Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T13:53:31.743Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Media, Citizenship, and Religious Mobilization: The Muharram Awareness Campaign in Mumbai

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2015

Patrick Eisenlohr
Get access

Abstract

The great urban diversity of Mumbai has given rise to a range of religious mobilizations that are not only shaped by a history of communalism along religious lines but also driven by intra-religious rivalry and competition in their urban environment. Against the backdrop of a global megacity, contemporary Shi‘ite religious activism in Mumbai provides evidence of the importance of global processes of religious mobilization, while also showing its entanglement with state regulation of religion. An advertising campaign by a Shi‘ite media center illustrates that such religious activism with global ramifications can only be understood if one also takes its intersection with state-sponsored regimes of religious diversity into account. Media practices of Indian Muslims as a vulnerable minority are especially responsive to normative discourses and images of religious diversity, and mobilize alternative strands of Indian secularism in order to counteract the fragility of their citizenship.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 687 - 710
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Adcock, C. S. 2014. The Limits of Tolerance: Indian Secularism and the Politics of Religious Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Aghaie, Kamran Scot. 2004. The Martyrs of Karbala: Shi‘i Symbols and Rituals in Modern Iran. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Ahmad, Imtiaz. 1981. Ritual and Religion among Muslims in India. New Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Ahmad, Imtiaz, and Reifeld, Helmut, eds. 2004. Lived Islam in South Asia: Adaptation, Accommodation, and Conflict. Delhi: Social Science Press.Google Scholar
Ahmad, Irfan. 2009. Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alam, Anwar. 2012. “Secular India and Muslim India: Discourse on Secularism and Muslims in Contemporary India.” In Politique et religions en asie du sud: Le sécularisme dans tous ses états? [Politics and religions in South Asia: Troubled secularism?], eds. Jaffrelot, Christophe and Mohammad-Arif, Aminah, 163–84. Paris: Éditions de l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales/Collection Purushartha.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alam, Arshad. 2008. “The Enemy Within: Madrasa and Muslim Identity in North India.” Modern Asian Studies 42(2–3):605–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Althusser, Louis. 1971. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 2000. “Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial Mumbai.” Public Culture 12(3):627–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhargava, Rajeev. 2007. “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism.” In The Future of Secularism, ed. Srinivasan, T. N., 20–53. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Blank, Jonah. 2001. Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity among the Daudi Bohras. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brass, Paul R. 1974. Language and Politics in North India. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brass, Paul R. 2003. The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Burchardt, Marian, and Becci, Irene. 2013. “Introduction: Religion Taking Place: Producing Urban Locality.” In Topographies of Faith: Religion in Urban Spaces, eds. Becci, Irene, Burchardt, Marian, and Casanova, José, 1–21. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Burghart, Richard. 1996. The Conditions of Listening: Essays on Religion, History and Politics in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Castells, Manuel. 2004. The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. Volume 2: The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1995. “Religious Minorities and the Secular State: Notes on an Indian Impasse.” Public Culture 8:11–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 2006. “Fasting for Bin Laden: The Politics of Secularization in Contemporary India.” In Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors, eds. Scott, David and Hirschkind, Charles, 57–74. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chatterji, Roma, and Mehta, Deepak. 2007. Living with Violence: An Anthropology of Events and Everyday Life. Delhi: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cohn, Bernard S. 1987. “The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia.” In An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cole, Juan R. I. 1989. Roots of North Indian Shi'ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Coleman, Simon. 2009. “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Urbanism.” In When God Comes to Town: Religious Traditions in Urban Contexts, eds. Pinxten, Rik and Dikomitis, Lisa, 33–44. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Contractor, Qudsiya. 2012. “‘Unwanted in My City’ – The Making of a ‘Muslim Slum’ in Mumbai.” In Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation, eds. Gayer, Laurent and Jaffrelot, Christophe, 23–42. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Daftary, Farhad. 1992. The Isma'ilis: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Das, Veena. 1984. “For a Folk-theology and Theological Anthropology of Islam.” Contributions to Indian Sociology, n.s., 18(2):293–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devji, Faisal. 2009. “The Terrorist as Humanitarian.” Social Analysis 53(1):173–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Didier, Brian J. 2004. “Conflict Self-Inflicted: Dispute, Incivility, and the Threat of Violence in an Indian Muslim Community.” Journal of Asian Studies 63(1):61–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Souza, Diane. 2004. “Devotional Practices among Shia Women in South India.” In Lived Islam in South Asia: Adaptation, Accommodation, and Conflict, eds. Ahmad, Imtiaz and Reifeld, Helmut, 187–206. Delhi: Social Science Press.Google Scholar
Eisenlohr, Patrick. 2009. “Technologies of the Spirit: Devotional Islam, Sound Reproduction, and the Dialectics of Mediation and Immediacy in Mauritius.” Anthropological Theory 9(3):273–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenlohr, Patrick. 2012. “Media and Religious Diversity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41:37–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelke, Matthew. 2010. “Religion and the Media Turn: A Review Essay.” American Ethnologist 37(2):371–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Michael M. J. 1980. Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fischer, Michael M. J. 2010. “The Rhythmic Beat of the Revolution in Iran.” Cultural Anthropology 25(3):497–543.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flueckiger, Joyce Burkhalter. 2006. In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Freitag, Sandria B. 1989. Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in Northern India. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gayer, Laurent, and Jaffrelot, Christophe, eds. 2012. Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Ghassem-Fachandi, Parvis. 2012. Pogrom in Gujarat: Hindu Nationalism and Anti-Muslim Violence in India. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Nile. 2011. Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the Western Indian Ocean 1840–1915. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. “Fundamentalism and Terror – A Dialogue with Jürgen Habermas.” In Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, Borradori, Giovanna, 25–44. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen, and Taylor, Charles. 2011. “Dialogue: Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor.” In The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere: Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Cornel West, eds. Mendieta, Eduardo and van Antwerpen, Jonathan, 60–69. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2000. “Predicaments of Secularism: Muslim Identities and Politics in Mumbai.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, n.s., 6(2):255–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2001a. “Bridging the Gulf: Migration, Modernity, and Identity among Muslims in Mumbai.” In Community, Empire and Migration: South Asians in Diaspora, ed. Bates, Crispin, 261–85. Delhi: Orient Longman.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2001b. Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2007. “The India That Does Not Shine.” ISIM Review 19:50–51.Google Scholar
Hasan, Zoya. 1996. “Communal Mobilization and Changing Majority in Uttar Pradesh.” In Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India, ed. Ludden, David, 81–97. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Hirschkind, Charles. 2006. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Howarth, Toby M. 2005. The Twelver Shi‘a as a Muslim Minority in India: Pulpit of Tears. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyder, Syed Akbar. 2006. Reliving Karbala: Martyrdom in South Asian Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Justin. 2012. Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India: Religion, Community, and Sectarianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Khan, Sameera. 2007. “Negotiating the Mohalla: Exclusion, Identity, and Muslim Women in Mumbai.” Economic and Political Weekly 42(17):1527–33.Google Scholar
Khoja Shia Isnaashari Jamaat, Mumbai. n.d. http://ksijamat.org (accessed September 13, 2013).Google Scholar
Khoja Shia Isnaashari Jamaat, Mumbai – India 1319–1419 A.H. A Centenary Presentation. 1998.Google Scholar
Larkin, Brian. 2008. “Ahmed Deedat and the Form of Islamic Evangelism.” Social Text 26(3):101–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mahajan, Gurpeet. 2003. “Secularism.” In The Oxford India Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology, 2 vols., ed. Das, Veena, 1:908–34. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mallat, Chibli. 1993. The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr, Najaf and the Shi‘i International. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masoudi Nejad, Reza. 2012. “Practising Fractal Shi'i Identities through Muharram Rituals in Mumbai.” Diversities 14(2):103–17.Google Scholar
Masselos, Jim. 1976. “Power in the Bombay ‘Moholla’ 1904–15. An Initial Exploration into the World of the Indian Urban Muslim.” South Asia, 1st ser., 6(1):75–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masselos, Jim. 1978. “The Khojas of Bombay: The Defining of Formal Membership Criteria during the Nineteenth Century.” In Caste and Social Stratification among Muslims in India, 2nd ed., ed. Ahmad, Imtiaz, 97–116. Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Masselos, Jim. 1982. “Change and Custom in the Format of the Bombay Mohurrum in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” South Asia 5(2):47–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masselos, Jim. 1994. “The Bombay Riots of January 1993: The Politics of Urban Conflagration.” Special issue, South Asia 17:79–95.Google Scholar
Mehta, Deepak. 2010. “Self-Dissolution, Politics, and the Work of Affect: The Life and Death of Sufi Baba.” Borderlands 9(3):1–23.Google Scholar
Menon, Dilip M. 2007. “An Inner Violence: Why Communalism in India Is about Caste.” In The Future of Secularism, ed. Srinivasan, T. N., 60–82. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Menon, Nandagopal R. 2014. “Communal Harmony as Governmentality: Reciprocity, Peace-keeping, State Legitimacy, and Citizenship in Contemporary India.” Modern Asian Studies 49(2):393–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metcalf, Barbara D. 1993. “Living Hadith in the Tablīghī Jamā‘at.” Journal of Asian Studies 52(3):584–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metcalf, Barbara D. 2005. “The Study of Muslims in South Asia.” Lecture given at the University of California, Santa Barbara, December 2. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/ikram/part0_metcalfintro.html (accessed September 13, 2013).Google Scholar
Meyer, Birgit, ed. 2009. Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion, and the Senses. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, Birgit, and Moors, Annelies, eds. 2006. Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Mirza, Shireen. 2014. “Travelling Leaders and Connecting Print Cultures: Two Conceptions of Twelver Shi‘i Reformism in the Indian Ocean.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 24(3):455–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nandy, Ashis. 1990. “The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Tolerance.” In Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots, and Survivors in South Asia, ed. Das, Veena, 69–93. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nandy, Ashis. 1998. “The Twilight of Certitudes: Hindu Nationalism and Other Masks of Deculturation.” Postcolonial Studies 1(3):283–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nasr, Vali R. 2006. The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Nilesh, Preeta. 2011. “Negotiating Communal Harmony in Mumbai: Women in Mohalla Committees.” Asian Politics & Policy 3(4):611–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oosterbaan, Martijn. 2010. “Virtual Re-evangelization: Brazilian Churches, Media and the Postsecular City.” In Exploring the Postsecular: The Religious, the Political, the Urban, eds. Molendijk, Arie L., Beaumont, Justin, and Jedan, Christoph, 281–308. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pandey, Gyanendra. 1999. “Can a Muslim Be an Indian?” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41(4):608–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pandey, Gyanendra. 2006. The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India. 2nd ed.Delhi: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patel, Sujata, and Thorner, Alice, eds. 1996. Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pinault, David. 1997. “Shi‘ism in South Asia.” Muslim World 87(3–4):235–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinault, David. 2001. Horse of Karbala: Muslim Devotional Life in India. New York: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinney, Christopher. 2009. “Iatrogenic Religion and Politics.” In Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction, eds. Kaur, Raminder and Mazzarella, William, 29–62. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Qureshi, Regula Burckhardt. 1981. “Islamic Music in an Indian Environment: The Shi'a Majlis.” Ethnomusicology 25(1):41–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rajagopal, Arwind. 2001. Politics after Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rajan, Diia, Dhanraj, Deepa, and Lalita, K.. 2011. “‘Bahar Nikalna’: Muslim Women Negotiate Post-Conflict Life.” Inter-Asian Cultural Studies 22(2):213–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rao, Vijayanthi. 2007. “How to Read a Bomb: Scenes from Bombay's Black Friday.” Public Culture 19(3):567–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reetz, Dietrich. 2006. Islam in the Public Sphere: Religious Groups in India 1900–1947. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Robbins, Joel. 2009. “Is the Trans- in Transnational the Trans- in Transcendent? On Alterity and the Sacred in the Age of Globalization.” In Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization, ed. Csordas, Thomas, 55–72. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, Francis. 1983. “Islam and Muslim Society in South Asia.” Contributions to Indian Sociology, n.s., 17(2):185–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, Rowena. 2010. “Boundary Battles: Muslim Women and Communal Identity in the Aftermath of Violence.” Women's Studies International Forum 33:365–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudnyckyj, Daromir. 2009. “Spiritual Economies: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia.” Cultural Anthropology 24(1):104–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sassen, Saskia. 2001. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. 2nd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schubel, Vernon James. 1993. Religious Performance in Contemporary Islam: Shi‘i Devotional Rituals in South Asia. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Schulz, Dorothea E. 2006. “Promises of (Im)mediate Salvation: Islam, Broadcast Media, and the Remaking of Religious Experience in Mali.” American Ethnologist 33(2):210–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1996. “Secularism and Its Discontents.” In Unraveling the Nation: Sectarian Conflict and India's Secular Identity, eds. Basu, Kaushik and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, 11–43. New Delhi: Penguin India.Google Scholar
Sikand, Yoginder. 2006. “The Tablighi Jama'at and Politics: A Critical Reappraisal.” Muslim World 96:175–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaery-Eisenlohr, Roschanack. 2008. Shi‘ite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stolow, Jeremy. 2005. “Religion and/as Media.” Theory, Culture & Society 22(4):119–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van der Veer, Peter. 1994. Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van der Veer, Peter. 2001. Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varma, Rashmi. 2004. “Provincializing the Global City: From Bombay to Mumbai.” Social Text 81(22, no. 4):65–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Islamic Network. n.d.a. Bashariat ko khatra e istikbar [The danger arrogance poses to humanity]. Hujjatul Islam Sayyed Jawad Naqvi. MP3 CD. Mumbai: World Islamic Network.Google Scholar
World Islamic Network. n.d.b. Concept of Leadership. Wilayat-E-Faqeeh. Majalis by Maulana Sayyed Zaki Baqri. MP3 CD. Mumbai: World Islamic Network.Google Scholar
World Islamic Network. 2003. Mix Majalis. Video CD. Mumbai: World Islamic Network.Google Scholar
World Islamic Network. 2005. Nauha. By Safdar Ali Rizvi. Anjuman e Dasta Imamia. MP3 CD. Mumbai: World Islamic Network.Google Scholar
World Islamic Network. 2008. Lectures by Maulana Sayed Ammar Naqshwani. DVD. Mumbai: World Islamic Network.Google Scholar
World Islamic Network. 2012. “Moharram Awareness Campaign 1432 H / 2011.” http://www.winislam.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18 (accessed April 10, 2015).Google Scholar
Zaman, Muhammad Qasim. 1998. “Sectarianism in Pakistan: The Radicalization of Shi‘i and Sunni Identities.” Modern Asian Studies 32(3):689–716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar