Demolishing Myths Or Mosques and Temples?

Demolishing Myths Or Mosques and Temples? PDF Author: Sunil Kumar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Hindu temples
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
History, it is said, cannot be studied without reflecting on the practice of historians who narrate it. The articles in this volume introduce readers to the writings of four scholars who study the subject of temple desecration in interesting and different ways. They focus on the ways in which historians study the political culture, events, historical narratives, material remains and aesthetic norms of a time very distant from us. Through their focus on the theme of temple desecration, a subject of considerable import in political rhetoric today, these essays also underline how easily history can be subverted to serve narrow, cynical ends. At a time when history has become so important in the making of the nation s identity, the articles in this book invite the readers to pause and reflect on the craft of history, the exciting and engaging conclusions to which it can lead and the worrying ends to which it can also be nudged.

Demolishing Myths Or Mosques and Temples?

Demolishing Myths Or Mosques and Temples? PDF Author: Sunil Kumar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Hindu temples
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
History, it is said, cannot be studied without reflecting on the practice of historians who narrate it. The articles in this volume introduce readers to the writings of four scholars who study the subject of temple desecration in interesting and different ways. They focus on the ways in which historians study the political culture, events, historical narratives, material remains and aesthetic norms of a time very distant from us. Through their focus on the theme of temple desecration, a subject of considerable import in political rhetoric today, these essays also underline how easily history can be subverted to serve narrow, cynical ends. At a time when history has become so important in the making of the nation s identity, the articles in this book invite the readers to pause and reflect on the craft of history, the exciting and engaging conclusions to which it can lead and the worrying ends to which it can also be nudged.

Bankrolling Empire

Bankrolling Empire PDF Author: Sudev Sheth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100933025X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
By the 1660s, the mighty Mughal Empire controlled the Indian subcontinent and impressed the world with its strength and opulence. Yet, hardly two decades would pass before fortunes would turn, Mughal kings and governors losing influence to rival warlords and foreign powers. How could one of the most dominant early modern polities lose their grip over empire? Sudev Sheth proposes a new point of departure, focusing on diverse local and hitherto unexplored evidence about a prominent financier family entrenched in bankrolling Mughal elites and their successors. Analyzing how four generations of the Jhaveri family of Gujarat financed politics, he offers a fresh take on the dissolution of the Mughal empire, the birth of princely successor states, and the nature of economic life in the days leading up to the colonial domination of India.

Constructing and Contesting Holy Places in Medieval Islam and Beyond

Constructing and Contesting Holy Places in Medieval Islam and Beyond PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004525327
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
This volume brings together thirteen case studies devoted to the establishment, growth, and demise of holy places in Muslim societies, thereby providing a global look on Muslim engagement with the emplacement of the holy. Combining research by historians, art historians, archaeologists, and historians of religion, the volume bridges different approaches to the study of the concept of “holiness” in Muslim societies. It addresses a wide range of geographical regions, from Indonesia and India to Morocco and Senegal, highlighting the strategies implemented in the making and unmaking of holy places in Muslim lands. Contributors: David N. Edwards, Claus-Peter Haase, Beatrice Hendrich, Sara Kuehn, Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont, Sara Mondini, Harry Munt, Luca Patrizi, George Quinn, Eric Ross, Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino, Ethel Sara Wolper.

The Mosques of Colonial South Asia

The Mosques of Colonial South Asia PDF Author: Sana Haroon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755634454
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In a series of legal battles starting in 1882, South Asian Muslims made up of modernists, traditionalists, reformists, Shias and Sunnis attempted to modify the laws relating to their places of worship. Their efforts failed as the ideals they presented flew in the face of colonial secularism. This book looks at the legal history of Muslim endowments and the intellectual and social history of sectarian identities, demonstrating how these topics are interconnected in ways that affected the everyday lives of mosque congregants across North India. Through the use of legal records, archives and multiple case studies Sana Haroon ties a series of narrative threads stretching across multiple regions in Colonial South Asia.

Evil and the Philosophy of Retribution

Evil and the Philosophy of Retribution PDF Author: Sanjay Palshikar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317342089
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
What is ‘evil’? What are the ways of overcoming this destructive and morally recalcitrant phenomenon? To what extent is the use of punitive violence tenable? Evil and the Philosophy of Retribution compares the responses of three modern Indian commentators on the Bhagavad-Gita — Aurobindo Ghose, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi. The book reveals that some of the central themes in the Bhagavad-Gita were transformed by these intellectuals into categories of modern socio-political thought by reclaiming them from pre-modern debates on ritual and renunciation. Based on canonical texts, this work presents a fascinating account of how the relationship between ‘good’, ‘evil’ and retribution is construed against the backdrop of militant nationalism and the development of modern Hinduism. Amid competing constructions of Indian tradition as well as contemporary concerns, it traces the emerging representations of modern Hindu self-consciousness under colonialism, and its very understanding of evil surrounding a textual ethos. Replete with Sanskrit, English, Marathi, and Gujarati sources, this will especially interest scholars of modern Indian history, philosophy, political science, history of religion, and those interested in the Bhagavad-Gita.

Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity

Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Jaś Elsner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108473075
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
Explores the problems for studying art and religion in Eurasia arising from ancestral, colonial and post-colonial biases in historiography.

Jāmī in Regional Contexts

Jāmī in Regional Contexts PDF Author: Thibaut d'Hubert
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004386602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 865

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Book Description
Jāmī in Regional Contexts: The Reception of ʿAbd Al-Raḥmān Jāmī’s Works in the Islamicate World is the first attempt to present in a comprehensive manner how ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492), a most influential figure in the Persian-speaking world, reshaped the canons of Islamic mysticism, literature and poetry and how, in turn, this new canon prompted the formation of regional traditions. As a result, a renewed geography of intellectual practices emerges as well as questions surrounding authorship and authority in the making of vernacular cultures. Specialists of Persian, Arabic, Chinese, Georgian, Malay, Pashto, Sanskrit, Urdu, Turkish, and Bengali thus provide a unique connected account of the conception and reception of Jāmī’s works throughout the Eurasian continent and maritime Southeast Asia.

The Muhammad Avatāra

The Muhammad Avatāra PDF Author: Ayesha A. Irani
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190089245
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
In The Muhammad Avatara, Ayesha Irani offers an examination of the Nabivamsa, the first epic work on the Prophet Muhammad written in Bangla. This little-studied seventeenth-century text, written by Saiyad Sultan, is a literary milestone in the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural history of Islam, and marks a significant contribution not only to Bangla's rich literary corpus, but also to our understanding of Islam's localization in Indic culture in the early modern period. That Sufis such as Saiyad Sultan played a central role in Islam's spread in Bengal has been demonstrated primarily through examination of medieval Persian literary, ethnographic, and historical sources, as well as colonial-era data. Islamic Bangla texts themselves, which emerged from the sixteenth century, remain scarcely studied outside the Bangladeshi academy, and almost entirely untranslated. Yet these premodern works, which articulate Islamic ideas in a regional language, represent a literary watershed and underscore the efforts of rebel writers across South Asia, many of whom were Sufis, to defy the linguistic cordon of the Muslim elite and the hegemony of Arabic and Persian as languages of Islamic discourse. Irani explores how an Arabian prophet and his religion came to inhabit the seventeenth-century Bengali landscape, and the role that pir-authors, such as Saiyad Sultan, played in the rooting of Islam in Bengal's easternmost regions. This text-critical study lays bare the sophisticated strategies of translation used by a prominent early modern Muslim Bengali intellectual to invite others to his faith.

The Ottoman and Mughal Empires

The Ottoman and Mughal Empires PDF Author: Suraiya Faroqhi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1788318722
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
For many years, Ottomanist historians have been accustomed to study the Ottoman Empire and/or its constituent regions as entities insulated from the outside world, except when it came to 'campaigns and conquests' on the one hand, and 'incorporation into the European-dominated world economy' on the other. However, now many scholars have come to accept that the Ottoman Empire was one of the - not very numerous - long-lived 'world empires' that have emerged in history. This comparative social history compares the Ottoman to another of the great world empires, that of the Mughals in the Indian subcontinent, exploring source criticism, diversities in the linguistic and religious fields as political problems, and the fates of ordinary subjects including merchants, artisans, women and slaves.

India’s Past, Its Learnings, Its Pedagogies

India’s Past, Its Learnings, Its Pedagogies PDF Author: R S Krishna
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
The very acrimonious debates on history textbooks have mostly been dominated by scholars, historians, civil society activists and politicians. Where are the teachers in this debate, vested with the onerous responsibility of transpiring learnings in history to the students? The author R S Krishna tries to ‘recover’ the teacher’s voice through an critical observation of select teachers, their classroom practices, the ideas that inform their understanding of our past and the way history textbooks are mediated by teachers. In this Krishna also brings in his own teaching experience and his evolution as a history teacher. Combining observations, experience and readings from educational sociology, Krishna establishes how history as we know it emerges largely through narratives where not recapitulation of ‘facts’ but competing nationalisms, politics and knowledge prisms are more defining. Here Krishna is particularly critical of the liberal-Marxist prisms that has had a major influence on textbook writing particularly of NCERT. At the same time attempts by the adherents seeking to establish an Indic or a Hindu view of our past, particularly their ability to bring pedagogically appropriate textbooks, have so far been dismal. Framing his arguments within the context of ‘modernity’ which he sees as ‘universal', having an egalitarian premise, the author emphasizes a need for a new methodologically informed textbooks that are more holistic, comparative and dialogic which helps to ‘reimagine’ India’s past and its future quests. The author avers whatever be textbooks scholarly merit, it should be pedagogically substantive and crucially for its meaningful understanding by students, a teacher’s command of the discipline and some familiarity of debates that frame history's knowledge status is key.