Usha Sanyal

Usha Sanyal is an Indian scholar and historian of Islam specializing in the Barelvi movement. She was a visiting assistant professor of history at Wingate University in North Carolina. Her PhD dissertation analysed the Islamic legal scholar Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi.

Education

Sanyal graduated with a BA in sociology with a minor in economics from Delhi University, India and an MA in Southeast Asian studies from the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. Her M Phil. in South Asian and Southeast Asian history, was done from Columbia University. She also completed a Ph.D. in history from the Columbia University in 1990.

Languages

Sanyal's research includes a knowledge of the English, French, and Hindi-Urdu Languages.

Works

Sanyal has authored five books:Scholars of Faith: South Asian Muslim Women and the Embodiment of Religious Knowledge, Oxford University Press.Food, Faith and Gender in South Asia: The Cultural Politics of Women's Food Practices , editor, with Nita Kumar, 2020 Bloomsbury Academic.Muslim Voices: Community and Self in South Asia with David Gilmartin, and Sandria Freitag, eds. Delhi: Yoda Press, 2013.Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1870-1920. 1st & 2nd editions. New York and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999. 3rd edition. Delhi:Yoda Press, 2010 Ahmed Raza Khan: In the Path of the Prophet. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. 2005
Devotional Islam and Politics in British India received a positive review from the scholar and translator of South Asian literature Aditya Behl in The Journal of Religion. He described it as "a well-researched and welcome addition to the literature on Islamic reform in colonial India".
Her articles include:

"South Asian Islamic Education in the Pre-Colonial, Colonial, and Postcolonial Periods" In Global Education Systems. Handbook of Education Systems in South Asia, eds. Padma M. Sarangapani and Rekha Pappu
"Sufism through the Prism of Shari‘a: A Reformist Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India" In Katherine P. Ewing and Rosemary Corbett, eds., Modern Sufis and the State: Rethinking Islam and Politics in South Asia and Beyond.
"Discipline and Nurture: Living in a Girls’ Madrasa, Living in Community," co-authored with Sumbul Farah, in Modern Asian Studies
"Al-Huda International: How Muslim Women Empower Themselves through Online Study of the Qur’an," in Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 13: 449–460.
"Changing Concepts of the Person in Two Ahl-e Sunnat/Barelwi Texts for Women: The Sunni Bihishti Zewar and Jannati Zewar, in Usha Sanyal, David Gilmartin, and Sandria Freitag, eds., Muslim Voices: Community and the Self in South Asia, eds. Usha Sanyal, David Gilmartin, and Sandria Freitag
"Barelwis." In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., pp. 94–99. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2011.
"Sufi Ritual Practice among the Barkatiyya Sayyids of U.P.: Nuri Miyan’s Life and Urs, Late Nineteenth – Early Twentieth Centuries." In Barbara D. Metcalf, ed., Islam in South Asia in Practice. Series ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton University Press, 2009.
"Ahl-i Sunnat Madrasas: The Madrasa Manzar-i Islam, Bareilly, and Jamia Ashrafiyya, Mubarakpur." In Jamal Malik ed., Madrasas in South Asia. Routledge, 2008.
"Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi." Encyclopedia of Islam, 3rd edition. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2007.
"Tourists, Pilgrims and Saints:The Shrine of Mu`in al-Din Chishti of Ajmer" In Carol Henderson and Maxine Weisgrau, eds., Raj Rhapsodies: Tourism, Heritage and the Seduction of History. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., U.K., 2007.
"Barelwis." In Jane D. McAuliffe, ed., Encyclopedia of the Quran, vol. 1, pp. 201–203. Leiden:E. J. Brill, 2002.
"The Construction of South Asian Muslim Identity in Queens, New York." In Carla Petievich, ed., The Expanding Landscape: South Asians and the Diaspora, pp. 141–152. New Delhi: Manohar, 1999.
"Generational Changes in the Leadership of the Ahl-e Sunnat Movement in North India during the Twentieth Century." Modern Asian Studies 32, 3 : 635–656.
"Are Wahhabis Kafirs? Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Sword of the Haramayn." In Muhammad Khalid Masud, Brinkley Messick, and David S. Powers, eds., Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and Their Fatwas, pp. 204–213. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.
"Barelwis." In John L. Esposito, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, vol. 1, pp. 200–203. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
"Pir, Shaikh, and Prophet: The Personalization of Religious Authority in Ahmad Riza Khan’s Life." In Contributions to Indian Sociology 28, 1 : 35–66.