ISBN : 9780198081678
Popular knowledge generally operates with the notion that "Hindu" and "Muslim" as polarized religious identities have existed from the moment Muslims entered northern India in the eleventh century. The essays for this volume interrogate this idea. They focus on Islamicate traditions in their interaction with coterminous Hindu ones in the three centuries between 1500 and 1800. They examine a wide tableau of sites and modes of interchanges, allowing the texts to speak in their own languages, whether these are assimilative, antagonistic, or indifferent. Given the charged nature of Hindi-Muslim relations today, a fresh study of these relations in their regional and temporal specificity along with a renewed attempt to closely interrogate the language in which we talk about them is absolutely vital in order to contest powerful and contemporary "clash of civilizations" narratives in South Asia as well as elsewhere.
Introduction
Section I: Of Intersections
1: Ideology and State-Building: Humayan's Search for Legitimacy in an Hindu-Muslim Environment, Eva Orthamann
2: Dara Shukoh, Vedanta, and Imperial Succession in Mughal India, Munis Faruqui
3: The Prince and the Muvahhid: Dara Shikoh and Mughal Engagements with Vedanta, Supriya Gandhi
4: Learned Brahmins and the Mughal Court: The Jyotisas, Christopher Minkowski
5: Between Gaya and Karbala: The Textual Identification of Persian Hindu Poets from Lucknow in the Tazkira of Bhagwan Das "Hindï", Stefano Pello
6: Faith and Allegiance in the Mughal Era: Perspectives from Rajasthan, Ramya Sreenivasan
Section II: Of proximity and distance
7: Inflected Kathas: Sufis and Krishna Bhaktas in Awadh, Francesca Orsini
8: Sant and Sufi in Sundardas's Poetry, Monika Horstmann
9: Hagiography and the Other in the Vallabha Sampradaya, Vasudha Dalmia
10: Diatribes against Saktas in Banarasi Bazaars and Rural Rajasthan: Kabïr and his Ramanandï Hagiographers, Heidi Pauwels
11: Muslims as Devotees and Outsiders: Attitudes Towards Muslims in the Varta literature of the Vallabha Sampradaya, Shandip Saha
12: Mahamat Prannath and the Pranami Movement: Hinduism and Islam in the Service of a Mercantile Sect, Brendan LaRocque
Note on Editors and Contributors
Index
