The Sufi Paradigm and the Makings of a Vernacular Knowledge in Colonial India

This book demonstrates how a local elite built upon colonial knowledge to produce a vernacular knowledge that maintained the older legacy of a pluralistic Sufism. As the British reprinted a Sufi work, Shah Abd al-Latif Bhittai's Shah jo risalo, in an effort to teach British officers Sindhi, the local intelligentsia, particularly driven by a Hindu caste of professional scribes (the Amils), seized on the moment to promote a transformation from traditional and popular Sufism (the tasawuf) to a Sufi culture (Sufiyani saqafat). Using modern tools, such as the printing press, and borrowing European vocabulary and ideology, such as Theosophical Society, the intelligentsia used Sufism as an idiomatic matrix that functioned to incorporate difference and a multitude of devotional traditions-Sufi, non-Sufi, and non-Muslim-into a complex, metaphysical spirituality that transcended the nation-state and filled the intellectual, spiritual, and emotionalvoids of postmodernity.

Auteur

Michel Boivin is the Director of the Centre for South Asian Studies (CEIAS), affiliated with The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and The School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), France. He holds a PHD in Oriental Languages, Civilisations and Societies from Sorbonne University. He was trained in contemporary history and anthropology, with specializations in Islamic and South Asian Studies. He has authored or edited fourteen books, the most recent of which are  The Hindu Sufis of South Asia, Discovering Sindh's Past (with Matthew A. Cook and Julien Levesque, 2019), Devotional Islam in Contemporary South Asia (with Remy Delage, 2015), and the Historical Dictionary of the Sufi Culture of Sindh in Pakistan and in India (2015).

Contenu

Chapter 1: The building of colonial knowledge and its aftermath

From culture to episteme: Vernacular knowledge and the Sufi paradigm

Scope and objectives

Part 1: Colonisation and the Shaping of Vernacular Knowledge

Chapter 2: The set-up of the colonial knowledge on Sindh

Introduction Knowledge and its agents in precolonial Sindh

Sindhi as a distinct language

The era of standardisation: Language and script

Translating, printing, and the making of the Sindhi munshi

Grammar and the dictionary

Conclusion

Chapter 3: The transmission of colonial knowledge

Introduction

The colonial knowledge of the society

Education for transmitting colonial knowledge

The formalisation of colonial knowledge through gazetteers

Conclusion

Chapter 4: Knowledge, Sufism, and the issue of a Vernacular literature

Introduction

Richard Burton, or the Orientalist Ethnographer

Burton's ethnography of Sindh and his principle of intercession Literatures as a weapon in our hands

Conclusion    

Part 2: Social Mobility and The Makings of the Sufi Paradigm

Chapter 5: the archaeology of the Sufi paradigm

Introduction

The printing of the Shah jo Risalo

The Sufi paradigm and the issue of a Persian pattern

The Sufi paradigm at its earliest stage

Conclusion

Chapter 6: Social mobility and the set-up of a Sufi paradigm

Introduction

The spread of the middle class and the issue of progress

The intelligentsia and the objectification of the Shah jo Risalo

Colonial Sufism as antiquity

Conclusion

Chapter 7: Sufi knowledge (ilm tasawuf), sufi culture, and the sufi paradigm

Introduction

Mirza Qalich Beg, or the Exemplary Sindhi Scholar

Bibliography, lexicography, and the Sufi paradigm in Mirza Qalich Beg's work

Sufi Knowledge (Ilm Tasawuf) and the Sufi paradigm

Jethmal Parsram Gulraj and the Sufi culture

Conclusion

 

Chapter 8: The deployment of the Sufi paradigm

Introduction

The Sufi paradigm beyond the Shah jo Risalo (or the second step of the SP)

The Sufi paradigm **beyond Sufism and Islam (third step of the SP)

The Sufi paradigm **beyond Sindh (fourth step of the SP)

New trends in early twentieth century knowledge: The spread of the qisso

The Sufi paradigm and the printed knowledge market

Conclusion

Part 3: Challenging the Sufi Paradigm in the Era of Communalism

chapter 9: The Sufi paradigm and the normative regimes of knowledge

Introduction

The codification of Islam and Hinduism: Sanatan dharma versus Umma

Reformism and Universalism among the Hindus

Sunni Reformism

The Church Missionary Society

The new conjuncture of the 1920s

Conclusion

Chapter 10: the Sufi paradigm and the devotional regimes of knowledge

Introduction

The attempt to create a Daryapanth

The Hinduisation of the Nanakpanth

The Shia regime of knowledge in the public sphere 

From Khoja to Ismaili: The Aga Khani regime of knowledge

Conclusion

Chapter 11: oral knowledge and the Sufi paradigm

Introduction

The figure of the bard

Oral knowledge and the devotional corpus

The bardic performance

Conclusion <b&g...