Vol.:(0123456789) Contemporary Islam https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-024-00567-8 Deen and Duniya, and the Indian Partition: perspectives from oral history Deepra Dandekar 1,2 Accepted: 2 September 2024 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2024 Abstract This article explores how religious concepts like deen and duniya in North India became entwined in the everyday life worlds of Ashraf refugee women who migrated to Pakistan in 1947. Deen, signified by pious humility historically imbibed as part of Ashraf heritage in pre-Partition North India, underwent transformation as post-Par- tition Pakistan produced a new materiality and new duniya for Ashraf migrants. The formation of a new duniya led to the partial reinvention of a pragmatic deen based on pre-Partition memories simultaneously suited and fitted to the exigencies of the new duniya of Pakistan. This article is based on two Partition oral narratives that explore the entrenchment of deen and duniya as lived but changing cultural and his- torical concepts, where a new pragmatic deen allowed Ashraf women to narratively emerge as nation, family, and community-makers in Pakistan, while simultaneously retaining their Ashraf status. Keywords Partition · Ashraf · Pakistan · Deen · Duniya · India Introduction 1 Partition migration to Pakistan for North Indian Ashraf Muslim families became part of a large exodus of Muslims to Pakistan that was marked by rioting, instances of looting, and violence. Muslims journeying to Pakistan were met half-way by * Deepra Dandekar deepra.dandekar@sai.uni-heidelberg.de 1 South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany 2 Heidelberg, Germany 1 Research for this article was initially part of a multi-collaborative project ‘The Challenges of Migra- tion, Integration and Exclusion 2017–2020’ of the Max Planck Society. This article was subsequently conceptualized and written with feedback from the ‘Contest Religion and Intellectual Culture’ unit of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. I also remain grateful to my peer reviewers for helping me to work through the ideas of this article.