Abstract:This article explores the role of Jamia Millia Islamia—the National Muslim University—in the formation of a composite national identity in India around the time of partition. This institution, born under the dual influence of the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements, constituted for its members a ‘laboratory’ for the nation. Through their educational experiments and constructive workà laGandhi, Jamia teachers and students sought to lay the ground for an independence that would be ‘meaningful’ not only for Mu… Show more
“…These institutions are the subject of a small but rich strand of historiography, which generally places their genesis within the politicization of community, identity, and culture that marked the high period of Indian nationalism (1905–47) (Abbas, 2014; Bhagavan, 2002; Brunner, 2020; Datla, 2013; Fischer‐Tiné, 2001, 2003; Gautier, 2020; Hasan, 1998; Hasan & Jalil, 2006; Hashmi, 1989; Lelyveld, 1978; Minault & Lelyveld, 1974; Renold, 2005). The university is unpacked for its symbolic, ideological, and political features, becoming a site for the articulation of competing visions of nation and community.…”
Section: Universities In British India: From English Education To Nat...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…For the Urdu intellectuals at the heart of Datla's study, the idea of a “vernacular university” provided an opportunity to delineate a unique Muslim nationalist imaginary: one that was not simply identitarian or separatist but cosmopolitan and secular. More recently, Laurence Gautier's article on Jamia Millia has argued that the Muslim university served as a unique “laboratory” for the nation, in which an inclusive conception of a composite India could be nurtured (Gautier, 2020, p. 233). Such conceptualizations foreground the university as a project of futurity — an institution vital for shaping, not only of the minds of future citizens and leaders, but also the values of communities and the ideologies of polities.…”
Section: Universities In British India: From English Education To Nat...mentioning
This essay traces different historiographical framings of the modern university in South Asia. Although the trajectories of this institution are manifold and complex, the university's deep imbrications with colonial expansion and developmentalist ambitions lend it to both national and global perspectives. Focusing on the late colonial to early postcolonial period, I examine how recent scholarship has positioned the university across multiple scales. In particular, I consider how the turn toward global, networked, and “entangled” perspectives — with examples drawn from global intellectual history and the history of international development — suggest fresh approaches, clearing the way for new questions as well as encountering unique limits. Ultimately, these frameworks help reorient the university toward its translocal dimensions: as a site of national imagining, internationalist claim‐making, development meaning‐making, global connectivity, and the transnational circulation of knowledge.
“…These institutions are the subject of a small but rich strand of historiography, which generally places their genesis within the politicization of community, identity, and culture that marked the high period of Indian nationalism (1905–47) (Abbas, 2014; Bhagavan, 2002; Brunner, 2020; Datla, 2013; Fischer‐Tiné, 2001, 2003; Gautier, 2020; Hasan, 1998; Hasan & Jalil, 2006; Hashmi, 1989; Lelyveld, 1978; Minault & Lelyveld, 1974; Renold, 2005). The university is unpacked for its symbolic, ideological, and political features, becoming a site for the articulation of competing visions of nation and community.…”
Section: Universities In British India: From English Education To Nat...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…For the Urdu intellectuals at the heart of Datla's study, the idea of a “vernacular university” provided an opportunity to delineate a unique Muslim nationalist imaginary: one that was not simply identitarian or separatist but cosmopolitan and secular. More recently, Laurence Gautier's article on Jamia Millia has argued that the Muslim university served as a unique “laboratory” for the nation, in which an inclusive conception of a composite India could be nurtured (Gautier, 2020, p. 233). Such conceptualizations foreground the university as a project of futurity — an institution vital for shaping, not only of the minds of future citizens and leaders, but also the values of communities and the ideologies of polities.…”
Section: Universities In British India: From English Education To Nat...mentioning
This essay traces different historiographical framings of the modern university in South Asia. Although the trajectories of this institution are manifold and complex, the university's deep imbrications with colonial expansion and developmentalist ambitions lend it to both national and global perspectives. Focusing on the late colonial to early postcolonial period, I examine how recent scholarship has positioned the university across multiple scales. In particular, I consider how the turn toward global, networked, and “entangled” perspectives — with examples drawn from global intellectual history and the history of international development — suggest fresh approaches, clearing the way for new questions as well as encountering unique limits. Ultimately, these frameworks help reorient the university toward its translocal dimensions: as a site of national imagining, internationalist claim‐making, development meaning‐making, global connectivity, and the transnational circulation of knowledge.
“…Its educational experiments were aligned with but distinct from Gandhian basic education methods. As such, Jamia structured its own vision for freedom and nationalism which included the expansion of education through adult education in working class Muslim neighborhoods in Old Delhi (Gautier, 2020).…”
Section: Jamia Millia Islamia and Shaheen Bagh: Cultivating A Muslim ...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Its anticolonial character was exemplified, for instance, in school assemblies where students recollected the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and in recitations of patriotic songs. Hussain conceived of the university as a secular institution that was an alternative to colonial education for the masses (Gautier, 2020). He maintained: the movement of Jamia Millia Islamia as a struggle for education and cultural renaissance that aims to prepare a blueprint for Indian Muslims which may focus on Islam but simultaneously evolves a national culture for common Indians.…”
Section: Jamia Millia Islamia and Shaheen Bagh: Cultivating A Muslim ...mentioning
Passed in December 2019, the Citizenship Amendment Act intensified Hindu majoritarian rule, emerging as another legal measure to systematically deny citizenship to Muslims and other minoritized populations. These legislations were met by protests which were responded to by police violence. Young Muslim women at Jamia Milia Islamia University followed the lead of elders in Shaheen Bagh, crafting an intergenerational feminist‐led protest which emerged at the forefront of resistance efforts. This article attends to young women's spatiotemporal claims of recognition and belonging. Dwelling on the collective and corporeal nature of their engagement, I highlight the theoretical significance of this unwavering collective still presence that characterizes their participation. In an India that increasingly questions their belonging, these student protesters craft home as an expanded political site. They make embodied claims to the university, public space, and by extension, the nation, as home.
This article examines often ignored ‘minority entanglements’ forged between European Jewish and South Asian Muslim intellectuals in Germany and traces their evolution in colonial India. The article focuses on three individual life histories and situates them within the more extensive Jewish-Muslim intellectual dialogue that resonated in the inter-war period. It brings to light the lives and writings of Josef Horovitz (1874–1931), professor of Arabic at the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, Aligarh, and a prolific contributor to the journal Islamic Culture published in Hyderabad; Leopold Weiss alias Muhammad Asad (1900–1992) in Islamia College, Lahore, who also served as the editor of Islamic Culture, Hyderabad; and educationist and reform pedagogue Gerda Philipsborn (1895–1943) at the Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi. The intellectual dialogue between minority communities, together with the contribution it made both to modern Islamic studies as a discipline and the forging of a new reform pedagogy, allow us to rethink the Jewish and Muslim question as well as the minority response to it through a comparative perspective. The minor history of European Jewish and South Asian Muslim entanglements makes for a rich testimony to the problems and possibilities of studying minorities as the makers of minor cosmopolitan knowledge.
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