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In our ethnography among traditionalist Sunni Muslims of Kerala, South India, we observe the emergence of new intellectual critiques of Islamic reformism and a revival of 'traditional' Islamic articulations. A new class of traditionalist Sunni ulama, claiming to be 'turbaned professionals', plays an instrumental role in providing epistemic sanctioning to 'traditional' Islamic piety while simultaneously grounding it within the discourses and processes of neoliberal developmentalism. Such assertions of traditionalist Sunni Muslim identity challenge the conventional understanding of Islamic reformism as a hallmark of the progressive understanding of faith and traditionalism as its 'anti-modern' other. The article argues that this discursive shift of Sunni Islamic traditionalism in Kerala since the 1980s from defensive to more assertive forms has to be located in the context of wider socio-economic change within the community facilitated by structural as well as cultural forces of globalization. We point out that this process traverses the local, national, and global scales of identification, and results in intense negotiations between local identifications and 'true Islamicate global imaginations'. These negotiations bring in new discourses around the question of 'authentic' Islamic practices and sensibilities among the traditionalist Sunni Muslims, forcing us to locate the question of their identity formation beyond the boundaries of communities and the nation states that ensconce them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changing nature of Muslim political mobilization in contemporary India in the context of Hindu nationalism's ascendancy into power and the consequent crisis of traditional Muslim politics. Through an ethnographic case study of the Popular Front of India, we argue that a qualitatively new form of political mobilization is taking place among Indian Muslims centered on an articulation of "self-defense" against a "Hindu nationalist threat." This politics of self-defense is constructed on the reconciliation of two contradictory processes: use of extensive legal pragmatism, and defensive ethnicization based on Islamic identity. The paper also examines the consequences of the emerging politics of competing ethnicization for even a normative and minimal idea of secularism and how it contributes to the process of decoupling of secularism and democracy in contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the competing processes of ethnicization taking place among Hindu and Muslim religious communities in the coastal region of Karnataka state in South India in the broader context of hegemonic ascendancy of Hindu nationalism in the country. We describe how an array of militant Hindutva organizations use an institutionalized system of religious vigilantism and violence against minorities to construct an ethnicized, exclusivist moral community of Hindus in the region. This construction of an ethno-Hinduism by a clever depoliticizing of caste inequalities and violence seeks to produce and naturalize religious difference into an incorrigible and exclusivist ethnic identity that thrives on a continuous process of enemy-making. Responding to this predatory ethnicization executed by militant Hindutva organizations, and capitalizing on the pervasive sense of alienation and anxiety of the Muslims in the region, radical Islamic organizations engage in a counter-predatory ethnicization of Muslim communities in the region. These organizations, while officially articulating secular positions, use the language of self-defence and securitization, coupled with radical Islamic identity for mass mobilization, to create an exclusive Islamic moral community, often mirroring the tactics of Hindutva vigilante organizations. We conclude that these competing processes of ethnicization of religious identities and the emergence of a 'vigilante public' will have far-reaching consequences for the central facets of democracy such as citizenship and secularism while leaving the socio-cultural spaces in coastal Karnataka highly polarized on religious lines and peaceful co-existence of religious communities challenging and undesirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nutrient management in shallow transitional aquatic systems is very complex due to the sediment-water exchange, especially for phosphorus. The present study tries to get an in-depth understanding of the distribution of geochemical forms of phosphorus in the surface sediments of Beypore Estuary, a tropical estuarine system in southwest India, which has been subjected to immense climate change in recent times. Total phosphorus in the sediments was found to be abysmally lower (76.8 to 889.12 µg/g) than those reported for other tropical estuaries. Organic-bound phosphorus constituted the majority of the total phosphorus in the sediments, and unlike other tropical estuaries, iron-bound and calcium-bound phosphorus were minor fractions in the study region. However, the bioavailable phosphorus was consistent throughout the study period and varied from 16.5 to 51.0% of total phosphorus. This reveals the active phosphorus buffering in the Beypore Estuary even in the absence of an external source. Statistical evaluation of two contrasting seasons (low and high runoff periods) could illustrate the major biogeochemical pathways for phosphorus in the Beypore Estuary. This study highlights the significant role of hydrographical parameters in regulating phosphorus bioavailability in this estuary; therefore, any modifications to the same by climate change could make nutrient management even more challenging., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)