The Pious Self is a Jewel in Itself - Usamah Yasin Ansari

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DOI: 10.1177/026272801003000304

2010 30: 275South Asia ResearchUsamah Yasin Ansari

'Shariatic Modernity'The Pious Self is a Jewel in Itself : Agency and Tradition in the Production of

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SOUTH ASIARESEARCH

www.sagepublications.comDOI: 10.1177/026272801003000304

Vol. 30(3): 275298Copyright 2010

SAGE PublicationsLos Angeles,London,New Delhi,Singapore and

Washington DC

THE PIOUS SELF IS A JEWEL INITSELF: AGENCY AND TRADITIONIN THE PRODUCTION OFSHARIATIC MODERNITY

Usamah Yasin Ansari1Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada

abstract This article historically situates Ashraf Ali ThanvisBahishti Zewar(Heavenly Ornaments) as a manual for the productionof pious dispositions. Written in 1905 for Muslim women in northIndia, this Urdu text teaches women how to train themselves to bepious and provides an ideal picture of the well-formed woman, self-reflective of how her actions correspond to the Divine will. Broughtup as a Muslim, she has already been socialised into subordination

to this will. Becoming self-reflective, linked to a critical rite ofpassage of an individuals life, involves more regulated, arduousand deliberate reiterative work on the self. Without advocating that

women should be managed through religious idiom, the analysispresented here challenges euro-centric perceptions of modernityand tradition and proposes that we need to think through morecarefully what kind of agency is actually involved in consolidatingthe Muslim subject who submits to Divine will in a framework ofshariatic modernity. This discussion carries immense relevancefor current debates about how Muslim women may address the

challenges of living in the West.keywords: agency, Deobandi, eurocentrism, Islam, modernity, Muslimwomen, piety, private-public, secularisation, shariatic modernity,Urdu, women

Introduction: The Bahishti Zewarand its Message

Would our understanding of agency posit a self that emerges as one that needs to beundone, whose presence as a sedimentation of reiterative practices needs to be disrupted

in a process of desired change? What do we do with agentive action that trains onesown body to submit? What happens to the body that carefully follows injunctionslike When speaking, do not make excessive gestures with your hands, and Whenwalking, pick each foot up completely?

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276 South Asia Research Vol. 30 (3): 275298

Sab se achcha paon ka zewar ye hai noor basre/Tum raho saabet qadm har waqt raah-e-naik par//Seem-o-zar ka paon main zewar ho to dar nahin/Raasti se paon phisle gar na meri jaan kahin//

The best adornment on your feet is the Divine light,So keep your steps fixed at every moment on the road of piety.Do not fret if silver and gold adorn your feet,If your feet will not stray off the path of Truth, my dear.

These are the last two couplets of the opening poem of the Bahishti Zewar, a bookcommonly given to new Muslim brides in South Asia (Metcalf, 1990: 3).2 The image

we are left with is of a body trying to walk the right path, itself a familiar central idiomofsharia. This is not only symbolic, as Thanvi actually refers to bodily comportment,here the foots movement. Indeed the body that has been trained to walk in such a waythat her feet will not stray from the right path has no need for adornments of gold orsilver. One must probe into how a subject is trained to know which path is right, andhow to move the body to make sure this path is followed. If we think of the body inthe couplets as linked to a subject being formed as a pious self, as one whose body hasbeen trained so that her being is disposed to Gods will, it becomes clear that the workinvolved in becoming pious is arduous and cannot be conceptualised as emerging fromwithin the self without guidance. We see the bodys outward faculties conceptualisedas important aspects of piety. If the foot is not trained properly and strays from theright path, the pious self has failed to be formed. To understand both this particularlycomported foot and its path, one must map the historical conditions that give themtheir currency. We shall see that this has much contemporary relevance.

The Bahishti Zewarcan be considered a manual for how women can train themselvesto be the type of pious self imagined in the quoted couplet. Written in Urdu in 1905by Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi (18631943), a prolific Muslim thinker embeddedin the Deobandi reform movement in north India, this text attempts to define theappropriate bodily and social behaviour for women as well as the methods for their

inculcation. Thanvi meticulously outlines how women can have destinies equal tomen if they are able to control their lower selves by articulating appropriate behaviour.He imagines a pious self made receptive to the Divine will through sets of finely tuneddispositions inculcated by following and reiterating the right type of actions, rangingfrom utterances to bodily comportment and outward appearance. Performing theright kinds of actions, then, does not simply produce a faade of piety. Rather, properreiterations are both the means to attain, and the characteristic of, a particular modeof being pious.3

The discussion in this article is more modest in scope than trying to map the

mode of being (and the method of becoming this being) that Thanvis injunctionsimagine. It merely uses the text to examine how imagining this mode of a pious selfmay have emerged historically. After introducing the text, it reflects on the Deobandi



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Ansari: The Pious Self is a Jewel in Itself 277

South Asia Research Vol. 30 (3): 275298

reform movement, which helps to situate the importance and influence of this text in

defining proper Muslim feminine etiquette in South Asia, as well as transnationally.Discussing the thinking of Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi then problematises the thesisthat he somehow refuted modernity. Situating Thanvis discourse as emerging out ofhistorically positioned social transformations in colonial India, it is argued that it canbe seen as articulating an alternative type of modernity, which I refer to as shariaticmodernity. Situating the text in this way, one can hope to map the type of pious selfimagined by Thanvi himself.

Ornaments of Piety: A Sketch of the Text

Reading the text, it becomes clear, first of all, that Thanvi is writing for a generalaudience, not just the learned ulema, religious scholars and legal experts. He speaksparticularly to women, putting a burdensome responsibility on them to engage inmanaging themselves in an appropriate manner. He uses a vernacular Urdu, not Persianor Arabic, which is usually associated with ulemawriting. Metcalf (1990) has producedan impressive English translation and introduction to the Bahishti Zewar. Out ofthe ten chapters (or Books) that comprise this text, she has only partially translatedhalf (parts of Books One, Six, Seven, Eight and Ten). She has also not translated theBahishti Gauhar (Heavenly Gem), an appendix aimed more specifically at men

(Metcalf, 1990: 9). To provide an overview of the text (Thanvi, 1960), I use my owntranslation and summations of chapters that have not been covered by Metcalf.4

Thanvi outlines normative rules for ritual and social life common to Hanafi SunniMuslims and a specific temperament of piety and moderation (Metcalf, 1990: vii). ToMetcalf, the idea is to produce a common standard of practice for Muslims by citingthe sharia(the Divine Code),comprised of the Quran, hadith (sayings of the Prophet)and selective interpretations of Hanafi jurisprudence (fiqh). I would add, as illustratedbelow, that this common standard would be recognisable only when a type of self iscultivated through certain methods outlined by Thanvi. Metcalf (1990: 1) situatesthe text as part of the spiritual reform movement in north India at the turn of thecentury. She notes that women had previously not been considered bastions of traditionuntil these reform movements of the twentieth century. Indeed earlier religious textsgenerally spoke to public men regarding their affairs. Topics like management of thehousehold and training womens intimate life-worlds are not characteristic of classicalIslamic texts andfiqh (Abu-Lughod, 1998; al-Hibri, 2000; Ali, 2005).

For Metcalf (1990: 2), the basic principle of the Bahishti Zewar is that womenmust be instructed if they are to act properly. The historical context for this push toregulate womens conduct in north India reflects the end of Muslim political dominanceand the emerging presence of British rule that encouraged religious identities, given

that a range of alternative cultural values were in circulation (Metcalf, 1990: 4).Another important situating factor is that the ulemawere banished from the colonialpolitical arena and started thinking about the need to manage womens private worlds



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and supposedly erroneous customs through emphasis on organising self-control

(Metcalf, 1990: 89). Thanvis text reveals a type of scriptural authority enteringwomens realms. With this entry comes a notion that local custom had poisonedwomens ability to reason (aql). This is not reason emerging from a transcendentalsubject, but rather the ability to conform to Gods will by proper appropriation of theshariaby discerning between good and bad actions (Metcalf, 1990: 33).

To refine this aql, Book One outlines basic principles of belief, prayers and generallegal matters. Thanvi also discusses writing letters and even offers an alphabet. Thereader is taken through a number of steps where women learn to read and pronounceletters, and then how to write letters addressed with proper etiquette. Thanvi moveson to using allegory through several stories from the Prophetic tradition and illustrates

sins to be weary of. I agree with Metcalf (1990: 39) that Book One is congested withevery kind of argument he could make to convey the seriousness with which heregarded literacy and religious education for girls.

Books Two and Three are concerned with the specific form Islamic rituals aresupposed to take, while Books Four and Five begin to paint the picture of a conjugalfamily and matters relating to marriage, divorce and finance. Book Two centrallycovers how to pray particular types ofnamaaz(or salaat, ritualised prayers at appointedtimes or events) and how to prepare the dead for burial. Thanvi also discusses properpronunciation of Arabic words for the purposes of worship and notes that one should

repeat these words until proper pronunciation is achieved. This reveals the centralityof training the body properly for acts of worship, in this case the ability to move themouth appropriately. Similarly, Book Three is concerned with ritual matters likefasting, sacrifice, charity, pilgrimage, oaths and so on. By outlining forbidden andacceptable items, Thanvi attempts to produce a disposition that can better discernbetween what should be consumed or enacted and what should not. For example, hedefines acceptable clothing and veiling (libaas aur parde ka bayaan).

Books Four and Five seem more relevant to how newly married women are beingremade, with concerns about household management and conjugal bliss. Book Fourfocuses on marriage rights, divorce and custody. Thanvi even claims that it is best tohave your own conjugal space (aise jagah diyowe jis main shohar ka koi rishtahdaar narehta ho).In fact, it is best if that space is empty, so that husband and wife can livewithout feeling awkward (be-takallufi) and can raise their children comfortably. Asal-Hibri (2000) claims, classic Islamic juridical texts never discuss any obligation forwives to do housework or rear children in the manner outlined here. Thanvis advicemust thus be considered as a reformative effort seeking to transform social relations,and not as imposition of an anachronistic type of Muslim family.5 This issue will bediscussed at length later.

This chapter also outlines the rights (huquq) relating to the husband, his relations

and other Muslims. Briefly, it also covers how women are to eat and behave in acongregation. Book Five is more concerned with financial matters like purchases andloans. These two sections reveal an interest in producing women who can create a



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tranquil, well managed household; they are almost readable as an effort in empowering

women to be skilled homemakers.In Book Six, Thanvi begins to outline why womens practices have thus far beenproblematic to producing a managed household and a healthy Muslim community.Metcalf (1990: 79) claims this section is primarily interested in seeing if particularcustoms are acceptable according to the sharia. Thanvi feels able to make moralstatements through citing the authority of the sharia, doing so, however, withoutmuch explicit jurisprudential Hanafi fiqh argument, since quoting and generallyreferring to the Quran and hadith (the Prophets conduct) is considered sufficient fora non-specialist audience.

Metcalf (1990) translates the title of Book Seven as On Comportment and Char-

acter, Reward and Punishment. The Urdu title is aadaab aur ikhlaaq aur sawaab auraazaab ke bayaan main ibadaton ka sunwaarna, which I translate as Rectifying Wor-ship Through a Discussion on Comportment, Character, Reward and Punishment.This section constitutes the most detailed discussion on how feelings and dispositionscan be transformed and may be produced through certain practical techniques. Thetitle itself reveals how external and bodily practices are central to cultivating the piousinner-self.

Metcalf (1990: 164) discusses the centrality ofaqlin Thanvis discussion: the abilityto discern between right and wrong. This ability, shared by humans and angels, is the

way to control the lower and rebellious self, the nafs. It is only through repeated correctbehaviour (Metcalf, 1990: 164) that the nafscan be subdued. To this end, Thanviprovides do and dont lists, so that appropriate behaviour may be inculcated and onecan be disposed to discern right and wrong actions. These lists relate to matters of theheart, the tongue and the whole body.

The section on reforming the heart is particularly important in producing theright type of person, because the heart symbolises the totality of personhood (Metcalf,1990: 165). One must remove vice from the heart to realise important principles ofworship, human interaction and habit. Removing vice is always linked to practicesone can articulate with conscious deliberation, often body movements or forms ofutterance. This means that outer behaviour is both the cause and the fruit of the innerself; therefore ritual action is transformative (Metcalf, 1990: 167).

In my own reading of the Urdu text, I find Thanvis discussion on the harms (burai)of and cure (elaaj) for anger most telling. Anger is often considered a passionate kindof emotion which we usually assume comes from within. Thanvi, however, points tothe way anger can be controlled through certain outwardly actions. By becoming overlyangry, a person can lose sight of her limits and is no longer aware of the outcomes ofactions (anjaam sochne ka hosh nahin rehta). To control this anger, then, one shouldleave the presence of the object of anger. The person should think that she, too, has

the same kinds of faults in the sight of God as the object of her anger. She shouldthen repeatedly recite I seek refuge in God (auzobillah), drink water and make ritualablutions. Though this task is arduous, after some days of repeating these actions, her



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temperament will change and anger will be banished from the heart (chand roz is tarhe

ghussah rokne se phir khud-ba-khud qaabu main aajaegadil se nikal jaega).Book Eight is relevant to modelling the right person in that it provides a list of ahundred significant women in Muslim history. Metcalf notes that there is no ideal

woman because each biography is distinct. What connects these accounts is howwomen must use reason to refine their characters. For example, Thanvi references theQueen of Sheba (Bilqis) to illustrate that if one is informed on some point of truereligion, one should not resist it out of modesty or the customs of family (Metcalf,1990: 26869). As a subtext, these biographies are telling an audience that the work

of creating a pious self is a type of wilful work that any woman can articulate. Theornaments, or rewards, that the correctly trained self can hope for are in many wayssymbolised by these biographical personalities.

Book Nine is quite different from these biographies and largely focuses on healthmatters. Vanzan (2000) articulates a telling commentary on the type of hygiene

Thanvi envisions. He is obsessed with levels of cleanliness, common illnesses and theircures and the well-being of the body. Vanzan (2000) claims that Thanvis advocacy ofunani(Greek) medicine, commonly associated with Muslims, was a type of resistancearticulated by the ulemaagainst British attempts to control medicine. It became a partof the Deoband curriculum, and the ulemathere also sawunanias a type of know-ledge that could intimately reach the population. Thus, medicine becomes a type of

piety, whereby consciousness of the Divine also involves vigilance towards hygiene andbodily well-being. Women must thus be instructed on matters of health and bodilywell-being, so that the community as a whole will not fall ill.6

According to Metcalf (1990: 315), when first encountered, Thanvis Book Tenlooks like a hodgepodge.7 Yet I found that it provided some of the most valuableinsights into the type of training Thanvi imagines. It contains a number of essays andlists that outline again the correct type of feelings, movements, controls, behavioursand practices of household management like sewing and making soap. The first list

refers to everyday common sense. The second focuses on common deficits in women.

As will become clear, this does not mean this deficit is necessarily innate, because itcan be overcome with proper training. For instance, Thanvi includes a chart abouthow to pronounce words in Urdu properly because mispronunciation is also a typeof weakness (ghalat bolna bhi aik ayb hai). Pronunciation will become better if oneconsciously repeats correct pronunciations. A third list focuses on specific mechanismsas means of achieving self-control and the fourth is interested in rearing children.The fifth list articulates the right kind of behaviours to be practised towards others inappropriate social contexts.

Book Ten is an important window into Thanvis overall methodology because it

sums up the type of person that can be produced by following the instructions heoutlines in the preceding chapters (Metcalf, 1990: 327). It provides a picture of thewell-formed woman in which self-control is centrally important: a woman who does



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not say anything or do anything before she carefully reflects on its outcomes; a woman

who is ordered and systematic.

Ornaments of Reform: Thanvi and the Deobandi Movement

To understand the context for the imagining of this type of systematised woman,I trace the Deobandi reform movement Thanvi was embedded in. Metcalf (1982: 5)outlines the basic motivating principles for Islamic revival movements in northIndia at the turn of the century. These included, first, the interpretation of problems

facing the Muslim community as religious; second, presenting problems related toindividual moral destitution and thus desiring to fashion a new type of person for a

new type of society; and finally, fighting against practices deemed outside of scripturaljustification. These three principles are mapped onto the pages of the Bahishti Zewar.Furthermore, the texts referencing ofhadith illustrates that reform movements in themodern era claim that the Prophet and the generation following the Prophet providethe best typography for behaviour (Metcalf, 1982: 4). This encompasses two ideas,that of tajdid(trying to be like the Prophet) andjihad(the effort required to con-form to Gods will). Thus the Bahishti Zewaris situated within a wide array of reformistprojects but specifically encased within the Deoband seminary.

The Dar-ul-Ulum at the Deoband seminary in Uttar Pradesh was started in 1866

by Maulana Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Maulana Muhammad Qasim and MaulanaNanautavi (Rizvi, 1980). It has trained teachers and scholars who have spread Deobandithinking around the world (Metcalf, 1982: 8). Many students come from a number

of different countries (Ahmad, 1996: 27) and it has even been called a transnationalphenomenon because schools affiliated with the seminary are found around the world(Reetz, 2007). It has a series of departments with a complex bureaucratic system.By the twentieth century, the Deoband University had eighteen affiliated collegesfrom Chittagong to Peshawar and had issued 269,215 fatwahs in its first century(Dryland, 1993). After its first century, there were 8,934 Deobandi schools (Metcalf,

1982: 136).The primary purpose of founding the school was to train ulemawho could articu-

late a uniformly reformed Islam in India. Branch schools were subject to centraladmission, with formal admission requirements and sometimes even inspections

(Metcalf, 1982: 100, 125). With so many schools in place, the ulemawere in a positionnot only to educate elites and bureaucrats as they did before (the government schoolswere open for them), but could now also influence the standards of piety and beliefof a large number of individual Muslims through sermons and the circulation oftexts. Furthermore, the widely popular and transnational TablighiJamaat missionary

movement has been largely inspired by its teachings and has thus been an importantagent in widening the audience of Deobandi thinking. These teachings focus on thereformation of Muslim selves and on inculcating proper modes of appearing and



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behaving as Muslims through holding seminars and door-to-door initiatives (Chatterji

and Mehta, 2007; Gaborieau, 2000; Masud, 2000; Sikand, 2002 and 2006). Clearlythis is an influential institution whose ideas have an important currency for Muslimcommunities in South Asia and beyond.

The schools curriculum is organised along four stages of development, wherestudents would be trained in subjects such as Arabic, Persian rational sciences,jurisprudence logic, hadith sciences and Quranic sciences. There is even a physicaleducation department (Rizvi, 1980: 202). Burke (1994) describes a highly structuredand regimented routine that students are made to follow. The curriculum outlines thetexts to be taught and in which year. Western sciences and English are not present inthis curriculum (Masud, 2000). Importantly, instruction is in Urdu and thus serves

as an important repository of Urdu in the face of Hindis post-Partition dominance inthe region (Ahmad, 2000; Brass, 1974; King, 1994; Rahbar, 2003). The use of Urduby the ulemacan also be linked to the British discouraging the use of Persian in northIndia (Naeem, 2004).

Before the Deoband seminary opened, students ofmadrassahs received religiousinstruction with an alim (scholar) they chose and studied without a central libraryor classrooms. These facilities have become key to the Deoband institution (Burke,1994: 80). Funds for religious institutions came from endowments and through thestate. The Deoband has always been free for students and is not funded through

the state. Indeed it never accepted funds from either the British administration norfrom any subsequent national governments (Dryland, 1993; Rizvi, 1980: 219). Theorganisational structure is clearly distinct from classic forms found in the madrassahand reflects transformations in structures of religious authority. This point will becomeimportant in challenging the idea that the school is a bastion of traditionalism.

Metcalf (1982: 7) has focused on the importance of the seminary to the Deobandimovement and shows that the school emerged out of the loss of Muslim political powerfollowing theghadar(revolt) of 1857. She claims that the catastrophic revolt situatedthe emergence of many Islamic revival movements in India and also reflected theulemas loss of public political influence. Metcalf (1982) discusses how the punishmentof Muslims and particularly the ulemaafter 1857 spelled disaster for seats of religiousauthority. The ulemadealt with this by producing schools, trying to inculcate Islamicqualities into individual lives and it became more and more preoccupied with trying toreform the self. Another effect of the revolt was that Delhi was in ruins. Manyulemathus left for qasbahsscattered along northern India.8Deoband was one such town(Devji, 1991; Metcalf, 1982: 91).

If Deoband was part of a movement that aimed to reform private selves, then oneimportant way of reaching individuals was through the circulation of print media. It isthus important to reflect briefly on how the circulation of Urdu texts to a more general

audienceas opposed to Persian and Arabic texts aimed for specialist ulemaplayedan important role in a gendered Muslim revivalism. Devji (1991) tracks how, followingthe Revolt, there emerged a number of texts concerned with Muslim womens literacy,



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household management and ending their engagement in folk practices. Key works

included Nazir Ahmads novels, Mumtaz Alis journal for women (Tehzib-e-Niswan),publications of the Aligarh Womens Zanana and of course Ashraf Ali Thanvis (1999)Bahishti Zewar.

Trying to understand Thanvis text, it is important to note that all these other texts,playing a part in producing a type of selves for Muslims in north India, were alsoparticularly concerned with women as signifiers of the communitys health. Deemingthe community ill, women were seen as needing education. Devji (1991: 141) notes,however, that there was also a worry that though educating women would improvethe community, it could lead to moral problems with more women entering thepublic sphere.

I argue that Thanvis work importantly provides a way out of this predicament byproviding a manual for women with mechanisms that can produce a trained piousself while remaining within the home.9 Devji (1991) also notes that the BahishtiZewaris itself an entire curriculum for women, including letter-writing and homecare. It is distinct from the other texts he mentions, though, because it evokesthe shariaas the central authority for trying to train women. But this does not assumethat the text, because it is citing religious authority, was not embedded in political andsocial transformations. Indeed, Robinson (1993: 234) notes that the circulation ofUrdu religious texts like the Bahishti Zewarmeant that traditional authority over the

transmission of Islamic knowledge was itself being transformed. Thus in the madrassahsystem, one would receive an ijaza(a certificate of permission)to teach a particulartext, which would include all the names of those who had transmitted the text. Thusthe adoption of print by the ulemameant that traditional transmission structures werebeing altered and subsequently individuals were becoming responsible to approachtext themselves.

Tracking these emergent texts, Devji (1991: 142) identifies that revivalist move-ments that were circulating religious texts were particularly important for urban orqasbah service professionals, whom he terms shurafa(singular: sharif). The ulemas useof print was thus an important aspect of producing asharifidentity as distinct fromthe agrarian classes and from the aristocratic classes, allowing the sharifto cite religiousorthodoxy in producing their sense of self. Devji outlines how this identity becamebased on types ofadab (etiquette) which were expected to be articulated by women aswell. Before this period, Devji (1991: 141) claims, adab was necessary for certain classesof men and courtesans, but not for wives and other women. As Metcalf (1984a and1984b) argues, this adabwent beyond trying to form asharifself, becoming prescribedas the main way one can control their lower selves (nafs) through inculcating correctbehaviour. Clearly the Bahishti Zewarwas concerned with this aspect. In fact, BookEight is preoccupied with illuminating historical examples of women who successfully

controlled their lower selves through using their reason (aql) and thus became fullyformed pious persons. Naim (1984) thus comments that the Bahishti Zewaris thefirst adab literature directed to women.

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Another important aspect of revivalist texts that tried to reach into the very intimate

lives of women centered on new notions of the privatepublic boundary. Devji(1991: 148) claims that movements like the Deoband had to interest themselves withthe private realm of the community and focus on self-forming, because the Britishhad already constituted the public realm. Furthermore, the notion of religion in theprivate sphere was itself a legacy of a colonial reshaping of traditional structures ofspatial authority where Muslim religious institutions had once had certain significance.Thus the shurafahad to re-create themselves by utilising religious idiom in their privateconduct. Print media like the Bahishti Zewarbecame central in mediating this process(Devji, 1991: 148).10

Indeed, if the private was to become an Islamic fortress because public institutions

of religious authority had been disbanded, then pagan elements had to be purged fromit. These were elements often associated with local cultures and with women. A newinterest in remaking women thus emerged for the ulemathat went beyond thinkingof them merely as a source of social strife (fitna) who needed to be secluded from thepublic (Devji, 1991: 153).

Chatterjee (1993) discusses how nationalist movements first carved a space ofsovereignty within colonial society in the spiritual/inner realm before contestingimperial power in the political landscape. Anti-colonial nationalism divided the worldof institutions and practices into two distinct spheres, the material outer realm and

the spiritual inner realm. The outer realm is where the West has proven its superiorityand where this superiority must be studied and emulated. The inner realm, on theother hand, has the essential marks of cultural identity (Chatterjee, 1993: 6). Inthis interior realm a modern national culture was produced, but one that claimednot to be western. In thinking through Chatterjees framework, one must note thatunlike the nationalists, the Deobandi movement did not wish to eventually seizesovereignty in the public domain, because the Deobandi movement was not interestedin state power or public institutions (Engineer, 2006; Metcalf, 1982; Naeem, 2004).Thus the formation of a pious self was itself a coveted private goal and primarily ameans to improve the community. Chatterjees discussion excellently illustrates thattransformations in the private lives of women also became important in dealing withcolonial power in public institutions.

The Deobandi movement also emerged in relation to other movements trying towork out issues of Muslim identity in the north. Much scholarship has focused onSir Sayyid Ahmad Khans response as trying to disseminate European arts, sciencesand social graces through the Aligarh School (Masud, 2000). There is, however, littlefocus on the ulema,because they are often dismissed as mere traditionalists (Naeem,2004) and because they turned away from the state. However, as Sanyal (1996)shows,various groups ofulemaemerged at this point with varying discourses. Ahmad (1996)

and Dryland (1993: 55), for example, discuss the Deobandi movement as emergingalongside the Barelvi Ulema, the Ahl-e-Hadith and the already established FarangiMahal in Lucknow. The Deoband was thus trying to win hearts away from these other



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ulema, while also competing with Hindu reform movements. Indeed the Deobandi

focus on problematising decadent practices, superstitions and saint worship (Ahmad,1996: 28) shares currency with the Hindu reformist Arya Samaj (Dryland, 1993;Gupta, 2001). Claiming, then, that the Deobandi movement was merely a bastion

of traditionalist thought misses how it was positioned within a rich colonial fieldwhere a number of contending discourses were trying to produce new types of selves.The circulation of texts associated with Muslim reform movements was central inproducing the subjectivity of ashurafaclass (Devji, 1991) within a discursively richhistorical moment.

Metcalf (1982) claims that the Deobandi movement appealed so much to sharifMuslims because it hinted that a distinct identity could be produced through cultivatingappropriate language, ways of being in social gatherings and some degree of religiousfamiliarity. The Bahishti Zewar, then, serves as a manual for fostering a Muslim ethicalpersonality distinct from the British, the Hindu and other Muslim classes. Metcalf

(1984b) notes that the Deoband and other ulemaat the turn of the century wantedto set standards for Muslim identities beyond certain classes (like the shurafa) with thehope that such manuals would change the wider population as well.

This brings us to Foucaults (1990) discussion on how the deployment of sexuality

operated as a way of self-affirmation for the bourgeoisie by using the technology of sexto preserve and cultivate their own body and their own species/being before deploying

its technology to the working classes. This shows parallels to how the ulemausedreligious discourse to produce the shurafasense of self and then set certain standards ofbehaviour for the entire community. For Foucaults European context, the discourse of

sexuality was necessary to differentiate the self from the aristocracy, who were definedby blue blood, and the working class, who had (at first) no sex because their welfarewas not a project (Foucault, 1990: 126). We see a parallel string of arguments whenconceptualising how the Deobandi circulation of religious manuals helped produce a

sharifidentity that cited religious orthodoxy to distance itself from the agrarian classesand the aristocrat classes (Devji, 1991; Metcalf, 1982), with the hope of eventually

altering the entire community. The Bahishti Zewaralsoreveals how animating womenin particular ways could become central to imagining these emerging selves.

A Doctor for the Ages? Ashraf Ali Thanvi and Shariatic Modernity

Who were these thinkers trying to animate women like this? Thus far I referred tothe Deobandi movement and the ulemawithout thinking of particular alim (singularofulema). I now turn to the author of the Bahishti Zewarto obtain a sense of howDeobandi reformist sentiment was sedimented in a particular thinkers work. This will

help us further situate the Bahishti Zewarand the movement that birthed it.Thanvi was a Farouqi Sheikh from Thana Bhavan.11 According to Saeed

(1999: 24) he strictly followed a regimented set of rules in his daily bodily conduct.



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Aside from the Bahishti Zewar,he published almost a thousand books in Urdu, Persian

and Arabic (Naeem, 2004). Thanvi was a student of Maulana Fateh MuhammadThanvi, one of the Deobands first three graduates (Rizvi, 1980: 32). Fateh MuhammadThanvi was associated with the Khanqah-e-Imdadiya, which Rizvi (1980: 35) claims

was a hotbed for anti-British organising before the Revolt of 1857, while Metcalf(1982: 82) questions whether ulemamembers of the Deoband took part in the revoltfrom Thana Bhavan, arguing that this is not established in primary sources and is anarrative that emerged only after the 1920s. Fateh Muhammad Thanvi is perhaps bestknown for translating the Persian commentary of the Hizb al-Bahr(Litany of the Sea)into a style of Urdu which is not overly literary and technical. We see a similar styleemployed by Ashraf Ali Thanvi in the Bahishti Zewar.

Ashraf Ali Thanvis fame exceeded that of his teacher after he completed histraining at the seminar. Indeed Rizvi (1980: 33) claims that there are very few housesof educated Muslims in the Subcontinent in which Thanvis one or the other book

may not be available. He earned the title ofHakim al-Ummah (The Doctor of theFaithful) because his eyes fell on the particulars of births, marriages, sorrow and otheroccasions, and, testing them on the criterion of the shariah, he separated the genuinefrom the spurious (Maulana Sayyid Sulaiman Nadvi, cited in Rizvi, 1980: 34). The

Bahishti Zewaris the most popular of his texts, with a huge readership (Devji, 1991;Metcalf, 1990). Because Thanvi made his books public and free for anyone to copy,

print or publish, there is no single publishing house credited for popularising thetext (Rizvi, 1980: 34). Another famous work of his is the Bayaan al-Quran, a partialtranslation of the Quran with a commentary (tafsir).

ThoughThanvi was not officially amufti, a specialist designated to issue non-binding religious rulings known asfatwah, and was not a member of the Dar al-Ifta(House of Legal Rulings) at Deoband, he did issue many popularfatwahs(Rizvi, 1980).Masud (1996: 193) interestingly situates the proliferation offatwahsat the turn ofthe century, with the British occasionally asking individuals making petitions in court

to prove the authoritative Muslim position on an issue, and reports that Thanvi was

approached like this more than once. The public circulation offatwahsmust be seenin light of British attempts to govern Muslims through the Muslim Personal Law(Masud, 1996: 195). Thanvi began writingfatwahsin 1884 under the supervisionof Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, one of the founders of the Dar-ul-Ulum at Deoband.

Hisfatwahspublished between 1887 and 1943 were collected in a monthly journal,Al-Nur, from Thana Bhavan and were later published in a collection called FatwahAshrafiyah (Masud, 1996: 198). The public circulation of such fatwahsmeant thatthey reached a wider audience and influenced the type of authoritymuftisarticulatedin the community. Devji (1991) discusses that this was part of an emerging urban

Muslim identity that relied on certain print technologies to produce its sense of selfand moral grounding, since the public institutions of religious authority were beingtransformed in a colonial context.



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Thus Thanvi was wielding a distinct type of authority by issuing texts that contained

legal opinions and would be widely circulated, such as the Bahishti Zewar. Individualswere seen as responsible for reading and living up to the norms he outlines. This kindof guidance must be considered alongside traditional structures of religious authority

being transformed in the wake of colonialism and other changes in India. Yet manyscholars have argued that Thanvi somehow refuted modernity and instead articulateda seemingly backward-looking traditionalism (Burke, 1994; Hamid, 2005; Naeem,2004). One needs to problematise this argument and the binary it assumes betweentradition and modernity, and also the way the Deoband school has been produced

as traditionalist as opposed to the Aligarh school as modernist. Clearly the existinganalyses of Thanvi have not worked out why notions of modernity must be linkedwith explicitly western modes of being as espoused by Sir Sayyid Ahmeds Aligarhmovement.

Burke (1994), for example, presumes a clear binary between the Deoband seminary

as traditionalist and the Aligarh movement as modernist. He claims that the rigidulema became more influential after the nineteenth century. But this ignores theearlier incorporation of the ulemawithin the Mughal state apparatus (Hamid, 2005).The Aligarh movements leader, Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan, was loyal to the British,

but did acknowledge a distinct Muslim identity. Sir Sayyid wanted Muslims to thinkfor themselves (Hamid, 2005: 76) and saw the ulemaas dangerous to free thought

and an instance where people put blind trust in religious leaders. Sir Sayyid thuswished to purge educational institutions of the ulemaand consequently modelled theAligarh Muslim University after western institutions. He believed that appearance

should be westernised and wore trousers with a Turkish fez (Hamid, 2005: 78). Thisis significant because the Deobandi movement and the Tablighi Jamaat that grewfrom Deobandi thinking is very interested in confirming Muslim styles of dress andappearance (Chatterji and Mehta, 2007; Masud, 2000; Sikand, 2006). As discussedearlier, the Deoband itself can be imagined as a modern institution produced out of a

historical context that also birthed Aligarh. For instance, though the Deobandis were

not interested in teaching western sciences, they still depended on an institutionalstructure distinct from traditional madrassah styles. Finally, I question the assumptionthat non-western modes of appearance are necessarily traditionalist when mobilisedas a type of reform.

Adopting the binary defined by Burke (1994), Hamid (2005) claims that Deobandithinking was a traditional response in the face of modernity. He conceptualises thenotion of training hearts and minds through defining the right practices as a purelytraditionalist notion. Modernity in Hamids discussion is reified and can be refuted ona conscious level by actors. Thus, though the Deoband was organised as an institution

with novel bureaucratic structures and distinct models of pedagogy, it is still supposedlya bastion of traditionalist thought (Hamid, 2005: 17). However, if the resourcesthe Deobandi movement utilised, such as emerging print media, circulation of texts



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the sole producer of the many values, discoveries, inventions, technologies, political

institutions, and so on we associate with modernity (Dussel, 1998: 5). While in reality,these are the effects of the management of the centre of the world-system, modernityis the fruit of the management of the centrality of this planetary system (Dussel,1998: 13). Values one associates with modernity, like rationalisation, then cannot bedivorced from colonialism.

We see now that Naeem (2004) articulates a very narrow Eurocentric conception ofmodernity, because for him modernity and its values like rationalism emerge from theEuropean Renaissance, as though European history is an internally coherent culturalsystem and historical experience. For example, Thanvi claimed in al-Intibaahaatthat just because you cannot prove something exists, that does not mean it is not in

existence (cited in Naeem, 2004: 98). If Thanvi is critiquing the positivist foundationto certain scientific assumptions through engagement with those principles from withinthe modern world system itself, is he really just refuting modernity? Dussel (1998)identifies that thinking of Thanvis discourse as embedded within the modern worldsystem, but providing an alternative and critical analysis of certain interpretations ofconcepts universalised as standing in for modernity, is more fruitful. It is problematicto assume that questioning the centrality of observation in proving that somethingexists simply means that one refutes science, rationalism and modernity. This approachfixes what these concepts mean to a particular mode of being modern, but it misses

how Thanvi might be critiquing positivism as a requisite for the concepts of science,rationalism and modernity.

Another example can be found in Thanvis discussion of time in al-Intibaahaat.Thanvi discusses the notion that time is created and thus argues for the temporality ofmatter because to say time is eternal is to attack the oneness (tawhid) of God (Naeem,2004: 103). This is because only God can be eternal. For Naeem, this is evidence thatThanvi refutes modernity because he cannot conceptualise modern time. I argue thatThanvi is commenting on the different modalities of thinking time (European andsharia-inspired, for example) being articulated in India at the time. Indeed Thanvijuxtaposes these two conceptualisations of time and argues that European claimsof time as eternal contradict the sharia. He thus illustrates a position not outsideof modernity by arguing with notions of time being espoused as universal within acolonial mission. Naeem (2004), then, assumes that only European conceptions oftime can be modern and implicitly claims that to use the religious idiom to grounddiscussions of time is inherently anti-modern.

This assumption is further problematised through an analysis of the BahishtiZewar. Though the text is largely grounded in religious idiom, always citing thesharia, it is a manual for appropriate conduct and household management that alsodeploys certain tropes not found in classic Islamic jurisprudential sources. I find it

difficult to conceptualise this text as a bastion for traditionalism, as Burke (1994)and Naeem (2004) do. For instance, Book Tens interest in household management(it even contains a section on how to make soap) and making women responsible for



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themselves and for the well-being of their families is not entirely dissimilar to reform

movements occurring in Europe and elsewhere that one often refers to as modernisingmovements (Abu-Lughod, 1998).Indeed, the idea that women are obligated to do housework is not supported

anywhere in recorded classical Islamic jurisprudence, so that the wife is under no dutyto do any housework (al-Hibri, 2000: 63). When Thanvi (1999: 253) claims that[w]hen a child is born it is essential for the mother to suckle the baby, this may be acommonsensical assumption, but Al-Hibri (2000) again finds that nowhere in classicaljurisprudence is this claim supported. Ali (2005) claims that this does not signify aprivileged position for women, but instead reveals that normative Islamic juridicalframeworks conceptualise marriage primarily in terms of an exchange, involving sexual

access to a woman for a dower (mahr).Another example is found in Thanvis discussion on how to sew and prepare certain

basic food recipes (in Book One and Book Ten). As al-Hibri (2000) outlines, theresponsibility for household management is quite novel and cannot be considerednormative in classical Sunnifiqh. Instead, the minute management of the householdand the training of womens bodily comportments to this end can find many parallelsin a modern Victorian mode of the conjugal family being deployed in colonial situ-ations, as Ali (2005) and Abu-Lughod (1998) indicate. When Thanvi cites the shariahto legitimise his type of conjugality, it is almost as though the shariah becomes the vector

through which modern management can infiltrate womens actions and the home.This citing of the shariah means, then, that Thanvi is not simply re-articulating

types of familial and womanly conduct as recognised by Victorian colonial discourseswith a stitched-on Islamic grammar. Manis (1989) discussion on how debates ontradition and modernity during colonisation could not help but appropriate similarlexicons is helpful to make sense of this debate. She claims that the conceptions oftradition as deployed in debates about saticannot be divorced from colonial discourse.To her, tradition was being reconstituted under colonial rule, so that Brahmanicalscripture and women became interlocking factors for its re-articulations. Womenfurthermore became emblematic of tradition, so that reworking of tradition occurredthrough debates about women. Debates surroundingsati, including Hindu reformist,Brahmanical and colonial elements, were not interested in the well-being of women,but were actually about what constituted authentic tradition (Mani, 1989: 90) and werethus representations of women astradition (Mani, 1989: 91, italics in the original).

The debates around proper Islamic conduct for women that preoccupied Deobandiand other reformist thinkers are not entirely different from the situation Mani (1989)describes in working out the very notion of tradition. This also problematises thenotion that tradition exists as an unchanging entity that can be cited at will or maybe used to refute modernity. But there are important differences between Manis

analysis and Thanvis animation of women. In the Bahishti Zewar, Thanvi is in factspeakingto women. Their actions are the objects of his project; training them willbring back a state of authentic Islamic subjecthood and will give birth to a pious self



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to remedy an ailing community. Thanvi is acting on an object to produce the desired

subject; his text is about womens actions. Women are not merely the ground onwhich the idea of tradition can be worked out. Thanvis interpretation of the shariahhas already provided a standard of correct tradition; the task now is to actualise it

through womens actions.I point in this regard specifically to Book Six, which focuses on educating women

on which customs are problematic and which are sanguine to the production of a piousself and a reformed community. Book Six produces a gradient of right and wrongcustoms, defining which bring good, are inconsequential or are sinful; indeed he pro-

vides a calculus for deciding how sinful they are. Thanvi is interested in explainingwhich traditions that women are already known to articulate are acceptable or notaccording to the shariah. He cites the authority of the sharia (mostly the Quranand hadith and less often fiqh) to legitimise his injunctions on how women are tobehave according to his notion of authentic religious tradition. Thus, reading prayer

facing a grave is deemed an incorrect tradition that women are known to articulate.Womens actions are thus the object, and constitute the material through which thedesired subject (a pious self) can be cultivated. Women are necessary to actualise hisnotion of tradition through their actions; they are not merely the ground on which

what is authentic tradition and what is not may be worked out. Through trainingwomens actions, educating them along Thanvis definition of correct behaviour, one

may actualise the pious self.Mani (1989: 90) claims that all sides in the satidebate equated tradition with

scripture, which is an effect of colonial discourse. The Deobandi movement as a

scriptualist movement concerned with how behaviour relates to scriptural injunctions(Masud, 2000; Metcalf, 1982) seems to confirm Manis notion. But if we think ofhow the ulemahad always been interested in interpreting and applying canonical text,we need to refine our analyses of how scripture is being cited in a particular way byThanvi. We also need to consider how colonial administration had transformed the

structures of religious authority. Thus the ulema, who turned away from the state and

from public institutions they were once embedded in, had to deploy texts to a largerpopulation and focus on reforming private selves. As Devji (1991) and Robinson(1993) mention, texts on religious scripture were more widely circulated because thestructures that had supported the ulemas public authorityas specialists in scripturalanalysis had been altered.

Manis (1989) discussion problematises the idea that concepts like tradition andmodernity have an a prioriexistence not subject to historical relations. This helps uschallenge the notion that Thanvi was simply refuting modernity and endorsing traditionby seeing how Thanvi was using the shariah in a way dependent on newly transformed

structures of religious authority to actualise his notion of authentic tradition in theactions of Muslim women. As outlined earlier, the seminary he was associated withitself depended on these relations for its own production, and was organised around



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a type of bureaucratic and pedagogic structure not common to the madrassahs that

predated it. It thus becomes difficult not to think of Thanvi as articulating a type ofmodernity, even though he cites religious tradition.Chatterjees (1993) discussion of how the private realm was produced as a space

of sovereignty for anti-colonial nationalism has been mentioned already. His work isalso relevant in how we may think of new types of modern community. Chatterjeemakes it clear that there can be alternative modalities of modern organisation, whichcan help us think of Thanvis work as also imagining new types of personhoodleading to a transformed community. Considering the Indian anti-colonial nationalistmovement, Chatterjee (1993) identifies specific areas within the inner sphere that weretransformed. In terms of the family, for example, a new patriarchy was produced that

was distinct from traditional patriarchy, while still describing itself also as distinctfrom the western family. Furthermore, the popular question of how must womenbehave in these changing times (Chatterjee, 1993: 140) is answered by producingwomens lives as organised around married life that now stands for conjugal love, andthus happiness (Chatterjee, 1993: 146). Thus there is a desire to form new women assigns of both the nation and its selfless spirit (Chatterjee, 1993: 131).

Though Thanvi is not interested in advocating state sovereignty for Muslims or astate sponsoring Muslim modes of being, Chatterjees discussion reveals that Thanvishared with nationalists an interest in producing new women or remaking women

(Abu-Lughod, 1998) as a way of imagining different forms of modern community.To assume that because Thanvi is citing religious tradition he is unable to imaginemodern community is to assume tradition can actually be locked into the past, andevoking tradition cannot itself be a way to produce new modes of being. Instead, thisdiscussion on the production of the Deobandi movement reveals how Thanvis dis-course was rife with modernist concerns around remaking women and reforming selves,while also grounding itself in religious idiom. Ultimately, then, the idea of reformingwomen and making them sites of instruction who can improve the health of theircommunities is hardly just a traditionalist response, simply because it cites religiousauthority, here the sharia, through Quran, hadith and jurisprudentialfiqh texts.

Perhaps, then, we can consider Thanvi articulating a modality of modernity, with acorresponding mode of family and gendered subjectivity that actually depends on citingtraditional authority. This could be referred to as shariaticmodernity. Thus the piousself which is produced through articulating the right type of reiterated action is not atype of self produced through traditionalist dreams or rigid adherence to tradition.Indeed it is dynamic, offering the means for enactment and reiteration of the righttype of ritual tradition, of meticulous attention to self-conduct and regulating stylesof reflecting on the self. It is actually a particular attempt to imagine an alternativelymodern form of self and community.

If we assume that modernising reform must necessarily be linked with secular ethos,then this notion ofshariaticmodernity becomes quite absurd, it becomes a forbiddenmodern (Gle, 1996). It depends of course also on what is meant by secular. If, on



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the other hand, we can consider the citation of religious discourse as itself necessary

to imagining new types of personhood and communities, then perhaps the conceptof shariaticmodernity has analytical power and much more relevance than currentscholarship recognises.

Conclusion: The Bahishti Zewarand Imagining a Type of Self

Though I began by thinking of the Bahishti Zewarin terms of how a subject is trainedto know which path is right, and how to move the body to make sure this right pathis followed, the study ultimately focused on how this particular text emerged out ofa reform movement produced by a Muslim thinker associated with it. The rationale

was first to provide deeper insights into the context for the manual-like Bahishti Zewarto both emerge and gain its currency as a guidebook for Muslim women, and secondto challenge the idea that Thanvi was refuting modernity. The irony is that the textemerged out of a situation rife with transformation and contending discourses withina colonial field, but gained its authority by using religious idiom to claim the type ofself imagined as always having been correctly comported and receptive of Divine Will.I have thus ultimately imagined Thanvi articulating a shariaticmodernity.

Let us then think again of the body in the couplets cited at the beginning of thearticle. The body trying to comport itself to walk the right path in the couplet then

takes on a specific meaning. It is a body walking a path produced through certainhistorical relations, but a path that is the means to actualising a particular type of self,and also its product, because as a product it is a path walked on properly. This canaptly symbolise how the actions a body takes are both the character of and the meansof becoming pious (Mahmood, 2006). Though the pious self as one who is receptiveto Divine Will is something constant in many Islamic discourses long predatingThanvi, his particular technologies for walking the right kind of path by cultivatingthe body with the right kinds of trained actions cannot be divorced from the historyI have tried to map out above.

Thus the anklet-less foot comported in a way that it will not stray signals theimagining of a type of pious-self that has been rightly cultivated. Though the twinklingof anklets often betrays the coming of a particularly adorned body from afar, thecoming of the pious body envisaged by Thanvi is signalled by the very absence ofadornment. The sixth couplet of the opening poem of the Bahishti Zewarclarifies thisscenario for us. Indeed, the pious self is the cultivated product of reiterated work, andthus a more precious adornment in herself than gold, silver and other embellishmentscould provide:

sone chaandi ki chamak bas dekhne ki baat hai/

chaar din ki chaandni aur phir andheri raat//The twinkling of gold and silver is but a pretty sight,

A few flickers of moonlight and then eternal darkness.



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There is no rational reason why such adornment, which takes on a mental and psycho-

logical dimension rather than physically manifest signs of commitment to sharia,could not be seen as both traditional and modern. Hence the suggested notion ofshariaticmodernity makes deep sense in the present discussion. This concept alsorequires further analysis in current debates about how Muslims all over the world areexpected to combine elements of tradition and modernity to construct a sustainableand sharia-compliant equilibrium in our postmodern times, yet without givingrise to religious diktat.

Notes

1. Usamah Yasin Ansari (19862008) was tragically killed in a car accident in April 2008and this posthumous article was submitted by Michael Nijhawan of York University, hissupervisor. Usamah had completed this text for publication in draft before his untimelydeath. Two graduate students, Kamal Arora and Saydia Kamal, in collaboration with theauthors academic supervisor, made only minor editorial changes of purely stylistic andbibliographical nature to produce the present text.

2. An online advertisement for an English translation of the text implies that this book isstill given as a wedding gift and also reveals that the internet has now taken up the task ofdisseminating the text globally:

When Moulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi (r.a.) saw how uneducated the Muslim girlsand women were, he decided to write this classic book on Fiqh & Masail (jurisprudence& regulations). The tradition is still holding on in the Indo-Pak to give this comprehensivehandbook as a gift to a new bride. So, while her new life in a new family begins, sheknows about the Islamic traditions, regulations and rituals. Women and men shouldget their own copy of this book. To have a look from what topics it ranges, here youcan read it online (True Life Press, 2007).

3. Mahmood (2006: 23) discusses how in the womens mosque movement in Cairo, theveil expresses modesty but is also the means by which modesty can be inculcated. A clearrelationship is drawn by the movements participants between the norm (modesty) and thebodily form it will take (the veil). Ultimately, the body with a veil (the veiled body) becomes

the necessary and reiterated means by which the norm of modesty is created and expressed.Women were concerned with desire for the proper realisation of the norm through theaccumulation of reiterative acts. While Mahmood discusses a situation of Muslim womenorganising their own appropriation of religious texts to decide what kinds of techniquesare sanguine to cultivation of the right kind of self, Thanvis text seeks to educate womenon how to be able to train themselves through the techniques he outlines.

4. The commentary on Book Nine in Vanzan (2000) has also been consulted.5. There are similar texts in Hindi and other South Asian languages that offer advice to newly

married women or young girls on how to be a dutiful Hindu individual.6. This evokes Foucaults (1997: 242) discussion on the development of disciplinary tech-

nologies of power that centre on the body, shifting to a biopolitical emphasis on managingand optimising the species: from man-as-body to man-as-species (Foucault, 1997: 243).This emphasis involves wishing to take control over biological processes, to produce not



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only disciplined individualised and normalised bodies, but a population that is regularisedand has optimised biological processes. Though Thanvi does not depend on a notion of

population that would be taken up in the types of governmentality Foucault discusses and

which would involve scientific discourses and public institutions, we see a similar concernfor the health of a community as related to certain practices of hygiene and health. Indeed,

Book Nine provides a nexus for both disciplinary and biopolitical concerns, being interested

in the populations health by producing women whose own disciplined hygiene andfamily management will keep the communitys health safe. This fits well with Foucaults

(1997: 251) discussion of medicine as a power-knowledge that can be applied to both the

body and the population, having both disciplinary effects and regulatory effects. How

Thanvi is articulating a type of medicine in this way, but through a religious idiom, goesbeyond the scope of this article.

7. It is significant that Metcalf uses this particular word. Indeed it has been a struggle forme to unravel meanings embedded within particular Books because it is so difficult toidentify Thanvis rationale in putting certain concepts together. For instance, as the title

reveals, Book Seven is about etiquette and character and yet the last subsection is headed

Important Issues Relating to the Day of Judgement (khas qayamat ke din ka zikr). Oneimportant act of reading, then, is not to think that Thanvi has no rationale in putting these

items together, and merely produces a hodgepodge. Rather, considering that a mode of

organising concepts different than ones we are used to recognising might allow us firstto realise that there are different logics when organising concepts, especially relating to

religious conduct, and second, to be enriched by trying to unravel these differences. Indeed

Mahmood (2006), discussing the architecture of the pious body produced in a particularIslamic revival movement, notes how the sequence of reiterating particular types of acts

becomes important in how they are sedimented, and how the pious bodys production is

imagined. Thanvis organisation of his concepts, then, might be relevant to the type of ethical

formation he is imagining. A seeming hodgepodge could then actually have importantsignificance in how a particular regime of reiterated practice is to be organised. This is why

I have not used Mohamedys translation very often (Thanvi, 1999), because he rearranges

the text to follow what he claims is a more relevant thematic organisation for contemporarylife. Thus matters relating to the Day of Judgment and etiquette would be housed in very

different sections.

8. Metcalf (1982) defines aqasbah (or kasbah) as a distinct type of town headed by elite Muslimfamilies and with large Muslim populations.

9. This implicates a class dynamic. Indeed those women who were already working outside

the house are not worried about.10. Asad (2003) has discussed a similar situation with the privatisation of religious law in

Egypt. He argues that since processes of secularisation articulated by colonial authorities

are premised on the assumption that belief cannot be coerced, religion should be regarded

by the political authorities with indifference as long as it remains within the private domain(Asad, 2003: 205). He traces certain social spaces that emerged within colonial dynamics

in which secularism could be cultivated, which included the narrowing of the jurisdiction

of the sharia(Asad, 2003: 208). This was one of the processes through which secularismcould become thinkable in India. As Khan (2006) discusses, codification of the shariainto the Muslim Personal Law limited to the private realm froze certain Islamic juridical



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processes with ongoing disastrous effects on women. Thus the Bahishti Zewarmust alsobe considered within these transformed structures of religious authority.

11. Sheikhs are one of the four ashraf(noble) classes of Muslims in north India who trace theirlineage outside of India. The others are Syed, Mughal and Pathan. Farouqi refers to theparticular biradiri(or brotherhood) that comprises each class.

12. The type of Urdu utilised in this text is quite distinct from the vernacular form used in theBahishti Zewar. Its technical language makes heavy use of Persian words, which confirmsthat the Bahishti Zewarwas produced for a wider readership, not limited to the ulema.

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Usamah Yasin Ansari (19862008)was a graduate student in the Sociology programmeat York University, Toronto. Having completed his MA in Sociology, he had beenaccepted into the PhD programme in Religious Studies at the University of Torontowhen he tragically passed away. At his young age, Usamah was an extraordinarilygifted scholar and poet. His work has been published in journals such as South Asia:A Journal of South Asian Studiesand Critical Studies in Media and Communication.Usamahs research interests evolved around the performativity of the body, analysedon the basis of different colonial and postcolonial texts. Aside from examining popularculture, he focused on Urdu vernacular literature, investigating how pious selves arecultivated through religious advice literature for Muslim women.Contact address: Dr. Michael Nijhawan, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology,York University, 2146 Vari Hall, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON, M3J1PS, Canada.[e-mail: [email protected]]

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The Pious Self is a Jewel in Itself - Usamah Yasin Ansari