Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- A note on transliteration and translation
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 A laboratory for composite India: Jamia Millia Islamia around the time of partition
- 2 Sifting Sir Syed’s legacy: From the ‘arsenal of Muslim India’ to a symbol of India’s national integration?
- 3 Re-legitimising minority rights: The campaign for Aligarh Muslim University’s minority status
- 4 Resisting minority politics, holding on to composite nationalism: Jamia Millia Islamia in the post-Nehruvian period
- 5 Uplifting backward Muslims: The new consensus?
- 6 Bastions of Islam: The defence of Islam as a narrative of empowerment and contestation
- 7 Women in Muslim universities: Guardians of tradition or actors of change?
- Conclusion
- Appendix
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Bastions of Islam: The defence of Islam as a narrative of empowerment and contestation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- A note on transliteration and translation
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 A laboratory for composite India: Jamia Millia Islamia around the time of partition
- 2 Sifting Sir Syed’s legacy: From the ‘arsenal of Muslim India’ to a symbol of India’s national integration?
- 3 Re-legitimising minority rights: The campaign for Aligarh Muslim University’s minority status
- 4 Resisting minority politics, holding on to composite nationalism: Jamia Millia Islamia in the post-Nehruvian period
- 5 Uplifting backward Muslims: The new consensus?
- 6 Bastions of Islam: The defence of Islam as a narrative of empowerment and contestation
- 7 Women in Muslim universities: Guardians of tradition or actors of change?
- Conclusion
- Appendix
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In her ethnographic survey conducted in Aligarh city in the mid-1980s, the anthropologist Elisabeth Mann noted:
Islam nowadays has the potential to serve as a rallying point for those who see themselves as betrayed by their elites, persecuted for the creation of the two Pakistans in 1947, suspected by a growing Hindu chauvinistic militancy, and taken advantage of by unscrupulous and cynical politicians.
Mann was quick to remind the reader that tensions remained rife between Aligarh's Muslim elites and non-elites. However, she also recognised that external pressures—the constant suspicion of their loyalty since partition and, increasingly in the 1980s, the sharp rise of Hindu communalism—reinforced a sense of collective identity among co-religionists. In this context, she suggested that invoking Islam could serve as a ‘refuge for the persecuted’. What this chapter will argue is that it could also serve as a language of contestation and empowerment in a context perceived as increasingly hostile.
The 1980s saw a resurgence of communal tensions in India, fed by the development of identity politics. Following the Congress’ crushing defeat in 1977, political competition intensified at the centre, boosting opposition parties that spoke the language of caste or religion to mobilise their constituencies. Although these evolutions were already under way by the 1960s, it was mostly after the emergency that they became prominent at the national level, leading to a shift in norms from national unity to group-based interests in the mainstream political discourse. Other domestic and transnational evolutions accentuated communal tensions. Within India, reports of Muslims’ demographic growth enhanced a sense of insecurity among some sections of the Hindu population. So too did the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, particularly in neighbouring Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq. The boom of Gulf economies added to these tensions as part of the Hindu population feared that oil money may fund mass conversions to Islam and ‘give to Islamism in India a new glow of self-confidence in one sudden sweep’. These evolutions fed into the ‘vulnerability syndrome’ of the majority population that boosted the rise of the Hindu right.
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- Between Nation and ‘Community'Muslim Universities and Indian Politics after Partition, pp. 284 - 334Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024