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Distributed for Seagull Books

Muslims, Dalits, and the Fabrications of History

How have the dominant histories of the Indian subcontinent been constructed and how do they deal with the subject of Muslims and Dalits or ‘Untouchables’? Taking a subaltern approach - the view from below - Muslims, Dalits, and the Fabrications of History explores a wide range of issues across history. The essays range across: the creation of the concept of ‘the Musalman’ through the work of Hindi writers and publicists in the late nineteenth century; how the re-imaginings of the Mappila peasant ‘uprisings’ in the early twentieth century constructed a popular image of the fanatic Musalman; Gandhi´s attempt to rethink political relations between Hindus and Muslims; the anomalous position of Kabir within the frameworks of caste and canonicity; the history, politics, and legal aspects of the case of the Dalit murdered on the steps of a Hanuman temple; how authority, property and matriliny in Malabar helped to shape colonial law-making; the rhetoric of the bardic tradition; the nationalist imagination.

350 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | © 2006

Asian Studies: South Asia

History: Asian History


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Table of Contents

Note on Contributors
1.  Representing the Musalman: Then and Now, Now and Then
     Shahid Amin, University of Delhi
2.  Refiguring the Fanatic: Malabar 1836-1922
     M. T. Ansari, University of Hyderabad
3.  A Practice of Prejudice: Gandhi´s Politics of Friendship
     Faisal Fatehali Devji, Yale University
4.  The Anomaly of Kabir: Caste and Canonicity in Indian Modernity
     Milind Wakankar, State University of New York
5.  Death of a Kotwal: Injury and the Politics of Recognition
     Anupama Rao, Columbia University
6.  Framing Custom, Directing Practices: Authority, Property and Matriliny under Colonial Law in Nineteenth-century Malabar
     Praveena Kodoth, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum
7.  A Poetics of Resistance: Investigating the Rhetoric of the Bardic Historians of Rajasthan
     Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar, independent scholar; Renu Dube, Boise State University; and Reena Dube, Indiana University
8.  The Work of Imagination: Temporality and Nationhood in Colonial Bengal
     Prathama Banerjee, Lady Sri Ram College, Delhi

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