About the Book: Poetry of Belonging : Muslim Imaginings of India 18501950
Poetry of Belonging is an exploration of north-Indian Muslim identity through
poetry at a time when the Indian nation state did not exist. Between 1850 and
1950, when precolonial forms of cultural traditions, such as the mushairah, were
undergoing massive transformations to remain relevant, certain Muslim 'voices
configured, negotiated, and articulated their imaginings of what it meant to be
Muslim. Using poetry as an archive, the book traces the history of the
mushairah, the site of poetic performance, as a way of understanding public
spaces through the changing economic, social, political, and technological
contexts of