May I offer you this picture? Will you consider it for a moment, together with me? The picture holds for me a range of positions — and a range of possibilities, too — as regards Muslims in present times. When I look at it, I see a huge door (battered though it is). I see a mosque-like structure framed in the door and sense that it is situated within an enclosed space. I assume there is a world outside and then I finally see a young man immediately inside the threshold, who stands with his back to the world, to the photographer, to all of us. [Read the full article]

Shahrukh Alam was provoked by the dastango’s article on ‘the secular, moderate Indian Muslim‘ to write this beautiful essay. The essay revolves around this photograph, taken by Khalid Anis Ansari, of the entrance to the Palkikhana at the Dargah Shah Arzan in Patna.

Shahrikh and Khalid both work with the Patna Collective, which seems to be doing very interesting work:We are a young research-activism collective based in Patna, India. Small and informal, too with just too full-time members and a bunch of volunteers.

We are working on developing a discourse around ‘Liberation Theology’ in the Indian context. We believe that religion should be rooted in socio-economic realities and our work attempts to encourage it to take a progressive stand on such realities. We also believe that in doing so, it would become more inclusive since a deeper understanding of religion would be forged – one that is based on notions of peace and justice – rather than it becoming a narrow identity marker.

One of our prime objectives is also to affect some degree of praxis between our research and our activism. We want our research to constantly be informed by our experiences on the ground; and for our research, in turn, to inform our activism/interventions. Towards this end, we surveyed various Sufi shrines in Patna and choosing a suitable one, started working with people who live in bastis (settlements) around these shrines, their social histories and economies, very often linked with that religious space.

We were excited because we felt that it would be very interesting to involve a ‘Muslim’ space in an experiment of this kind. Where Muslim spaces can be seen to be involved in issues other than the ones that ‘only’ concern Muslims.

We wanted to engage with the community living around the shrine and try to mobilize it around themes of pluralism and justice and around issues that were relevant to its social-economic contexts.

One of the first responses that we had related to livelihood options. Of the need to organize skilled workers into co-operatives so that they may be able to sell their products for a fair price in the market. And thus ‘class’ as also an identity was introduced into the dargah (shrine) space.

The community at the dargah comprises skilled bookbinders. Thus, Shirkat – the bookbinding workers’ collective was formed at the dargah, in the belief that the dargah (religious/spiritual space) can also be a shirkat-gah (a space for equal participation; thus a democratic space conscious of class, caste and gender dynamics) at the same time.

The Patna Collective hopes to work with Shirkat and build it into a successful, profit-making workers’ collective. It also hopes to invite unskilled Dalit workers from a neighbouring basti and teach them bookbinding so that they can also become a part of Shirkat, thus furthering class solidarity.

Though initially, we have been working primarily with ‘Muslims’, our work aims at making that identity more inclusive/flexible and based on ideological beliefs and socio-economic realities, rather than on accidents of birth or cultural moorings alone. For this reason, we try to consistently stress the importance of engagement with other socially, economically and politically marginalized communities in India.

Since we are working towards an engagement – an alliance – of similarly placed communities, we want to better understand how the Indian Muslims perceive Islam and how this understanding impacts the Muslim identity in contemporary India. How comfortable is this identity with such possible alliances?

Our research focuses on issues of socio-economic status and identity in contemporary India. We have also been documenting our work at the dargah and have just produced a report on issues of class, caste and identity in the dargah community (based on an intensive survey of fifty-five Muslim and Dalit households in the area). Copies of the report are available on request.