INTRODUCTION 5
marking of the colonial construction of the communalist past was a
critical intervention, what remained unexamined was the centrality
of the origins narrative-the naturalness with which "Muslims" re-
mained outsiders-such that each historical epoch began anew (for ex-
ample, for the medieval historians there remains an assumption that
Mughal ideology and politics bore little relationship to that of their
Indic predecessors, or similarly the Delhi sultanate bore no relation-
ship to the Arab rule in Sind).^7 That is, even though historians demon-
strated that the colonial state constructed the antagonistic forms in
which difference was naturalized between communities, they did not
push against the ways in which the origins narrative governed under-
standings of the past. The consequence was that arguments for an ano-
dyne syncretism kept in place the fundamental difference between the
communities.
Whether one looks for syncretism or antagonism, the impulse to
create a teleology of Muslim presence; is remarkably persistent in the
origins narrative of the history and historiography of South Asia. His-
torians of Pakistan focused on specific moments: the conquests pf the
eighth or the eleventh century, the late Mughal period, and north India
from the nineteenth century onward. Those Muslims, and Muslim
pasts, left in Indian territory were also left out of Pakistani historiog-
raphy. Historians of northern India left out from their inquiries the
Muslim history before the thirteenth century, for that geography was
now in Pakistani territory. The historians of southern India similarly
elided any discussion of communities of settlement, trading, and being
Muslim throughout the medieval and early modern periods.^8 What
governs these complementary silences is the physical partition of po-
litical and social space in contemporary South Asia as well as the
intellectual partition of archival pasts. What motivates it is the begin-
nings narrative of Muslim origins. These are the unique challenges faced
by any intellectual history of premodern India-of time, space, and
beginnings.
This bl'.lok is an argument against origins. It takes as an imperative
that "origin must itself be known historically, history must itself re-
solve the problem of history, knowledge must turn its sting against it-
self."9 In taking aim at the origins narrative, I pinpoint the text most
critically important for its construction-Chachnama. I present the