[Reader-list] First Posting: From Naseem ur-Rahman and Yoginder Sikand

[Yogi Sikand]

*Hello All!* *Our project is titled: "The Shaping of Muslim Identities and
the Role of Muslim Publishing Houses: The Delhi Case ". This is our first
posting. *

Look forward to your suggestions!


* * *–Naseem ur Rahman and Yoginder Sikand*

Delhi is the single largest centre of the Muslim publishing industry in
India. A large number of Muslim publishing houses are located in Delhi. Most
of these are based in the Muslim-dominated parts of Old Delhi and in Basti
Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and Okhla in New Delhi. Books published by these
publishing houses are found in Muslim bookshops all over India and even
abroad. Several of these publishing houses are leading exporters of Islamic
books in a range of languages, including Urdu, Arabic and English.

Our project looks at the role that these publishing houses play in shaping
Muslim identities in contemporary India. It also examines their role in
sustaining, nurturing and further developing the tradition of Islamic
learning, focusing particularly on how this tradition comes to be expressed
in diverse ways, reflecting sectarian, political and other differences.

Most of these publishing houses produce literature geared essentially to a
Muslim, Urdu-reading public. The vast majority of these publishing houses
specialize in producing literature on Islamic themes, including rituals,
beliefs ('*aqaid*) and jurisprudential issues (*fiqh*). This reflects both
the marginalisation of Urdu and Muslims in post-1947 India as well as the
relegation of Urdu to the status of an almost exclusively 'Muslim' language,
principally as a result of discriminatory state policies, market forces as
well as the politics of communalism. The overwhelming focus of the literary
production of these publishing houses on specifically religious themes in
Urdu also reflects the fact that Urdu scholarship has, as a result of whole
host of factors, been relegated to the portals of the *madrasa*s. This
represents what could be called a radical 'de-secularisation' of Urdu in
post-1947 India, primarily as a result of discriminatory state policy and
the rapid abandonment of Urdu by non-Muslims, because of which Urdu is now
generally associated as a language of the *madrasa*s. Few *madrasa*s teach
anything other than specifically Islamic 'religious' subjects beyond a
certain basic level. Consequently, '*ulama*, Islamic clerics trained in the
*madrasa*s, are not generally equipped to write on such themes. A large
proportion of the authors whose works are published by the Delhi-based
Muslim publishing houses are '*ulama* or *madrasa* graduates. The
overwhelming focus of these publishing houses on specifically Islamic issues
is thus, in part, a reflection of the social background of a majority of the
authors whose works they publish.

In addition to specifically Islamic religious themes, many Delhi-based
Muslim publishing houses also produce texts about Muslim historical
personages, including the Prophet Muhammad, his companions (*sahaba*),
Muslim scholars ('*ulama*), rulers, Sufi mystics and reformers, as well as
various Muslim and Islamic movements. This again reflects the fact that in
post-1947 India Urdu has come to be treated by the state and society as a
specifically Muslim language, something that was not the case in
pre-Partition India. The Islamic and Muslim focus of the publications of
these houses, in turn, reflects the role of the Muslim publishing industry
in shaping notions of what it means to be Muslim in contemporary India as
well as providing normative guidelines for Muslim readers to sustain their
Islamic faith and identity in the specific context of minority-ness that
they are placed in. Exploring this aspect is another crucial component of
our project.

The Muslim identity as well as the Islamic religious tradition that these
publishing houses seek to construct, sustain and promote is, however, not
homogenous or internally undifferentiated. There are a number of different
schools of thought (*maktab-i fikr*), sect (*maslak*) and jurisprudence (*
fiqh*, *mazhab*) among the Indian Muslims and most of them have their own
particular publishing houses. Most Indian Muslims are Sunnis and several
publishing houses that are associated in some way or the other with each of
the major Sunni groups (Ahl-i Hadith, Deobandis, Barelvis, Jamaat-i Islami
etc.) are located in Delhi. In the Shia case, although there are different
groups (Ithna Ashari, Mustalia Ismaili and Nizari Ismaili), only the Ithna
Asharis have a few publishing houses in Delhi. In this context, these
publishing houses play an important role in sustaining internal,
particularly sectarian, differences among Muslims. This is another important
aspect that we wish to study.

Few Muslim publishing houses have produced any sort of social science
literature on empirical issues related to Muslim communities in contemporary
India. These issues are generally referred to only obliquely, most often in
the context of Islam and Islamic injunctions. Understanding why this is so
is one of our crucial research questions. How do demand and supply factors
relate to this phenomenon is something that we seek to understand through
in-depth interviews with the owners of the publishing houses.

A final aspect of our project is the role that some Muslim publishing houses
are now seeking to play to engage with a host of issues that Muslims, not
just in India but elsewhere, too, are today faced with, such as the need to
offer creative responses to the challenges of religious pluralism and
secularism, demands for social and economic justice, the phenomenon of
religious radicalism and the growing influence of Islamophobic discourses
and so on. We would seek to examine the extent and the efficacy or otherwise
of these efforts.
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