Gautier, Laurence. 2024. Between Nation and ‘Community’: Muslim Universities and Indian Politics after Partition. 1st ed. Cambridge University Press
CSH congratulates Dr. Laurence Gautier, researcher and member of the Documenting Democracy: History, Politics, Citizenship area of the CSH, for the publication of her book entitled “Between Nation and ‘Community’: Muslim Universities and Indian Politics after Partition” by Cambridge University Press on 15 April 2024.
The book is available online: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009358507
Book Description: This book proposes a political history of Muslim universities in post-independence India, from 1947 to the 1990s. Based on a wide range of sources in English and in Urdu, it highlights the central role that these educational institutions played in the debates on national integration, secularism, minority rights and Muslim backwardness. After independence, Muslim universities found themselves at a critical juncture between central state authorities and India’s Muslim population. As public and Muslim institutions, they were to participate in nation-building as much as in the development of the Muslim ‘community’. By closely looking at the relation between these institutions and state authorities, the book teases out the ambiguities of the state’s Muslim policy. It also examines, in turn, how university members responded to this policy and developed competing conceptions of Muslim identity and citizenship, which structured the wider public debates on Muslims’ status in post-partition India.
