Community and Consensus in Islam is a bold attempt to re-introduce the role of ideas in the interpretation of Muslim politics in India between 1860 and 1947. Dr. Shaikh questions the widely-held view that the politics of the period can be adequately explained by reference to pragmatic interests alone. She argues, instead, that the influence of ideas rooted in Islamic tradition must form a crucial dimension of any well-grounded explanation of the determinants of Muslim political practice. The volume makes a substantial contribution to the continuing debate about the causes of the Partition of India in 1947. It offers a radical reinterpretation of Partition as the consequence not only of the configurations of colonial politics, but of the tensions between two contrasting intellectual traditions. The different assumptions of the Islamic and the liberal-democratic traditions about the proper ends of political action did much to sharpen the constitutional attitudes that led inexorably to Partition.
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