Call for Abstracts/Papers
~~Ruptures~~
‘South Asian Islam and the Caste Question’
1-2nd December 2012, India International Centre, New Delhi
The field of ‘Caste and Islam’ has recently drawn attention as a critical site for academic reflection and political articulation. The enactment of the ‘pasmanda’ identity and the articulation of a counter-discourse by subordinated Muslim caste groups, especially in Northern parts of India, have led to the relative destabilization of mainstream ‘Muslim’ discourse and the posing of novel questions on identity, politics, deprivation, culture and theology. Also, the political framing, sense of belonging or representative strategies in any movement have to necessarily engage with an ‘excess’, a discursive outside, which may refer to a number of complex claims and trajectories that both threaten and enable the constitution of the discourse in the first place. The political pitching of a movement, that strives to condense a range of meaningful elements, is also often caught between the crisscrossing domains of the everyday/social. Thus, the recent circulation of pasmanda discourse has persuaded the academia to consider ‘caste’ as an entry point to the study of Indian Islam. Interestingly, the application of caste analytics to the study of Islam has also been attempted in recent times in other South Asian jurisdictions, like Pakistan and Nepal for instance, with very enriching results. All these developments make Muslim caste an extremely interesting site for reflection with multiple theoretical/explanatory possibilities.
Hence, the express purpose of this two-day conference is to bring together a number of scholars and activists for a deliberation on questions related to various dimensions of Muslim caste, and if possible to capture and circulate the substantive part of these conversations in the form of a publication. By way of beginning we have identified a few themes/questions around which the papers can be possibly worked out. It must be stressed that these thematic are only suggestive in nature and contributors can develop and propose other related themes as well.
a) Democracy and Counterpublics: How could the emergence of the pasmanda discursive space (counterpublic) and its political signification be understood in the context of destabilization of the notions of community/identity and solidarity generally? More specifically, how does the pasmanda discourse inform the ideas and practices of pluralism-difference (secularism/communalism dyad) and social justice-inequality (affirmative action) in India? How does one reflect on the intersectionalities, for instance the relationship between caste and gender movements within Indian Islam? Lastly, what is the theoretical fallout of these developments in the articulation of ‘citizenship’ and ‘democracy’ in India?
b) Ethnography and/of Muslim Caste: How are lived experiences and the daily political related with the larger political discourse of Muslim caste? We are looking for ethnographies—anchored on Muslim caste—of caste associations, artisan/worker guilds and production units, urban neighborhoods, religious conversions, madrasas, folk practices, etc.
c) Theology and Hermeneutics: How far can the claim of caste-embeddedness be sustained in the theological texts of the subcontinent and, in turn,has the politicization of Muslim caste lead to ruptures in the ways of reading, doing and constructing theology? How does caste impact the understanding of sects/denominations (maslak) within Indian Islam? What are the possibilities of a counter hermeneutical tradition (pasmanda liberation theology)?
d) History, Memory and the Archive: Is there a poverty of the ‘institutional’ archive vis-à-vis Muslim caste? If that is the case how does one undertake historical studies related to Muslim caste and what can one possibly understand about the structure of archiving? How does one engage with the relation between ‘memory’ and ‘history’ and how has the question of Muslim caste been treated in historical works thus far?
e) Affect, Humiliation, Aesthetics: In the post-colonial period, when the public legitimacy of caste has gone down, or rather where caste is more or less privately defended and publicly ridiculed, what does one make of the affective or emotional dimension of Muslim caste? How does one reflect on the narratives of humiliation foregrounded by the subordinated Muslim caste groups? What is the relation between urban anonymity and the transcendence from the stigma faced by subordinated Muslim caste groups? What is the relation between the ‘dis-invention’ of Muslim caste and the process of Islamization, especially in the contemporary where the discourse of ‘Terror’ and ‘Islamophobia’ have gained a widespread circulation? Can the Muslim ‘spiritual’ and the ‘cultural’ be said to be marked by caste? How has Muslim caste been represented in fiction, poetry, cinema and television and other popular media spaces?
f) Globalization and Development: What has been the impact of globalization and neo-liberal economics on the skill-sets, crafts and business opportunity vis-à-vis subordinated Muslim castes? What is the pasmanda narrative on development, deprivation and exclusion?
g) Muslim Caste and the Epistemic: What is the epistemological status of caste analytics when applied to the study of South Asian Islam? What kinds of questions are opened up thus? What are the immanent limitations?
Paper abstracts (300 words) should be sent by 15th September 2012 at khalidanisansari@gmail.com.
For further queries and clarifications please contact:
Khalid Anis Ansari, The Patna Collective, Ph: 91-97111-95217
The Patna Collective 