Poetry of Belonging: Muslim Imaginings of India, 1850–1950, by Ali Khan Mahmudabad

Abstract

This book by Ali Khan Mahmudabad, which explores the spaces of Urdu poetry from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, comes at a critical time in the history of the Indian nation state. This is a moment when the idea of India as a pluralistic nation and society, particularly in terms of the place of Muslims within it, is under severe threat. It is thus a timely reminder of how Muslims, but also Hindus, used Urdu poetry and its performance in the mushaira, to define India and express their belonging to it outside the narrow framework of the nation state. The vehicle of poetry allowed them to inflect India, as well as the Muslim community, with a local flavour that was at the same time located in a much broader transnational framework. While several scholars have made this particular argument before, few have focused so extensively on Urdu poetry...