Muslims and the Qasbati Public Sphere: Manifestations of Islam in Colonial India

This paper seeks to examine religion and its role in the public sphere of qasbati (of qasbahs or small towns) Muslims of colonial north India. Focusing on the period of late nineteenth- to mid twentieth-century, this paper puts forth two basic arguments: first, the qasbati public sphere lacked a clear, bi-polar distinction between the public and the private with regard to religion, its ideals, and practices; and second, it was marked with sundry manifestations defined by and oblivious of religion all at once. These arguments can be evidenced by considering certain institutional and collective articulations of the qasbati Muslims. Their participation in Mushairah (Urdu poetry readings), Sufi Islam, the Progressive Writers’ Movement, and the movement for Pakistan testify to both the immanence of religion in the public sphere and its conspicuous absence. At one level, a participation in these institutions and movements was individual as well as collective, private as well as public. On another level, while the Mushairahs reflected varied expressions ranging from the religious to the modern, Sufi Islam as an essential feature of qasbati living voiced the limits of particular religiosity. We also have examples of people who candidly asserted their religious identity in both public and private, favored a separate homeland for Muslims, while also played a key role in the left-oriented Progressive Writers’ Movement that sought to forsake religious and sectarian differences for social justice and equality. Such examples indicate the extent to which the religion of Islam defined and shaped the Muslim public domain while also sharing it with the non-religious forces. This paper, thus, looks into the intersections of the sacred and the secular and the inalienability of the public and the private.