One of the focal points of scholarly discussion on the subject of Islamic assertion in India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been the extent and reach of revivalist and reformist ideas and practices beyond the ranks of the religious leadership. Some historians have emphasised the shift towards more uniform scriptural or textual norms in Indian Islamic religious and social practices as the key development in this period. Others have drawn attention to the uneven spread, penetration and stratified nature of such trends, as well as the persistence of syncretic traditions and pluralism in belief and ritual, with many local variants and differentiation along the lines of class and status. Gail Minault, for instance, points to potentials of class tension in Islamic assertion, when she comments: ‘Religion offers a sheet anchor in a time of economic, political and moral uncertainty, threat and instability. Islam also offers an ideology supportive of private property, for those who have it or fear losing it, and supportive of egalitarianism for those who have not.’ Such questions of internal cohesion and contradiction within resurgent Islam form the focus of investigation here, with the aim of unravelling the specfic nature of religious change among the poorer Muslims of UP towns — artisans and labourers, pedlars and petty traders.

Expansion of Islamic practices in the public arena

The extensive movements of religious revival and reform that characterised north Indian Islamin the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not leave the poorer Muslims untouched.