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- Convenors:
-
Sadia Bajwa
(Humboldt Univeristy)
Razak Khan (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
- Location:
- 22F68
- Start time:
- 24 July, 2014 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
This panel examines the plurality and historical variability of Muslim societies and cultures in South Asia by looking at the production and transformation of Muslim subjectivity in South Asia through the category of the minority.
Long Abstract:
This panel examines the plurality and historical variability of Muslim societies and cultures in South Asia by looking at the production of Muslim subjectivity through the category of the minority. It attempts to open up the category of 'Muslim Subject' by illustrating the varied and changeable boundaries of minority subjectivities within the South Asian context, be these drawn by state-imposed definitions, internally-defined community discourses or practices or medial representations of majority and minority in colonial and postcolonial South Asia. The panel will deal with the larger question of the shifting trajectories of the 'Muslim as a minority' problematic and how the category of the minority has been historically transformed in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Indeed postcolonial states have been imagined through the production and defining of minorities.
The panel will also focus on minority and marginal subjectivities within the category of South Asian Muslims, for example subjectivities of women, Muslim sects or the interaction of religious with ethnic identity. It looks at moments of transition where boundaries of majority/minority are re-negotiated within new political and societal realities, be these transitions from the colonial to the post colonial or other periods of transition that contained potential for the creative articulation of a minority perspective and the re-negotiation of the state, the community and Muslim selfhood.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the remedy of conjugal restitution among Muslims. It shows that arguing from the premise that marriage in Islam was a purely civil contract was a means for asserting that the personal law was as genuinely legal in character as the law of the market in classical legal thought.
Paper long abstract:
Henry Maine's famed declaration that social progress can be measured as a movement from 'status to contract' remains familiar to scholars of 19th-century India. While the idea is now bemoaned as a relic of evolutionist social thought, less often has it been asked how the concept of status actually functioned within the law. Were the stylized terms of sociological theory merely imported as is into an equivalently stylized discourse of judicial decision-making? To what extent was the reception of the status-contract divide into law unique to India? In my paper, I begin to address these questions by looking at the development of the doctrine of the restitution of conjugal rights in India during the late 19th-century. Because conjugal restitution originated in English ecclesiastical law, the doctrine in India had tobe secured on a new basis. This gave rise to competing conceptions about whether marriage in the personal law was to be juridically cognized as a relationship of status or one of contract. In the paper, I explain why the contractual view of marriage became especially prominent within the Muslim personal law. As I argue, this was not simply due to the politics of gender subordination by which husbands increasingly took hold of the doctrine to consolidate control over their estranged wives. To the contrary, doctrinal development was also driven by a symbolic politics of communitarian identity in which arguing from the premise of contract was a means by which to prove the genuinely legal character of the Muslim personal law.
Paper short abstract:
Focusing upon a campaign to establish an ‘Islamic Emirate’ in India in the inter-war decades, this paper examines a novel construct of Muslim minority leadership and community organisation within India which existed in separation from the language and structures of the colonial state.
Paper long abstract:
Most studies of the development of Muslim minority identities in late-colonial India have considered how such categories evolved in interaction with the communitarian language and assumptions of the public and political arenas of the colonial state. Taking an alternative approach, this paper explores the ways in which an alternative leadership for the Muslim minority evolved which, instead, drew upon ideas of kingship and political authority grounded within the Islamic tradition. From around 1914, a number of Islamic scholars began to evoke the idea of the establishment of an 'Islamic Emirate' in India, one that would at once provide a centralised direction to Indian Islam and also facilitate the closer integration of Indian Muslims within the global umma'. By 1921 and beyond, a number of religious intellectuals were establishing a programme for the effective 'independence' of the Muslim community within India: Muslims were to have not only their own structures of communal leadership, but their own social, charitable and legal institutions. By examining the development of vernacular constructs of Islamic leadership, this paper establishes how many Islamic scholars of the era combined their own participation in agitations for India's independence with a simultaneous evocation of the legal and structural independence of the Muslim minority within India.
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the production of the Muslim minority and its safeguards in the Indian Constitution. It focuses particularly on the Directive Principles of State Policy, a feature that is present in very few constitutions.
Paper long abstract:
The Directive Principles of State Policy in the Indian Constitution was labelled a "veritable dustbin of sentiment" by a member of the Constituent Assembly, the body that framed India's Constitution between 1946 and 1949. Among the articles that make up the non-justiciable directive principles, at least one - Article 44 which calls upon the Indian state to endeavour to secure a uniform civil code for its citizens - has had an enormous impact on the rights of the 150 million-plus Muslim minority in India. This paper examines the link between the directive principles and rights of Indian Muslims by analysing four connected issues. First, it tries to understand the rationale behind the directive principles by examining the debates in the Constituent Assembly. Second, it specifically examines the discussion on Article 44 in the Constituent Assembly. Third, it analyses the Indian Supreme Court's interpretation of the directive principles, including Article 44, which have had the effect of bringing the directive principles closer to fundamental rights. Finally, it places the debate on the uniform civil code in the context of the intense politics over the issue.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the post-partition re-negotiation of culture and history among Indian Muslims. It focuses on debates about the concept of Minority and its re-construction among Muslim intellectuals.
Paper long abstract:
Following recent calls to understand the "Long Partition" of South Asia, this paper examines the Partitioning of culture and memory.It also explores the diverse responses to question of Nationalism and Minority identity among Indian Muslims. It does so by focusing on the debates about "Muslim culture" in post-partition India.The debates on nationalism and "Muslim culture" characterized the newly created nation states of Pakistan and India but with striking differences in their content and purpose: while in Pakistan "Muslim culture" was integral to the construction of national culture, its trajectory in India was one of minoritization through state institutions and government cultural policies. In India, therefore, "Muslim culture" had to be re-imagined to accommodate its perceived political shift to the margins. Moving beyond the statist discourse,I argue that the re-negotiation of these concepts among Indian Muslim intellectuals was also done through engagement with history and emotions.The paper focusses on nostalgic remembrance as an emotional practice to come to terms with the partition. Moreover, it argues for the recognition of nostalgic writing as a literary strategy that serves to critique the minority status placed on Muslims in post-partition India. Nostalgic writings therefore emerge as a crucial space for not just re-visiting bygone past but as a site of political critique of contemporary lived experience. Thus, the paper hopes to map this changing cultural landscape and illustrate the role of literature in understanding the political and aesthetic sensibilities of Muslims in post-partition India.
Paper short abstract:
Focussing on communist responses to subcontinental constellations, the paper addresses questions of and linkages between minority and resistancy in a communist nomenclature and the latter’s confirmation of collective identity formation on the example of independent India’s Muslims.
Paper long abstract:
Positive communist connotations of 'community' have ever been underpinned by notions of resistancy connected with a given community. The impact of classical Marxism's materialist class analysis has been matched solely by the concept of self-determination of nationalities - and concomitantly the category of "national minority" - popularised by Soviet Marxism. As opposed to the working class, the minority's resistancy lies solely in its relative numerical definition as a minority.
It is well known that the adaptation of this paradigm in a subcontinental environment on the part of the CPI effected the latter's tectonic shift towards supporting the Pakistan demand in the 1940s, which emphatically declared communist support for a minoritarian Muslim subjectivity. However, beyond that surprisingly little work has been done on further communist contribution to the delineation of an Indian Muslim identity. The paper will concentrate on developments within the Indian communist left after the dramatic events accompanying the bifurcation of British India. It will address questions such as how Muslim subjectivity is defined within a communist nomenclature, how positive connotations of 'Muslim-ness' are tied to projections of resistancy as opposed to sharp rejections of majoritarian Hindu assertiveness, how shifting social and political constellations influenced a communist shaping of India's Muslims, and most importantly how a (Muslim) communist viewpoint negotiates the space for a minoritarian Muslim identity within the larger framework of a secular and socialist project in a post-independent political landscape. The writings of Muqimuddin Farooqi and others like Sajjad Zaheer will be instructive in exploring these apparent antinomies.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines Bengali Muslim cultural nationalism from the Pakistani movement in the 1940s through the instantiation of an East Pakistani Bengali cultural concept in the new state of East Pakistan from 1947 until the break-up of East Pakistan into Bangladesh.
Paper long abstract:
The South Asian twentieth century is usually known for the partition, nation-state formation, and now India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It is not generally known for the culture concept and its relationship to Muslim minorities. The nineteenth century's glorious Bengali Hindu intellectual past, and its invocations of culture, are certainly well documented and forms a staple for South Asian history. Muslim South Asia, defined either through rich pre-modern cultures and histories or through Pakistan, carries forth a minor historiography, but has little to offer modern intellectual history. Bengal holds not only a history of culture concepts that played a pivotal role in nineteenth century nationalism but also an altogether different appearance of productive culture-concept-building in the form of Bengali Muslim Pakistani cultural nationalism. Though this culture concept was thwarted and destroyed in the embers of the 1971 civil war, I engage with analysis of the continuity of the culture concept from the Pakistan movement of 1940-1947 as well as signature iterations of culture in the East Pakistani Bengali public sphere from 1947 to 1971, particularly from the journal The Concept of Pakistan, active from the mid-1950s through the end of the East Pakistan period. This research shows how political ideas about minorities developed in ways that were not only emanating from nationalisms or state-based propaganda, but always were engaged in critiques of both.
Paper short abstract:
This paper argues that SLMC creates a ‘dual nationalism’ in its policymaking when it navigates to be loyal both to the nation (Sri Lankans) and the ethnicity (Muslims) and it uses Islamic concepts to do so creating Muslim Politics.
Paper long abstract:
The Muslims in Sri Lanka are a minority in regards to both the Sinhala and the Tamil community in the country. As the war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil rebels started to accelerate in the early 1980s the Muslim community were caught in the crossfire. A new Muslim political organization started to arise in Sri Lanka; it was the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). Its main goal was to secure a Muslim identity and as they shared language with the Tamil (and Sinhala) community the ethnic marker was religion. This paper analyzes the use of religion in the politics behind this 'ethnic marker.' The empirical data consists of over 30 interviews with members of the political elite of the party as well as official documents.
As research about SLMC tends to miss out what is behind the ethnic marker, this paper will argue that SLMC's is creating 'Muslim Politics' and it uses Islamic concepts not only to sustain its ethnicity but also it is used to argue that Sri Lanka should continue to be a pluralistic country. SLMC creates a 'dual nationalism' in its policymaking when it navigates to be loyal both to the nation (Sri Lankans) and the ethnicity (Muslims).
Paper short abstract:
This paper traces the transformation of Sunni-Shi'a discourses since the 1970s. It argues that the Iranian Revolution constitued a watershed that gave a new spin to doctrinal debates and led to the portrayal of Pakistan's Shīʿa as blocking the country from being molded into its true political form.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I argue that the rise of Sunnī-Shīʿī sectarian polemics and violence in the 1980s and 1990s in Pakistan has to be located first of all within the realm of politics and clashing visions of how the "God-given state of Pakistan" could realize her potential. Often-repeated arguments about the importance of local economic grievances or clear-cut Saudi Arabian agendas are not reflected in the literature produced by the sectarian actors themselves. Drawing on Naveeda Khan's observation about Pakistan being suspended in a "striving" relationship with Islam, I contend that for the ʿulamā of Pakistan's virulent anti-Shīʿa group, the Sipāh-i Ṣaḥābah (Army of the Prophet's Companions), the Iranian Revolution constituted a particular moment of threatening closure to this open-ended process of envisioning their country. In doing so, they stand in stark contrast to sectarian discourses of the 1970s. Even though the Sipāh-i Ṣaḥābah still highlights doctrinal incompatibilities between "real" and Shīʿī Islam, the Shīʿa are primarily framed as blocking Pakistan from being molded into its true form, namely a Sunnī entity with a claim to global leadership. By denouncing and simultaneously drawing on the example of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Sipāh-i Ṣahābah also demonstrates a dialectical relationship with the Iranian Revolution.
Paper short abstract:
Muslim India’s informal institutions found in Uttar Pradesh’s semi-rural districts comprise an Islamicate public sphere, distinct from the majoritarian publics--liberal, secular, or otherwise--that govern India’s public life and narratives about communal violence.
Paper long abstract:
Communal violence in the Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar district appears routine in media retellings. Rehearsed in reporters' commentaries and politicians' posturing, the story follows familiar trajectories of rumor and revenge between local Hindus and Muslims. Some of the commentators' explanations are correct: Muzaffarnagar's "little Gujarat" was years in the making. In the secular fascination with communal violence, however, the social fabric of Muslims' everyday experience and public culture is conveniently ignored. It seems in "post-communal" India Muslims and other religious minorities have a public presence only when the coercive forces of majoritarianism disrupt their lives. In the context of the violence at the end of summer 2013, I focus on everyday Muslim life in the semi-rural, industrial districts of Muzaffarnagar where I conducted fieldwork between 2008-2012. This locale has one of the highest concentrations of Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, comprised of agriculturalists, semi-skilled laborers, and businessmen from the lower levels of the Muslim classes. To paint a different portrait of Muslim responses to communal violence, I draw on fieldwork carried out in tea stalls, madarsas, kabob restaurants, print shops, and pan stands where mainly middle-aged Muslim men gather to discuss politics, debate literature and current news, gossip, tell jokes, and read the ubiquitous Urdu newspapers often laying around. I argue such informal institutions of India's outlying districts comprise an Islamicate public sphere for India's Muslim minorities distinct from the majoritarian regimes--liberal, secular or otherwise--that govern India's public life and narratives about communal violence.