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Weaving personal remembrances with diverse sources including the author's academic research and field works, this book is an intriguing rural Muslim historiography in Colonial Bengal, a largely ignored swathe in South Asian history. The gripping true-life account is built around real people-not imagined characters. Between the twilight of the 19th century and nearly the first half of the 20th century, the Muslims in Colonial Bengal in India were haunted by their misgivings about an alien rule and its cohorts. The religiosity and identity questions, conflicting existential urges, the spiraling Hindu-Muslim discord, the feudal constraints, and marginalization by the bhadraloks swirled around them. Wracked by religious, cultural, social, and political conflicts, the old British Indian Bengal comes alive in this book's intergenerational narrative. With its 9 main chapters plus a preface and introduction, this volume seeks out average individuals' life amidst such turmoil while it amplifies the larger challenges of the Muslims in undivided Bengal.
Not rigidly structured, the multi-layered recount has utilized variable ways and means of research and innovative analysis. Authored by a well-published scholar on South Asia, this extraordinary study of a rural Muslim family in pre-partition Bengal addresses scholars, students, and specialists as well as the general readers. Framed by the known historical milieu and backed by reliable oral narratives, qualitative interviews, authentic memoirs, and scholarly sources, this is not a chronological memoir. Pertinent to the academics and refreshing to avid readers, this recount touches a range of disciplines from history, culture, and politics to anthropology.
List of contents
Preface: Ways and Means of the Narrative - Acknowledgements - Introduction: Threads of Memories! - Weaving Contemporary and Comparable Memories - A Family Maverick: Existential Slog and Identity Encounters! - Nuri: A Virtuous Woman with a Voice of Her Own! - Achkan/Sherwani, Fez, Lungi or Dhoti? Identity and Dress - The Incredible Rezu Chacha: Quest for Sufism in a Rural Community? - Kaleidoscopic Rural Elites: Rai Sahebs/Khandans/Beparis? - Muslim Identity Imaginations: "Never Apologize for Being a Muslim!" - Eclectic Historiography: "Demise of Memories Is the End of History!" - Memories: A Cherag on the Edge of History! - Bibliography - Index.
About the author
Mohammad Rashiduzzaman, M.A., Ph.D., a retired academic and Professor Emeritus in Political Science at Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey, USA, is a recognized scholar with a range of publications on British India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Durham, England in 1964; he taught at the University of Dhaka, now Bangladesh for a decade before he came to Columbia University for post-doctoral work from 1970 to 1973. His previous works include The Central Legislature in British India, 1921-47: Parliamentary Experiences Under the Raj (Peter Lang, 2020), Politics and Administration in the Local Councils: A Study of Union and District Councils in East Pakistan (1968), and Pakistan: A Study of Government and Politics (1967). He also authored numerous peer-reviewed articles on Pakistan, Bangladesh, Muslim identity, and political Islam.
Summary
Blended with the author's own family remembrances and diverse sources, this is a meticulous, insightful and comprehensive portrait of a rural Muslim family in a historical context.
