History Faculty Publications
Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
8-2016
Publication Source
Journal of Asian Studies
Abstract
The origins and growth of Bengali Muslim identity have been the center of several studies till date. Most have concentrated on the politics of Muslim separatism in the 1930s with the politicization of the eastern Bengal’s peasantry and subsequent support for the Pakistan Movement. Neilesh Bose, in his Recasting the Region: Language Culture and Islam in Colonial Bengal shifts focus from politics to the Bengali literary sphere where Bengali Muslim intellectuals created a particular regional identity distinct from both mainstream Urdu Muslim and Hindu Bengali culture. This particular Bengali Muslim identity, Bose argues, was produced and established through writings of well known Muslim writers and activists, in Bengali language journals published and read in both Dacca and Calcutta but also in the mofussils, and through the functions of literary civic societies. Bengali identity that thus emerged in late colonial India was based not exclusively on religion but also on language and region.
Inclusive pages
859-860
ISBN/ISSN
0021-9118
Document Version
Postprint
Copyright
Copyright © 2016, The Association for Asian Studies Inc.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Volume
75
Issue
3
eCommons Citation
Roy, Haimanti, "Review: 'Recasting the Region: Language, Culture and Islam in Colonial Bengal'" (2016). History Faculty Publications. 140.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/hst_fac_pub/140
Comments
This article has been published in a revised form in Journal of Asian Studies. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works.
Permission documentation on file.