Event Date: 9-10 September 2011
Royal Holloway, University of London
Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia
Shi‘a Muslims constitute a significant, though indeterminate (perhaps c. 15-20%) minority within South Asian Islam, making South Asia one of the world’s most
significant centres of Shi‘a population. Moreover, the historical associations of Shi‘ism in many parts of South Asia with historic ruling dynasties and/or wider Indo-Persian cultural traditions mean that Shi‘ism has had social, cultural, political and intellectual influences in South Asia out of all proportion to the enumeration of the religion’s formal adherents. Nevertheless, for too long scholarly attention has tended to focus on Shi‘ism in states such as Iran or Iraq, casting South Asia to the peripheries of the Shi‘a world.
This conference aims to address this gap in our understanding by focusing on various aspects of Shi‘a Islam in modern South Asia, from the late-nineteenth century to the present. It will
illustrate the relevance of Shi‘a Islam to understanding South Asian Islam’s engagements
with modernity, reform, rationality and notions of the individual self. In doing so, it will contribute to current academic debates on the diversity and dynamism of religious traditions within South Asian Islam, while adding considerably to our understanding of Shi‘ism as a world religion, with significant and autonomous manifestations in various global regions, rather than one primarily directed from perceived ‘heartlands’ in cities such as Najaf or Qom.
The panellists, to be drawn from diverse academic disciplines, will analyze in various ways the dynamics of religious, social and political change in Shi‘a societies in modern South Asia, and their contributions to debates on identity formation within Islam. Speakers are invited to consider ideas of Shi‘a influence on or interaction with Indo-Islamic cultures and societies more widely, or to assess contestations within or between Shi‘a communities themselves.
For the colonial period, for instance, participants are invited to consider the responses of the Shi‘a to the encounter with colonial rule. One may consider, for instance, the various aspects of religious change occurring in the period, such as the expansion of Shi‘a madrasa education, growth of a culture of theological polemics and the historical trajectories of particular Shi‘a ritual and cultural practices, for instance matam (self-flagellation), and majlis-i-‘aza (sermon-gatherings for the remembrance of the Imams). Others may consider social change among the Shi‘a ashraf (nobility) or development of new Shi‘a communitarian identities, each of which were in some sense facilitated by encounters with the new technologies and knowledge systems embedded in the experience of colonialism.
Post-independence, papers may additionally focus on the strategic adjustments of Shi‘a clerics and secular elites to ensuring the preservation of their religious rights (and rites) in the overwhelmingly Sunni state of Pakistan and ‘Hindu’ India. Shi‘a concerns and political campaigns, regarding such issues as permissions to take out ta‘ziya processions during Muharram, the applicability of fiqh-i-Ja‘fariya as a separate code of Shi‘a personal laws, and a separate curriculum for religious studies in public schools, are all themes that can be considered as a basis for the understanding of Shi‘a responses to state management of religion or, in some cases, the perceived Islamization of the state.
A particular aim of the conference will be to combine analyses of the Isna ‘Ashari Shi‘a and those of the Isma‘ili Shi‘a. These two communities, each influential in their own right in parts of the subcontinent, have always been discussed in isolation from each other in scholarship; this conference thus opens the possibilities for a meaningful comparison of their experiences as religious confessions and minority communities. Equally, the conference welcomes reflection on the relationships of the South Asian Shi‘a with those in the wider world: for instance, ideas of clerical internationalism tying the Isna ‘Ashari Shi‘a of north India, Hyderabad or Karachi to Iraq or Iran, or the links between the Isma‘ili Shi‘a of South Asia and their co-religionists in East Africa and elsewhere.
With themes of the ‘Iranianization’ of global Shi‘ism and the growth of Shi‘a-Sunni sectarianism at the forefront of contemporary academic and media discussion, this conference will allow the opportunity for meaningful analysis of transitions and contestations internal to Shi‘a communities. It will permit a greater recognition of the historical influence of Shi‘ism within South Asian Islamic cultures and societies more broadly, and will evoke a vision of modern South Asian Shi‘ism as existing at the centre, rather than the margins, of the wider Shi‘a world.
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FRIDAY 9TH SEPTEMBER
Introduction by Justin Jones .
Keynote Address:
Francis Robinson
Reflections on the Shi‘a in South Asia and the wider Muslim World.
[AUDIO HERE]
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Session I
Michel Boivin
The Isna ‘Ashari-Isma‘ili divide among the Khojas around 1910: exploring forgotten judicial sources from Karachi.
[AUDIO HERE]
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Ian Williams
Shared and disputed symbols within Twelver Shi‘ite and Ahl-i-Sunnat traditions of Islam: an examination of theological constructions and devotional practices among leaders and adherents from nineteenth century South Asia to the contemporary U.K.
[AUDIO HERE]
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Tahir Kamran
Sufi shrines, electoral politics and sectarian violence in Punjab: a case study of the dargah of Siyal Sharif.
[AUDIO HERE]
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Session II
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Ludovic Gandelot
Isma‘ili Aga Khani religious and social identities, as seen through Sultan Muhammad Shah’s firmans at the beginning of the twentieth century.
[AUDIO HERE]
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Soumen Mukherjee
Of ‘religious and social welfare’ and ‘progress of the community’: religious inspiration, leadership and idioms of welfarism among Shi‘a Imami Isma‘ilis in twentieth century South Asia and East Africa.
[AUDIO HERE]
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Bashir Damji
The Khoja Isna ‘Ashari communities of East Africa: from newcomers to flag-bearers.
[AUDIO HERE]
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Session III
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Sajjad Rizvi
Establishing the principles of the faith for a new Shi‘ite polity: the theology of Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi.
[AUDIO HERE]
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Justin Jones
Khandan-i-Ijtihad: authority and transition in a family of Shi‘a ‘ulama in Lucknow, c.1850-1950.
[AUDIO HERE]
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Ali Khan
Local nodes of a trans-national network: a case study of a Shi‘a family in Awadh, 1900-1950.
AUDIO NOT AVAILABLE
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Session IV
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Simon Wolfgang Fuchs
Third-wave Shi‘ism: Sayyid Arif Husayn al-Husayni and the Islamic revolution in Pakistan.
[AUDIO HERE]
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Hasan Ali Khan
The role of the Auqaf Department in redefining Sufi and Shi‘a built heritage in Pakistan.
[AUDIO HERE]
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Saleem Khan
The Shi‘a dominance of the legal profession in British India: a study of the lawyerpoliticians of Bihar.
[AUDIO HERE]
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images from the conference:
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