Muslim India: Islam in Colonial South As

This course will study Muslim communities and cultures in South Asia, a global demographic center of Islam. Our focus will be on the British colonial period and Muslim resistance and engagement with European colonialism. The class, however, will also cover earlier and later periods. We will study, for example, ideas about the “origins” of Islam in the Indian subcontinent as well as the development of majority-minority politics in independent India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Throughout the course, we will analyze a variety of primary source materials including historical texts, literature, music and visual materials. The class pays particular attention to Muslim interactions with other religious communities and the Muslim influence on the arts, literature, and legal traditions of the region.