The Sufi Paradigm and the Makings of a Vernacular Knowledge in Colonial India
The Case of Sindh (1851–1929)
Buch in deiner Nähe kaufen
Beschreibung
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.
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.
Explores the historical encountering between two religious cultures that today are mostly perceived as being antagonistic Provides an innovative perspective on how the colonized escaped the control of the colonizers through the building of their own vernacular knowledge Documents the history of 19th and early 20th century Sindh through the lens of Sufi paradigm, and re-organization of religious milieu through colonial intervention
Autor*in
Michel Boivin
Themen in »The Sufi Paradigm and the Makings of a Vernacular Knowledge in Colonial India«
Sufism India new elite knowledge colonization Islam Hinduism Indigenous Epistemology Colonial Knowledge Vernacular Knowledge