Announcment: Religion, conflict and accommodation in Indian history: the medieval period (28-29 Sept, Columbia Univ)

Religion, conflict and accommodation in Indian history: the medieval period

Friday, September 28th, 2012 to Saturday, September 29th, 2012, Saturday, 9am-5:30pm; Sunday, 10am-5:30pm
Room 101, Religion Department, 80 Claremont Ave

The IRCPL is sponsoring a two day workshop on ‘Religion, conflict and accommodation in Indian history: the medieval period’ on September 28-29, 2012. Last year, this project organized a workshop on ancient and early medieval India, focusing on historical relations between Vedic religion and Buddhism in North India and between Saivas, Vaisnavas and Jainas in South India. This year’s workshop will focus on the medieval period – and the focus of the discussions will be mainly on the developing complexities of the relations between Islamic communities and power centers and their Hindu counterparts. As the project is interested in exploring the sources of conflict and strategies of accommodation, both these dimensions will figure in the presentations. Papers will analyze how Sufi orders generated specific forms of cosmopolitanism in Mughal India, intellectual exchanges and dialogues between Muslim and Hindu groups and narrative communities, complexities of the relations of power, and related issues. As in the last workshop, methodological questions about anachronism, the relation between internal and external languages and judgments will also figure in the deliberations.

See below for list of participants and programme.

Convened by Sudipta Kaviraj (Columbia) and Rajeev Bhargava (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi). Participants include Manan Ahmed (Columbia), Muzaffar Alam (Chicago), Patton Burchett (NYU), Allison Busch (MESAAS), Purnima Dhavan (Washington), Jack Hawley (Barnard), Rajeev Kinra (Northwestern), Heidi Pauwels (Washington), Samira Sheikh (Vanderbilt), Philip Wagoner (Wesleyan), and Tyler Williams.

Program

Religion, conflict and accommodation in Indian history: the medieval period

September 28, Friday

10.00 – 10.30 Preliminary discussion Rajeev Bhargava, Sudipta Kaviraj

10.30 – 11.30

Manan Ahmed

A Man With Ruby Eyes: Encountering Deities in Early Medieval Sindh

11.30 – 12. 00 COFFEE

12.00 -1.00

Phillip Wagoner

Temple desecration in the sixteenth century Deccan?: the case of the Adoni fort mosque

1.00– 2.00 LUNCH

2.00-3.00

Allison Busch

Talking Politics in Seventeenth Century India

3.00-4.00

Rajeev Kinra

Mughal attitudes towards pluralism in the seventeenth century

4.00-4.30 COFFEE

4.30 – 5.30

Patton Burchett

When the ‘Other’ is a Brother from Another Mother: Sufi-Bhakta Interlogue in Devotional Literature and Hagiography.

Saturday 29 September

10.00 – 11.00

Heidi Pauwels

Victims or Victory-mongers? Multiple lives of Krishna images in Northern India

11.00 – 11.30 COFFEE

11.30- 12.30

Purnima D havan

Rogues and Robbers: The Dilemma of Religion and Ethics in late Mughal Punjab

12.30-1.30

Sameera Sheikh

Vishnu and Krishna in Sultanate Gujarat



1.30-2.30 LUNCH

2.30-3.30

Jack Hawley

The Commonwealth of Love and its Limits.

3.30-4.00 COFFEE

4.00-5.00

Tyler Williams

The Oral Framework of Sufi-Bhakti Encounters in Seventeenth Century Nagaur

5.00-5.30

Final discussion: theoretical issues and practical arrangements