Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 Missionaries and Reformists in the Market of Islams
- 2 Cosmopolitan Cults and the Economy of Miracles
- 3 The Enchantment of Industrial Communications
- 4 Exports for an Iranian Marketplace
- 5 The Making of a Neo-Ismā‘īlism
- 6 A Theology for the Mills and Dockyards
- 7 Bombay Islam in the Ocean's Southern City
- Conclusions
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 Missionaries and Reformists in the Market of Islams
- 2 Cosmopolitan Cults and the Economy of Miracles
- 3 The Enchantment of Industrial Communications
- 4 Exports for an Iranian Marketplace
- 5 The Making of a Neo-Ismā‘īlism
- 6 A Theology for the Mills and Dockyards
- 7 Bombay Islam in the Ocean's Southern City
- Conclusions
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Writing in Bombay around 1890, the colonial administrator James Douglas recounted tales of former times, when, far from hearth and home, spirits of the Anglo-Saxon dead warned friends and family of impending danger or rescue in supernatural ways that were strongly reminiscent of Muslim seaborne miracle stories heard in previous chapters. All such stories, and the anxieties that fed them, were products of circumstances that fed religious demand. But near the century's end Douglas was convinced that Bombay could no longer harbour such fantasies:
The utility of these ghostly exhibitions has been altogether superseded by the introduction of the electric telegraph. Fed and nourished by the nervous excitement about friends in far-off countries, from whom they were separated by stormy oceans and arid deserts, the devotees of this religion – for it was a religion – gave up their belief as soon as it was found possible to communicate with individuals instantaneously on the other side of the world. The truth is, the electric telegraph has flashed this class of spirits out of existence.
Like other Victorian champions of scientific progress and the rational utility of technology, Douglas saw in the industrializing city around him an arena of disenchantment, an urban workshop for the dismembering of old religions and customs. Such attitudes have weathered surprisingly well: Thompsonian Methodism and the occasional study of plebeian Liverpudlian séances aside, the nineteenth-century city continues to be policed by the historiographical heirs of Bentham and Weber.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Bombay IslamThe Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915, pp. 235 - 244Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011