Literature and Society

Questionable Remedy AKEEL BILCRAMPs 'Rushdie and Reform of Islam' (EPW, March 24) conceives the possibility and pace of reform with that of industrialisation. Such a nexus between industrialisation and reform was a characteristic feature of western societies at a time marked by a conflict between Papacy and the temporal power, culminating in the victory of the latter over the former, characterised popularly as the 'Reformation'. Bilgrami applies this paradigm to non-western societies particularly to the Islamic world. He is sorry that the Muslim world has not had a transformation on the lines of reformation. Like most of the western scholars venturing into the realm of Islam from an a priori assumption (linking reformation with" industrialisation), Bilgrami also suffers from what is generally labelled as 'Eurocentricism'.