June 8, 2005
TC grad earns Fulbright trip
Brian Tilley will spend nine months studying Sufi Islam in India
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Brian Tilley, a 2001 graduate of Central High School, has found a passage to India.
The recipient of a Fulbright grant, Tilley will spend nine months studying Sufi Islam, specifically patterns of worship at Sufi shrines in two cities in India. The project will take Tilley back to the country when he spent a total of nine months spanning two trips during his undergraduate years at Hamilton College in New York.
Having just graduated last month with a bachelor's degree in Asian Studies, he will begin the Fulbright in March of 2006. His grant was awarded through a new Fulbright program called the Islamic Civilization Initiative, which began after 9-11 to enhance understanding of Islamic history and culture. As part of his proposal, he plans to share what he learns with both the Hamilton College and Traverse City communities.
Between now and next March, Tilley will immerse himself in the Urdu, the language of Pakistan that is similar to Hindi. He will study in Lucknow, India, thanks to another grant from the University of California at Berkeley.
When he begins his study next spring, Tilley will be delving into the differences between folk Islam - Sufi - and fundamentalist Islam that is based on a strict interpretation of the Quran. He will focus on two cities, one in northern India and the other in the south, talking to people at Sufi shrines there.
"Sufism is based on idol worship and rituals, a sort of broad based and popular rituals," Tilley said. "Folk Islam, whether Sufism or not, is widely popular in the Islamic world."
His interest in the top grew out of a course on Islamic Thought that he took last year at Hamilton. Coupled with his previous travels to India, where he found Sufi rituals that dated to the beginning of Islam in India 900 years ago, he pulled together a Fulbright application. Tilley submitted it last October and learned of the award in April.
As for his interest in India, which helped spawn his Fulbright topic, Tilley credited a geography teacher at East Junior High for planting the seed.
"In class we did a unit on India and watched the movie Gandhi," said Tilley, who also became interested in Indian music in high school and studied the sitar while in India. "That was the impetus for the whole thing."
Tilley spent three months in northern India in the summer of 2002 and another six months in the country from June 2003 through the end of the year. During the first trip, he and three other American students lived with a host family as he helped organize relief projects for Tibetan refugees.
The next summer he was part of an anthropology expedition in northwestern India for the Himalayan Health Exchange. Tilley then completed a semester abroad through the University of Iowa.
On his first trip, Tilley found adjusting to India a 24-hour challenge. He said he quickly adapted to an environment unlike any he had been exposed to before.
"When I first got to India, I was really excited, I never thought I would have culture shock," he recalled. "I flew into Calcutta, it's a very intense city. I've grown to like it a lot but it was overwhelming in a lot of ways: hot, humid and dirty."
"I think for 24 hours I was shocked and then we left the city," he added.
Being a tall American, he stuck out where ever he went.
"It's different, you definitely stick out in a crowd," he said. "I bang my head on lots of doorways, too; everything is smaller."
Tilley said the Fulbright grant provides an excellent foundation for his future goal of attending graduate school to study anthropology or history. During his Fulbright studies, he will be affiliated with a university in India and have a professor to advise him.
"It's going to be a lot of fun, the goal is to connect with other people," he said.