Reclaiming Karbala: Nation, Islam and Literature of the Bengali Muslims (Routledge, 2023)
The new book by Epsita Halder, former fellow of the ‘Religion and Urbanity’ group, is titled ‘Reclaiming Karbala: Nation, Islam and Literature of the Bengali Muslims’. It was published in 2023 and studies the emergence and formation of a viable Muslim identity in Bengal over the late-19th century through the 1940s. Beginning with an explanation of significance of the martyrdom of Hazrat Muhammad’s grandson Husayn in the battle of Karbala (680 CE) for the Muslims, this book explores how this particular historical episode was recurrently reclaimed and reinterpreted by the Bangla-speaking ulama and Muslim literati to define what it meant to be Muslim in colonial Bengal.