debated. Members of the Houses of Commons and Lords alike cited
the “natures” of Hindus and Muslims as part of the rationale for
expanding British presence in South Asia; they debated what sort of
market it would be for various goods; and they considered at length the
role of missionaries and the merits of purposefully seeking to convert
Indians to Christianity. They were particularly concerned with the
possibilities of disorder, of threats to British power, and, ultimately, of
revolt or rebellion.
Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Malcolm (d. 1833), a long-serving and
high-achieving member of the East India Company’s army, was called as
an expert witness before both Houses of Parliament during the
examinations on the East India Company’s charter. When questioned by
a member of the House of Commons about the Indian population and
the possibility of stable, orderly rule, Malcolm stated: “That our
territories in India contain a great number of seditious and discontented
men, there can be no doubt.” 17 During the same exchange, when
asked to specify between Hindus and Muslims, he plainly asserted that
the majority of the Hindu population was “contented,” but “the
Mahomedan part may not be so much contented.”18 He added that
“I certainly conceive that the attachment of the Hindoo population of
India is the chief source of our security in India,” but that “our authority
could not last a day” if Hindus and Muslims united in rebellion. 19
Others during these hearings suggested the same: rule in India was to be
maintained by virtue of a sleepy, submissive Hindu majority, but
Britons ought to worry about Muslims disrupting the calm.20
Sir Charles Warre Malet (d. 1815) echoed Malcolm’s assessment and
concerns. Malet was another long-serving and decorated officer of the
East India Company who was questioned by the Select Committee of the
THE COMPANY, RELIGION, AND ISLAM
17
House of Commons on the issue of the East India Charter. Like Malcolm,
Malet was asked specifically – and at some length – about the
trustworthiness of Indians, the ways in which Muslims and Hindus
interacted, and how those interactions might shape unrest. He stated:
India is a country of vicissitude and revolution; I think it not at all
improbable that some great genius, some extraordinary spirit,
might arise, that could combine the present floating spirit of
discontent in the Mahometans into one mass; in which case I think,
notwithstanding the general amicable disposition of the Hindoos,
that spirit might be dangerous and difficult to subdue. 21
India, Malet attested, was a country of revolution despite the majority’s
amicability. He placed the possibility of rebellion upon the shoulders of
a charismatic, dissenting leader who could mobilize the discontented
Muslim masses and then excite the otherwise-agreeable Hindus. For
Malet, only Muslims held the potential to set alight the rebellion,
despite the majority Hindu population’s general compliance.
Malet thought that Britons were the root cause of Muslim distress
and dissatisfaction with British rule. He testified that “the hostile
spirit” was “produced by any indiscretion or violations of the manners
on the part of our countrymen,” and suggested that “only power and
opportunity would be wanting to effect the suggestions of any
indisposition which might have been created.” 22 Others, too, believed
that British religious policies and missionary activity in India brought
about rebelliousness, especially in retrospect: after 1857, many pointed
to British policies and events as having led Indians toward rebellion.
Salahuddin Malik, a contemporary scholar, notes that “many Britons
regarded the excessive missionary activity to be largely responsible for
the uprising in India.”23
We ought not dismiss anti-missionary pronouncements lightly.
The Great Rebellion came to be portrayed as a religious rebellion, and
both Indians and Britons cited the Charter Act which allowed
admission of missionaries and enacted broad and formal changes to the
Britons’ religious policy toward native Indians, as a seismic shift
and precursor to the Rebellion itself. In our contemporary
moment, where post-colonial and decolonial studies of religion, the
(former) Commonwealth, and India have successfully challenged
18
INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
historiographies of empire, it may seem unlikely to us that
missionaries were problematic for the EIC. Certainly, missionaries
and missions played a tremendous role in myriad expressions of
colonialism, imperialism, and governmentality in South Asia. But
before the Charter Act of 1813, the EIC was remarkably careful about
allowing them access and permission to operate in India.
Salahuddin Malik notes that:
A cursory glance at the history of the rise to power of the East
India Company would reveal an extremely cautious and
conservative policy followed by them with regard to native
religions, customs and conventions. There was a time when the
Company’s government would not let a missionary set foot on
their territory, obviously for fear of offending native religious
beliefs. Every conquest, every annexation and every occupation was
invariably followed by a solemn pledge of non-interference and
observance of complete neutrality in religious affairs. 24
Claims to neutrality do not actually vouchsafe it; and, as other scholars
have noted, missions and missionaries, in spite of restrictions, operated
with relative safety and freedom in South Asia well before 1813.25
However, the Company’s formal reluctance to allow missionaries, its
policies – even if lip service – of noninterference, and its track record of
denouncing missionaries should not be overlooked. Taken together,
these earlier policies demonstrate what a fundamental change occurred
with the Charter Act of 1813, reactions to which largely engendered
both later hostility toward evangelizing Britons and a popular memory
of unrest attributed to British disregard of native religions leading up to
the Great Rebellion.
The East India Company’s policies do not indicate a secularist ideal of
equality of religions. Instead, they communicate real trepidation about
the Company’s ability to control a populace and represent a pragmatic
attempt to mitigate Indic concerns about foreign rule, forced conversion,
and the appearance of invasion. Some observers flatly commented that
“Asiatic” or “Oriental” people – and especially Muslims – were known
for their religious zeal, and controlling zealotry became a strategic device
to maintain order. These commentators found all religious people in
India to be swayed by emotion, especially religious emotion, but they
THE COMPANY, RELIGION, AND ISLAM
19
reserved fears about fanaticism, and fanatic revolt, for the Muslim
population of India. 26
For example, during the East India Company Charter Hearings of
>
1813, Thomas Sydenham stated that Muslims, across time and space,
were well noted for their “bigotry and fanaticism,” and that the “very
considerable body of the Mussalmen inhabitants of India” posed a
“considerable danger” to British control.27 Warren Hastings (d. 1818),
the first governor-general of India who was infamous for being tried for
(though acquitted of) corruption, likewise testified on the East India
Charter before the House of Lords Select Committee. Despite a
reputation for hardness vis-à-vis indigenous Indians, he strongly argued
against a heightened British presence in India, calling such an influx of
“foreigners” both “ruinous” and “hazardous.”28 With regard to Muslims,
Hastings insisted that arrivals of more Britons – which would certainly
include missionaries and Christian officers – would yield “religious
war,” because he could imagine that Britons “might speak in
opprobrious epithets of the religious rites” of both Brahmins and
“Mahometans,” adding that such behavior would no doubt “excite the
zeal of thousands in defense of their religion.” 29
In 1813, as part of a debate about the nature of the East India
Company before the Houses of Parliament in London, officials suggested
that Muslims were predisposed to religious war against British rule, and
that this predisposition should influence how Parliament proceeded with
respect to the Charter Act. All of the men cited above had illustrious
positions and careers in India and as part of the EIC, and all – among
others – advocated cautious fortification of Britain’s presence in India
on the basis of the religious nature of Indians generally and Muslims
particularly.
While some scholars have held that the Company remained resolutely
cool toward introducing missions and Christianity in imperial India,
others have convincingly argued that over time, these two facets of
empire warmed to each other and found common cause in missionizing
vis-à-vis either Christianity or “civilization.” Historian Ian Copland
notes that, especially between the passing of the Charter Act in 1813 and
the Great Rebellion, the Company and the Empire “eventually
developed a fruitful and at times even intimate relationship, based in
part on their shared faith, and in part on their common interest in
providing Western education to the country’s elite,” adding that “this
20
INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
honeymoon did not last” and “after 1858, both sides came to re-evaluate
the benefits of partnership in the light of new theological strategies and
changing political imperatives.”30 The relationship between mission-
aries and the EIC was ever-changing, though after the Charter Act, each
side seemed gradually to see the other as helpful in their various aims.
Nevertheless, between 1813 and the Great Rebellion in 1857, real
changes that stemmed from religious ideologies (like evangelism) and
were based upon definitions of religion and religions came into being
and affected Indians. The full-fledged allowance of missionaries after
1813 did not simply permit Christian men and women, individually
seeking converts, to roam freely in British-controlled areas. Instead, it
sanctioned the establishment of institutional structures, including
mission schools, printing presses, and centers for materials distributions,
that could support missionary activity and foster a long-term set of plans
for the safeguarding and promulgating Christianity in India. Further,
these institutions relied on fundamental changes to laws and their
application. Still, these changes did not happen readily, as even though
the Charter Act passed, it could not change the EIC’s longstanding ethos
of avoiding religious matters.
For example, in 1821 the Anglican bishop Thomas Fanshaw
Middleton, who was appointed by the Crown per the Charter Act and
financed via Indian revenues (making him an officer of the State),
suggested an ordinance that would forbid “the employment of native
artificers on Sundays.” 31 The ordinance was refused, as the governor-
general and his advisory council feared that such a policy would “do
violence to the religious habits of Muslims and Hindus” and thereby
damage the reputation and standing of the Company. Lest we imagine
offense was a primary concern, in their refusal the council added
economic concerns as well – such as losing 52 Sundays of work.32 Even
though this ordinance did not pass, it exemplifies the sort of structural
change made possible by the Charter Act: before it, missionaries and
missions were at the sole discretion of the EIC, and generally frowned
upon, but after it, the EIC was obligated to entertain their suggestions,
and, in a slow, case-by-case manner, address them. Other ordinances and
policies passed across the regions and presidencies, including those that
established mission schools. 33 As we will see later, mission schools,
which openly used Christian scripture, enforced attendance through
truancy laws and then attempted to convert children while their parents
THE COMPANY, RELIGION, AND ISLAM
21
were elsewhere; they became sources of deep contention, anxiety, and
anger for many Indians.34
Structural changes required both institutional support and on-the-
ground reinforcement. As but one other example of the effects of the
Charter Act, by 1830, laws set by Mughal rulers and local ruling
elites on the basis of shari’a (an idealized Islamic law35) and
fiqh (jurisprudence) had already seen formalized changes. At a hearing
before the Select Committee of the House of Lords, part of an inquiry
into the state of the East India Company, attorney Courteney Smith
testified that “Mahomedan criminal law has, to a great extent, been
altered by the Regulations [of the East India Company].” 36 He stated
that these laws had been modified, citing that:
Mutilation has been put an end to, and some rules of evidence have
been modified; the rule about female evidence has been modified.
The Mahomedan law of evidence requires two women for one man;
but according to our practice, a woman is thought as good as a man
for a witness.37
Well before the Rebellion, changes in legal code with specific reference
to Islamic law had taken shape. Laws around conversion had similarly
changed: in the district of Bengal, the noted stronghold of the Company,
making conversions to Islam (or “Mahomedanism”) could be ruled
illegal, finable, or jailable if a judicial official found the conversion to
be “forcible.” In 1832, two such cases were tried and prosecuted with
success. 38 Mechanisms of the Mughal Empire – an empire ruled by
Muslims, though one that would be challenging to term “Muslim rule”
– were stripped as new rulers carved their own space, informed by their
set of missives, and these posed distinctive challenges to Muslim life in
India. Yet, however great the challenges to Muslims became as Britain
increased its authority an
d control, none would be as great as those that
would follow the Great Rebellion of 1857 – 8.
Religion before Rebellion
In order to make sense of the Rebellion’s influence on the depiction of
religion, it is worthwhile to first briefly sketch how scholars conceived of
religion prior to 1857. “Religion” as an academic field relies on the
22
INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
history and culture of imperial India. Many pioneers of the nascent field
were Indologists, some employed by imperial agencies. 39 The effect of
colonial, missionary, corporate (i.e., East India Company), and imperial
documentation of religion, religions, and the religious40 in South Asia
has direct impact on the field of religious studies. We cannot and should
not study the history of religion without engaging South Asia, yet few
nonspecialists attend to the unique role India has played in the
construction of religious studies.
Britons invested in ruling India before and after 1857 fixated on the
role that religion and ethno-religious identities played in governance.
The British Empire’s emphasis on religious distinction – based on
creed, sacred text, and ritual – weighed heavily upon official and
unofficial imperial policies. 41 For many, the Rebellion clarified the
relationship between politics and religion: Indians would constitute
either a controlled population or a horde of religiously justified
insurrectionists.42 Before the Great Rebellion, during that tumult, and
well beyond into the twentieth century, Britons portrayed Muslims as
an especial concern – a nuisance before 1857, and an outright threat in
the period after the Rebellion.
Religion before the Rebellion inhabited a space of interest to Britons
in their ruling, trading, and civilizing aims. Sometimes these aims
competed with each other, sometimes they complemented each other,
and other times still they were wholly absent from conversations about
India. Yet religion – and the British construction, maintenance, and
ongoing classification thereof – was roundly (and problematically)
understood to be vital in understanding India. 43 At hearings about the
East India Company, its charter, and its dealings in South Asia and
beyond, members of Parliament routinely asked questions pertaining to
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