Shivdasani Visiting Fellow talk
by Dr Ankur Barua
Week 6, Wednesday 4 June, 2.30-3.30, OCHS Library
Various patterns of amicability and antipathy have been generated across Hindu and Muslim borderlines in Bengal and these patterns emerge at dynamic intersections between self-understandings and social shifts on contested landscapes. The characterization of relations between Hindus and Muslims either in terms of an implacable hostility or of an unfragmented peace is historically inaccurate, for these relations have been modulated by a shifting array of socioeconomic and sociopolitical parameters. From within these crucibles, we witness the “indigenization” of Islam – that is, the attempt to speak the multiple languages of Islam by using local idioms, subjectivities, and institutions. Thus, certain processes of sociocultural otherization are concurrent with conscious efforts at highlighting everyday forms of exchanges across the milieus of Hindus and Muslims.
Dr Ankur Barua has a B.Sc. in Physics from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, and read Theology and Religious Studies at the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge. His primary research interests are Vedāntic Hindu philosophical theology and Indo-Islamic styles of sociality.
He researches the conceptual constellations and the social structures of the Hindu traditions, both in premodern contexts in South Asia and in colonial milieus where multiple ideas of Hindu identity were configured along transnational circuits between India, Britain, Europe, and USA.
