Description

Pious Labor argues that artisans in colonial India were not passive subjects of colonial industrial and technological change. By harnessing the increasingly accessible popular print culture to redefine Islamic traditions “from below”, Muslim workers in the United Provinces and Punjab challenged their own economic and religious marginalization. Between the 1860s and 1930s, they asserted narratives of an “artisan Islam” in an effort to reclaim technical authority and status for their trades within the Indian economy.
Drawing upon previously overlooked Urdu technical manuals and community histories that circulated within artisan groups, Pious Labor examines colonial-era social and technological changes from the perspectives of the workers themselves – as religious and intellectual agents. Centering the stories and experiences of metalsmiths, stonemasons, tailors, press workers, and carpenters, Amanda Lanzillo explores the deep relation between their religion and their labor, the materiality of artisanal production and the exercise of cultural agency.

The book is relevant for those interested in histories of popular culture, religion, print, labor, minorities, industrial change, and society in colonial South Asia.

Praise for the book

Amanda Lanzillo’s Pious Labor is a rich and innovative study that breaks new ground in the histories of labor, science and technology.
Chitra Joshi, Independent historian, formerly taught in IP College, University of Delhi.

Lanzillo provides a fascinating account…highlights the immense diversity that marks Islam in South Asia. Pious Labor provides, as a corrective to top-down narratives of South Asian Islam, an understanding of Muslim culture from below. A must-read for those inter- ested in the socio-cultural histories of colonialism.
Farhat Hasan, Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi

About the author

Amanda Lanzillo is an assistant professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.