Who Is a Muslim?: Orientalism and Literary Populisms
Who Is a Muslim? argues that modern Urdu literature, from its inception in colonial institutions such as Fort William College, Calcutta, to its dominant iterations in contemporary Pakistan—popular novels, short stories, television serials—is formed around a question that is and historically has been at the core of early modern and modern Western literatures. The question “Who is a Muslim?,” a constant concern within eighteenth-century literary and scholarly orientalist texts, the English oriental tale chief among them, takes on new and dangerous meanings once it travels to the North-Indian colony, and later to the newly formed Pakistan. A literary-historical study spanning some three centuries, this book argues that the idea of an Urdu canon, far from secular or progressive, has been shaped as the authority designate around the intertwined questions of piety, national identity, and citizenship.
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Who Is a Muslim?: Orientalism and Literary Populisms
Who Is a Muslim? argues that modern Urdu literature, from its inception in colonial institutions such as Fort William College, Calcutta, to its dominant iterations in contemporary Pakistan—popular novels, short stories, television serials—is formed around a question that is and historically has been at the core of early modern and modern Western literatures. The question “Who is a Muslim?,” a constant concern within eighteenth-century literary and scholarly orientalist texts, the English oriental tale chief among them, takes on new and dangerous meanings once it travels to the North-Indian colony, and later to the newly formed Pakistan. A literary-historical study spanning some three centuries, this book argues that the idea of an Urdu canon, far from secular or progressive, has been shaped as the authority designate around the intertwined questions of piety, national identity, and citizenship.
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Who Is a Muslim?: Orientalism and Literary Populisms

Who Is a Muslim?: Orientalism and Literary Populisms

by Maryam Wasif Khan
Who Is a Muslim?: Orientalism and Literary Populisms

Who Is a Muslim?: Orientalism and Literary Populisms

by Maryam Wasif Khan

eBook

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Overview

Who Is a Muslim? argues that modern Urdu literature, from its inception in colonial institutions such as Fort William College, Calcutta, to its dominant iterations in contemporary Pakistan—popular novels, short stories, television serials—is formed around a question that is and historically has been at the core of early modern and modern Western literatures. The question “Who is a Muslim?,” a constant concern within eighteenth-century literary and scholarly orientalist texts, the English oriental tale chief among them, takes on new and dangerous meanings once it travels to the North-Indian colony, and later to the newly formed Pakistan. A literary-historical study spanning some three centuries, this book argues that the idea of an Urdu canon, far from secular or progressive, has been shaped as the authority designate around the intertwined questions of piety, national identity, and citizenship.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780823290147
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Publication date: 01/19/2021
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 288
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Maryam Wasif Khan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the Mushtaq Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS University, Lahore.

Table of Contents

Note on Transliteration | ix

Introduction: Who Is a Muslim? | 1

1 Mahometan/Muslim: The Chronotope of the Oriental Tale | 21

2 Hindustani/Urdu: The Oriental Tale in the Colony | 53

3 Nation/Qaum: The “Musalmans” of India | 87

4 Martyr/Mujāhid: Muslim Origins and the Modern Urdu Novel | 126

5 Modern/Mecca: Populist Piety in the Contemporary Urdu Novel | 165

Epilogue: Us, People / People Like Us: Fehmida Riaz and a Secular Subjectivity in Urdu | 209

Acknowledgments | 221

Notes | 225

Index | 255

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