policies and activities. It is certainly possible to read Khan as an
apologist who tried to contort and conform his various identities into
acceptable and comprehensible modes for British elites. This would be
reductive, however, and may also miss what scholar Faisal Devji, echoing
the renowned historian Fazlur Rahman, suggests is a relative gain for
Indian Muslims: “apologetic modernity,” as Devji terms it, afforded men
like Sir Syed the space, time, and relative freedom to slowly and
intellectually define and craft “a moral community transcending the
particularity of royal, clerical or mystical authority.” 6 Sir Syed’s loyalism
and Muslim modernism were not at odds, and if we take Devji’s
argument, these ideologies and socio-religious locations uniquely
positioned him as an author of a “moral community” bent toward
redefining authority.
In this chapter, I examine Sir Syed’s analysis of the Great Rebellion
and the subjectivity of Muslims in British India. I first explore his
earliest writings on the events of 1857, Causes of the Indian Revolt (Asba¯b-i
bag̲h̲a¯vat-i Hind), to establish his immediate reactions to the Rebellion,
as well as his concern that Muslims be unfairly blamed. Second, I closely
examine Sir Syed’s Review on Dr Hunter’s Indian Musalmans, a
distinctively Indian Muslim critique of Hunter’s influential text. His
writings highlight the ways the Great Rebellion fundamentally altered
perceptions how Indian Muslims were perceived by Britons and Indian
Muslims themselves.
Khan’s loyalties to the Crown make his work an interesting site of
dissent and assent, denunciation and acceptance after and in light of the
1857 Rebellion. While challenging Hunter and drawing British
attention to the Empire’s mistreatment of its Muslim subjects, Sir Syed
simultaneously promulgated British conceptualizations of the Great
Rebellion, Muslims, and loyalty. He employed religiously framed
debates, arguments rooted in religion, and religious identifications
to critique imperialism while maintaining allegiance to the British
Empire.
In the immediate aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion, popular
sentiment identified Muslims as uniquely culpable; Sir Syed Ahmad
Khan’s writings reflected this historical and social context while
contesting the depiction of Muslims as naturally rebellious.
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INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
Sir Syed on the Great Rebellion
Khan’s rejoinder to Hunter was not his first publication related to
Muslim loyalty generally or to the Great Rebellion specifically. In 1858,
scant months after the first events of the Rebellion occurred, Sir Syed
wrote Causes of the Indian Revolt (Asba¯b-i bag̲h̲a¯vat-i Hind ), which was
published in Urdu in 18597 and in English in 1873.8 In the immediate wake of the Great Rebellion, Britons and Indians alike scrambled to
explain – often for different purposes – what had happened, who was
responsible, and how it might be avoided (or cultivated) again. Sir Syed
penned Causes of the Indian Revolt in 1858, when some skirmishes,
massacres, and rebellions were still taking place across northern India.
Sir Syed’s essay is, in this way, a kind of first responder text: what he
chose to prioritize in his essay signals not only what preoccupied his
personal thoughts, but a conversation in which he was participating and
to which he was responding. Causes of the Indian Revolt thus suggests a
broader conversation than the later 1871 – 2 intertextual exchange
between Sir Syed and Hunter. Though he refuted the implication that
Muslims were inclined toward jihad and rebellion, Sir Syed wrote
extensively on religiously defined or inflected trespasses against Muslims
and Hindus. Khan’s writings demonstrated and reinscribed religion –
and specifically Islam – as an interpretive framework for the Great
Rebellion.
Khan’s initial remarks on the 1857 Rebellion, Causes of the Indian
Revolt, were republished and translated into English within months of
the publication of his rejoinder to Hunter. 9 At the center of both texts is
Khan’s call for Britons’ just treatment of Muslim subjects in the wake of
the Great Rebellion. In Causes of the Indian Revolt, Sir Syed forcefully
argued that the Great Rebellion was not jihad and that it did not
represent tenets of Islam. He further contended that, while the rebels
did not represent Islam, Muslims under British rule had suffered
transgressions that might make rebellion appealing. Specifically, Khan
critiqued governmental support of Christianity – perceived or real, tacit
or explicit – to the exclusion of other religions, especially Hinduism and
Islam. Governmental preference for Christianity, Khan argued, had
eroded Indians’ trust in their Christian, British rulers. Causes of the Indian
Revolt enumerated a collection of seemingly small infractions that, taken
as a whole, indicated two things: first, a palpable shift, tied to the
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91
changes set forth in the Charter Act of 1813, 10 in the ways that Britons
and the British government treated the population that it ruled; second,
that these infractions were undoubtedly tied to religion.
Sir Syed identified religion as a primary cause of the Great Rebellion,
but he emphasized that acts of Christians and imposition of Christianity
were catalysts. Winifred Sullivan’s use of small-p protestantism is
instructive once again here: Sir Syed did not locate the problem in
Christianity or Christians, but perhaps he did in small-c christianity,
which is to say, the acts of a Christian majority in the name of rule,
civilization, and proper behavior. 11 Khan believed that the genuine
causes of the revolts centered on a series of offenses that threatened
Hindus and Muslims. Despite his passionate vocalization of Indians’
dissatisfactions, Sir Syed intended neither to defend rebellion nor to
justify the behavior of rebels. Yet he adamantly maintained that the
rebels’ claims and actions responded to vital wrongs that Britons ought
to have known about – and correct.
From the outset of Causes of the Indian Revolt, Khan maintained that
Indians – Hindus and Muslims alike – were dissatisfied, disillusioned,
and even affronted by British policies and actions. 12 He remarked that
the rebels largely came from disadvantaged classes “who had nothing to
lose, the governed not the governing class.”13 He went as far as to
suggest that Indians did not despise their foreign rulers, nor even
foreign rule writ large. He argued: “we must reject the idea that the
natives of this country rose of one accord to throw off the yoke of
foreigners, whom they hated and detested,” and continued, saying
“Hindu and Mussalman, all who have been under English rule have
been well content to sit under its shadow.” 14 Sir Syed’s text first
established that Indians found themselves impinged upon by British
rule, but did not collectively aim to cast off a hated enemy.
H
e contended that Muslims were no different from Hindus insofar as a
general sense of disillusionment was concerned, and thus he challenged
in his first pages of analysis of the Great Rebellion the conceptualization
that Muslims, inimitably, bore the weight of responsibility for anti-
imperial revolts.
While Khan linked Hindus and Muslims as similarly disaffected, he
also pointed out the distinctive concerns for Britons raised by Muslims.
He argued that Muslims were neither distinctively violent nor rebellious
and declared: “There are again no grounds for supposing that the
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INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
Muhammadans had for a long time been conspiring or plotting a
simultaneous rise, or a religious crusade against the professors of a
different faith.”15 But, as he further developed the “compilation of
causes” for the Rebellion, he contended that “there was little doubt” that
Muslims were “in every respect more dissatisfied than the Hindus,” and
so one might expect to find Muslims “in many districts the greater
proportion of rebels.” 16 Khan appears to have been sympathetic to
British concerns, and aware of some of the initial and numerical claims
that Muslims made up the greatest proportion of rebels. However, his
sympathies did not shield Britons from critique.
He listed grievances and trespasses against Muslims, committed
by Britons individually as well as by British rule epistemologically. Sir
Syed cited religion – and specifically Christian religion supplanting
“native” religions – as crucially important here, even as he argued that
Muslims were not banding together to wage jihad on Christians.
He noted that Britons had not taken up religion as a focus of policy in
their earlier days of rule, but that it had presently become a grave
concern. “Hindustanees,” regardless of caste or creed, understood this
increased focus on religion – in terms of conversion, and a diminished
sense of freedom of practice – to be part of “Government,” either
officially or unofficially. 17
A particularly salient example is the actions of Britons and British
organizations, including governmental institutions, after the drought of
1837. The drought and its related famine, dubbed the Agra famine,
wrought devastating effects on the North-West Provinces. In what he
calls a “conservative estimate” based upon extant primary sources,
historian Sanjay Sharma reports that by the end of 1838 over 800,000
people had died of starvation or illness related to the famine.18 Khan
documented that in the wake of the drought of 1837, many orphans
were taken in by British organizations and reared “in principles of
Christian faith,” which he suggested “was looked upon throughout
N. W. P. [North-West Provinces] as an example of the schemes of
Government.”19 This sort of education and assistance to orphans caused
great disconcert, as it aimed to undo their natural religions. “It was
supposed,” Khan suggested, “that when Government had similarly
brought all Hindustanees to a pitch of ignorance and poverty, it would
convert them to its own creed.” 20 By centering orphans – paradigms of
bodies in dire straits and dire need – Khan highlighted British altruistic
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programs and placed them within the context of imperial persuasion.
If the support of British governance was a system by which
“Hindustanees’” religions would be altered, then this seemed not a
program of aid but rather one of purposeful destruction. Sir Syed
implied that British policies and rule would purposefully impoverish
Indians in order to convert them to Christianity from their natural
religions.
Sir Syed foregrounded intersections of religion, religious identity, and
institutional structures in his explication of causes of the Rebellion.
He cited missionary schools in some regions, claiming that they were
compulsory in some parts of northern India and that they were ruthless
in pushing Christianity upon their students;21 he enumerated issues
around language instruction, pointing toward differences in caste- and
religion-affiliated tongues;22 he brought up the “messing system” at
jails, in which Muslims and Hindus were subject to eating food from a
singular kitchen and preparation system, rather than having their
communities’ religious dietary needs met;23 and, finally, he lamented the
British approach to liberties for women, reasoning that such issues
irritated Muslims and Hindus alike and inserted Government in the
realm of family and religious comportment.24 Khan listed issues
affecting religious norms and authority.
As evidence of Indian discontent, Sir Syed cited the perception that
British laws meddled in personal affairs, specifically referencing Act
XXI of 1850, better known as the Caste Disabilities Removal Act,
which altered the ways in which inheritance and taxation on inheritances
functioned. Its primary purpose was to ensure that Christian converts
still received inheritance and thus aimed to make inheritance laws more
equitable. 25 Despite these aims, Khan stated: “This act was thought to
have been passed with the view of cozening men into Christianity.” 26
The act targeted the standard and religiously articulated practice of
stripping converts of familial inheritance rights.27
Yet Khan reserved his most palpable rancor for British missionaries.
He contended that missionaries were a direct source of anxiety and upset
for Indians, writing:
It is commonly believed that Government appointed Missionaries
and maintained them at its own cost. It has been supposed that
Government, and the officers of Government throughout the
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INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
country were in the habit of giving large sums of money to these
Missionaries [. . .] and thus it happened that no man felt sure his creed
would last even his own lifetime.28
These are deep-rooted fears that not only pointed to culpability of
Britons and the British government, but also expressed a simmering
bewilderment and desperation. Most men, Sir Syed observed, assumed
their religion would perish before they did. This is a terminal prognosis
with Britons as the catalysts to creedal fatality. Britons were implicated
individually, in the persons of officers who donated financially to
missions and missionaries, and institutionally, as the British government
was imagined to support missions.
Beyond their promulgation of Christianity with substantial financial
support, missionaries were particularly upsetting for Sir Syed because they
did not follow the given norms of north India. Myriad denominations
and faiths preached conversion, but in his estimation, those preachers’
audiences were their own communities – fire and brimstone was reserved
for one’s place of worship, not the marketplace. For Sir Syed, missionaries,
on the other hand, were supported by the government and conducted their
> proselytization in public arenas, like “markets [. . .] and fairs where men of
different creeds were collected together.” 29 He nimbly wove a critique of
missionaries with one of British rule, reporting that these public displays
of missionizing were often “attended by police, ”30 thus benefiting from
governmental protection to missionaries even in periods when
proselytizing was formally discouraged.31
Sir Syed also lamented that missionaries did not limit their public
pronouncements to their own texts, but instead:
In violent and measured language they attacked the followers and
holy places of other creeds: annoying, and insulting beyond
expression the feelings of those who listened to them. In this way,
too, the seeds of discontent were sown deep in the hearts of the
people.32
Khan brings to the fore the reckless way Britons treated followers of
Indian religions. In the immediate aftermath of the revolts and
massacres, Sir Syed considered trespasses to religious sensibilities to
incite revolutionary ideologies and supporters; he argued that whether
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95
these trespasses were insensitive or calculated, they yielded an insulted
populace and courted revolt.
Of course, in Causes of the Indian Revolt, he did not ignore “non-
religious” factors like economic and political disenfranchisement. Khan
cited the “resumption of revenue free lands” as “most obnoxious,”
specifically mentioning Sir Thomas Munro – whose testimony is
likewise cited as part of the East India Company charter hearings33 –
and the Duke of Wellington as perpetrators of these policies and the
troubles they wrought. 34 He suggested that these economic policies –
taken together with the religiously inflected grievances listed above –
stood to prove that the English simply did not understand their subjects.
Of course, some of these economic policies were an affront precisely
because they impeded upon religious laws or customs, as in the case of
inheritance laws. He lamented that no Briton wanted to know his
subjects, because “almost all look forward to retirement in their native
land and seldom settle for good amongst the natives of India.”35 Khan
critiqued the problems of repatriation – of Britons never being nor
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