UCLA

Spanning the period from 1850 to 1950, this dissertation is a study of three processes: 1) the religious and commercial institutions created by Indian Muslims to participate in circuits of regional and global capitalism; 2) intra-Muslim debates concerning Islamic law, customary practice, and the norms and institutions of modern capitalism; 3) the rise of an anti-capitalist discourse of ‘Islamic economics’ which provided the framework for the postcolonial birth of the Islamic finance industry. By situating Indian Muslim economic life in a geographic frame stretching from the Balkans to Burma, and using sources in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Urdu, this dissertation represents a significant empirical intervention. At the same time, rather than resorting to the normative, ahistorical categories of Islam typical in studies of ‘Islam and capitalism,’ this dissertation utilizes the dual frameworks of political and religious economy to zoom in on the panoply of Muslim commercial and religious ‘firms’ that operated in this space. The study of these firms highlights the very real tensions - between law and custom, colonial capital and local enterprise, religious competition and appeals to Muslim unity - that modulated Indian Muslim commercial life.

Four arguments are deduced from the study of these firms. Firstly, there was substantial intra-Muslim economic disparities throughout the colonial period, which call into question the typical argument of a ‘Hindu-Muslim wealth gap,’ a formulation that ignores the economic links between Muslim and non-Muslims. Secondly, the success of select Indian Muslim firms was contingent upon the initial mobilization of local religious institutions needed to enter the market as a competitive player, followed by the creation of lasting relationships of trust with non-Muslims. Thirdly, there was immense internal disagreement among firms over whether the Islamic legal tradition must supply a benchmark for commerce, which spawned competing behavioral norms and institutional trajectories. Lastly, the rise of an all-India Muslim politics showcased the dissonance between different forms of Muslim capitalism. This precipitated a highly charged struggle over what an ‘authentic’ Muslim economic life entailed. Ultimately, these rival visions and the firms that espoused them were central to the so-called ‘Great Convergence,’ the process whereby the economic disparities perpetuated by nineteenth-century colonialism and globalization were negotiated and mitigated.