Muslim nationalism in South Asia

During the medieval era, an Islamic society in India that originated from Persianate culture that spread the religion amongst Indians, resulting in the rise of powerful Muslim kingdoms such as the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire.

Expression of Muslim separatism and nationhood emerged from modern Islam's pre-eminent poet and philosopher, Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal and political activists like Choudhary Rahmat Ali.

They espoused the Two-Nation Theory, that India was in fact home to the Muslim and Hindu nations, who were distinct in every way.

In contrast, another section of Muslim society, led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari and Maulana Azad felt that participation in the Indian Independence Movement and the Indian National Congress was a patriotic duty of all Muslims.

[9] In 1919, a large group of Deobandi scholars formed the political party Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and it maintained a position of opposing the partition of India.

As time went on, communal tensions rose and so partition won increasing support among many Muslims in Muslim-majority areas of the British India.

During the late years of British rule and leading up to independence, it had three distinct supporters: According to official government statistics, the Hindu-majority India has almost 14% Muslim population spread across all states with significant concentrations in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana, Assam, West Bengal, Gujarat, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir.

Their thesis is that Muslims and non-Muslims have entered upon a mutual contract in India since independence, to establish a secular state.

Fazlul Huq, Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz, Syed Ahmed Khan, Shamsul Haque Faridpuri .