The symbolic construction of the walls of Deoband

Abstract

The interest in traditional Muslim education for religious leadership among policy makers began to raise a number of research questions that could only be resolved by scholarly investigation of dar al-uloom education in both Britain and India (the original location of the principal dar al-ulooms that influence the creation of the British network of such colleges). The article explores some of the issues that arose out of fieldwork in India, primarily on visits to over 20 Deobandi seminaries in Up and Gujarat, to clarify the historical origins of the traditional curriculum used to train imams. However, the researchers recognized that most of the narratives recounted by the ulama of Deoband were more easily accessed as the creation of an ‘imagined community’ and set out to establish the discourses that constructed the boundary walls of the Deobandi movement.