Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India. By Amanda Lanzillo

The historiography of artisanal labor in colonial India reflects a dynamic and evolving field. While traditional Marxist interpretations highlight the detrimental effects of colonialism on indigenous industries, revisionist scholars and recent research offer a more nuanced view, acknowledging the resilience and adaptability of certain sectors and the multifaceted nature of economic change during this period. Yet “De-industrialization versus Modernization” still dominates the academic debates of economic history in South Asian curricula.

As a fresh breeze, in Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India, Amanda Lanzillo examines how Muslim artisans in northern India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries integrated Islamic principles into their crafts amid colonial industrialization. This work is a meticulous exploration of the intersection between Islamic identity, artisanal work, and technological advancements in colonial northern India. Lanzillo argues that Muslim artisans positioned themselves as both technical experts and religiously grounded professionals, producing Urdu technical manuals that framed modern technologies within an Islamic intellectual tradition. This perspective diverges from most of the prior scholarship, which tends to separate religious identity from labor practices, primarily focusing on colonial policies and their effects on labor. Lanzillo’s turn to vernacular Urdu manuals and community histories shows how artisans themselves framed their labor as both economically and morally significant, creating an alternative discourse on labor that countered colonial narratives of progress. This approach challenges the assumption that technological change in colonial India was entirely dictated by British frameworks.

Past studies have analyzed South Asian artisans more as “objects” in terms of industrial development and economic adaptation. Lanzillo moves beyond this canvas by portraying artisans not just as economic actors but as intellectual figures who actively wrote, taught, and debated within their communities. This shifts the focus from labor as merely physical work to labor as an epistemic practice. Pious Labor differs from other histories of artisans in modern India in its focus, sources, and argument. Most historical studies of artisans in colonial India focus on caste-based communities (e.g., weavers, leather-workers, potters, carpenters) and their economic struggles under British rule. Some previous scholars have used cultural and religious lenses to study artisans. However, most of these works—for example, Nita Kumar, Artisans of Banaras: Popular Culture and Identity, 1880-1986 (1988), Gyanendra Pandey, Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (1990), Deepak Mehta, Work, Ritual, Biography: A Muslim Community in North India (1997), Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India (2001), Thomas Chambers, Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans (2020), and Santosh Kumar Rai, Weaving Hierarchies: Handloom Weavers in Early Twentieth Century United Provinces (2021). Yet in spite of focusing on much smaller geographical spaces, these books tend to offer macro analysis. Lanzillo, on the other hand, shifts attention to artisans’ own writings, showing how they framed their work as religiously and socially significant. While acknowledging economic challenges, she emphasizes continuity and reinvention rather than total displacement. The previously mentioned works on artisan communities have often focused on labor movements and resistance; Lanzillo instead highlights intellectual adaptation, showing how artisans incorporated new materials like electroplating while preserving traditional Islamic frameworks. Instead of seeing industrialization as simply an economic force, she explores how Muslim artisans made sense of new machines and techniques through an Islamic moral lens.

Lanzillo presents artisans as dynamic agents who navigated the changing technological landscape while maintaining and redefining their Islamic identity. One of the book’s most novel arguments is about the existence of a reading culture and reading public among these artisans constantly highlighted by technological and material knowledge production in Urdu. The work attests that in case of South Asia, artisans did not merely vanish but adapted their knowledge to new industrial conditions while maintaining religious and cultural legitimacy.

Lanzillo introduces the concept of “artisan Islam,” highlighting how Muslim artisans integrated Islamic principles into their crafts. This integration allowed them to navigate colonial and industrial changes while maintaining a distinct cultural identity. The book examines how artisans adapted to new technologies, and how these adaptations influenced their work and social status. Lanzillo emphasizes the role of artisans in innovating fusion in the technological landscape of colonial India.

The work is divided into three parts containing six chapters in addition to introduction and conclusion. The first part engages with the refashioning of older technologies and the appropriation of modern ideas within the fold of tradition. The first chapter explores the role of Muslim artisans in the burgeoning print industry, focusing on lithographic printing. It examines how these artisans navigated the intersection of traditional craftsmanship and modern printing technologies. The second chapter investigates how Muslim metalsmiths engaged with electroplating, viewing it through the lens of Islamic alchemical traditions. This perspective allowed them to reconcile new technologies with religious and cultural values.

The second part locates the problems and processes of the circulation of artisan knowledge and tradition through trades like tailoring and carpentry. Chapter 3 delves into the tailoring community, highlighting the transmission of knowledge and skills through generations. It emphasizes the role of religious figures like Idris in preserving and imparting artisanal knowledge. The fourth chapter examines the experiences of migrant Muslim carpenters, focusing on how they adapted their religious and technical knowledge in new environments. This mobility facilitated the exchange of skills and religious practices across regions.

The third part looks at the complex ways in which artisans appropriated modern official initiatives of skilling and technical education. These negotiations were closely mediated by, and in turn mediated, their historical context, its social and economic structures, prevailing ideologies and notions of skill. The fifth chapter explores how Muslim artisans in the boiler-making industry integrated Islamic principles into the operation and maintenance of steam engines, viewing them as manifestations of divine creation. In the sixth chapter, Lanzillo investigates the role of stonemasons in constructing modern mosques, highlighting how they infused religious significance into their labor, thereby bridging traditional craftsmanship with modern architectural demands.

Lanzillo concludes by reflecting on the colonial marginalization of artisans and its link to the continued exclusion of laboring voices. She highlights the impact of the partition of India and consequent formation of “national histories of artisanal experiences.” She again underscores the importance of understanding the cultural and religious dimensions of labor in colonial India.

Lanzillo utilizes Urdu-language technical manuals, community histories and instructional texts—sources rarely used in previous artisan studies to uncover the cultural agency of artisanal producers. These texts demonstrate how artisans actively engaged with technological knowledge, translating it into their own vernacular traditions rather than passively receiving colonial influence. Previous studies on Urdu print culture explore literary and religious texts but do not analyze artisans’ engagement with print. Lanzillo shows how Muslim artisans used Urdu manuals to assert their expertise and religious authority. This approach underscores the agency of artisans in shaping their labor practices and offers a nuanced perspective on the interplay between tradition and modernity in colonial India.

While Pious Labor offers valuable insights into the lives of Muslim artisans across diverse artisanal trades, this book moves back and forth among various regions of North India, which at times creates a tendency to generalize. Moreover, by relying on unstudied Urdu-language technical manuals and community histories, she may have overlooked other significant narratives. The reliance on vernacular manuals and community histories, though valuable, may present challenges in terms of representativeness and completeness. Certainly, the technological aspects of artisanal work are explored in depth, while the social and economic contexts could be further developed. There are challenges in interpreting technical manuals as historical sources. These texts often lack narrative elements, making it difficult to extract comprehensive historical insights. Despite these minor issues, Lanzillo's work is mesmerizing for its innovative approach to understanding the role of technology in shaping religious identities among artisans.

This book is essential reading for scholars and readers interested in the intersections of culture, technology, and labor in colonial contexts. Lanzillo’s book provides an essential corrective to dominant narratives by emphasizing adaptation, agency, and the fusion of religious and technological thought. It challenges longstanding assumptions about colonial-era artisans as passive victims of industrialization, instead presenting them as knowledge producers who reshaped both their crafts and their intellectual traditions. This intervention makes Pious Labor a critical addition to the historiography of Labor, Islam, and technology in South Asia.