This is a reassessment of conventional South Asian historiography from a subaltern perspective and a unique look at how conceptions of history and community clash. For nearly a millennium, the Muslim Meo community of northwest India endured a succession of brutally oppressive regimes, from the Arab invasion in the 8th century through the era of British colonialism. The Meo's resistance to these regimes and their quest for autonomy was stigmatized, even criminalized. Unwilling to abandon their ethnic and religious identity, they created an alternate version of their history through an oral tradition that enabled them to challenge state formation for centuries. This study explores the Meo community through their oral literature, revealing sophisticated modes of collective memory and self-government while telling a story that radically diverges from most accepted Indian histories.