'Being Muslim' in Contemporary India: Nation, Identity, and Rights

Abstract

This chapter endeavours to capture contemporary identity consciousness of the Muslim citizens of India, incorporating its various dimensions-cultural, instrumental, spiritual, and political-on the basis of narratives recorded in the city of Delhi. Muslim narratives recorded here refuse to tread a singular trajectory; and in doing so underscore the imperative to talk in terms of a plurality of Muslim subjectivities. The Muslims of contemporary India unequivocally renounce the idea of a Muslim nation in their endeavour to confront the stigma of Partition. On a similar note, the inventiveness of Muslim religio-political consciousness in dissociating from the theological bipolarity of darul-Islam and dar-ul-harb while adopting the idea of dar-ul-aman (a place of peace where Muslims are not constrained in religious practice) is noteworthy. However, the phantasmagoria of unity, uniformity and cultural homogeneity imagined in the narratives is punctured in varying degrees by the caste, gender or regional constraints.