ABSTRACT
Hermeneutics has long been an indispensable part of understanding societies, cultures, legal and regulatory codes, texts of art and literature, religions, and several other human engagements. In Humanities and Social Sciences, scholars cannot engage ‘texts’ of learning without interpretation, and this poses several challenges for understanding different societies and cultures with analytical categories having both ‘universal’ and ‘particular’ dimensions. This is even more complex in the context of understanding religion and sacred texts, especially in societies where people are under heavy pressure from institutionalized religions and clergy. This chapter tries to analyse the hermeneutical practices in Islam in the South Asian context by elucidating the intellectual tradition of Vakkom Moulavi in the early twentieth century. The contributions of Vakkom Moulavi are also analysed within the contours of Islamic hermeneutics and the intellectual traditions of the exegetical methodology in the nineteenth century.
