becoming Indian, always remaining strangers in a strange land. Sir Syed
concluded his relatively brief Causes of the Indian Revolt with an
exhortation to better rule: “When by the Divine Will, Hindustan
became an appendage of the Crown of Great Britain, it was the duty of
Government to enquire into and lessen as much as possible the sufferings
of its subjects.” 36 Khan appealed to a British understanding of a social
contract as a way to exhort his readers to see the Rebellion as a complex
web of issues of religion, economics, and politics, and all of the
overlapping interactions between these fluid categories.
Causes of the Indian Revolt articulated Sir Syed’s reasoned supports and
critiques of the British and the Rebellion alike. It was a well-cited
essay,37 and the 1873 English translation contained an appendix of
official documents. For example, it included an infamous 1855 letter
by E. Edmond, a British missionary stationed in Calcutta, which
highlighted official attitudes toward conversion, namely, that the
British Empire ought to be entirely Christian.38 It also contained the
lieutenant governor of Bengal’s reply to disquiet among Hindus and
Muslims caused by missionaries, in which he denounced Edmond’s
and other missionaries’ unsanctioned writings and proclamations and
attempted to assuage local unease. 39 In the text, Khan engaged these
authors as evidence that Britons, officially and unofficially, were culpable
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INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
for offending Indians by saying too much, as in the case of Edmond,
and by offering too little far too late, as in the case of the lieutenant
governor. Unlike Hunter, Khan does not represent the disquiet in a
framework dominated by religious pronouncements (fatwas) about the
rights of Britons to rule nor did he spend much time on particular
theological points, like technicalities of debates about jihad, dar-ul-
islam, or dar-ul-harb.
Sir Syed did in fact write at some length about jihad in Causes of the
Indian Revolt, more to refute jihad’s centrality to the revolt than to
identify it as a primary factor. Although he did not specifically
address other commentaries on the Rebellion, his tone, the structure
of the argument, and the defensiveness of certain positions indicate
that Sir Syed was arguing against positions that were widely
disseminated and well-known. Both jihad and its imbrication with the
viability and possibility of Muslim subjecthood are paramount in
Sir Syed’s writings on the Rebellion. Sir Syed’s reflections on the
Great Rebellion address both the problems in Britons’ definitions and
understandings of jihad as well as corresponding conclusions about
Indian Muslim subjecthood. In both Causes of the Indian Revolt and
Review on Dr Hunter’s Indian Musalmans, Sir Syed maintained that
Britons’ falsely construed requirement of jihad broadly and as a
catalyst for the Rebellion in particular led to the equally false notion
that Indian Muslims were inherently predisposed toward rebellion and
thus unfit subjects.
Sir Syed bluntly declared all acts committed by Muslims during
the Rebellion to be outside the pale of Islam and counter to all its
precepts. In Causes of the Indian Revolt, he wrote: “The Mahomedans
did not contemplate Jehad against the Christians prior to outbreak
[of rebellion].” 40 He added:
None of the acts committed by the Mahomedan rebels during the
disturbances were in accordance with the tenets of the Mahomedan
religion. The Futwa of Jehad printed at Delhie was a counterfeit
one – a large number of Moulvies who considered the King of
Delhi a violator of the Law, left off praying in the Royal Mosque. 41
Khan contended that the fatwa cited by many Britons as evidence that
the Great Rebellion was jihad – which Hunter cited later, too – was
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97
fraudulent. 42 In his introductory remarks, Sir Syed roundly dismissed
the idea that violence inherent in Muslims or Islam played a role in
causing the revolt.
Ultimately, Causes of the Indian Revolt exemplifies Sir Syed’s initial and
ongoing evaluation of the Great Rebellion, which foregrounded a sense
of native religious subjugation to foreign, Christian power as a primary
issue behind Indian alienation and unrest. Although he focused on
religious issues, he was keen to demonstrate that issues of religious war
were not at play. He strongly articulated that jihad was neither called for
nor appropriate within authentic Islamic law, even despite Britons’
problematic curtailing of religious liberties for Muslims, especially in
Bengal and other north Indian provinces.43 Sir Syed did not disavow
British rule altogether in this text or elsewhere, and neither did he offer
his support to the rebels. Instead, he presented, in the months following
the events of 1857, a reasoned attempt to explain why “Hindustanees”
and, of those, Muslims in particular would find motivation to revolt,
with the purpose of communicating to Britons what they seemed unable
to hear previously.
Many of the religious issues that Sir Syed identified as important
causes of the Rebellion spoke to a British ignorance, whether willful or
accidental, about the importance of religious mores and norms. These
included like the messing system at prisons, which had previously
allowed for prisoners to abide by Brahmin, casted food pollution
laws as well as by Islamic dietary practices. It also included the
conceptualization of proper public religiosity; Khan expressed deep
distaste for Christian missionary activities in the marketplaces – not
necessarily because of the work itself, but rather because of its location
in a shared space. Khan also drew his readers’ attention to the more
nefarious actions of the British during and after the Agra famine of
1837 – 8; he implied that British officials failed to act during the
famine, and then after it saw orphaned children as an opportunity to
rear Indians in Christianity. Sir Syed poignantly acknowledged that
both Hindus and Muslims feared that their religions would not last
their lifetimes.44 The 1857 revolts, for Khan, were not religious
warfare, but rather the consequence of British indifference to religion
in India. His work, geared toward a British audience, demanded that
Britons take responsibility for their infractions against Indians and
especially Muslims even as it disavowed the actions of the rebels.
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INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
When Causes of the Indian Revolt appeared in English, many Britons
cited it as a particularly helpful view to “native” sentiments, and many
suggested that Sir Syed’s account was especially valuable because of its
reliability. He was well regarded and highly respected by British elites;
while British observers did not accept his critiques as assessments as
readily as those by British historians and commentators, his views still
stood as notable examples of authentic Ind
ian and Muslim opinion.
For example, Lieutenant-Colonel G. F. I. Graham – a high-ranking
officer and a friend of Sir Syed – later remarked, in his biography of Syed
Ahmad Khan, that:
Although some of us may not agree with Syed Ahmed’s ‘Causes of
the Revolt,’ the pamphlet is exceedingly valuable, as giving us an
insight into native modes of thought, and as written by the ablest
of our loyal Mohammedan gentlemen.45
He similarly reported the high estimation of Khan by his fellow Britons,
who praised his courage and bravery, his truthfulness, and his manliness.46
Some 15 years later, in reply to W. W. Hunter, Syed Ahmad Khan
revisited his assessment of the Great Rebellion and reexamined British
insistence that jihad was its primary cause and that Muslims might not
be able to live peaceably under British rule. His interpretation of 1857’s
revolts stayed remarkably consistent. This implies other consistencies in
Indian and British popular understandings of the 1857 Rebellion: the
ongoing characterization of the Great Rebellion as a disproportionately
Muslim (or Muslim-initiated) revolt; Muslims as uniquely bound to
their religious laws; and Islam as uniquely bent toward religious warfare.
These issues – and Sir Syed’s refutations thereof – reappear with more
vigor and urgency in his Review on Dr Hunter’s Indian Musalmans: Are
They Bound in Conscience to Rebel Against the Queen? (1872).
An Academic Rejoinder to Indian Musalmans
By 1872, Syed Ahmad Khan was more than a famous persona; he was a
well-established Muslim thinker, having given numerous speeches and
lectures, and written widely on issues of modernity and modernism,
science and education, religion and governance. In 1872, he wrote a
response to Hunter’s Indian Musalmans (1871), only a year after its initial
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99
publication, and the same year its reprint with updated preface – which
Khan engaged – appeared. His response was in the form of a review –
an academic critique and analysis of what was Hunter’s academic work. 47
But this was not a hasty reply, nor was its intent to vehemently invalidate
Hunter or his work. Rather, Khan’s Review on Dr Hunter’s Indian
Musalmans (hereafter, Review) was written to better express “Mahomedan
feeling in India” in light of Hunter’s work and of “Wahabi trials” and “the
murder of Chief Justice Norman.”48 Its audience, it seems, was specifically
English: Hunter’s text was published in London and in English, and
though Review was written in Urdu, it was published, reissued, and more
widely distributed in English. In it, Sir Syed set about to dismantle
Hunter’s argument point by point, and he assumed basic familiarity with
Indian Musalmans. Khan’s Review followed the organization of Hunter’s
work exactly, in fact.
In this rejoinder, Sir Syed quoted Hunter at length, and where
appropriate, offered differing interpretations of Hunter’s Islamicate
source material, like fatwas and historical information. His tone is,
at once, serious and flippant. At times, the Review reads like an
impassioned, critical reproach of an influential academic text, and at
other times, it is clear that Sir Syed was exasperated with what he found
to be outlandish characterizations of India, history, Islam, or Indian
Muslims. Despite speaking to Britons as part of his audience, Sir Syed
did not shy from addressing their offensive stereotypes of Indians as
ignorant, lazy, or stupid. He introduced his review by declaring: “I am
aware that many of the ruling race in India are under the impression that
English literature, both books and newspapers, seldom, if ever,
permeates the strata of native society.” 49 He added that “native society”
was well informed on matters of “the state of feeling of the English to the
natives, religious questions, or matters affecting taxation.”50
Sir Syed declared that natives were neither uninformed nor unaware,
and having established himself and others as reliable informants and
critics, he launched his Review. He began a thorough critique of Hunter,
one that dismantled not only the interpretations and usage of certain
texts and evidence, but also the position of power from which he spoke.
He argued:
What books and newspapers enunciate is, by the general native
public, believed to be the opinion of the whole English
100 INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
community – official or non-official – from the veriest clerk to the
Governor General in Council – aye, even to the Queen herself!51
In the preface to the second edition of Indian Musalmans (1872), Hunter
had used the term “demi-official” to describe the work, and he had
carefully attempted to distance his opinions from those of the
government, claiming that he spoke only as himself and not on behalf of
the British Empire – a disclaimer, as it were. 52 Khan took to task the
very idea Hunter put forth that the general reading public, Indian and
British, believed works like Hunter’s to represent the opinion of the
imperial regime (with good cause53). Hunter represented the Crown
whether or not he wanted to, and his work represented the thoughts of
the “whole English community,” as far as Khan was concerned. Sir Syed
thus offered not just a critique of Hunter, but of imperial power.
While taking Hunter’s claims of objective, distanced scholarship to
task, Sir Syed was careful neither to launch an ad hominem attack nor to do
anything that might result in being accused of doing so. He wrote that
Hunter was a “friend to the Mahomedan,” but “his last work [. . .]
has worked us [Muslims] great harm.” 54 He was likewise direct about the
consequences, implications, and what he perceived as sloppiness
of Hunter’s often-bombastic language in Indian Musalmans. Khan argued
that though Hunter “expressly states” he was only writing about “Bengal
Mahomedans,” the provocative title, along with numerous passages, “gives
us the general feeling of Mahomedans through out India.”55 Khan took
explicit issue with Hunter’s very premise that his claims were limited,
regionally specific, and rooted in observation. He added, with characteristic
bluntness, a direct challenge to Hunter’s work: “I must raise my voice in
opposition to Dr Hunter in defense of my fellow-countrymen.” 56
Despite his bold and direct critiques, Sir Syed acknowledged that
his personal identity and relationship to Islam would be held against
him as he challenged Hunter’s claims. He wrote: “The English, who
are unacquainted with the general run of Mahomedan opinion, will
probably deem me an interested partizan [sic ], and will pay small
attention, or place little reliance on, what I think and write. This,
however, must not deter me from speaking what I know to be truth.” 57
Sir Syed understood the conundrum of offering his assessment: as a
Muslim, he assumed a position of insider knowledge and familiarity
with texts and attitudes Hunter had particul
arly misunderstood,
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101
but, also as a Muslim, his very identity rendered him an unreliable
interpreter. Nevertheless, Khan specifically addressed the same audience
as Hunter, both in and outside India, and in this way, constructed a
conversation between two learned elites.
I submit that this was a conversation – unequal in its power dynamic,
incomplete insofar as dialogue is concerned (after all, these are two
freestanding textual statements), but a conversation nevertheless. Its
rhetorical power is in the discourse it both represents and propels. Sir Syed
noted his minoritized status and pointed out that such a status rendered it
nearly impossible to alter impressions made by a member of the powerful
elite. Further, he noted that Hunter’s assessment of Indian Muslims
persuaded the Indian public. He highlighted the ways in which Hunter’s
work was meant for elite readers – likely elite readers in the metropole –
and yet influenced readers well beyond London, including his “fellow
countrymen.” Sir Syed’s Review demonstrates the ways in which imperial
intellectual products (be they “demi-official” or otherwise) influences the
crafting of imperialized identities, histories, and movements. In his
Review, Sir Syed engaged with Hunter largely on Hunter’s terms. Even
when denying the efficacy of his arguments, Khan did not fundamentally
reject Hunter’s proof-texts, presumptions of a pan-Islamic identity, or the
heavily textual or literal nature of Indian Muslims.
Khan certainly found many faults in Hunter’s work, but Review is not
a polemical takedown. It is, rather, a complex text that reflects and
replicates normative positions on religion, Islam, and Muslims even as
it attempts to problematize and clarify assumed misunderstandings
about these very subjects. We can productively compare how Khan and
Hunter utilized sources, evidence, and terminology to parse Muslims’
subjecthood and loyalty. To maintain specific focus on the primary nodes
of analysis at work in Sir Syed’s Review, I do not follow his organizational
structure, but instead prioritize his arguments. These include the
problematic conflation of Wahhabism with Islam, and the construction
of jihad as a central factor in the Rebellion; Khan crafts his chief
critiques of these two issues by showing that Hunter’s glosses on Islamic
Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion Page 16