self-employed in traditional professions. Muslims
are underrepresented in salaried professions and
high-tech industries. Muslims also tend to have
higher rates of illiteracy than Hindus or Chris-
tians, especially among
Women
.
Muslims tend to be labeled as outsiders by
members of other Indian groups, yet intermar-
riage and conversion have brought about a signifi-
cant degree of indigenization. The Indian census
does not recognize racial or ethnic groups, but it
does recognize language populations. There are
22 official languages that belong to two main lan-
guage families—the Indo-European (in the north)
and the Dravidian (in the south). Muslims speak
the local languages of the regions where they
live. The greatest number speaks Hindi-Urdu, but
there are also many who speak Kashmiri, Ben-
gali, Marathi, Sindhi, Malayalam, Gujarati, and
Kannada. Punjabi is another language spoken by
Indian Muslims, but more so in nearby Pakistan
than in India. Like other Indians, most speak more
than one language, including English, another of
India’s official languages. Within a particular lan-
guage-speaking domain, Muslims may distinguish
themselves from Hindus and others by greater use
of Arabic and Persian loanwords, and, in some
areas, the use of Urdu script (a modified version
of Perso-Arabic script) instead of Devanagari, the
Sanskritic script. Also, many Arabic and Persian
loanwords have entered into the languages spo-
ken by non-Muslims through the centuries. This
process is slowly being reversed, however, as non-
Muslims attempt to replace these loanwords with
Sanskritic ones.
All of the major expressions of Islam are pres-
ent in India, in addition to several that developed
on Indian soil. Although many of these expres-
sions came from the Middle East and Central Asia,
they have been shaped by centuries of Hindu-
Muslim interaction, both on the level of popular
religion and on the level of formal institutions
and doctrines. In terms of formal Islamic tradi-
tion, especially in urban India, most Muslims are
Sunnis affiliated with the h
anaFi
l
egal
s
chool
.
The s
haFii
l
egal
s
chool
prevails in southern
India, especially in the states of Kerala, Tamil
Nadu, and somewhat less so in Karnataka. In
recent years, Hanbali law may be gaining some
influence through workers returning to India after
living or studying in s
aUdi
a
rabia
and through
the dissemination of Hanbali ideas via the print
and electronic media. About 10 percent of Indian
Muslims are Shii. t
Welve
-i
mam
s
hiism
is especially
strong in Hyderabad in the south and the region
of Awadh in the north (centered on Lucknow
in Uttar Pradesh). Followers of i
smaili
s
hiism
,
known as Bohras and Khojas, are found today
mainly in Mumbai (Bombay), but they have been
historically influential in a wider area encom-
passing the Sind (now in Pakistan), Gujarat, and
Maharashtra. The number of Ismailis is much
smaller than that of the Twelve-Imam Shiis. India
is also the birthplace of the a
hmadiyya
sect, which
was founded by g
hUlam
a
hmad
(d. 1908) in the
Punjab during the last decade of the 19th century.
Moreover, Islam’s presence in South Asia contrib-
uted significantly to the emergence of Sikhism, a
separate religious tradition, in the Punjab during
the 16th and 17th centuries.
The shape Islam has taken in India and
South Asia generally has been greatly influ-
enced by s
UFism
. The leading Indian Sufi orders
are the Chishtis (since the 13th century), the
Suhrawardis (since the 13th century), the Qadiris
(since the 15th century), and the Naqshbandis
(since the 16th century). Of these four orders,
the Chishti is the one that has become most
grounded in the Indian context, with major
saint
shrines located in a
Jmer
, Delhi, Ahmedabad,
and Gulbarga (other important Chishti shrines
are located elsewhere in India and modern
Pakistan). The other Sufi orders originated in
the Middle East and Central Asia. They all ben-
efited from official patronage during the eras of
the d
elhi
s
Ultanate
and the m
Ughal
dynasty
.
Membership of the orders has been recruited
from among the Sunni populace at large, but the
festivals held at Sufi shrines (called dargahs in
K 350
India
eastern Islamicate lands) in honor of their saints
(pirs) can attract hundreds of thousands from
across a wide spectrum of religious traditions.
The Shiis, for their part, have directed their piety
toward the imams and their descendants. They
hold large gatherings and processions during
a
shUra
, the annual commemoration of the mar-
tyrdom of Imam Husayn. Ismailis have similar
observances in honor of their Imams and pirs,
and in difficult times, they have employed Sufi
ideas and symbols to avoid persecution by liter-
ally minded Sunni jurists and judges.
When Muslim rule was declining and British
colonial control was increasing, Islamic
reneWal
and
reForm
movements
began to arise in India.
a
hmad
s
irhindi
(d. 1624) and Shah Wali Allah
(d. 1762) were among the early pioneers in these
reform movements. After the suppression of the
1857 Muslim-Hindu uprising (known in British
history as the Sepoy Mutiny) against the govern-
ment of the English East India Company, Sunni
Ulama
at the d
eoband
madrasa
near Delhi sought
to bolster Islamic
edUcation
among Indian Mus-
lims in order to preserve their tradition. Deobandi
schools have since spread throughout South Asia,
and the ulama continue to be active in adapting
their religious traditions to the rapid changes
brought with modernity. Another consequence
of the 1857 uprising was the founding of the
Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh
by Sir s
ayyid
a
hmad
k
han
(d. 1898), which was
designed to educate Muslims in the modern sci-
ences and prepare them for leadership in colonial
India. From 1919 to 1924, Muslims in northern
India participated in the k
hilaFat
m
ovement
in an
unsuccessful effort to revive a pan-Islamic
caliph
-
ate
. Other important movements that originated
in India that have since had global impact are the
Deobandi missionary movement known as the
t
ablighi
J
amaat
(founded in the late 1920s) and
Abu al-Ala Mawdudi’s J
amaat
-
i
i
slami
(founded in
1941), an Islamic political movement that became
an increasingly important political force in Paki-
stan after its creation in 1947.
ISlAM IN SOuTh ASIA:
A hISTOrICAl SKETCh
The conventional understanding found in modern
India and often outside India is that its history
consists of three phases: an ancient Hindu Vedic
golden age from around 1200
b
.
c
.
e
. to 1000
c
.
e
.,
an Islamic age of foreign conquest and despotism
from around 1000 to 1600, and a British colonial
age that laid the foundations for modern inde-
pendent India from 1600 to 1947. An assortment
of facts can be brought forth in support of this
view of history. Such a view, however, tends to
treat Islam in monolithic terms, exaggerating the
role of religion at the expense of social, politi-
cal, and economic processes in Indian history.
It relies on the misleading idea of irreconcilable
gaps between Muslims and Hindus as well as
between Muslims and the British. These per-
ceived gaps are the results of India’s experience
with
colonialism
and communal politics since
the 1930s and 1940s, rather than a reflection
of precolonial historical realities in South Asia.
In recent years, the three-phase model has been
given new life by Hindu nationalists and Mus-
lim radicals, as well as Western scholars such
as Samuel P. Huntington, who has proposed a
post–cold war world of civilizational “clashes”
based largely on religious identity. Now, however,
some scholars are questioning the validity of the
model, arguing that it is a gross oversimplifica-
tion and that nowhere is it more oversimplified
than in its conceptualization of the “Islamic age.”
It overlooks the variety of ways that Muslims
used to indigenize their religion in India during
the more than 1,000 years they have lived there,
the complex array of forms that Islam took there
(as described above), and how Indian Muslim
rulers and the English engaged in various sorts
of cooperation and power sharing even after the
1857 uprising. Conflicts and acts of violence did
occur and still do, but they were not confined
to the eras of Muslim rule, nor did they always
occur along religious or cultural “fault lines”
between Muslims and non-Muslims.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: