ABSTRACT
How do we approach the Muslim question in India today? In the face of a spiralling rise of majoritarian nationalism, the subject appears far more pertinent today than in the past. The Sachar Committee Report (SCR), with its singular focus on developmental deficits, marked a new shift in the deliberations on the Muslim question. Previously, dominant lenses through which social sciences engaged with Muslims were either communalism and violence or Islam and its various institutions. Intermittently sociology absorbed within itself the study of caste and the specificity of Muslim cultural practices – belief system, medicinal tradition, purdah, and divorce. The Muslim interface with politics, state practices, and economic processes found few takers. This has left a feeble legacy of sociological research on Muslim communities and societies. It is far more pertinent therefore to empirically study Muslims in their lived locations and contexts, as artisans, traders, professionals; as students, as recipients of education, as beneficiaries of government policies, as those seeking access to health services as well as justice in courts of law. The essays in this volume challenge prevailing myths by foregrounding the ordinary and diverse lives of Indian Muslims.
