Indian Muslims Research Articles

The Political Philosophy of Allama Iqbal and Its Impacts on Muslim Politics in South Asia during 20th Century

TThis is an analytical study about the political role of Allama Iqbal. The paper primarily deals with the contribution of Iqbal as a poet and how his poetry influenced on the Muslims of India to aware them against the colonial masters. In the context of Muslims’ awareness Iqbal tried his best and though his poetry he urged passion of independence for the Muslim. In his early carrier he was the propagator of Indian nationalism but soon he became the great supporter of Muslim’s nationalism. As a philosopher poet what type of role he played for the freedom of Indian Muslims as the theme of this study and how Allama Muhammad Iqbal worked for the freedom movement is debatable? Although the political contribution of Allama Muhammad Iqbal always considered marvelous during the freedom movement. As a poet his political philosophy had strongly influenced on the Muslims of Subcontinent as he had a profound political insight and had a great connection with the pulse of the nation as he said in Javed-Namma that a poet is like a heart in the nation and without a poet the nation is like a heap of the clay. [i] Iqbal as a political poet emphasis the unification of Muslims and his mind produced first time the idea of a Separate state for the Muslims of subcontinent. He traced the idea of Pakistan as a most rare political event of history. Through his address 1930 at Allaabad, he planted the seed with the ambiguous idea. He died before the emergence of Pakistan but as a poet the construction of Muslim polity on Islamic unity and solidarity in India. When we look Iqbal as political leader it is very clear that Iqbal was a reformer, poet and philosopher. He used poetry and philosophy together to achieve the political goals. As a political poet, he knew that success in achieving goals is not possible without understanding the mood of the nation. Due to his guidance the nation moved forward and the dream of Pakistan was embarrassingly realized. This paper highlights Iqbal as a political philosopher during the freedom movement of Pakistan.

برصغیر میں مسلمانوں کی اشاعت و تبلیغ دین کے تسلسل کا تحقیقی و تجزیاتی مطالعہ

The name of Islam is mentioned in the Quran, taken by the roots of Peace. Al-Slam is an attribute of Allah Almighty. Islam insists that it is the continuity of all true prophets’ teachings. It is a religion of propagation. It is told that no new prophet will come and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is the last prophet. He was sent to all creatures in all lives. After him, it is duty of his all followers to convey his message to others. Some people especially follow his message and migrated to Indian Subcontinent. The propagation of Islam was their aim. It is narrated in hadith that sush as Muslims will perform the duty of Israelites Prophets. Muslim traders, rulers, military commanders, scholars and mystic saints play their important role for the propagation and spread of Islam here. A large majority of Indian Muslim are the descendents of those who converted to Islam on the hand of Muslim Saints. It is a narrative research of their services in Islamic propagation and spread in subcontinent. They earn their livelihood by their own sources and served the Humanity according to the teachings of Islam. They faced many difficulties but leave to spread the Islamic message. On their footstep, their followers are busy in Islamic Propagation in modern era.

Semantic Aspects of “Wish” in Iqbal’s Thoughts

Allama Iqbal (1877–1938) is a great poet, philosopher and thinker, he has a special place in his philosophy and ideas. He has expressed his feelings in poetry and prose. The life and thoughts of any writer and intellectual are hidden in his desire. In this research paper, an analytical study of Allama Iqbal's thoughts has been presented with the help of Iqbal's poetry, letters and other prose passages. He has mentioned the creation and fulfillment of desire in his writings. In many places, he has openly expressed that he has presented ideas about the identity of the Muslim nation and the life of an individual. Adopting the analytical approach of research, different concepts of hope have been derived from his thoughts in this paper. In the Iqbalistic research, only hope has been seen less than the meaningful point of view of national unity on the political scene. An attempt has been made to fill this gap in this research paper. Iqbal's desire was fulfilled in the form of the Muslim Unity of Muslims in India.

Идеологическая и структурная трансформация индусской националистической организации Раштрия сваямсевак сангх в конце XX – начале XXI в.

The article examines the ideology of Hindu nationalism in the domestic politics of modern India through the prism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh socio-political activities. The author determines the relations of the organization with its branches and mechanisms for regulating internal conflicts between them. The purpose of the article is to consider and analyze the ideological and structural transformation of the organization at the end of the XX and the beginning of XXI centuries, in particular, the strategy for the inclusion of Indian Muslims in the Hindu nationalist mainstream. The article uses descriptive, historical-genetic, chronological, comparative and structural-functional methods. The author analyses the development of Hindutva ideology in the works of V. D. Savarkar and M. S. Golvalkar; the campaigns for the rapprochement of the Hindu and Muslim communities conducted by the organization and its branches, as well as the structural and ideological transformations of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Sangh Parivar. The article pays particular attention to the attitude of Hindutva ideologues towards minorities, specifically Indian Muslims. At the end of the XX century significant political and economic changes in India contributed to the complication of Indian society, which affected both the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Sangh Parivar’s membership and ideological orientation. New branches have emerged to defend the interests of groups that were not previously in the orbit of the organization’s interests. At the same time, the successes of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the main political asset of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and the desire to consolidate them prompted the search for additional electoral support from the Muslim part of the country’s population. The changes demonstrate the organization’s willingness to change both structurally and ideologically in order to gain mass support in changing India. However, despite the changes, some bias towards Indian Muslims and concerns about inclusion of new Muslim branches remain.

EXPLORATION OF DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILES AND WORK-FAMILY INTERFACE AMONG MUSLIM WOMEN IN INDIA

The work-family interface is a pivotal topic in contemporary discourse on women and gender dynamics, representing the evolution and development of gender roles in sync with modern advancements and evolving socio-economic paradigms. This study ventures into the nuanced complexities of the work-family interface among Muslim women in India, illuminating a previously uncharted realm. Employing a survey-based methodology, this research aims to unravel the intricate web of motivating factors propelling these women into the workforce, resulting in a delicate balancing act encompassing financial, social, and personal aspirations. Furthermore, it unveils a spectrum of challenges spanning traditional, cultural, political, social, and religious dimensions, which hinder their pursuit of work and endeavor from confining them within traditional family roles. By providing invaluable insights into the lived experiences of Indian Muslim women, this paper establishes itself as a foundational resource for comprehending their distinctive work-family dynamics, ultimately offering guidance for enhancing their socio-economic well-being and empowerment.

“How Many Cooks in This Kitchen?”: Reflecting on Autoethnography

In this article we combine an autoethnographic narrative by the first author and analytical reflections by the second, exploring the complexities of autoethnographic reflection on fields of cultural practice. The autoethnographer describes Indian Delights, a cookbook that is iconic among South African Indian Muslim women, as a shifting cultural collage and social repository, which also has a particular status in her life. The second author’s reflections apply the ideas of Michel de Certeau and Luce Giard regarding writing, practice, and meaning. The two strands of writing complicate the relation between practice and commentary, addressing the value and limits of the compositional process and its outcomes.

Knowledge and power in a girls’ madrasa in India: a critical analysis of textbook and curriculum

ABSTRACTArticles 28 and 30 of the Indian Constitution (1950) guarantee the right of religious minorities to establish their educational institutions and impart religious education. Analysing the curriculum, textbooks, and pedagogical practices of one such minority-run institution for girls makes it possible for us to see how contemporary Muslims in India transmit religious teaching today in ways that showcase some legacies of the colonial past but also fashion new ways of being and becoming in a rapidly changing and westernising 21st-century environment. This argument is more nuanced than stereotypes that pervade the mainstream media and public sphere about the static, moribund and irrelevant nature of Islamic education in the modern world. Analysing three recurring themes in textbooks and pedagogical practices of a girls’ madrasa located in Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India, this article illustrates how Islam is interpreted, debated, and adapted to contemporary reality by Indian Muslims in a specific educational setting, in a larger political context where they are an embattled minority. The article argues that textbook knowledge and choice of curriculum influence the process of socialisation and identity formation in girls. This article explores the self-perception of the Muslim community in India through the medium of textbooks and curriculum in a community-run school.

How Much Does Material Determination Explain in Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans?

How Much Does Material Determination Explain in <i>Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans</i>?

An Introductory Study of Modern Interpretations of the Quran

The twentieth century A.D was a very important period for Muslims in Pakistan and India. In the Western world, that universal revolution had reached its culmination, as a result of which modern man, instead of Allah himself, reorganized the whole world of thought and action based on inductive science. The tenets of religion that seemed to contradict the new conception of life were abandoned, and with this state of mind, the Western nations gained political supremacy over the Eastern countries. Doubt, atheism and secularism began to take shape here as well. This was due to the attacks on Islam by Western Christianity and Western-nurtured Orientalism. These attacks on Western thought and Christianity were taking place under the auspices of the imperialist powers. At the same time, these nations were teaching civilization to the eastern nations. Muslim subcontinent was undergoing a process of political and cultural influence. In the field of knowledge, these things affected his intellectual perseverance and resilience in the field of knowledge. A trend of liberalism and reconciliation emerged in the religious literature of the time, represented by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. After the establishment of Pakistan, some people with the same mindset came forward who expressed their commitment and deep connection with the Qur’ān, He wrote many books and published journals to popularize Qur’ānic teachings. He taught Qur’ānic discourses and wrote commentaries, but through the maneuvering, and misinterpretation of the Qur’ānic verses, he developed the structure of an Islam whose features were radically different from the real Islam.

Maternal subjectivity of Indian Muslim mothers: reflections on the hijab and education

Most theories of motherhood, across different societies, tend to be anchored on the child’s needs. This results in mothers either idealised or blamed for the impact they have on their child. In all this theorising, I have found that maternal voice is absent, creating a gap in our understanding of maternal subjectivity. This article is part of the larger doctoral work focused on Indian Muslim mothers, building on Benjamin’s work that argues for mutual recognition of the other in a dyadic relationship as a subject. A psychosocial lens is used to explore the maternal experiences of raising adolescent daughters in contemporary times where the Muslim identity is frowned upon and their cultural practices are a matter of debate. In politically charged contemporary India, where religion is a prominent source of conflict, an Indian Muslim woman, doubly marginalised due to her gender and community, which is in a minority, would find it difficult to find a voice as a mother. Her reflections on hijab and education are highlighted in this article as she mothers and makes an attempt to provide a voice for herself and her daughter. It is proposed that her understanding of the relationship with her mother can be crucial to her negotiation of the current dilemmas of wearing a hijab and the significance of religious and secular education. The voices were captured in in-depth interviews conducted in the capital city of Delhi and have an implicit cultural flavour of North India.

Worldmaking in the Hijaz: Muslims between South Asian and Soviet Visions of Managing Difference, 1919–1926

AbstractBetween the end of World War I and the Mecca World Muslim Congress of 1926, Soviet officials and Indian Muslim thinkers imagined the possibilities of a post-imperial world through the Hijaz. The All-India Khilafat Committee (AIKC; established 1919), an organization led by prominent Indian Muslim thinkers, and the Soviet Union promoted competing projects to protect the Hijaz, home to some of Islam’s holiest shrines, against European imperialism. Yet, far from limiting themselves to the question of who should rule the Hijaz, the AIKC and the Soviet state engaged in broader debates about religious and social difference, sovereignty, and minority rights. Whereas the AIKC imagined the Hijaz as an international Muslim republic and a place of refuge for Muslims worldwide, Soviet officials contended that the political future of Muslims should only be settled within the framework of ethno-territorial nation-states. Ironically, the programs of both the AIKC and the Soviet state denied the right of self-determination to Hijazis themselves, leaving the region’s inhabitants to choose between two forms of external oversight: a Soviet-supported Saudi ethno-territorialism or limited domestic autonomy under the management and inspection of an international Muslim Council. With very few exceptions, past scholarship on the Hijaz in this period has analyzed the region’s political fortunes through Saudi statecraft or European colonial influence. However, Soviet and Indian Muslim experimental engagement with the Hijaz ultimately proved just as crucial to the consolidation of Saudi governance over the region. The article arrives at these novel insights by bringing rare Soviet archival documents together with the Urdu proceedings of the AIKC’s delegation to the Hijaz, as well as Arabic sources from the period in question.

Fashioning a Persianate Offspring for a Modern India: Urdu Visions of Persian Pasts, 1890s–1950s

Abstract This article addresses how some influential Indian Muslim intellectuals conceptualized and imagined the Urdu language as the linguistic offspring and heir of the Persian language and Persianate textual cultures from the late nineteenth century through the early 1950s. As the symbolic and material value of Persian gradually declined in India, select Persianate idioms, genres, and histories were drafted for Urdu’s modernity. This article considers the significance of Persian as it was variously construed as either a burden or a model by Urdu scholars and as either a worthy or unworthy predecessor for Urdu from the 1890s to the 1950s. It traces the shifting textual processes by which three prominent Indian Muslim intellectuals constructed a parent-offspring relationship between Persian and Urdu in response to colonial education reforms, competing national projects, and pan-Islamic intellectual currents. In summary, this article excavates the many uses that Persian served as it was simultaneously erased from and encoded into Urdu’s anticipated futures.

The Veil of Purity: Tropes of Nineteenth-Century Islamic Reform and Ahmad Khan’s naicar

Abstract Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) was one of the most prominent Indian Muslim reformists of the nineteenth century and was exceptional for the ways in which he proposed that nature and observations of nature were central to Islam. Like many nineteenth-century reformist narratives, Khan’s ideals on naicar (nature) routinely employed a rhetoric of ‘break,’ ‘renewal,’ and ‘purity’ to imply that Indo-Persian culture was in a state of malaise and in need of rejuvenation. Yet despite this outward denunciation, Khan’s reformist project also ironically reflected many qualities of Persianate Islam that had characterized Indo-Muslim culture before the nineteenth century. This article reconsiders Ahmad Khan’s modernism in light of the Persianate modes that he maintained to point out some of the rhetorical inconsistencies of modernist writing, and the historical lacunae which they create.

Persian Garlands of Stars: Islamicate and Indic Astral Sciences in Seventeenth-Century North India

Abstract This paper offers a study of Mullā Farīd and Mullā Ṭayyib, two astronomers active in several North Indian courts in the first half of the seventeenth century. The lives and works of these two brothers illustrate the central role of mathematical astronomy and astrology in the science of the time and its use by Indian Muslim nobility. They also document the familiarity of Indian Muslim scholars with Indic astrology and its practice in Muslim milieux. Mathematical astronomy was very much alive in seventeenth-century Mughal India, and Persian-writing scholars were commenting and revising the astronomical data and mathematics transmitted from the Maragha and Samarqand schools of astronomy. Their intellectual activities are also better understood in the context of the avid interest in occult sciences cultivated by early modern Persianate societies, and more particularly by the Mughal court. Mathematical astronomy was nurtured for the precise purpose of casting horoscopes and creating astrological almanacs. Astrological practices in North-Indian courts, including Delhi, the Mughal imperial capital, were evidently mixed and flavoured with elements from both Islamicate and Indic traditions. Knowledge was widely shared across languages and scientific interests went well beyond religious denominations. Crucially too, the exchange between the Persian and the Sanskrit scholastic worlds was sponsored by Mughal patrons and resulted in scientific translations from one language to the other. A closer reading of Mullā Farīd and Mullā Ṭayyib’s Persian works allows us to see that besides their more classical astronomical works, the two brothers shared a common interest in Indic methods of prognostication, in particular muhūrtaśāstra, the science of electing an auspicious moment to perform a certain action. In this paper, we elucidate an intricate dossier on the “bust hours,” an ancient prognostication method popular with Islamicate astrologers. Identified by Islamicate scholars as coming ultimately from India, the source of many features of Islamicate astrology, these bust hours were reinterpreted on Indian soil by Mullā Farīd and Mullā Ṭayyib in light of their first-hand knowledge of muhūrtaśāstra. In this manner, these bust hours came back full circle to the original Indian prognostication practices.

How a populist remains in politics: an Indian Muslim politician’s winning style

ABSTRACT In a competitive political system where getting renominated is challenging and incumbency disadvantage is a reality, what factors compel an electorate to keep a certain leader in power for over four decades? This article examines the qualitative characteristics of Azam Khan’s politics in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, and their interlinkages with his sustained electoral success. Through ethnographic methods, I uncover the various populist strategies he deploys in his connection with his electorate and investigate local responses to this politics. The strategies involve an anti-elite rhetoric, constant identification with the people, self-victimization, the projection of a strongman image, his use of transgressive language, the importance in the party, and the voters’ perception of lack of alternatives. A comparison is also undertaken with non-populist opposition politicians to understand the significance of these strategies. In times of majoritarianism when Muslim candidates are marginalized by mainstream political parties and struggle to win elections, understanding why people accept a Muslim leader as their symbol also has wider implications for the study of representation in which considering both the leader’s claim of being voters’ voice as well as voters’ acceptance of that claim is contextually important.

Grooving on at Seventy-Five: Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Rushdie, and the Indian Muslim’s Ecstatic Return

This essay examines two high profile creative producers of Indian Muslim heritage: the actor Shah Rukh Khan and the writer Salman Rushdie. Even as each faced attacks (of different kinds) in 2022, early 2023 saw the triumphant resurgence of their creativity with the film Pathaan, starring Khan in the eponymous role, and Rushdie’s new novel Victory City. I argue that the film and the novel together offer a complementary manifesto for the Indian Muslim as a minority subject 75 years after Partition. To understand the stakes at play in this minoritization process, I conduct the analysis against two essays on minority subjectivities in India, particularly that which crystallizes through Indian Islam—one from the 1960s, by Humayun Kabir, and the other from the contemporary moment, by Aamir Mufti.

"Indian Lady Tourists Killed at Jericho": Tourism, Pilgrimage and South-South relations in Interwar Palestine

In press coverage of the 1927 earthquake in Palestine, frequent mention is made of the deaths of three women at the Winter Palace Hotel in Jericho. That the three were from British-occupied India apparently rendered them unusual enough to be noted by a journalist, whose observation was reproduced around the world. This article draws on newspapers, official documents and secondary literatures on the hajj, tourism and the British Empire to consider the history of South Asian travellers to Palestine and relationships between colonialism and travel in the interwar period.&#x0D; One of the three women was Lady Abdul Rauf, the wife of a retired High Court judge and veteran Indian Muslim nationalist campaigner, Sir Syed Abdul Rauf. The couple had departed Bombay in April 1927 for the hajj to Mecca and Medina, but extended their trip to include Jericho. This was not unusual; the Indian Hospice in the Old City of Jerusalem attests to a long history of Indian visitors to Palestine. This paper, however, locates the ill-fated presence of Lady Abdul Rauf and her companions in the changing nature of Indian travel in the region, as religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem combined with politics and tourism, and as changing infrastructures of capitalism and colonialism shifted how Indian visitors experienced Palestine.

Somnath Mandir in a play of mirrors: heritage, history, and the search for identity of the new nation (1842–1951)

AbstractThe story of the Somnath temple, in the northwestern Saurashtra peninsula, has often been taken as an example of the contentious legacies of the penetration, settlement, and political establishment of Muslims in India. Its history testifies to the complex relationship between history, heritage, and the consolidation of collective memories of past events and processes.This article focuses on two key moments in the temple's recent history: the retrieval of the Somnath gates by Lord Ellenborough in 1842 and the reconstruction of the temple between 1947 and 1951. At these two moments—one during colonial times and the other at the creation of the independent state—Somnath became the battlefield for questioning how the state should be positioned with regard to religious places, histories, symbols, and practices.While the temple was apparently dealt with as a tangible place of heritage, both episodes show how the value endowed upon the temple had far more complex meanings. The analysis proposed in this article ends with the reconstruction of the temple. This shows the way in which architects of independent India addressed the country's history, directly or indirectly engaging with the construction of a heritage for the new state. Their efforts aimed to strengthen a shared memory of the past, which could in turn consolidate membership and a sense of belonging to the new nation. Advocates and promoters of the temple's reconstruction, among whom were Vallabhbhai Patel and K. M. Munshi, envisioned that the reconstruction would embody the long-awaited liberation of India from centuries of continuous domination by ‘foreign’ powers. In contrast, secular politicians, with Nehru at the helm, opposed the reconstruction, fearing that Somnath might become the symbol of a sectarian vision of the nation and, in the wake of partition, derail efforts to characterise independent India as an inclusive country. While the reconstruction did eventually take place, the entire episode invites us to question the relationship between the framing of Indian nationalism and the heritagisation of Indian history. Following a critical theoretical approach to Heritage studies, where heritage has less to do with the item that is preserved than with the value with which it is endowed, this article proposes to investigate the meanings that heritage preservation, conservation, and reconstruction acquired as part of the project of nation- and state-building.

Beyond Colonial Rupture: Print Culture and the Emergence of Muslim Modernity in Nineteenth-Century South Asia

Abstract Scholarly discussions on Islam in print have focused predominantly on the role of Urdu in the development of North Indian Muslim publics (Dubrow, 2018; Robb, 2020), ʿulama and Islamic jurisprudence (Tareen, 2020) and relations between Islam and colonial modernity (Robinson, 2008; Osella &amp; Osella, 2008) This special issue instead offers fine-grained investigations on technology and labour; print landscapes, networks and actors; subaltern languages; and popular Islam. We critique the idea of an “epistemic rupture” brought about by colonial modernity, providing a more systematic analysis of continuities and changes in Islamic knowledge economy. Examining two centuries of print authored by South Asian Muslims, the articles in the issue provide new ways of thinking about questions of knowledge production, distribution, circulation and reception. The issue broadens the scope of earlier scholarship, examining genres such as cosmology, divination, devotional poems, salacious songs, romances and tales of war in Urdu, Persian, Arabic, dobhāṣī do Bangla, Arabic Malayalam, Sindhi, Balochi and Brahui. The articles show the different ways that pre-colonial practices and cultures of writing and reading persisted in the print landscape, in terms of copying, adaptation, translation and circulation of texts. They inquire into new technologies, labour and networks that evolved, and how it provided fertile ground for both new and traditional forms of religious activities and authorities. The articles present new Muslim publics, geographies, and imaginaries forged through the vernacularisation of Islam, and their relationship to the transnational or global community.

Muslim personal names in Urdu: structure, meaning, and change

Abstract Based on an analysis of a corpus, in this study we examine: (a) the linguistic structure of Muslim personal names, (b) their etymological sources, and (c) some changing patterns among the younger generation. Firstly, we present a typology of the naming patterns by showing that there are four major types – one-part, two-part, three-part, and four-part names. While one-part names are formed from the given name only, the other three types are complex as they are composed of additional names containing honorific titles, caste titles, patronym, and husband’s names in case of married women. Secondly, by examining the linguistic sources of one-part and two part names, we show that Muslim names are primarily derived from Arabic and Persian. Our study further shows that while Indian Muslim names trace their origins to Arabic, the structure of their names differs significantly from Arabs and other Muslims especially those in southern India. Finally, we demonstrate a shift in the naming pattern among the younger generation in that some names and honorific titles are declining. We conclude our paper with some possible social factors that may contribute to the shift.