Robinson, F (1997) Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia since 1800. South Asia, 20 (1).
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In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries South Asian Muslims, along with Muslims elsewhere in the world, began to experience religious change of revolutionary significance. This change involved a shift in the focus of Muslim piety from the next world to this one. It meant the devaluing of a faith of contemplation on God's mysteries and of belief in His capacity to intercede for men on earth. It meant the valuing instead of a faith in which Muslims were increasingly aware that it was they, and only they, who could act to create a just society on earth. The balance which had long existed between the other-worldly and the this-worldly aspects of Islam was moved firmly in favour of the latter.
This is a Published version This version's date is: 1997 This item is not peer reviewed
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1. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 1-24. 2. For the significance of the role of print and the shift from orality to literacy, see Francis Robinson, `Islam and the Impact of Print in South Asia' in Nigel Crook ed., The Transmission of Knowledge in South Asia: Essays in Education, Religion, History, and Politics (New Delhi, 1996), pp. 62-97. 3. The shrines concerned were those of Takiya Sharif, Kakori, Khanqah Karimiya, Salon, and Haji Waris Ali Shah, Deva. Claudia Liebeskind, `Sufism, Sufi Leadership and `Modernisation' in South Asia since c.1800'(PhD, London, 1995). 4. For the general process see Barbara D. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900 (Princeton, NJ, 1982). 5. Ibid., p. 163. 6. Ibid., p. 166. 7. Barbara D. Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf `Ali Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar: a Partial Translation with Commentary (Berkeley, 1990), p. 63. 8. S. Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, trans. Mohammad Asif Kidwai, Life and Mission of Maulana Muhammad Ilyas (Lucknow, 1979), p. 108. 9. Metcalf, Perfecting Women, pp. 222-30. 10. Speech of Saiyid Ahmad Khan quoted in Altaf Husain Hali, trans. K.H. Qadiri and David J. Matthews, (New Delhi, 1979) p. 172. 11. For these developments see Robinson `Islam and the Impact of Print, Barbara D. Metcalf,`Meandering Madrasas: Knowledge and Short-term Itinerancy in the Tablighi Jama`at' in Crook ed., Transmission, pp. 49-61, and Christian W. Troll, `Five Letters of Maulana Ilyas (1885-1944), the Founder of the Tablighi Jama`at, translated, annotated, and introduced'in C.W. Troll ed., Islam in India: Studies and Commentaries 2: Religion and Religious Education (Delhi, 1985), pp. 138-76. 12. Metcalf, Perfecting Women, pp. 1-38. 13. Cited in Faisal Fatehali Devji, `Gender and the Politics of Space: the movement for women's reform, 1857-1900' in Z. Hasan ed., Forging Identities: Gender, Communities and the State (New Delhi, 1994), pp. 35-6. The whole point is summed up in a classic text: Abul A`la Maududi, Purdah and the Status of Women in Islam (New Delhi, 1974). 14. Metcalf, Perfecting Women, p. 107. 15. Troll, `Five Letters' p. 143. 16. M. Iqbal The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore, 1954), p. 198. 17. Taylor, Sources, p. 14. 18. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis (London, 1946), pp. 64-7. 19. Robinson, `Islam and the impact of print', n. 80, pp. 96-7. 20. See, Gail Minault, Secluded Scholars (OUP, New Delhi, forthcoming) and Azra Asghar Ali, `The Emergence of Feminism Among Indian Muslim Women, 1920-47' (PhD, London, 1996), especially, pp. 319-81. 21. Christian W. Troll, ed., Islam in India: Studies and Commentaries, 3: The Islamic Experience in Contemporary Thought (New Delhi, 1986), p. 153. 22. Metcalf, Perfecting Women, pp. 235-36. 23. See, for instance, Tom Webster, `Writing to Redundancy: Approaches to Spiritual Journals and Early Modern Spirituality', The Historical Journal, 31, 1 (1996), pp. 35-56. But, it remains important to realise that the rise of self-consciousness was not restricted to one time or one culture. Peter Burke, `Representations of the Self from Petrarch to Descartes' in Roy Porter ed., Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present (London, 1997), pp. 17-28. 24. Mohamed Ali, Afzal Iqbal ed., My Life: A Fragment: An Autobiographical Sketch (Lahore, 1942). Syed Mahmud's spiritual reflections may be found in the Firangi Mahal Papers, Karachi. 25. Abbas's father was known for his strict reforming principles, K.A. Abbas, I Am Not An Island: An Experiment in Autobiography (New Delhi, 1974), p. 35 and K.H. Ansari, The Emergence of Socialist Thought Among North Indian Muslims (1917-1947) (Lahore, 1990), pp. 288-89. Ismat Chughtai's background was notably liberal but in her early religious background she was exposed to a strict maulvi, ibid., pp. 316-17. 26. Translation of part of Iqbal's poem `God's Talk with Man' in N.P. Ankiyev `The Doctrine of Personality', H. Malik ed., Iqbal: Poet-Philosopher of Pakistan (New York, 1971), p. 274. 27. Altaf Fatima, Ruksana Ahmad trans., The one who did not ask (London, 1993), pp. 62-4. 28. The point is well made in Ahmed Mukarram `Some Aspects of Contemporary Islamic Thought: Guidance and Governance in the World of Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi and Mawlana Abul Aala Mawdudi' (DPhil, Oxford, 1993). 29. Precisely the kind of study to elucidate this issue, even though it is on a Hindu rather than a Muslim community, has recently been completed by Mines in the context of Madras city. Mattison Mines, Public Faces, Private Voices: Community and Individuality in South India (Berkeley, 1994).