Anand Vivek Taneja is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of the award-winning Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi and the forthcoming The Gabriel of Madness: Islamic Poetry and Ethics in an Age of Hindu Nationalism.

Lecture Abstract:

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888-1958), a major Islamic scholar and the first Education Minister of independent India, articulated a vision of Muslim belonging in a multi-confessional India which continues to be relevant for Indian Muslims today, a vision which is being revived along with Azad’s memory at a time when Muslim belonging in India is yet again being questioned. Crucial to Azad’s vision was a revaluation of the term “minority”. In Azad’s understanding, India’s Muslims were not a disadvantaged demographic category but held a position of social and moral leadership. While largely articulated in colonial (and yet un-Partitioned) India, Azad’s understanding of minority beyond demography, as a morally agentive category rather than one which is the recipient of the majority’s noblesse oblige, is one which has enormous resonance and relevance in post-colonial India, given the ways in which its Constitution and its first-past-the post electoral system have evolved to make it possible for demographic minorities and disadvantaged groups to make developmental demands of the state and to attain power through strategic electoral alliances. In this talk, I will first revisit a moment of the revival of Azad’s memory in Jamia Nagar, Delhi’s pre-eminent Muslim majority area and Muslim intellectual center. Then I will turn to Azad’s writings in his last book published in pre-partition India, Ghubar-e Khatir. Finally, I will think with current Muslim understandings of democratic politics, and the idea of ethical worthiness or auqat, which is understood as being central to electoral success, rather than just raw demographic numbers.

Offered in conjunction with the Department of Anthrolpology Colloquium Series.