{"title":"Following Richard Burton: Religious Identity and Difference in Colonial Sindh","authors":"U. Shahani","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10028","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\nRichard Burton, soldier, ethnographer, translator, philologist, and colonial intelligence-gatherer spent the early years of his career in Sindh and was the first and primary colonial ethnographer of Sindh. Burton was clearly attracted to the ecumenical complexity of Sindhi religious practice but was hostile in his descriptions of Sindh’s Hindus whom he viewed as a corrupt and scheming “race,” subjecting the Muslims of the province to their tyranny. The article examines how Burton’s racialised ethnographies of Sindh cast Sindh as distinct from “India” and Hindus as outsider immigrants to the province. Paradoxically, Burton’s narratives also created Sindh as the space par excellence of the negation of religious categories. However, this categorisation of Sindh also highlighted it as a space distinct from India. In conclusion, the article shows how the idea of Sindh’s separate identity maintained a strong afterlife in colonial Sindh, rearticulated in certain key contexts.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Philological Encounters","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10028","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Richard Burton, soldier, ethnographer, translator, philologist, and colonial intelligence-gatherer spent the early years of his career in Sindh and was the first and primary colonial ethnographer of Sindh. Burton was clearly attracted to the ecumenical complexity of Sindhi religious practice but was hostile in his descriptions of Sindh’s Hindus whom he viewed as a corrupt and scheming “race,” subjecting the Muslims of the province to their tyranny. The article examines how Burton’s racialised ethnographies of Sindh cast Sindh as distinct from “India” and Hindus as outsider immigrants to the province. Paradoxically, Burton’s narratives also created Sindh as the space par excellence of the negation of religious categories. However, this categorisation of Sindh also highlighted it as a space distinct from India. In conclusion, the article shows how the idea of Sindh’s separate identity maintained a strong afterlife in colonial Sindh, rearticulated in certain key contexts.
Richard Burton是一名士兵、民族志学家、翻译家、文字学家和殖民情报采集者,他职业生涯的早期在信德省度过,是信德省第一位也是主要的殖民民族志学家。伯顿显然被信德省宗教实践的普世复杂性所吸引,但他对信德省的印度教徒的描述充满敌意,他认为他们是一个腐败和诡计多端的“种族”,使该省的穆斯林遭受暴政。这篇文章探讨了伯顿对信德省的种族主义民族志如何将信德省塑造成与“印度”不同的地方,并将印度教徒塑造成该省的外来移民。矛盾的是,伯顿的叙述也将信德创造为否定宗教范畴的卓越空间。然而,信德省的这种分类也突显出它是一个不同于印度的空间。最后,文章展示了信德省独立身份的概念是如何在殖民地信德省保持强大的生命力的,并在某些关键背景下重新表述。