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India today exemplifies the making of an "ethnocracy," a polity in which the dominant ethnic group obtains political control and deploys the state apparatus to ethnicize territory and society. I illustrate the making of India's ethnocracy by documenting key political and policy practices of Narendra Modi's rule. I do this by offering evidence of this process by documenting: (1). the contest between the dominant Hindus and minority Muslims over territorial space and the public realm; (2). solidifying Hindutva ethno-nationalism; which builds on and consolidates; and (3). long-term political and economic stratification between Hindus and Muslims. However, the making of India's ethnocracy has not gone unchallenged. Therefore, I direct attention to the resistance mounted against India's ethnocratic turn in the institutional, political and social terrains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with two Islamist movements in India since 2011, this article contributes to a better understanding of how Muslim community leaders try to spearhead third front alliances with secular and religious minorities through discourses of shared political and economic victimhood and the provision of protection against the assertions of Hindu nationalists in an era of unprecedented Hindu vote consolidation. While such alliances exist, the paper analyzes a new trend within Muslim politics that promotes a political departure from the traditional patronage of the Indian National Congress (INC) and other low-caste and socialist parties, which have historically represented the Muslim masses. I then discuss the limitations of these third front leadership ambitions, whereby Islamist movements are seen as incompatible with gender equality and secular norms. Theoretically, the paper informs the academic debate on coalition-building processes within social movement theory (SMT), which has partially ignored the role of conservative religious actors in democratic as well as authoritarian systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muslim communities in modern Indian society are often seen through the lens of race and politics. The separate mechanisms of faith and secularism, which, as Judith Butler observes, may well be "a fugitive way" for certain kinds of "religion to survive", are meshed together with the politics of representation and counter-representation of Islam and Muslims in the framing of identities. From the Babri masjid demolition to the wake of Ram mandir bhoomi pujan, and the hijab controversy, religion and culture run the risk of being employed in disloyalty, as a threat, in an artistically compromised manner. This article will examine how the tensions between individual subjectivity and a communitarian adherence to culture and faith manifest themselves in the present-day situation in India, as they negotiate between the pull of a liberal individualist lifestyle and that of family and community—between speaking as an "I" and on behalf of a collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to unravel the idea, the history, the theological understanding and the socio-cultural influences on the idea of "Talaq" in general and "Instant Triple Talaq" in particular. The paper also unearths the possibilities of the misuse, misinterpretation and politicization of the concept which have taken place at various historical junctures. At empirical level, the paper attempts to draw the attention toward the perception and opinion of the Muslim women through the structured questionnaire regarding the Instant Triple Talaq and Triple Talaq Act enacted by the Government of India. The study focuses on how the existing power structure in the Muslim community and the deeply rooted cultural practices that in a way were antithetical to the basic Islamic beliefs have shaped the lives of Muslim women in India. The study does not find the Triple Talaq Act passed by Indian parliament as something constructive, rather regards it as interference on part of state institutions into the religious affairs of a particular community. The study finally draws a parallel between the literate and illiterate strata of Muslim women and their perception toward the Triple Talaq Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation gets a new momentum in India like many other countries, and the increasing social media penetration has a considerable contribution to it. Acknowledging misinformation's considerable impacts on Indian society as well as public health, this study analyzes 228 pieces of popular misinformation prevalent in India from 1 February to 11 April 2020. A thematic analysis explores six major themes of misinformation: health, religious, political, crime, entertainment, and miscellaneous. Health misinformation directly impacts the country's healthcare system and services, producing fake prescriptions, remedies, statistics, and predictions. The analysis further explores two types of religious misinformation: Misinformation based on spirituality and divinity that is less harmful, and misinformation based on religious politics and communalism that threatens social congruence. While Islamic misinformation is found more associated with spiritual misinformation that tries to champion Islam, Hindu misinformation is found more religiopolitical that mainly conveys vitriol against the Muslim minorities, promoting communal segregation and animosity. This study emphasizes a paradigm shift in the country's communication infrastructure, lack of digital literacy, inadequate anti-misinformation initiatives, and political ambience for a better understanding of the misinformation situation in India during the pandemic. The article concludes with some of its limitations related to the data source, thematization of misinformation, and data collection period. This study, identifying a few knowledge-gaps, invites more research as well, to understand the contents, sources, impacts, and other necessary aspects of COVID-19 misinformation in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an ethnographic focus on a Muslim village in rural West Bengal, this article explores how a group of women have come to defy gendered socio-cultural and locally rooted religious interpretations to become the bureaucratic and political gatekeepers within their community. The wider climate for Muslim men at this moment across India, the characteristics of bureaucratic spaces themselves and the perceived necessity of this kind of work for the most marginal are all identified as facilitating this shift. Yet in addition to these factors, this article will claim that the women themselves are wilfully utilising these encounters in order to become seen by the organs and actors of the local Indian state. It is not simple recognition they are after, nor to be considered as bureaucratic or political insiders, but rather to be seen on their own terms in diverse and context dependant ways that are ultimately of their choosing. As such, this shorkārī kāj or political work has become a central part of their daily lives and identities, to which it is suggested that their attributes and experiences as women may make them particularly well suited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between emotions, identity and work in the narratives of Muslim women in rural Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, India. The article uses an in-depth account of two families where all women engage in income generating work. The women experience complex challenges, struggles and negotiations, and they make remarkable decisions in resolution. The role their emotions play in their decisions articulates an entrepreneurial self that offers a newer interpretation of the relationship between emotions, identity and work. By detailing their struggles, negotiations and remarkable decisions, this article attempts to move towards a sociology of hope that marks the spirit of these women in overcoming the constraints in their everyday. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islamic law gives women shares in the estate of a deceased parent, husband, and certain other relatives. However, in India they rarely obtain the inheritance shares to which they are entitled. When the time comes, they typically either waive their inheritance rights or are prevented by their male co-heirs from accessing them. Those who assert a claim to their shares find themselves vilified by their natal kin and by society at large, as greedy, grasping, selfish, unwomanly and lacking in family feeling. They are often even ostracized by their brothers, sisters-in-law, and other family members. Drawing upon data from interviews conducted in Delhi in 2011, I explore this gap in India between Islamic law and actual practice, with specific reference to a Muslim daughter's right to inherit natal property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, India made the unprecedented move of listing 1.9 million people in its northeast state of Assam as illegal migrants from Bangladesh in a new National Register of Citizens before passing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which overtly discriminates against the country's Muslim minority. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, this paper investigates the reality of precarious citizenship under India's increasingly anti-migrant regime, particularly for Bengali-speaking Muslims. Going beyond the predominant notion that illegal migrants acquire documentary citizenship through fraudulent means after crossing the porous border between India and Bangladesh, this essay reveals a reverse scenario: those living with citizenship rights and in a regular social world are subjected to the gradual process of detection, detention and 'deportability' in India. This paper employs the concept of precarious citizenship to unravel this complex and oscillating world of legality and illegality, citizenship and noncitizenship, and the predicaments of life as a Bengali-speaking Muslim in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communal violence in India has become more frequent due to the unwanted interplay between religion and political manipulation, by which India has been affected many times. Communal violence has also been recognized as a significant social and public health problem, resulting in long-term human and economic costs. The dominant form of communal violence in India has involved the two communities, i.e. Hindus and Muslims. Post-violence studies worldwide have shown a short and long-term higher prevalence of mental health disorders. To the best of our knowledge, no earlier study has investigated the association between communal violence experience and self-rated psychological health in India. Thus, the current study was designed to provide valuable addition to the existing literature on mental stress among riot victims. This paper explores the association between mental health and socio-economic characteristics among riot victims based on a primary survey (N = 300 participants) conducted in two riots-affected districts of Uttar Pradesh in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Independent India has witnessed a surge of right-wing militant Hindu extremism since the 1980s. The long term political and ideological goal of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is to create a Hindu Rashtra through propagating Hindutva. To realize this goal, proponents of Hindutva radicalize youth and children with conservative and fictional thoughts which lead to Islamophobia. This paper examines the link between radicalization and spread of Hindutva discourse, and communal violence. It also surveys campaigns used by the VHP to prevent proselytism. The paper also analyses how RSS aims to rewrite textbooks and control education patterns and establish conservative schools to further its interests. Findings of the paper also indicate that governments have been either complicit or negligent while dealing with Muslim riot victims. Analysis of news article regarding communal violence involving Hindus and Muslims indicate that the media acts as an echo chamber and enable Hindutva and Islamophobia in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay focuses on the Indian migrant crisis in the context of the state's handling of the pandemic. It argues that the migrant situation in India pries open 'problem spaces' that, if attended to, reveal how many of the now normative solutions for governing and containing the virus are exceeded by bodies – of migrants in particular – that cannot be kept safe by solutions in place to check the contagion. The essay first raises questions about the unequal distribution of 'saveability' in the Indian context (but this can also apply to others). It asks who cannot be included in the frame of 'human life' that underlies the solutions offered for protecting lives in the pandemic. Second, the essay offers a description of the migrant crisis in India that has ensued in the pandemic. Following that description, the essay focuses on three problem-spaces or aporias that the pandemic has pried open and that call for a more politically complex, contextually sensitive, and humane response to the management of the virus: unequal temporalities, the dilemma of im/mobility, and the challenge of recording death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to investigate the genomic diversity and population structure in the Muslim community of Telangana, India, using 23 autosomal microsatellite genetic markers. We also examined genetic relatedness between Muslim and non-Muslim populations of India. A sample of 184 randomly selected unrelated healthy Muslim individuals from the Telangana state were included in this study. The genotyping of 23 autosomal STR markers included in PowerPlex® Fusion 6 C multiplex system (Promega)was done. A total of 273 alleles were observed in the studied population, and locus SE33 showed 37 observed alleles, which is the highest number of observed alleles among all the studied loci. Among all the studied loci the most polymorphic and discriminatory locus was SE33, with the values of polymorphic information content (PIC) = 9.411E–01 and power of discrimination (PD) = 9.865E–01. Observed heterozygosity ranged from 6.630E–01 (D22S1045) to 9.239E–01 (SE33). Discrimination power, exclusion power, matching probability and paternity index for all the studied loci were 1.00E + 00, 1.00E + 00, 2.01E–28, and 5.68E + 09, respectively. The studied Muslim population showed genetic relatedness with non-Muslim populations i.e. populations of central India, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh, suggesting the conversion of Hindus during the Muslim invasion. Neighbor-joining (NJ) tree and principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that the studied population showed genetic affinity with communities of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh states. The genetic data of this study may be useful for forensic, medical, and anthropological studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenal rise of Hindu nationalism in India has fostered a number of anti-Muslim campaigns, ranging from random enforcement of vegetarianism on beef-eating communities, to highly organised communal riots. This article explores one such strain of Hindu nationalist discursive politics called 'Love Jihad', a moral panic against the alleged seduction, marriage, forced conversion and trafficking of young Hindu girls by Muslim men. Against the backdrop of emerging urban modernities, which offers women exposure to education, romantic choices and inter-religious marriages, employment in urban labour economies, and opportunities to experiment with religious ideologies and sexualities, the authors analyse how the discourse of 'Love Jihad' was modified to act as a regulatory mechanism to control the choice and mobility of young urban women. This article examines the conceptualisation of 'Love Jihad' in multiple nationalist sites, in order to shed light on the ways in which right-wing organisations attempted to realign the urban public sphere in accordance with a gendered Hindu civil order. By drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the women's wings of two prominent Hindu nationalist organisations, the authors study a range of doctrinal, informal, practical, persuasive and coercive strategies used by nationalist women leaders to socialise young women into the ideology of perfect Hindu subjecthood; by laying its foundation in the dichotomy between security of the 'Self' (women uncorrupted by the fluidities of modern life as ideal, permissible and desirable urban citizens), versus the danger of the 'Other' (migrants, Muslims and other undesirable communities in urban public space). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neo-liberal reforms of the 1990s in India brought new modes of operation which made cities as the central nodes of the economy. The cities were now reconfigured as servicing hubs for the global market. The spatial nature of the city and the way of life also was transformed to match the other global cities which served as examples on which the Indian cities were modelled. In case of Hyderabad, this moment of transformation to a global city creates a critical tension between the futuristic imaginations of the city and the present. This tension is experienced spatially and temporally; while the new city was shaping itself as the Hitech city, the old city with its identity associated with the Muslim past was outside the development discourse. It is at this juncture that the Hyderabadi film emerges, speaking Deccani language, a language which has historical origins in the region. These films visualize the interaction between the old city and the new city through humour and satire. This paper attempts to examine the ways in which the city is brought alive on screen by the Deccani films and interrogate its politics. It attempts to understand the nature of the city realised on screen at the juncture of shift of economy to the neo-liberal model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author revisits her book, Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History (2013), to examine its central themes—status, rights and identity—in relation to political developments in India since 2014. The paper argues and provides evidence for, firstly, the greater consolidation of a jus sanguinis citizenship regime, with an attenuation of religion-neutral laws of citizenship; secondly, a shift from a rights-based conception of social citizenship to a contributory approach to welfare, now burdened with the requirement of a biometric identity; and, finally, the routinisation and normalisation of identitarian violence against Dalits and Muslims, rendering their citizenship even more precarious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses administrative reforms in India to identify the philosophical, cultural and ideological underpinnings of these reforms and their impacts. The study hypothesizes that despite differences in state ideologies, Indian leaders have followed the ‘democratic incremental approach of reform’, which has contributed significantly in achieving the continuity of the bureaucracy and ongoing development in India. There has been continuity in diverse administrative legacies in India. Muslim and British rulers modernized the ancient Indian district administration to serve their purposes while independent India takes pride in the revival of its ancient legacy. Before British rule, Indian rulers—Muslims and Hindus—maintained a semi-retainer bureaucracy; whereas the British adopted the philosophy of a mandarin bureaucracy. After independence, India replaced the British administrative philosophy of a mandarin bureaucracy with ‘the democratic philosophy of a semi-retainer bureaucracy’. Influenced by this philosophy, Indian leaders retained the inherited steel frame and made only incremental changes. As a result, Indian bureaucracy remains almost as strong as it was during the British era in terms of structural and procedural perspectives. Overall, the bureaucracy is still performing reasonably well in maintaining continuity of administration and, in the process, cultural integration of society, ongoing economic development and political stability in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is widely accepted as a key to decent employment, better health and development; however, in a region of large religious diversity it is necessary that all religious communities should have equal access to education. Thus, keeping in view significance of education in the overall development of a region the present study attempts to examine the access of Muslims to education in India's most populated state—Uttar Pradesh with about 200 million population and where Muslims constitute about one-fifth of the total population. Various indicators of education, such as literacy rate, completed level of education, gross attendance ratio, dropout rates, gross enrolment ratio and enrolment by types of institution have been analysed to examine the access of Muslims to education vis-à-vis other religious communities in the state. The study is based on secondary data obtained from Census of India 2011 and National Sample Survey Office (71st Round, NSS 2014). The results revealed that the significant disparities exist in access to education for Muslims and other religious communities in the state. Muslims have emerged as the worst sufferers as far as their access to education is concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the making of colonial modernity, the newspaper, novel and theatre were three fundamental implements for the development of a bourgeois public sphere. Nevertheless, their introduction led to significant alterations in modes of inter-communal social contestation. This article traces three separate instances of the outbreak and prevention of Parsi-Muslim communal riots in colonial India sparked by three representations of Muslim prophets - pictorial, narrative and theatrical - within the city of Bombay in 1851, 1874 and 1891. Through this analysis, the article traces the embedded predilection within colonialism's "secular" juridical mechanisms towards majoritarian religious sensitivities. It argues against the equation of Indian secularism with substantive values, reintroducing questions of hegemony and demography to normative analyses of secularism. Secularism's legal machinery thereby emerges as neither dispassionate nor independent of the epistemological claims of the majority, exposing the limits of current views of Indian secularism as distinctive from its western counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christian missionaries working in India in the nineteenth century made numerous important contributions to European and North American understandings of Islam. One such contribution was theDictionary of Islamcompiled by the Anglican missionary Thomas Patrick Hughes, who was serving in Peshawar on the border between British India and Afghanistan. Drawing upon sources such as collections of Hadith, he provided both brief definitions and some longer analyses of a wide range of aspects of Muslim beliefs, practices and history. However, his compilation was not entirely based on textual sources, but was also informed by daily contact with Muslims in and around Peshawar, particularly Maulavi Ahmad of Tangi. Hughes combined his interest in defining Islam with a passion for exploring and explaining Afghan culture and politics to his readership in Britain. Although situated on ‘the edges of empire’, Hughes nonetheless found himself at the centre of world events as the intrigue between Britain and Russia resulted in the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Although located in what some considered a minor province on the periphery of the Muslim world, he nonetheless produced a major reference work on Islam that is still in print. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is an assumption that nationalist movements which are constituted by an ethnic majority are hostile towards all minorities, so how does one account for such a movement's affection for one minority and hostility for another? In this paper I explore this question using the case study of a Hindu nationalist movement in India called Hindutva which simultaneously expresses hostility towards Muslims and affection for another minority known as the Parsis. I argue in societies that imagine themselves as plural there is a type of nationalist thought premised upon the existence of both exemplary and threatening minorities. An exemplary minority is imagined as loyal and acculturating, illustrating both how a minority should relate to the majority and why other minorities are threatening. While an historical argument enables the distinction between the majority and minorities, a plural hierarchy of minorities is enabled by mythical stories of coexistence and conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the manner in which over the past few years, the major political parties in the largest Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have calibrated their policies with the objective of wooing Muslim voters. It examines the factors which shaped Muslim electoral behaviour in the general election of 2014 to the Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Indian Parliament) and how the electoral arithmetic was transformed in the run-up to this election. By analysing institutional, political and intra-community factors, it explores the reasons for the declining importance and representation of Muslims in the electoral arena of Uttar Pradesh. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contends that Salim al-tavarikh, a didactic genealogical history of the Arains published in 1919, was a sophisticated discursive means of claiming high social status for the community in the historical context of colonial Punjab. The interpretive techniques adopted in this text for making these claims go against the grain of existing scholarly literature on social mobility and reformist Islamic thought in modern South Asia. First, it constructed a genealogical history which traced the colonial Arains’ origin to early Islamic Arabia by claiming that they were descendants of Arab soldiers who had participated in the Umayyad general Muhammad bin Qasim’s early eighth century conquest of Sindh. As the progeny of these valorous Arab-Muslim conquerors, the colonial Arains were a distinctive Muslim community with innately Islamic attributes. Second, drawing upon this inherent Muslimness, it developed a reformist perspective tailored to the Arains’ political classification as one of Punjab’s elite ‘agriculturalists.’ It recast the Arains’ adherence to an inheritance system based on custom and Arain peasant women’s mobility as practices supported by the Quran. In this way, this text upheld the Arains’ ‘true’ Muslim identity while consolidating their agriculturalist status. This narrative also contested contemporary representations of the community as ‘bad’ Muslims of ‘lowly’ indigenous origin.ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHERCopyright of South Asian History & Culture is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2014 Lok Sabha elections witnessed a significant shift in the political spectrum of the Bodo Territorial Autonomous District (BTAD) in Assam, with non-Bodos voting en masse for an independent candidate, a former United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) militant who was backed by a collective of non-Bodo organisations. Using the elections as a focal point, this paper aims to explore the larger political dynamics, political mobilisation and shifting alliances within a framework of contentious politics and collective action that unfurled during the elections and eventually led to an episode of targeted violence against the Muslim community in BTAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Census is considered to be a scientific exercise. However, it leaves a deep impact on religious and ethnic identities. This is because through census enumeration not only are boundaries of communities fixed, but also actual size and growth are known. This adds a new sense to the identities of the religious communities in the sphere of democratic politics. In India, the census was started around 1872 during the British rule, seven decades after the first census was held in Great Britain in 1801. The question on religion was included right from the first Indian census, unlike the British census which only included it in 2001. This paper shows that the inclusion of the question on religion, and the consequent publication of data on size and growth of population by religion during British rule, invoked sharp communal reactions. The demographic issues found a core place in the communal discourse that continued in independent India. The paper argues that the demographic data on religion was one of the important factors that raised Hindu–Muslim consciousness and shaped the Hindu and Muslim relationship in both colonial and postcolonial India. As a result, several demographic myths have found a place in the communal discourse shaping the political imagination of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on problems of democracy and nation-building in Pakistan. Topics include Pakistan was established in 1947 as the state for the Muslims of India; Pakistan has failed to stabilise as a Muslim/Islamic democracy while in the regional and international arena it enjoys the unenviable reputation of being a sanctuary for terrorists and terrorist networks; and Jinnah had kept the idea of Pakistan vague, using Islamic identity as the main reason for a separate state outside India.

This article examines the dissonance between Indian secularism in theory and secularism in practice for India's largest religious minority of Muslims. Marginalised and discriminated against in everyday life, India's Muslims are frequently constructed simply as victims without recourse to agency. This article challenges this narrative by documenting how Muslims living in Varanasi in North India actively sought to realise their citizenship and a sense of meaningful participation in society. The empirical insights illustrate that despite the failure of state secularism to protect the Muslim minority from discrimination and facilitate their realisation of equal citizenship, these Muslims did not reject the principle of secularism nor seek an alternative. To the contrary, the rhetoric of secularism offered spaces of opportunity through which Muslims could become political, challenge normative narratives and articulate themselves as citizens. The article develops an understanding of multiple and plural Muslim citizenship strategies that are enacted simultaneously across different spaces and scales within the state and society, where notions of the self and citizenship are always in the process of becoming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ways in which particular individuals or groups are cast as problematically other at certain times by exploring the relationship between empathy and antipathy – identified as products of ‘resonance’, or a certain kind of responsiveness to embodied encounters with others and also to concerns, ideas and discourses that originate locally or from elsewhere. Consequent effects on subject-formation and affordances of social possibilities are explored through an intensive focus on one Muslim man. The notion of a ‘laminated subjectivity’ is presented and elucidated. The paper draws on ethnography conducted in a Tamil town and is set against the backdrop of Hindu–Muslim relations in India. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

More than 4,000 families of the Muslim community in the state of Gujarat in India have been facing internal displacement after a communal riot broke out in 2002. Many of them have also been facing bereavement and trauma due to loss of family members and/or sexual assault during the riot. Using innovative qualitative methods, this study explored the experiences of trauma reactions, social suffering, and healing among the children of these families in the Panchmahal district of Gujarat. Findings show the presence of experiences of trauma reactions (trauma specific fear and posttraumatic stress symptoms, such as avoidance and sleep disturbance) and social suffering (loneliness, separation from loved ones, and deprivation) among these children. Findings also show the experiences of healing (support through relatedness, guided by religious values, and harmonious thoughts and experiences) among children, as facilitated by their socio-religious values and the emotionally supportive environment they are receiving at their school. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of further psycho-social care needed by children such as these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The partition of the Indian subcontinent not only created new state boundaries, but also forged or altered cultural identities. It left a lasting legacy in Sylhet, a Bangla-speaking, Muslim majority district of Assam, which was partitioned in July 1947. Like other partitioned groups in the subcontinent, Sylhetis too are spread across international borders and boundaries, in this case in Bangladesh as well as India. This essay shows how modern state-dictated contours of political geography more often than not create spaces of anxiety and conflict where multiple identities, mostly fluid and contested, emerge, dwell and play politics. Beginning with the colonial history of Sylhet, particularly since 1874 when the district was separated from Bengal Presidency and attached to Assam, the essay moves across 1947 to map the process by which the distinctly fused colonial Sylheti identity stood re-constructed in post-colonial India. Divided into three sections, it begins with the political history of colonial Sylhet until referendum and partition, followed by a contemporary account of the community, its middle class in particular. The third and final part of the essay attempts to map the trajectory of Sylheti identity discourse in colonial and contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores how the ideals of nationalism and Islam intersect by looking at the life and career of Mohamed Ali, a leading Muslim political figure, scholar, journalist and poet of the early twentieth-century India. Mohamed Ali, one of the leaders of the Khilafat movement, has often been seen as someone given to passionate politics and religious rhetoric. He was undoubtedly different from many of his contemporaries since he refused to act in a unilinear, ‘politically correct’ fashion in the pursuit of the idea of a nation. Yet, a close study of Mohamed Ali's career reveals that contexts and circumstances defined most of his politics, ranging from his association with Gandhi during the Khilafat movement to his political uproar over the issue of separate electorates. Through his public career, he constantly juggled his claims to best represent Muslim interests while simultaneously also proclaiming his love for the nation, although mostly in the form of anti-colonialism. These associations were often presented in a variety of subtle combinations rather than in the form of clear either–or choices. This essay examines Mohamed Ali's attempts at reconciling Islam with nationalism and how he ultimately defined his political preferences, refusing to align himself with either pole in favour of a more conciliatory path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partition and the legacy of the two-nation theory have shaped the history of the subcontinent. The division of two nation-states into Hindus and Muslims had formalized this divide in a way that one religious community dominated the other, that is, the Hindus in India and the Muslims in Pakistan. The partition of the subcontinent along religious lines with accompanying communal violence produced a politics that was reproduced consecutively in the day-to-day lives of religious minorities of the region. In this article, I discuss how Hindus came to be constituted as minorities in the state of Bangladesh, in the context of its Constitution, legal structure, demography and ideology. It charts the trajectory of their journey as a minority in Bangladesh, the politics of minority vote banks, its interplay with electoral politics, the intricacy of property laws and the reasons for their resultant exodus into India. In describing the growing vulnerability of Hindus, I locate their responses in the context of present-day national, regional and global politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent writing on religion in Gujarat has often confused political rhetoric with common religious belief and practice. Thus, religious categories have become caricatures standing for sociological realities and totalised worldviews. In this scheme, ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ are supposed to believe different things which ensure that they see and act in the world quite differently. In this paper, I examine the narratives of blame that emerged after the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat. The ethnography suggests that although religious identity plays a role in the way blame is cast, people of different religious communities also use common frames of logic and their shared experiences of shock and alienation to explain catastrophe. The religious reasoning of blame narratives is therefore shown to have a broader cultural existence outside the boundaries of particular religious identities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the gendered experience of the state for the Muslim survivors of violence in Gujarat in 2002. Most of the scholarship on the working of the state after communal violence in post-independence India concentrates on the anxiety to re-instate the 'myth of the state', through policies that establish its respectability after violence. The emphasis is on understanding the mechanics of the state, its 'order making' function. Very little attention has been paid to understanding the lived experience of the modern state from a gendered perspective. What studies there have been tend to focus on the internal power structures within nationalist discourses, the patriarchal nature of state assertion, and point to forgotten narratives within the meta-narratives of violence and suffering. There is very little evidence examining how men and women experienced the same process differently, or how they make sense of their experiences, in a context where the lines between order and chaos, legitimacy and illegitimacy and trust and betrayal were constantly being redrawn. In examining memories of loss and suffering, this paper shows the contrasting and shifting ways in which the state is experienced, imagined and granted legitimacy by men and women from the margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is based on my engagement with the Sindhi-speaking Hindu minority of Sindh that migrated to India in and around 1947, when the province of Sindh became a part of Pakistan. It privileges therefore a specific religious group and its response and negotiation to a specific moment. My current research on Sindhi-speaking Muslims along the border interrogates the classification of 'Sindhis' as a spatially fixed identity, and revisits the state-endorsed premises of irrevocability and border-formation. It is essential to examine three generations of Sindhis in India, post-1947, in order to understand whether Partition persists for example, among those who go to Sindhi-medium schools and live in erstwhile refugee camps at Pimpri or Ulhaasnagar; among those who do business in at least three continents of the world; among those who manage clothes and electronics shops in the bustling markets of Indian cities; and among the very few who write in Sindhi and worry about their language, the only marker of their identity in India, and who have only Sindhi Muslims across the border to share these anxieties with, and those who speak English or Hindi and would have nothing to do with Sindh or Sindhis. The issues tie up with diasporic studies, border studies and identity politics in contemporary India. The study would also have to be taken up by a host of scholars situated in different parts of India who could examine how a linguistic minority such as the Sindhis negotiate in different regions and the specific forms of disjunctures that continue to take place as a result of Partition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the emergence of violent child identity politics in a communally sensitive urban slum in Hyderabad, a city in southern India. My ethnographic landscape is Sultanpur, a Muslim-dominated ghetto in the northern quarters of Hyderabad, which has been marked by decades of hostilities between local Hindus and Muslims. These tensions had everyday and extreme manifestations (ranging from quotidian expressions of symbolic violence to rioting, looting and bomb blasts) which increased the vulnerabilities of Muslim male children in the slums; the latter being humiliated by ordinary passers-by in times of peace, and at other times being attacked by rioting mobs. To counter their victimhood and organise their own retribution, sections of local boys in Sultanpur, aged between 9 and 14 years, co-ordinated themselves into child squads (bacchon ke fauj). These child vigilantes patrolled the slum borders and common public places, constantly establishing a disciplinary control over fragile aspects of ghetto life. For example, the male child squads not only aggressively prevented members of other communities from entering the slum, they also monitored the movement of Sultanpur-wallahs, often physically assaulting local women who were caught having affairs with Hindu men. In my paper I show how the power, presence and practices of these child squads upturned traditional structures of male and female authority, contested conventional notions of male childhood in a volatile urban space, and sustained nascent masculinities within the moral and social economy of impoverished Muslim male children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Hindu temples in Hyderabad, a city in a territory ruled by Muslims from the fourteenth century until the 1948 incorporation of the princely state of Hyderabad into independent India, were resources in a multi-religious landscape, institutions that reflected the political power of their patrons and often performed functions for the state. Temples were built and managed as part of the Indo-Muslim or Mughlai urban court economy in Hyderabad, and temple patronage reflected the shifting patterns of prominence as one high-ranking Hindu noble or official replaced another and secured state support for major temples. Rather than defending Hyderabad state's policies and practices with respect to Hindu institutions and events, this article shows the development and implementation of an Indo-Muslim ruling tradition as Muslim rulers interacted with non-Muslims to become part of a distinctively South Asian tradition of secularism or pluralism. Rather than syncretism or synthesis, I emphasize 'translation', appropriate to the time and place, as the concept best able to capture the pluralism of India's historical Indo-Muslim cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the status of Indian Muslims in Malaysia from a historical perspective and its definition as a minority ethnic group. It also highlights the political reality of the Indian Muslims, particularly as a smaller and relatively insignificant minority group in comparison with the numerically larger Malays as well as the non-Muslim Chinese and Hindu Indians. It describes the social interactions of the various ethnic groups in Malaysia and the Indian Muslims as a minority fighting for their identity and survival. It discusses the “position” of the Indian Muslims with particular reference to Article 152 of the Malaysian Constitution which states that a Malay person is defined as one speaking the Malay language, practicing Malay customs, and following the religion of Islam. The great contributions of Indian Muslims are also elaborated. This inquiry highlights the reality facing the Indian Muslims in Malaysia today: they have no political power but remain a marginalized minority in the midst of Malay political domination and Chinese economic hegemony. Indeed they are facing the grim prospect of permanent bifurcation of their identity—some are slowly but surely being assimilated into the Malay cultural milieu, mainly through marriage and for political expediency, on the one hand and others stubbornly resist this cultural absorption, and resiliently retain and preserve their ethnic traditions and purity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the 2000s, confirmed polio cases in India have been increasingly localised in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar, especially amongst Muslim children. Muslims have also been at the sharp end of the Pulse Polio Initiative (PPI) and the associated 'Underserved Strategy' designed to counter civilian resistance to the programme. Our critique of the PPI draws on long-term research in rural UP and focuses on the programme's socio-political implications. We discuss popular rumours about polio vaccine and official responses to resistance. Taking a longer term view of top-down single-issue public health programmes, we argue that Muslims in western UP, as a marginalised minority, have good reason to be suspicious of the PPI. Moreover, the PPI arguably reflects the agendas of global funders, not the priorities of local communities. Villagers - Hindu and Muslim alike - have repeatedly criticised government health services for failing to deal with the health issues that worry them most. Their concerns echo other critiques of the PPI, particularly the diversion of resources from other health-related activities that could address the social determinants of health and health inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research has implied that social capital functions as an unqualified 'public good', enhancing governance, economic performance, and quality-of-life. Scholars of disaster have extended this concept to posit that social capital provides non-excludable benefits to whole communities after major crises. Using qualitative methods to analyse data from villages in Tamil Nadu, India following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, this article demonstrates that high levels of social capital simultaneously provided strong benefits and equally strong negative externalities, especially to those already on the periphery of society. In these villages, high levels of social capital reduced barriers to collective action for members of the uur panchayats (hamlet councils) and parish councils, speeding up their recovery and connecting them to aid organizations, but at the same time reinforced obstacles to recovery for women, Dalits, migrants, and Muslims. These localized findings have important implications for academic studies of social capital and policy formation for future disasters and recovery schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the issue of community and nation-making in a relatively less explored region of colonial India, Bihar. Although engaging with the existing literature on the theme, it looks into new sources including those in Urdu. The exploration finds that considerably large sections of Muslims were firmly and consistently opposed to the communal separatist politics of the Muslim League in the last days of the empire. Their adherence was to the principle of composite nationalism (muttahidah qaumiyat) and was articulated through the Imarat-e-Shariah and the Muslim Independent Party (MIP), whose essential ideological affiliation was with the Congress. This affiliation was manifested most clearly during and after the Congress ministry (1937-1939). The Muslim League's victory in 1946 elections of Bihar was far from inevitable. The 'Rajendra Prasad Papers', Urdu sources, besides other archival accounts, however, clearly suggest that the Congress refused to extend necessary cooperation to those Muslim leaders/political formations (religious/secular and biradri based, most of them belonging to the Congress itself) which were opposed to the idea of communal separatism. Rising assertion of the majoritarian communalism of organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha/RSS and the considerable communalization of the lower strata of the Congress was no less significant factor, which is amply testified by the archival documents (like intelligence reports and official correspondences) of 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing attention is being paid to the heterogeneous identity of Indian South Africans. This article contributes to this literature by highlighting the distinct migratory history of Gujarati South Africans and the importance these histories have in perceptions of community identity. It traces key features of the early Gujarati migratory process, the ways in which Gujarati identities have been reconfigured over the past century, the relationship between Gujarati Hindus and Muslims, Gujarati mobility, how Gujaratis fit into the broader Indian population and how Gujarat is imagined within the diaspora in the contemporary moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diu, unlike many ex-Portuguese colonies in India, preserves a variety of cultural and historical edifices of many communities. While impressive churches create landmarks and Portuguese houses give the narrow lanes and urban and village squares a Mediterranean flavour, the legacies of Hindus, Muslims, and Zoroastrians are also evident in the island. In the authors' ongoing project of recording the historic remains of Diu to provide a comprehensive study of the history, architecture, and urban development of the island, papers on the earliest mosque, the fort, and the town have appeared in this journal. The present article explores the island to show how Diu has preserved its rich and diverse culture from the thirteenth century to the present. Starting with the pre-Portuguese Muslim remains on the coast near the town we then trace the ancient road - with wheel-marks engraved in the rock - leading to Fudam, where the church of Our Lady of Remedies stands. In Fudam's vicinity, near the coast, is the Gangeśvara rock-temple dedicated to Siva, and near the temple are other Hindu remains and the two Zoroastrian Towers of Silence (dakhma), one of which is well-preserved and provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the design and construction of dakhmas. Further west, we go to the shrine of Pīr Ḥabash Baba (the name indicates Abyssinian origin) revered by Muslims. Finally, at the west of the island, the fishing village of Vanakbara is explored, with its shady urban square, the Jama'at khana (mosque) of the Khoja Isma'īlīs, and the Church of Our Lady of Mercy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Babon Gaji is a curious god. He is avowedly a Muslim, and the icons that represent him seek to capture his 'Muslim-ness' conspicuously in their attire, not to mention the name itself (Gaji = Ghazi = Muslim warrior-monk) and local lore. Yet he is worshipped by Brahmin Hindu priests who are equally conspicuous in flaunting their Hindu-Brahmin identity. There are no stories about the Gaji ever having been a Hindu or having had anything more than an intellectual interest in Hinduism. He remains, thus, in his afterlife a Muslim; yet, he receives worship through Brahmin priests. Both Hindus and Muslims come to him in large numbers today, in search of a cure for their afflictions. Local accounts place the origins of his shrine at Tajpur, South 24 Parganahs a little over 100 years ago, yet, no account of either the cult or the shrine - to the best of my knowledge - exists in the colonial archive. Neither are there any known written accounts outside the colonial archive that are more than a couple of decades old. For the historian of colonial medicine in the region, therefore, the Gaji presents a difficult challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand why and how young Muslim women pursue sexual relationships in the urban bustees (slums) of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. I discuss how girls in heterosexual romantic relationships decide where, when and how to have sex, and the importance of class discourses and popular Bollywood culture in this decision-making process. Premarital sex is haram, or a forbidden act in Islam, and I will describe how girls in this research negotiate their Muslim identity whilst pursuing sexual relations with their boyfriends. Sex before marriage is also socially unacceptable in the bustee, and throughout this paper I show why young women negotiate various social risks to pursue sexual relationships. I demonstrate that girls are not overtly challenging the normative discourses of sex, gender arrangements and religious expectations in public spaces. Rather, they manipulate the norms of the 'good Muslim girl' in public in order to maintain sexual relationships with their boyfriends in private. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The genetic structure, affinities, and diversity of the 1 billion Indians hold important keys to numerous unanswered questions regarding the evolution of human populations and the forces shaping contemporary patterns of genetic variation. Although there have been several recent studies of South Indian caste groups, North Indian caste groups, and South Indian Muslims using Y-chromosomal markers, overall, the Indian population has still not been well studied compared to other geographical populations. In particular, no genetic study has been conducted on Shias and Sunnis from North India. Aim: This study aims to investigate genetic variation and the gene pool in North Indians. Subjects and methods: A total of 32 Y-chromosomal markers in 560 North Indian males collected from three higher caste groups (Brahmins, Chaturvedis and Bhargavas) and two Muslims groups (Shia and Sunni) were genotyped. Results: Three distinct lineages were revealed based upon 13 haplogroups. The first was a Central Asian lineage harbouring haplogroups R1 and R2. The second lineage was of Middle-Eastern origin represented by haplogroups J2*, Shia-specific E1b1b1, and to some extent G* and L*. The third was the indigenous Indian Y-lineage represented by haplogroups H1*, F*, C* and O*. Haplogroup E1b1b1 was observed in Shias only. Conclusion: The results revealed that a substantial part of today's North Indian paternal gene pool was contributed by Central Asian lineages who are Indo-European speakers, suggesting that extant Indian caste groups are primarily the descendants of Indo-European migrants. The presence of haplogroup E in Shias, first reported in this study, suggests a genetic distinction between the two Indo Muslim sects. The findings of the present study provide insights into prehistoric and early historic patterns of migration into India and the evolution of Indian populations in recent history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper connects the historic consolidation of corporate Muslim identities at the national level in India with the narration of local identities in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood in South Delhi. The discussion is based on interviews with women and men living in the predominantly Muslim area of Zakir Nagar in Delhi. Residents often spoke about the existence of a “Muslim mahol” (social environment or culture), that existed in their neighborhood. However, the way that this sense of “Muslim-ness” was constructed varied and was differently privileged, depending on the social position of the narrator. For middle-class respondents in particular, the Muslim character of the neighborhood was listed as a priority. As well, the way religious identity was privileged was different for women and men. Therefore, although increasing feelings of marginalization and insecurity amongst Muslims can be connected to the construction of the locality and localized identities, the ways in which religious identity is described and privileged must also be looked at in relation to a host of other identifications including class, gender and regional affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gujarat pogrom of 2002 is evidence of a profound crisis in India's democracy. Samuel P. Huntington's influential thesis of the 'clash of civilizations,' according to which the world is torn between democratic western values and threatening Islamic values, gives no help in explaining the situation, since the threatening values of the Hindu Right derive largely from European origins and are being used to threaten innocent Muslim civilians. I argue that the real 'clash of civilization' is the clash within every modern society between those who are prepared to live with people who differ, on terms of equal respect, and those who seek the comfort of a single 'pure' ethno-religious ideology. At a deeper level, the 'clash' is internal to each human being, as fear and aggression contend against compassion and respect. Policy-makers eager to promote the victory of respect over violence can learn from the case of India, where a wise institutional structure and a genuinely free press are major assets in resisting the call to hate. On the other hand, India's current lack of emphasis on critical thinking in the schools, and its lack after Gandhi's death of a public culture of compassion to counter the Hindu Right's culture of humiliated, warlike masculinity, sound warning notes for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the cultural and economic strategies of educated but un/under-employed young Muslim men aged between 20 and 34 in a village in western Uttar Pradesh, north India. Drawing on Connell's gender theory, the paper demonstrates how economic and political forces shape Muslim young men's strategies. The paper distinguishes between 'school-educated' men, some of whom had studied in madrasahs for long periods, and the 'madrasah-educated'. Concentrating on school-educated men, we discuss their perceptions of education, and how these relate to their search for a respectable masculinity and what they regard as 'good work'. We also show how uneducated Muslim young men with alternative visions of education criticise the strategies of their educated peers. We use this account of Muslim young men's practices to emphasise the value of a culturally sensitive political economy approach to the analysis of threatened masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]