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This chapter scrutinizes some of the elements of the “minoritization” of Muslims in India and China. Indian Muslims have a history that gives them a centrality in processes of state formation in India, as exemplified by the Mughal Empire, but also by the postcolonial formation of Pakistan and Bangladesh, which cannot be found in the history of Chinese Muslims. In the comparison between India and China, the chapter highlights that despite the differences in numerical strength it is the transformation of Muslims from a variety of different groups into a “minority” that in both cases require scrutiny in relation to the construction of a national majority.

According to all available sources (archives and interviews), no one in Malerkotla was killed in the interreligious violence of Partition, and most of the Muslim population remained. Explanations for this situation draw on Malerkotla’s particular history, selectively referencing certain events, such as the blessing of Haider Shaikh or the Sikh Guru Gobind Singh, to construct a coherent narrative for what otherwise appears as a gross aberration from the Partition experience of most Punjabis. In combination, these explanations are often contradictory or even mutually exclusive, and yet the range and variety of accounts form a web of meaning that allows everyone access to the grand narrative. Through continual repetition and reinforcement this metanarrative of peace becomes a hegemonic discourse, silencing opposition and dominating all accounts of Malerkotla.

The question of what explains relative educational backwardness among the Muslim communities of India has remained a puzzle. Is it Islamic theology that prevents the Muslims from taking advantage of modern education? Or is it that they are discriminated against in matters of admission and establishment of educational institutions? Or is it a pre-conceived apprehension of discrimination among Muslims that discourages them to acquire education? Does their access to educational opportunities, by and large, follow general rules of demand for education or is it determined by factors specific to them? This chapter discusses various perspectives on the link between religion and education in general and on the orientation of Indian Muslims towards the modern education system in particular. These perspectives on the relative lack of education among Indian Muslims are exposed to be lacking in logical formulation as well as being against empirical evidence.

Chapter Three focuses on Somalis in South Africa and their ambiguous position within this racially segregated society. The analysis shows how Somalis leverage their Muslim faith to cement ties with Indian Muslim, but distinguish themselves from the majority Black population. Despite economic success, the legacy of violence and communal crisis in post apartheid South Africa leaves these Somalis vulnerable to violence. The violence is gendered, as it is exclusively Somali men who enter poor black neighborhoods, whereas women work in more racially mixed urban centers. As in the UAE, Somali gender dynamics are rarely undermined here, where Somalis reside and socialize within the minority Indian Muslim community. In some aspects, then, Somalis’ racial, religious, and gender identities remain stable and secure within the Indian enclaves where they settle, thus in line with the original sense of migration as leading to an earthly jannah. The pervasive violence and the lack of travel documents fuel Somalis’ desire for further migrations, towards Europe or North America.

Considered the epicentre of the Muslim universe, Mecca attracts hundreds of thousands of believers every year. It is this pull of Mecca which induced people to undertake difficult journeys in the days before air travel became the norm. During these early years, it took several months for pilgrims to complete their journey, the length of which was prolonged by the restrictions and checks imposed upon their movements. These restrictions were a product of larger medical and political developments. This introductory chapter begins by reviewing the experiences of Indian pilgrims based on colonial accounts and from pilgrims' own travelogues, a whole genre of which had emerged by the late nineteenth century. It then discusses the role of Indian Muslims in transforming the nature of the Haj during the late colonial period, and the medical dimension of the pilgrimage. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter focuses on the political economy of small towns in north India and the political pressure experienced by the qasbah. It suggests that the history of gentry qasbah and commercial city illustrates more general themes in the society and politics of north India and that the north Indian Muslim qasbah represents some of the features of the classic Islamic city from Algeria to Indonesia. It also highlights the importance of the gentry qasbah in the history of political separatism in north India given that small towns were the scenes of conflict between the two major religious communities in the 1830s.

This chapter discusses Syed Ahmad Khan, whose family was closely connected to the Mughal court. The chapter begins with a section on Khan’s childhood and his decision to accept a job in the East India Company, a decision protested by his family members. It then looks at the start of his official career as an apprentice in the court of the Sadr Amin at Delhi, and how he became a Sadr Amin in less than twenty years. It describes Khan as pro-British, and narrates his successful efforts to negotiate the release of the British officers and their families who were posted in Bijnor. The chapter also studies the Mutiny of 1857 and Khan’s role in bridging the gap between the Indian Muslims and the British government.

This concluding chapter details how Muhammad Iqbal aimed to re-establish Muslim dignity under the British Raj. Iqbal diagnosed a wound within the modern Muslim soul, caused by two injuries — first, a paternalistic colonialism justified through particular socio-political, philosophical, and religious doctrines and, second, the intellectual laziness and lack of courage on the part of the Muslims themselves. The medicine that Iqbal prescribes is the empowerment of the self (khudi). These newly empowered Muslims will be able to revitalise the community and confidently assert themselves against oppressive rule. However, in order to see a khudi-empowered community realised, Indian-Muslims need to be committed to instilling the necessary character traits within themselves.

This chapter explores the relevance of Pakistani elite perceptions about Indian Muslims as input into foreign policy formation. Over time, violence surrounding Partition and the divided family syndrome declined as shapers of political opinion about India. The Indian Muslims gradually slipped from the national agenda as they were considered increasingly ‘Indianized’, being cut off from Pakistani over long stretch of time in terms of direct communication and due to Islamabad’s involvement in the Gulf and Afghanistan away from South Asia in economic and strategic terms respectively. Pakistani perceptions have been typically stereotyped—mainly seen through the prism of mohajirs—carrying nostalgia for UP as the land of past Muslim glory at the cost of contemporary issues and areas of Muslim concentration elsewhere in India. In Pakistan itself, mohajirs and Punjabis, more than other ethnic communities, are mobilized on matters relating to their co-religionists across the border.

Nazir Ahmad was not only a novelist but also a versatile scholar, a gracious teacher, and a social reformer. He and Sayyid Ahmad built a reputation as defenders of the same ideal: the harmony of faith and reason. Nazir Ahmad's novels mirror the Indian society. He saw women being cloistered in the private realm of the family, and knew that the reach of Islam's ideals of equality and gender justice was severely constrained by the institution of marriage that empowered men and disempowered women. Nazir Ahmad took part in debates that offer a glimpse into north India's social, political, and intellectual history. Citing the Koran and the numerous Hadis, he argued that the theoretical equality of all Muslims should be put into practice. This chapter examines Nazir Ahmad's views on Islam and modernism as well as purdah, polygamy, and Muslim women's rights, as well as his affirmative uses of rhetoric.

This chapter introduces the debates triggered by the writings on nationalism and communalism-on identity politics, social reforms, and the administrative definition of the Muslims as separate and homogenized. This image of Muslims as separate and homogenized had important implications; it represented a sharp break from the networked mode that had shaped medieval thinking, and it is little wonder that it generated considerable ferment in Muslim thinking in India. Anyone who embarks upon such enterprise is bound to rely heavily on sociologists and political scientists and the literature they generate. Such an exercise is badly needed and can be ascertained by examining any of the standard reference works on South Asian history, politics, sociology, and comparative religion.

This chapter talks of Mahatma Gandhi’s support for Pan-Islamism. It suggests that no decision made by Gandhi in the course of his long political career, extending over more than fifty years, has come in for sharper criticism than his support of the Khilafat or the Pan-Islamist movement in the early 1920s. This essay highlights nationalist historians’ criticisms on Gandhi’s gross misjudgement in taking up a purely religious grievance of the Indian Muslims, thus introducing religion into politics. It also discusses the Congress–League Pact and the argument that until 1919, there was no Muslim leadership that could be definitely identified as representing the common Indian interests.

The chapter discusses the ideology and practice of Islamic or pan-Islamic unity in the context of the Ottomans and the Indian Muslims. It is argued that where ethnic and geopolitical interests failed, the pan-Islamism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries succeeded in forming a strong bond between the Turks and the Indian Muslims. However, the author makes a point of cleansing pan-Islamism of the period from the more aggressive strains that have come to be associated with the idea more recently. The chapter presents pan-Islamism in the context of the Indian Medical Mission to Turkey during the first Balkan War, providing an overview of its origins and rationale. The chapter concludes that the appeal to action to resurrect the dignity of the Muslim nation, both at home and in the rest of the Muslim world, was the mainstay of pan-Islamic thinking which led the Mission to the Ottoman Turkey.

This chapter discusses Halide’s views about Hindu-Muslim relations in India. In Inside India two influences are visible, Jamia and Gandhi. Generally speaking, her analysis of and conclusions on Hindu-Muslim relations accord with the Mahatma. Like him, she believed that each religious community could make it a part of its dogma to teach all children their oneness as Indians. This, she felt, would one day remove friction, if it did nothing else. Halide also examined the fragmentation of the Muslim élites under British rule, the ‘Muslim revival’ under Syed Ahmad Khan, and the impact of World War I which gave birth to a New India. With great insight, she talked of ‘a distinct sense of nationhood separate from their religious life’ among the Indian Muslims.

The Prologue contextualises the socio-economic conditions of Muslim minorities in contemporary India. It points out severe income inequality as the most significant feature of contemporary India, which is governed by the logic of neoliberal economic policies. This chapter reviews the political, policymaking, and academic discourses in the socio-political and economic contexts of neoliberal reforms in India. It introduces the questions that the book addresses in the later chapters. This introductory chapter also narrates the theoretical framework, the conceptual clarifications regarding the specificity of the Indian Muslim identity, the particular characteristics of the Indian version of neoliberalism, and the peculiarities of the political and policy regimes that sustain Indian neoliberalism and spells out the chapter plan in the book.

This chapter explores the example of the Indian Muslim Ahmed Khan, who was, like many Muslims, greeted with hospitality by the Revolution. Indeed, despite the hostility of leading Jacobins to the expansion of revolutionary proselytism into allied states like the Ottoman Empire, the appearance of this Indian Muslim could set in train a project to translate the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen into Persian. That project was encouraged by Maximilien Robespierre, even as he rejected the attempts by French subjects in the Muslim world to establish revolutionary societies. In addition, Ahmed's story can tell us something about the French Revolution and its relationship to the foreigner. Despite the shifts in revolutionary historiography, the old notion that foreigners were arbitrarily persecuted under “the Terror” has remained largely in place. From the perspective of this Indian Muslim, that history looks different. Instead of suspicion and distrust, he found support and encouragement.

This chapter provides original insights based on field research and the author’s personal experience as a woman growing up in the Indian Muslim community in urban Myanmar. This chapter charts the ways in which social, cultural and religious norms inhibit the potential of Muslim women in terms of their educational and career prospects. It highlights the problems inherent in the current system of state education. Yet there are also particular barriers that Muslim women face to accessing education. The chapter concludes by emphasising the potentially positive role that Islamic religious leaders, parents and the government could play in reversing this situation in order to empower Muslim women.