"It is perhaps impossible to sustain completely (on present evidence) the hypothesis that Muslim historical writing on medieval India is completely controlled by political considerations. It may be no mere coincidence, however, that works emphasizing the community of interests and the cultural intercourse of Hindus and Muslims tended to appear in the nineteen-twenties, that works emphasizing their polarity in religion and thought but suggesting that political co-operation had been and could be secured, tended to appear in the nineteen-thirties, and that works emphasi- zing theseparate political achievements and destiny of the Muslims in South. Asia tended to appear in the nineteen-forties, The situation of Aligarh today may also be not unconnected with the appearance there of Marxist interpretations of medieval history. It is interesting to speculate—for I can attempt no more—whether any of the attitudes of medieval Muslim historiography have been carried over into modern Muslim historiography on medieval India. There appears to be the same intense consciousness of Islam as the unique, vital, final way of life and thought. There is the same inarticulate premiss that the writing of history should justify the ways of Muslims to men. There is the same assumption that history is purposive, teleological; there is the same urge towards a universal schematic view of history. May not the personification of ‘the Muslim doctrine of equality and toleration’ or ‘the Quranic con- ception of God’ as ‘a revolutionary force of incalculable value for the attainment of human welfare’ and their treatment as final causes in history be the consciousness of the sovereignty of God in modern dress? The significant feature of Professor Habib’s Marxist interpretation of medieval Indian history is not that Marxism has absorbed Islam but that Islam has absorbed Marxism."