Religious imagination in the making of public Muslims in a Mumbai slum

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article looks at how the objectification of religious imagination influences Muslim poor’s coping of their changing worldly realities in a Mumbai slum. It looks at the role of new religious intellectuals in addressing the shrinking Muslim presence in the public sphere in urban India through newer styles of religious leadership embedded in a broader understanding of the religious imagination itself. These new religious intellectuals among the Muslim poor I argue see the role of secular education coupled with a religious imagination as essential in order to protect one’s self interests as a Muslim yet be integral to a larger and diverse public. Islamic knowledge and behavioural conduct combined with secular education is hence seen as a way of fashioning the lives of the modern Muslim subject. By describing and analysing how universalistic principles of Islam have been realised in the local context of a Mumbai slum, this article illustrates how, embracing modernity emanating from Islamic values is seen as a way of refashioning the Muslim self.