Can ‘Om’ be an Islamic term? Translations, encounters, and Islamic discourse in vernacular South Asia

Abstract

This article aims at offering a critique of recent approaches to the study of vernacular Islamic literature in South Asia through examples taken from Islamic literature composed in Tamil. First, the article argues that many approaches tend to re-inscribe essentialised religious differences by assuming that specific religious meanings underlie the semantics of a given language. This tendency ignores that both Arabic as well as South Asian vernaculars were employed in multi-religious environments long before Islamic vernacular literature came to be composed in any of these languages. Second, the article seeks to challenge the assumption that the prime aim of vernacular literature was didactic, i.e., that it was composed for the sole purpose of educating a population largely ignorant of religious tenets in Islam. This has led scholars to overemphasize the constraints under which authors composed texts and to ignore the importance of aesthetics in the production of vernacular Islamic literature. Third, the article critiques the portrayal of vernacular Muslim authors as isolated individuals grappling with a non-Muslim environment. Rather, it suggests that many authors responded to other Muslims communicating in the same vernacular, forming a network of poets and texts following similar conventions. In conclusion, the article argues for understanding vernacular Islamic discourse in South Asia as expression of an ‘Indic’ Islam rather than of an uneasy encounter between Islam and Hinduism.