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<p>This dissertation examines the shape, substance, and staging of Muslim orthodoxy in British India, concentrating on how orthodox theologians survived colonial modernity by deploying sociological, discursive, psychic, and hermeneutical strategies. This dissertation is organized around Ashraf `Ali Thanvi (1863-1943), a leading Muslim theologian, mystic, and jurist of colonial India. Thanvi authored hundreds of original treatises, compiled texts, and works of commentary on doctrine and ritual, mystical experience, communal identity, and political theology. His collected letters, recorded conversations, and sermons were published within his lifetime and continue to instruct many contemporary South Asian Muslims. I closely read Thanvi's texts and situate them within two frameworks: the history of Indo-Muslim thought and the socio-political history of colonial India. Thanvi's hundreds of published treatises and sermons, continued citation within South Asian Islam, and widespread sufi fellowship make him one of the most compelling case studies for analyzing some of the key thematic concerns of Muslim orthodoxy, such as religious knowledge, self-discipline, sublimation of desire, regulation of gender, and communalist politics. My analyses demonstrate how orthodox scholars proliferated their theological, legal, and mystical teachings in order to make tradition relevant and authoritative in the public and private lives of many South Asian Muslims. Orthodox Islam not only survived colonial modernity, but also thrived in its ideological and social contexts.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis is an ethnography of a community of professional thieves called the Kanjar-a 'caste of thieves' by practice, public perception and self-designation-in the northern Indian province of Rajasthan. It is also an argument that spells out the broader logic of rank in local society. Insofar as it offers the first ethnography of the Kanjar community- and of caste-based, professional, hereditary theft-this study is new. My analytical concern with hierarchy and rank, however, is old, engaging in the once central, and now largely out-fashioned, discussion in the sociology of South Asia. My project began with a narrow set of concerns with the place of thieving and thieves in local society. In the course of my fieldwork, however, it became apparent that the received wisdom of South Asian sociology regarding the principles of rank did not offer useful explanatory tools and that a different conception of rank was necessary to make sense of what I observed, both about the social position of Kanjars and the hierarchical social formation at large. As is so often the case, what began as a study of historically and sociologically particular circumstances became an inquiry into the pervasive regnant aspects of the local order of things.

In the Path of the Prophet: Medieval and Early Modern Narratives of the Life of Zarathustra in Islamic Iran and Western India is a historical study of the discursive practices by which Zoroastrians struggled to define their communal identity through constructions of the central figure of their religion. I argue that Zoroastrians adopted cosmopolitan religious vocabularies from the Islamicate and Sanskritic literary traditions for a world in which they were no longer a dominant political force. Contrary to much scholarship, which characterizes medieval Zoroastrian thought as stagnant, I contend that literary production in this period reveals extraordinary intellectual engagement among Zoroastrians endeavoring to make meaning of their ancient religious traditions in a rapidly changing world. The essays of my dissertation focus on four moments in Zoroastrian intellectual history. I begin with an analysis of the thirteenth century Persian Zarātushtnāma (The Book of Zarathustra), examining interactions between Zoroastrian theology and prophetology and contemporary Islamic thought, focusing on the role that miracles played in medieval Zoroastrian conceptions of prophethood. In my next essay, I explore questions of identity, orthodoxy and heterodoxy by investigating a group of Zoroastrian mystics who migrated from Safavid Persia to Mughal India around the seventeenth century. Influenced by the Illuminationist school of Islamic philosophy, they left behind a body of texts which blur religious boundaries. In my third essay, I examine the earliest literary compositions in the Gujarati language about the life of Zarathustra, employing theoretical discussions of literary cosmopolitanism and vernacularization to trace how Zoroastrian stories were reimagined by Indian Zoroastrians (Parsis) to fit Indo-Persian and Sanskritic discursive conventions. Finally, I look at the ways in which Zoroastrian prophetology was transformed through the experience of colonial modernity, focusing especially on the role of the printing press and the creation of a literate public sphere. I argue that the formation of a Parsi colonial consciousness was an experience of loss and recovery, in which traditional Persianate forms of knowledge were replaced by newly introduced sciences of philology, ethnology, and archaeology, fundamentally reshaping the Parsi conception of their religion and religious boundaries. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

abstract: Under-representation of women doctors in medical work force despite their overwhelming majority in medical schools is an intriguing social issue for Pakistan raising important questions related to evolving gender relations in Pakistani society. Previous research on the broader issue of under-representation of women in science has focused primarily on the structural barriers to women’s advancement. It does not account for the underlying subtle (and changing) gendered power relations that permeate everyday life and which can constrain (or enable) the choices of women. It also does not address how women are not simply constructed as subjects within intersecting power relations, but actively construct meaning in relation to them. It raises interesting questions about the cultural shaping of subjectivities, identities and agency of women within the web of power relations in a society such as Pakistan. To analyze the underlying dynamics of this issue, this dissertation empirically examines the individual, institutional and social factors which enable or affect the career choices of Pakistani women doctors. Based on the ethnographic data obtained from in-depth, person centered, open ended interviews with sixty women doctors and their families, as well as policy makers and the stake holders in medical education and health administration in Lahore, Pakistan this dissertation seeks to address the complex issues of empowerment and agency in the context of Pakistani women, both in individual and collective sense. Participation in medical education is ostensibly an empowering act, but dissecting the social relations in which this decision takes place reveals that becoming a doctor actually enmeshes women further in the disciplinary relations within their families and society. Similarly, the medical workplaces of Pakistan are marked by entrenched gendered hierarchies constraining women’s access to resources and their progression through medical career. Finally, the political implications of defining work in medicine, and devaluing care in capitalist economies is explored. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2017

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