self-employed in traditional professions. Muslims
are underrepresented in salaried professions and
high-tech industries. Muslims also tend to have
higher rates of illiteracy than Hindus or Chris-
tians, especially among Women.
Muslims tend to be labeled as outsiders by
members of other Indian groups, yet intermar-
riage and conversion have brought about a signifi-
cant degree of indigenization. The Indian census
does not recognize racial or ethnic groups, but it
does recognize language populations. There are
22 official languages that belong to two main lan-
guage families—the Indo-European (in the north)
and the Dravidian (in the south). Muslims speak
the local languages of the regions where they
live. The greatest number speaks Hindi-Urdu, but
there are also many who speak Kashmiri, Ben-
gali, Marathi, Sindhi, Malayalam, Gujarati, and
Kannada. Punjabi is another language spoken by
Indian Muslims, but more so in nearby Pakistan
than in India. Like other Indians, most speak more
than one language, including English, another of
India’s official languages. Within a particular lan-
guage-speaking domain, Muslims may distinguish
themselves from Hindus and others by greater use
of Arabic and Persian loanwords, and, in some
areas, the use of Urdu script (a modified version
of Perso-Arabic script) instead of Devanagari, the
Sanskritic script. Also, many Arabic and Persian
loanwords have entered into the languages spo-
ken by non-Muslims through the centuries. This
process is slowly being reversed, however, as non-
Muslims attempt to replace these loanwords with
Sanskritic ones.
All of the major expressions of Islam are pres-
ent in India, in addition to several that developed
on Indian soil. Although many of these expres-
sions came from the Middle East and Central Asia,
they have been shaped by centuries of Hindu-
Muslim interaction, both on the level of popular
religion and on the level of formal institutions
and doctrines. In terms of formal Islamic tradi-
tion, especially in urban India, most Muslims are
Sunnis affiliated with the hanaFi legal school.
The shaFii legal school prevails in southern
India, especially in the states of Kerala, Tamil
Nadu, and somewhat less so in Karnataka. In
recent years, Hanbali law may be gaining some
influence through workers returning to India after
living or studying in saUdi arabia and through
the dissemination of Hanbali ideas via the print
and electronic media. About 10 percent of Indian
Muslims are Shii. tWelve-imam shiism is especially
strong in Hyderabad in the south and the region
of Awadh in the north (centered on Lucknow
in Uttar Pradesh). Followers of ismaili shiism,
known as Bohras and Khojas, are found today
mainly in Mumbai (Bombay), but they have been
historically influential in a wider area encom-
passing the Sind (now in Pakistan), Gujarat, and
Maharashtra. The number of Ismailis is much
smaller than that of the Twelve-Imam Shiis. India
is also the birthplace of the ahmadiyya sect, which
was founded by ghUlam ahmad (d. 1908) in the
Punjab during the last decade of the 19th century.
Moreover, Islam’s presence in South Asia contrib-
uted significantly to the emergence of Sikhism, a
separate religious tradition, in the Punjab during
the 16th and 17th centuries.
The shape Islam has taken in India and
South Asia generally has been greatly influ-
enced by sUFism. The leading Indian Sufi orders
are the Chishtis (since the 13th century), the
Suhrawardis (since the 13th century), the Qadiris
(since the 15th century), and the Naqshbandis
(since the 16th century). Of these four orders,
the Chishti is the one that has become most
grounded in the Indian context, with major saint
shrines located in aJmer, Delhi, Ahmedabad,
and Gulbarga (other important Chishti shrines
are located elsewhere in India and modern
Pakistan). The other Sufi orders originated in
the Middle East and Central Asia. They all ben-
efited from official patronage during the eras of
the delhi sUltanate and the mUghal dynasty.
Membership of the orders has been recruited
from among the Sunni populace at large, but the
festivals held at Sufi shrines (called dargahs inK 350 India