The Sufi Paradigm and the Makings of a Vernacular Knowledge in Colonial India

Chapter 1: The building of colonial knowledge and its aftermath.-From culture to episteme: Vernacular knowledge and the Sufi paradigm



Scope and objectives.-Part 1: Colonisation and the Shaping of Vernacular Knowledge.-Chapter 2: The set-up of the colonial knowledge on Sindh.-Introduction.-Knowledge and its agents in precolonial Sindh.-Sindhi as a distinct language.-The era of standardisation: Language and script.-Translating, printing, and the making of the Sindhi munshi.-Grammar and the dictionary.-Conclusion.-Chapter 3: The transmission of colonial knowledge.-Introduction.-The colonial knowledge of the society.-Education for transmitting colonial knowledge.-The formalisation of colonial knowledge through gazetteers.-Conclusion.-Chapter 4: Knowledge, Sufism, and the issue of a Vernacular literature.-Introduction.-Richard Burton, or the Orientalist Ethnographer.-Burton's ethnography of Sindh and his principle of intercession.-Literatures as a "weapon in our hands".-Conclusion    .-Part 2: Social Mobility and The Makings of the Sufi Paradigm.-Chapter 5: the archaeology of the Sufi paradigm.-Introduction.-The printing of the Shah jo Risalo.-The Sufi paradigm and the issue of a Persian pattern.-The Sufi paradigm at its earliest stage.-Conclusion.-Chapter 6: Social mobility and the set-up of a Sufi paradigm.-Introduction.-The spread of the middle class and the issue of progress.-The intelligentsia and the objectification of the Shah jo Risalo.-Colonial Sufism as antiquity.-Conclusion.-Chapter 7: Sufi knowledge (ilm tasawuf), sufi culture, and the sufi paradigm.-Introduction.-Mirza Qalich Beg, or the Exemplary Sindhi Scholar.-Bibliography, lexicography, and the Sufi paradigm in Mirza Qalich Beg's work.-Sufi Knowledge (Ilm Tasawuf) and the Sufi paradigm.-Jethmal Parsram Gulraj and the Sufi culture.-Conclusion.-

Michel Boivin is the Director of the Centre for South Asian Studies (CEIAS), affiliated with The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and The School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), France. He holds a PHD in Oriental Languages, Civilisations and Societies from Sorbonne University. He was trained in contemporary history and anthropology, with specializations in Islamic and South Asian Studies. He has authored or edited fourteen books, the most recent of which are The Hindu Sufis of South Asia, Discovering Sindh's Past (with Matthew A. Cook and Julien Levesque, 2019), Devotional Islam in Contemporary South Asia (with Remy Delage, 2015), and the Historical Dictionary of the Sufi Culture of Sindh in Pakistan and in India (2015).