Book Review

Asia

To the Mughals, the Mewatis were "rebels." To British ethnographers, they were "criminal tribes." To two modernizing princely rulers of eastern Rajasthan in the first half of the twentieth century, embracing Hindu nationalism, they were "Muslim." Finally, to the Islamicizing, pietist movement, Tablighi Jama'at, which has flourished in Mewat since partition, the Mewatis were the jahiliyya of pre-Islamic Arabia, in urgent need of reform. In this important and welcome contribution, Shail Mayaram tells the story of the princely and Tabligh regimes as well as the story of Mewati resistance she finds throughout. She makes a valuable contribution to understanding how a particular group comes to be identified by others, and to identify itself, as "Muslim"—an identity contingently produced and profoundly modern, the product, not the opposite, of nationalism (p. 7).

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Alwar and Bharatpur were home to about two-thirds of the Meo, who comprised in 1941 some sixty percent of the population's 330,620 Muslims. At partition, Mayaram discovered, contrary to her expectations, there was an explicit state policy of "cleansing," characterized by forced conversion, capture of women (who "do not have any religion" [p. 191]), and genocide of Muslims with an estimated 82,000 killed. After partition, Meos lost land to Hindu and Sikh refugees. An informant told Mayaram his own story: he fled; returned because of Congress promises that he would retain his property; discovered his houses burnt and animals gone; and received back only sixty of his original 600 bighas of land. "Tabligh came to our village after this," he concluded (pp. 205–06).

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