Focusing on the early publications between 1900 and 1920, this presentation discusses how the early phase of print culture in Telugu produced a wide variety of Sufi texts- both original writings in Telugu and then the translations from various Islamic languages. Circulated widely as chapbooks and popular editions, these texts were successful in creating a dialogue between Muslims and Hindus as related to pluralism and religious diversity. Although a similar paradigm extends further into contemporary times after the advent of Hindu nationalism, I will show how such a history of interactions paved the way for a counter-narrative to the mainstream literary cultures in Telugu.
About the speaker
Afsar Mohammad is an internationally acclaimed South Asian scholar working on Hindu-Muslim interactions in the Telugu-Urdu speaking states of Telangana and Andhra in South India. Afsar is now teaching at the University of Pennsylvania and he recently published "Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad" with the Cambridge University Press. He previously published "The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India" with the Oxford University press in 2013.
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