Rebellion was a shock to Britons because “the self-relying, phlegmatic
English do not understand the passionate, impulsive, mercurial natures
of other people.” 49
REBELLION AS JIHAD, JIHAD AS RELIGION
135
Trevelyan/Indophilus’s comments on the Great Rebellion and
Muslims’ roles in it are telling: printed in a highly noted and widely
circulated newspaper, they demarcate a set of opinions both popular and
representative. His first letter, titled “Retribution – Delhi,” addressed
the Muslims as a political issue. Speaking to a wide audience about a
widely held perception, he noted, “the disposition at present is to put the
Mahomedans under a ban.” 50 Trevelyan continued, arguing that:
It is true that according to its principles as laid down in the
Koran, Mahomedanism is a standing conspiracy against every
government which is not Mahomedan, because the sword and
the acquisition of temporal power are the predicted means of
propagating this religion. 51
Islam – Mahomedanism – is a standing conspiracy, requiring power and
the sword. Although he did not use the terms holy war or jihad here, the
inherent threat of religious war is on full display.
Interestingly, Trevelyan/Indophilus tempered these claims about
Muslims, intoning, “But what people act fully up to the principles of
their religion?” 52 He estimated that most people, including Christians,53
do not actively live up to their religious obligations, and Muslims were, in
this regard, no different. Yet, Trevelyan tacitly argued for a
conceptualization of proper Muslim as jihadi insofar as legal requirements
and the letter of the law were concerned. Should Muslims be either pious
or obedient, they would be a militaristic risk, required to wage war.
In other words, should Muslims be real Muslims, then the threat of Islam
and of inherently Islamic traits would become manifest. Trevelyan
repeated a post-Rebellion depiction and widely held truth: Islam is a vast
conspiracy, and Muslims by extension are the conspirators.
In the same letter to the editor, Trevelyan offered another argument to
address the popular suggestion that India’s Muslims ought to be placed
under a ban. He did not suggest that Muslims were falsely accused of
disloyalty, nor did he counter the claims that Islam – as an identity-
marker – espoused something beyond “the sword.” Instead, he offered a
logical, demographic argument. He suggested that Muslims in India
must not be terribly religious given the size of the population and
Britons’ ability to hold Indian territory in the first place!54 Trevelyan
additionally suggested that Muslims did not outnumber Hindus in the
136
INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
sepoy regiments, but because of disproportionate and inherent
fanaticism did succumb to the “temptations” to express “hostility.”55
He labeled Muslim sepoys as distinctively violent and disproportio-
nately mutinous. Trevelyan concluded, in a visually striking free-
standing line, that “military execution will, of course, be done upon
every mutineer taken in arms.”56
In later letters, Trevelyan/Indophilus noted that Muslims may well
have been “surprised” by the Rebellion, and as such ought not to be
held specifically responsible, and yet he maintained that Muslims were
exceptionally warlike and intrinsically moved by rebellion, hostility,
and war. His responses perhaps articulate what was a moderate
position: the Qur’an and Islam justify and require violent ends and a
victorious Muslim population, but the Indian Muslims of specific
concern to the British Empire had not demonstrated true piety and
thus true Muslimness.
The elisions among Islam, anti-imperial ideologies, Wahhabism, and
jihad reduced Muslims to, at best, dangerous subjects of the Queen and,
at worst, rebels by definition. Khan attempted to dissuade audiences of
this position in his Review on Dr Hunter’s Indian Musalmans (1872), but
he had previously presented similar arguments in Causes of the Indian
Rebellion (Urdu 1858 and English translation 1873), and Account of the
Loyal Mahomedans of India (1860). Both of these earlier works share a
thread with his later reply to Hunter: in each text, Khan sets about
demonstrating the “real” causes of revolt, which were, for him, rooted
decidedly outside Islam. Furthermore, wherever Khan addressed the
Rebellion, he highlighted Muslim allegiance to the Crown.
Sir Syed expressly stated that the purpose for An Account of the Loyal
Mahomedans of India was to “publish a series of narratives” of “loyal acts”
as a defense of Muslims after the Great Rebellion. 57 We ought not
assume Sir Syed was on the offensive, attempting to portray Muslims in a
good light simply to do so. Rather, he clearly indicated that he was
writing against negative depictions in which Muslims were “freely
represented as everything that is vile, treacherous, and contemptible.”58
In 1858 and 1860, Sir Syed already found himself writing against a
socio-political narrative in which Muslims were demarcated as uniquely
untrustworthy, and in some cases, distinctively culpable for the events of
the Great Rebellion. He found himself writing against the minoritization
and racialization of Muslims.
REBELLION AS JIHAD, JIHAD AS RELIGION
137
The language of culpability had some resonance with the actors
involved in the uprising, the myths of greased cartridges and passed
chapatis, and the officially deposed Mughal rulers. But many Britons
and Muslims alike came to rest upon the concept of jihad not only to
explain the Great Rebellion but also specifically to mark difference. For
Hunter, jihad was an inescapable problem for all Indian Muslims, and
solvable only by increasing British educational systems with a stated
goal of undermining Islam. 59 Hunter maintained that the entire Qur’an
assumed a victorious population, thereby creating a Muslim populace
that would need political and social ascendancy in order to maintain its
religious laws; he suggested that jihad was the only conclusion possible
for Muslims, unless they were to be less faithful. In other words, Muslims
were required to be jihadis, participants in and practitioners of holy war,
until or unless they were less Muslim. Similarly, Trevelyan suggested
that Indian Muslims had proven themselves to be lesser Muslims
precisely because Britons had managed to gain and maintain control –
with the hiccup of the Rebellion notwithstanding and simultaneously
demonstrating – the ease with which Britain reigned. Khan attempted
to disprove the legitimacy of calls for jihad by offering a condemnation
of Wahhabism and citing fatwas that supported loyalty to British rule,
but in doing so, he analogously rendered Indian Muslims as a cogent
whole that stood as part of a larger Islamic unity. Khan responded to the
discourse in its own terms, thereby replicating a sense of pan-Islamicism,
racialized Islam, and a minoritized Indian Musl
im population. These
authors demonstrate the ways in which Indian Muslims came to be
defined as one unified group, where jihad was seen as the distinguishing,
inherent feature of Islam and Muslims.
Jihad in Imperial India and the Great Rebellion
South Asian Muslims utilized and declared jihad, and the complex issues
surrounding jihad – namely, whether British rule in India met the legal
requirements – spurred numerous and intense debates among the
ulama. I attended to how the Great Rebellion first produced “the
Muslims” as an identifiable group, and then how “the Muslims” were
conceptualized as uniquely bent toward war (i.e., jihad) on the basis of
literalism and legalism. The Rebellion – the most dangerous and
shocking revolt for the British Empire – became both a warning of what
138 INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
was yet to come as well as a reminder of what Indians, Muslims in
particular, could do.
Muslims emerge from the aftermath of Rebellion under suspicion of
already being jihadis, 60 whether latent or active. However, this is not
to argue that jihad is a concocted concept of the British deployed
against Muslims, nor is it to suggest that Indian Muslims never
advocated for the use of war – jihad or otherwise. Jihad is a real
category that Muslims employed and deployed, not an idea British
imperialists concocted in order to slander or control its Muslim
subjects. Jihad was – and remains – condoned by some Muslims in the
right circumstances. Below, I briefly examine South Asian calls for
jihad in the nineteenth century,61 the contexts in which they arose, and
the ways in which they are read – or misread – by Britons and other
Indian Muslims, as exemplified by Hunter and Khan.
While traditional histories of the Rebellion trace either elite
Muslims’ remarks on jihad62 or estimate the role of lower-classed and
Muslim laity among the rebels,63 the combined picture is closest to
accurate: Muslims of all walks of life across northern India helped define
what jihad and religious war is in the context of the Great Rebellion.
This includes the traditional Sunni ulama, modernist Muslims,
Wahhabi or Ahl-e Hadis followers, and Muslim laity who partook in
jihadi or ghazi (fighter, usually against non-Muslims) bands; all made
claims affirming, condemning, or denying jihad during the outbreak
and aftermath of the Great Rebellion. A wide swath of northern Indian
Muslims participated in, contributed to, and contoured the discourse of
jihad. Britons observing the Rebellion firsthand, as well as those who
would comment later on the ramifications of 1857, picked up on this
divergent discourse, sometimes highlighting the multiplicity of uses
of jihad, but more often collapsing them into one definition for all
Muslims. British understandings of rebellion-as-jihad and Muslims-as-
jihadis followed the discursive collapse of religious diversity into a
racialized essentialism. To sketch a discourse constitutive of Muslim and
British voices, I focus below on proclamations and characters that were
cited and well-known to both Muslim and British commentators.
Most narratives of Indian jihad begin in Balakot, a town noted
historian Ayesha Jalal suggests was “in many ways the epicenter of jihad
in South Asia.” 64 Balakot is in contemporary North-West Frontier
Province in Pakistan, and is the site where Syed Ahmed Barelvi and Shah
REBELLION AS JIHAD, JIHAD AS RELIGION
139
Ismail died in a battle against the Sikhs in 1831. This region remained a
space of contentious interactions between locals and imperial agents, and
across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Britons often noted deep
tension in this area and expressed real concern for the Empire’s tenuous
hold over it. Balakot comes to represent the “epicenter of jihad in South
Asia,” and Shah Ismail and Barelvi come to represent paradigmatic
Muslim warriors, for Muslims and Britons alike.
Tariq Hasan, an acclaimed Indian journalist and author, labels
Barelvi’s “legend and reality” crucial to understanding “the minds of the
21st century mujahideen (Islamic warriors).” 65 Beyond noting Barelvi’s
continuing imprint and legacy, Hasan notes that Barelvi’s jihad was
rooted in a compulsion to “rescue his co-religionists who he felt were
being persecuted by Raja Ranjit Singh.” 66 Barelvi’s jihad is defensive,
meant to protect Muslims from a non-Muslim ruler bent, in this
reading, on limiting Islamic practice. Further, as noted Islamic studies
scholar Iqtidar Alam Khan notes, Barelvi’s “jihad was not aimed at
establishing an Islamic state in the Punjab; it was, according to Saiyid
Ahmad’s own professions, solely focused on forcing the Sikh authorities
to remove what were seen by the leaders of jihad as restrictions on the
observance of Islamic ordinances.”67 This is, as above, a nineteenth-
century development in the deployment of jihad – holy war as defensive
and as a response to limits, perceived or real.
While the story of jihad in South Asia often begins with Balakot
and Barelvi, these are not aberrations: they were working within
an already extant tradition. Barelvi and Shah Ismail trace their
discipleship in the intellectual lineage of Shah Wali Allah (d. 1763).
Many derisively labeled this lineage Wahhabi, but as Sir Syed Ahmad
Khan remarked in Review on Dr Hunter’s Indian Musalmans, the
movement preferred to be called Ahl-e Hadis, Followers of Hadith. 68
Barelvi was a disciple of Shah Abdul Aziz (d. 1823), himself the son
and successor of Shah Wali Allah.69 Shah Ismail, a scion of Shah Wali
Allah’s family, is regarded by many scholars as one of the best
theoreticians of his era. 70 Barelvi and Shah Ismail’s discipleship
matters in this context because they drew upon and developed their
predecessors’ conceptualizations of jihad, many of which were rooted in
the dar-ul-islam and dar-ul-harb dichotomization.
Shah Ismail’s writings are crucial to the development of jihad (and its
associated concepts) in South Asia. He was critical of monarchy, but he
140 INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
suggested that Muslim rulers of a delimited realm ought to be
considered the imam – the religious head of state, in his gloss. He further
conceptualized jihad in this framework. As Iqtidar Alam Khan
summarizes, Shah Ismail called for jihad in terms of the ruler’s violation
of religious practice and the subsequent change of status to the region:
A jihad would become binding on Muslims against a ruler only
when he goes to the extreme of imposing restrictions on the
observance of Islamic ordinances (ahkam), rendering the territory
ruled by him a ‘zone of war’ (dar-ul-harb). Such a jihad would be
led by a leader (imam) of the Islamic community located outside
dar-ul-harb. There are, thus, two more preconditions for starting a
jihad: (i) migration (hijrat) by the Muslims to a place outside the
dar-ul-harb, and (ii) choice of a pious and capable person as t
he
imam of the Islamic community.71
Shah Ismail’s jihad relies upon territory under the rule of Muslims
sliding from dar-ul-islam into dar-ul-harb. While he calls for Muslims to
first flee the “zone of war” before appointing a leader (imam), he also
makes the status of the region reliant on the ruler’s treatment of
Muslims.
But, as historian Ayesha Jalal is right to note, the jihad against Sikhs
waged under the leadership of Barelvi and Shah Ismail is “the only real
jihad ever fought in the subcontinent” – and “it ended in dismal
failure.” 72 Both Barelvi and his predecessor Shah Abdul Aziz had
complicated relationships with jihad and the British. In 1804, Shah
Abdul Aziz issued a fatwa describing areas under British control as dar-
ul-harb, but he did not issue a fatwa calling for jihad (in these regions or
elsewhere). 73 The fatwa declared that there is no proper Muslim ruler
(Imam al-Muslimim), and that there is no check on the rule or power of
Christian officers. The fatwa conceded that “certain Islamic rituals” like
jummah and Eid prayers, “azan [call to prayer] and cow-slaughter” have
been left untouched, but it also argued that Britons place no value on
these rituals – Abdul Aziz reasoned that the demolition of mosques
demonstrates “lordship” and total authority.74 Abdul Aziz’s 1804 fatwa
declared British India dar-ul-harb, but he did not go as far as to declare
jihad against the British. It is clear that his fatwa had deep influence over
Muslim intellectuals because his disciples and others return to it in 1857
REBELLION AS JIHAD, JIHAD AS RELIGION
141
in order to determine whether to declare jihad during the Rebellion.
Further, Abdul Aziz’s fatwa served – for Muslims and Britons – as the
first “determined expression of Muslim attitude towards the establish-
ment of British rule in India,” as noted historian Taufiq Ahmed Nizami
writes.75
Abdul Aziz’s proclamation continued to reverberate in 1857 but so
did his example: Muslims during the Rebellion were left to decide
whether to act upon the dar-ul-harb classification or to follow Abdul
Aziz’s example and leave jihad a stone unturned. Britons, for their part,
were left to debate and attempt to predict whether the threat of jihad
Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion Page 22