Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T01:58:45.246Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Forgotten Futures: Indian Muslims in the Trans-Islamic Turn to Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2013

Nile Green
Get access

Abstract

This essay casts light on the alternative but unrealized futures imagined through the Indian Muslim encounter with Japan in the inter-war period. Echoing other attempts to destabilize the empire-to-nation teleology of Indo-Pakistani independence, the essay uncovers a set of aspirations, actors, and spaces of comparison by which Indian Muslims sought an independent future for Muslim-ruled princely states such as Hyderabad. Through comparison with similar patterns in other Asian princely states, a case study of Urdu writings on Japan shows how East Asia became a place to imagine for Hyderabad a future that never came to fruition. By locating India in a trans-Islamic pattern of engaging Japan, the essay shows how, between the Russo-Japanese War and the Second World War, Japan provided newly globalized intellectuals with a template for empowering Muslim-ruled polities that either never came into existence or were subsumed by Asia's postcolonial nations.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , August 2013 , pp. 611 - 631
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Ali, Choudhry Rahmat. 1978. Complete Works of Choudhry Rahmat Ali, ed. Aziz, K. K., 2 vols. Islamabad: National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research.Google Scholar
Amin, Haron. 2007. Afghan-Japan Relations: Lands under the Rising Sun. Tokyo: Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in Tokyo.Google Scholar
Anantharamaiah, Poomagame, and Murthy, Narasimha. 1986. India and Japan: Dimensions of their Relations, Historical and Political. Delhi: ABC Publishing House.Google Scholar
Andaya, Barbara Watson. 1977. “From Rūm to Tōkyō: The Search for Anticolonial Allies by the Rulers of Riau, 1899–1914.” Indonesia 24:123–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aqeel, Moinuddin. 1996. “A Culture Shock: A Narrative of the Late 19th Century Japan in Urdu.” Area and Culture Studies 53:135–51.Google Scholar
Auslin, Michael R. 2004. Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aydin, Cemil. 2007. The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Badr al-Islam, Shaykh Muhammad. 1934. Haqīqat-e Jāpān [The truth about japan]. Delhi: Anjuman-e Taraqqī-e Urdū.Google Scholar
Bharucha, Rustom. 2006. Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bose, Subhas Chandra. 1997. Indian Pilgrim: An Unfinished Autobiography, eds. Bose, Sisir Kumar and Bose, Sugata. Calcutta: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bose, Sugata. 2011. His Majesty's Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle against Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Chida, Momohei, and Davies, Peter N.. 1990. The Japanese Shipping and Shipbuilding Industries: A History of their Modern Growth. London: Athlone Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Sebastian, and Mühlhahn, Klaus. 2007. “Global Mobility and Nationalism: Chinese Migration and the Reterritorialization of Belonging, 1880–1910.” In Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880s–1930s, eds. Conrad, Sebastian and Sachsenmaier, Dominic, 181–212. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cyclopedia of India. 1907. The Cyclopedia of India: Biographical, Historical, Administrative, Commercial. Calcutta: The Cyclopedia Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Datla, Kavita. 2009. “A Worldly Vernacular: Urdu at Osmania University.” Modern Asian Studies 43(5):1117–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickinson, Goldsworthy Lowes. 1914. An Essay on the Civilisations of India, China and Japan. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.Google Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 1997. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Esenbel, Selçuk. 1996. “A ‘Fin de Siècle’ Japanese Romantic in Istanbul: The Life of Yamada Torajirō and his ‘Toruko Gakan.’” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 59(2):237–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esenbel, Selçuk. 2002. “Japan and Islam Policy during the 1930s.” In Turning Points in Japanese History, ed. Edström, Bert, 180–214. Abingdon, UK: RoutledgeCurzon.Google Scholar
Esenbel, Selçuk. 2004. “Japan's Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945.” American Historical Review 109(4):1140–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esenbel, Selçuk. 2011. Japan, Turkey and the World of Islam. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gabaccia, Donna R., and Hoerder, Dirk, eds. 2011. Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gauriprasada. 1904. Tārīkh-e Japan [History of Japan]. Agra: n.p.Google Scholar
Georgeon, François. 1991. “Un voyageur Tatar en Extrême-Orient au début du XXe siècle” [A Tatar traveler in the Far East at the beginning of the 20th century]. Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 32(1):47–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Nile. 2009. “Among the Dissenters: Reciprocal Ethnography in Nineteenth Century Inglistan.” Journal of Global History 4(2):293–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Nile. 2011. “The Trans-Border Traffic of Afghan Modernism: Afghanistan and the Indian ‘Urdusphere.’” Comparative Studies in Society and History 53(3):479–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Nile. 2013. “Shared Infrastructures, Informational Asymmetries: Persians and Indians in Japan, c. 1890–1930.” Journal of Global History 8(3).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Nile. 2013. “Anti-Colonial Japanophilia and the Constraints of an Islamic Japanology: Information and Affect in the Indian Encounter with Japan.” Journal of South Asian History and Culture 4(3).Google Scholar
Haag-Higuchi, Roxane. 1996. “A Topos and Its Dissolution: Japan in Some 20th-Century Iranian Texts.” Iranian Studies 29(1–2):71–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hay, Stephen N. 1970. Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan, China, and India. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayashi, Shunsuke. 2010. “Yapon Mohbiri: The Sole Magazine Introducing Japan to Muslim Countries of the World.” National Diet Library Newsletter 171. http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/publication/ndl_newsletter/171/715.html (accessed September 7, 2010).Google Scholar
Hidayat, Mahdi Quli. n.d. Safarnāma-ye tasharruf bih Makka-ye mu‘azzama [Travelogue of a respectful visitation to Mecca the magnificent]. Tehran: Chāpkhāna-ye Majlis.Google Scholar
Husayn, Muhammad Fazl. 1904. Mukammil mukhabarāt-e Rūs ū Jāpān [Comprehensive news on Russia and Japan]. Muradabad: n.p.Google Scholar
Ibrahim, Muhammad. 1904. Jang-e Rūs ū Jāpān [The war of Russia and Japan]. Muradabad: n.p.Google Scholar
Isozaki, Sadamoto. 1997. “Brief Report on Present Muslims in Japan.” Korea Journal of Islamic Culture 1(1):199–205.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Richard M. 2004. “Seeking Śākyamuni: Travel and the Reconstruction of Japanese Buddhism.” Journal of Japanese Studies 30(1):65–96.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Richard M.. 2006. “Buddhist Material Culture, ‘Indianism,’ and the Construction of Pan-Asianism in Prewar Japan.” Material Religion 2(3):266–93.Google Scholar
Japan Weekly Mail. 1907. “Indian Student.” February 23.Google Scholar
Johnston, Hugh. 1989. The Voyage of the Komagata Maru: The Sikh Challenge to Canada's Colour Bar. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Khalidi, Omar. 1998. “Ottoman Royal Family in Hyderabad, Deccan, India.” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 46(3):89–97.Google Scholar
Khan, Mawlvi Zafar ‘Ali. 1905. Jang-e Rūs ū Jāpān [The war of Russia and Japan]. Hyderabad: Matba‘a.Google Scholar
Kreiser, Klaus. 1981. “Der Japanische sieg über Russland (1905) und sein echo unter den Muslimen” [The Japanese victory over Russia (1905) and its echo among the Muslims]. Die Welt des Islams, n.s., 21(1):209–39.Google Scholar
Laffan, Michael F. 1996. “Watan and Negeri: Mustafa Kamil's ‘Rising Sun’ in the Malay World.” Indonesia Circle 24(69):156–75.Google Scholar
Laffan, Michael F.. 1999. “Mustafa and the Mikado: A Francophile Egyptian's Turn to Meiji Japan.” Japanese Studies 19(3):269–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laffan, Michael F.. 2001. “Making Meiji Muslims: The Travelogue of ‘Ali Ahmad Al-Jarjawi.’” East Asian History 22:145–70.Google Scholar
Laffan, Michael F.. 2006. “Tokyo as a Shared Mecca of Modernity: War Echoes in the Colonial Malay World.” In The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War, ed. Kowner, Rotem, 219–38. London: RoutledgeCurzon.Google Scholar
Markovits, Claude. 2000. The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750–1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masood, Sir Syed Ross. 1923. Japan and Its Educational System: Being a Report Compiled for the Government of His Exalted Highness the Nizam. Hyderabad: Government Central Press.Google Scholar
Masood, Sir Syed Ross. [1922] 1968. Travels in Japan: Diary of an Exploring Mission, ed. Kidwai, Jalil Ahmad. Karachi: Ross Masood Education and Culture Society of Pakistan.Google Scholar
Mas‘ud, Sayyid Ras. 1925. Japān aur uskā ta‘līmī nazm ū nasq [Japan and its educational order and administration]. Aligarh: Anjuman-e Taraqqī-e Urdū.Google Scholar
Mas‘ud, Sayyid Ras. 1926. Rūh-e Japān [The spirit of Japan]. Hyderabad: Matbū‘a-e Dār al-Matba‘-e Sarkār-e ‘Ālī.Google Scholar
Menemeniciogğlu, Nermin, ed. 1978. The Penguin Book of Turkish Verse. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Mishra, Pankaj. 2012. From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Mukhopadhyay, Bhaskar. 2002. “Writing Home, Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of Dwelling in Bengali Modernity.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 44(2):293–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
My-Van, Tran. 1999. “Japan through Vietnamese Eyes (1905–1945).” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 30(1):126–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
My-Van, Tran. 2005. A Vietnamese Royal Exile in Japan: Prince Cuong De, 1882–1951. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nadwi, Sayyid Sulayman. [1944] 2008. Sayr-e Afghānistān [Journey to Afghanistan]. Lahore: Sang-e Mīl.Google Scholar
Nish, Ian. ed. 1998. The Iwakura Mission in America and Europe: A New Assessment. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press.Google Scholar
Oishi, Takashi. 2004. “Indo-Japan Cooperative Ventures in Match Manufacturing in India: Muslim Merchant Networks in and beyond the Bengal Bay Region 1900–1930.” International Journal of Asian Studies 1(1):49–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramnath, Maia. 2011. Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ray, Rajat Kanta. 1988. “Moderates, Extremists and Revolutionaries: Bengal, 1900–1908.” In Congress and Indian Nationalism: The Pre-Independence Phase, eds. Sisson, Richard and Wolpert, Stanley A., 62–89. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sahhafbashi, Ibrahim. 1985. Safarnāma-ye Ibrāhīm Sahhāfbāshī [The travelogue of Ibrahim Sahhafbashi], ed. Mushīrī, Muhammad. Tehran: Shirkat-e Mu‘allifān.Google Scholar
Shimizu, Hiroshi, and Hirakawa, Hitoshi. 1999. Japan and Singapore in the World Economy: Japan's Economic Advance into Singapore, 1870–1965. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Singh, Jagatjit. 1906. Safar-e Chīn ū Japan ū Jāva [Travels in China, Japan, and Java]. Lahore: n.p.Google Scholar
Singh, Puran. 1924. The Story of Swami Rama, The Poet Monk of the Punjab. Madras: Ganesh.Google Scholar
Sirāj al-akhbār [Torch of the news, newspaper]. 1912. no. 14.Google Scholar
Sugita, Hideaki. 2007. “The First Contact between Japanese and Iranians as Seen through Travel Diaries.” In The Islamic Middle East and Japan: Perceptions, Aspirations, and the Birth of Intra-Asian Modernity, ed. Worringer, Renée, 11–32. Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener Publishers.Google Scholar
Usmanova, Larisa. 2007. The Türk-Tatar Diaspora in Northeast Asia: Transformation of Consciousness: A Historical and Sociological Account between 1898 and the 1950s. Tokyo: Rakudasha.Google Scholar
Visvesvaraya, Mokshyagundam. 1920. Reconstructing India. London: P. S. King and Son.Google Scholar
Weiss, Anita M. 1991. “South Asian Muslims in Hong Kong: Creation of a ‘Local Boy’ Identity.” Modern Asian Studies 25(3):417–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittner, David G. 2008. Technology and the Culture of Progress in Meiji Japan. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Worringer, Renée. 2004. “‘Sick Man of Europe’ or ‘Japan of the East’? Constructing Ottoman Modernity in the Hamidian and Young Turk Eras.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36(2):207–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Worringer, Renée, ed. 2007a. The Islamic Middle East and Japan: Perceptions, Aspirations, and the Birth of Intra-Asian Modernity. Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener Publishers.Google Scholar
Worringer, Renée. 2007b. “Japan's Progress Reified: Modernity and Arab Dissent in the Ottoman Empire.” In The Islamic Middle East and Japan: Perceptions, Aspirations, and the Birth of Intra-Asian Modernity, ed. Worringer, Renée, 91–120. Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener Publishers.Google Scholar
YĀnĪ yĀpŪn mukhbirĪ: al-Mukhbir al-yĀbĀnĪ. 1936. vol. 38. Tokyo: Yānī Yāpūn Mukhbirī.Google Scholar
Yokohama Archives of History Review. 2011. “Indian Businesses in Yokohama.” 29:41.Google Scholar