The Hamdard University, New Delhi, has set up the “Centre for Studies on Indian Muslims” and | have been appointed to head it. One of the first tasks of the Centre would be to build up a documentation unit, focusing on the social, cultural, political and educational conditions of the Indian Muslims, as well as on inter-community relations. We would be grateful if you can contribute material to the centre in the form of books, journals, manuscripts, cassettes, posters, pamphlets etc. Although they form the second largest Muslim population in the world, relatively little serious academic literature exists on the Muslims of contemporary India. In the field of religious studies, South Asianists and Indologists typically focus on Hinduism and Budhism while classical Islamic studies remain wedded to the notion of the Middie-East as representing normative Islam. Consequently, the Indian Muslims continue to suffer from a lack of adequate academic attention and representation. The existing corpus of literature on the Indian Muslims suffers from several inadequacies. One problem is its overwhelming focus on Muslim political elites. Thus, numerous works exist on various Muslim dynasties in medieval India while we know much less about Muslim social history particularly the histories of various local ‘Muslim communities.
Likewise, much has been written on the activities of Muslim elites in the 15th and early 20th centuries & – leading up to the “independence” of India, while relatively little has been written on the conditions of ordinary Muslims in this period. (ysikand@yahoo.com ).
