An annual religious procession makes its way along darkened brick-paved and packed-earth streets through the various neighbourhoods of Arampur, a village in Bihar, India. Young men chant formulaic slogans while ritually clashing in shows of weaponhandling. Women, men, and children stand in the night or sit on string beds outside their homes watching the lively action come and go on their otherwise non-eventful street. Occasionally they shout their support for the prancing adolescents. In this village with nearly equal numbers of Hindus and Muslims, is this procession Hindu or Islamic

Gottschalk, P.

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The Problem of Defining Islam in Arampur

Leiden University Scholary Publications

Regional IssuesI S I M  N E W S L E T T E R  8 / 0 1 23N o t e s1 . Asad, Talal (1999), ‘Religion, Nation-State,Secularism’, in Van der Veer, Peter (ed.), Nation andReligion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, P r i n c e t o n :Princeton University Press, p. 181.2 . Chandra, Bipan (1984), Communalism in ModernI n d i a , New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, p. 12.3 . Smith, Wilfred Cantwell (1962), The Meaning andEnd of Religion, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, p. 137.4 . Ibid., p. 38.Peter Gottschalk is assistant professor of religiona t Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas,and adjunct assistant professor in the Asian StudiesDepartment at the University of Texas at Austin.H e has recently published Beyond Hindu andMuslim: Multiple Identity in Narratives fromV i l l a g e India (Oxford University Press, 2000)a n di s co-designing a ‘virtual village’( w w w . c o l l e g e s . o r g / ~ v i l l a g e ) .E-mail: gottschp@southwestern.eduSo uth As iaP E T E R  G OT T S C H A L KAn annual religious procession makes its way alongdarkened brick-paved and packed-earth streetsthrough the various neighbourhoods of Arampur, avillage in Bihar, India. Young men chant formulaicslogans while ritually clashing in shows of weapon-handling. Women, men, and children stand in thenight or sit on string beds outside their homes watch-ing the lively action come and go on their otherwisenon-eventful street. Occasionally they shout theirsupport for the prancing adolescents. In this villagewith nearly equal numbers of Hindus and Muslims, isthis procession Hindu or Islamic?Scholars have become increasingly aware ofhow political interests have depicted‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ identities as artificiallysingular to suit their own agendas, whetherof the colonial state, Pakistan movement, orHindutva cause. Despite their disapproval ofmilitant attempts to both equate ‘Indian’with ‘Hindu’ and denigrate Muslims, schol-ars demonstrate far less cognizance of theirown acceptance of a monolithic under-standing that suffuses post-colonial West-ern scholarship regarding South Asian cul-tures. This is to say, Western scholars mayrecognize the socio-political ramificationsof essentialized religious identities but donot often enough practise scholarship inways that challenge problematic categories.The example of the procession describedabove demonstrates a crisis in identificationfor religious studies, the import of identitypolitics on the national level, and the dy-namics of identity practices on the locall e v e l .The description could accurately portraytwo different annual processions in Aram-pur: one which occurs on Muharram and an-other on Durga Puja. Attempts to categorizethese events as Muslim or Hindu demon-strate both the multiple meanings eachterm allows and the uncertainty which com-monly accompanies their use. With equal vi-tality and energy for the proclamation oftheir heroes, the boys and young men ofeach procession brandish long, hardenedbamboo staves and differ only by the he-roes they memorialize: Muslims commemo-rate Husain and Hindus celebrate Durga.However, the participation of both Muslimsand Hindus among the watching, if notcheering, crowd problematizes efforts atexact labelling.Problems of definitionEfforts to label such rituals as ‘Islamic’ or‘Hindu’ often rely on unclear definitions andthus overlook the often shared identities andparticipation in each other’s lives. Three op-tions for determining the religious characterof each ritual come to mind: historical originof the ritual, essence of the ritual, and identi-ty of the participants. We might label theMuharram procession as Islamic and notHindu (or Sikh or Christian) because it origi-nated as a commemoration of the martyr-dom of Husain. Yet, if the historical originalone determined the assessment of amemorial day’s character, would All SoulsDay then be defined as pagan instead ofCatholic based on the primacy of its begin-nings? Secondly, Muharram might be de-fined as Islamic simply because it is accepted,assumedly, as essentially Islamic by Muslimsin Arampur. In fact, however, some Muslimsin the Arampur area, not to mention else-where in the world, disparage such rituals ascounter to Islamic principles as they under-stand them. Finally, the Durga Puja proces-sion might be labelled Hindu because thoseprocessing identify themselves as Hindu. Yetcan the event be so narrowly described as todefine participation solely based on the pro-cession? The audience, which includes Hin-dus and Muslims for both events, does in-deed participate in each procession, if onlyby attendance. To label it as ‘Hindu’ disre-gards the presence, support, and involve-ment of many Muslims. Overall, then, no sin-gle criteria exists for the application of thedescriptors ‘Islamic’ and ‘Hindu’. Rather, theuse of either term can refer to any of thethree criteria given above (if not others) andthus the meaning remains unclear.In contrast with the elusive definitions of‘Islamic’ and ‘Hindu’, the term ‘communal’conveys a very specific meaning in SouthAsian studies. The Anglophonic use of ‘com-munal’ has come to commonly assumenothing less than acrimonious relations be-tween antagonistic religious groups. Thepervasive dominance of this expectation re-garding community in South Asia demon-strates the degree to which scholarship hasbeen shaped by a focus on religious com-munities imagined to be monolithic in com-position, exclusionary in principle, and hos-tile in practice. When the term ‘communal-ism’ is used in an Indian context, the burdenof anticipated religious exclusivity prohibitsthe imagining of any shared communityamong Muslims and Hindus.Hindu, Muslim or modernCaught between secular expectations andcommunalist rhetoric, scholarship oftenstruggles against three contingent, essen-tializing assumptions: firstly, that Islam andHinduism in India (if not elsewhere) are not‘just’ religions, but lifestyles. That is, the firstassumes that most Muslims and Hindus es-chew the possibility of a shared secular pub-lic sphere because they allow their respec-tive religious traditions to pervade com-pletely their lives.1 Too often the additionalassumption follows that, this being the caseand because Hindus and Muslims embracepractices and beliefs entirely apart from theother community, they are either Hindus orMuslims and seldom, if ever, share an identi-ty. The third assumption is that not only dothe personal identities and cultural spheresof Hindus and Muslims not overlap, theystand in binary opposition to one another(e.g. cow veneration versus beef consump-tion, iconic representation versus stridenticonoclasm). Despite the professed secular-ism of India’s democracy, scholars expectmost social and cultural phenomena to beuniformly Hindu, Muslim, or – when neitherterm fits – modern. The current spate ofHindu nationalist language that has beenthe focus of ample Indian and Westernscholarship has only intensified the expec-tations among many that Hindus and Mus-lims live in irreconcilably different cultures.Trapped by secular presumptions that reli-gion can and should be safely isolated fromthe public sphere for the preservation of so-cial order, scholars often deride the politicaluse of communalist language while accept-ing its underlying assumptions regardingthe social divergence of Hindus and Mus-l i m s .2In fact, the terms ‘Islamic’ and ‘Hindu’ areinherently multivalent. This is because reli-gions in India (and in much of the West) arenot purely self-contained systems which re-side neatly behind definite boundaries.Rather, religious symbols, terminology, andbehaviour permeate the public cultureswithin which they thrive and a wide varietyof phenomena can be ‘Islamic’ or ‘Hindu’ inmyriad ways. Further, what these terms de-fine – what practices, beliefs, dispositions,emotions, and physical manifestations theyinclude – vary so greatly even among theresidents of a single village that, were Hin-duism and Islam to exist within tangible andmutually exclusive limits, their internal vari-ation would challenge any notion of consis-t e n c y .These problems may impel some, like Wil-fred Cantwell Smith, to declare that religionis too ill-defined to be an adequate concept.But increasingly people perceive these reli-gions as objective systems within whichthey involve themselves and so their acade-mic rejection would be naïve.3 Smith alsocalled for a study of believers in context; thatwe must look through their eyes at the uni-verse and see what they see.4 Issues of thelimits of this ideal aside, Smith is right insofaras this universe also includes the broadsocio-cultural world of believers. The reli-gious lives of Hindus and Muslims are in-formed by the relationships of diffusion andantagonism with other religious and non-re-ligious cultural traditions. When scholarsimagine that they see the world through theeyes of believers, they too frequently suffer afar-sightedness that overlooks neighbours,classmates, and teammates who may sharein any dimension of life except religion.We must be sure to recognize that fewMuslims and Hindus understand themselvessolely as such. They not only see differencesamong the members of their own religiouscommunities broadly construed, but theyalso understand themselves as members ofcommunities without an explicit religiouscharacter. Each resident of Arampur recog-nizes not a single identity but multiple iden-tities with which they navigate through themultiple social interactions and associationsas they live their lives. As they consider pub-licly and privately their own meaning of‘Islam’ or ‘Hinduism’, they do so within aweb of conversations and interactionswhich shape their thinking and identitypractices. Because identity is more thanhow one thinks – it is perhaps even morehow one communes bodily – we must moreextensively explore the fuller range of inter-relations among Muslims and those living inthe broader cultural realm along with them.So perhaps, for example, one of the audi-ence members who watches the Muharramprocession pass by her house and identifiesherself as a Hindu will think about Au-rangzeb’s infamous deprivations againstHindus and wonder whether any of thecheering young men would be a futureiconoclast. Can Muslims ever truly be loyalIndians like she and her family are? Butwhile such thoughts may prompt her toponder Hindu-Muslim differences, they maynot come to mind as she prays at any of thelocal d a r g a hs for the intervention of a Sufi inher life. Or a boy, who identifies himself asMuslim, takes part in the procession andfeels encouraged by hearing the narrative ofHusain’s sacrifice. He is following a very de-liberate path through the village – a pathalong which he and many others – Hindusand Muslims alike – use their bodies to af-firm that they all belong to the village, notunlike his local cricket team. In these twoimagined but not impossible moments,identities of Hindu and Muslim mingle withthose of nation and village, family and team.Part of the answer to this crisis in religiousstudies lies in expanding the contextualiza-tion of religious traditions, not only in themulti-religious cultures in which most Indi-ans live, but also in the socio-economic en-vironments in which they thrive as individu-als with multiple identities, shared and notshared, in varying combinations amongt h e m .M u h a r r a ms w o r dp l a y .The Problem of DefiningIslam in Arampur

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The Problem of Defining Islam in Arampur

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