ABSTRACT
The relationship between prescription and practice-betweenconcepts of the ‘ideal’ (or normative) and the ‘lived’ (or‘actual’)—has for long been a topic of ethnographic investigation. While in certain areas of research, the former has been stressed (e.g. kinship prescriptions), in others (e.g. the study of religion), the latter has been accorded primacy. Obviously, a great deal of discourse concerning practice takes place among religious specialists and scholars of the scriptures, and hence, the question of similarities and differences between (often scriptural) prescription and practice in a variety of religions has also engaged many ethnographers. Debates about such differences among South Asian Muslims have also engaged many scholars (see notably for India, Ahmad 1981; Robinson 1983, 1985, 1986; Das 1984; Minault 1984). While considerable information exists both about discourse and practice, there are few studies on the discourse that goes on about this practice-on what
Bourdieu (1977) referred to as ‘objectified practice’—among lay people and non-specialists. Few studies engage with the ideas and emotions of the vast majority of Muslims regarding the relationship between their normative and lived religion. As an anthropologist, my point of departure is what the people concerned do and say about their actions, since this impacts further action. In this paper, I attempt to briefly discuss such ideas and emotions among a community of Kashmiri Muslims.
