people don’t (refuse) to understand muslim culture. i love being bihari muslim. one walk through patna and a completely new world will unfold unto you, a history of muslim identity, forged and intertwined with their hindu brethren. co-constituted in education and knowledge.
both identities were of course then reshaped by british colonialism… but it’s important to understand it, and complicate it. bihar is really crazy diverse, beautiful, with the origin of budhism and jainsism,
the basin collected a kind of muslim class, presenting and synthesising its own cultural hegemony over the subcontinent. bihar presents in a big way the dominant idea of an indian muslim, a narrative which is only told through its caste and class privilege.