In the ruins of a medieval palace in Delhi, a unique phenomenon occurs: Indians of all castes and creeds meet to socialize and ask the spirits for help. The spirits they entreat are Islamic jinns, and they write out requests as if petitioning the state. At a time when a Hindu right wing government in India is committed to normalizing a view of the past that paints Muslims as oppressors, Anand Vivek Taneja's Jinnealogy provides a fresh vision of religion, identity, and sacrality that runs counter to state-sanctioned history. The ruin, Firoz Shah Kotla, is an unusually democratic religious space, characterized by freewheeling theological conversations, DIY rituals, and the sanctification of animals. Taneja observes the visitors, who come mainly from the Muslim and Dalit neighborhoods of Delhi, and uses their conversations and letters to the jinns as an archive of voices so often silenced. He finds that their veneration of the jinns recalls pre-modern religious traditions in which spiritual experience was inextricably tied to ecological surroundings. In this enchanted space, Taneja encounters a form of popular Islam that is not a relic of bygone days, but a vibrant form of resistance to state repression and post-colonial visions of India.

The work of twenty-two scholars is brought together in this comparative study of the emerging relationships between religion and politics in India, Pakistan, and Ceylon. Part I, "South Asia: Unity and Diversity," presents a comparative analysis of religio-political patterns in the three countries. Part II, “India: The Politics of Religious Pluralism,” emphasizes the rich diversity of Indian religious life and its political consequences. Part III, “Pakistan: The Politics of Islamic Identity,” is chiefly concerned with the political, ideological, and legal problems which Pakistan has faced. Part IV, “Ceylon: The Politics of Buddhist Resurgence,” emphasizes the dramatic developments by which Buddhists have become deeply involved in politics. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book analyses the emerging trend of Muslim-minority politics in India and illustrates that a fundamental shift has occurred over the last 20 years from an identity-dominated, self-serving and inward-looking approach by Muslim community leaders, Islamic authorities and social activists that seeks to protect Islamic law and culture, towards an inclusive debate centred on socio-economic marginalisation and minority empowerment. The book focuses on Muslim activists, and members and affiliates of the Popular Front of India (PFI), a growing Muslim-minority and youth movement. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork undertaken since 2011, the author analyses recent literature on Muslim citizenship politics and the growing involvement of Islamist organisations and movements in the democratic process and electoral politics to demonstrate that religious groups play a role in politics, development, and policy making, which is often ignored within political theory. The book suggests that further scrutiny is needed of the assumption that Muslim politics and Islamic movements are incompatible with the democratic political framework of the modern nation state in India and elsewhere. Contributing to a more nuanced understanding of how Islamic movements utilise various spiritual, organisational and material resources and strategies for collective action, community development and democratic engagement, the book will be of interest to academics in the field of political Islam, South Asian studies, sociology of religion and development studies.

This book is a collection of essays on various aspects of lived Islam and Muslim social reality in contemporary India. Moving away from the normative discourse that characterises much discussion and debate about Muslims, it seeks to highlight the complex interactions between religion and a host of economic, social and political factors that help shape Indian Muslim identities. It draws attention to the multiple expressions of Islam and Muslim identity and challenges the notion of a Muslim monolith. This it does by looking at the ways in which various Indian Muslim organisations, activists and intellectuals are seeking to respond to various challenges that Muslims in India are today faced with, such as growing demands for gender justice, the imperative to dialogue with people of other faiths and the need to respond to Hindutva, Islamist and Islamophobic discourses and politics.

In this brilliant look at the rise of political Islam, the distinguished political scientist and anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani brings his expertise and insight to bear on a question many Americans have been asking since 9/11: how did this happen? Mamdani dispels the idea of “good” (secular, westernized) and “bad” (premodern, fanatical) Muslims, pointing out that these judgments refer to political rather than cultural or religious identities. The presumption that there are “good” Muslims readily available to be split off from “bad” Muslims masks a failure to make a political analysis of our times. This book argues that political Islam emerged as the result of a modern encounter with Western power, and that the terrorist movement at the center of Islamist politics is an even more recent phenomenon, one that followed America’s embrace of proxy war after its defeat in Vietnam. Mamdani writes with great insight about the Reagan years, showing America’s embrace of the highly ideological politics of “good” against “evil.” Identifying militant nationalist governments as Soviet proxies in countries such as Nicaragua and Afghanistan, the Reagan administration readily backed terrorist movements, hailing them as the “moral equivalents” of America’s Founding Fathers. The era of proxy wars has come to an end with the invasion of Iraq. And there, as in Vietnam, America will need to recognize that it is not fighting terrorism but nationalism, a battle that cannot be won by occupation. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim is a provocative and important book that will profoundly change our understanding both of Islamist politics and the way America is perceived in the world today.