In the Making: Identity Formation in South Asia

A book of Meeto's essays has been published this month. I am sure the essays will be great.

In the Making: Identity Formation in South Asia

by Meeto (Kamaljit Bhasin-Malik)

This book critiques the taken-for-granted opposition of Hindu and Muslim as separate and cohesive categories, the frequent coding of syncretism as deviant, impermanent or tolerant, and moves towards a more nuanced approach. It questions the historicist preoccupation with incidents and processes of conflict, conquest, iconoclasm, and sets out to look at co-existence and peaceful interactions at the grassroots as equally crucial for the formation of identities. Written with perception and lucidity, it could be used profitably by scholars and by students, teachers, activists and the general reader.

Contents:

Introduction by Kumkum Sangari

1. A historiographical essay on Hindu-Muslim relations
2. Composite Culture in Pre-Partition Punjab: Fractures and Continuities
3. The Historian and the Indian Census: Accounts of Religion in late Nineteenth Century Punjab
4. The Census in Colonial Ceylon
5. Minority Rights, Secularism and Civil Society (co-authored with Yamini Aiyar)
6. The Ahmadi Problem: an unfinished essay
7. Appendices: a. I would like to ...; b. Concept Paper on the Census; c. Being an Ahmadi in an Age of 'Islamic terrorism'

Meeto by Judith Brown

About the Author:

Meeto (Kamaljit Bhasin-Malik) was doing her doctoral dissertation at Balliol College, University of Oxford, when she died in January 2006 at the age of 28. She had been awarded the prestigious Clarendon Fellowship. Before returning to academics, she worked in various capacities with organisations involved in developmental and gender issues, minorities and human rights, and peace movements.

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