Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia

In South Asia, as elsewhere, the category of ‘the public’ has come under increased scholarly and popular scrutiny in recent years. To better understand this current conjuncture, we need a fuller understanding of the specifically South Asian history of the term. To that end, this book surveys the modern Indian ‘public’ across multiple historical contexts and sites, with contributions from leading scholars of South Asia in anthropology, history, literary studies and religious studies. As a whole, this volume highlights the complex genealogies of the public in the Indian subcontinent during the colonial and postcolonial eras, showing in particular how British notions of ‘the public’ intersected with South Asian forms of publicity. Two principal methods or approaches―the genealogical and the typological―have characterised this scholarship. This book suggests, more in the mode of genealogy, that the category of the public has been closely linked to the sub-continental history of political liberalism. Also discussed is how the studies collected in this volume challenge some of liberalism’s key presuppositions about the public and its relationship to law and religion. This book was originally published as a special issue of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.

Brannon D. Ingram is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University, USA. He specializes in the study of Islam in modern South Asia and South Africa, focusing particularly on Sufism and traditionally educated Muslim scholars (ulama). Brannon’s publications can be found in journals such as Modern Asian Studies and The Muslim World.

J. Barton Scott is Assistant Professor of Religion and Historical Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. His work puts religion in colonial India in transnational perspective by approaching modern Hindu thinkers as theorists of religion who can be read alongside their North Atlantic contemporaries. Scott’s current research interests include print culture in colonial India, the legal regulation of media publics, and the reception of liberalism among colonial Hindu reformers. His book Spiritual Despots: Modern Hinduism and the Genealogies of Self-Rule is forthcoming in 2016 as part of the series "South Asia Across the Disciplines."

SherAli K. Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College, USA. He received his PhD in Religion/Islamic Studies at Duke University and his BA at Macalester College. His work centers on Muslim intellectual thought in modern South Asia with a focus on intra-Muslim debates and polemics on crucial questions of law, ethics, and theology. He is currently completing a book project entitled "Polemical Encounters: Competing Imaginaries of Tradition in Modern South Asian Islam" that explores polemics over the boundaries of heretical innovation (bid‘a) among leading 19th century Indian Muslim scholars (‘Ulama’). His articles have appeared in the Journal of Law and Religion, Muslim World, Political Theology, and Islamic Studies.