Using primarily Urdu sources from the nineteenth century, this book allows us to rethink notions of 'the Muslim', in its numerous, complex and often contradictory forms, which emerged in colonial North India after 1857. Allowing the self-representation of Muslimness and its manifestations to emerge, it contrasts how the colonial British 'made Muslims' very differently compared to how the community envisaged themselves. A key argument made here contests the general sense of the narrative of lamentation, decay, decline, and a sense of self-pity and ruination, by proposing a different condition,...