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Since a right-wing Hindu nationalist government came to power in 2014, Indian Muslims have faced rampant Islamophobia, lynchings and mob violence, discriminatory legislation, and economic ostracism. How have Indian Muslims—the largest religious minority in the world’s largest democracy—responded to the failures and demise of state secularism? Using the lens of Urdu poetry, this beautiful ethnography explores how Indian Muslims have drawn upon Islamic traditions to actualize free-thinking selves and imagine a pluralistic society unbeholden to coercive state power. Through poetic symposiums, interviews, social media, and deep conversations with diverse Muslim interlocutors, from religious leaders to politicians, civil society activists to poets, Anand Vivek Taneja paints a portrait of the vitality of Indian Muslim artistic, ethical, and spiritual life at a moment of existential crisis.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliterations and Translations
Prologue: I Saw Nothing But Beauty
Introduction
1. Wehshat
2. The Ghost of Ghalib: Or, How to Be a Self
3. This Is the Womans Miracle: The Networked Public Sphere and the Remaking
of Gender Relations
4. Jaun Elia from Heaven: Or, How (Not) to Belong to Hindustan
5. In Me Is the Essence of the Gita: Muslim Engagements with Hindu Dharma
6. Islam Comes Alive After Every Karbala: Shifts in the Nature of Islamic
Authority in Hindu Nationalist Times
7. Nest upon Nest: Maulana Azad, Political Demonetization, and Muslim
Persistence in India
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Anand Vivek Taneja is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. He is author of the award-winning Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi.
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