Hindu-Muslim Research Articles

Religious proximity and misinformation: Experimental evidence from a mobile phone-based campaign in India

We investigate how religion concordance influences the effectiveness of preventive health campaigns. Conducted during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in two major Indian cities marked by Hindu–Muslim tensions, we randomly assigned a representative sample of slum residents to receive either a physician-delivered information campaign promoting health-related preventive practices, or uninformative control messages on their mobile phones. Messages, introduced by a local citizen (the sender), were cross-randomized to start with a greeting signaling either a Hindu or a Muslim identity, manipulating religion concordance between sender and receiver. We found that doctor messages increased compliance with recommended practices and beliefs in their efficacy. Our findings suggest that the campaign’s impact is primarily driven by shared religion between sender and receiver, leading to increased message engagement and compliance with recommended practices. Additionally, we observe that religion concordance helps protect against misinformation.

The Perpetuation of Muslim–Hindu Divide in British India Through the (Ab)Use of Historical Memory

This article seeks to highlight the extent to which recounting historical narratives can determine the nature of relations between racial and ethnic groups, through examining the case of Muslims and Hindus in British India. Throughout the 19th century, the process of the religious communalization of the subcontinent was set in motion, which ultimately led to the bifurcation of the local society into two self-conscious, mutually antagonistic groups: a Hindu majority versus a Muslim minority. This study argues that such schism would not have taken place without the instrumentalization of a colonially ‘constructed’ past by Hindu communalists who, in the process of mobilizing their co-religionists through mythmaking and a hostile discourse fraught with subjectively interpreted historical facts, alienated the members of the other group. This article also underscores that besides imperial scholars, Hindutva activists should bear the historical responsibility for the divide.

QURANIC INFLUENCES ON THE FABLES OF PREMCHAND AND KHADIJA MASTOOR

Premchand is a reliable fiction writer of Urdu. In his fictions, every subject of life is presented with all its atmosphere. There is a deep influence of Quranic influences, teachings and verses on his fictions. Quran is also presented in the fictions of Khadija Mastoor. Majeed's verses and teachings have a deep influence. His stories portray the modern era too. There are mentions of Quranic verses, teachings, hints, events and messengers of Allah in their stories. The fusion of Hindu Muslim culture in the fictions of Khadija Mastoor and Premchand also keeps the reader engrossed.

Reasons and Socio-Political Implications of Emergence of Terrorism Naxalism in India

The seeds of terrorism in India were sown during the British rule. As a result of the divide and rule policy of the British, Hindu Muslim communalism started at the time of independence and grew exponentially thereafter. India and Pakistan have fought four wars since the first war for the possession of Kashmir during the partition of India and Pakistan. Pakistan started trying hard politically to harm India. As a result of torture by terrorists in the terror-prone areas, the government system became very weak, the dissatisfaction with the government increased, the sense of nationalism among a section of the people was weakened, while the anti-national mentality was created in a section of the people, the terrorists got the necessary socio-political environment to spread their influence.

Reasons and Socio-Political Implications of Emergence of Terrorism Naxalism in India

The seeds of terrorism in India were sown during the British rule. As a result of the divide and rule policy of the British, Hindu Muslim communalism started at the time of independence and grew exponentially thereafter. India and Pakistan have fought four wars since the first war for the possession of Kashmir during the partition of India and Pakistan. Pakistan started trying hard politically to harm India. As a result of torture by terrorists in the terror-prone areas, the government system became very weak, the dissatisfaction with the government increased, the sense of nationalism among a section of the people was weakened, while the anti-national mentality was created in a section of the people, the terrorists got the necessary socio-political environment to spread their influence.

Quality of Life of Hindu and Muslim Females – An Investigation

To investigate the effects of community residential area and employment on quality of life of females quality of life scale constructed and standardised by Sharma and nasreen 2014 and a self made personal information inventory were administered on a sample of 200 married females residing in rural and urban areas of Saran district of Bihar. The is range of married females was from 30 to 50 years. Comparison of escorts on quality of life of different groups and sub groups revealed that Hindu Muslim enjoy better quality of life then Muslim females. Urban females enjoy better quality of life then rural females irrespective of community. Employed females enjoy better quality of life then unemployed females irrespective of community.

This World and the “Other”: Muslim Identity and Politics on the Indo-Bangladesh Border

This article investigates the “othering” of Muslims in two Northeast Indian states: Assam and Tripura, in a region known for its ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity, and long history of militancy and civil unrest. Northeast Indian politics thrives on disagreement between “Us” and “Them” and tensions over illegal migration, drawing on overlapping or intersecting frames of “othering.” This study asks why and how the political “othering” of Muslims persists, and why the religious frame, or the Hindu–Muslim divide, is more salient in some parts of the region than in others. Drawing on fieldwork on the Indian side of the Indo-Bangladesh border in Tripura and southern Assam, historical records and contemporary print media archives, this study compares the role of Hindu–Muslim contention in the politics of the two neighboring states and finds reproduction of the Hindu–Muslim divide in Assam and resistance to Muslim “othering” in Tripura. The theoretical contribution of this article is to confront the concept of “othering” with colonial and post-colonial frameworks of representation to understand how contemporary non-Western “worlds of difference” capitalize on, reproduce and resist vestiges of colonial representations.

The Indian Muslim Salariat and The Moral and Political Economies of Usury Laws in Colonial India, 1855–1914

Abstract This article examines the long-term response of the Indian Muslim salariat to the lifting of usury laws in British India in 1855. The salariat were a group of urban professionals and landed gentry in north India who emerged after the uprising of 1857. They espoused a self-conscious brand of Islamic modernism, a central feature of which was a reinterpretation of Islamic traditions pertaining to ‘rent on money’ (interest/usury). Hitherto, Islamic legal rules authorizing interest/usury transactions had been context-dependent, but, motivated by the colonial state’s abrogation of usury caps and a critique of prevailing Islamic legal norms, the salariat articulated a context-free interpretation of interest/usury in which the two were made distinct. Henceforth, interest transactions among Muslims were acceptable, but ‘usurious’ moneylending, conflated with ‘Hindu’ moneylending, was condemned. This pro-interest, anti-usury programme frequently fused Islamic exegesis with readings from European political economy. In turn, the salariat crafted a vernacular political-cum-moral economy that they sought to propagate among the Muslim masses. Nevertheless, by 1914 the salariat had largely disavowed this programme, convinced that the colonial state’s revocation of usury laws had produced a Hindu–Muslim wealth gap. Now a new conception of an ‘Islamic’ economy, in which all interest was anathema, materialized.

Orientalism’s Hinduism, Orientalism’s Islam, and the Twilight of the Subcontinental Imagination

Using the figure of the ethnic Pathan/Pashtun as a trope in South Asian culture, this essay provides a genealogical account of the modern emergence of Hindu–Muslim “religious” conflicts played along the lines of nation-thinking in the Indian subcontinent. This modern phenomenon begins in the late 18th century, with the orientalist transcriptions of a vast conglomerate of diverse Indic faiths into a Brahminical–Sanskritic Hinduism and a similar telescoping of complex Islamic intellectual traditions into what we can call a “Mohammedanism” overdetermined by Islamic law. As such, both these transcriptions had to fulfill certain Christological expectations of western anthropology in order to emerge as “religions” and “world religions”, that is, when, as Talal Asad has shown, “religion” was constructed as an anthropological category within the parameters of European secular introspection and the modern expansion of empire. Both Hinduism and Islam therefore had to have a book, a prophetic figure, a doctrinal core, and a singular compendium of laws. Upper caste Sanskritic traditions therefore dominated Hinduism, and a legal supremacist position dominated the modern reckoning of Islam at the expense of philosophy, metaphysics, poesis, and varieties of artistic self-making. Together, the two phenomena also created the historical illusion (now industrialized) that Brahminism always defined Hindu societies and the Sharia was always a total fact of Islam.

Religious disparities in health in Bangladesh–the case of hypertension and diabetes: evidence from two nationally representative cross-sectional surveys

ObjectivesReligious affiliation, beliefs, and practices shape lifestyles and disease risks. This study examined Hindu–Muslim differences in the prevalence and management of hypertension and diabetes in Bangladesh, a religiously plural country...

Pilgrimage Space, Hinduization of Space, Hindutva Politics of Space, and the Case of Ayodhyā as a Religious and Religiopolitical Hotspot

Abstract In this article I analyze aspects of religious geography in the mobilization by Hindu nationalists in India in the 1980s and 1990s and how Hindu nationalism and Hindu religious geography were merged in the case of the Ayodhyā conflict. Ayodhyā was consciously changed from a pilgrimage center (tīrtha) of diminishing religious importance into a religiopolitical hotspot by political forces. The potential for a Hindu–Muslim conflict and for mobilizing support for their vision of a Hinduized India was probably what made the place attractive for Hindu nationalists. The article argues that Hindu nationalism exploited the views of territoriality of traditions of pilgrimage and salvific space and merged these with their political nationalist agenda, and that it was this blending of views of space from the pilgrimage traditions, ideas of national territory, and Hindu nationalists’ ideas of a homogeneous Hindu nation with aggressive political agitation that turned Ayodhyā into a religiopolitical hotspot.

Gandhian Ideology in the Fiction of Chaman Nahal

Mahatma Gandhi was a freedom fighter as well as a social reformer. He was a man of action and intuition. He held no political office. Yet he could arouse the consciousness of an entire subcontinent! A lean, frail, ‘half-naked fakir’—armed with a wooden staff and dignity of a human being, he fought against greatest empire the world has ever known. It was just a moral grandeur of his soul which enabled him to fight against the brute power, in any form, and even vanquish it. As a defender of the human rights, he made people more conscious of their duties, to set a moral order in the society and also to make people learn that the true source of right is duty only. A saint, social reformer and humanist Gandhi held out “a message” which based on “a series of experiment with truth”, touched upon every domain of human life: social, economic, moral/spiritual, cultural, political. Therefore, he is a perennial source of writing and has influenced different disciplines and many writers from different fields like history, politics, philosophy, literature, sociology, and so on. In his principle of non-violence, Gandhi introduces technique of resistance to evil and untruth. His Satyagraha is inspired by boundless love and compassion. It is opposed to sin and evil. Gandhi was the speaker of truth and he did not like falsehood. His fight against untouchability and the notions of superiority and inferiority by birth were well known. R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, and many other Indian writers like Chaman Nahal explore Gandhiji’s view in their writings. Chaman Nahal is the first novelist in the post-independent ethos who delineated Gandhi and Gandhian ideology more realistically than any other writers of the era. Chaman Nahal has exquisitely explored almost all the dimensions of Gandhian Ideology such as Truth, satyagraha, azadi (in true spirit of Swaraj), simplicity, women emancipation, sacrifice, affirmation, belief in equality, humanitarian attitude for weaker sections, Hindu Muslim amity and last but not the least his non-violence.

The Myth of Sufi Sindh: Reflections on the Orientalist and Nationalist Historiography

The Sindhi nationalist historiography is a classic case of how to read historical, archaeological, and political texts of importance to justify the present-day modernist ideologies premised on excluding marginalized sections of society. This essay interrogates the Sindhi nationalist literati elite’s epistemic neglect of the underprivileged caste’s lifeworld. That disregard reflects in their literary and political writings that arguably rely on the British Orientalist historiography to construct the myth of caste-neutral and egalitarian culture of Sufi Sindh. It traces the historicisation of the claim of Hindu–Muslim interfaith harmony, and its persistence in the post-Partition Sindh. Based on the content analysis of progressive literature and the historiography of progressive politics in Sindh, it is concluded that owing to the casteist social structural barriers the privileged caste elite at the vanguard of progressive nationalist politics was blinded by their own privileged position to justly address the caste question. That inherent blindness to see through the problem of caste is the reason that progressives’ emancipatory projects to redefine the past and myths end in failure.

Inequality, elections, and communal riots in India

How does inequality within and between ethno-religious groups influence the likelihood and frequency of communal riots? Using evidence from India, this article finds that low within-group and high between-group inequality dampens the likelihood and frequency of communal riots. Theoretically, the article suggests that the instrumental logic, which posits that ethnonationalist politicians use violence to stoke ethnic cleavages and mobilize support, best accounts for this finding. We argue that to be politically competitive, ethnonationalist politicians need their supporters to identify foremost with their ethnic identity. When inequality within groups is high and/or inequality between groups is low, citizens are less likely to focus on ethnicity as their primary identity. In such contexts, politicians may use communal riots to improve their electoral prospects by reinforcing the salience of ethnicity. Empirically, the article relies on a time-series cross-district analysis of inequality and Hindu–Muslim riots in India to test the instrumental argument against theoretical alternatives. To illustrate the causal logic, the article also uses the analysis of a communal riot that occurred in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. Analyzing three aspects of the riot – background conditions, timing, targets of propaganda – we evaluate the different predictions of the instrumental argument. The article concludes with the suggestion that communal riots are distinct from cases of mass violence – such as civil wars, genocide, and ethnic cleansing – and could be conceptualized, along with other types of small-scale political violence, as a separate class of events with their own internal logic.

Explaining the diminishing of Muslim advantage in child survival in India

AbstractReligion is one of the key instrumental social institutions in determining child health and mortality. Muslim advantage in child survival in India has been widely reported. Recent India’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS) shows that the gap between Hindu–Muslim childhood mortality rates is shrinking—reversing decades of child survival advantage for Muslims. This study examines the factors linked to the diminishing of Muslim advantage in childhood survival and attempts to uncover the mechanisms accounting for the convergence using the characteristics hypothesis of Goldscheider (Population, modernization, and social structure Little, Brown & Co; 1971) and the analytical framework of Guillot and Allendorf (Genus 66(2), 2010). We have analyzed a pooled sample of 23,47,245 all live births and 428,541 of last live births from four rounds of NFHS (1992–2016). Kaplan–Meier survival plots over time by religion confirm convergence in Hindu–Muslim child survival probabilities. The Pyatt decomposition model reveals that the gap in Hindu–Muslim childhood mortality is diminishing due to a decline in within-Hindu inequality. Cox proportional hazard regression model shows that improvement in household and maternal socioeconomic factors has contributed to Hindu children catching up with Muslims—leading to a convergence in Hindu–Muslim childhood survival probabilities. Conditional β-convergence regression model also suggests the convergence in socio-economic status and maternal health care is driving the convergence in child survival of Hindus and Muslims across Indian states.

Development of Religious Activities Through Cultural Transformation in Hindu-Muslim Multicultural Educational Institutions

Plurality is an undeniable fact in Indonesia. This plurality can have good and bad impacts, such as social disunity or social capital for nation-building. The natural source of this dispute cannot be separated from the domination of values and partial truth claims by each group, although various practical interests serve as catalysts. The purpose of this study was to analyze and provide an interpretation of the development of students' religious activities through the transformation of school culture in multicultural educational institutions at Tengger Children's Nature School, Pasuruan. The research method used is qualitative with the type of case study research. Data collection by in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentation. Data analysis by presenting data, condensing data, and drawing conclusions. As for checking the validity of the data, researchers do this using credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. This research resulted in the finding that the development of a culture of mutual collaboration within the Hindu Muslim community at Tengger Children's Nature School was carried out through activities that prioritized politeness in interactions, besides that all school members were involved in cohesive activities through the school community association, also through organizational activities in traditional event committees. This is a superior value possessed by multicultural educational institutions in the cultural transformation to develop the quality of education, especially in the religious field, where mutual respect can be achieved.

The Melody of Universalism: Political Thought in Rabindra Sangeet

This article searches for Tagore’s political thought by an analysis of his songs. Existing literature has largely focussed on Tagore’s novels, letters, poems and short stories to understand his political vision. In this article, I argue that in tandem with his literary compositions, Tagore’s musical creations also have the potential to shed much light on his political thought. A keen observer of social upheavals, Tagore aimed to resolve the specific problems which were paralysing the Bengal of his times. So emerged his songs promoting Hindu–Muslim unity, India’s composite culture and spiritual regeneration of the human soul. Beneath these apparently different themes, there remained an urge for universalism, fraternity and unity which was abound in his musical expositions. This article deconstructs Tagore’s songs to analyse their meaning and their relation to the wider contemporary cultural ambience. The political thought of Tagore, as reflected in his songs, however, should not be interpreted independent of and abstracted from his literary contributions. This article, therefore, situates his songs in the ongoing discourse on Tagore’s political thought, alongside his stories, poems and novels.

Translating Wisdom: Hindu–Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia By Shankar Nair

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Gandhi’s View on Judaism and Zionism in Light of an Interreligious Theology

This article describes Gandhi’s view on Judaism and Zionism and places it in the framework of an interreligious theology. In such a theology, the notion of “trans-difference” appreciates the differences between cultures and religions with the aim of building bridges between them. It is argued that Gandhi’s understanding of Judaism was limited, mainly because he looked at Judaism through Christian lenses. He reduced Judaism to a religion without considering its peoplehood dimension. This reduction, together with his political endeavors in favor of the Hindu–Muslim unity and with his advice of satyagraha to the Jews in the 1930s determined his view on Zionism. Notwithstanding Gandhi’s problematic views on Judaism and Zionism, his satyagraha opens a wide-open window to possibilities and challenges in the Near East. In the spirit of an interreligious theology, bridges are built between Gandhi’s satyagraha and Jewish transformational dialogical thinking.

Inter-religious Harmony between Hindu Muslim Groups in Nepal

Religious harmony is very important to maintain peace and stability in a country like Nepal where people are multi-religious. Failure to address religious harmony it could take the society into conflict. Though Nepal is a Hindu dominant secular country the Muslims are an important and inseparable part of Nepalese community. They have been living in Nepal since last 500 years with religious harmony. During this period there were negligible religious riots between Hindu and Muslims. Social acceptance and recognition given to the Nepali Muslims, they were integrated in such a way, became inseparable part of the society. But in recent years they have tried to differentiate themselves religiously challenging centuries old harmony and peace. In the process they have undergone a process of political Islamization and have emerged as a distinctive ethnic community. It has shown a danger of deadly encounter between Hindu-Muslim religion groups. This paper tries to discuss the fundamental factors contributing to religious in a multi-religious society. FGD and library research method is used in addressing the situation of religious harmony. This paper also emphasizes that elements such as acceptance, understanding, co-operation as well as right and justice are significant elements in sustaining religious harmony. Hence, the discussion is aimed to build a sustainable concept of multi-religious harmony in Nepal. The findings could encourage maintaining strong relationship among them.