Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T06:22:47.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Saved by the Saint: Refusing and Reversing Partition in Muslim North India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2009

Anna Bigelow
Get access

Abstract

Although Punjab experienced serious violence during the 1947 partition, no one died in Malerkotla. This peace at partition is central to the collective identity of the town, founded in 1454 by a Sufi saint. Focusing on the power of the saint, his tomb shrine, and his multireligious cult, this study demonstrates how Malerkotla's idealized reputation is produced and perpetuated. Through ritual exchanges and oral and written accounts, residents and pilgrims integrate the partition experience into the history of the saint and his town, so that this moment comes to symbolize Malerkotla's pacific civic identity.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , May 2009 , pp. 435 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Bayly, C. A. 1985. “The Prehistory of ‘Communalism’? Religious Conflict in India, 1700–1860.” Modern Asian Studies 19 (2): 177–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bigelow, Anna. 2009a. “Narratives of the Life of Haider Shaikh (d. 1515) in Punjab.” In Islam in South Asia in Practice, ed. Metcalf, Barbara D.. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bigelow, Anna. 2009b. “A Tazkira for the Times: Saving Islam in Post-Partition Punjab.” In Tales of God's Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Translation, ed. Renard, John. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bowman, Glenn. 1993. “Nationalizing the Sacred: Shrines and Shifting Identities in the Israeli-Occupied Territories.” Man 28 (3): 431–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowman, Glenn. 2002. “Response to Robert Hayden.” Current Anthropology 32 (2): 220.Google Scholar
Butalia, Urvashi. 2000. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Casey, Edward S. 1987. Remembering: A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Casey, Edward S. 1996. “How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time.” In Senses of Place, ed. Feld, Steven and Basso, Keith H, 13–52. Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Eaton, Richard. 1984. “The Political and Religious Authority of the Shrine of Baba Farid.” In Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, ed. Metcalf, Barbara D, 333–56. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ernst, Carl W. 1993. “An Indo-Persian Guide to Sufi Shrine Pilgrimage.” In Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam, ed. Smith, Grace Martin and Ernst, Carl W., 43–67. Istanbul: Isis Press.Google Scholar
Flueckiger, Joyce Burkhalter. 2006. In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Gilmartin, David. 1979. “Religious Leadership in the Pakistan Movement in Punjab.” Modern Asian Studies 13 (3): 485–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gopin, Marc. 2005. Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gottschalk, Peter. 2001. Beyond Hindu and Muslim: Multiple Identity in Narratives from Village India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hasan, Mushirul, ed. 2000. Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics, and the Partition of India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch. 2002. “‘We Have No Orders to Save You’: State Complicity and Participation in Communal Violence in Gujarat.” Human Rights Watch 14 (3). http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2002/india/gujarat.pdf [accessed January 14, 2009].Google Scholar
Ibbetson, D., MacLagan, E. D., and Rose, H. A.. 1883. A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province. Lahore: Government Printing House, 1919.Google Scholar
Ismail, Sufi Muhammad. 1995. Bagh Anbiya Punjab [Garden of the saints of Punjab]. Malerkotla: Janab Doctor Muhammad Nizamuddin Sahib.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, Patricia. 2000. Frogs in a Well: Indian Women in Purdah. Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Jolly, Asit. 1997. “Myth of Malerkotla.” The Asian Age, December 17.Google Scholar
Kansteiner, Wulf. 2002. “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies.” History and Theory 41 (2): 179–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapferer, Bruce. 1983. A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Kaul, Suvir, ed. 2002. The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Knipe, David. 1989. “Night of the Growing Dead.” In Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees: Essays on the Guardians of Popular Hinduism, ed. Hiltebeitel, Alf, 123–56. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Liebskind, Claudia. 1998. Piety on Its Knees: Three Sufi Traditions in South Asia in Modern Times. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lindholm, Charles. 1995. “Caste in Islam and the Problem of Deviant Systems: A Critique of Recent Theory.” In Muslim Communities of South Asia: Culture, Society, and Power, ed. Madan, T. N., 449–67. New Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Maler Kotla State Gazetteer. 1904. Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press.Google Scholar
Menon, Ritu, and Bhasin, Kamla. 1998. Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition. New Delhi; Kali for Women.Google Scholar
Mir, Farina. 2002. “The Social Space of Language: Punjabi Popular Narrative in Colonial India, 1850–1900.” PhD diss., Columbia University.Google Scholar
Pandey, Gyanendra. 1999. “Can a Muslim Be an Indian?” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (4): 602–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pandey, Gyanendra. 2001. Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History in India. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Portelli, Alessandro. 2001. The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Stewart, Tony K. 2001. “In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving the Hindu-Muslim Encounter through Translation Theory.” History of Religions 40 (3): 260–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sultana, Anila. 1993. “Muslims of Malerkotla: A Study of Change.” PhD diss., Punjabi University, Patiala.Google Scholar
Talbot, Ian. 2002. Introduction to Partition and Genocide: Manifestation of Violence in Punjab, 1937–1947, by Hansen, Anders Bjørn. New Delhi: India Research Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Taylor, Christopher. 1999. In the Vicinity of the Righteous: Ziyara and the Veneration of Muslim Saints in Late Medieval Egypt. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Troll, Christian W., ed. 1989. Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, History, and Significance. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Werbner, Pnina, and Basu, Helene, eds. 1998. Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality, and Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar