Islam and Muslims in South Asiaa

This paper aims to posit inquiry on the questions of minority and minoritization and homogenization of Muslims in India through the theoretical lenses of biopolitics and state power. Using theories by Giorgio Agamben (1998; 2005) and Nicos Poulantzas (1975; 1978a; 1978b), this paper aims to identify the problems that the interventions by the secular Indian law and legislative apparatus produce in the process of re-defining the boundaries and constructing a homogenous, Muslim subject. This paper argues that conceptualizing a homogenous Muslim subject in Indian law – especially, in the Personal Law – enables both biopolitics of exclusion and puts the Indian Muslim communities in a direct conflict with the Indian juridical–political apparatus, which aims to regulate them as one ‘body’, disregarding diversity and multiple identities.

This article focuses on the campaign for AMU’s minority status (1965–1981), at the intersection of student politics and Muslim politics. What started in 1965 as an internal university dispute on student quotas soon transformed into a central Muslim issue. The campaign crystallized mounting resentment against the government and provided a common platform to heterogeneous forces–students, teachers, as well as Muslim organizations of different shades and hues–who all claimed to serve Muslim interests. This campaign thus played a key role in the reconfiguration of Muslim politics in the 1960s. It contributed to the re-emergence of the demand for Muslim minority rights, largely delegitimized after partition. It provided a platform for an increasingly assertive Muslim leadership which claimed to represent the Muslim community. Finally, it constituted a laboratory for issue-based coalitions, which, in the absence of a strong Muslim political party, became a dominant feature of Muslim politics, especially in North India. These changes must be read in the wider context of the post-Nehruvian period. The campaign participated in the emergence of counter-narratives, which questioned Congress’s “hegemonic” discourse on secular nationalism. Through student mobilization and issue-based coalitions, it also facilitated the emergence of contentious voices outside party structures. As such, the campaign participated in the larger pluralization of Indian politics, marked by the erosion of Congress’s dominance, much before the post-Emergency crisis.

The introduction to the special issue provides a framework to think about the changing conceptions of Sayyid-ness in various historical contexts in South Asia. First, we review some of the sociological and anthropological literature on caste among South Asian Muslims, to argue for a contextualised and historicised study of Muslim social stratification in Muslims’ own terms. Second, we throw light on the fact that Sayyid-ness, far from being a transhistorical fact, may be conceptualised differently in different socio-political and historical contexts. For instance, Sayyid pedigree was at times downplayed in favour of a more encompassing Ashraf identity in order to project the idea of a single Muslim community. Far from projecting an essentialising image of Sayyid-ness, by focusing on historical change, the articles in this collection de-naturalise Sayyids’ and Ashraf's social superiority as a ‘well-understood and accepted fact’. They further shift attention from the debate on ‘Muslim caste’, often marred by Hindu-centric assumptions, to focus instead on social dynamics among South Asian Muslims ‘in their own terms’. In so doing, these studies highlight the importance of the local, while pointing to possible comparisons with Muslim groups outside South Asia.

This is the concluding part of a collquium on "The 'Re-Orientalization' of the Orient? On the role of tradition in social conflicts of the eighties" on 24 October 1991 at the Oriental Studies section of the former Institute of General History of the Academy of Sciences of the former GDR which was closed at the end of 1991. It was published in their academic journal "asien, africa, lateinamerika" of the Akademie-Verlag which discontinued.

The introduction to the special issue provides a framework to think about the changing conceptions of Sayyid-ness in various historical contexts in South Asia. First, we review some of the sociological and anthropological literature on caste among South Asian Muslims, to argue for a contextualised and historicised study of Muslim social stratification in Muslims’ own terms. Second, we throw light on the fact that Sayyid-ness, far from being a transhistorical fact, may be conceptualised differently in different socio-political and historical contexts. For instance, Sayyid pedigree was at times downplayed in favour of a more encompassing Ashraf identity in order to project the idea of a single Muslim community. Far from projecting an essentialising image of Sayyid-ness, by focusing on historical change, the articles in this collection de-naturalise Sayyids’ and Ashraf's social superiority as a ‘well-understood and accepted fact’. They further shift attention from the debate on ‘Mu...