubiously, "is get one of its fifty-
pound vises on you."
She seized his hand and, through two layers of rubberized material,
he sensed the unsteadiness of her grip. "Do be careful, Dave."
He was impressed. It wasn't often she allowed her more serious
nature to show through candidly.
She rose suddenly and turned to face a distant mountain range.
Randall tensed. "Yes, Carol—what is it?"
Profuse light from the primary etched lines of concern on her brow.
"I'm sensing electronic spill-off from somewhere up in those peaks—
perhaps beyond."
Randall's breath rasped in the earphones. But he only said, "Spurious
stuff. Reflections caused by a dense magnetic field can throw you off
like that, you know."
She nodded—not enthusiastically, however.
Stewart glanced at the director, who looked swiftly away. But their
eyes had met for an instant and, in Randall's, Stewart wondered
whether he hadn't detected something cunning, elusive. Or was it
just the same nameless fear that he, himself, felt.
"There it goes!" McAllister exclaimed. "The OC's getting ready to
transmit!"
Elbows splayed along the ridge, Carol watched the huge machine
steadying its parabolic discs on a spot close to the horizon.
"See if you can pick up some of the spill-off," Stewart urged.
She waved for silence. "I'm beginning to get it now."
"Can you pinpoint the frequency?"
"Just a notch about one thirty-six point two MCs."
"On the nose, isn't it?" Randall asked.
"Close enough. How are the signals, Carol?"
"They seem shipshape, well modulated, crammed with data. I can
even read some bits having to do with oxygen—plenty of it—in that
cave over there, I believe." She pointed, then glanced at Stewart.
"There's no malfunctioning at all!"
He retrieved his transmitter and switched from MCW to CW. "That
simplifies our task. When we re-establish control, all we'll have to do
is reorient the OC."
Randall walked several feet away, kicked a stone, glanced up at the
sky and returned. "What now?"
Stewart retuned his transmitter. "Penultimate emergency procedure.
I'm going to come down with both heels on the frequency at which it
received code signals from the relay base."
"But can you give it coded commands?"
"I'm just going to lock the sending key on a steady impulse. It's a
'stop-everything' order." He hit the lever.
Carol winced. "Ouch. I wasn't ready for that."
"What's it doing now?" he demanded.
"Still transmitting. No interruption."
He released the key. "Well that exhausts our bag of tricks. We'll have
to do it by hand."
Just then Carol's amused laughter tinkled in the earphones. "Why,
that harebrain machine thinks it's God!"
Randall started. "What?"
"I'm having a peek at its PM&R pack spill-off. It's lord and master of
the universe! There's only one thing worthy of touching its pedal pad
—the puppet barge. That's because the barge, being metal too, is a
totem!"
The director shook his head and mumbled, "Most unusual." Then,
"Carol! Can you see anything at all significant in its memory pack?
Any evidence of—"
But in the next instant she screamed and lunged back away from a
foot-long metallic crab that had drawn up before her.
"The Flora C&A!" Stewart made a grab for the thing, but it skirted his
gloved hand and started forward again.
McAllister backed away until he came up against the outcropping
beside the girl. Squirming qualmishly, he kicked out and caught the
crab broadside, sending it skittering back.
Then he shouted in pain and gripped his instep with both hands. "My
foot! It's broken!"
But, a moment later, Stewart was certain the injury was negligible,
judging from the adequate support the foot provided in McAllister's
sprint for the Photon.

Bigboss completed his transmission and turned full attention on the

eureka signals coming frantically from Grazer.
Interested, he inspected the sequenced data and took note of the
modulation peaks that exactly duplicated the C5H8 parameter.
Grazer had sensed hydrocarbon! More important, one of his
spectrometric biodetectors was getting a whiff of DNA molecules!
Even those significant findings, however, accounted for but part of
the frenzy with which Grazer was transmitting his impulses. There
was much more behind the eurekas than that. But all the lesser
worker could convey telemetrically was his general excitement, for
there were no parameters dealing with the third element of his
discovery.
Perplexed, Bigboss pondered this inadequacy of communication
between him and his servitor—until a rationalization circuit came up
with the recommendation: Tap in on Grazer's direct video system.
He did.
And Bigboss went momentarily irrational as motor circuits fought one
another to express the exultation flooding from his evaluation pack.
He leaped three meters high. His upper command section turned up
a hundred revolutions per minute in triumphant delirium. He
extended and retracted his vises, leveled his blaster and spat out a
lance of vicious destruction that slashed a concentric trench in the
ground about him.
Then he damped all activity and steadied himself with a sober
appreciation of the telemetric signals Grazer had contributed. The
servitor was confronting three hated non-Totemic mobiles!
They had emerged from their needle! They had come finally to hurl
direct challenge at the Supreme Being!
Circuit currents surging once more toward irrational levels, Bigboss
calmed himself with dedication to the vengeful destruction of those
insolent creatures.
He transmitted a "stop-what-you're-doing-and-follow-me" order and
headed into Grazer's telemetric signals. Every twenty meters or so, a
discrimination circuit peaked in its erratic pattern and he hurled out a
bolt of raw energy, annihilating a boulder here, leveling a rise there,
pulverizing an occasional crag.
In his excitement, however, he had neglected the environs-scanning
procedure he had devised to compensate for his damaged video
sensor. And he didn't realize that, while he had been stabilized for
transmission, Minnie had almost reached him in a stealthy advance.
But now he was pulling steadily away from her.
Ignoring their order of social priority, the workers converged on the
nearby outcropping. Some bore to the right around the rock
formation, while others joined Bigboss in a flanking maneuver to the
left. The long-legged Maggie and Peter the Meter evaluated the
slanted stone as comprising no barrier and proceeded directly over it.

When he finally swung around and brought the contemptuous

mobiles under direct visual observation, Bigboss paused to evaluate
the situation. It required no small amount of self-control to restrain
his motor circuits. But he had to. For he was determined the arrogant
mobiles would not again reach the sanctuary of their Totem.
Grazer stood before the three creatures, his servo units idling as his
transmitter continued to send frantic eurekas. And now his excited
impulses were joined by those of other servitors who had formed a
half circle around the outcropping—Peter the Meter, boasting of
excitation of an infrared radiometer; Breather, reporting traces of
both oxygen and carbon dioxide in the immediate atmosphere;
Minnie, whose high neutron flux instruments were beginning to
identify concentrations of calcium, potassium, carbon.
Sequencing and storing the data, Bigboss sent out a curt directive
that amounted to: Do not analyze! Just stay out of the way!
The ring of clansmen remained poised. Several times one of the
nonmetallic captives attempted to force its way through the workers,
but was pulled back by another mobile.
Bigboss brought up his blaster and loosed a vicious, blinding charge
that swamped half a dozen unretracted photometers and pulverized
the top of the outcropping. He adjusted his aim, compensating for
the crouching, huddled position the interlopers had assumed, and fed
renewed energy to the blaster's condenser.
By the next sine wave peak, however, he regretted his pre-occupation
with the mobiles. For, at that moment, Minnie's drill head, sweeping
through one of his fields of vision before he could discharge the
blaster, crashed into video pickup lens Three.
He sprang back, rationalization pack coming frantically to grips with
this further loss of visual integrity. Through luck rather than intent, he
brought one of his still functioning lenses to bear on the advancing
Minnie.
She let her entire drill head fly in a bludgeoning blow, but he parried
it with his vise while he reasoned out the modified swivel motion now
required to provide adequate coverage with only two lenses.
But the attack had touched off a number of other clashes among
socially ambitious workers. Seismo turned on Minnie's exposed flank
and sent a pedal disc crashing through her after analyzing chamber.
Sludge spilled out upon the ground.
Peter the Meter swung his boom-and-ball gamma ray detector
against Breather's air pouches while Maggie straddled Sun Watcher
and proceeded to stomp on one of his telescopic instruments.
In the midst of all this confusion, Bigboss was only vaguely aware
that the three impudent mobiles had slipped out of the ring of
servitors and were returning swiftly to their Totem.
Infuriated over the imminent loss of prey, he swiveled around in their
direction. Again, however, he neglected his defense.
And before he could trigger a charge at the fleeing things, Minnie's
drill head whipped around in a level arc that snapped his blaster off
at its socket and sent it hurtling across the plain.
As she drew back for another blow, he lunged over and managed to
grip her bit in his vise. With a violent twist, he broke it off at the
chuck.
Subdued finally, she withdrew.

"You saw it, didn't you?" Mittich demanded.

Vrausot scratched his jaw with a rigid talon. "Interesting—that
trouble between the aliens and their automatons. What interpretation
do you put on it?"
Pivoting on his tail, the other spun around from the screen to face
the Chancellor. "That they don't even carry side arms. They had no
defense whatsoever against their machines. If they were here looking
for a fight, wouldn't they be armed at all times?"
Vrausot expressed ridicule by tracing a circle with the tip of his
tapering snout. "Mittich, you amuse me. Only one sunset ago you
were bending my tail to make me believe they may be cunning; that
they might have strung out a seine for us."
"Yes?" the Assemblyman prompted, expecting more.
"Now I simply extend your own logic back to you. They prepared that
drama down there for our benefit—just in case we were watching.
They want us to believe they are stupid and helpless."
Assemblyman Mittich laced the other with a calculating stare. He was
aware of the heavy irony in Vrausot's hisses and clicks and he knew
the Chancellor was only deriding him.
"If I had to arrive at an alternate assessment, Assemblyman—"
Vrausot paused and Mittich braced himself for more scorn. "It would
be that the aliens are stupid, inept, blundering, defenseless. Actually,
it would seem that they must have gained interstellar status only
through accident."
"Oh, no. We know that isn't true."
Ignoring the interruption, the Chancellor continued. "And they were
foolish enough to come here unarmed, apparently."
But Mittich broke in again. "If I had attracted more votes in the
Curule Assembly, we would have come unarmed too."
"Ah! But we didn't. And do you know why? Because the Assembly
really believes as I do, even though they might not have the courage
to vote their convictions. That's why I'm going to exercise my own
judgment—because I know their subliminal disposition in this matter."

Mittich unhinged his jaw, conveying dismay. There was no doubt now
what the Chancellor's intentions were. Oh, he would probably swim
around cautiously for a while. But his final determination was already
cloaked with inevitability.
Eventually—how soon?—he would lash out at the aliens with all the
ship's invincible firepower. And nothing else could be done to delay
that treachery. For Mittich couldn't conceive of another last-purai
diversion, such as the suggestion that the aliens may have strung out
a seine, to forestall the tragedy Vrausot was determined to
perpetrate.
Lumbering over to the ship's control panel, the Chancellor directed
his pilot: "Advance five degrees westward along our orbital path then
restabilize."

Kavula's hands darted here and there and the vessel resounded with
the thuds of great tails thumping down on the deck to maintain
equilibrium as new velocity came in surges.
"This will put us below the aliens' horizon," Kavula noted.
"Of course it will," the Chancellor hissed back at the other's
impertinence. "And we'll be in such a position that they won't be able
to observe our artillery emissions."
He turned to the intercom. "Gun Crew One, prepare for firing."
"Action?" Mittich asked, fearing the worst.
"Of a sort—preparatory." The Chancellor studied the teleview screen
and once more directed the gunners:
"I'm designating a target circle on one of those peaks down there.
You may fire at will."
He touched a button and a green halo flared on the screen. He
adjusted it to encompass the surface prominence he had in mind.
The ship shuddered as the gunner punched his firing stud.
Mittich watched the surface erupt in a brilliant display of angry
energy—a thousand kilometers off target.
The Chancellor received the fire control officer's apology, together
with a request for permission to try again. The latter he denied.
"They evidently need the practice," Kavula advised.
The Chancellor fumed at his pilot's insolence. "They'll do better at
close range," he promised. "Meanwhile, I want this ship stripped for
action. I've reached my decision. One close pass is all it should take.
We strike after sunup."
Desperately, Mittich hurried over and swung his small arms
imploringly. "You can't do this thing!"
"Oh, quit being such a floundering minnow! Nothing's going to
happen. They're quite defenseless, I'm convinced."
"If that's the case, then you are under injunction of the Curule
Assembly to make peaceful contact!"
"Drown peaceful contact!" the Chancellor swore. "I'm supposed to
exercise my judgment out here!"
"But—"
"Flotsam! There will be no peace. If that's what the aliens wanted,
they wouldn't have come out here in the first place. We are going to
blast them. And from here we'll go on!"
"Go on?" Mittich repeated cautiously. "Where?"
Vrausot's eyes glazed over and his disarray of teeth were exposed to
the gums as he paced the deck and beat his arms against his side in
a fit of frantic expectation.
"We know where their relay base is," he explained. "We'll strike that
next! Then, capitalizing on the element of surprise, we'll continue to
their World of Origin and destroy it outright. On the way back we'll
probably knock out one or two other planets."
He turned on a dumfounded Mittich. "The war—if there is to be one—
will be short. We'll have only to return to the Tzarean Shoal and
muster a fleet before we wipe out the rest of their civilization. And
once again ours will be the glory of conquest—such as we have not
experienced in, oh, how many millennia?"

Stewart woke up shouting the next morning.

Perhaps the nightmare had been brought on by his previous day's
experience with the telepuppets. For, in his dream, there had been
the OC, again spitting out deadly fire that missed the targets only by
inches before gouging great craters in the plain beyond.
Suddenly the master robot vanished, taking all the lesser automatons
with it. In the suspenseful stillness that followed, Stewart could only
stare in bewilderment at Carol and Randall.
Then it came—the blazing, naked light, together with the stentorian
roaring that filled the sky and shook every rock.
Terrified, he huddled with the other two, his eyes searching
desperately for some place to hide. But as he spotted each gaping
fissure, each yawning cave entrance that might offer concealment, it
too vanished. Until they were left with only a smooth, featureless
plain extending to infinity in all directions.
Eventually the mighty ships—hundreds of them, it seemed—landed.
And down debarkation ramps poured thousands of hideous Harpy-like
forms, their gigantic claws magnified in his fancy until they were even
larger than the bodies they supported and, by their sheer weight,
made flight impossible.
This vast army assembled before its ships in the center of the plain
and started forward.
But there was a blur of motion on the right and left extremities of
Stewart's field of vision and he watched great, gauzy curtains draw
together from opposite horizons, meeting directly in front of him. Like
dazzling auroral streamers, they hung from a rod located so high in
the stratosphere that it was lost in the blackness of space.
Diaphanous though the drapes were, they appeared to be adequate,
as if through some magical power, to hold back the horde of vicious
Harpies on the other side.
But even as Stewart shuddered with the thought of what would befall
Randall, Carol and himself should the almost intangible barrier fail,
the director charted forward and drew the curtains aside.
Instantly, the monstrous creatures poured through.
But in the next moment Randall was beside his bunk, shaking him
awake and regarding him quizzically.

Dismayed over the continued evidence of a lurking, inexplicable fear,

Stewart ate breakfast mostly in silence while he cast about for a
reasonable interpretation of the nightmare.
It was almost as though the auroral curtain represented a mental veil
that hid a horror-filled recess of his mind. The content of that fissure
—was it something he didn't want to face? Something he had
intentionally hidden? Was it actually that Randall could, if he desired,
draw back the curtain? Why Randall?
He brought his cup to his lips and almost gagged on an icy bitterness.
Carol chided him for his abstraction, dumped the coffee into a
disposal slot and gave him a refill.
Randall slapped his thigh. "Well, we still have a telepuppet problem
on our hands."
Mortimer sat up sharply. "You're not going to fool around with those
damned things any more, are you?"
"Don't see how we can avoid it. We've got several days' repair work
on that subspace drive coil—outside the ship. That's the only way we
can either get out of here or recover use of our long-range
transmitter. But I wouldn't want to turn my back on those puppets
while they're out of control."
"You won't catch me out there again," McAllister vowed.
Randall went over to the external view screen and spent several
minutes scanning the sky, bright now with the dawning light of
Aldebaran.
"You won't find the puppets up there," Stewart said, finally intolerant
of whatever phobia Randall might be pampering.
The director turned guiltily away from the screen. "Anybody have any
ideas on what we can do about those robots?"
Stewart went over to a second screen. "After having slept on the
problem, I think I might be able to contribute something."
He focused on the telepuppets, attending to their various exploratory
chores out on the plain. "Carol gave me an idea with something she
said yesterday. We may be able to solve our telepuppet worries
within five minutes' time."
"Bring the OC back under control?" The director arched his thick
brows. "How?"
"We might succeed in immobilizing it. That'll deprive the other
puppets of their source of power. Within a few hours their batteries
will drain and we'll be able to go to work on the OC without any
possible interference."
He indicated his hostile-atmosphere sheath slumped in a corner of
the compartment. "Won't need that. But I will have to have a deep-
space suit—heavily shielded against solar storm exposure. You have
one aboard, McAllister?"
The pilot nodded. "Standard equipment. But you'll think it weighs a
ton. It's designed for null-G use."
Carol's puzzlement drained away. "The suit's metal! Which means, as
far as the puppets are concerned, that it's totemic!"
"That's what I figure," Stewart said. "Wearing it may give me status
as one of the boys."

McAllister had been right. Against the relentless tug of gravity, the
armored suit felt as though it weighed not much less than a ton.
Laboriously, Stewart planted one thick-soled boot ahead of the other
and moved at a snail's pace across the difficult terrain.
Through a separation between two boulders he could see the
telepuppet team. The machines were hard at work, with the
Operations Co-ordinator majestically surveying its charges.
Stewart's legs strained under the great weight as he struggled over a
rise and stepped out upon the plain.
Pausing, he stared at the mike recessed in the inner curvature of his
helmet. It was dead and his resulting loss of voice contact made him
feel lonely and inadequate. But the suit was not equipped with radio,
since its wearer would normally be plugged into the ship's intercom
system through an anchor line.
Inching across the plain, he closed in on the puppet team. Thus far
he had not been noticed.
Cautiously, he skirted the knoll on which sat the Solar Plasma
Detector. Even now its boom-and-ball sensor was swinging around to
point toward a rising Aldebaran. He was certain he had passed in the
SPD's direct line of local sight. But it only ignored him.
Twenty paces farther he gave a wide berth to the Atmosphere
Analyzer. Here, too, he had to go directly in front of the thing's video
sensor. But the AA obliged by making no move toward him.
So far, so good. But he had approached only those robots which
would ordinarily show no interest in him, since he was neither
celestial nor gaseous. A minute later, however, when he was cleared
through without incident by an indifferent Mineral Analyzer, he was
certain his totemic qualifications would bring him to his objective
without picking up a challenge along the way.
He crested a rise, trudged between the Astronomical Data Collector
and the Seismometer and, more certain of his immunity, stepped
over the crablike Micro-organism Collector and Analyzer.
Then he stood hesitatingly before the master robot.
Ports ablaze with luminous evidence of faultless power generation,
the huge automaton ignored him. Shorn of its laser intensifier, it
appeared somewhat pathetic. But Stewart was inclined to waste no
sympathy. It stood swinging its upper command section, first right,
then left, to compensate for loss of two video sensors. But he was
more interested in the underslung, recessed compartment whose
outline he could now see. He had only to flip open the lid and throw
the switch in order to deactivate the OC.
Suddenly the thing reacted to his presence. One of its lenses swept
over him, stopped, swung back, overcorrected, then steadied. And he
couldn't guess what analytical criteria were being applied in the
general assessment.
The robot raised its vise-equipped appendage. A hostile gesture?
Defensive move? Or merely one of the symbols of communication it
had devised during its independent reign?
There was swift movement in the periphery of Stewart's vision and,
instinctively, he dropped to the ground as a great clanking form
swept past him.
Rolling over, he saw it was the Mineral Analyzer, boring in for another
attack. The six-legged automaton drew up in front of the OC and
swung its stout drill head in a sweeping arc.
He ducked under the gleaming neck and watched it crash into the
bigger machine's lower section, sending it bouncing rearward on
stumpy legs. The master robot lashed back, slashing a gaping slit in
the MA's neck.
Into this fury of swinging appendages Stewart decided he would have
to hurl himself if he expected to immobilize the telepuppet team. As
unpredictable as the robots were, he might never get this close to the
master automaton again.
The flow of battle, however, made his decision unnecessary. For the
grappling machines were now sweeping over the spot where he lay
and a huge pedal pad barely missed him as it thudded down.
For a fleeting instant, the recessed compartment was immediately
above his head. Overcoming the ponderous weight of his mailed arm,
he reached up and flicked open the lid. At the same time he
managed to get a finger on and throw the switch.
One final kick by the OC hurled him from beneath the tons of metal.
Meanwhile, the thing's thrashing vise caught the MA broadside and
sent it flailing backward. Then the master puppet toppled over like a
towering tree being felled by an ancient woodsman's chain saw. The
ground trembled violently with the impact.
Stewart rose and wiped dust from his helmet's view plate.
The monstrous robot lay motionless, darkened ports evidencing its
lifelessness. Close by, the Mineral Analyzer stumbled around in
looping circles, one of its gyros atilt. The other puppets continued
their work, unaware that when all stored energy was depleted there
would be no opportunity to recharge their batteries.
Exhausted, his face filmed with perspiration and his hip aching
beneath the dent the big machine had kicked in his armor, Stewart
headed back for the ship. But his release from urgency lightened his
steps somewhat. Now there would be little to do but wait until the
lesser puppets ran out of power.

An automatic erector leveled Minnie's tilted gyro. Another emergency

maintenance circuit cut in and compensated for precession. Finally
her sense of balance was restored.
Rationalization circuits reasoned out the precise maneuver necessary
to bring her upright and she rose upon her motor appendages,
expecting at any moment to be bludgeoned again by Bigboss' vise.
Slowly she turned and sent her restricted field of vision sweeping
across the ground. And her video lens came to focus on—
Bigboss!
In a most unusual position! And—motionless!
He was stretched out on the ground, extensible vise limp as it lay half
covered by the soil into which it had dug. One of his antennae was
crumpled beneath him while the other was bent and twisted. Hardly
able to accept as valid the visual data she was receiving, she
transmitted an unwarranted "please-verify-that-instruction" impulse at
low volume.
Her evaluation circuit was thrown almost into a frenzy when there
was no response. At maximum gain, she repeated the signal.
Still no response!
Cautiously, she went forward and stood over the Supreme Being. She
lowered her bitless drill head and nudged one of his motor
appendages. Drawing away, she watched it swing back and forth in
smaller and smaller arcs until it finally came to rest.
Then she went into a limited ecstasy of reaction. She whirled around
in circles until she became afraid she would tilt another gyro. She
reared up on her two posterior appendages and thumped back upon
the ground. She swung her drill head up and down, back and forth,
around. Through her rear slot she exhausted all the sludge from her
analyzing chambers.
She had won! She had supplanted Bigboss!
She had climbed to the top rung of the ladder!
And now She was Supreme Being!
That she had been able to succeed, despite Bigboss' overwhelming
superiority, was a datum so questionable that she almost decided to
reject it before storing it away.

Minnie went into another triumphant dance, but suddenly came to a

rigid halt. Her head held high and Her lens aimed in the direction of
the non-Totemic mobile that was withdrawing toward its needle.
There was something wrong in Her Universe! It was not at all as it
had been before She had conquered the Supreme Being!
Tensely, She recalled for review impressions only recently implanted
on Her drums. And she recognized immediately what was missing.
The telemetric chatter of all the workers was gone! Nor could she
detect the constant exchange of directive and acknowledgment that
had always flowed ceaselessly between Bigboss and each of the
workers. Yet, all the analyzers were there, continuing their chores as
though nothing had happened.
Apprehensive now, she assigned her meager rationalization capacity
to the task of deducing the reasons behind the startling change. And
many sine wave peaks passed before the judgment was handed back
up to her main circuits for storage on a memory drum:
Bigboss had justifiably been the Supreme Being! For He had, indeed,
been Supreme. The workers had voices, of course. But they were
isolated voices that could be heard by other members of the clan only
because they were passed along by Bigboss.
Minnie's drill head sagged until it rested on the ground.
She was Supreme Being now. But it was only a hollow distinction. For
she had fallen heir to none of Bigboss' authority. That authority had
been lost forever in the neutralization of charges which had rendered
the former Omnipotent One impotent.
What had she done? How could she have been so irrational? Why
hadn't she more thoroughly evaluated the consequences of her
forced ascendancy?
More for consolation than for any other reason, she transmitted a
desperate "where-are-you?" impulse to Screw Worm.
The directional signals that returned brought with them a great sense
of balance to the circuits in her PM&R pack. She was not, after all,
alone! She still held the supplemental function of supervision over her
sole helper!
She watched Worm approach, kicking up clouds of dust with the jets
that propelled him across the ground on his rolling threads. When he
arrived, she sent him a "hold-everything" signal. As he remained
motionless before her, she lowered her drill head until she could
sense the slight change in capacitance values that indicated physical
contact with him.
No, even though she had destroyed the Supreme Being and, by that
action, had forever shut herself off from the other members of the
clan, she was not alone. She still had her Worm!
But within the limits of those circumstances, she resolved suddenly,
she would try to act like a Supreme Being!
She drew herself upright and remained rigid while she drove her
rationalization circuits at a furious pace.
How did an Omnipotent One act?
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