"Tandrusti Deen ka Kaam Hai": Health as a Matter of Religion in Book 9 of Ashraf Ali Thanvi's Bahishti Zewar

• Published in: History of religions 2012-08, Vol.52 (1), p.49-76
• Main Author: Ansari, Usamah Yasin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Asian religions; Christianity; Contemporary period; General subjects; Health behavior; History and sciences of religions; Human body; Islam; Moral theology; Personal health; Scholars; Thanvi, Ashraf Ali; Vedic religions. Hinduism. Jainism. Sikhism; Women
• ISSN: 0018-2710; 1545-6935
• DOI: 10.1086/665963

Ansari illustrates how Ashraf Ali Thanvi, a prominent scholar associated with the Deobandi Islamic revival movement, used health as a way to make oneself the object of one's care in order to produce a fortified Muslim self. Thanvi produced an enduringly influential Urdu religious manual known as the Bahishti Zewar (heavenly ornaments), which focuses on training women to inculcate the correct dispositions and form themselves as pious beings thereby. In the broader colonial context under which the "woman question" had been vigorously debated through emerging vernacular literatures and reformist religious discourses, the Bahishti Zewar was not merely a guide to living that included information on activities like praying, moving the body appropriately, or cooking meals. Rather, its focus on health, medicine, and the body must be understood through a historical context wherein the active social and political participation of women in emerging public spheres achieved a new significance, while simultaneously the relations between gender and the genre of religious texts became newly politicized amidst a backdrop of emerging "communal" politics.