Another India: The Making of the World's Largest Muslim Minority, 1947-77 - Hardcover

Anil, Pratinav

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0197694691 ISBN 13: 9780197694695

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2023

Synopsis

Another India tells the story of the world's biggest religious minority. Weaving together vivid biographical portraits of a wide range of Indian Muslims--elite and subaltern, secular and clerical, activist and apolitical--it brings the experience of the country's Muslims under a single focus; and, by throwing light on the Indian Muslim condition during the first thirty years of independence, reflects on the true character of democratic India. What we have here is a rather different picture from received accounts of the 'world's largest democracy'.

Challenging traditional histories of Nehru's India, Pratinav Anil shows that minority rights were neglected right from independence. Despite its best intentions, the Congress regime that ruled for three decades was often illiberal, intolerant and undemocratic. Muslims had to contend with discrimination, disadvantage, deindustrialization, dispossession and disenfranchisement, as well as an unresponsive leadership.

Anil demonstrates how the Muslim elite encouraged depoliticization, taking up seemingly noble but largely inconsequential causes with little bearing on the lives of ordinary members of the community. There was no room for mass protests or collective solidarity in this version of Muslim politics. Another India explores this elite betrayal, whose consequences are still felt by India's 200 million Muslims today.

About this title

About the Author

Pratinav Anil is an historian of postcolonial India, currently teaching at the University of Oxford, whose writings have appeared in The Spectator, The Indian Express and History Today. He is the co-author (with Christophe Jaffrelot) of India's First Dictatorship, and the author of Another India, both published by Hurst.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0197694691
• ISBN 13: 9780197694695
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432