Mushirul Hasan

Mushirul Hasan (15 August 1949 – 10 December 2018) was a historian of modern India. He wrote on the partition of India, communalism, and on the history of Islam in South Asia.

Quotes

• “On reaching Pakistan [these India trained scholars had to] rewrite their own histories”. [They constructed] “a different past altogether, one that was at variance with their earlier explorations [and began] to search for heroes and martyrs, involve new symbols and traditions, and discover milestones [. . .] for the historical antecedents of Pakistan”.
  • Mushirul Hasan. “The Historic Divide” The Indian Express, Saturday, February 20, 1999.

• The issue was not just the defense of Partition, or Independence from Pakistan's vantage point, but a different reading of the past involving, among other things, the rejection of a diverse but vibrant composite-cultural and intellectual legacy.
  • Mushirul Hasan. “The Historic Divide” The Indian Express, Saturday, February 20, 1999.

• In order to legitimize Pakistan as a Muslim homeland, historians had to nurture the “image of the Muslims as a monolithic entity, acting in unison and committed to specifically Islamic values and norms”.
  • Mushirul Hasan. “The Historic Divide” The Indian Express, Saturday, February 20, 1999.