©2009 Arpita Chakrabarti ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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©2009 Arpita Chakrabarti ALL RIGHTS RESERVED A FINE BALANCE: RE-MAKING MUSLIM MODERNITY AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICES IN DELHI AND NEW YORK CITY By ARPITA CHAKRABARTI A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Anthropology written under the direction of Louisa Schein and approved by _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October 2009 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION: A FINE BALANCE: RE-MAKING MUSLIM MODERNITY AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICES IN DELHI AND NEW YORK CITY By ARPITA CHAKRABARTI Dissertation Director: Louisa Schein How do middle-class Muslims make sense of their religion and of their own selves as Muslims, while occupying the position of highly stigmatized religious minorities? How do they live with and attempt to resolve the contradiction of an Islam that is the source of all that is good and worthwhile and an Islam that stands for backwardness, fanaticism, and terror? This dissertation, based on twenty four months of participant observation in India (Delhi) and the United States (New York City), focuses on how middle-class Muslims in these two sites are re-making what it means to be a pious Muslim and a modern person, as they live their everyday lives in ways that demonstrate that it is entirely possible to be both religious and modern in a world which routinely places Islam in an antithetical relation to modernity. I argue that given the insistent dominant representations of Muslims as anti-modern and backward, Muslims cannot help but engage with the discourses that produce them as such. This engagement in turn produces new understandings of what it means to be both Muslim and modern. At the core of this middle-class Muslim modernity, there is an emphasis on critical thinking that must be ii brought to bear on all aspects of their lives including their religion. At the same time, in this process of re-presenting themselves as modern, middle-class Muslims are not setting aside their religion but presenting Islam as providing a means for a thoroughly modern way of being in the world in ways that enable us to rethink the tradition/modernity dichotomy. Having already been stigmatized as backward and anti-modern through various public discourses, middle-class Muslims often represent themselves as modern through drawing specific contrasts between their own religious beliefs and practices and those of less educated, lower-class Muslims whom they designate in turn as backward. The very religion of Islam, on account of which Muslims are marked off as non-modern, is thus transformed in the discourses and actions of middle-class Muslims into the site for performing and appropriating modernity. iii PREFACE This project has been in the making for close to a decade, during which time I have crossed continents and time zones, met many wonderful people, and learnt to look at the world differently. It seems appropriate, therefore, to begin with a brief summary of the stimulating intellectual journey that this has been and to take this opportunity to thank all those who have made it possible. I started graduate school at Rutgers University, New Jersey, in the Fall of 2000, having entered the Anthropology Program with an interest in researching African- American Muslim identities. My interest in African-American Muslims had been sparked while writing a paper on the ways in which religion had been used in the American civil rights movement, by the two very different figures of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. However, a summer of exploratory fieldwork and review of literatures on Muslims in the U.S. led to the realization that there was a large and understudied South Asian Muslim population in the tri-state area. I felt compelled to further understand this immigrant experience of being Muslim, situating it within the racial and immigrant politics specific to the U.S., as well as within the larger framework of transnational relations shaped by allegiance to the umma or worldwide Muslim community, and by ties to the different nation-states of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. I conducted a year (2003-2004) of participant observation among South Asian Sunni Muslims in New York City, spending time in a variety of immigrant Muslim spaces such as Islamic schools, Muslim non-profit organizations, and Muslim-owned and run grocery stores and restaurants. During this time, I also became increasingly interested in understanding how South Asian immigrant experiences and understandings of being iv Muslim were similar to and different from those of Muslims in India, who also constitute a minority subject to similar kinds of public misrepresentations and suspicion. Thus, my stay in New York City was followed by another year (2004-2005) of fieldwork with middle-class Sunni Muslims in Old Delhi, India. In this dissertation, I have chosen to focus primarily on the insights derived from research in Delhi. A relatively small selection of the data gathered in New York City is presented in chapter six and used primarily to provide a comparative perspective. The longer the life span of a project, the longer are the list of debts accumulated. It is with great pleasure that I thank everyone who have been involved in any way with the making of this dissertation. My greatest thanks go to the many men and women in New York City and Delhi who befriended me, shared their lives, and opened their homes to me. While I cannot acknowledge each one of them individually, I would like to extend a special thanks to Mehmood and Faiza, Masood, Azra and their families for extending their friendship, cooking me the most delicious meals, and making me feel at home. A special thank you to my advisor, Louisa Schein - without her enduring interest, incisive comments and insistence that I can do better this dissertation would not have been possible. I would also like to thank my wonderful committee members – Laura Ahearn, Angelique Haugerud, Ethel Brooks and Lila Abu-Lughod - for taking the time to read this dissertation and provide insightful comments, as well as for their unfailing support, encouragement, and friendship over the years. Ethel, thank you for always reminding me that the work I am doing is important because of its larger purpose beyond the dissertation. Achieving those larger goals will obviously be the work of a life time, but thank you for reminding me to aim for them. Angelique, I would like to extend a v special thank you to you for the excellent classes in research methods and for giving me a head start in writing a successful research proposal. Lila, thank you for taking such an interest in this project, for making the time to read this dissertation so closely, and for providing many helpful comments regarding both substance and structure. Laura, thank you for everything. I would also like to thank other faculty members at Rutgers University, especially Michael Moffatt, Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas, Jasbir Puar, and Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi. My thanks go out also to the wonderful staff members in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, especially Vicky, Penny, and Ginny, for their warmth and ever readiness to help in every way. I thank the Indian Government for granting me permission to conduct research in Delhi, the Department of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics for providing academic affiliation, and Dr. Deepak Mehta for providing helpful guidance during fieldwork in Delhi. Purnima Mehta and the staff members at the American Institute of Indian Studies were extremely warm and helpful. I would also like to thank Mandeep Janeja and her family for taking such good care of me in Delhi. Fieldwork in New York was made possible through a Teaching Assistantship from Rutgers University, while research in Delhi was funded by a Junior Research Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies. Preliminary research in Delhi and New York were funded by Princeton University’s Program in Urbanization and Migration as well as Bigel Awards from Rutgers University. The writing of the dissertation was facilitated by a grant from the Taraknath Das Foundation at Columbia University as well as a Teaching Assistantship from Rutgers University. Portions of this work have been presented at annual meetings of the American Anthropological vi Association and the Asian American Association. I thank fellow participants and audience members for helpful comments and suggestions. I would like to thank my friends for their support throughout graduate school and the process of writing this dissertation. I am especially thankful to Amrita Bhaumik, Jessica Libove, Andy Bickford, Wendy Weisman, Noelle Mole, Dillon Mahoney, Debarati Sen, Emily McDonald, Drew Gerkey, Rebecca Etz, Purnima Paidipatti, Ellorashree Maitra, Ananya Dasgupta, Manjusha Iyer. A special thank you goes to Dillon Mahoney for his generous help in facilitating the submission of this dissertation. None of this would have been possible without the love and support of my family. I would like to thank both sets of parents – Raghu Nath and Sunanda Chakraborty, Shiloo and Reeta Chattopadhyay - for their love and the support they have provided over so many years, in so many ways. And finally, Rono and Nikhil – thank you for being all that I look forward to coming home to every day. Notes on Language and Translation In most of the interviews I conducted in Delhi and New York City, as well as in casual conversations, respondents spoke in English, switching every now and then to Hindi, Urdu, or Bengali. This is how most of our conversations were conducted since English in combination with one or more local languages is what most middle-class Muslims use on a daily basis in both sites.