Muslim Belonging in Secular India: Negotiating Citizenship in Postcolonial Hyderabad

Description

Muslim Belonging in Secular India surveys the experience of some of India's most prominent Muslim communities in the early postcolonial period. Muslims who remained in India after the Partition of 1947 faced distrust and discrimination, and were consequently compelled to seek new ways of defining their relationship with fellow citizens of India and its governments. Using the forcible integration of the princely state of Hyderabad in 1948 as a case study, Taylor C. Sherman reveals the fragile and contested nature of Muslim belonging in the decade that followed independence. In this context, she demonstrates how Muslim claims to citizenship in Hyderabad contributed to intense debates over the nature of democracy and secularism in independent India. Drawing on detailed new archival research, Dr Sherman provides a thorough and compelling examination of the early governmental policies and popular strategies that have helped to shape the history of Muslims in India since 1947.

Taylor C. Sherman is Associate Professor in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science where she teaches South Asian history as well as comparative imperial history. Her previous works include State Violence and Punishment in India (2009).

'No work has set out so thoroughly the problems, indeed the agony, of those Muslims who remained in India after Partition in 1947. This is a first-class piece of research.' Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of London 'This engaging examination of the changes that followed Hyderabad's incorporation illuminates the characteristics of citizenship and secularism in early post-independence India.' Ian Talbot, University of Southampton 'Taylor C. Sherman's book marks an important intervention in contemporary debates over citizenship, belonging, democracy and nationalism.' Asma Rasheed, The Book Review