This volume brings together some of the finest writings on the Muslims of Indian subcontinent and the role of Islamic symbols and identities in public life. It highlights the extent to which Muslims, like their Hindu counterparts, have been engaged in recent times in renewing and rethinking the historic traditions of their faiths. The essays are united in the challenge they offer to the negative stereotypes that are current, for example, that Islam is inevitably politically militant, that Muslim women are particularly oppressed, or that Islam is a static tradition. The essays in contrast show the Islamic scholars of India and Pakistan as people engaged with issues of the modern world and, pragmatically driven in their socio-political activities. What also remains constant in all the essays is the focus on individual Muslim lives, giving the volume the feel of a vibrant oral history. The author argues that, for the most part, there has been an absence of ‘Islamist politics’ or movements in the colonial period and thereafter in India. Instead, there is a wide evidence of a firm commitment to democratic secularism and a-political spiritual renewal. She cautions that the over-emphasis on jihad-oriented movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan should no t eclipse the more enduring the pervasive patterns of Islamic activity in South Asia. Nor should they distract from other constructive activities of the Muslims of the subcontinent like-education of boys and girls, moral and spiritual guidance, cultivation of Greco-Arabic medicine, poetry, and production of pilgrimage accounts.
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