A Voice from the Margins: An Appraisal of Ubaid-Allah Sindhi’s Mahabharat Sarvrajia Party and its Constitution

Ubaid-Allah Sindhi is among those very few political thinkers and activists of the twentieth-century India who were initially associated with the traditional theological seminaries but their political vision was marked by liberalism and openmindedness. He established a non-communal political party— Mahabharat Sarvrajia Party in 1924 in order to translate his political ideals into practice. The Party Constitution envisaged the idea of a unique form of confederal form of government for the country. It also presented an outline of a socio-economic order which was derived from a reconciliation of Socialist ideals with the Quran and Shah Wali-Allahi thought. However, he is among one of the least understood and often misinterpreted Muslim thinkers of India. Thus, there is a need to appreciate and reevaluate the political modernism in his thought and vision. Key-words: Ubaid-Allah Sindhi, Mahabharat Sarvrajia Party, The Constitution of the Federated Republics of India, Confederalism, Socialism Ubaid-Allah Sindhi (1872-1944) of Deoband School is among those very few political thinkers and activists who were trained in traditional madrassahs or theological seminaries, but had a thorough understanding of their contemporary political and economic ideologies, and were endowed with a deep vision and tremendous political foresight. Unlike most of his fellow ulama or scholars and political leaders of Deoband School, he was receptive to modernism, though in a selective manner. It is for this very reason that he has been hailed as ‘the most broad-minded Muslim scholar of South Asia after Shah Wali-Allah of Delhi’ by Said Ahmad Akbarabadi, an illustrious pupil of Sindhi and a renowned scholar of Islam (see introduction in Aslam, n.d., p. 10). He was not only an exponent of the religious and political thought of Shah Wali-Allah of Delhi (1703-1762), Sindhi was himself a profound thinker, an activist and a revolutionary. Amid the reactionary environment of madrassahs where he was trained, he was the first religious and political thinker of the twentieth century who was able to break away from traditionalism, and embraced the various aspects of modernity, including political modernity. ♣ Author is Assistant Professor Department of History, Quaid-i-Azam niversity, Islamabad Pakistan