Minority Studies

Description

In India, the ‘minority–majority’ logic has been inherited from the Independence struggle and Partition history, and ratified by provisions in favour of minorities in the Constitution. Minority Studies, the first volume in the series, ‘Oxford India Studies in Contemporary Society’, looks at issues related to the identification, definition, and categorization of religious minorities and foregrounding of the significant social categories of caste, gender, ethnicity, and class. Drawing from fieldwork based on historically grounded and ethnographically researched locations, it examines how modern law creates and conditions minority identity, how groups manipulate the ground-level situation to project a certain identity at a particular point of time, and what happens when a group considered as part of the ‘majority’ demands ‘minority’ status. In this paperback edition, the editor adds further to the discussion by referring to the recent resurgence of majoritarian populist politics in India as evidenced in the lynching and targeted violence against Muslims and Dalits in the name of cow vigilantism and other such instances. The editor emphasizes how the minority question becomes even more potent in the current socio-political milieu.

About the Editor

Rowena Robinson is professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay, India.

Contributors:

Dibyesh Anand

Chad M. Bauman

Natasha Behl

Farhana Ibrahim

Murzban Jal

Laura Dudley Jenkins

Joseph M.T.

Joseph Marianus Kujur

Sipra Mukherjee

Yousuf Saeed

Michel Seymour

Rina Verma Williams

Richard F. Young

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Rowena Robinson

1. India and the Concept of a Multinational Federation

Michel Seymour

2. Making Minority Identities: Gender, State, and Muslim Personal Law

Rina Verma Williams

1. Scheduled Castes, Christians, and Muslims: The Politics of Macro-majorities and Micro-minorities

Laura Dudley Jenkins

4. Representing the ‘Minority’

Farhana Ibrahim

5. Buddhists: The Political Dynamics of Conversion and Caste

Joseph M.T.

6. Christian and Tribal: The Dynamics of Scheduled Tribe Status in the Field

Joseph Marianus Kujur

7. Minorities and the Politics of Conversion: With Special Attention to Indian Christianity

Chad M. Bauman and Richard F. Young

8. Parsi Ethics and the Spirit of Indian Modernity

Murzban Jal

9. The Curious Case of the Ramakrishna Mission: The Politics of Minority Identity

Sipra Mukherjee

10. Sikh Minority Identity Formation: Nation and Politics in Postcolonial India

Natasha Behl

11. From Inclusive to Exclusive: Changing Ingredients of Muslim Identity in Bombay Cinema

Yousuf Saeed

12. The Violence of Security: Hindutva’s Lethal Imaginaries

Dibyesh Anand

Notes on Contributors

Index