Centre for the Study of Social Systems
School of Social Sciences
CSSS Colloquium
M. Raisur Rahman
(Associate Professor, Wake Forest University, USA)
Will be presenting a paper on
Civil Society and Cosmopolitanism: Badruddin Tyabji and the Network of Communities in Colonial Bombay
Date & Time: August 14, 2018 (Tuesday), 3.30 pm
Venue: CSSS Committee Room (No: 13), SSS-II
Abstract: One of the most remembered Muslim figures from colonial Bombay is Badruddin Tyabji (1844-1906). Despite his many contributions and those of his larger clan—the Tyabjis—his public memory as well as official histories is at best confined to his leadership of the early Indian National Congress. Recollections such as do not do adequate justice to the representations of the past. A closer look at biographies, genealogies, correspondence, family histories, and private papers reveals an alternative picture of the legacies of the Tyabjis as well as Muslims of several other lineages inhabiting Bombay such as the Peerbhoys, the Memons, and the Konkanis. Their collective attempts at reforms, education, freedom struggle, philanthropy, arts, literature and civil life helped forge a culture that enabled the emergence of Bombay as the “cosmopolitan capital” of India.
Bio: Dr. M. Raisur Rahman, Associate Professor of South Asian History at Wake Forest University, is interested in local, urban, intellectual, and literary histories of modern India and South Asian Islam. He is the author of Locale, Everyday Islam, and Modernity: Qasbah Towns and Muslim Life in Colonial India (Oxford University Press, 2015) and coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to Sayyid Ahmad Khan (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2018). Rahman holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.Phil. and M.A. from Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.