Conclusion
IN 1989 A. K. RAMANUJAN asked, "Is there an Indian way of
thinking?" His own answer looked at a range of thought, starting from
the Vedic laws of Manu to the epic of Mahabharata via the philologists
William Jones and Max Muller. In Ramanujan's survey of Indian
thought, present were ragas and akam, but he left un-commented the
Persian theories of music or love as also "Indian."^1 Is the "Indian" way
of thinking evident solely in one grammar, one religion, certain lo-
cales, certain specific genres? If there are Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu
ways of being Indian, is there no Indian way of being Muslim and no
Muslim way of being Indian? If the Mahabharata can elucidate Indian
thought, surely that thought can also belong to a Muslim?
Conceptually and programmatically, the study of pasts in South
Asia is cleanly divided between the "Indic" and the "Muslim"; between
Indologists and historians; between the ancient, the medieval, and the
modern; between archives of Persian, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Tamil; and
between nations of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Granted that there
were different political regimes in the past. That difference created vio-
lence. Yet our scholarship cannot continue to insist on "Muslim pasts"
and "Hindu pasts" as hermetically sealed categories. We need new his-
tories of our collective pasts, for we continue to see all pasts through
creedal differences.