[Book Review]: "Making place for Muslims in contemporary India"

Abstract

Menon's book is one of the rare ethnographies of India's religious configuration that differently echoes the courage and clarity of Mathur's (2008) The Everyday Life of Hindu Nationalism. It vividly describes what Muslims experience in contemporary India: a reign of terror manifest, among others, in their being routinely lynched (also filmed) and their lives destroyed in the name of “counterterrorism.” In the shadow of post-9/11 terrorism discourse, which is all-pervasive in India because it is internationalized by the American empire and its props, 35 percent of the police force view it as “natural” (p. 16) to lynch Muslims. Lynching often occurs on the pretext of Muslims being accused of “cow slaughter,” a Hindu term—indeed, a “combat concept” developed from the work of Reinhart Koselleck—because it displaces the question of citizens’ dietary freedom. The reign of terror forces Muslims to suppress their real names and present themselves as Hindus (p. 32). Notably, throughout her absorbing tale, Menon remains attentive to her interlocutors’ world: a world in which Muslims confront everyday indignity and institutionalized discrimination. Yet the people she worked with nurse hope for a better morrow.