This book is a historical exploration of the social and cultural processes that led to the rise of the ideology of labor as a touchstone of Bengali Muslim politics in late colonial India. The book argues that the tremendous popularity of the Pakistan movement in Bengal is to be understood not just in terms of "communalization" of class politics, or even "separatist" demands of a religious minority living out anxieties of Hindu political majoritarianism, but in terms of a distinctively modern idea of Muslim self and culture which gave primacy to production/labor as the site where religious, moral, ethical, as well as economic value would be anchored. In telling the story of the formation of a modern Muslim identity, the book presents the conceptual congruence between Islam and egalitarianism as a distinctively early twentieth-century phenomenon, and the approach can be viewed as key to explaining the mass appeal of the desire for Pakistan. A novel contribution to the study of Bengal and Pakistan’s origins, the book will be of interest to researchers studying South Asian history, the history of colonialism and end of empire, South Asian studies, including labor studies, Islamic Studies, and Muslim social and cultural history.

A unique survey of each country in the region. It includes an extensive collection of facts, statistics, analysis and directory information in one accessible volume.

Over the past two hundred years, two great processes have shaped Muslim societies: Western domination and the industrial capitalism that came with it, and the Islamic revival that preceded the Western presence but came to interact significantly with it. In this book, Francis Robinson considers the challenges Western dominance has offered key aspects of Muslim civilization, particularly in the context of South Asia, which in the nineteenth century moved from being a receiver of influences from the rest of the Muslim world to being a transmitter of influences to it. Robinson also considers aspects of the Muslim revival and how they have come to shape, in various ways, Muslim responses to Western dominance. The role of the transmission of knowledge, both formal and spiritual, in forming Muslim societies is explored, and also the particular role of the transmitters in sustaining the Islamic dimensions of Muslim societies under Western dominance. Attention, too, is paid to the imposition of the modern state and the restriction of cosmopolitan spaces.

This book explores the ways in which modern Hindu identities were constructed in the early nineteenth century. It draws parallels between sixteenth and eventeenth Cecntury Protestantism and the rise of modernity in the West, and the Hindu reformation in the nineteenth century which contributed to the rise of Vedantic Hindu modernity discourse in India. The nineteenth century Hindu modernity, it is argued, sought both individual flourishing and collective emancipation from Western domination. For the first time Hinduism began to be constructed as a religion of sacred texts. In particular, texts belonging to what could be loosely called Vedanta: Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. In this way, the main protagonists of this Vedantist modernity were imitating Western Protestantism, but at the same time also inventing totally novel interpretations of what it meant to be Hindu. The book traces the major ideological paths taken in this cultural-religious reformation from its originator Rammohun Roy up to its last major influence, Rabindranath Tagore. Bringing these two versions of modernity into conversation brings a unique view on the formation of modern Hindu identities. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of religious, Hindu and South Asian studies, as well as religious istory and interreligious dialogue.