Peter Gottschalk

Three Tales of Three Houses

The house has stood empty since Partition. Its Muslim family abandoned their Bihari village in India for a new life in West Pakistan, 1,300 kilometers distant. Unlike most other homes left behind by emigrants, this ones doors still open to its owners keys, since his brothers remained in their homes nearby. One of those brothers follows invitations across north India preaching the Tablighi Islamic revival. In conversation, he demonstrates little interest in the religious traditions of the Hindu majority of his large village. Two decades ago, his son, Farhad, opened one of the first private schools in the area, anticipating the surging demand for education that has overtaken India. Some of the first classrooms built had brick walls pierced by concrete screens decoratively depicting a Quran, crescent moon, and star. Most of the schools students and many of its teachers are Hindu.

Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear

When confronted with the commonality of Islamophobic themes of the fanatic Muslim man, the oppressed Muslim woman, and an intolerant Islamic religion, defenders of these views often respond that their prevalence must reflect their truth. After all, they argue, all stereotypes have some seed of truth. The ironclad quality of this tautology—that past repetition of an allegation is justification for its reiteration—recommends a different tack in refutation. A historical evaluation of these claims that demonstrates their persistence despite historical changes helps demonstrate how the core of American and British Islamophobia derives from received truisms that have established—and continue to establish—basic expectations about how Muslims behave. These expectations shape how information about Muslims is interpreted so that what fails to fit within this frame of reference (e.g., Muslim tolerance, nonviolent Muslim protest) often is overlooked. nIf a Mohammedan, Turk, Egyptian, Syrian or African commits a crime the newspaper reports do not tell us that it was committed by a Turk, an Egyptian, a Syrian or an African, but by a Mohammedan. If an Irishman, an Italian, a Spaniard or a German commits a crime in the United States we do not say that it was committed by a Catholic, a Methodist or a Baptist, nor even a Christian; we designate the man by his nationality.1

The Equality Paradigm in Warner v. Boca Raton: Winnifred Sullivan and The Impossibility of Religious Freedom

In early 2015, a political firestorm swept across the news and social media in the United States following the announcement that the state of Indiana’s Republican governor signed into law a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Already enacted in various forms by nineteen states, Indiana’s version — like its predecessors — would be modeled on a national RFRA signed into legislation by Democrat President Clinton in 1993. However, none of these antecedents had stirred a national level of controversy as did Indiana’s. The difference stemmed from a particular moment in America’s culture wars, as conservative Christians sought to hold a defensive line against the rising tide of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-, and Transsexual rights. As increasing numbers of states recognized gay and lesbian marriage laws, some conservative Christians in Indiana — if not the Governor himself — fought to ‘protect’ business owners from having to ‘participate’ in queer marriage ceremonies that they claimed violated their religious sensibilities. In a Reuters-Ipsos poll taken at this time, 28 per cent of respondents across the United States agreed that businesses should have — based on their religious beliefs — the right to refuse service to any individual, while 27 per cent approved of hiring discrimination as well (Holland 2015).

Promoting Scientism: Institutions for Gathering and Disseminating Knowledge in British Bihar

A young girl says two names as she passes particular images in a gallery exhibiting British prints of India: “Chainpur” and “Mundeswari.” Given that Chainpur village has been my research site in Bihar and that its residents often refer to Mundeswari temple, I pay attention when, a few minutes later, she returns with her parents in tow. They all stop to examine the images. When asked how they knew Chainpur, the father replies that they live in a nearby town. His daughter recognizes the Mundeswari temple from visits there and Chainpur, presumably, from its proximity to their home. The images that prompted this discussion were painted by Thomas and William Daniell, an uncle-nephew team who traversed British India in the late eighteenth century and provided Europe with its first widely reproduced pictures of South Asia. The introduction to the gallery explains in Hindi, “There has always been an insistence of cultivated people to live in excellence and modernity. For this reason, from the eighteenth century, cultivated Indians began to be influenced by Western knowledge of different sorts. Consequently, Indian artistic painting and architectural art did not advance.” Both the museum gallery’s association of the Daniells’ work with “excellence,” “modernity,” and “Western knowledge” and the child’s easy recognition of the images—in part made possible by the Archaeological Survey of India’s preservation of the Mundeswari temple—seem to evidence the impact of Western science on Indian perspectives.

Being an 'Other' Other Than Myself: "Take It To the Bridge"

This article derives from a conference panel entitled Fieldwork: Bridging Anthropology and the History of Religions. Ruminating on just what exactly, or even generally, I would try to add to the panel, I began to think about its tide. What is it, after all, to bridge? And how did my experience as an historian of religions doing ethno graphic research involve a bridge or the act of bridging? The American Heritage Dictionary defines bridge first as a structure spanning and providing a passage over a gap or barrier, such as a river or roadway (1993: 174). This suggests a path between two fixed places. I imagine that when he entitled this panel, the organizer had in mind an expio radon of how we have found a way between the two academic fields of anthropology and the history of religions. But, with a midrashic turn of mind, I reflected on two other possible interpretations of the title.