With special reference to Dārulʻulūm Devband; covers the period 1857 to 1947.

This book challenges the fundamental assumptions regarding the foundations of Pakistani nationalism during colonial rule in India.

The Deoband movement—a revivalist movement within Sunni Islam that quickly spread from colonial India to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and even the United Kingdom and South Africa—has been poorly understood and sometimes feared. Despite being one of the most influential Muslim revivalist movements of the last two centuries, Deoband’s connections to the Taliban have dominated the attention it has received from scholars and policy-makers alike. Revival from Below offers an important corrective, reorienting our understanding of Deoband around its global reach, which has profoundly shaped the movement’s history. In particular, the author tracks the origins of Deoband’s controversial critique of Sufism, how this critique travelled through Deobandi networks to South Africa, as well as the movement’s efforts to keep traditionally educated Islamic scholars (`ulama) at the center of Muslim public life. The result is a nuanced account of this global religious network that argues we cannot fully understand Deoband without understanding the complex modalities through which it spread beyond South Asia.

This title addresses the Khilafat Movement in India, a pan-Islamic, political protest campaign launched by Muslims of India to influence the British government not to abolish the Ottoman Caliphate.

1989 marks the unraveling of India's 'Nehruvian Consensus' around the idea of a modern, secular nation with a self-reliant economy. Caste and religion have come to play major roles in national politics. Global economic integration has led to conflict between the state and dispossessed people, but processes of globalization have also enabled new spaces for political assertion, such as around sexuality. Older challenges to the idea of India continue from movements in Kashmir and the North-East, while Maoist insurgency has deepened its bases. In a world of American Empire, India as a nuclear power has abandoned non-alignment, a shift that is contested by voices within. Power and Contestation shows that the turbulence and turmoil of this period are signs of India's continued vibrancy and democracy. The book is an ideal introduction to the complex internal histories and external power relations of a major global player for the new century.

What experiences and practices characterize the lives of Muslims in South Asia today? This book examines the contests of ideas, begun 150 years ago, that have translated into political actions touching the lives of tens of millions. Equally, the book focuses on aspects of daily life to emphasize that there are diverse ways of being Muslim. The book is an essential tool for anyone interested in the lives and futures of South Asia's 500 million Muslims.

From the cleric-led Iranian revolution to the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, many people have been surprised by what they see as the modern reemergence of an antimodern phenomenon. This book helps account for the increasingly visible public role of traditionally educated Muslim religious scholars (the `ulama) across contemporary Muslim societies. Muhammad Qasim Zaman describes the transformations the centuries-old culture and tradition of the `ulama have undergone in the modern era--transformations that underlie the new religious and political activism of these scholars. In doing so, it provides a new foundation for the comparative study of Islam, politics, and religious change in the contemporary world. While focusing primarily on Pakistan, Zaman takes a broad approach that considers the Taliban and the `ulama of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, and the southern Philippines. He shows how their religious and political discourses have evolved in often unexpected but mutually reinforcing ways to redefine and enlarge the roles the `ulama play in society. Their discourses are informed by a longstanding religious tradition, of which they see themselves as the custodians. But these discourses are equally shaped by--and contribute in significant ways to--contemporary debates in the Muslim public sphere. This book offers the first sustained comparative perspective on the `ulama and their increasingly crucial religious and political activism. It shows how issues of religious authority are debated in contemporary Islam, how Islamic law and tradition are continuously negotiated in a rapidly changing world, and how the `ulama both react to and shape larger Islamic social trends. Introducing previously unexamined facets of religious and political thought in modern Islam, it clarifies the complex processes of religious change unfolding in the contemporary Muslim world and goes a long way toward explaining their vast social and political ramifications.