Islam in South Asia (Vol. 2: Encountering the West: Before and After 1857)

This volume, the second in the series Islam in South Asia, introduces certain aspects of India’s response to the West. it also includes travel literature which is becoming increasingly important, because cultural theorists treat them as serious little jigsaw puzzles of ethnography, anthropology and social and cultural history. Our contention is that while scholars in the West engage in constructing their epistemology of Islam, it is about time Muslim scholars start constructing their own epistemology of the West by turning to the travel documents that carry us into a wider world and often posses a penetrating quality in them. This volume includes the travelogues of Mirza Abu Taleb, the pioneer travel writer, and Lutfullah. As India celebrates the 150th anniversary of the 1857 revolt, this collection of published essays introduced some seminal writings by Sayyid Ahmed Khan, the Aligarh reformer, Mirza Ghalib, the Urdu poet, Fazl-I Haq Khairabadi, the scholar, and Abdul Halim Sharar, essayist-novelist from Lucknow. Together, they capture the trauma of an era. They are essential readings for the understanding of an important event.