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Reclaiming Karbala studies the emergence and formation of a viable Muslim identity in Bengal over the late-nineteenth century and into the 1940s.
List of contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
A Note on Transliteration and Other Conventions
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Situating Karbala in Bengal
Chapter 1: Mapping Karbala from orality to print
Prologue
1.1 Creative application of Islamic ideas in early modern Bengal
1.1.1 Karbala in the Bengal region
1.1.2 Translation/rewriting as intertextuality, narrative as speech act
1.2 Dobhāshī: The language of the popular
1.2.1 From recitation to reading: At the threshold
1.2.2 How cheap, how scriptural: The internal ambivalence of Dobhāshī
1.3 Oral forms, scripted format: Whatever happened to the performative?
1.4 Writing as sacred ritual: Turning pain from body to book
Conclusion
Chapter 2: Print and Husayn-Centric Piety
Prologue
2.1 New sober Islam and the new authors
2.1.1 Sunna and maẓhab: Two elements of reformist sensibilities
2.1.2 From pir-centric piety to Prophet-centric piety: Muhammad as the moral template
2.2 The Caliphate and the ahl ul-bayt: Two legacies of Muhammad and his intercession
2.2.3 Namaz and the ahl ul-bayt: Muhammad’s twin treasures
2.3 Fatima, the mother of the martyrs: The template of Sabr
Conclusion
Chapter 3: The Rhetoric of Loss and Recovery: The Moment of Muslim jātīyatā
Prologue
3.1 The beginning of jātīẏatā: Bengaliness and Muslimness
3.1.1 The jātīẏa between Syed Ameer Ali and Jamāluddīn al-Afghānī
3.1.2 Anjumans, periodicals and the new print network: Affiliation, alliance and antagonism
3.2 Talking back to the Evangelists and Orientalists: Jesus versus Muhammad
3.3 The Bangla-Urdu divide: Bengali Muslims between region and nation
3.4 Literariness of jātīẏa sāhitya
Conclusion
Chapter 4: The Recovery of the Past: History and Biography
Prologue
4.1 A Hindu nationalist script and the Muslim jātīẏa
4.1.1 The search for jātīẏa: Territorial expansion and authentication
4.1.2 Writing the history of the sacred: Between Medina and Mymensingh
4.2 Jībanī/Carit as a modern genre: The contributions of Girishchandra Sen
4.3 Writing jātīẏa Itihās and jībanī as modern literature: Between the rational and the miraculous
4.4 Other histories and other biographies: Between the pan-Islamic and the province
4.5 Ummah, succession and the Karbala in jātīẏa sahitya
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Literature, Modernity, Multilinguality
Prologue
5.1 Miśra Bangla: Linguistic identity-in-difference
5.1.1 Reformist Islam and the claims over Bangla language: Āhle Hādis, Islām Darśan, Baṇgīẏa Mussalmān Sāhitya Patrikā
5.1.2 Bangla as miśra bhāshā in Muslim multilingualism
5.1.3 Redefining literary modernity: Recovery of puthis, discovery of folk
5.2 Karbala: Intra-literary reception and rejection
5.2.1 Narrative as argumentative discourse: Mohārram Kānda
5.2.2 From Mahāśmaśān Kābya to Maharam Śarīph bā Ātma-bisarjan Kābya: Kaykobad and Karbala
5.3 Poetry as Kaiphiẏat: Kārbālā Kābya and Maharam Śariph
Conclusion
Afterword: 300 Karbalas and Beyond
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Epsita Halder is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, India. She was Visiting Fellow at Max-Weber Kollege, University of Erfurt, Germany, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK.
Summary
Reclaiming Karbala studies the emergence and formation of a viable Muslim identity in Bengal over the late-nineteenth century and into the 1940s.
