South Asian Muslims’ interactions with Arabian Islam until the 1990s

Abstract

Christophe Jaffrelot’s chapter highlights the polyvocal exchanges between Arabia and South Asia contributing to the making of the Indian Muslim Civilization. Tracing a historical path starting from the 1857-59 mutiny in colonial India, the chapter draws out the effects of the fall of the Mughal empire and the repression of the Mutiny on the reinforcement of ties between Arabian centers of Islam and Indian Muslims. It insists upon the mutuality of influences between the two in the flourishing of the Muslim cosmopolis. The chapter goes on to present the visions of a new Islamic Republic harbored by the promoters of Pakistan and the failed effort to build a trend-setting model of an Islamic State for the Muslim world. The historical progression of the chapter ultimately moves to examine the Arabization of Islam in Pakistan under President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq through his Islamization Policy and the rapprochement with the Gulf monarchies following the Afghan jihad explaining thus, the ‘gulfization’ of South Asian Islam.