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Ethical Selfhood and the Status of the Secular: Islam, Modernity and Everyday Life in Mumbai ETHICAL SELFHOOD AND THE STATUS OF THE SECULAR: ISLAM, MODERNITY AND EVERYDAY LIFE IN MUMBAI Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Anand, Ari S Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 30/09/2021 12:53:12 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195626 ETHICAL SELFHOOD AND THE STATUS OF THE SECULAR: ISLAM, MODERNITY, AND EVERYDAY LIFE IN MUMBAI by Ari S. Anand Copyright © Ari S. Anand 2008 A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN ANTHROPOLOGY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2008 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Ari S. Anand entitled Ethical Selfhood and the Status of the Secular: Islam, Modernity and Everyday Life in Mumbai and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________________________________________________________________ Date: October 14, 2008 Dr. Brian Silverstein _______________________________________________________________________ Date: October 14, 2008 Dr. Jane Hill _______________________________________________________________________ Date: October 14, 2008 Dr. Mark Nichter _______________________________________________________________________ Date: October 14, 2008 Dr. Richard Eaton Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: October 14, 2008 Dissertation Director: Brian Silverstein 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Ari S. Anand 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Immense gratitude to those who, while unnamed in this document, were nevertheless key to both its production and to whatever growth and understanding, both academic and humane, that the author underwent in the process. The warmth and generosity extended me by my interlocutors in the "field" did little credit to the apprehensions with which I initially embarked upon my fieldwork, and are a testament to the resilience of a minority community that faces various forms of violent provocation on a regular basis. Thanks are also due to both my Comprehensive examination and Dissertation committee members, Professors Ana Alonso, Richard Eaton, Jane Hill, Miranda Joseph, Mark Nichter, and Brian Silverstein. I have learnt far more from each of them than either this dissertation or my interactions with them could possibly convey. In particular, I would like to acknowledge Professor Alonso for the many years of academic and personal guidance and encouragement she provided throughout my years as a graduate student. I am also honored to have been one of those fortunates who shared the benefit of Professor Hill's wisdom and example both in and out of the classroom. I know I am not alone in viewing her as an exemplar worthy of emulation, and wish her well as she retires. Finally, I am indebted to Professor Silverstein, chair of my dissertation committee, for his extraordinary mentorship and responsiveness, and his knack for getting me to commit to, and accomplish, goals that I scarcely believed were in the realm of possibility. Appreciation is also due to an entire group of friends and peers for their nourishment and sustenance over many years at the University of Arizona, from the department of Anthropology to the graduate program in Comparative Cultural Literary Studies. Listing names would be an impossible exercise here, but I would especially like to thank Drs. Zoe Hammer and Dereka Rushbrook for years of friendship and critical engagement, from reading drafts to sharing food. Finally, my deepest gratitude to my family: my parents Dharini and Bhupinder Singh Anand, my wife Rachel Christiansen and my daughter Gita. Their support for me in this academic journey has never wavered, even if their understanding of it, and its value, sometimes did. It gives me immense pleasure to finally, three years into her life, offer Gita a father who no longer has an incomplete dissertation hanging over his head. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 8 INTRODUCTION 10 The Question of the Secular 12 Indian Muslims: Ethical Selfhood and the Idea of Tradition 20 An Outline of the Work 32 1. POST 18TH CENTURY ISLAM IN SOUTH ASIA AND THE AHL-E SUNNAT WA 39 JAMA’AT Introduction 39 The Rise of Reformist Islam in Colonial South Asia 42 Muslims and Islamic Movements in Post-18th Century South Asia 50 The Ahl-e Sunnat wa Jama’at 57 The Nature of Reform and the Question of the Secular 65 Conclusion 69 2. EXPLORING THE RELIGIOUS AND THE SECULAR: MADRASA , TALIB, CITY 72 Introduction 72 Madrasas and Knowledge in India Today 73 Knowledge, Education and Madrasas in Muslim India 77 The Madrasa in the City: Habitation and Imagination 91 Narratives of Selfhood 97 Inter-Maslak Conflict: In Defense of the Prophet 99 Ambiguity, Adab and the Shari'a 104 The World Outside the Madrasa 105 Of Piety, Human Affairs and Knowledge 111 Conclusion 113 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS—CONT’D 3. SPACES OF AN URBAN SECULAR 115 Environs 115 Mohallas 116 Habitation 123 4. EXPLORING THE RELIGIOUS AND THE SECULAR: THE 131 HOUSEHOLDER/ENTREPRENEUR Introduction 131 Narratives of Selfhood 133 Status and Manliness 133 Gender, Learning and Authority 140 Gender at Home and Work 142 Islam and the Media at Home 150 Adab and Childraising: The Formation of Personhood 156 State Persecution and the Language of Rights 160 The Culture of Enterprise: Professional and Personal Pursuits 165 Rebuilding: Networks and Self-Improvement 165 Yoga, Natural Healing and Islamic Apologetics 169 Living Religious, Living Secular 172 Secular Life and Religious Identity 172 Politics: Citizenship and the Possibilities of Particularity 181 Conclusion 185 5. MEMORIES OF AN URBAN SECULAR 187 Introduction 187 The City Remembered 192 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS—CONT’D The City in the Official Imaginary 199 The Global City 203 Conclusion 207 6. CULTURE AND POWER IN AN URBAN SECULAR 209 Introduction 209 Culture, Power and Governmentality in the City 211 Quotidian Life and Networks of Identity 221 Muslim Urban 236 Conclusion 240 CONCLUSION 242 WORKS CITED 250 8 ABSTRACT In this dissertation I explore social identity, secularism, and Indian Muslims’ conceptions and experiences of living in a secular state while debating among themselves the meanings of ethical Muslim selfhood. Through participant observation and interviews based on over 15months of intensive field research, undertaken in a predominantly Muslim area of south-east Mumbai, my research focused on two groups of Muslim men—middle-class entrepreneurs and householders in their early to mid thirties, and senior students, from their late teens to early twenties, from a madrasa (Islamic seminary) attached to a prominent mosque in the city. Owing to its complex and intense dynamism, I also emphasize the city as an important agent in shaping everyday life. The core of my work is to explore secular life and secularism, central to India’s liberal conception of itself as a pluralist democracy, that emerge through the lived experiences of Muslim men engaging with various daily pressures and transactions in an intensely dynamic urban context while trying to maintain a self understood to be ethical in terms of an inherited Islamic tradition. In discussing everyday phenomena such as piety and religious authority, gender, childraising, popular culture, personal and professional pursuits and ethical conduct, I demonstrate that the ostensibly ‘religious’ domain of Islam is not necessarily the only, or even primary, basis for achieving selfhood for even those who identify as observant and devout Muslims. Rather, I argue, the religious domain of Islam in this context is defined as such and intersected by discourses 9 and practices of the self as a political and economic agent, that is, a self defined in terms of political modernity. Thus this dissertation also contributes to the current anthropological rethinking of categories like ‘religion’, ‘secularism’, and ‘politics’ in relation to social processes and subjects: a series of projects that are related, in the Indian context, to modernity and liberal conceptions of statehood, sovereignty, and personhood. A major conclusion of this work is that while most Indian Muslims have largely internalized (and accept) the liberal differentiation of politics and religion, the modern secular project in India nevertheless remains incomplete.
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