"It is the non-Muslims who are the field of this Tabligh (propagation and conversion) of Islam and form the raw material for this splendid activity. We are opposed to Islam's right to missionary activity to a particular area," thus spoke Deobandi leader Maulana Hussain Ahmed Madani while opposing the formation of Pakistan in his speech before the 1945 Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind conference in Delhi as quoted by author ZH Faruqi in his book The Deoband School and the Demand for Pakistan and later by reformist leader Hamid Dalwai in his book Muslim Politics in Secular India. On another occasion, Madani was even more unabashed in airing his views when he said: "If Dara Shikoh would have triumphed over Aurangzeb, Muslims would have stayed in India, but not Islam. Since Aurangzeb triumphed, both Muslims and Islam were here to stay."

As indicated by his above statements, Madani, a Deobandi preacher and Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind leader, was a pan-Islamist. But since a significant section of the Deoband movement opposed the partition and took part in the Congress-led freedom movement as part of its long-term religious strategy to safeguard the interests of puritanical Islam, Madani figures as a nationalist in history books written during the Congress period. This was one of the main tragedies that India’s post-partition history saw. It prevented true Muslim role models for the community from emerging and encouraged the projection of pan-Islamists as role models, thus hindering the integration of the Muslim community with the Indian nation.

Had it not been so, true Muslim heroes instead of pan-Islamists would have figured in our history and been role models – like Ibrahim Khan Gardi, hero of the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761 who as the artillery in-charge of the Marathas refused to join the Muslim coalition of Afghan invader Ahmed Shah Abdali and had to pay with his life as a result, or Brig Usman who died fighting against the Pakistanis in 1948 in Kashmir and is the only Brigadier to be decorated with Param Vir Chakra, or Havaldar Hamid of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war fame and scores of others including Rana Khan, another Muslim hero who emerged out of the Panipat battle and became the life-long friend of the great Maratha general Mahadji Scindia. Even during the action against terrorists at Gandhinagar's Akshardham temple in 2002, one of the jawans of the Gujarat State Reserve Police (SRP) who died after killing the two Pakistani terrorists was a Muslim.

It is in the light of this that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's appointment of former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief Syed Asif Ibrahim as his special envoy on counter-terrorism should be seen. Ibrahim’s track record makes him a role model at a time when some leaders of the Wahabi stream want Indian Muslims to get sucked into the vortex of pan-Islamism: they want to do so by maintaining a separatist streak and raising special demands in the name of minorityism.

Interestingly, Ibrahim was made IB chief by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2012 as part of its political strategy with an eye on Muslim votes. He, in fact, superseded four IB officials to get that post and the then Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde had even boasted that the UPA government was the first to ever appoint a Muslim IB chief in India's history. The UPA game plan was to use the IB to trap Modi and his aide Amit Shah in the Ishrat Jahan case to prevent the then Gujarat chief minister from emerging as the prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 polls. For this reason, a number of pliant officers had been inducted in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which was investigating the alleged fake encounter cases in Gujarat, including the one relating to Ishrat Jahan. But Asif Ibrahim became the stumbling block for the UPA designs at great personal risk.

The CBI was reportedly directed in the middle of 2013 by the home ministry to prosecute an IB officer, Rajendra Kumar, who as a Gujarat IB unit chief had given the Ishrat Jahan tip off to the Gujarat Police in 2004. He was to be booked on the charge that he was hand-in-glove with Gujarat government and had given a false tip off. But Ibrahim put his foot down and strongly protested before the home ministry saying that it would demoralise the IB and severely affect its intelligence network. He reportedly argued that the sanctity of India’s premier intelligence agency had to be maintained at all costs by not dragging it into a political battle.

The Hindu-Muslim wrangling is one of the major hurdles today in India’s true progress. The fundamentalism of pan-Islamists, who oppose a uniform civil code and removal of Article 370 of the Constitution, giving special status to Jammu and Kashmir, is one of the causes that prevents the integration of Muslims in the Indian society and sows seeds of hatred for Muslims in Hindu minds. Ibrahim’s liberal and patriotic credentials make him an apt model for creating a moderate class of Muslims willing to become equal partners with Hindus in India’s progress.

Ibrahim, who is from the Madhya Pradesh cadre, has a commendable track record. He was private secretary to the late Madhavrao Scindia when he became Union minister of state for Railways in 1984. This was after Scindia saw his calibre and integrity during his stint in Gwalior as a police officer. Later, he joined the IB and performed very well in the area of counter-terrorism in various capacities. Modi’s riposte to pan-Islamists by appointing Ibrahim to the prime minister's office (PMO) is a significant development in his year-long tenure and for the emergence of a truly secular India.