Reclaiming Karbala

Epsita Halder is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, India. She was Visiting Fellow at Max-Weber Kollege, University of Erfurt, Germany, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK.

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

A Note on Transliteration and Other Conventions

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Situating Karbala in Bengal

Chapter 1: Mapping Karbala from orality to print

Prologue

1.1 Creative application of Islamic ideas in early modern Bengal

1.1.1 Karbala in the Bengal region

1.1.2 Translation/rewriting as intertextuality, narrative as speech act

1.2 Dobhāshī: The language of the popular

1.2.1 From recitation to reading: At the threshold

1.2.2 How cheap, how scriptural: The internal ambivalence of Dobhāshī

1.3 Oral forms, scripted format: Whatever happened to the performative?

1.4 Writing as sacred ritual: Turning pain from body to book

Conclusion

Chapter 2: Print and Husayn-Centric Piety

Prologue

2.1 New sober Islam and the new authors

2.1.1 Sunna and maẓhab: Two elements of reformist sensibilities

2.1.2 From pir-centric piety to Prophet-centric piety: Muhammad as the moral template

2.2 The Caliphate and the ahl ul-bayt: Two legacies of Muhammad and his intercession

2.2.3 Namaz and the ahl ul-bayt: Muhammad’s twin treasures

2.3 Fatima, the mother of the martyrs: The template of Sabr

Conclusion

Chapter 3: The Rhetoric of Loss and Recovery: The Moment of Muslim jātīyatā

Prologue

3.1 The beginning of jātīẏatā: Bengaliness and Muslimness

3.1.1 The jātīẏa between Syed Ameer Ali and Jamāluddīn al-Afghānī

3.1.2 Anjumans, periodicals and the new print network: Affiliation, alliance and antagonism

3.2 Talking back to the Evangelists and Orientalists: Jesus versus Muhammad

3.3 The Bangla-Urdu divide: Bengali Muslims between region and nation

3.4 Literariness of jātīẏa sāhitya

Conclusion

Chapter 4: The Recovery of the Past: History and Biography

Prologue

4.1 A Hindu nationalist script and the Muslim jātīẏa

4.1.1 The search for jātīẏa: Territorial expansion and authentication

4.1.2 Writing the history of the sacred: Between Medina and Mymensingh

4.2 Jībanī/Carit as a modern genre: The contributions of Girishchandra Sen

4.3 Writing jātīẏa Itihās and jībanī as modern literature: Between the rational and the miraculous

4.4 Other histories and other biographies: Between the pan-Islamic and the province

4.5 Ummah, succession and the Karbala in jātīẏa sahitya

Conclusion

Chapter 5: Literature, Modernity, Multilinguality

Prologue

5.1 Miśra Bangla: Linguistic identity-in-difference

5.1.1 Reformist Islam and the claims over Bangla language: Āhle Hādis, Islām Darśan, Baṇgīẏa Mussalmān Sāhitya Patrikā

5.1.2 Bangla as miśra bhāshā in Muslim multilingualism

5.1.3 Redefining literary modernity: Recovery of puthis, discovery of folk

5.2 Karbala: Intra-literary reception and rejection

5.2.1 Narrative as argumentative discourse: Mohārram Kānda

5.2.2 From Mahāśmaśān Kābya to Maharam Śarīph bā Ātma-bisarjan Kābya: Kaykobad and Karbala

5.3 Poetry as Kaiphiẏat: Kārbālā Kābya and Maharam Śariph

Conclusion

Afterword: 300 Karbalas and Beyond

Bibliography

Index