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Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship

Debates amongst 18th and 19th century Muslim scholars on appropriate boundaries for friendship and intimacy with Hindus were sparked by the new political realities of colonial rule and fears of assimilation.

As the Mughal empire waned and colonial shadows lengthened in the late 19th century, South Asian Muslim scholars embarked on rethinking their communitarian identity in the face of political upheaval.

In his work Perilous Intimacies, SherAli Tareen explores one key debate: deciding the appropriate boundaries for friendship and intimacy with Hindus, which would guard against assimilation in an age when Muslims had lost political power.

Some scholars emphasised commonalities between Hindu and Islamic ideas, advocating friendship, while others stressed differences to maintain communal distinctions.

Within this diversity, tensions persisted between desires for closeness and the preservation of communal boundaries and hierarchy.

In doing so, he emphasises that intraMuslim diversity resists facile binaries of secular and non-secular, ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

Concerns about friendship were sparked by the colonial moment’s relegation of Muslims as disadvantaged minorities and by ascendant ideas of cultural assimilation.

Friendship became a site of these debates because it signified an intimate encounter, challenging claims to purity and sovereignty.

The Arabic term for close friendship muwalat – emerging in these discourses – suggested the intricate relationship between friendship and power.

Its root, wali, could mean both friend and a guardian with authority. Tareen shows how the original prophetic command against untethered assimilation evolved over centuries of scholastic interpretation into a flexible juridical category to enforce theological sanctions and police 'heterodox' dissent.

Tareen emphasises the promise and peril across diverse registers of friendship, from everyday encounters to political collaborations, translation projects, and ritual imitations.

As such, these debates circled around questions over the appropriateness of embodying practices seen as contravening Islamic jurisprudential norms: ranging from sartorial styles, cultural customs, and linguistic habits to culinary tastes.

Muhammad Nadeem is a writer, editor and translator from Kashmir. (Courtesy: The India Forum)