| Abstract: | The conflation of Urdu literature and language with Islam is one of the most noxious ramifications of Orientalist legacy in South Asia, and much reconstructive work needs to be done to deflate the tautologies of Urdu-Muslim and Hindi-Hindu. Buddhism is integral to any account of South Asian religious and intellectual history, and yet it is absent from many contemporary conversations about the history, the present, and the future direction of the area's cultures. Its rich cultural history in South Asia presents a hopeful possibility for diffusing Muslim-Hindu tensions. The 1989 novel Makan by the Indian writer Paigham Afaqui and the 1990 novel Aab-e-gum by the Pakistani writer Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi use Buddhism extensively to defy the conflation of Urdu literature with a normative Muslim identity. |
