Migration, citizenship and belonging in Hyderabad (Deccan), 1946–1956

Whilst the history of the Indian diaspora after independence has been the subject of much scholarly attention, very little is known about non-Indian migrants in India. This paper traces the fate of Arabs, Afghans and other Muslim migrants after the forcible integration of the princely state of Hyderabad into the Indian Union in 1948. Because these non-Indian Muslims were doubly marked as outsiders by virtue of their foreign birth and their religious affiliation, the government of India wished to deport these men and their families. But the attempt to repatriate these people floundered on both political and legal shoals. In the process, many were left legally stateless. Nonetheless, migrants were able to creatively change the way they self-identified both to circumvent immigration controls and to secure greater privileges within India

Averroes and the Philosophical Account of Prophecy

Prophecy is conspicuous by its complete absence from all three of the commentaries on De Anima by Averroes. However, prophecy and philosophical metaphysics are discussed by him in his Commentary on the Parva Naturalia, a work written before his methodological work on philosophy and religion, the Faṣl al-maqāl, generally held to have been written ca. 1179-1180. The analyses and remarks of Averroes presented in that Commentary have been characterized by Herbert Davidson as “extremely radical” to the extent that “The term prophet would, on this reading, mean nothing more than the human author of Scripture; and the term revelation would mean a high level of philosophical knowledge”. In the present article I discuss Averroes on method in matters of religion and philosophy as well as prophecy in philosophically argumentative works and in dialectical works, with particular consideration of the reasoning of his Commentary on the Parva Naturalia. I conclude that Averroes found in philosophy and its sciences the most complete and precise truth content and highest levels of knowledge and understanding and from them constructed his worldview, while he found prophecy and religion to be like an Aristotelian practical science in that they concern good and right conduct in the achievement of an end attained in action, not truths to be known for their own sake