I say, all these provisions been added by our author, his rendering of
this doctrine would be correct. 114
Hunter wanted to show Wahhabism in “its most terrifying form” so he
“wisely omitted all these provisions.” 115 Sir Syed thus continued his
critique Hunter’s (mis)use of sources, and he accused him of
misrepresentation in ignoring key prerequisites within legal discourses
as well as conflating “Wahhabi” and “jihad”.
Hunter had argued that while England held power in India, rulers
and officials of all ranks would need to constantly and vigilantly
maintain Muslims’ carefully balanced – but ever threatened – peace.
Holy war was sanctioned, according to Hunter, because the British were
non-Muslim, a rather tidy argument. Khan’s preliminary critique
included passages ignored or omitted by Hunter, and thus complicated
Hunter’s simplistic read of jihad and of the related fatwas that dealt with
both jihad and the status of India. But Sir Syed took issue with Hunter’s
argument not only because it omitted serious and relevant provisos, but
also because it overstated Wahhabi influence in South Asia. Khan argued
that “Wahabis could not [. . .] preach their faith [under Mughal rule]
without great danger.”116 He added that their very name indicated how
much Indian Muslims loathed them: their self-given name “Ahal-i-
Hadis” (lit., “the people of hadith” 117) was replaced with the sobriquet
“Wahabi.” 118
Hunter, in a section subtitled “District-Centres of Sedition,” wrote
that Patna, a city and region in the contemporary state of Bihar, in the
north-east of India, was particularly “seditious,” “rebellious,” dangerous,
and delinquent.119 He connected this delinquency to Syed Ahmed’s
authority and ability to sway the masses toward Wahhabi ideas,
including those of jihad. Despite conceding that money and recruits in
this period did come largely from Patna, Khan argued that:
It is very evident that not a man of these [recruits] was intended or
used for an attack on British India; nor was there the slightest
grounds for support during these three periods, that there was a
rebellious spirit growing up amongst the general Mahomedan
public in India. 120
116
INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
Not only did Khan undermine the characterization of Muslims in Patna
as overwhelmingly rebellious, he cast doubt on Hunter’s claims on the
basis of time. It made little sense that Muslims would rise against the
British within the periods Hunter had outlined, because these predated
the formal annexation of Punjab in 1849, a moment that did invite deep
distrust, fear, and even violence.121 Locating rebelliousness ahead of
schedule, to Khan, seemed another example of Hunter’s overstatement of
Syed Ahmed’s power and influence, and, more broadly, of Hunter’s basic
misread of Muslims in India. Hunter’s reading back into history events
that could only have been hypothesized demonstrates a teleological bent
to his writing and underlines a willingness to creatively reread history in
light of the conceptualizations of Muslims he favored. This is a valuable
critique, because, as we will see below, a similar process of re-ascribing
meaning to the Great Rebellion takes shape around jihad, Hunter’s
work, and its uses.
Khan highlighted the analytical ellipses Hunter created by focusing
solely on religious interpretation of war. He agreed with Hunter that
young Muslims were recruited and were leaving their homes, but he
insisted that truly devout Muslims, be they Wahhabi or not, had by
leaving their homes definitionally “left their families and property in the
care of the British Government, and their faith expressly forbids them
taking up arms against the protectors of their families.” 122 He took an
especial affront to Hunter’s characterization of these men on the grounds
of law – religious justifications for war were, of course, not the only
obligations put upon practicing, devout, or pious Muslims.
Sir Syed did not limit his critique of Hunter to historicity and
periodization. The next prong of his evaluation centered on Hunter’s
(mis)understanding of zakat (religious duty of charity). Hunter
submitted that because Muslims were required to contribute charitably,
Muslim militias would be funded quickly and robustly; further, he
suggested that all Muslims were conceivably participants in treason and
sedition, even if they did not raise arms personally, because they were
doubly bound to religious war by zakat and the jihad itself.123 Hunter
was distinctively concerned with the limitlessness of Muslim support,
both in terms of men and money, and he tied this concern to the Islamic
legal principles of charity and war. 124 He assumed that all charity would
funnel toward jihad, implicating even the staunchest supporter of
British rule in the mechanisms of anti-British jihadi activity.
“GOD SAVE ME FROM MY FRIENDS!”
117
On these points, Sir Syed commented, “one has to smile when reading
Hunter’s accounts” of the Muslim populace – adding, facetiously, that
not all people live up to their religion.125 Having levied a few sardonic
jabs, Sir Syed seriously addressed the problem of characterizing zakat as a
means to fund rebels or support jihad, obliquely or outwardly:
So frightened have Mahomedans now become of being accused of
aiding and abetting sedition, that in many cases men have
abstained altogether from assisting travelers or any one else.
Apparently, no Mahomedan can now dispense his “zakat” without
laying himself open to the charge of aiding a jihad against the
English.126
While he does not support these claims with figures of any kind, the
message is clear: in Khan’s estimation, many of his Muslim
contemporaries had taken to abandoning the religious practice of charity
after the Rebellion because of its association with jihad for the British.
Conclusions
Hunter concluded Indian Musalmans by offering a set of solutions to the
“Muslim question.” His paramount recommendation was for Britons to
invest in the education of Muslims, with the hope and express purpose of
tempering the fanatical zeal he found endemic to Islam.127 Sir Syed,
following Hunter’s organization, similarly concluded with a word on
education. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he found Hunter’s strategy of
abominable and thought it would sow seeds of resentment:
If Government does not deal openly and fairly with its
Mahomedan subjects, if it deals with them in the underhand
way recommended by Dr Hunter, I foresee much trouble both in
our days and hereafter.128
Sir Syed championed educational reform, but he was adamantly opposed
to those educational reform ideas proffered by Hunter that aimed to
interfere with and, if successful, impede native religion. Of course, he is
best known for his role as a modernist reformer, and correspondingly for
his focus on education as a vehicle for the advan
cement of Muslims and
118
INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
progress in Islam. While he disdained Hunter’s “underhanded” manner
of singling out Muslims and educating them in a way that made Islam
palatable to Britons, he argued that this educational reform “will
certainly come to pass by our own exertions.” 129 Additionally, Sir Syed
claimed that education ought to speak to “the evils that now exist,”
which he saw as byproducts of a lack of “union and sympathy between
the rulers and the ruled;” he saw Hunter’s education as propaganda that
would add to the problem, “widen the gap,” between these groups.130
Reform was possible, and for Sir Syed, it was both desirable and
achievable through education. Hunter’s methods, however, did not read
to Sir Syed as genuine reform but rather as specifically hostile to Islam.
Having accused Hunter of recommending underhanded tactics to
solve real problems, and of ignoring Muslims who were already working
on the reforms he so desperately wanted, Khan concluded by offering an
insightful consideration of Hunter’s influence and the power of his
rhetoric. I include his concluding passage at length below to preserve Sir
Syed’s tone alongside his primary opinions:
In conclusion, although cordially thanking Dr. Hunter for the
good feeling which he at times evinces towards my fellow-
countrymen, I cannot but regret the style in which he has written.
I cannot divest myself of the idea that when he commenced his
work, he was more imbued with the desire to further the interests
of Mahomedans in India than is afterwards apparent in his pages.
This Wahabi conspiracy has, I think, influenced his mind as he
wrote; and he has allowed himself to be carried away by it. His
work was politically a grave, and in a minor degree, an historical
mistake. It is, however, hard, as I have already said, for one of the
minority to attempt to remove the impression which literary skill
like Dr. Hunter’s has undoubtedly made on the minds of the
Indian public. This impression was as regards the native
community, heightened by Dr. Hunter’s work having received
the approbation of the highest functionary in India. I could not,
however, in justice to myself and my co-religionists, have kept
silence when such erroneous statements were thrown broadcast
over the land. I have striven as much as in me lay to refute the
errors published by Dr. Hunter, and although my efforts may have
been in vain, I feel that I have done my duty. 131
“GOD SAVE ME FROM MY FRIENDS!”
119
Sir Syed finished his Review of Hunter’s Indian Musalmans by dismissing
it as erroneous; exhibiting its inherent danger, regardless of its specious
nature; and calling attention again to the ways in which his own
minoritized status would mitigate his evaluation of the text at hand.
Still, he thanked Hunter and acknowledged that Hunter had intended –
as indeed he specified132 – to further the understanding of Indian
Muslims. As Sir Syed pointed out, Hunter simply failed in this regard,
making grave errors not only in the political arena but in historical
scholarship as well. And, Sir Syed drove home yet again his point about
Hunter’s fixation on Wahhabism and the supposed “Wahabi conspiracy,”
which profoundly shaped his gloss on India and Muslims writ large.
The conclusion to Khan’s Review provides crucial insight into the
historicity, politics of publication, and import of Hunter’s grave
misunderstandings of Islam in Indian Musalmans. Sir Syed emphasized
his own minority status, acknowledging the seemingly impossible task
of a minority’s argument disrupting that of a ruling elite. Khan also
highlighted the influence of Hunter’s work on elite readers – likely elite
readers in the metropole at that – as well as on readers well beyond
London. Hunter’s assessment of Indian Muslims also persuaded the
Indian public.
Khan described a need to disprove Hunter’s characterization of Islam
because of its “approbation of the highest functionary in India” – the
Viceroy Lord Mayo had solicited Hunter’s words, giving them the
weight of Empire, as Khan had stated earlier.133 Sir Syed’s closing
remarks on the Rebellion and on Hunter’s conclusions draw into sharp
relief an ongoing academic critique of empire writ large, that is, a critical
examination of the ways that empire limits access to the construction of
narrative. Khan’s conclusion implies that some voices carry inherent
power, and some do not. He referred to himself as one in the minority,
and while we ought to assume this is a demographic comment, for our
purposes and in thinking through the minoritization of Muslims it is a
rather telling adjective: Khan was an elite, educated, loyal(ist) Muslim
who still feared that, despite a carefully argued Review, his words
definitionally could not be held in the same esteem as Hunter’s. This is a
savvy and erudite critique of empire, and one that acknowledges the
ways in which many would marginalize his account. In contemporary
terminologies, we might say that Khan acknowledged his relative
privilege and disadvantage, and that he called into question the power
120 INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
dynamics that allowed Hunter’s Indian Musalmans – filled with
“erroneous statements”134 – to be viewed as fact, but his critique and
subjectivity with suspicion.
Along these lines, Sir Syed’s closing critique resonates with
contemporary studies that show the lasting scars of colonialism and
imperialism on the colonized and imperialized, beyond legal or physical
disfigurements.135 Khan described the indelible mark that authoritative
works about India came to make on Indians. He expounded the ways in
which even the erroneous historical assessments of Britons in power
affected and altered the conceptualization of historical realities, and in
turn, the categories Hunter rendered. 136 He certainly did not make these
arguments with the ardor of authors writing in later colonial contexts,
like Franz Fanon, who famously referred to the process Sir Syed described
as a “colonization of the mind.” 137 Nevertheless, Sir Syed poignantly
observed the myriad effects of Indian Musalmans and works like it not
only on Britons’ conceptualizations of Indians and Muslims, but on
Indian and Muslim conceptualizations of the history and views raised in
these works – even of themselves. In short, then, Khan, a staunch ally of
British rule, offered scathing critiques of colonial and imperial India.
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan offered a response to Sir William Wilson
Hunter, and this response offers us a glimpse at a construction of
narrative. Both parties came to define Muslim belonging within British
India, and both parties cited religion – religious texts, religious persons,
and religious groups – to make their case. Furthermore, both parties
highlighted two key legal issues: jihad and when it is justified; and the
status of
the country, i.e., whether and how a country can be pronounced
as safe, appropriate, or accommodating for Islam and Muslims. The two
differed with regard to which texts counted, whose words were most
accurate, and how the populace might use (or ignore) various texts,
pronouncements, customs, or laws. Indian Musalmans and Review, in
short, epitomize a debate about religion.
More relevantly, however, their intertextual construction of narrative
is not a remotely perfect dialectical relationship, where the actors exert
equal influence over each other or their audiences – as Khan so
poignantly articulated in his conclusion. And, he was right: Hunter’s
work garnered more attention and was considered more valid within
the constructs of imperialism and imperial knowledge systems. But it is
a relational conversation nevertheless. Hunter’s analysis of Muslim
“GOD SAVE ME FROM MY FRIENDS!”
121
religious ideas set the conversation, Khan responded, often having cited
the same sources, and together, they stood to define, redefine, and
ultimately reify certain characteristics, interpretations, and emphases.
This conversation elicited many responses and assessments, in its
time and up to present-day scholarship. A number of commentators
declared Sir Syed the winner of the debate while others sided with
Hunter’s assessment. Lieutenant-Colonel Graham, writing in the later
part of the nineteenth century, decidedly thought that Sir Syed Ahmad
Khan had offered a “knock-down blow” to Hunter’s Indian
Musalmans. 138 W. A. Wilson, a Canadian missionary, quoted Hunter
and clearly supported his interpretations of Muslims; Wilson used
Hunter’s conclusions as evidence to suggest that Muslims were
unambiguously bent on the destruction of the British Empire and
Christians. Wilson cited Sir Syed – but only to mark his failures at
reforming a religion that ultimately could not be reformed. 139 In the
mid-twentieth century, Bashir Ahmed Dar asserted that Sir Syed had
triumphed, claiming – though offering no support for this claim – that
“[Khan’s] was universally acclaimed, and the majority of the Anglo-
Indian press of the day agreed with his point of view.” 140 Contemporary
historian Alex Padamsee evaluates their exchange in terms of what work
Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion Page 19