Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion
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his contemporaries, Hunter imagined Wahhabism in both frightful
and laudatory terms; it was, to their eyes, a reform movement bent
toward purity and simplicity, but one that jeopardized colonial and
imperial projects. Certain Wahhabi Muslims, like those who were part
of the Wahhabi Trials, 52 figure essentially as exemplars of legalism
and literalism rather heavily in Hunter’s analysis. Hunter’s read of
Wahhabism allowed him to use “fanatic” or “rebel” claims to represent
normative Indian Islam. It also demonstrates how his elisions of
divergent histories and diverse populations, even within the relatively
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INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
limited arena of South Asia, both perpetuate and produce anew a
universalized Muslim and a totalized Islam.
It is clear throughout Indian Musalmans that Hunter considered
Muslims a unique group: one with an imagined center somewhere outside
the Indian subcontinent and with an imagined legal loyalty to pan-Islamic
ideals always located apart from and in antithesis to those of a (non-
Muslim) empire. Hunter dissected Indian history, Muslim scriptural
sources, and Muslim legal documents and rulings in order to demonstrate
that “The Musalmańs of India are, and have been for many years, a source
of chronic danger to the British Power in India. ”53 In short, then, Hunter
ultimately argued that Muslims were, indeed, bound by religious doctrine
to laws that both specifically and obtusely demand rebellion.
Hunter began Indian Musalmans with his conclusion. The first
paragraphs of his first chapter observe, “While the more fanatical
Musalmans have thus engaged in overt sedition, the whole
Muhammadan community has been openly deliberating upon their
obligation to rebel.” 54 The entire community is implicated here: the
fanatical Muslims were roundly seditious, and everyone else – “the
whole Muhammadan community” – overtly discussed how they ought
to revolt. Hunter did not discuss the possibility that subjects of any
empire might rebel, nor did he contextualize Muslims within a wider
landscape of rebellious South Asians – after all, the Great Rebellion was
not a rebellion of Muslims, but rather comprised a multitude of castes,
classes, and religio-ethnic actors. Hunter instead worried about Muslim
subjects in particular, concluding in his introduction that these subjects
– both the “fanatics” and, as is implied, their “moderate” or “liberal”
counterparts – were obligated to rebel. He saw no alternative model for
subjecthood, nor did he imagine that fanatics were fanatical, which is to
say exceptional examples. Hunter concluded that all Muslims were
bound by laws beyond the pale of British authority.
Hunter foregrounded his argument in the borderlands of the Raj and
competing ideologies. Geographically, he drew heavily upon regions of
contestation, like the North-West Provinces; similarly, he drew heavily
on sites of ideological contestation, like support for and resistance to
jihad and the legal status of India. These authorial choices support his
conclusions and aims while distorting his depictions of both normative
and normalized Islam. Hunter located periods and places of debate and
dispute as exemplars of authenticity, and in so doing, he conflated
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63
literalism and legalism with what Muslims did in their daily lives, and
how they thought about Britons. He also placed heavy weight upon “law
doctors” (muftis), and many of his particular arguments relied on an
assumption that Muslims, because of their “natural” legalism, 55 would
necessarily follow anything proclaimed and ruled by muftis.
In his opening pages, Hunter claimed that “Muhammadan law
doctors”:
will convince every reasonable mind, that while the more reckless
among the Musalmańs have for years been engaged in overt
treason, the whole community has been agitated by the greatest
state question that has ever occupied the thoughts of a people. The
duty of rebellion has been formally and publicly reduced to a nice
point of Muhammadan law. 56
He continued by stating:
Somehow or other, every Musalmań seems to have found himself
called on to declare his faith; to state, in the face of his co-
religionists, whether he will or will not contribute to the Traitors’
Camp on our Frontier; and to elect, once and for all, whether he
shall play the part of a devoted follower of Isla´m, or of a peaceable
subject of the Queen.57
These powerful introductory selections demonstrate Hunter’s over-
arching argument, sensibility, and presuppositions. Muslims, for him,
could and would be convinced by legal rule to be treasonous – it was a
duty to rebel, and one that would touch each and every Muslim. This is
not, however, an argument in the abstract or the hypothetical: to Hunter,
Muslims were called to declare their faith specifically by contributing to
warfare and rebellion on the frontiers of the British Empire in India. For
Hunter, to be Muslim was to declare rebellion against the Crown.
Hunter consequently framed Muslims as having dual allegiances, at
best, or outright traitors, at worst. He explicitly called attention to the
Muslim masses of people in terms of a source of fear:
It is not the traitors themselves whom we have to fear, but the
seditious masses in the heart of our Empire, and the superstitious
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tribes on our frontier, both of whom the Fanatics have again and
again combined in a religious war against us. 58
This short quote packs in many assumptions requiring analysis. Most
pressingly, perhaps, are the “Fanatics,” a term Hunter used categorically
to describe a singular threat. Upon closer inspection, “Fanatics”
encompassed a range of distinct and in some cases unrelated groups. The
term is occasionally applied to “law doctors,” especially those from
Mecca;59 more often, however, he used “fanatic” to refer to anti-British
authors, rebels, and, in a few places, populations living on frontiers, be
they Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, or “tribal.” 60 Earlier in the Indian
Musalmans, he subtitled a section “Fanatic War of 1857,” which he
linked to but held apart from the Sepoy Rebellion properly; he claimed
that the Fanatic War of 1857 was but the first of such major rebellious
acts that demanded retaliation, denoting this event as the event that
spurred a British response.61 Fanatic, it seems, functions both as a loose
term – those who oppose British rule, a particular British agent, or a
specific event with an organizing reference to a religious identity – and
most commonly as a particular category for Muslims engaging in anti-
Empire ideas or activities.
Hunter was preoccupied by rebellious actions, which is why the 1857
events figured so centrally in Indian Musalmans. He declined to outline
all of the events of 1857 – 8, instead stating that the “whole period” was
/>
characterized by “fanatics [who] kept the border tribes in a state of
chronic hostility to the British Power.” 62 He traced the dramatic
increase of fighters and the reciprocal increase in a need for British
armies.63 Hunter may have only spent a few pages directly with the
specificities of 1857 – 8, but he repeatedly returned to those events as he
explored how Britons might know that Muslims posed a true and unique
threat. Further, by tying the Great Rebellion to concurrent and
subsequent massacres, insurgencies, and, most importantly, the virulent
spread of revolts, Hunter accomplished two things: he made the
rebellion catching; and he made it religious and especially Muslim.64
This equation yields a conceptualization of Islam as a contagious
revolutionary force.
The virulence of Islam and rebellion in his book speaks to Hunter’s
focus on the threat of religious war. Hunter spent a good deal of
space on what he saw as antagonistic, violent Muslim “armies”65 and the
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inimitable, religiously articulated threats they posed to the throne.
He employed the term “Muhammadan Crescentaders,” which suggested
a recognizable religious zeal informing these armies, and simultaneously
conjured images of a medieval strain of zealotry. 66 The linkages between
medieval Crusades and modern threats ought not be read as a mere
analogy: this connection played into an ideology of European superiority.
In this gloss, Muslims are Crescentaders in their medieval religious
observance as well as in terms of the threat of armed warfare on behalf of
their religion.
When Hunter referenced the physical Empire – “the seditious masses
in the heart of our Empire, and the superstitious tribes on our frontier” 67
– he indicated another of his primary concerns, namely, the borders and
boundaries of the British Raj. Though they are left specifically unnamed,
one can infer that the borderlands in question included the Frontier
Settlement68 of Bengal, where Hunter lived and about which he wrote
for a majority of his career. He wrote:
The truth is, while we have been trying to stamp out the Frontier
Settlement beneath the heel of a military force, the Fanatical sects
among our Muhammadan subjects have been feeding it with an
inexhaustible supply of money and men; pouring oil on the embers
which we had left for dead, and nursing them again into a flame. 69
Hunter raised two issues here: first, that the frontier represented
dangerous, contentious space rife with religious rebellion; and second,
that the rebels themselves were independently funded, with inexhaustible
financial and human resources.
He positioned Muslims as an overwhelming threat. They were also
imagined as uniquely connected, supported, and cogent: the fanatical
sects, whomever that included (for Hunter or his readers), were
actively funding rebellion. Hunter, to reiterate, did not define the
fanatical sects – either in name or in an umbrella, categorical manner
– and so did not enumerate their collective or specific religious
interpretations, presence in the Empire, or the very revenue sources he
cited as evidence above. Hunter gave no indication that Muslims
might differ in opinion, that the “sects” might differ from one another,
or that regional, linguistic, or ethnic identifications might supersede
or influence a Muslim one.
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INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
We must bear in mind that data was Hunter’s primary trade: careful
histories, demographies, geographies, cartographies, and geologies form
the bulk of Hunter’s significant written output. In other words, the data
missing in Indian Musalmans are present not only in other passages in
this text but elsewhere, like The Imperial Gazetteer, History of British India
(1899), and A Statistical Account of Bengal (1875 – 9), to name a few.
Hunter proved himself capable of better specificity, and so his lack of
support is notable with respect to these fanatical sects, their outside
financial support, and their influence upon other Muslims. This lack
speaks to fear but also to Hunter’s obvious disinterest in specificity in
this case – after all, his argument hinges upon Muslims as a unique and
unified entity.
He argued:
They [Fanatics] preached that the Almighty had withdrawn
him from a fainthearted generation; but that when the Indian
Musalmans, with singleness of mind, should join in a Holy War
against the English Infidels, their Prophet would return and lead
them to victory. In all this there was nothing incredible to a
Musalman. 70
The danger of Indian Muslims coming together is foregrounded above,
as is the claim that they should – and the implication that they would –
join a holy war against the English, infidels by definition. In fact, that
Muhammad would return to earth and lead the Indian Muslims to
victory, Hunter claimed, is not incredible; it is, in his gloss of Muslims as
necessarily fanatical, a typical expectation held by Muslims. Hunter’s
claim is not benign, as it linked what he considered fanatic preachers and
their lessons to the “average” Muslim living under British rule.
A concern for these “average” Muslims – the ones who would think
nothing of their Prophet leading them to victory under the banner of
Holy War against infidels (the British) – belied a concern about good
Muslims. More frankly, this characterization questioned whether a
“good” Muslim could be trustworthy. To illustrate, Hunter quoted the
Magistrate of Patna, a city in the current Indian state of Bihar on the
Ganges River, as saying: “They [Muslims] have, under the very nose and
protection of Government authorities, openly preached sedition in every
village of our most populous districts, unsettling the minds of the
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Musalman population, and obtaining an influence for evil as
extraordinary as it is certain.”71 Using the Magistrate’s words, Hunter
moved his suspicions of Muslims beyond outwardly fanatics, whom he
would label bad, “destructive,” or “radical,” to include those Muslims
that the British government assumed to be “good.”72
Thus, there are fanatic, “bad” Muslims who, according to Hunter,
actively – with money and armies – sought rebellion and revolution
(which he both conflated with and attributed to jihad). The insinuation
and overt assertion he made is that even the trustworthy, good, friends-
of-the-Empire Muslims were, at their core, not quite as good as they
would have one believe. Like their fanatical co-religionists, they were
bound in conscience to rebel against the Queen, no matter how “good”
they appeared at first, second, or third glance. It is this inherent
untrustworthiness – the inherent loyalty to rules, laws, and institutions
outside those of the British Empire – that marked Muslims in the
British Raj as inherently deficient subjects.
Hunter referenced �
��the treasonist” Syed Ahmed Barelvi (Hunter’s
rendering was Sayyid Ahmad of Rae Bareili [d. 1831]) as an inspirational
Wahhabi for other Muslims; in one place, he called Syed Ahmed a
“prophet,” noting that this was his term, and not that of his followers. 73
Syed Ahmed had long figured as the link between South Asia and
Wahhabism, having reportedly gone on hajj in 1824 and returned from
Mecca with a zealous urge to reform his community. Contemporary
historians, however, complicate and even refute this well-rehearsed
history. Charles Allen, for example, bluntly declares that “the argument
that Syed Ahmad picked up his ideas of Wahhabi intolerance and jihad
while in Arabia is untenable.”74 Similarly, Harlan Pearson observes:
“There is no direct evidence that Sayyid Ahmad Bre¯lwı¯ was preaching
jihad before his pilgrimage or that any experience in the holy cities
inspired him.” 75 For Hunter, however, Syed Ahmed’s leadership in
bringing Wahhabism to India was both undeniable and cataclysmic:
though Hunter explicitly warned against conflating Wahhabis with
“traitors,” 76 he also provided numerous examples of Wahhabi and
Wahhabi-influenced tracts, fatwas, and pamphlets that announced
Muslims’ responsibility for rebellion.
As Hunter delineated the specific threat Muslims posed to the British
Empire, he explained that Wahhabis “ha[d] developed a copious
literature filled with prophecies of the downfall of British Power, and
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devoted to the duty of Rebellion.” 77 Hunter was an historian, and as we
might expect of a researcher, did not leave his reader wanting for
evidence. He quoted Jama Tafasıŕ in the Calcutta Review:
No true believer can live loyal to our Government without
perdition to his soul. Those who would deter others from Holy
War or Flight [i.e., jiha¯d or hijra] are in heart hypocrites. Let all
know this. In a country where the ruling religion is other than
Muhammadanism, the religious precepts of Muhammad cannot be
enforced. It is incumbent on Musalmańs to join together, and wage
war on the Infidels. Those who are unable to fight should emigrate
to a country of True Faith. At the present time in India, Flight is a
stern duty. 78
Jama Tafasıŕ clearly explicated the duty of Muslims, in one statement