Adab and Banarsipan
Embodying Community among Muslim Artisans in Varanasi, India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/cist.v1i2.839Keywords:
Banaras, marginal Muslim communities, Muslims in IndiaAbstract
In this article, I consider adab (“cultured respectfulness”) and banarsipan (“Banaras-ness”) as two ways-of-being for working-class Muslims in the Indian city of Varanasi. Each of these identities contain its own ontology and truths about the remembered past, the lived present, and the processes which created them, and thus serves as alternatives to nationalist and communal identities and the histories they present. These ways-of-being are examined using a theoretical orientation that brings together concepts of bodily hexis and social memory, which offers a promising way to consider local or marginal Muslim communities, their emic configurations of meaning, power, status and personhood, and their relationship with dominant or normative Muslim groups and identities.References
Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Zones of Theory in the Anthropology of the Arab World.” Annual Review of Anthropology 18 (1989): 267-306.
Alter, Joseph S. “The Body of One Color: Indian Wrestling, the Indian State, and Utopian Somatics.” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 1 (1993): 49-72.
Asad, Talal. The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam. Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Occasional Paper, 1986.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Bourdieu, Pierre. In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity, 1990.
Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Freitag, Sandria B. ed. Culture and Power in Banaras: Community, Performance, and Environment, 1800-1980. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
Gottschalk, Peter. Beyond Hindu and Muslim: Multiple Identity in Narratives from Village India. Oxford University Press, 2000.
Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Edited, translated, and introduced by L.A. Coser. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Halbwachs, Maurice. The Collective Memory. New York: Harper & Row, 1980 (1951).
Kumar, Nita. Artisans of Benaras: Popular Culture and Identity, 1880-1986. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Kumar, Nita. “Work and Leisure in the Formation of Identity: Muslim Weavers in a Hindu City.” In Culture and Power in Benaras: Community, Performance and Environment 1800-1980. Ed. Sandria Freitag, 147-170. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
Mahmood, Saba. “Rehearsed Spontaneity and the Conventionality of Ritual: Disciplines of Salat.” American Ethnologist 28, no. 4 (2001): 827-853.
Mauss, Marcel. “Techniques of the Body.” Economy and Society 2, no. 1 (1973): 70-88.
Metcalf, Barbara. “Introduction.” In Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam. Ed. Barbara Metcalf, 1-20. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Nora, Pierre, ed. Les Lieux de mémoire. 7 vols. Paris: Edition Gallimard, 1984-1992.
Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7-25.
Nora, Pierre. “From lieux de mémoire to Realms of Memory.” In Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. Vol. 1, Conflicts and Divisions. Ed. Pierre Nora and Lawrence D. Kritzman, xv-xxiv. New York: Columbia University Press. 1996.
Pandey, Gyanendra. “In Defense of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today.” Representations 37, Special Issue, Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories (Winter 1992): 27-55.
Pinault, David. Horse of Karbala: Muslim Devotional Life in India. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Platts, John Thompson. A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1993 (1884).
Safi, Omid. “Introduction: The times they are a-changin’—A Muslim Quest for Justice, Gender Equality and Pluralism.” In Progressive Muslims. Ed. Omid Safi, 1-29. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003.
Simon, Beth. “Language Choice, Religion, and Identity in the Banarsi Community.” In Living Banaras: Hindu Religion in Cultural Context. Ed. Bradley R. Hertel and Cynthia Ann Humes, 245-268. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
Starrett, Gregory. “The Hexis of Interpretation: Islam and the Body in the Egyptian Popular School.” American Ethnologist 22, no. 4 (1995): 953-969.
