Abstract:

To what extent are the sectarian, regional, ethnic, “caste” and language identities of South Asian Muslims characteristic of historic India as opposed to other parts of the Islamic world? This discussion will concentrate on how such identity categories have been foregrounded or obscured over time with respect to the Aligarh movement, the emergence of Urdu, British social analysis, and nationalist projects. The presentation seeks to stimulate comparisons and ideas for further research.

Speaker’s Bio:

David Lelyveld is the author of Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India (1978, reprinted 2003). His publications also deal with the social and political history of Urdu and its differentiation from Hindi. A graduate of Harvard University, he did his Ph. D at the University of Chicago. He has held faculty and administrative positions at the University of Minnesota, Columbia, and Cornell. He retired as Professor of History at William Paterson University. He lives in New York City and is presently exploring aspects of the cultural relationship between India and Japan in the early twentieth century.