Moral Striving: Chapter from Ethical Life in South Asia Editor(s): Anand Pandian & Daud Ali (original) (raw)

When, in 1947, India split into two countries-India and Pakistan-the question might have arisen in the minds of many Hindus and Muslims as to what it would mean from now onto "belong" to this country. 1 My aim in this essay is not to tell the story of Indian secularism and its implications for thinking about the cultivation of political virtues; rather my goal is to reflect on how India figured as a theological space for Indian Muslims in their everyday life, given their proximity to Hindus along with their sense of an Islamic project of "becoming" that the birth of Pakistan represented for them. The question might also be posed as follows: Are there different ways of relating to territory than are catalogued in modernist discourses of nationhood that might have been brought into play in considering what it is to cultivate oneself as a moral person in this "new" land? 3 The same question can be asked of Hindus. For my purposes here, however, I will simply state that the story of Hindu "becoming" outside of Hindu nationalist projects is not symmetrical to that of Muslims-which is why it cannot be told through analogies or polarities.