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.