1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910407712803321

Autore

Boivin Michel

Titolo

The Sufi Paradigm and the Makings of a Vernacular Knowledge in Colonial India : The Case of Sindh (1851-1929) / / by Michel Boivin

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2020

ISBN

9783030419912

3030419916

Edizione

[1st ed. 2020.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xv, 318 pages) : illustrations, maps

Disciplina

915.49180331

300

Soggetti

Ethnology

Knowledge, Theory of

Asia - History

Religion and sociology

Sociocultural Anthropology

Epistemology

History of South Asia

Sociology of Religion

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Sommario/riassunto

This book demonstrates how a local elite built upon colonial knowledge to produce a vernacular knowledge that maintained the older legacy of a pluralistic Sufism. As the British reprinted a Sufi work, Shah Abd al-Latif Bhittai's Shah jo risalo, in an effort to teach British officers Sindhi, the local intelligentsia, particularly driven by a Hindu caste of professional scribes (the Amils), seized on the moment to promote a transformation from traditional and popular Sufism (the tasawuf) to a Sufi culture (Sufiyani saqafat). Using modern tools, such as the printing press, and borrowing European vocabulary and ideology, such as Theosophical Society, the intelligentsia used Sufism as an idiomatic matrix that functioned to incorporate difference and a multitude of



devotional traditions-Sufi, non-Sufi, and non-Muslim-into a complex, metaphysical spirituality that transcended the nation-state and filled the intellectual, spiritual, and emotionalvoids of postmodernity.