Übung Begleitübung zum Großen Forschungsseminar B Islamwissenschaft Interfaith Relations and the Making of Medieval and Early Modern India

In the modern histories of the South Asian subcontinent a critical historiographical theme that cuts through time is the subject of ‘Hindu-Muslim’ relations. It is important to keep in mind that the transcription of this historiography commenced from the nineteenth century at a time when there was great mobilization and discussion of the idea of the emerging nation, of modernity, colonialism and communalism. Although historiography dealing with modern history was usually careful to distinguish ‘communalism’ of the 20th century from its pre-colonial antecedents, its ‘pre-history’ has always remained unclear. Outside the academy, in ‘popular history’, communal identities were, and still are, encased as linear historical developments from medieval ‘Hindu-Muslim’ relations to the present. This reading course engages with the historiographies of modern communal and pre-colonial ‘Hindu-Muslim’ relations, asking students to evaluate the major historiographical continuities and transitions in the study of this subject. Were they shaped largely by contexts – precolonial versus colonial? This is a large question, and the readings will help to break it down into its details: for example, how did political mobilisation at different moments affect, or not, the social organisation of adherents of a religion? What role did recourse to history and memory play in defining identities? The readings require students to remain attentive to the archive of the historian: what were the sources used by different scholars? To what extent did their questions constitute their archives and enlarge or foreclose their readings? Consider, for example, the ways in which historians might consider the ‘frontier’, or [caste/class] prejudice with its inclusions and exclusions, and the competing and contiguous ways in which these were formulated in the precolonial and colonial records. While the readings in this course are organised to focus questions regarding social and political identities and interfaith relations ranging through time, they also ask you to consider the complex ways in which historical change and continuity needs to be studied. They also ask you to contextualise the craft of the historian within a larger realm of knowledge formation that circulates within and outside the professional academy. W3-Professur für Turkologie/Iranistik (Univ. Prof. Dr. Christoph Neumann) LMU München SoSe 2015 Prof. Dr. Kumar Sunil