In Tanweer Fazal’s book, 'Practices of the State: Muslims, Law and Violence in India', he explains how this state-sponsored identity flattens the Muslims into a homogenous community. https://thewire.in/books/how-the-indian-state-constructs-muslimness-through-law-and-violence
Tanweer Fazal’s book, Practices of the State: Muslims, Law and Violence in India, is an investigation of how a singular discourse of ‘Muslimness’ has been produced in India in defiance of the fact that the Muslims are a heterogenous and internally variegated community with divergent religious practices and beliefs. This book asks what binds a Bengali Muslim in Assam, with a Qureshi meat-seller in Uttar Pradesh and a Muslim villager in Bhagalpur Bihar, to a Muslim worshipper in Ayodhya or an Arzal Muslim seeking to be recognised as a scheduled caste person, notwithstanding their varied lived contexts? According to Fazal, it is their experience of ‘state’, not only in times of crisis but at an everyday level. This experience, Fazal argues, is not internally generated but produced externally, as a result of state practices, law-making and law-enforcement.
03/09/2024