Reclaiming Karbala Nation, Islam and Literature of the Bengali Muslims

Analysing an extensive range of texts and publications across multiple genres, formats and literary lineages, Reclaiming Karbala studies the emergence and formation of a viable Muslim identity in Bengal over the late-19th century through the 1940s. Beginning with an explanation of the tenets of the battle of Karbala, this multi-layered study explores what it means to be Muslim, as well as the nuanced relationship between religion, linguistic identity and literary modernity that marks both Bengaliness and Muslimness in the region.This book is an intervention into the literature on regional Islam in Bengal, offering a complex perspective on the polemic on religion and language in the formation of a jatiya Bengali Muslim identity in a multilingual context. This book, by placing this polemic in the context of intra-Islamic reformist conflict, shows how all these rival reformist groups unanimously negated the Karbala-centric commemorative ritual of Muharram and Shi‘i intercessory piety to secure a pro-Caliphate sensibility as the core value of the Bengali Muslim public sphere.

List of Figures Acknowledgements A Note on Transliteration and Other Conventions List of Abbreviations Introduction: Situating Karbala in Bengal Chapter 1: Mapping Karbala from orality to print Prologue 1.1 Creative application of Islamic ideas in early modern Bengal 1.1.1 Karbala in the Bengal region 1.1.2 Translation/rewriting as intertextuality, narrative as speech act 1.2 Dobhashi: The language of the popular 1.2.1 From recitation to reading: At the threshold 1.2.2 How cheap, how scriptural: The internal ambivalence of Dobhashi 1.3 Oral forms, scripted format: Whatever happened to the performative? 1.4 Writing as sacred ritual: Turning pain from body to book Conclusion Chapter 2: Print and Husayn-Centric Piety Prologue 2.1 New sober Islam and the new authors 2.1.1 Sunna and ma?hab: Two elements of reformist sensibilities 2.1.2 From pir-centric piety to Prophet-centric piety: Muhammad as the moral template 2.2 The Caliphate and the ahl ul-bayt: Two legacies of Muhammad and his intercession 2.2.3 Namaz and the ahl ul-bayt: Muhammad’s twin treasures 2.3 Fatima, the mother of the martyrs: The template of Sabr Conclusion Chapter 3: The Rhetoric of Loss and Recovery: The Moment of Muslim jatiyata Prologue 3.1 The beginning of jati?ata: Bengaliness and Muslimness 3.1.1 The jati?a between Syed Ameer Ali and Jamaluddin al-Afghani 3.1.2 Anjumans, periodicals and the new print network: Affiliation, alliance and antagonism 3.2 Talking back to the Evangelists and Orientalists: Jesus versus Muhammad 3.3 The Bangla-Urdu divide: Bengali Muslims between region and nation 3.4 Literariness of jati?a sahitya Conclusion Chapter 4: The Recovery of the Past: History and Biography Prologue 4.1 A Hindu nationalist script and the Muslim jati?a 4.1.1 The search for jati?a: Territorial expansion and authentication 4.1.2 Writing the history of the sacred: Between Medina and Mymensingh 4.2 Jibani/Carit as a modern genre: The contributions of Girishchandra Sen 4.3 Writing jati?a Itihas and jibani as modern literature: Between the rational and the miraculous 4.4 Other histories and other biographies: Between the pan-Islamic and the province 4.5 Ummah, succession and the Karbala in jati?a sahitya Conclusion Chapter 5: Literature, Modernity, Multilinguality Prologue 5.1 Misra Bangla: Linguistic identity-in-difference 5.1.1 Reformist Islam and the claims over Bangla language: Ahle Hadis, Islam Darsan, Ba?gi?a Mussalman Sahitya Patrika 5.1.2 Bangla as misra bhasha in Muslim multilingualism 5.1.3 Redefining literary modernity: Recovery of puthis, discovery of folk 5.2 Karbala: Intra-literary reception and rejection 5.2.1 Narrative as argumentative discourse: Moharram Kanda 5.2.2 From Mahasmasan Kabya to Maharam Sariph ba Atma-bisarjan Kabya: Kaykobad and Karbala 5.3 Poetry as Kaiphi?at: Karbala Kabya and Maharam Sariph Conclusion Afterword: 300 Karbalas and Beyond Bibliography Index

Epsita Halder is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, India. She was Visiting Fellow at Max-Weber Kollege, University of Erfurt, Germany, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK.