Overview

Using primarily Urdu sources from the nineteenth century, this book allows us to rethink notions of 'the Muslim', in its numerous, complex and often contradictory forms, which emerged in colonial North India after 1857. Allowing the self-representation of Muslimness and its manifestations to emerge, it contrasts how the colonial British 'made Muslims' very differently compared to how the community envisaged themselves. A key argument made here contests the general sense of the narrative of lamentation, decay, decline, and a sense of self-pity and ruination, by proposing a different condition, that of zillat, a condition which gave rise to much self-reflection resulting in action, even if it was in the form of writing and expression. By questioning how and when a Muslim community emerged in colonial India, the book unsettles the teleological explanation of the Partition of India and the making of Pakistan.

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9781108490535

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S. Akbar Zaidi is currently the Executive Director of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi. He was Professor at Columbia University, New York from 2010 to 2020, where he held a joint position at the School of International and Public Affairs, and the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies. He was also Adjunct Professor at the IBA from 2013 to 2020. In his academic career of over 35 years, he has taught courses on colonial history, Pakistani history and on the political economy of South Asia. His most recent publication is New Perspectives on Pakistan's Political Economy (Cambridge, 2019) which he co-edited with Matthew McCartney.

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