Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion
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as skirmishes and massacres continued), many commentators suggested
that Muslims were uniquely responsible for the rebellion and had
persuaded Hindus or others to participate. As seen in the 1813 Charter
Act Hearings, Britons represented Muslims as having a predilection
toward violence, with a ferocity that was especially reserved for a
conquering, non-Muslim regime. During and after 1857, this tableau
was exacerbated and used to demonstrate that Muslims, unlike their
Hindu counterparts, were predisposed to violence and rebellion, with
the potential to agitate the otherwise-docile Hindus into anti-imperial
action. This explained the revolts neatly for many commentators.
This explanation is exemplified by the work of W. H. Carey, a British
author and compiler for the East India Company, who specifically
addressed the Great Rebellion in a book he titled The Mahomedan
Rebellion. 86 This hurried volume appeared in late 1857, no more than six
months after the original outbreak of revolt, as events were still
unfolding across northern India, and as British and Indic contemporaries
alike scrambled to respond, physically and in writing, to the cascading
effects of revolt. Carey’s work was shaped by both religious conviction
and a Eurocentric sense of history; he replicated religious ideologies
36
INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
about Christian supremacy as well as European ideologies wherein Islam
and Christianity were at odds, representatives of differing – even
warring – worlds.87 Carey insisted that the Rebellion was that of Indian
Muslims, evidence of religio-political objection to British rule, and
proof that deep concerns about Islam in India were justified. 88
In his prefatory remarks, Carey stridently insisted on the religious
nature of the Rebellion. Accusing Indians of “cowardly massacres” and
“treachery,” and calling them “misguided and faithless miscreants” as
well as “hordes of robbers,” he attributed British success to a divine
hand: “Providence has watched over the Briton, and brought aid at
the very moment when most needed – and India continues British
India still!” 89 Carey reported that while the general public saw the
Rebellion as a vast conspiracy “to exterminate the Europeans in India”
that had “been the work of years,” his review of documents and records
from Calcutta did not provide evidence of a conspiracy. 90 Rather, he
saw the Rebellion as a result of Muslims seizing upon British weakness
and, importantly, acting on behalf of and in obedience to their
religion. 91 In fact, Carey offered a lengthy quote from “the Shah of
Persia,” and he italicized the portions of it that he saw as supporting –
even commanding – Muslims engaged not in a political conspiracy,
but in holy war. 92
In most of his fairly sizeable book, Carey worked from this
summation of a document from the “Shah of Persia,” which he claimed
was recovered “when our conquering troops had fought the battle
of Mahamra in the plains of Persia” in a “deserted tent of the
Shahzada [. . .] duly signed, but without a date.”93 Carey seems to have
mistaken – or collapsed – the concurrent Anglo-Persian wars (1856 – 7)
and the Indian Rebellion (1857 – 8). The Anglo-Persian wars
encompassed a number of battles for control between the British and
the Qajar dynasty; regionally, these took place in the greater area of
western Afghanistan, on the borders between the expanding British
territory in India (and contemporary Pakistan) and the Persian Empire.
The Persian Shah did indeed declare jihad, and he did indeed do so
during the battles for control against the British.94 However, these
wars were related only in British eyes: they both threatened British
control over India insofar as a Persian gain on the borders – with their
Russian allies nearby – would pressure Britain in India. Carey’s mistakes
appear to be based upon an imagined pan-Islamic unity in which a (Shi’i)
THE COMPANY, RELIGION, AND ISLAM
37
Shah of a distant empire would directly sway Indians hundreds (if not
thousands) of miles away. Moreover, in his quoted text, Carey reports
that the Shah spoke directly to “the people of Heran [Herat],” 95 which is
a city in Afghanistan near the contemporary border of Iran. So, even if
the Shah directly addressed the Muslims of India, as Carey claims, it is
unclear to which Indians either the Shah or Carey refers: are they the
proximate South Asians, in contemporary Pakistan? Are they Afghani
Muslims assumed to be Indian Muslims? Or, are they those Indian
Muslims who would, later in 1857, first rebel in Meerut, nearly 1,300
miles away as the crow flies? Are they all Indian Muslims? And if so,
how did Carey imagine a Persian-language letter would be disseminated,
and, once disseminated, to whom?
Carey’s assumptions here are vast and go unanswered. Regardless, it is
telling that his volume relied upon the Shah’s “recovered” letter, the
outright declaration of jihad, and an imagined unity among all Muslims.
He summarized the letter’s most relevant – and damning – passages as
follows:
1st, that the Mussulmans of India (the Shah proclaims it) had cause
for fear in the matter of their religion, from the bad faith and
deceitful mode of proceeding adopted by the British invasion and
annexation. 2nd, that the war he [i.e., the Muslim] was about to
enter upon was a religious war, and that all good Mahometans
should arm in defense of the orthodox faith of the Prophet, and
slay and exterminate in the cause of God. 3rd, That armies had
been equipped and appointed to march on India for the assistance
of the faithful residing there. 4th, Combination is recommended
and a general rising. 5th, All true believers are informed that this
war has been waged for the purpose of taking vengeance on the
British for all the injuries which the Holy Faith [i.e., Islam] has
suffered from them. 96
For the Shah, in Carey’s summation of his letter, the British had
unmistakably overstepped their bounds, not merely as rulers of a
political regime, but as arbiters of non-Muslim rule in previously
Islamic areas. Less than two decades later, W. W. Hunter’s 1871 – 2
account of the Great Rebellion and its relationship to Muslims and
jihad more specifically would replicate Carey’s summation as well as his
38
INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
analysis, as we will see in the next chapter. Carey’s insistence that his
primary sources acutely delineated a religious obligation for Muslims
to rise against British rule was neither unique nor limited. Carey not
only implied that, but also cited eyewitness accounts that stated that
Muslims and Islam were transparently accountable for the atrocities
committed during the Rebellion. 97 The Mahomedan Rebellion articulated
the distinctive relationship between Islam and anti-British sentiment.
Carey represents a vociferous segment of Britons. Historia
n
Salahuddin Malik has written that in major newspapers published
across the United Kingdom, it was standard to regard the unfolding
rebellion as a Muslim-led revolt. 98 He suggests as well that Britons –
and perhaps especially British missionaries – imagined Muslims
as doubly-inclined to rebel: first, existentially as Muslims who
were imagined as “proud, vengeful, and fanatical;” and second,
situationally, as fallen rulers, who bore distinctive animosity toward
the British, the newest and formal rulers of India. 99 Muslims were
depicted before and after the Great Rebellion as dejected, ousted rulers
bent on regaining what they had lost. One commentator in The
Examiner suggested that it “was a necessity that the descendants of
Mahomedan conquerors of India should hate us, and that mingled
with this hatred there should be an undying hope of recovering the
supremacy they had lost.”100
British authors reproduced extant stereotypes of Muslims as violent,
incapable of being ruled by non-Muslims (i.e., without Islamic law), and
with an ingrained despair about having ceded power to Christian
foreigners. The background noise of these assumptions was amplified in
light of rumors about the Enfield rifle and the related stories of chapati
signals. These circumstances, on the whole, proved a fertile ground in
which to sow suspicion of a vast conspiracy – one that was notably
“Islamic” for some, and for others, merely spurred on by individual
Muslims or members of the formerly ruling Mughal elite. In either case,
however, accusations and assumptions of conspiracy were tied to Muslim
involvement. Anxieties about and evidence for conspiracy speak, in large
part, to British concerns about control, but also to the unique nature of
religious persuasion in India, especially for (disloyal, warlike) Muslims.
Colonel G. B. Malleson offers a standard example of the British
narrative of the 1857 Rebellion, and he was an outright advocate for a
conspiracy model. He clearly named chief conspirators, including both
THE COMPANY, RELIGION, AND ISLAM
39
Muslim and non-Muslim actors, citing Maulvi Ahmadulla of Faizabad,
Nana Sahib, the Rani of Jhansi, and Kundwar Singh.101 He most often
cited the Maulvi as a key persona and conspirator.102 Malleson goes as far
as to call these four leaders the “Executive Council” of the mutiny, and in
the earliest portions of his oft-cited book, attempts to parse how each
person contributed to and fostered rebellion.103 There can be no doubt
that he was utterly convinced that a conspiracy existed and that Maulvi
Ahmadulla of Faizabad played a central role in it. 104
Despite identifying these key collaborators, Malleson suggested
that “all the active conspirators [. . .] may probably never be known.”
He proximately contended that there “could be no question” as to the
Maulvi’s primary role. 105 He then – rather grandiloquently – argued
that the Maulvi “was selected by the discontented in Oudh to sow
throughout India the seed which, on a given signal, should spring to
active growth. ”106 For Malleson, the people of Oudh, a vast and
influential area of northern India, popularly chose the Muslim Maulvi
to incite rebellion. While he offered little direct evidence for this
suggestion beyond a possible list of places the Maulvi visited, Malleson
forcefully argued that he was not only an influential leader of a great
conspiracy but the influential leader. Popularly elected to his position,
capable of single-handedly sowing seeds of rebellion, and credited
with devising and enacting the “chapati scheme,” the Maulvi appeared
as an indispensable and uniquely capable insurgent. 107 Moreover, as
Malleson suggested, he represented not only the will of the people of
Oudh, who elected him, but also of India, for he was selected to sow
seeds of rebellion throughout India.
Malleson tidily summed up the Maulvi’s power, and his connection to
what had already become a standard rationalization for the Great
Rebellion, when he wrote:
The secret agents of the vast conspiracy hatched by the Maulavıóf
Faiza´ba´d and his associates had by this time done their work so
thoroughly, had roused to a pitch of pent-up madness of which an
oriental people are alone capable, the feelings of the sipa´hıś and the
population of the North-western Provinces generally, that it is
improbable that, if the Government had even gone the length of
withdrawing absolutely the new musket, and the new cartridge
with it, the plague would have been stayed. 108
40
INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
In Malleson’s imagination, the Maulvi employed “secret agents” and
headed a “vast conspiracy” that relied on the story of greased cartridges
and newly issued rifles. Malleson stated that because “oriental people”
were uniquely capable of hysteria, the Maulvi had no trouble whipping
their emotions into a frenzy, regardless of whether the Enfield rifle and
its cartridges wrapped in their prohibited animal fats actually replaced
the Brown Bess. In the work of one of the most circulated and cited
historians of the Great Rebellion, Maulvi Ahmadulla of Faizabad thus
represented the essence of a conspiracy; that he was Muslim was not lost
on other commentators or on Malleson himself, and speaks to the elision
between the events of 1857 – 8, mutinous sepoys and rebellious citizens
alike, and Islam.
Muslim Memories of the Great Rebellion
Despite their overrepresentation and enduring influence, Britons were
not the only ones to provide written records of the events of 1857 – 8.
Following their pattern of dismissing the documentation and historical
accounts of South Asian peoples, Britons insisted that Indian authors
simply did not have a method by which to recount historical events, that
they were incapable of making sense of their past with reference to the
present. Notably, Romila Thapar has suggested that lingering effects of
colonial rule upon Indian knowledge includes the obscuring of
autochthonous narrative accounts; she has investigated whether Indians
had their own records, methods, or interpretive systems, and found
that in fact they did.109 1857 is no different. Much of the scholarship
neglects local documentation of the Great Rebellion, and when it does,
these documents are more often used to support the widely accepted
British narrative than to offer a balanced articulation of the events.
Further, as Indian historian S. M. Azizuddin Husain estimates, there are
some 60,000 documents in Persian and Urdu about the Great Rebellion,
stored in a number of libraries and both state and national archives in
India.110 Yet some scholars have claimed that relevant documents
dealing with the Rebellion do not exist, are not accessible, or have been
improperly stored (and thus are unusable, lost, or deteriorated).111
Scholar Arshad Islam similarly notes an omission of Indian voices within
historiographies of the Great Rebellion, especially wi
th regard to acts
of violence. 112
THE COMPANY, RELIGION, AND ISLAM
41
While ignoring Indic sources, we have seen how Britons characterized
acts of rebellion as both distinctively Muslim as well as decidedly
religious. For example, in most of the contemporaneous British sources
cited above, authors duly outline how acts of rebellion were distinctively
those of Muslim actors or inspired by Muslims, as we saw in Malleson
and his characterization of the Maulvi. Carey similarly reported various
atrocities, both confirmed and alleged – like massacres, rapes, and
sieges – as the responsibility of Muslim agitators. 113 Still others, like
Hunter, combined both military progress with local effects on civilians,
and, perhaps with the benefit of some years’ hindsight, offer intellectual
analysis of the causes of the Great Rebellion as well as suggestions on
how to stem future insurrections. Across these loose categorizations,
most Britons explained violent acts committed by Indians by invoking
religious parameters; both Carey and Hunter both saw Muslim violence
as prescribed and necessarily anti-Christian in addition to being anti-
British, for example.
Despite clear understandings of the Great Rebellion as religiously
imbued, if not outright religious or holy war, few Britons saw the actions
of the British in India as religiously offensive or influenced, even as they
called for Christendom’s spread. Fewer still identified violence against
Indians as religiously inflected. In a particularly telling example of this
double standard, accounts by Indian Muslims of the British recapture of
Delhi differ in significant ways from the prominent British accounts of
the same event. Delhi was an early loss for the British, and a site of great
bloodshed, both military and civilian, throughout the Great Rebellion.
During the September 1857 British reclamation of lost territory, British
forces captured the Jama Masjid, a congregational mosque built in the
mid-seventeenth century and the largest mosque in India. British
accounts merely mention this factually. Carey, writing contempor-
aneously, did not elaborate on the recapture (or “fall”) of Delhi, but
simply declared, “With the fall of Delhi, the successes of General
Havelock and the Commander-in-Chief against the mutineers in their