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Deconstructing Muslim Identity
Making a Muslim: Reading Publics and Contesting Identities in Nineteenth Century North India by S Akbar Zaidi, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; pp 269, `950 (hardback).
S Akbar Zaidi’s latest work, Making a Muslim: Reading Publics and Contesting Identities in Nineteenth Century North India a much-awaited book, is a welcome addition to contemporary scholarship on the history of Muslims in South Asia. Though his work has been available to readers in the form of his PhD dissertation on the conception of the Muslim qaum for more than a decade, this book is a refined elaboration of the key arguments made by Zaidi regarding the construction of Muslim identity in colonial north India. The book adds to the corpus of recent writing on Muslims, Islam, and Urdu in colonial India (a field that is witnessing a recent rejuvenation) and contributes to a nuanced understanding of Muslim society in South Asia.
Who Is a Muslim?