SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

State and community revisited: Islamic education in later nineteenth century Punjab

Abstract

The emergence of religious cleavages in later nineteenth century Punjab society is traditionally explained as the result of intensifying competition for employment, land and economic resources and growing dispute over the province’s vernacular language. In this paper, it is shown that concerns for the provision of religious education were equally vital to the development of Punjab civil society upon religious lines. Across the Indian subcontinent, religious instruction had been systematically excluded from schools and colleges under the management of the colonial state. From 1860, this largely unexplored dimension of colonial secularism was contested by Punjabi Muslim elites concerned for the protection and promotion of Islam in the colonial milieu. With the assistance of notable European administrators, including Gottlieb Leitner, Muslim parties positioned Islam centrally in an emergent public sphere and successfully forced major revisions of government educational policy. Responsibility for Punjab schooling was transferred from the colonial state to a civil society increasingly denominalised.       

Speaker Biography

A former MA student at SOAS, I’ve recently completed a PhD thesis in the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kent. My research traces a history of secularism in colonial India through debates on education and law, focusing in particular on Muslim civil society and engagement with the colonial state. I teach at the University of Kent and also at Heythrop College, University of London, where I’m working for an institute committed to the study of religion and society.