Indian Muslims

This study questions current views that Muslims represented a secure point of reference for the British understanding of colonial Indian society. Through revisionary readings of a wide range of texts, it re-examines the basis of the British misperception of Muslim 'conspiracy' during the 'Mutiny'. Arguing that this belief stemmed from conflicts inherent to the secular ideology of the colonial state, it shows how in the ensuing years it produced representations ridden with paradox and requiring a form of descriptive segregation.

Da‘wa, a concept rooted in the scriptural and classical tradition of Islam, has been dramatically re-appropriated in modern times across the Muslim world. Championed by a variety of actors in diverse contexts, da‘wa –"inviting" to Islam, or Islamic missionary activity – has become central to the vocabulary of contemporary Islamic activism. Da‘wa and Other Religions explores the modern resurgence of da‘wa through the lens of inter-religious relations and within the two horizons of Islamic history and modernity. Part I provides an account of da‘wa from the Qur’an to the present. It demonstrates the close relationship that has existed between da‘wa and inter-religious relations throughout Islamic history and sheds light on the diversity of da‘wa over time. The book also argues that Muslim communities in colonial and post-colonial India shed light on these themes with particular clarity. Part II, therefore, analyzes and juxtaposes two prominent da‘wa organizations to emerge from the Indian subcontinent in the past century: the Tablīghī Jamā‘at and the Islamic Research Foundation of Zakir Naik. By investigating the formative histories and inter-religious discourses of these movements, Part II elucidates the influential roles Indian Muslims have played in modern da‘wa. This book makes important contributions to the study of da‘wa in general and to the study of the Tablīghī Jamā‘at, one of the world’s largest da‘wa movements. It also provides the first major scholarly study of Zakir Naik and the Islamic Research Foundation. Further, it challenges common assumptions and enriches our understanding of modern Islam. It will have a broad appeal for students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Indian religious history and anyone interested in da‘wa and inter-religious relations throughout Islamic history.

Indian Muslims: The Way Forward reflects upon a range of issues concerning the Indian Muslims, such as: • Why are the Indian Muslims, as a whole, socially, educationally and economically backward? What can be done to address this? • How far are Muslim religious and political leaders responsible for the present conditions of the Indian Muslims? • How should the Indian Muslims relate to the present social and political context? • How can the Muslims of India earn the goodwill of people from the other communities in the country? What are some practical things that they can do to promote inter-community harmony? This book speaks about the way forward for India’s Muslims in the present context. It appeals to them to contribute to the common good of the country as a whole and the wider society while also focussing on their educational and economic development. India’s Muslims and the other communities in the country, the book highlights, must practise the art of peaceful coexistence, as India is their common home. “One could say that God has destined them to live together here”, the author says.

'[This] substantial volume at once illuminates empirical conditions and tests theories about ghettoization, integration, and the political attitudes of India's urban Muslims' - Sunil Khilnani 'Christophe Jaffrelot's range of scholarship is amazing, and his new book ... co-edited with Laurent Gayer, illustrates well his wide-ranging interests. The contributions are instructive and insightful and cover a much-neglected theme in contemporary South Asia' - Mushirul Hasan Numbering more than 150 million, Muslims constitute the largest minority in India, yet suffer the most politically and socio-economically. Forced to contend with severe and persistent prejudice, India's Muslims are often targets of violence. In India's cities, these developments find contrasting expressions. While the quality of Muslim life may lag behind that of Hindus nationally, local and inclusive cultures have been resilient in the south and the east. In the Hindi belt and in the north, Muslims have known less peace, especially in the riot-prone areas of Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Jaipur and Aligarh, and in the capitals of former Muslim states - Delhi, Hyderabad, Bhopal and Lucknow. These cities are rife with Muslim ghettos and slums. However, self-segregation has also played a part in forming Muslim enclaves, such as in Delhi and Aligarh, where traditional elites and a new Muslim middle class have regrouped for physical and cultural protection. Combining first-hand testimony with sound critical analysis, this volume follows urban Muslim life in eleven Indian cities, providing uncommon insight into a litde-known subject of immense importance and consequence.

Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans provides an ethnography of life, work and migration in a North Indian Muslim-dominated woodworking industry. It traces artisanal connections within the local context, during migration within India, and to the Gulf, examining how woodworkers utilise local and transnational networks, based on identity, religiosity, and affective circulations, to access resources, support and forms of mutuality. However, the book also illustrates how liberalisation, intensifying forms of marginalisation and incorporation into global production networks have led to spatial pressures, fragmentation of artisanal labour, and forms of enclavement that persist despite geographical mobility and connectedness. By working across the dialectic of marginality and connectedness, Thomas Chambers thinks through these complexities and dualities by providing an ethnographic account that shares everyday life with artisans and others in the industry. Descriptive detail is intersected with spatial scales of ‘local’, ‘national’ and ‘international’, with the demands of supply chains and labour markets within India and abroad, with structural conditions, and with forms of change and continuity. Empirically, then, the book provides a detailed account of a specific locale, but also contributes to broader theoretical debates centring on theorisations of margins, borders, connections, networks, embeddedness, neoliberalism, subjectivities, and economic or social flux.

Making Place for Muslims in Contemporary India looks at how religion provides an arena to make place and challenge the majoritarian, exclusionary, and introverted tendencies of contemporary India. Places do not simply exist. They are made and remade by the acts of individuals and communities at particular historical moments. In India today, the place for Muslims is shrinking as the revanchist Hindu Right increasingly realizes its vision of a Hindu nation. Religion enables Muslims to re-envision India as a different kind of place, one to which they unquestionably belong. Analyzing the religious narratives, practices, and constructions of religious subjectivity of diverse groups of Muslims in Old Delhi, Kalyani Devaki Menon reveals the ways in which Muslims variously contest the insular and singular understandings of nation that dominate the sociopolitical landscape of the country and make place for themselves. Menon shows how religion is concerned not just with the divine and transcendental but also with the anxieties and aspirations of people living amid violence, exclusion, and differential citizenship. Ultimately, Making Place for Muslims in Contemporary India allows us to understand religious acts, narratives, and constructions of self and belonging as material forces, as forms of the political that can make room for individuals, communities, and alternative imaginings in a world besieged by increasingly xenophobic understandings of nation and place.

The work is unique in the sense that it has not only delved into historical antecedents of the contemporary attitudes of the new generation of Indian Muslims, but has also brought out their adjustment mechanisms and reactions to the demands which are made upon them from a section of the majority. For the understanding of different aspects of behaviour of the minority vis-a-vis the majority, the author has liberally drawn upon the relevant literature of three branches of social sciences, viz., Psychology, Sociology and Political Science. The studies of minority-majority relations elsewhere are referred to for making the reader aware that to a very large extent minorities, wherever they are found, behave in the similar way. Reviews “... The perspective offered by the author in the present study augurs well for the cause of nation-building in the specific context of the persisting and ever elusive communal problem in India.†Prof. Iqbal Narain “The publication is so fascinating that I read more than half by the time I reached Lucknow†. Prof. H.S. Asthana “The first full length study of the mass psychology of the Muslim mind after Mujib’s The Indian Musilms .... Qamar Hasan has used the tools of academic research to study the Muslim factor in Indian Politics... read it because it is a same voice in the madness all around. Tapan Basu, Sunday “The book clearly brings out reactions indicative of fear of domination and urge to dominate ... the book has made a definite contribution in the understanding of inter-and intra-group relationships.†Pramod Kumar “The author must be complimented for his bold and frank revelations about the attitudes of Muslims and Hindus towards each other, their self appraisals and their assessment.†Dr. K. Ravichandra, Review Projector, Vol. VIII, Nos. 10–12 “The causes and cures of the serious problems bedevilling relations between the Muslim minority in India and the Hindu majority badly need studying within a socio-psychological framework. Qamar Hasan is on the right track for a social scientist to throw light on the problems of his people, but he needs to settle on just one frame of reference and typology and then test some bolder hypotheses.’’

This Book Originally Appeared In 1951 Under The Title Makers Of Pakistan And Modern Muslim India(By A.H. Albiruni), And Has Been An Important Source Book For The History Of The Period It Deals With.The Earlier Book, As Its Title Indicat¬Ed, Was An Account Of The Lives And Activities Of The Leaders Who Enabled Muslim India To Recover From The Loss Of Political Power Culminating In The Exile Of The Last Mughul Emperor In 1858, And Who So Guided Its Affairs As To Lead To The Establishment Of The Independent State Of Pakistan.The Original Book Has Been Greatly Enlarged And, Although The Approach Remains Basically Biographical, Many New Chapters Giving The Background Of The Period And Various Historical Developments Have Been Added. Out Of The Fifteen Chapters, Five Are Entirely New, Including A Long Chapter On The Developments In The Areas Which Now Constitute Pakistan With Considerable Additions In Others. Personalities From Muslim Bengal Have Been Fully Dealt With, And Advantage Has Been Taken Of The Publication Of Considerable New Material Relating To Partition To Make The Account Comprehensive. An Im¬Portant New Section Relates To Jinnah, The Man And The Statesman.