M.T. Ansari - Islam and Nationalism in India

Islam in India, as elsewhere, continues to be seen as a remainder in its refusal to conform to national and international secular-modern norms. Such a general perception has also had a tremendous impact on the Muslims of the Indian sub-continent, who as individuals and communities have been shaped and transformed over centuries of socio-political and historical processes eroding their world-view and steadily erasing their life-worlds.

This book traces the spectral presence of Islam across narratives to note that difference and diversity, demographic as well as cultural, can be espoused rather than excised or exorcized. Focusing on Malabar home to the Mappila Muslim community in Kerala, South India and drawing mostly on Malayalam sources, the author investigates the question of Islam from various angles by constituting an archive comprising popular, administrative, academic, and literary discourses. The author contends that an uncritical insistence on unity has led to a formation in which minor subjects embody an excess of identity, in contrast to the Hinducitizen whose identity seemingly coincides with the national. This has led to Muslims being the source of a deep-seated anxiety for secular nationalism and the targets of a resurgent Hindutva, in that they expose the fault-lines of a geographically and socio-culturally unified nation.

An interdisciplinary study of Islam in India from the South Indian context, this book will be of interest to scholars of modern Indian history, political science, literary and cultural studies, and Islamic studies.

M. T. Ansari is Professor at the Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad, India. He has received fellowships awarded by the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, University of Chicago, USA, and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, India.

Islam and Nationalism in India

South Indian contexts

M. T. Ansari

First published 2016
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2016 M.T. Ansari

The right of M.T. Ansari to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ansari, M. T.

Islam and nationalism in India : South Indian contexts / M.T. Ansari.

pages cm. (Intersections: colonial and postcolonial histories ; 11)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. NationalismReligions aspectsIslam. 2. Islam and politics

India, South. 3. NationalismIndia, South. 4. Malabar (India)
History20th century I. Title.

BP173.55.A57 2016

297.27209548dc23

2015022414

ISBN: 978-1-138-93406-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67821-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC

It is indeed a great pleasure and privilege to acknowledge the numerous people and institutions that I have been associated with during this long project. An enormous intellectual and personal debt is owed to Susie Tharu for piquing my interest in this area for a doctoral thesis, and also for putting up with my vagaries through the years. Teachers and fellow scholars at the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (now EFLU, Hyderabad) during 19931998; colleagues at the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit (Kalady) during 19982001; colleagues at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (Vadodara) during 20012004; colleagues and students at the University of Hyderabad from 2004; and colleagues at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (Shimla) during 20142015, are remembered with sincere gratitude.