Santhosh R

The chapter examines how a traditionalist Muslim group in Kerala, regionally referred to as the AP Sunnis, creatively engages with the imperatives of neoliberal globalization to address the question of development. The AP Sunni group has been particularly successful in creating an ulama class of ‘turbaned professionals’, religious scholars who also possess educational degrees in non-religious subjects including professional courses and presented as the embodiment of ‘traditional’ Islamic piety with professional competence. This new-age ulama are particularly noteworthy for the ways in which they combine traditionalist notions of Islamic piety within the discourses and processes of neoliberal developmentalism in the regional context of Kerala. Taking the case of Markaz Knowledge City, integrated township touted as a major development project in the state, we argue how the spaces of compatibility between notions of traditionalist Islamic piety and neoliberal developmentalism are necessary to make sense of the social mobility of Muslims in Kerala.

The lack of electoral success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the South Indian state of Kerala is often explained through the idea of Kerala 'exceptionalism', a broad term used to explain the unique historical, political, and developmental trajectory of the state. However, such explanations do not adequately address the systematic and concerted attempts by Hindu nationalist organizations to transform the cultural sphere of Kerala into a fertile ground for its future electoral politics. Through an ethnographic study of three Hindu nationalist organizations in the civil society sphere of Kodungallur, a multi-religious town in central Kerala, this article explores the politics and implications of their cultural interventions. The article argues that, peeved by an 'absent Hindu atmosphere' in Kerala, these organizations are trying to construct new forms of sociality and subjectivity and a grassroots public sphere embedded in Hindu nationalist ideology in Kodungallur. Often described by these organizations as 'apolitical' and 'cultural', these interventions are indeed a critique of the Kerala public sphere which is characterized by religious pluralism and secular sociality. Hence, the attempt to create a 'Hindu atmosphere' by these organizations is a deeply political endeavour aimed at creating an exclusivist Hindu hegemony in the cultural sphere, which they assume will pave the way for their electoral hegemony in Kerala in the long run.

The political trajectory of the Indian Union Muslim League in Kerala displays a unique engagement of religion-based political mobilisation of Muslims with secular-democratic politics in India. In the contemporary context of aggressive Hindutva politics, the Muslim League is faced with the dual challenge of resisting majoritarian communalism while simultaneously countering new mobilisations from within the community that are based on a radical Islamic identity, but deploy explicitly secular discourses. A critical appraisal of this situation requires moving beyond the pre-occupation with the formal aspects of secularisation and instead arrive at more substantive conceptions of "being secular" that embrace deeper commitments to secularism, such as plurality and toleration.

This paper examines the changing nature of Muslim political mobilization in contemporary India in the context of Hindu nationalism’s ascendancy into power and the consequent crisis of traditional Muslim politics. Through an ethnographic case study of the Popular Front of India, we argue that a qualitatively new form of political mobilization is taking place among Indian Muslims centered on an articulation of “self-defense” against a “Hindu nationalist threat.” This politics of self-defense is constructed on the reconciliation of two contradictory processes: use of extensive legal pragmatism, and defensive ethnicization based on Islamic identity. The paper also examines the consequences of the emerging politics of competing ethnicization for even a normative and minimal idea of secularism and how it contributes to the process of decoupling of secularism and democracy in contemporary India.

The formative years of Darul Uloom, Vazhakkad, a well-known Muslim waqf institution in northern Kerala in India established in the late nineteenth century for imparting religious education, is examined in this article. Darul Uloom is probably the first registered waqf in Kerala and by analysing the registered waqf deeds of this institution, we seek to understand the operation of authority and management in the initial years of this institution, especially in the background of contestations between emergent Islamic reformists and traditionalists. We trace the significant reformulation of the foundational intent evident in the subsequent deeds by later custodians and the intervention of various social groups, particularly the local community, in refashioning the trajectory of the waqf. A shift in authority—a complex product of theological, political and economic contestations emerged in the context of transformations brought by British Colonialism in Malabar—is evident in this process. Through our analysis, we suggest that waqf institutions and its legal foundations were highly dynamic and adaptive to their changing social contexts as against the portrayal of these Islamic institutions as stagnant and inflexible.

India is the third largest Muslim populated country in the world with an estimated number of over 160 million, constituting roughly 15 per cent of its population. The fundamental theoretical question that underlines most of these inquiries is the distinct character of Muslim encounter with modernity in the specific geopolitical landscape of India during colonial as well as post-colonial contexts. The status of Muslims in India as the largest religious minority stands out as the most significant factor that influences the varied dimensions of their everyday existence. The Muslim religious identity becomes seminal in areas such as citizenship questions, political articulations and socio-economic development as it has tremendous implications on historical as well as contemporary narratives of these dimensions. Throughout the Islamic history, the question of sources of authority from where specific guidelines can be drawn to govern personal as well as public affairs has been a highly contested one.

We examine the competing processes of ethnicization taking place among Hindu and Muslim religious communities in the coastal region of Karnataka state in South India in the broader context of hegemonic ascendancy of Hindu nationalism in the country. We describe how an array of militant Hindutva organizations use an institutionalized system of religious vigilantism and violence against minorities to construct an ethnicized, exclusivist moral community of Hindus in the region. This construction of an ethno-Hinduism by a clever depoliticizing of caste inequalities and violence seeks to produce and naturalize religious difference into an incorrigible and exclusivist ethnic identity that thrives on a continuous process of enemy-making. Responding to this predatory ethnicization executed by militant Hindutva organizations, and capitalizing on the pervasive sense of alienation and anxiety of the Muslims in the region, radical Islamic organizations engage in a counter-predatory ethnicization of Muslim communities in the region. These organizations, while officially articulating secular positions, use the language of self-defence and securitization, coupled with radical Islamic identity for mass mobilization, to create an exclusive Islamic moral community, often mirroring the tactics of Hindutva vigilante organizations. We conclude that these competing processes of ethnicization of religious identities and the emergence of a ‘vigilante public’ will have far-reaching consequences for the central facets of democracy such as citizenship and secularism while leaving the socio-cultural spaces in coastal Karnataka highly polarized on religious lines and peaceful co-existence of religious communities challenging and undesirable.

In our ethnography among traditionalist Sunni Muslims of Kerala, South India, we observe the emergence of new intellectual critiques of Islamic reformism and a revival of 'traditional' Islamic articulations. A new class of traditionalist Sunni ulama, claiming to be 'turbaned professionals', plays an instrumental role in providing epistemic sanctioning to 'traditional' Islamic piety while simultaneously grounding it within the discourses and processes of neoliberal developmentalism. Such assertions of traditionalist Sunni Muslim identity challenge the conventional understanding of Islamic reformism as a hallmark of the progressive understanding of faith and traditionalism as its 'anti-modern' other. The article argues that this discursive shift of Sunni Islamic traditionalism in Kerala since the 1980s from defensive to more assertive forms has to be located in the context of wider socio-economic change within the community facilitated by structural as well as cultural forces of globalization. We point out that this process traverses the local, national, and global scales of identification, and results in intense negotiations between local identifications and 'true Islamicate global imaginations'. These negotiations bring in new discourses around the question of 'authentic' Islamic practices and sensibilities among the traditionalist Sunni Muslims, forcing us to locate the question of their identity formation beyond the boundaries of communities and the nation states that ensconce them.

In this paper, we reflect on the caste-violence perpetrated on lower castes by Bhumihars, one of the dominant castes in Bihar, India, as it indicates their complex relationship with important socio-economic and political issues such as land relations, identity assertion and socio-economic differentiation, among others. We also pay attention to ideological and moral constructs embedded in the narratives about Bhumihars, which provides legitimacy to their violence. Several narratives and personal interviews have been incorporated in our analysis along with a broader mapping of Bhumihars’ historical engagement with violence as a form of caste assertion and its changing character in the contemporary era marked by ‘backward-caste’ mobilisation and the rise of Hindu right-wing politics in Bihar. Our critical study traces these historical trajectories and points to a decisive shift from Bhumihars’ engagement with direct violence towards a more subtle and symbolic form of violence, often masquerading as their articulation and expression of caste identity.