The Portable Madrasa: Print, publics, and the authority of the Deobandi `ulama

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 845-871 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRANNON D. INGRAM
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Islamic Education ◽  
North India ◽  
Reading Process ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Popular Piety ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Islamic Belief

AbstractIn the first decades of the twentieth century, classically trained Muslim scholars (`ulama) of the influential Deobandi school of North India issued a number of immensely popular, mass-printed ‘primers’ on Islamic belief and ritual practice. Now ubiquitous in the Islamic bookshops in South Asia and elsewhere, these primers sought to summarize the rudiments of an Islamic education for a nascent lay Muslim reading public. Focusing on three Deobandi`ulama—Ashraf `Ali Thanvi (d. 1943), Mufti Muhammad Kifayatullah (d. 1952), and Muhammad Manzur Nu`mani (d. 1997)—this paper explores how their primers advanced the Deobandi school's well-known critique of popular piety even as they claimed to address Muslims generally, and how their authors negotiated the subtle dynamics of print. Understanding the potentially subversive power of print to open a space for readers to form their own interpretations of minute doctrinal matters and the threat of mass-printed religious texts to their own authority, these`ulamaimplored readers to refrain from forming their own opinions of the primers’ content and to consult the`ulamathroughout the reading process. Thus, even as they took advantage of print's possibilities, they remained deeply suspect of its ramifications.

Translating the Scribe: Lithographic Print and Vernacularization in Colonial India, 1857–1915

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 281-300
Author(s):  
Amanda Lanzillo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
North India ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Book Production ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
Arabic Script ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Focusing on the lithographic print revolution in North India, this article analyses the role played by scribes working in Perso-Arabic script in the consolidation of late nineteenth-century vernacular literary cultures. In South Asia, the rise of lithographic printing for Perso-Arabic script languages and the slow shift from classical Persian to vernacular Urdu as a literary register took place roughly contemporaneously. This article interrogates the positionality of scribes within these transitions. Because print in North India relied on lithography, not movable type, scribes remained an important part of book production on the Indian subcontinent through the early twentieth century. It analyses the education and models of employment of late nineteenth-century scribes. New scribal classes emerged during the transition to print and vernacular literary culture, in part due to the intervention of lithographic publishers into scribal education. The patronage of Urdu-language scribal manuals by lithographic printers reveals that scribal education in Urdu was directly informed by the demands of the print economy. Ultimately, using an analysis of scribal manuals, the article contributes to our knowledge of the social positioning of book producers in South Asia and demonstrates the vitality of certain practices associated with manuscript culture in the era of print.

Pendidikan Islam dan Pluralisme Beragama

1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-14
Author(s):  
M Slamet Yahya
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Islamic Education ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Life Orientation ◽  
Religious Plurality ◽  
Prophetic Mission

Islam is a religion that has prophetic mission, namely rahmatan lil ‘alamin, blessing to universe. To realize this mission, Islamic education must able to produce outputs that have inclusive character, pluralist, and appreciative to pluralism. Pluralism in Islam not only normatively supported by religious texts, but also on praxis-empiric level. Islam also has practiced life orientation that reflected religious plurality. Therefore, on global scale, acknowledgment to religious plurality became essential and significant matter. To realize this, it’s urgently needed wisdom to suppress emotional and radical attitude on everyday life. 

A Comparative Exploration of the Spiritual Authority of the Awliyā’ in the Shi‘i and Sufi Traditions

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-74
Author(s):  
Rebecca Masterton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Critical Comparison ◽  
Spiritual Authority ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Islamic Belief

This paper aims to engage in a critical comparison of the spiritual authority of the awliyā’ in the Shi‘i and Sufi traditions in order to examine an area of Islamic belief that remains unclearly defined. Similarities between Shi‘i and Sufi doctrine have long been noted, but little research has been conducted on how and why they developed. Taking a central tenet of both, walāyah, the paper discusses several of its key aspects as they appear recorded in Shi‘i ḥadīth collections and as they appear later in one of the earliest Sunni Sufi treatises. By extention, it seeks to explore the identity of the awliyā’ and their role in relation to the Twelve Imams. It also traces the reabsorption into Shi‘i culture of the Sufi definition of walāyah via two examples: the works of one branch of the Dhahabi order and those of Allamah Tabataba’i, a popular twentieth-century Iranian mystic and scholar.

Reinventing Ramanand: Caste and History in Gangetic India

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Pinch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Religious History ◽  
North India ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Literature And Religion ◽  
History Of

According to Sir George Grierson, one of the pre-eminent Indologists of the early twentieth century, Ramanand led ‘one of the most momentous revolutions that have occurred in the religious history of North India.’Yet Ramanand, the fourteenth-century teacher of Banaras, has been conspicuous by his relative absence in the pages of English-language scholarship on recent Indian history, literature, and religion. The aims of this essay are to reflect on why this is so, and to urge historians to pay attention to Ramanand, more particularly to the reinvention of Ramanand by his early twentieth-century followers, because the contested traditions thereof bear on the vexed issue of caste and hierarchy in colonial India. The little that is known about Ramanand is doubly curious considering that Ramanandis, those who look to Ramanand for spiritual and community inspiration, are thought to comprise the largest and most important Vaishnava monastic order in north India. Ramanandis are to be found in temples and monasteries throughout and beyond the Hindi-speaking north, and they are largely responsible for the upsurge in Ram-centered devotion in the last two centuries. A fairly recent anthropological examination of Ayodhya, currently the most important Ramanand pilgrimage center in India, has revealed that Ramanandi sadhus, or monks, can be grouped under three basic headings: tyagi (ascetic), naga (fighting ascetic), and rasik (devotional aesthete).4 The increased popularity of the order in recent centuries is such that Ramanandis may today outnumber Dasnamis, the better-known Shaiva monks who look to the ninth-century teacher, Shankaracharya, for their organizational and philosophical moorings.

scholarly journals Investigating the Reading Process by Means of Collaborative Environment

Comunicar ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (33) ◽  
pp. 133-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adair de Aguiar Neitzel ◽  
Luiz Carlos Neitzel
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Human Resources ◽  
Elementary School Children ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Reading Process ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Collaborative Environment ◽  
Determining Factors ◽  
Methodological Procedures ◽  
Recursos Humanos

Brazilian research on the determining factors for the success of programs to teach reading indicates a need to view literature as an aesthetic object that will encourage children to appreciate books. This study proposes investigating teachers' concepts of literature, from the point of view of the children. Chat was used as a data collection mechanism, proposed between two groups of elementary school children and interviews with the teachers. The analysis of the chats followed the methodology of Franco (1997). This study indicates three key areas for winning a reading public: a) qualified human resources, with a clear concept of literature as an aesthetic phenomenon; b) methodological procedures that are coherent with this concept; c) a bibliographical archive that is aligned with this concept. Investigaciones brasileñas acerca de los factores determinantes para el éxito de programas de formación de lectores señalan la necesidad del empleo de la literatura como objeto estético para que el niño se aproxime al libro. Esta investigación se propuso estudiar las concepciones de los profesores acerca de la literatura a partir del punto de vista del lector infantil. Se utilizó el chat como mecanismo de recolección de datos, propuesto entre dos clases de la enseñanza fundamental, y entrevistas con las profesoras regentes. El análisis de los chats siguió la metodología de Franco (1997), evidenciando que los docentes no consideran al libro como un objeto estético que necesita ser disfrutado. Esta investigación señala tres ejes básicos para la conquista de un público lector: a) recursos humanos calificados con claridad acerca de la concepción de literatura como fenómeno estético; b) procedimientos metodológicos coherentes con esa concepción; c) acervo bibliográfico ajustado a esa concepción.

EEN POPULAIRE ARISTOCRAAT

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-169
Author(s):  
Erica van Boven
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
General Public ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Cultural Hierarchy ◽  
Intellectual Elite

A POPULAR ARISTOCRAT. ARTHUR VAN SCHENDEL AND THE READING PUBLIC IN THE 1930S In Dutch literary culture of the first half of the twentieth century, intellectual elite and general public were not only separate, but even opposite categories. ‘Highbrow’ and ‘middlebrow’ held polarized positions in matters of cultural hierarchy and literary taste, which led to fierce debates. Strikingly, one author was able to bridge this gap: Arthur van Schendel (1874-1946) appealed both ends of the spectrum and thus had an exceptional, connecting role in the cultural divides of the interwar period. This article analyses the responses to Van Schendels so-called ‘Dutch novels’ in order to find out what made Arthur van Schendel highly valued by leading professionals as well as loved by the reading audience.

scholarly journals Page Composing and Lettering Games: Experimentation in Italy in the 1930s

Authorship ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Bonciarelli
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Book Design ◽  
Page Layout ◽  
Middlebrow Literature ◽  
The Revolution

The objective of this article is to analyze how or in what ways the most advanced visual experiments centred on “the book” as an object in the period between 1900 and 1930 in Italy, in particular in relation to the development of middlebrow literature. The article’s hypothesis is that the revolution brought about by Futurism soon touched on literature intended for a middlebrow reading public, attracted and interested by the paratextual presentation of the book and its physical aspects. This article focuses in particular on changes in page layout and on lettering games in paratextuality, to give a precise idea of how strong the thrust of Futurism was and how book design affected the visual culture of the beginning of the twentieth century in Italy.

Patterns of Prejudice from Henri Massis to Walter Bedell Smith

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-180
Author(s):  
Mircea Platon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Status ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Ideological Context ◽  
The Way

Astolphe de Custine’s collection of letters La Russie en 1839, first published in France in 1843, was rediscovered by Henri Massis in 1946. Massis re-introduced Custine’s by then long forgotten letters on Russia to the French public. Once American Cold Warriors such as George Kennan and General Walter Bedell-Smith discovered the book, they promptly promoted it to the status of the most prophetic book on the “Russian soul.” Denounced as “fictional,” by many nineteenth-century writers and by a host of twentieth-century scholars, Custine’s book was accepted as canonical by a large reading public and, more importantly, by successive generations of us policy makers. This article contributes to the historiography of Cold War propaganda by looking first at the context in which the book was initially resurrected by Massis, and then by analyzing the ways in which Cold War propaganda constructed its “relevance,” “actuality” and “prophetic” character. The article begins by taking a look at the way in which Massis, the first popularizer of the book, fitted it into his own ideological pattern. In a second movement, the article analyzes the ways in which the book functioned in the post-wwii ideological context, seeking to discover if the alleged relevance of the book had anything to do with the survival into the postwar world of the European Right’s interwar tangle of received ideas and patterns of prejudice.

Muslim identity and separatism in India: the significance of M. A. Ansari

1991 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. G. Robb
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Muslim Identity ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Empirical Level ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This paper arises out of dissatisfaction with wholly instrumentalist explanations of Muslim separatism in India, views which have their critics but which generally prevail nowadays, reinforced by no less an influence than that of Michel Foucault. The problem is the fundamental one of what constitutes a group, and in particular of whether or not there can be objective harmonization, ‘orchestration sans chef d'orchestre qui confère regularité’, within any set of people. At an empirical level, in regard to Indian Muslims, the debate has three main elements: what was the nature of communalism, how far Muslim separatism was a process, and whether its development was a sufficient explanation for the partition of 1947. To the extent that Muslims became separatist, they obviously might have been diverted into other attitudes, and to that extent is it important to identify events which encouraged or errors which prevented that diversion.On this occasion the discussion will begin as a review of A nationalist conscience, Mushirul Hasan's study of M. A. Ansari, and then move on to some of the issues suggested by Ansari's life and Hasan's treatment of it. The book provides an important corrective, in its emphasis and viewpoint, to the tendency to attribute the partition in India to a consistent and inevitable conflict between increasingly irreconcilable forces. The study extends and rounds out earlier work; it brings to life the alternative symbolized by Ansari, and thus casts into relief the occasions when Hindu–Muslim agreement and a common front against the British seemed possible, as in 1919–22 and 1935. The book exhibits the familiarity and maturity of understanding resulting from such an intense and long-term project of research. It is a timely contribution too, as intercommunal tensions once again mount in South Asia, and voices are heard suggesting that the secular constitution of India is inappropriate to the essential character of its people. The book's implicit thesis is that separatism did indeed evolve, with clear stages from the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth century; that its opponents were unable to arrest its advance; and that Ansari is significant for exemplifying these two points. Hasan thus illustrates an alternative to communalism offered during the struggles against British rule; it was an alternative which failed. The question is whether or not it could have succeeded.

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