'[This] substantial volume at once illuminates empirical conditions and tests theories about ghettoization, integration, and the political attitudes of India's urban Muslims' - Sunil Khilnani 'Christophe Jaffrelot's range of scholarship is amazing, and his new book ... co-edited with Laurent Gayer, illustrates well his wide-ranging interests. The contributions are instructive and insightful and cover a much-neglected theme in contemporary South Asia' - Mushirul Hasan Numbering more than 150 million, Muslims constitute the largest minority in India, yet suffer the most politically and socio-economically. Forced to contend with severe and persistent prejudice, India's Muslims are often targets of violence. In India's cities, these developments find contrasting expressions. While the quality of Muslim life may lag behind that of Hindus nationally, local and inclusive cultures have been resilient in the south and the east. In the Hindi belt and in the north, Muslims have known less peace, especially in the riot-prone areas of Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Jaipur and Aligarh, and in the capitals of former Muslim states - Delhi, Hyderabad, Bhopal and Lucknow. These cities are rife with Muslim ghettos and slums. However, self-segregation has also played a part in forming Muslim enclaves, such as in Delhi and Aligarh, where traditional elites and a new Muslim middle class have regrouped for physical and cultural protection. Combining first-hand testimony with sound critical analysis, this volume follows urban Muslim life in eleven Indian cities, providing uncommon insight into a litde-known subject of immense importance and consequence.

Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans provides an ethnography of life, work and migration in a North Indian Muslim-dominated woodworking industry. It traces artisanal connections within the local context, during migration within India, and to the Gulf, examining how woodworkers utilise local and transnational networks, based on identity, religiosity, and affective circulations, to access resources, support and forms of mutuality. However, the book also illustrates how liberalisation, intensifying forms of marginalisation and incorporation into global production networks have led to spatial pressures, fragmentation of artisanal labour, and forms of enclavement that persist despite geographical mobility and connectedness. By working across the dialectic of marginality and connectedness, Thomas Chambers thinks through these complexities and dualities by providing an ethnographic account that shares everyday life with artisans and others in the industry. Descriptive detail is intersected with spatial scales of ‘local’, ‘national’ and ‘international’, with the demands of supply chains and labour markets within India and abroad, with structural conditions, and with forms of change and continuity. Empirically, then, the book provides a detailed account of a specific locale, but also contributes to broader theoretical debates centring on theorisations of margins, borders, connections, networks, embeddedness, neoliberalism, subjectivities, and economic or social flux.

Da‘wa, a concept rooted in the scriptural and classical tradition of Islam, has been dramatically re-appropriated in modern times across the Muslim world. Championed by a variety of actors in diverse contexts, da‘wa –"inviting" to Islam, or Islamic missionary activity – has become central to the vocabulary of contemporary Islamic activism. Da‘wa and Other Religions explores the modern resurgence of da‘wa through the lens of inter-religious relations and within the two horizons of Islamic history and modernity. Part I provides an account of da‘wa from the Qur’an to the present. It demonstrates the close relationship that has existed between da‘wa and inter-religious relations throughout Islamic history and sheds light on the diversity of da‘wa over time. The book also argues that Muslim communities in colonial and post-colonial India shed light on these themes with particular clarity. Part II, therefore, analyzes and juxtaposes two prominent da‘wa organizations to emerge from the Indian subcontinent in the past century: the Tablīghī Jamā‘at and the Islamic Research Foundation of Zakir Naik. By investigating the formative histories and inter-religious discourses of these movements, Part II elucidates the influential roles Indian Muslims have played in modern da‘wa. This book makes important contributions to the study of da‘wa in general and to the study of the Tablīghī Jamā‘at, one of the world’s largest da‘wa movements. It also provides the first major scholarly study of Zakir Naik and the Islamic Research Foundation. Further, it challenges common assumptions and enriches our understanding of modern Islam. It will have a broad appeal for students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Indian religious history and anyone interested in da‘wa and inter-religious relations throughout Islamic history.

This study questions current views that Muslims represented a secure point of reference for the British understanding of colonial Indian society. Through revisionary readings of a wide range of texts, it re-examines the basis of the British misperception of Muslim 'conspiracy' during the 'Mutiny'. Arguing that this belief stemmed from conflicts inherent to the secular ideology of the colonial state, it shows how in the ensuing years it produced representations ridden with paradox and requiring a form of descriptive segregation.

While jihad has been the subject of countless studies in the wake of recent terrorist attacks, scholarship on the topic has so far paid little attention to South Asian Islam and, more specifically, its place in South Asian history. Seeking to fill some gaps in the historiography, Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst examines the effects of the 1857 Rebellion (long taught in Britain as the 'Indian Mutiny') on debates about the issue of jihad during the British Raj. Morgenstein Fuerst shows that the Rebellion had lasting, pronounced effects on the understanding by their Indian subjects (whether Muslim, Hindu or Sikh) of imperial rule by distant outsiders. For India's Muslims their interpretation of the Rebellion as jihad shaped subsequent discourses, definitions and codifications of Islam in the region. Morgenstein Fuerst concludes by demonstrating how these perceptions of jihad, contextualised within the framework of the 19th century Rebellion, continue to influence contemporary rhetoric about Islam and Muslims in the Indian subcontinent.Drawing on extensive primary source analysis, this unique take on Islamic identities in South Asia will be invaluable to scholars working on British colonial history, India and the Raj, as well as to those studying Islam in the region and beyond.

Malaysia is among the most ethnically diverse and culturally rich nations on earth. Yet much of its cultural wealth lies buried beneath the rubric of its main Malay, Chinese and Indian "race" categories; the dazzling diversity within and outside these groups remains largely unexplored. This book uncovers some of this fascinating diversity through the stories of five little-known acculturated ethnic groups in Peninsula Malaysia. The author, a Malaysian sociologist, delivers an insightful and lucid study of these groups, with some surprising findings. These communities illustrate how much more cross-cultural mingling, sharing and co-dependence there is within Malaysian society than we care to recognize, admit or celebrate. This raises various questions: Is a similar process of spontaneous inter-ethnic interaction possible between larger ethnic groups today? How can we foster such acculturation, and can it by itself contribute to ethnic harmony? The author also discovers that despite their long settlement and deep acculturation, segments of these groups are anxious about their future, and pine for an indigenous identity. What are the implications of this trend for ethnic relations, and how can it be resolved? This book traces the acculturation journey of these communities and draws lessons for ethnic relations in one of the most complex multi-ethnic nations in the world. It will appeal to scholars, students, laymen and visitors interested in migration, history, culture, ethnicity and heritage in Malaysia and the region.

Through the creation of post-colonial citizenship, India adopted a hybridisation of specific secular and western conception of citizenship. In this democratic framework, Indian Muslims are observed on how they make use of the spaces and channels to accommodate their Islamic identity within a secular one. This book analyses how the socio-political context shapes citizens’ perceptions of multiple variables, such as their sense of political efficacy, agency, conception of citizenship rights and belief in democracy. Based on extensive surveys and interviews and through presenting and investigating the various meanings of jihād, the author explores the usage of non-Eurocentric conceptual approaches to the study of postcolonial and Muslim societies, in particular the meaning it carries in the psyche of the Muslim community. She argues that through means of argumentative and spiritual jihād, Indian Muslims fight their battle towards a realisation of citizenship ideals despite the unfavourable conditions of intra and inter community conflicts. Presenting new examinations of Islamic identity and citizenship in contemporary India, this book will be a useful contribution to the study of South Asian Studies, Religion, Islam, and Race and Ethnicity.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is perceived as a communal party that aims to eliminate the secular character of the Indian state in which Indian-Muslims coexist. The Hindus and Indian-Muslims are often projected as absolute identities. The present study argues that a number of identities-communitarian, caste, and regional-exist in India and compete to preserve their respective traditions. The BJP as the proponent of Hindutva and the Muslims as the advocates of Islam-Urdu are struggling to protect their respective values system and traditions. Both identities have deep historical roots that were formed during the British Raj. The author has studied the BJP-Muslim interaction in three distinct phases: the Raj era; the post-Independence Congress-dominated era; and the post-Congress-dominated BJP era. The book will be useful for academicians, politicians, and students of International Relations and Indian politics. It will be an indispensible read for those who design courses on Indian politics and South Asia.

This book examines the position of Muslims in any one province.