Muslim Modernism and Trans-regional Consciousness in Bengal, 1911–1925

2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neilesh Bose
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
New Research ◽  
Communist Party Of India

Histories of Marxism in South Asia often focus on the great men of colonial Indian politics, such as M. N. Roy, who imagined political futures away from nation or identity, or narrowly on activists like Muzaffar Ahmad, the founder of the Communist Party of India, without consideration of the regional-historical and intellectual contexts out of which such activism and imaginations sprang. Using the Bengali Muslim context of the early twentieth century, this article examines how Muslim activists imagined their identity outside of and beyond normative frameworks such as nation or religious community. This article specifically analyses Samyabadi, a left-oriented journal published in Calcutta from 1922 to 1925, in the larger context of communist developments in Bengal and throughout India. The findings offer exciting support for new research approaches to regional and religious identity in late colonial South Asia.

Caste-Less Tamils and Early Print Public Sphere: Remembering Iyothee Thass (1845–914)

2021 ◽  
pp. 026272802110348
Author(s):  
Dickens Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of

Responding to the history of Dalit invisibility in print public sphere, this article explores one of the earliest Dalit articulations in print in South Asia during the colonial period. Extending studies on anti-caste thought by foregrounding the Tamil cosmopolis, this conceptualises how the most oppressed by caste engaged with print in the early twentieth century, through studying the works on and of Pandit Iyothee Thass and his movement. The article proposes that these experiments with print opened the chance of a political to emerge, which was otherwise foreclosed, towards wording a caste-less community at this earlier time in Indian history.

In International Pursuit of a Caliphate

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Age ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
New Models ◽  
Muslim Intellectuals ◽  
Post War

This chapter analyzes the vibrant discussions of the early twentieth century over how to revive a caliphate best suited to the post-war era. While some advocated preservation of a traditional caliphal figurehead, many Muslim intellectuals were greatly persuaded by new models of internationalism embracing the nation-state and proposed international caliphal councils and organizations, similar to the League of Nations, or other purportedly spiritual institutions, similar to the refashioned papacy, to preserve the bonds of a transregional religious community. To varying degrees, all the participants in the debate over reviving a twentieth-century caliphate were influenced by an intriguing confluence of both the historic transregionalism of the Muslim community as well as the modern thrust of the new age of global internationalism.

Matriliny, Marxism, and the Birth of the Communist Party in Kerala, 1930–1940

1978 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Jeffrey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Family System ◽  
Traditional Society ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Upheaval ◽  
Social Turmoil ◽  
Crucial Ingredient

AbstractWhy has communism flourished in some parts of Asia and not in others? Examining the case of Kerala, this paper argues that, in India at least, social dislocation is the crucial ingredient when added to poverty, landlessness, and literacy. In Kerala, the matrilineal family system of caste-Hindus and the attendant system of extreme disabilities enforced against the low castes collapsed in the early twentieth century. The social upheaval was greater than anywhere else in India. A déraciné generation of caste-Hindus was forced to seek remedies for-the disruption and misery that daily confronted it, while increasing numbers of low castes refused to submit to the restrictions that traditional society sought to impose. This situation of social turmoil, similar in some ways to that prevailing in China and Vietnam, contributed crucially to the establishment of Kerala's vigorous, broad-based Communist party in the late 1930s.

What to do about cows? Princely versus British approaches to a South Asian dilemma

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAN COPLAND
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Custom ◽  
Vexed Question

For more than a millennium, cow slaughter has been a source of bitter contention in South Asia. Hindus revere the animal; Muslims like to eat it and, until recently, the cow has been the preferred animal of sacrifice at the Islamic festival of ‘Id-ul-Adha¯. This paper looks at how, over the twentieth century, Indian governments of differing type and ideological colour—British and princely during the late colonial period and Congress nationalist after 1947—have tried to mediate this vexed question. It finds that while policies differed widely, there was a tendency for all governments in the early twentieth century to be guided by social custom and local opinion, so that in the small Muslim-ruled state of Mangrol, which had an official ban, the Muslims who killed cows occasionally for food were never prosecuted so long as they kept their activities discreet—but this ‘discretionary’ option became politically unviable once the country embraced democracy.

scholarly journals Mass Mobilization in Indian Politics: A Case Study of Non-Cooperation Movement

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Farooq Ahmad Dar ◽  
Muhammad Sajid Khan ◽  
Muhammad Abrar Zahoor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Masses

Mass-Mobilization is one of the key ingredients for not only launching a movement but also for spreading any political agenda. The involvement of the masses always plays an important role in a process of bringing change anywhere and at any time. The history of South Asia, however, witnessed that in the struggle against the colonial rulers, to begin with, started by the elite alone. Politics was considered as the domain of a selected few and the common men were considered as ignorant and perhaps irrelevant and thus were kept at a distance. It was only after the beginning of the twentieth century and especially after the entrance of Gandhi on the political screen that the masses gained importance and were directly involved in political affairs. They not only became part of the Non-Cooperation Movement but also played an important role in spreading the movement all across India. In this paper, an attempt has been made to highlight Gandhi’s efforts to mobilize Indian masses during the Non-Cooperation Movement and its impact on the future politics of the region. The paper also discusses in detail different groups of society that actively participated in the process of mass-mobilization.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Italian Unification

Italian imperialism in the early twentieth century left behind a legacy that is seldom far below the surface in postcolonial Libya. The ability to trace a lineage of resistance conferred political legitimacy in the formation of a national identity. In Italy today the legacies of imperial expansion are less accessible but no less important. The decision to occupy Libya occurred at a pivotal moment in the development of Italian national identity in the decades after Italian unification. Debates over an Italian approach to expansion in Muslim North Africa served as an opportunity to define the nature of religious identity in the nation as Italy attempted to join the ranks of the European imperial powers.

Gurusand Gifting:Dana, themathreform campaign, and competing visions of Hindusangathanin twentieth-century India

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
MALAVIKA KASTURI
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
North India ◽  
Political Consciousness ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Before And After

AbstractFrom the early twentieth century, Hindu socio-religious and political bodies debated the use thatmaths(monastic establishments) made of their wealth, amassed in large part throughdana(socio religious gifts). From the early nineteenth century, Anglo Hindu law on inheritance, and thereafter the Religious and Charitable Endowments Acts, had enabled the autonomy ofmathsby classifying them as private religious corporations, not charitable endowments. This article suggests that themathreform campaign between 1920 and 1940 in north India was impelled by the preoccupations of heterogeneous Hindu political and socio-religious organizations withdanaand its potential to fund cultural and political projects regenerating an imagined Hindu socio-religious community. Specifically, the Hindu Mahasabha yokeddanato its Hindusangathan(unity) campaign to strategically craft an integrated ‘Hindu public’ transcendingsampraday(religious traditions) to protect its interests from ‘external enemies’. My discussion probes how the Hindu Mahasabha and its ‘reformist’ allies urged the conversion ofmathsinto public charitable trusts, or endowments accountable to an ephemeral ‘Hindu public’ and the regulation of their expenditure. Monastic orders,guru-based associations like the Bharat Dharma Mahamandala, and the majority of orthodox Hindus successfully opposed this campaign, defending the interests ofmathsandsampradaybefore and after independence. In so doing, they challenged Hindusangathanby articulating alternative visions of the socio-religious publics and communities to be revitalized through philanthropy. Through this discussion, the article charts the uneasy relationship between monasticism and an emerging Hindu nationalist cultural and political consciousness that remained fractured and internally contested.

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