Arshad Amanullah, New Delhi
Journalism in Madrasas and Madrasas in Journalism

Daljit Ami, Chandigarh
Celluloid and Compact Disks in Punjab

Maitrey Bajpai, Mumbai
Cawnpore

Samit Basu, New Delhi
The Trousers of Time: Possible Futures of Indian Speculative Fiction in English

Rudradeep Bhattacharjee, Mumbai
Freedom in Cyberspace in the Context of India: A video documentary

Tushar Bhor, Mumbai
Water Lenses: Prelude for a New Imagination for Urban Water in Mumbai

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Kolkata
Bishnupur Gharana: Story of a Forgotten Melody: Restoring the sound of Bishnupur Gharana

Averee Chaurey, New Delhi
The Song of the Baul

Ayesha Sen Choudhury, Kolkata
Locating Sexuality Through the Eyes of Afghan and Burmese Refugee Women in Delhi

Dilip D’Souza, Mumbai
Village in the city: Bombay in microcosm

Girindra
Pravasi Ilaqe mein telephone booth sanskriti
(The culture of telephone booths)

Uddipana Goswami, Guwahati
City as Setting: Reflections of the Changing Faces of Guwahati in Assamese Literature

Peerzada Arshad Hamid, Anantnag
Exploring the Space of Psychiatric Hospitals in Srinagar

Rakshat Hooja, Jaipur
Urban Stakeholder Activism and the Role of Resident Welfare Associations

Farhana Ibrahim, Gurgaon
Maritime Histories: Merchant Networks and the Production of Locality in Western India

Lakshmi IndraSimhan and Jacob Weinstein , New Delhi
Vending as Vernacular: Depicting Street Sales and Services through Sequential Art

Brajesh Kumar Jha, Delhi
Hindi Cinemayee geet aur uska Bhashayee safar
(The Language Journeys of Hindi Cinema)

Anjali Jyoti, New Delhi
Home Street Home: A Street Child Survival Guide for Delhi

Sunandan K.N., New Delhi
Workshop Boys of Coimbatore: A Study of City and Tacit Knowledge

Akshaye Khanna, New Delhi
Apni Jagah, Zarah Hut Ke: A “Staged Ethnography” of Space and Sexuality

Naresh Kumar, New Delhi
Festival of Music in the City of Sports: Harballabh Sangeet Mela of Jalandhar

Prabhat Kumar, Delhi
Yuvak Sangh aur ‘Yuvak’: 1920 ke dashak mein Bihar ka bauddhik parivesh
(Yuvak Sangh and the ‘Yuvak’ magazine in the intellectual public sphere in 1920s Bihar)

Rajesh Kumar K, Trivandrum
An Ethnography of Teyyam Performance from a Practitioner’s Point of View

Udaykumar M, New Delhi
Unravelling a ‘Real’ Media Incident in Trivandrum

Mallica, New Delhi
Identities and Aspirations of Tibetan Youth in New Delhi

Mamta Mantri, Mumbai
Movie Theatres on and Around Maulana Shaukat Ali Road, Mumbai

Abhinandita Mathur Veenu Mathur , New Delhi
My building and the Shahar

Rajesh Mehar, Bangalore
Exploring Notions of Creative Ownership Among Contemporary Musicians

Kamal Kumar Mishra
Hindi Hridaysthali mein Jasoosi Upanyason va Inkey Paathakon ka Ek Samajik Itihas
(A social history of detective novels and their readers in the Hindi heartland)

Sanjeev Ranjan Mishra, Delhi
Gyan-vinimay ki nayi takneekein aur mel banate Dalit
(The New Technologies of Knowledge-flow and the Dalits)

Izhar Ahmed Nadeem, Delhi
Muslim Mahilaon ki Urdu Patrikayo ki Duniya
(Urdu Women’s Magazines: Their impact on Muslim Women)

Veena Naregal,
Informal Economies and Cultural Patronage: Studying Bollywood

John Patrick Ojwando, Bangalore
An Exploration of the Experiences of Afro students in South Asia

Anil Pandey, NOIDA
Desi Filmon ka Karobar
(An analysis of the desi films trade)

Piyush Pandey, Delhi
News Channelon ka Satyakathakaran
(The Satyakathaization of News Channels, on the compulsive crime reporting on TV)

Rahul Pandita, Delhi
Byte Soldier: The Life and Times of a Metro TV Reporter: A Graphic Novel in Hindi

Janice Erica Pariat, New Delhi
Writing the Notion of Home and Urban Space

Sudipta Paul, West Bengal
Response of the Labour Force to the Changing Urban Formation in the Asansol Industrial Area, West Bengal

Dripta Piplai, New Delhi
The Hegemony of Calcutta Music Schools in Tagore Songs: Towards an Archival Preservation of ‘Multiple Traditions in Rabindrasangeet’

Vasundhara Prakash, New Delhi
15 Seconds of Fame: Extras in Bollywood

Nandita Raman
Dilli ke cinemagharon ka badalta swaroop: ek chhayachitraN
(The changing face of Delhi’s cinema halls)

Nithya V Raman, Chennai
Disaster Politics: An Examination of Tsunami Relief in Chennai

Kaushiki Rao, New Delhi
Transplanting the Urban Aesthetic in a Resettlement Colony in Delhi

Rama Rao
Ladkiyon ke College ka sarvajanik telephone aur ab har hath mein mobile
(Then and Now: The public telephone in girls’ colleges and the mobile phone)

Rinchin, Bhopal
Tracing the History of Girl’s Education in a Small Town Through the Eyes of its First Woman Teacher

Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed, Chennai
Indian Print Media and its Reportage on Fatwas

Nirupama Sekhar and Sanjay Ramchandran , Mumbai
Urban Stories: A Collection of Graphic Essays on the City of Mumbai

Debjani Sengupta, New Delhi
Colony Fiction: Refugee Colonies and their Representation in Post-Partition Kolkata

Aman Sethi, New Delhi
Seeking Alternative Ways and Means of Representing the “Poor and the Oppressed” by Studying Informal Networks at Labour Mandis in Delhi

Ram Murthi Sharma, UNA, Himachal
An Analysis of Magazines in Braille

Parismita Singh, New Delhi
Babel in Humayunpur, the Gift of Difference: a Comic Book Exploring Migrant Experience

Sidharth Srinivasan, New Delhi
A photoroman feature film: a Love Story Intertwined with the Myth and Folklore of Delhi’s Heritage Sites

Sheba Tejani, Mumbai
Queer Cityscapes: Exploring Mumbai Cityscapes through the Eyes of Two Queer Women.

Mrityunjay Tripathi, Allahabad
Allahabad ki Chhatra Rajniti
(Student politics in Allahabad)

Indu Verma, Mumbai
Society and the Soap Factory

Aamit Rai, Wardha
Harsud aur media
(Harsud and the Media)

Syed Mohd. Yunus and Syed Mohd Faisal, Delhi
Asahay Mahanagar: Help Line karyakartaon ke najariye Se Dilli Shahar ka Adhyayan
(Helpless City: A Study of Delhi from the Perspective of Help Line Workers)

1.7.06

The Fatwa in Journalism

Pico Iyer in his book Tropical Classical: Essays from Several Directions, an anthology of his essays, writes in the essay “Prosaic Justice All Around: Salman Rushdie vs. The Ayatollah”, “When Khomeini issued a fatwa, or death sentence, on Rushdie last week, it became impossible to tell who was the prophet and who the victim-…[1]“. For any person then who is reading the essay a fatwa then is interpreted to be a death sentence. Vico Giambattista, the seventeenth-eighteenth century Italian philosopher has said that human knowledge is only what human beings have made. In this essay Iyer, who is otherwise a perspicacious travel writer commits a severe gaffe in his role as an interlocutor. Iyer is an intermediary at some level between the reader and his idea. In his communication the author is claming to be an ‘expert’ (without stating it). A reader who reads this essay instantaneously accepts the ‘fact’ that a fatwa is a death sentence without questioning Iyer’s assessment. As the point made in an earlier posting the definition of a fatwa can hardly be restricted to a ‘death sentence’ but when good writers like Pico Iyer make such critical errors the magnitude of errors of misinterpretation can only be magnified in the shallow arena of journalism.

The word fatwa became a part of general parlance when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa where he justified that Rushdie deserved to die because of his blasphemous utterances in his book The Satanic Verses. The instrument of the fatwa became famous in 1988 with its association with Salman Rushdie but as Sadik argues in his paper the infamous ‘fatwa’ was not a fatwa at all[2]. Anyway, the impression that the world got was that once a fatwa was pronounced Muslims were bound by their faith to fulfil the letter of the fatwa. Thus, we saw quite a few Muslims the world over baying for Rushdie’s blood. Finally, in a recent fatwa, Rushdie’s life was spared but raises the necessity to critically question the media’s rule in purveying this idea that the fatwa is a death sentence. Pico Iyer has fallen prey to this misinterpretative role performed by the media.

Earlier[3] last year in June the Darul Uloom Deoband pronounced that Imrana, a woman from Muzafarnagar in UP could no longer be the legal wife of Noor Ilahi. Imrana was directly paying for the crimes of her husband. In the same week the Darul Uloom issued another fatwa proclaiming that ideally Muslim women must not contest panchayat elections, and never without a veil. The Indian print media splashed these issues on the front page giving it more importance than necessitated by the actual pronouncements. Undeniably, the seminary at Deoband is a very important authority for Muslims in South Asia but the print media simply blew the whole issue out of proportion. The issue concerning the panchayat election fatwa was investigated by Basharat Peer of the Tehelka[4] who in his interview with the Vice Chancellor found out that a journalist from a local Hindi newspaper had sent a letter seeking opinion whether Muslim women could go out to campaign and contest elections without wearing a veil. The journalist had not mentioned his profession and had merely signed his name. A mufti had read his query and answered according to Islamic law, which forbids women from going out without a veil. Then the journalist had written the story and it looked like the seminary had announced a fatwa on its own. From there it was picked up by the national newspapers and it looked like the fatwa was a binding order on all Muslims.

In a report in The Hindu dated 1st July in the Imrana case the report described a fatwa as an edict[5]. The report said, “However, she (meaning Imrana) was yet to receive a formal fatwa (edict) to stay away from her husband and children. Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband issued a fatwa to Imrana that she could no longer live with her husband as she had been raped by her father-in-law.” The report while misinterpreting the meaning of fatwa also makes it look like the victim here does not respect the Indian legal system that has a grievance redressal system and as if the fatwa is binding upon her.

What is important to note here is that when the print media reports on issues pertaining to the delivery of fatwas it generally treats it under the broad rubric of reporting about Islam and it does this in an insensitive and crass manner without recognising the internal divisions within Islam in India. While Muslims in India can be broadly divided into Sunnis and Shiahs, among the Sunnis they can be further subdivided into the four maslaks or traditions of Islamic jurisprudence, the Hanafis, Shafis, Hanbalis and Malikis. While most Sunni Muslims in India are Hanafis there are divisions amongst the Hanafis themselves and Deoband represents a strand of the Hanafi thought. The Barelwis who are the followers of the late Ahmed Riza Khan Barelwi (d. 1921) and who are the most numerous in India (according to the Islamic scholar Rafiq Zakaria) might not always follow the fatwa of the Deoband as they have their own seminary in Barilley. The Ahl-e-Hadis is another important sect within Indian Islam which does not conform to any of the four maslaks mentioned above and their principal seminary is located in Benares and they will certainly not hold the fatwa of Deoband to be the last word on any particular issue.

A few other fatwas that I can think of that have been reported by the Indian media is one fatwa issued by some obscure alim of West Bengla who forbid Sania Mirza from playing because she wore revealing clothes. The manner in which that issue was reported gave so much importance to the ruling of an alim whom nobody had ever heard of that it smacked of callousness in reporting.

The December 12th 2005 issue of Outlook had a cover story on Fatwas. The cover had a blown up picture of heavily painted glistening lips crossed out and the headline was Crazy World of Fatwas. “No Make Up” in bold red read a bigger strap line and the last line said, “Outlook obtains a fatwa against Muslim women using lipstick in public”. The cover story was titled “Ayatollahs All” by Saba Naqvi Bhaumik. The story starts off quite well though it makes one ponder what she means when she writes that of the great mass of Muslims in India, “Some are neo-converts anxious not to commit any sin in their journey to a promised paradise”. It is a troublesome statement because almost all Muslims in India are not neo-converts.

The story moves on with the author describing how the fatwa entered pubic consciousness (through the fatwa on Salman Rushdie of course). The reporter makes an important point when she writes that there has been an impression that a fatwa is a command or an edict. But then the reporter moves on to investigate the matter by creating a fictitious setting and it looks as if she is out to debase Islam. The question that the reporter chose to seek an opinion of a mufti was, “As a Muslim woman, is it appropriate for me to work and to use cosmetics like lipstick when I go to office?” The opinion sought was from an alim from the Islamic Fiqh Academy in Delhi. It is not said to which maslak in Islam this institution belongs nor is any background about the institution given. The impression that the reader would get from reading the fatwa is that Islam does not allow women to wear make up.

Then there are five excerpts from the fatwa collection of Darul Uloom Deoband. The magazine writes that they culled out these gems (the italics are mine) from the collection and they have been listed under the title of ‘Ridiculous Fatwas’. The five gems are:

1. If while breaking wind it does not smell or sound, does it still break the wazu (cleaning before prayers)?

A. If you are sure you broke wind and you are not under a false illusion and are not physically challenged, then you should do the wazu again.

2. What is the punishment for a man who tells his wife that having sex with her is like having sex with her mother?

A. There is no punishment for what a man says in private to his wife.

3. If a chicken defecates in my well, has it become impure? How do I purify my well?

A. Throw out 110 buckets of water from your well. Then it will be purified and the water can be used for wazu.

4. If my bathroom does not have high walls and a roof, should I still bathe in the nude?

A. If the walls are high enough to cover your body then bathe in the nude, if not, then don’t bathe naked.

5. Will Allah accept my prayers if I pass wind while doing my namaz?

A. Only if you have kept the wind within you and restrained from releasing it are your prayers valid. If not, you should say your prayers again.

The reporter does not state how many fatwas are there in the ten volumes of the compendium of the Darul Uloom Deoband. Even if a safe speculation is made about the number of fatwas in that set, taking into account the fact that the Dar-ul-ifta of Deoband is more than a century old and it is one of the most respected Islamic seminaries in the world, it can easily be said that the number will not be less than several thousands. Culling out five gems from this collection very subjectively presents Muslims in a terrible light, almost mocking their religious beliefs.

Journalism is a shallow medium of communication of information. The medium demands that ‘news’ be communicated as instantaneously as possible. It is a competitive process to see who can deliver the news as quickly as possible. In this communication that is a dominant part of popular culture we see that the limited research that tight deadlines lead to a flattening out of the news. Stories aren’t investigated at a deeper level and this leads to a certain pursuit of the sensational. There is a celebration of ’sensationalism’. In such a scenario where the sensational is sought after and celebrated questions like objectivity and truth are lost.

The fatwa entered the realm of public consciousness through Rushdie and has now embedded itself in the consciousness of the public. Nobody has not heard of a fatwa. The media has used the word so frequently that most consumers know it as some ‘Muslim rule’. The media has failed in it’s role of presenting something to the audience in an unbiased manner. The fatwa is perceived to be bad now and every time someone hears the word fatwa the first reaction is that it must be another binding rule for all Muslims.

The theorists of the media (I had a section on this in my earlier posting) who operate from a slightly Marxist view point write that the bourgeois notions of what constitutes news helps in preserving a certain status quo while the liberal pluralists believe that truth is provided by the media. As can be seen in the analysis of the way the ‘fatwa’ is reported it acquires an anti-Islamic tinge to it bringing Chomsky’s and Herman’s fifth filter where Anti-communism is replaced by Anti-Islamic reportage. Of course, a larger research would demonstrate this inherent prejudice in the Indian media of anti-Islamic prejudice that this research has proved through the reportage of the fatwa.

The liberal pluralists believe that news helps in the creation of public opinion but is the truth offered for a ‘true public opinion’ to be formed. As the analysis of the fatwa reportage has demonstrated there has been a gross misrepresentation of the role a fatwa plays in the life of Muslims and more seriously, a gross misrepresentation of what a fatwa actually is. Thus, when truth itself is questionable then can a responsible public opinion be formed?

Edward Said writes that the American media is insensitive to the differences that abound within the ummah (community) of Muslims. There is a reductionism at work here that seeks to present Muslims as terrorists and fundamentalists. Using the analogy of Islam as reported in America and fatwa as reported in India a similar argument can be made that the variety within Indian Islam is not recognised by the Indian print media and a reductionism is taking place when fatwas are reported reducing them to mere edicts.There is a callousness in reporting about Islam in India that reflects in reports about fatwas.

[1] Iyer…p. 147

[2] Al-Azm, Sadik J. “Is the ‘Fatwa’ a Fatwa?” Middle East Report 183 (Jul.-Aug. 1993): 27.

[3] For many portions of this paragraph I have relied on Javed Anand’s article, “Let’s Call the Ulema’s Bluff” in the Times of India dated July 7, 2005.

[4] Peer, Basharat. “Inside Deoband: The Third-Umpire of Fatwas”. Tehelka. 2: 35 dtd. 03/09/05.

[5] The Hindu. “I will abide by religious laws, says Imrana” dtd. 1st July 2005

30.6.06

30th June 2006

Dear Sarai Fellows,

This mail contains a review that I wrote for The Biblio: A Review of Books for the May-June 2006 issue. I would appreciate comment and feedback.

A Polemical Work against Islam

By VIKHAR AHMED SAYEED

The Trouble With Islam Today: A Wake-Up Call for Honesty and Change

By Irshad Manji

Imprint One, New Delhi, 2005, xiii + 258 pp., Rs. 295

Distributed by Foundation Books

ISBN 81-88861-02-2

Why am I a Muslim? Is it because I was born a Muslim or is it because I believe in Islam. The two positions are not contradictory; I could be a person who was born a Muslim and also believe this is the best faith among the panoply of spiritual alternatives available. I’ve never given the question significant thought until reading Irshad Manji’s provocative The Trouble With Islam Today: A Wake-Up Call for Honesty and Change. This is Manji’s second book after Risking Utopia: On the Edge of a New Democracy published in 1997. Manji grew up in Canada and her experiences in understanding Islam in Vancouver form a major part of the early chapters of her book.

Manji’s book primarily targets Muslims and forces them to confront their shibboleths. The book is in the form of an open letter and the introductory chapter begins with an address to “My Fellow Muslims”. It is the beginning of a personal memoir and is passionate, controversial, irreverent and even blasphemous at times as this quote demonstrates, “Through our screaming self-pity and our conspicuous silences, we Muslims are conspiring against ourselves. We’re in crisis, and we’re dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it’s now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it?”.

Her book is partly an autobiography, a travelogue, a polemic against practised Islam, an amateur attempt at history writing; all of these hyphenated by cursory analysis. She carries on a conversation with the reader and there is no attempt at political correctness. She is blunt and revels in the uneasiness she stirs in the reader. The interesting part about Manji is that she identifies herself as a Muslim in spite of having several irreconcilable differences with Islam (her homosexuality being the biggest). She chooses to criticise Islam while remaining a Muslim and writes that she chose to stay within Islam because “…the imperative of identity kicked in…Most of us aren’t Muslims because we think about it, but rather because we’re born that way. It’s who we are.”

Manji addresses several themes in her book, some ritualistic and some geopolitical, but at the root of all these troubles she sees Islam to be responsible and feels that the time has come for an Islamic reformation to take place.

The most important issue that she raises when she talks about the rituals of Islam is that whether Muslims all over the world are succumbing to a form of ‘desert Islam’ and coins a phrase ‘foundamentalism’ to describe this. By desert Islam she means the sort of Islam practised by the Arabs. She writes, “To parrot the desert peoples in clothing, in language, or in prayer is not necessarily to follow the universal God.” This harks of Naipaul who wrote in the introduction to his book Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples that “Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert’s worldview alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language becomes Arabic. His idea of history alters.”

She also writes that literalism is going worldwide in Islam and is ideologically colonising Muslim minds. Legitimacy for every act for Muslims, not only religious, but also political and social, (Islam doesn’t differentiate between the spiritual and the temporal realm) needs to be derived from two sources, i.e., the Quran and the hadis. So when Manji is asking Muslims to look beyond these two sources it contradicts one of the fundamental beliefs of any Muslim.

She questions the perfection of the Quran calling it an ambiguous document and writes that Muslims must begin to question the Quran and the hadis. The Prophet was not an infallible man, she says, and thus his actions need not be emulated. Historians of Islam have made these arguments before but her casual manner will only incense Muslim fideists who believe in the pristinity of the Quran and the infallibility of the Prophet.

Manji forcefully calls for an Islamic reformation and says that Ijtihad needs to be done for contemporary times. The first act of ‘Operation Ijtihad’, as she calls it, should be that female Muslim entrepreneurs need to be encouraged. She chooses this act of female entrepreneurship as the first step in ‘Operation Ijtihad’ because she writes that “Muslims exhibit a knack for degrading women and religious minorities.” She chooses entrepreneurship because “…Muslims have a centuries old affair with commerce” and secondly “…there’s no prohibition in the Quran against women becoming businesspeople.” There is no problem with the sentiment that female entrepreneurs need to be encouraged and this could, in certain ways, revitalise Muslim societies but is it so easy to practise ijtihad?

Ijtihad means the independent assessment of any issue based on the Quran, sunna and fiqh literature and many Muslims (both Sunni and Shia belonging to the recognised schools of Islamic jurisprudence) consider the gates of ijtihad closed. Only a person who is highly qualified in Islamic jurisprudence can practise ijtihad and while Manji may stridently call for ‘Operation Ijtihad’ ijtihad is not a common everyday occurrence in Islam.

The next theme that she addresses is the stubborn streak of Anti-Semitism that prevails among Islamic societies and she blames this on two main reasons. One of these reasons is that Muslims are not aware of the common religious linkages between the two faiths while the second reason is that Palestine has become a global litmus test for Muslims to identify with the ummah. The first reason is not convincing because for any Muslim who is slightly familiar with his religion it is common knowledge that Islam was a denouement of Judaism and Christianity and Mohammed was sent as the last prophet because Jews and the Christians were not good religionists. Moses is a highly respected prophet in Islamic hagiography and there are references to Jews in the Quran.

The second reason where she talks about Palestine she indicts the Arab states more for the plight of Palestinians than Israel. She seems to almost exonerate Israel for the sorry state of Palestinians and accuses Arab states of catalysing the conflict. It is true that the Arab states have had their own self-interests and domestic causes to be propped up under the banner of Palestine but can Israel be non-culpable? It seems funny to even pose the question when we think of the fact that a country was created where none existed before in 1948.

The next theme that she addresses in her book is that Muslims all over the world do not hate America because they perceive it to be against Muslim interests but they hate America because, for them, “Washington is the unrealised hope, not the lead criminal”. And what is this unrealised hope? It is the hope that America will bring democracy to Muslim countries. She strongly endorses American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq but sees them as jobs left incomplete. There has been a regime change bought about by the Americans but now she wants them to make sure that they impose their style of democracy so that Muslims are truly liberated. The fact that America blatantly invaded a sovereign nation on the basis of false evidence doesn’t even merit one sentence.

She is convinced that Muslims love America simply because there is no rejection of American culture in the Middle East. Muslims are desperate to get on the local version of the show Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Saudi Arabian women buy raunchy lingerie. If Manji is following the protests over the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed all over the world, when Pakistani Muslims burn the American flag even though America has nothing to do with the cartoons, is it a sign that they want to be invaded in the hope that true democracy can be imposed?

Another theme that Manji touches upon is of Islam and slavery. She quotes verses from the Quran to demonstrate Islam’s laxity when it comes to the question of slavery. I wonder how she overlooked the fact that one of the first converts to Islam was an Abyssinan slave, Bilal, who was impressed by Mohammed’s message of equality and embraced Islam. He was Islam’s first muezzin, no lowly post.

There are several other jarring issues that she raises in her book. Suicide bombers come in for her prejudiced scrutiny but she chooses to focus on the hackneyed seventy virgins theme that has become a choice ridicule of Muslims while ignoring the desperate situations that lead young men, sometimes not religious at all, to strap themselves with bombs and blow themselves up. She doesn’t talk about female suicide bombers and we can be sure that they don’t blow themselves up because of the seventy virgins in paradise.

Edward Said and Noam Chomsky are dismissed summarily by Manji. She writes that Edward Said whose book Orientalism became such a rage all over the world needs to rethink his theory because his book was distributed by the west. Noam Chomsky also gets his one line dismissal when she writes that it is not the west but Muslims who ‘manufacture consent’ in Allah’s name.

Manji imagines herself to be a pioneer, a mild revolutionary who is intent on reforming Islam. I did find myself nodding to many of the things that she had written when it came to the ritual aspects of Islam. I remember when I was a little child I learnt by rote many verses of the Quran in Arabic without remotely knowing what they meant. I also felt sad that our dog couldn’t come inside our house because he was considered an unclean animal and many fellow Muslims disapproved of it. I’m also dismayed that most Muslims in India look up to the clerics who have been trained in Islamic seminaries that still follow a syllabus based on the Dars-i-Nizami, an outdated syllabus (The syllabus originally consisted of 79 books written between ninth and eighteenth centuries and does not have any Western philosophical text in it)

But many of her arguments are simply not tenable and she makes one factual error when she writes that it is not possible to know the chronology of the revelation of the Quranic verses. It is possible to find out which verses of the Quran were revealed in Mecca and which ones at Medina. Manji should have done more academic research and relied less on anecdotes. Anecdotes are the paraphernalia of a good writer but are subjective and the reliance on anecdotes gives portions of the book an air of a pamphlet. There are faint ripples for reform being heard all over the Muslim world today but Manji’s book will not turn these ripples into waves.

7.4.06

Dear Vikhar Ahmad: I read your review of Irshad Manji’s `The Trouble with Islam Today’ with great interest. I agree to a very large extent with your comments about her (frequently naive) political stance on many issues, most notoriously, on the Israel Palestinian conflict. Your review however underplays the dillemma that she outlines very early in her book : “Can Islam and homosexulaity be reconciled?” (Page 23) I think this idea is pretty central to the book. Whether or not one agrees with her formulations, it has to be taken seriously. Had you engaged with the powerful role that desire plays – of which sexual orientation is an integral part – you may have hesitated to conclude that “She [Irshad Manji] doesn’t talk about female suicide bombers and we can be sure that they don’t blow themselves up because of the seventy virgins in paradise”. Well, we can’t be so sure, can we? Besides, how many better reasons are there to die? Warmly Shohihi

7.7.06

Dear Shohini,

I read your remarks on Vikhar’s review with great interest…

On to the question of whether Islam can be reconciled with homosexuality…

We can approach it doctrinally or historically…

If we approach the question doctrinally we would need to determine the

doctrinal canon within Islam, how it came about, what are the central

texts, how they have changed over time and so on…

That might not be such a fruitful proposition, but when we approach

the questin historically we might find that Islamic societies, that is

to say societies where Islam was a promiennt religion, have been the

great founts of homosexual relations….a predominant part of Persian

and Urdu poetry deals, when it deals with personal emotions, with

young men and boys…and girls in the case of women poets if we

properly unearth them. Half our sufis, I somethimes think in my

exaggeratef flights of fancy, became so because of their same sex

love…it is part of the reason, at least Ralph Russell would think

so, why Urdu poetry does not have a gender specific in its

address…that is perhaps why, pace the mid 18th century travelogue of

Delhi called Muraqqa-e Delhi, a male dancer could earn as much as a

lakh Rs a night for his performance….also that is why the Arabs and

the Afghans have been renowned, at least whatever renown they earned

in our parts of the world, for their sexual predilections…but that

is still a male world, admissibly…

The seventy virgins might or might not have appealed to Rabia, one of

the founders, perhaps THE founder, of Sufism, but irrespective of

gender, she at least expounded for us the simple fact that desire has

to sublimated for it to achieve itself truly…whether it is material

or carnal…

The question really is not homosexuality versus Islam…but

institutionalisation of same sex relations in the modern world versus

its ’suppression’ in the pre-modern part of it…

When I try and approach the question historically the choices before

me, again, are whether I want a tacit co-existence or a blatant

manifestation…then it is an issue of choosing the modes of

suppression…which one pleases us…

Whatever our choices may be, they do not, from the perspective of the

contemporary modern that we inhabit, cease to be arbitrary…

Best,

Mahmood

7.7.06

7th July 2006

Dear Shohini Ghosh,

I must thank you for taking interest and responding to my review and you raise an interesting question.

“Can Islam and homosexuality be reconciled?”

There is an interesting essay that answers this question partly in the book ‘Because I have a Voice’ edited by Gautam Bhan and Arvind Narain. An essay written by Ali Potia explores the experience of growing up gay and Muslim. Potia’s argument in the essay is that Islam does not provide space to homosexuality and thus he chooses a simple way and walks out of Islam (It has been some time since I read this essay but I don’t think I’ve forgotten his argument – but if I’ve got it wrong in any way I apologise). This would be an interesting place to start your exploration of the question whether Islam and homosexuality can be reconciled.

Secondly, I will try to look at the primary source of Islamic Shariah, i.e., the Quran and try to give an answer to the question whether Islam and homosexuality can be reconciled. The caveat here is that I cannot even claim mild expertise on the shariah but hopefully my answer would be a semblance of the orthodox scriptural response to the whole issue.

In the seventh chapter of the Quran, Al-A’raf Verse 81 strictly speaks out against homosexuality. The story of the Prophet Lot is common to the three semitic faiths and he was sent “…as a Prophet and warner to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, cities utterly destroyed for their unspeakable sins”.

Chapter 7, Verse 80-81:

We also (sent) Lut:

He said to his people:

“Do ye commit lewdness

Such as no people

In creation (ever) committed

Before you?

“For ye practice your lusts

On men in preference

To women: ye are indeed

A people transgressing

Beyond bounds”.

Chapter 26, Verse 165-166 says:

“Of all the creatures

In the world, will ye

Approach males,

And leave those whom Allah

Has created for you

To be your mates?

Nay, ye are a people

Transgressing (all limits)!”

Thus, it is clear from these verses that the Quran considers homosexuality to be a transgression and there would not be place for homosexuality within Islam. There are also other verses in the Quran that speak about this theme. I remember having a conversation with Sanjay Kabir Bavikatte, a lawyer who studied in NLS, about this a long time back when he was doing some research on Islamic Liberation Theology. He was trying to reconcile Islam and homosexuality using these verses but I don’t think interpretations of Islamic law can really alter this fundamental piece of Quranic evidence.

About the point you make about the role of desire this should clear matters up a bit but I am also looking at some material on the psychology of suicide bombers. I will write to you again about that.

Thirdly, I disagree with you when you say that the question of Islam and homosexuality is central to Manji’s book. The central theme in Manji’s book is her emphasis that there needs to be a reform within the contemporary understanding of Islam. Within this larger theme Islam’s orthodox denial of homosexuality is one part. What I find very interesting about Manji is that she strongly identifies herself with Islam even though orthodox Muslims would not consider her to be a Muslim. Unlike Ali Potia she does not choose to abandon Islam.

A fourth point that I would like to make would add on to Mahmood Farroqui’s comments. Historically Islamic societies (I find that phrase slightly troublesome because can there be a society whose basis is primarily religious – Islamic in this instance- but let me use it in this case) have condoned homosexuality. I will cite two instances that this is shown.

In Orhan Pamuk’s ‘My Name is Red’ there is excessive reference to pederasty as an accepted form of sensual gratification in sixteenth century Turkey. At that point of time the Caliphate (which can in some senses be interpreted as a symbol of power more than a religious symbol) was with the Turks. Thus, it could be categorized as one of the more religious Islamic societies in the world at that time. There is a celebration of same sex love and the manner in which the miniaturist ‘Butterfly’ is described and the relationship between Master Osman and his apprentices alluded to without any sense of shame portrays same sex love beautifully. I found Pamuk’s novel to be well researched historically and that is why I think this can be cited as a valid example.

A second instance is that of Baburnama. This is a sixteenth century text again and is Babur’s autobiography. Babur, unashamedly, describes his feelings of love for a boy in his adolescence. He writes about his feelings for the boy, “…before this experience I had never felt a desire for anyone, nor did I listen to talk of love and affection or speak of such things”. Thus, I think I can (based on the limited evidence I could muster) conclude that historically Islamic societies have made no secret of the fact that homosexuality was accepted (Again, same-sex love between women is something that I do not have any evidence on).

I have made an attempt to provide you with an initial idea of ‘Islam and homosexuality’ but I confess that I need to read up more on the issue myself. I will also keep you updated if I find any more relevant material about this.

Bye,

Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed.

8.7.06

Dear Vikhar: Thanks for your reply. The broad discussion of homosexuality and Islam is a different debate and much has been written on it already. You may already have read the following but I’d still like to recommend Same Sex Love in India by Ruth Vanita and Salim Kidwai, 2000 published by Palgrave in India and St. Matrtin’s Press in the US. The feminist literature from Arab countries is very instructive because it challenges the idea of a homogenous Islamic society. An excellent collection of essays, stories and cartoons is Women and Sexualtity in Muslim Societies, A Publication of Women for Human Rights, New York.edited by Pinkar Ikkaracan. It shows how diiverse women’s sexualities in Muslim countries are and its total import is far more radical then anything that Irshad Manji has written even though queer sexuality is not the only concern of the book. These women are not asking for reform-they are the reform. Since you are interested in suicide bombers and Muslim afterlife – there’s the brilliantly funny Women in Muslim Paradise by Fatima Mernissi published by Kali for Women, 1986 (second edition 1988). The new English translation of Chocolate and Other Stories of Male-Male Desire by Pandey Bechan Sharma Ugra (OUP 2006) with an absolutely wonderful introduction by Ruth Vanita (also the translator). She talks about how Hindu nationalist writer Ugra, while ostensibly condemning homosexualty in Chocolate, actually makes a case for it. Written in 1927, Chocolate had created a public furore in which even Gandhi and Premchand had joined in. The book shows how complex and clever the negotiation between religion and non-conformist ideas can be. Wishing You all the Best Warmly Shohini

24/4/06

In this section I want to look at the ideas of objectivity in journalism and the rationale behind the production of news.

“The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace[1],” write Herman and Chomsky in their book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy and the Mass Media. It is a valid point that the authors make and it is important to see the media as a dominant element of popular culture. The view point of structuralism can be bought in here as they have a significant amount to contribute to the idea of communicating by language and the medium of journalism is dominated by language. The structuralists, led primarily by Saussure’s ideas, contend that language consists of ’signs’, which in turn can be divided into two component parts, ’signifier’ and ’signified’. ‘Signifier’ for Saussure means the ‘inscription or the acoustic sound’ while ’signified’ means the ‘concept or mental image’[2].

The meaning of this initial idea of Saussure was restricted to linguistics but was taken forward by Roland Barthes who in his book Mythologies represents the most significant attempts to bring the method of semiology to bear on popular culture[3]. The guiding principle of this book is to always interrogate what is not obvious. He takes Saussure’s principle of ’signifier’ and ’signified’ and adds one more level to it. The first level of ’signification’, he calls ‘primary signification’ or ‘denotation’ and the second level he calls ’secondary signification’ or ‘connotation’. He then argues that it is at the second level of signification that what he calls ‘myth’ is produced and consumed. By myth Barthes means ideology understood as ideas and practices which defend the status quo – the ‘bourgeois norm’ – and actively promotes the interests and values of the dominant classes in society. Myth is the turning of the cultural and historical into the natural, the taken-for-granted. As we can see Barthes is taking a slightly ‘political framework of analysis’ to borrow a phrase that Stuart Allen uses in his book News Culture. The ‘political framework of analysis’ draws heavily from the writings of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels in The German Ideology as will become obvious from this excerpt:

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it…In so far, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they…among other things…regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch[4].

As is obvious Barthes’ understanding of popular culture is partly based on Karl Marx’ ideas of the dominant ideas being nothing but a means to maintain the status quo. While Marx was a journalist for ten years himself, he has not written directly about journalism thus his comments that he made about popular culture like the one above taken from The German Ideology need to be understood for journalistic institutions.

Before moving one I must make clear that many theorists of culture do not generally take the media into consideration in their understanding of popular culture. Most of the academicians involved in cultural studies tend to neglect this crucial aspect of popular culture. If we look at the studies of culture we will see that the early culturalists like Arnold and Leavis tended to see culture as restricted to art, literature and classical music. For them there was a difference between ‘high culture’ and ‘low-brow culture’[5]. The anthropologists offer a more complete definition of culture as ‘forms of life and social expression’. This is relevant in studies of the media as media is an important part of culture[6].

Thedor Adorno and Max Horkenheimer write that mass culture is a way of offering temporary ephemeral gratification to people condemnded to lives of work. In their idea of mass culture they bring in the idea of television[7]. Though they do not specifically comment on the media here we have to see that how media forms an important part of ‘popular culture’ and if we interpret Adorno and Horkenheimer’s thesis that they offered for ‘popular culture’ in journalism we will realise that the media serves as a temporary ephemeral gratification for the consumers of media who tend to absorb everything that is offered unquestioningly and as the ‘truth’.

This brings us to another interesting point in journalism. Journalists operate on the premise that they provide the truth to their consumers but what is ‘truth’. Is there an objective basis for truth? The answer to that question goes to the heart of ongoing debates over whether or not the news media ‘reflect’ social reality truthfully, or the extent to which journalists can produce a truthful news account. How do you separate facts from values? The assumption that the truth resides entirely in the former raises the question whether it is actually possible to separate the two.

For Noam Chomsky and Herman there is nothing like ‘objective truth’. They have come with the propaganda model where they argue that there exists within that country’s (their analysis is for the media as it operates in the United States of America) commercial news media an institutional news bias which guarantees mobilisation of certain ‘propaganda campaigns’ on behalf of an elite consensus (propaganda is deemed to be broadly equivalent with dominant ideology in this analysis. There is a collaboration of the state and the mass media. They use the idea of ‘filters’ where they demonstrate the extent to which journalists reiterate uncritically official positions of the state while simultaneously, adhering to its political agenda. The five filters are:

1. Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation of the Mass Media[8]: This is the first filter and concerns the commercial basis of the dominant news organisations. Close ties between the media elite and their political and corporate counterparts ensure that an ‘establishment orientation’ is ordinarily maintained at the level of news coverage. It is this top tier of major news companies which, together with the government and wire services, ‘defines the news agenda and supplies much of the national and international news to the lower tiers of the media’.

2. The Advertising License to do Business[9]: “With advertising the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The advertisers’ choices influence media prosperity and survival”. They also point out that advertisers are primarily interested in affluent audiences due to their ‘purchasing power’, and thus are less inclined to support forms of news and public affairs content which attract people of more modest means. Moreover, there is a strong preference for content which does not call into question their own politically conservative principles or interferes with the ‘buying mood’ of the audience.

3. Sourcing Mass-Media News[10]: “The mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest. The media need a steady, reliable flow of the raw material of news. They have daily news demands and imperative news schedules that they must meet,” write Chomsky and Herman. The relative authority and prestige of these sources also helps to enhance the credibility of the journalist’s account leading to the news media’s over reliance on government and corporate ‘expert sources’.

4. Flak and the Enforcers[11]: Flak refers to negative responses to a media statement or program. This disciplines the news organisations. Chomsky and Herman are referring to a variety of flak including complaints from individuals or organised groups like state officials. The authors suggest that these makers of ‘flak’ receive respectful attention by the media, only rarely having their impact on news management activities explicitly acknowledged.

5. Anti-communism as a Control Mechanism[12]: This final filter is the role of the ‘ideology of anti-communism’ as a ‘political control mechanism’. This ideology in Herman’s and Chomsky’s words helps mobilse the populace against an enemy. The concept is so fuzzy it can be used against anybody advocating policies that threaten property interests or support accommodation with Communist states and radicalism.

Overall only the residue that passes through these five filters is pronounced fit to call news. This basically sums up the arguments of the propaganda model used by Herman and Chomsky. Chomsky and Herman write, “In sum, a propaganda approach to media coverage suggests a systematic and highly political dichotmisation in news coverage based on serviceability to important domestic power interests[13].” A main criticism of this approach according to Allen is that their approach “…risks reducing the news media to tired ideological machines confined to performing endlessly, and unfailingly, the overarching function of reproducing the prerogatives of an economic and political elite through processes of mystification. Journalists in this process become well-intentioned puppets whose strings are being pulled by forces they cannot fully understand. Meanwhile the news audience would appear to be composed of passive dupes consistently fooling fooled into believing such propaganda is true[14].” But it cannot be denied that they make important points and this framework of analysis has provided the basis for many other observers of the media to carry ahead their research.

Edward Said’s book Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine how we see the World looks at also follows a similar method of looking at the media. Said critically questions the role of the media and accuses it of creating certain shibboleths about Muslims without recognising the diversity in the faith of over one billion. He writes that the generalisations that can be made about Muslims in the media cannot be made about any other community and continues, “”My concern, though, is that the mere label ‘Islam’, either to explain or indiscriminately condemn ‘Islam’, actually ends up becoming a form of attack, which in turn provokes more hostility between self-appointed Muslim and Western spokespersons[15].”

Islam is variegated and the homogenous way in which it is looked at is wrong. “Instead of scholarship, we often find only journalists making extravagant statements, which are instantly picked up and further dramatised by the media[16].” He argues that there is a slippery concept of fundamentalism that they attribute only to Islam without ever defining any thing properly. “Much in current representations of Islam is designed to show the religion’s inferiority with reference to the West, which Islam is supposed to be hell-bent on opposing, competing with, resenting, and being enraged at[17]“. Apart from hostility and reductionism offered by all these misrepresentations they also exaggerate and inflate Muslim extremism within the Muslim world[18]“. Said’s point is that cooperation must be admitted. There has been a gross simplification of Islam.

“The academic experts whose specialty is Islam have generally treated the religion and its various cultures within an invented or culturally determined ideological framework filled with passion, defensive prejudice, sometimes even revulsion; because of this framework, understanding of Islam has been a very difficult thing to achieve[19],” Said writes and criticises Naipual for furthering this viewpoint and writes that he has an intense antipathy to Islam. “For Naipaul and his readers, ‘Islam’ somehow is made to cover everything that one disapproves of from the standpoint of civlised, and Western, rationality.

Labels are vague and unavoidable. Labels function in atleast two different ways and produce two different meanings[20]. First, they perform a simple identifying function. The second function is much more complex and when Islam and the West are pitted against one another the assumption is that the West is greater and has surpasses the age of Christianity. On the other hand Islam is still mired in religion, primitivity and backwardness.

“The experts whose field was modern Islam worked within an agreed-upon framework for research formed according to notions decidedly not set in the Islamic world. Modern Islamic studies in the academy belong to ‘area programs’ generally and are affiliated to the mechanism by which national policy is set[21]“. He questions the source of funding for scholarly studies and links it up with questions of why scholars get it wrong. Apart from this the Western scholars do not command relevant linguistic expertise and have had to rely on press and other Western writers for information[22].

Media coverage is superficial, friendly regimes produced official information that they wanted and US had made no efforts to get to know the country well or to make contact with the opposition. These sum up US and European attitude towards Islamic World. Said writes that he has not been able to discover any period in European or American history since the Middle Ages in which Islam was generally discussed or thought about outside a framework created by passion, prejudice and political interests[23].

Said questions the aims of the press like objectivity, factuality, realistic coverage and calls them highly relative terms. “News, in other words, is less an inert given than the result of a complex process of usually deliberate selection and expression[24].” The American media differ from the French and the British media because the societies differ so much. Said writes that every reporter is subliminally aware of his setting and is subjective in that way[25]. The medium itself exercises great pressure. Said writes that all media is somewhere a corporation that has a corporate identity – they all have the same central consensus in mind. It is the result of the culture.

About this creation of consensus Said makes two points[26]. First, because the US is a complex society, the need to impart a more or less standardised common culture through the media is felt with particular strength. The second point shows that this consensus sets limits and maintains pressures. Said next comments on the quantitative aspects of news. The consequence of this is that Islam is viewed reductively, coercively and oppositionally. He gives an example by saying that Islam for the west is nothing but ‘news’ of a particularly unpleasant sort. Said criticises the whole institution of Islamic studies as geared towards providing what the media and the governments need.

Apart from the adherents of the ‘political economy’ position that includes those media theorists influenced by the ideas of Marx the other group believes in a ‘liberal pluralist position’ where they are convinced that the market-bases mass media system protects the citizen’s right to freedom of speech. It is the news media, to the extent that they facilitate the formation of public opinion, which are said to make democratic control over governing relations possible. For the adherents of this position the news media represents the fourth estate (as distinguished, in historical terms, from the church, the judiciary and the commons). Journalism, as a result, is charged with the crucial mission of ensuring that members of the public are able to draw upon a diverse ‘market place of ideas’ to both sustain and challenge their sense of the world around them. Thus, for this group of ideologues media is seen as empowering rather than propaganda. ‘News’ helps people in making decisions and forming opinions. The inherent notion on which the liberal pluralists operate is that ‘News’ provided through the media offers the ‘truth’[27].

In this section I want to look at the world of fatwas. I try to understand what a fatwa is and look at it historically in India and the manner in which it operated. Some of this research is based on a research paper I wrote earlier but I have incorporated some work I read in a recent book (Masud, Muhammad Khalid, Brinkley Messick and David. S. Powers. Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and their Fatwas. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2005) This book is very useful for anybody interested in the world of fatwas.

A fatwa is a legal opinion of a Mufti [28] (a jurisconsult). It derives from a verb meaning ‘to inform’[29]. The mufti is a person educated in Islamic jurisprudence and the mechanism of the working of the fatwa is like this; a person who is doubtful or ignorant of what the shariat says in particular circumstances turns towards the mufti to answer his question. The person writes an istifa (question) addressed to a particular mufti or to an institution and the mufti pronounces a fatwa based on his understanding of sources. These sources include the Quran, the Sunna (the traditions of the prophet), hadith reports (the activities of the prophet as seen by his companions), the fiqh literature (this means the Islamic schools of jurisprudence) and ijma (meaning consensus among a majority of the ulema)[30].

A fatwa need not be necessarily written and can be orally pronounced. The fatwas that are printed do not include the real names of the individuals involved in a dispute but allot them fictitious names, the most common ones being Umar and Zayd[31]. In India, the fatwa is not legally binding, neither was it in colonial times. In colonial India the ulema functioning as the mufti registered some important changes, fatwas were given on the authority of a particular madrasa (most madrsas had a dar-ul-ifta, were issued in larger numbers and the technology of print enabled the madrasas to disseminate their fatwas more widely and to begin publishing influential compilations of them[32]. The collections of these fatwas by the ulema of this period are of immense importance for understanding the preoccupations of Indian Muslims outside the charmed circle of those whom the British met socially[33].

Masud, Messick and Powers distinguish between the domain of legal procedure (the job of the qazi) and nonbinding advisory opinions (fatawa) and write that the muftis have received lesser attention than that qazi because the job of the mufti is unfamiliar and it was not institutionalised as much as qazis. Also many muftis operate privately and unobtrusively unlike the qazis. Fatwas, throughout history have been more concerned with practical aspects of the state of Islamic law[34].

In the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam predominated. Although several contemporary scholars treat muftis as an integral part of the pre-modern judicial system, suggesting that they were attached to the qadi courts at all levels, this conclusion is not borne out by the primary sources. In this region the term fatwa often denoted an authoritative and accepted opinion of the Hanafi school, not necessarily an opinion issued in response to a question. Pre-modern Indian fatwa collections bear the names of rulers, indicating the status of these texts as authoritative opinions potentially enforceable in state courts[35].

Whereas a judgement of a qazi entails direct action, a fatwa provides access to sharia knowledge in the form of a considered opinion. Whereas a judgement carries the presumption of finality, a fatwa enters the world of competing opinions. Despite their non-binding and informational qualities fatwas often had a significant impact on law[36].

Behind the encounter of mustafti and mufti, the posing of a query and the giving of a fatwa lies a complex social and interpretive relation[37]. The mufti is not an investigator of facts so the manner in which a question is phrased becomes important. The issues involved ought to be ones that have actually arisen and should not be purely hypothetical or imaginary. The fatwas also have a disclaimer, such as allahu a’lam “God knows best”. As muftis commonly are affiliated with particular schools of law, in some historical settings, they cite authors of authoritative works in their fatwas 25[38].

Fatwas had been in common use in colonial India. Fatwas were used quite liberally during the 1857 Mutiny and Jalal writes that “The fatwas issued during 1857 are a colourful medley of quite different points of view.[39]” Fatwas were also issued against cow slaughter, only to be rejected by another Muslim divine or propagandist[40]. In Kashmir, Shiekh Abdullah used the instrument of the fatwa as he sought to establish an alternative religious authority through his own appointed muftis[41].

All the various groups contesting for domination of the narrow sphere used the fatwa during this period as a potent instrument[42]. Several fatwa wars took place between the various groups with one fatwa being answered by another fatwa[43]. One of these fatwa wars related to the whether the azaan (call for the prayer) should be given from inside or outside the mosque. The special significance of this issue is that it was one of the few times when a non-Muslim was bought in as the arbitrator. The issue went up to the Hindu magistrate who held Ahmed Riza Khan (founder of the Barelvi school of Islam in South Asia to which most of the subcontinents Muslims claim allegiance to) guilty of libel against the recently deceased Maulana Abdul Muqtadir[44]. Ahmad Riza Khan, in the very few fatwas that he deals with the British, is rather emphatic in severing all ties with them[45]. So it is rather unfortunate that of all the alims, it was he who was forced to appear before the magistrate. This is also significant because it points to the power of the state. The ulema might choose to ignore the British and continue their religious debates with their fellow Muslims but the state would not let them go if its direct interference was solicitied.

The Deobandis also urged their followers to completely avoid the courts of British India[46]. They set up a separate court to circumvent Anglo-Muhammedan Law[47]. The ulema of this period, writes Hardy, shared the political attitudes towards British rule of the mass of educated Muslims outside the circle – antipathy, sometimes hatred, but not active underground resistance[48].

Then these fatwas were also circulated among the general populace by either reproducing them in the newspapers run by these organisations or by printing tracts and distributing them all over South Asia and beyond. Bookshops were also publishing houses and began to be identified with particular groups of ulema[49]. The Barelwis had two printing presses in Bareilly that exclusively published Riza Khan’s work. His books had generally something on the cover that poked fun at other sects and the newspaper that furthered the cause of the Barelwis was the Dabdaba-e Sikandari and had a section that reproduced the fatwas of Riza Khan[50].

Most madrasahs had a dar-al-ifta (an office that was responsible for answering fatwas) and Sanyal writes, “Even the addition of a Dar al-ifta to a madrasas of the time was competitive, for it was through the fatwa produced by the ulema of different movements that they made known their stand on controversial issues and rebutted those of their rivals. Ahmad Riza expressed his views for the most part in a daily stream of fatwa going out to people through British India and beyond”[51].

The main groups involved in these contestations and these contestations continue even in the present day were the Ahl-e-Hadis (the adherents of this group recognise only the Quran and the hadith and legitimate sources of Islamic law), the Deobandis (The Deobandis are Hanafis, meaning the followers of the Islamic jurisprudential system as established by the 8th century cleric Imam Abu Hanifa), the Barelwis (The Barelwis legitmise the uniquely sub-continental version of Islam which includes sacerdotalism) and the Nadwaites (followers of the Nadwat Ul Uloom in Lucknow). Most of the Sunni Muslims barely tolerated the Shiahs and considered them apostates from the true faith. The issues dealt with by the Barelwis, the Ahl-e-Hadis and the Deobandis seem to have been similar, as can be understood from the analysis of their fatwas, and the concerns were also the same[52].

Fatwa writing for Riza Khan was a hierarchical institution and it was divided among his disciples based on their areas of specialisation but complex fatwas were answered by himself. Sanyal writes, “Matters relating to ritual and the so-called ‘pillars’ – purification (taharat), prayer (salat), alms-giving (zakat), fasting (sawm) and the pilgrimage (hajj) – appear first and in that order, in the first 4 volumes. The remaining volumes deal with marriage (nikah), regulations concerning infidels, apostates, and rebels (sair), economic issues such as partnership (shirkat) and sale (bai’) and bequests (rahn) among other things.”

“Then there are fatwas on janaza, fatwas relating to the Khilafat movement of the 1920’s, on learning the English language. These fatwas on political issues are enmeshed in the section on funerals and apostates.[53]” I agree with Metcalf when she writes that the concern of these fatawa has mainly been with “…correct individual ritual practice and behaviour in everyday life, not, in these years of high colonial rule, issues of larger political or societal concerns.”[54] Metcalf has translated and paraphrased a few Deobandi fatwas of which I will reproduce one here for the reader to understand the general way in which a Deobandi fatwa was composed

Query: What of a person who goes to Noble Mecca on hajj and does not go to Medina the Radiant, thinking, ‘To go to Noble Medina is not a required duty (farz-i-wajib) but rather a worthy act (kar-i-khayr). Moreover, why should I needlessly take such a dangerous route where there are marauding tribes from place to place and risk to property and life. A great deal of money would be spent as well- so what is the point?’ Is such a person sinful or not?

Answer: Not to go to Medina because of such apprehension is a mark of lack of love for the Pride of the World, on whom be peace. No one abandons the worldly task out of such apprehension, so why abandon this pilgrimage? The road is not plundered every day; (safety) is a matter of chance- so that is no argument. Certainly, to go is not obligatory. Some people, at any rate, think this is pilgrimage is a greater source of reward and blessing than lifting the hands in prayer and saying amin out loud. Do not give up going out of fear of controversy or concern for your reputation. Should you abandon this pilgrimage from such apprehension and supposition, or put it off, consider, then, which portion is that of full faith. It is a joy to spend money on good acts. To go from Mecca to Medina, travelling first class, costs only fifty rupees. Whoever takes account of fifty rupees and does not take account of the blessed speulchre of the lord is a person of undoubtedly defective faith and love. Even if not a sinner, this person lacks faith in is basic nature. The end. Almightly Allah knows better[55]. Rashid Ahmad, may he be forgiven[56].

This is the general reply to a fatwa. Instead of answering the question in a simple manner the answer is long and drawn out and as the portion in italics shows is specifically targeted at other groups. In this particular fatwa of Rashi Ahmed Gangohi the target is the Ahl-e-Hadis. The Ahl-e-Hadis do not encourage pilgrims on the Hajj to visit the grave of Mohammed and thus we see how Gangohi is directly making them the targets of his fury when he writes that making this pilgrimage is a greater source of reward than lifting the hands in prayer and saying amin out loud. This practice called rafayidin is peculiar to the Ahl-e-Hadis’ salat and there are many fatwas legitimising this practice in Amritsari’s collection. This is one example to show how the fatwa was used as a chance to very visibly demonstrate the contempt that one group held for the other.

Metcalf has examined the Deobandi fatwas and writes that they were largely concerned with dealings with other Muslim groups rather than having to anything to do with the Hindu and the British. The Deoband fatwas were quite prolific and the number of fatwas produced by the dar-al-ifta at Deoband were 147, 851 between 1911 and 1951[57]. The influence of the ulema was primarily limited to matters of belief, ritual and relations to other religious groups. She writes, “Many of the fatawa dealt with the basic required rituals of the faith. A full one-fifth of the whole were devoted to the correct performance of the canonical prayer, the most important and frequent of the Islamic religious duties. These fatawa dealt with such problems such as the correct time of prayer, the manner of ablution and the procedure of both requisite namaz and special prayers. They, too, reflected reformist concerns. For example, they forbade the funeral prayer to be read in either mosque or graveyard and prohibited ceremonies on fixed days after a death. Many of the fatawa on namaz treated differences in details of performance with the Ahl-i Hadis. A handful of fatawa deal covered other ritual obligations such as fasting and hajj. About an equal number were concerned with the proper care and techniques of reading the Quran. The bulk of the remaining fatawa dealt with relations to other groups, including the Ahl-i Hadis, the so called bid’ati Muslims, the Shiah, the Hindus, and the British rulers. The existence of such fatawa suggest the active religious debate characterisation of this period.[58]” This long quote from Metcalf shows a remarkable similarity on the issues dealt with by Amritsari and thus, the Ahl-e-hadis with even the ratio of fatwas on certain issues being the same. The only lack in Amritsari’s fatwas is on those related to the British.

Even the fatwas of Ahmed Riza Khan ignores British presence[59]. But unlike the fatwas of Sanaullah Amritsari (a prominent early twentieth century cleric of the Ahl-e-hadis) and Ahmed Riza Khan Barelwi the Deobandi fatwas did not have extensive citations from the Quran and the hadis[60]. The fatwas are in simple Urdu and are actual exchanges of letters. At the risk of digressing, a point must be made here about how the ulema tended to popularise Urdu and Metcalf writes that Deoband was instrumental in establishing Urdu as a language of communication among the Muslims of India[61]. Robinson also mentions this point as he traces the history of the Firangi Mahal family. He writes that the Perso-Islamic culture declined in India from the 1820’s and 1830’s and the reformist ulema were partly responsible for this decline because they started using local languages to transmit their messages[62]. The fatwas of Abdul Hay, a prominent Firangi Mahali were also important during this period but these were rather more academic compendium of legal rulings than the collections of the Deobandi ulema[63].

Many a time there was a bombardment of fatwas on either side. One instance was when Ahmed Riza Khan went on his second Hajj in 1905 and secured fatwas against the Deobandis who responded with their own fatwas[64]. Riza Khan institutionalised the traditional version of Islam that had come down through the centuries and was widely prevalent all over the subcontinent. He wanted to maintain Islam as it existed and he did not see any mistake in the way Islam was followed. Riza Khan gave a legitimacy to the rituals and ceremonies that were being practised among South Asian Muslims but which did not have scriptural sanction. Riza Khan’s argument was that any practice that hundred’s of ulema have considered to be good over hundred’s of years cannot be bad[65]. These practices increasingly came under attack of reformist groups like the Ahl-e-Hadis and the Deobandis.

To the extent that the sharia remains relevant or authoritative, it is usually in the domain of family law. Many nation states have muftis nowadays. Formal instructional programmes and apprenticeships for the training of muftis have been established in institutions such as Azhar University in Egypt and Dar-al-Ulum in Karachi, which has a specialised two year program of courses in ifta[66]. Dar-al-ifta’s have become common in many countries. Other notable fatwa committees include that established by the World Muslim League in Mecca etc.

In my further research I will be looking at the way the media reports about fatwas.

[1] Herman…p. 1

[2] Storey…p. 93

[3] Ibid. p. 94

[4] Allen…p. 50

[5] Storey…p. 3

[6] Rivkin…p.

[7] Ibid.,

[8] Herman…p. 3

[9] Ibid., p. 14

[10] Ibid., p. 18

[11] Ibid., p. 26

[12] Ibid., p. 29

[13] Ibid., p. 35

[14] Allen…p. 60

[15] Said…p. xv-xvi

[16] Ibid., p. xviii

[17] Ibid., p. xxv

[18] Ibid., p. xxvi

[19] Ibid., ps. 6 & 7

[20] Ibid., ps. 9 & 10

[21] Ibid., p. 19

[22] Ibid., ps. 22 & 23

[23] Ibid., p. 50

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid., p. 51

[26] Ibid., pgs. 54 &55

[27] Allen…p. 49

[28] The education of a Mufti involves several years of education. The education to become an alim requires 14 years at the Nadwat-ul-Uloom. I am not sure about the number of years it requires at other institutions. Kozlowski writes that only 7 students become Maulawi Kamil every year which gives them the right to issue a fatwa. A person who wants to be a Maulawi Kamil has to first be a Maulawi and then graduate to be a Maulawi alim and only then finally he can be a Maulawi kamil that is equivalent to an M.A. p. 909.

[29] Kozlowski…p. 896.

[30] Masud…p. 16

[31] We see this phenomenon occurring in several of Sanaullah Amritsari’s fatwas also.

[32] Zaman…p. 25

[33] Hardy…p. 171

[34] Masud…p. 4

[35] Masud…ps. 14 & 15

[36] Ibid., p. 19

[37] Ibid., p. 20

[38] Ibid., ps. 22-25

[39] Jalal…p. 33

[40] Jalal…p. 85

[41] Rai…p. 269

[42] See Sanyal…pp. 203-207 for a brief idea about the manner in which Riza Khan used the fatwa to target other groups.

[43] Sanyal…p. 196

[44] Sanyal…p. 197 and p. 200.

[45] Sanyal…p. 283.

Ahmad Riza Khan’s response as far as relations with the British went showed a reluctance to deal with them at all: -

- Muslims must refrain from taking disputes to the court

- Muslims should keep commercial transactions within the community

- Wealthy Muslims should open interest-free banks for fellow Muslims

- Muslims should go back to follwing the din (religion) correctly

[46] Kozlowski…p. 922

[47] Metcalf…pp. 146-147.

[48] Hardy…p. 173

[49] Metcalf…pp. 214-215.

[50] Sanyal…p. 84-87

[51] Sanyal…p. 81

[52] The issues dealt by the ulema even today remain the same as the article by Gregory Kozlowki shows. Kozlowski studies the fatwas of the Mufti of the Jami’ah Nizamiyyah in 1989 and writes that, “In published collection of fatawa, an outside portion of the queries and replies deal with ritual matters such as the etiquette of prayer or the pilgrimage and ritual pollution. Many of the problems addressed seem to be purely hypothetical, designed as much to display a scholars forensic skill and learning as to resolve some genuine dilemma. The most common queries to this mufti (of the Jami’ah Nizamiyya) were those that related to marital relations and inheritance.

[53] Sanyal…p. 183-184.

[54] Metcalf…Intro…p. 17

[55] Kozlowski writes that the fatwas of Jamiyah Nizamiyah also carry the caveat, ‘God alone knows the truth!’ p. 917. Thus, we see how the ulema try to solve the issue to the best of their knowledge but try to signify their modesty by including this statement at the end of every fatwa.

[56] Metcalf…Two Fatwas…p. 56

[57] Hardy…p. 171

[58] Metcalf…Islamic Revival…p. 149

[59] Sanyal…p. 50

[60] Metcalf…Two Fatwas…p. 62

[61] Metcalf…Islamic Revival…pp. 102-103. Also see pp. 206-210. Metcalf writes that from modest beginnings early in the century, Urdu had become the language of almost all religious works with a shift in the social and political implications of using Urdu slowly shifting. Urdu was identified as a Muslim language and threatened. The ulema were reacting to a threat to their culture and political position by fostering the use of Urdu. The ulema played a fundamental role in establishing Urdu as a pre-eminent symbol of Muslim identity in India.

[62] Robinson…Ulama…p. 33

[63] Hardy…p. 173

[64] Sanyal…p. 65

[65] Sanyal…p. 162-163.

[66] Masud…p. 27

19/1/06

I’m Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed and am studying journalism at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. I completed my M. A in Modern History from JNU last year and came here to postpone the decision about what I wanted to do in life and to avoid the parochial confines of academic research. At some level I’ve been a drifter…my graduation was in commerce and then I went on to study history (I didn’t know that I would be studying history till a day before the results came out, my first choice was for another course) – but I’ve enjoyed the ride so far so I might even recommend it!

I intend to continue research on a topic that I’ve explored in some detail for my M. A seminar paper. The paper I wrote was on ‘Intra- Islamic Rivalry in late 19th Century and early 20th Century: A Case Study of the Fatawas of Sanaullah Amritsari’. In this paper I had looked at the differences that existed amongst the various sects within Indian Islam and I demonstrated how fatawas were used to foster these differences.

In my research as an Independent Fellow at Sarai (my topic is ‘Indian Print Media and it’s Reportage on fatawas) I want to see how much the media has been sensitive when they report about fatawas. Do they understand what a fatwa is? Do they understand the role it plays in the lives of Muslims, if it plays any role at all? Why does an obscure maulvi issuing a fatwa become a newsworthy item at all? I will try to trace the history of fatwa reportage in the Indian print media going back to the time of the reports of the infamous fatwa that was given about Salman Rushdie, depending of course, on the access to archives.

I will also try to look at the manner in which the whole world of fatawas operates and try to find out the relevance it holds for a contemporary Indian Muslim by trying to visit prominent madrasas across India that are affiliated to the various sects within Indian Islam.

Comments and suggestions are invited…

Vikhar Ahmed.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS – SARAI-CSDS INDEPENDENT FELLOWSHIPS, 2005-06

Applications are invited for the upcoming cycle of Sarai-CSDS Independent Research Fellowships.

The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
Sarai is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. CSDS is one of India’s best known research centres, with traditions of dissent and a commitment to the work of the public intellectual going back four decades. The Sarai Programme at CSDS was initiated in 2000 as a platform for discursive and creative collaboration between theorists, researchers and practitioners actively engaged in reflecting on contemporary urban spaces in South Asia—their politics, built form, ecology, culture and history—as well as on the histories, practices and politics of information and communication technologies, the public domain and media forms.

For more information, visit www.sarai.net

*The Purpose of the Independent Fellowship*

The Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowships allow the time for individuals from diverse backgrounds to either begin or continue research into specific aspects of media and urban culture and society, broadly and creatively defined, and to also think carefully and rigorously about the various public forms in which their research might be rendered. We are also interested in using the materials generated through the research to continue to build up our thematic archive of research on the city. Thus, we see the fellowship as an important source for this archive. Finally, an important purpose of the fellowship program is to spark, overlap and allow access to newly emerging research networks across disciplines, academic and non-academic institutions, organisations, practices, geographical locations and professional backgrounds.

We are thus invested in the idea of what we call public and distributed research, where new knowledge is created and shaped from a variety of locations, and not just in a top-down fashion. Participants in the fellowship programme are expected to have a very strong and independent motivation towards the pursuit of their own specialised areas of research, but also to respond to and critique the research of others in the programme as intelligent non-specialists, and be open to suggestions and comments from non-specialists.

Each year, a large number of the fellowships are awarded to projects that deploy standard methodologies and forms from the humanities and social sciences towards what we feel are justly deserving, new and emergent areas of research. However, a significant number of fellowships are also awarded to projects that are innovative both in terms of what they consider to be research, as well as the variety of purposes and forms to which that research is applied. As a result, we encourage the inclusion of individuals with little or no previous formal research experience who want to pursue, more rigorously, a passion for a tightly-focused, feasible, understudied research topic; and equally, we encourage individuals with seasoned research experience in a conventional context to experiment with forms that are relatively new to them.

For detailed abstracts of successful proposals from previous years, please visit www.sarai.net and click on the link for “Independent Fellowships” on the left-hand sidebar.

*Conditions*

–For administrative purposes, applicants are required to be resident in India, and to have an account in any bank operating in India.

–Applications can be in Hindi or in English. The research work and presentation can also be in either Hindi, English, or a combination of the two languages.

–The research fellowship will run from January 2006 to the end of August 2006 and award between Rs 30,000 and Rs. 60,000 during this period.

–Fellows will be required to make a minimum of six postings, one per month, on Sarai’s “reader-list” email listserve, between January and the end of June 2006.

–A working draft or initial prototype of the final work will be expected by the end of July 2006. The final presentation of the research project will be made in Delhi at the end of August 2006.

–The fellowships do not require the fellows to be resident at Sarai.

–Although participation in the fellowship programme does require a substantial time commitment—to the research, the postings on progress, and interaction with other researchers and projects in the fellowship cycle—participants are also welcome to pursue the fellowship research in addition to their primary occupations or commitments to other fellowships or grants, if any.

–Proposals from teams, partnerships, collectives and faculty are welcome, as long as the grant amount is administered by and through a single individual, and the funds are deposited in a single bank account in the name of an individual, partnership, registered body or institutional entity.

–Applicants who apply to other institutions for support for the same project will not be disqualified, provided they inform Sarai if and when support is being sought (or has been obtained) from another institution. The applicants should also inform Sarai about the identity of the other institution.

*What Do You Need To Send, Where and When?*

There are no application forms. Simply send us by postal mail your:

1. Name(s), email address(es), phone(s), and postal address(es).

2. Proposal (not more than 1200 words) including details of the subject, process, mode of public presentation and rationale for the research. Your proposal will be greatly strengthened if you are also able to indicate the kinds of materials that you think your research project would be able to generate for the Sarai archive. In the past, fellows have submitted transcripts of interviews, photographs, recordings, printed matter, maps, multimedia and posters, related to the subject of their study, to this archive.

3. Two work samples: if possible, the samples of previous work done should give us a sense of your preferred mode of public presentation for this project (e.g., academic research paper, narrative prose, multimedia, video, performance, photography, installation, sound recording, “creative” writing, prototype design, combinations of the above, etc.) and also suggest to us how you might understand your upcoming research process for this fellowship. The work samples can—but do not necessarily have to—make reference to the current research topic.

4. A clear work plan (not more than one page) with, if possible, a month-by-month breakdown of the research work.

5. An updated CV (not more than two pages) for each applicant.

–Send these to: ATTN: I-FELLOWS PROPOSAL 2005-2006, Independent Fellowship Programme, Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India.

–Enquiries: vivek at sarai.net for English proposals, ravikant at sarai.net for Hindi proposals.

–Last date for submission: proposals should be postmarked on or before Monday, October 31, 2005.

–The list of successful proposals for 2005-2006 will be announced on the Sarai website, and on Sarai’s email list, reader-list at sarai.net, towards the end of December 2005. For more details on joining the reader-list, please visit www.sarai.net and click on “LISTS at Sarai”.

*Who Can Apply? *

There is absolutely no pre-qualification required for application to the Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowship. Sarai invites independent researchers, media practitioners, working professionals, software designers and programmers, urbanists, architects, artists and writers, as well as students (postgraduate level and above) and university/college faculty to apply for support for research-driven projects.

*What Other Fellowships Does Sarai Offer?*

Sarai offers an exciting “Student Stipendship” for students at academic institutions wishing to pursue closely mentored and innovative research (contact: sadan at sarai.net) and a “FLOSS Independent Fellowship” for programmers and coders wishing to develop free and open source software (contact: viyyer at sarai.net). Please note that the Sarai Media Fellowships have been discontinued.

MORE INFORMATION

*New Directions for the Independent Fellowship Programme in 2006*

The new design for the Independent Fellowships will include:

–Systematic and regular monthly offline meets for fellowship holders in each of our major metros.
–Use of a list dedicated to discussion and critique in Hindi.
–Facilitation of more interaction, both from Sarai and also between fellowship holders in different locations.

*Why Research? What Do We Mean by Research? *

Sarai is committed to generating public knowledge and creativity through research. Hence the support for research driven projects and processes. The fellowships are in the nature of small grants in order to emphasise the initiation and founding of projects that would otherwise go unsupported.

By research we mean both archival and field research, and forays into theoretical work as well as any process or activity of an experimental or creative nature—for instance in the audiovisual media, as well as in journalism or the humanities and social sciences, or in architecture and socially attuned computing.

We are especially interested in supporting projects that formulate precise and cogent intellectual questions, reflect on modes of understanding that implicate knowledge production within a critical social framework, foregrounding processes of gathering information and of creating links between bodies of information. We also encourage research that is based on a strong engagement with archival materials and imaginative ways of tackling the question of the public rendition of research activity.

*The Experience of Previous Years*
This is the fifth year in which Sarai is calling for proposals for such fellowships. We would like to describe how the process has worked in previous years, as an indication of what applicants should expect.

These included work toward projects based on investigative reportage of urban issues; essays on everyday life; a history of urban Dalit performance traditions; soundscapes of the city; a graphic novel about Delhi; a documentation of the free software movement in India; research on displacement and rehabilitation in cities; interpretative catalogues of wall writings and public signages; digital manipulation of popular studio portrait photographs; the limitations of language in shrinking public spaces in Srinagar; histories of cinema halls and studios in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata; a study of the world of popular crime fiction in Bengali; reflections on the Kashmiri ‘encounter’ in Delhi, and many others. Successful applicants included freelance researchers, academics, media practitioners, artists, writers, journalists, activists and professionals such as nurses and bankers.

The projects were submitted in English, Hindi or a combination of the two languages. We have seen that projects that set important but practical and modest goals were usually successful, whereas those that may have been conceptually sound but lacked sufficient motivation to actually pursue a research objective on the field, usually did not take off beyond the interim stage.

Sarai interacts closely with the researchers over the period of the fellowship, and the independent fellows make a public presentation of their work at Sarai at the end of their fellowship period. During the term of their fellowship each fellow is required to make a posting to our email list every month, reporting on the development of their work. These postings, which are archived, are an important means by which the research process reaches a wider discursive community. They also help us to trace the progress of work during the grant period, and understand how the research interfaces with a larger public.

Submissions at the end of the fellowship period included written reports and essays, photographs, tape recordings, audio CDs, video, pamphlets, maps, drawings and html presentations. Fellows have made their final presentations in the form of academic papers, lecture-demonstrations and performances.

*What Happens to the Research Projects?*

The annual research projects add to our increasingly substantial archival collections on urban space and media culture. These are proving to be very significant value additions to the availability of knowledge resources in the public domain. Researchers are free to publish or render any part or all of their projects in any forms, independently of Sarai (but with due acknowledgment of the support that they have received from Sarai). Sarai Independent Research Fellows have gone on to publish articles in journals, work towards the making of films, exhibitions, websites, multimedia works and performances, and the creation of graphic novels, soundworks and books. We actively encourage all such efforts.

*What We Are Looking For*

As in the past, this year too we are looking for proposals that are imaginatively articulated, experimental and methodologically innovative, but which are pragmatic and backed up by a well-argued work plan which sets out a timetable for the project, as well as suggests how the support will help with specific resources (human and material) that the project needs.

Suggested Themes:

Sarai’s interests lie in the city and in media. Broadly speaking, any proposal that looks at the urban condition, or at media, is eligible. Proposals for projects that seek to push disciplinary limits and boundaries or break new ground, that offer fresh and detailed empricial insights, that desire to engage with questions and problems pertaining to cities, urban culture, media from a philosophically and conceptually enriched terrain of inquiry are especially welcome. We are committed to methodological and analytic rigour even as we are also keen to engage with sensibilities and registers of thought that are oppositional, dissident, heretical, imaginative and poetic.

More specifically, themes may be as diverse as the experience of work in different locations, institutions and work cultures, histories of urban sexuality, heretical figures and imaginations, histories of particular media practices, legality and illegality, migration, transportation, surveillance, intellectual property, social/digital interfaces, urban violence, street life, technologies of urban control, health and the city, the political economy of media forms, digital art and culture, or anything else that the applicants feel will resonate with the philosophy and interests that motivate Sarai’s work.

We are particularly interested in work that comes from non-metropolitan and mofussil urban spaces, even though we continue to look for strong projects that articulate the realities of major cities.