In Ashraf into Middle Classes, Margrit Pernau sets out to understand multiple ways of being that have shaped Muslim ashraf identity and its transition to middle class in Delhi during the nineteenth century. Her broader aim is to dissect “West” and “Muslim” as isolated categories and demonstrate “entangled history” involving “interconnectedness of a whole host of transfer processes in both directions” (p. 434). Lying at the intersection of urban history, culture, and histories of class, Pernau's analysis presents a complex framework where different groups of Delhi Muslims cohered around virtues of “respectability” and Islamic reform to produce a distinct middle-class ethic. Using the revolt of 1857 as a pivot for periodization, Pernau examines in detail relations between the British and Delhi Muslim nobility prior to 1857 and the establishment of the colonial state and society following the aftermath of the rebellion. Drawing on a diverse archive, she interprets sources such as tazkiras, Persian akhbarat, state documents, newspapers, and periodicals to demonstrate several interconnected processes involving political power, ethics, gender, education, and religious change.

Pernau makes five major arguments about the interconnectedness of state, society, and self to signal the formation of the Muslim middle class in Delhi. Firstly, she demonstrates how changes in state power and relations between British officials and the elite engendered subsequent changes in self-fashioning and piety. Pernau critiques the notion of “White Mughals,” arguing that the policy of alliances between British and Mughals had ended by 1830 and that the British cannot be credited with peaceful cultural exchange. With advancing liberal reform and decreasing opportunities for Delhi elites in the colonial administration, Muslim distrust for the British only grew (pp. 90–91, 213). The perceived decline of Muslim rule, according to Pernau, played a key role in shaping the imagination of Islamic reform movements: where the “Muslim character of the community could no longer be guaranteed by the ruler, the responsibility for upholding it fell to the individual believers” (p. 144).

Secondly, changes in state power and its subsequent impact on reformist ideas contributed to the emergence of a “new public sphere” in which ashraf groups sought an upward mobility characterized by a growing print culture and formation of civic associations (pp. 88, 115–23). Pernau's connection between public sphere and middle class highlights a “prehistory of middle class” and speaks closely to Bayly's notion of ecumene in North Indian society involving literati, Indo-Islamic notables, and officers of state in the eighteenth century.Footnote ¹

Community consciousness, Pernau adds, produced a third process in middle-class formation involving a changing composition of ashraf, suggesting a dynamic between exclusion and inclusion. With the patronage of Islamist reform movements, merchants, especially Punjabi traders after 1857, were able to transform their wealth into social status through an active commitment to piety and Islam (pp. 252–54). At the same time, Pernau demonstrates that the traditional mores of the nobility and lower classes were shut out from the post-1857 conception of ashraf, redrawing the boundaries of Indo-Muslim manners and middle class (p. 267). This contrast of exclusion and inclusion makes middle-class formation a heterogeneous, ambiguous process and remains a central claim of Pernau's analysis.

Pernau's fourth argument involves the role of religion in society. She describes a process of secularization, dissociation between Muslim groups, “de-Islamization,” and “re-Islamization” to discuss changes in Muslim community vis-à-vis religion. Employing Niklas Luhmann's thesis of secularization as functional differentiation, Pernau demonstrates the increasing significance of Islamic reform and the gradual differentiation of ulama into specialists of religion. Noting “re-Islamization” through the establishment of Deoband and Aligarh, and the growth of Islamist movements like Ahl-e Hadith, Pernau adds that processes of dissociation between the “various theological movements intensified as the question of what made a true Muslim acquired greater significance” (p. 286).

Pernau's fifth major argument places domesticity and the remaking of gender relations at the center of middle-class formation, revealing similarities between cultural developments in Delhi and Bengal. Pernau demonstrates that, prior to the 1840s, it was not unusual for noblewomen to wield political influence and prioritize financial security, but the marginalization of nobility by colonial power combined with Islamic moral reform meant that women were gradually relegated more and more to domesticity and driven out of the public sphere. Echoing the works of Judith Walsh and Tanika Sarkar, she notes that the “new woman” was part of a “new patriarchy,” and her life was shaped increasingly by the restrictions of the reform program.

Pernau's arguments about the fuzziness of Muslim middle-class identity, its engagement with the public sphere, and its practices of “modernity,” including secularization, are significant interventions in South Asian historiography, which have also been noted in discussions about the middle class in different geographic locations and in its transnational narrative.Footnote ² Her deep knowledge of the archive, combined with analytical arguments, historicizes the global process of middle-class formation in the context of Delhi Muslims and succeeds best in its attention to local changes instead of demonstrating “transfer processes in both directions.” It is thus an invaluable contribution to the understanding of Muslim identity in North India and its interaction with processes of global change.