India: A Laboratory of Inter-religious Experiment

Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 2007

The essay examines several texts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, dealing with interfaith relations in Mughal India. The principal author we consider is the Khatri courtier and intellectual Anand Ram 'Mukhlis'.

On one hand, this ‘book of logic ‘n reasoning’ appraises the Islamic faith shaped by the sublimity of Muhammad's preaching in Mecca and the severity of his sermons in Medina, which together make it Janus-faced to bedevil the minds of the Musalmans. That apart, aided by “I’m Ok – You’re Ok”, the path-breaking work of Thomas A. Harris and Roland E Miller’s “Muslim Friends–Their Faith and Feeling”, this work for the first time ever, psycho-analyses the imperatives of the Muslim upbringing that has the potential to turn a faithful and a renegade alike into a fidayēn. On the other, this work, besides appraising the monumental rise and the decadent fall of Hindu intellectualism, analyses how the sanātana dharma came to survive in India, in spite of the combined onslaught of Islam and the Christianity on Hinduism for over a millennium. Also, besides providing a panoramic view of the Indian history, this thought-provoking book appraises the way Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Azad, Ambedkar, Indira Gandhi, Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Narendra Modi et al made or unmade the post-colonial India. Possibly in a new genre this free eBook is a book for our times. Contents Preface of Strife Chapters 1. Advent of Dharma 2. God’s quid pro Quo 3. Pyramids of Wisdom 4. Ascent to Descent 5. The Zero People 6. Coming of the Christ 7. Legacy of Prophecy 8. War of Words 9. Czar of Medina 10. Angels of War 11. Privates of ‘the God’ 12. Playing to the Gallery 13. Perils of History 14. Pitfalls of Faith 15. Blinkers of Belief 16. Shackles of Sharia 17. Anatomy of Islam 18. Fight for the Souls 19. India in Coma 20. Double Jeopardy 21. Paradise of Parasites 22. The Number Game 23. Winds of Change 24. Ant Grows Wings 25. Constitutional Amnesia 26. The Stymied State 27. The Wages of God 28. Delusions of Grandeur 29. Ways of the Bigots 30. The Rift Within 31. The Way Around 32. The Hindu Rebound 33. Italian Interregnum 34. Rama Rajya 35. Wait for the Savant

CenRaPS Journal of Social Sciences, 2020

The Indian peninsula is known for its multi-religious and multicultural identity. India, the birthplace of Hinduism and Indian culture, has accepted many local and foreign religions throughout History. India's meeting with Islam began with Arab merchants at the time of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and was completed with the military expeditions of Persian and Turkish rulers. The most important Muslim Empire in Indian history is the Mughal Empire, founded by Babur, the grandson of Timur. It ruled over many territories in the Indian sub-continent for three centuries. Recognizing Islam as a state religion, this empire has treated indigenous Hindus and the adherents of other religions that constitute the majority of the Indian population with extraordinary tolerance. Generally, these Muslim rulers allowed their citizens to live according to the religions they wanted, even though they destroyed some Hindu temples as a symbol of the authority change. These Muslim rulers even employed them in the governing body of the state. The most prominent example of this can be seen in the period of Akbar Shah of the Mughal Empire. This study examined how the Mughal Empire, which ruled for centuries in the Indian Peninsula, treated the non-Muslim subjects, especially the Hindus and how did they introduce the culture of coexistence , giving more importance for the period of Akbar, the great ruler of the Mughal Empire. Similarly, I will try to compare the millet system of the Ottoman Empire with those of Mughal's religious policy using the comparative method.

INTERRELIGIOUS RELATIONS Occasional Papers of The Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies Programme, 2020

While contemporary interfaith movements aim to unite the voices of the multiple faith traditions for confronting injustices and inequities, the emergence of religious extremist groups and multicultural societies pose challenges arising from the mixing of different religions. Reflecting on Mohandas K. Gandhi’s writings, this paper analyses Gandhi’s vision of heart unity for creating communal harmony among the many religions of India at a time when the forces of fanaticism, bigotry, and hatred are raising their heads. Despite historical and contextual differences in the time Gandhi lived, his moral and critical approach to religion presents dynamic solutions for salvaging it from dogmatic and violent systems and for situating it in a moral context. His emphasis on the equality of all religions, while grounding himself in Hinduism, presents a model for serious and honest interfaith interactions. His insights on the issues of conversion, the study of scriptures of different religions, interfaith marriages, and parenthood can be experimented with to disrupt the othering of religions different from one’s own in order to build interreligious relations, with the goal of mutual respect and deep understanding, not simply tolerance.

A Review of “Ancient to Modern*, in *History: Reviews of New Books* , 38:2, 2010

Common to all the essays is the drive to probe and unsettle “established understandings and accepted verities pertaining to religion and texts, sects, and communities”

Indian Economic and Social History Review, 2016

Religions, 2023

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

2020

In post-independent India, most of the Muslim intellectuals, scholars and organizations urged people to establish religious harmony in the country. However, Abū al-Hasan Ali Nadwi (1914-1999) and Waḥiduddin Khan (b.1925) emerged as the most influential Muslim scholars as they played a significant role in establishing religious harmony in the country. This research uses analytical and comparative methods to explain the approach of Nadwi and Khan concerning religious harmony. It critically investigates their approaches to determine the validity and relevance of their thoughts in contemporary India. The study found that Nadwi considers Muslims as significant contributors to Indian civilization and culture. Nadwi"s suggestions do not only restore the courage among Muslims in India but imbue the essence of love, humanitarianism, peace and cooperation among all Indians. On the other hand, Khan"s ideas are passive, unilateral and apologetic, and he considers Muslims as the cause of communal riots in the country. The study concludes that Nadwi"s approach is more relevant and appropriate to contemporary Indian society to establish communal harmony. His approach appeared as courageous, especially for Muslim youth to contribute to the development of the country without compromising their faith and identity.

The Muslim World, 2017

T he relation between Muslims and Hindus has a very long history that can be traced back to the very first century of Islam. 1 It seems that the interaction between these two communities of faith in the Indian sub-continent, where they happened to co-exist over a millennium, has always been-as long as politics was not involved-quite positive and prospering, as it is today. Until modern times, the Hindu community confined itself to what we know today as the Indian subcontinent with some settlements in the regions of southeast Asia, especially those of Java and Sumatra in present-day Indonesia, where it enjoyed, even before the arrival of Islam, a tremendous influence over the thought patterns and culture of the people and which continues to this day to a considerable extent. 2 It is only with dawn of the modern period, the rise of European colonialism, and the consequent opening up of the Indians towards migration, that the Hindu communities started moving towards the East and the West, leading to the creation of what can be called the Hindu diaspora. Here, there is more than one area where one can discuss the issue of Hindu-Muslim relations. Included in that are the developments that took place around the end of the 19 th century when Hinduism and later Buddhism began to attract followers in the West-Europe and America-and local communities of Hindus emerged altering the demography of the western societies perhaps forever. The consequences of all these changes, coupled with myriad cultural backgrounds turning into a melting pot and diverse geographical settings, lead to a kaleidoscope of different models/paradigms of this relationship. But, the fact remains, that the heart land for studying Hindu-Muslim relations will always be the Indian sub-continent.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2013

"communities of tradition" into "communities of interpretation," and thus necessitated an individual hermeneutical undertaking. Although this useful study opens up further avenues of research, it is questionable whether some other agents such as the Kharijites should be so broadly characterized and dismissed given the lack of available sources. The evidence that El Shamsy presents also indicates that the orality/textuality dichotomy discussed in the book is not as clearly defined as he, at times, asserts. Nevertheless, this is an important advance in Islamic studies. It is most useful for graduate study in Islamic law, but has potential for interdisciplinary use as well.