Laurence Gautier- Between Nation and ‘Community’- 3 June 2024

Between Nation and Community examines the political role of Muslim universities (AMU and Jamia Millia) in post-independence India. The book argues that these institutions constituted platforms to imagine the nation as much as the Muslim qaum. They served as intermediaries between central state authorities and the Muslim population, and formed major centres for different strands of Muslim politics in the post-independence period. By closely looking at the relation between these institutions and state authorities, the book teases out the ambiguities of the state’s Muslim policy. It also examines, in turn, how university members responded to this policy and developed competing conceptions of Muslim identity and citizenship, which structured the wider public debates on Muslims’ status in post-partition India.