Since the consolidation of the Sangh Parivar in the 1990s and its subsequent ascendancy to power in 2014, there has been a significant rise in the studies and commentaries on Hindu nationalism and the Hindutva discourse in India. These studies have emphasized the nature of Hindutva ideology, its history, its organizational structure, its transnational nature, its fascist and Nazi underpinnings, its complicity in violence towards minorities, its subversion of democracy and its digital advancement. Affirming that Muslimness is the other of the Hindutva project, few studies have also focused on the violence (misnamed as communal riots) and the marginalization of Muslims in India (Brass 2005, Jaffrelot 2012).

However, what remains uninterrogated in these studies is whose language is compromised or erased. Such theorizations often locate the Muslim as a victim rather than an autonomous subject, whereby the potential of Islam is relegated, and Muslim political subjectivity is disciplined. Subsequently, the Muslim political responses to Hindutva are discarded using the explanatory power of extremism, foreclosing political legitimacy and debates around Muslim autonomy. This framing results from a particular arrangement of Muslim subjectivity post-independence facilitated through a preference for a so-called secular interpretation of Islam. A critique would necessitate the problematization of existing categories, concepts and importantly the ontological and epistemological presuppositions they are founded on.

The special issue aims to interrogate the construction of these presuppositions, thereby aiming to provide a more extensive historical and complex political background to the debates on what is happening in India. We invite articles positioning the political back into the plane of discussion not to merely de-pathologize Muslim political experiments in India but also to think through the conditions of possibility that constitute a Muslim self that is capable of a radical political imaginary.

Prospective themes that can be examined include:

• • Different ideas of minority and how it configures Muslim subjectivity
  • Legal ordering of communities and Muslim identity
  • Islamophobia – the Indian nation and racialized governmentality
  • Secularism and the disciplining of Muslim political autonomy
  • Epistemic condition of GWOT and Hindutva
  • Anti-terror legislations and logic of extremism
  • Indian culture and Hinduness
  • Hinduism as a political category
  • Political constitution of the religious communities.
  • Nationalism and the imagination of Muslim political

To apply, please mail your abstract (300 – 400 words) to:

Shaheen Kattiparambil: s.kattiparambil@leeds.ac.uk

Thahir Jamal Kiliyamannil: jamalkm@uohyd.ac.in

Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit a working paper of 3000 words for presentation in an online writing workshop. This workshop is to facilitate discussions of ideas and arguments before the final manuscript submission. The word count limit for the final manuscript is 8000-10,000 words with bibliography.

Abstract submission deadline:  31st May 2022

Notification of acceptance:  15th June 2022

Working paper submission deadline:  5th Sept 2022

Online writing workshop:  1st Oct 2022

Manuscript submission deadline:  15th Jan 2023