Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion
Page 25
practitioners were – and continue to be – racialized. The vast diversity
of Islamic practice, textual interpretation, and legal preferences come
to mean very little in a system of racialization where Muslims are
understood to possess natural and inherent qualities. Race is a social
construct, and Indian Muslims in the wake of Rebellion were
constructed to be part of a particular – and particularly violent and
conspiratorial – race.
CONCLUSION
155
This book demonstrates through an examination of widely circulated
texts how the 1857 Rebellion shaped the classification of religion, rebels,
and jihad. Before the Great Rebellion, religion was a primary category of
concern for Britons ruling India in India and from London, with the
religions of Hindus and Muslims of particular import. Islam was a
greater concern than Hinduism, but before the Rebellion, it was
portrayed merely as that – a concern – and not typically as a direct or
even immanent threat. This drastically changed after 1857. After the
Rebellion, there was an intellectual and imperial impetus to sort out its
causes, to punish the perpetrators, and prevent future rebellion by
identifying its conspirators. Rebels were portrayed as Muslims, and so
Muslims disproportionately felt the burden of this label, politically and
practically. A major rationale for Muslims-as-rebel and Rebellion-as-
religion was jihad; in turn, jihad came to symbolize all of Islam and
Muslims.
I have used a particular exchange between two foremost Anglo-Indian
intellectuals in order to render clearly the shift in how Muslims were
represented, conceived of, and ultimately produced after the Great
Rebellion. It is unreasonable to condense the Great Rebellion to political
or military history, as both its causes and effects were and are so
commonly described in terms of religion. The Rebellion has been
constructed, discursively, as a set of acts couched in or caused by religion,
namely Islam, and specifically as a consequence of doctrines of jihad. The
watershed moment in Indian history continues to cast its shadow
contemporarily, and despite its centrality in histories and historio-
graphies, we have yet to scratch the surface of the ways that the
Rebellion enabled a categorical, racialized, and minoritized definition of
Muslims that still lingers.
The exchange between Hunter and Khan stands to demonstrate how
“the Muslims” were produced in the wake of the Great Rebellion. The
ways in which this exemplifies the construction of category, its
deployment, and its reification is not limited to India, however. This
exchange is a microcosm of how Britons during British imperialism
created religion and religions; Britons exported these classificatory
systems to their other imperial territories across the globe, as well as to
other European (and American) imperial systems and agents. The Great
Rebellion was, of course, a very real and very terrible set of events, but
the way it came to be remembered, theorized, and (officially) recorded
156
INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
demonstrates that the process of defining religion was pervasive and
inordinately powerful. Britons used minoritization and racialization to
create “the Muslims” as necessarily jihadi, as incapable of living under
non-Muslim rule, as a (foreign) threat to India, and as a threat within
all British imperial lands. While others have contended that the
process of defining religion in India demands the attention of any scholar
of religion, if nothing else, Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857
Rebellion has brought to light the specific ways in which racialization
and minoritization of Muslims after 1857 informs the construction of
religion-as-category.
EPILOGUE
1857 FROM TODAY'S VERMONT
CHUCK TODD: So, do you believe Islam is consistent with the
Constitution?
DR. BEN CARSON: No, I don’t, I do not. 1
ANDERSON COOPER: Do you think Islam is at war with the
west?
DONALD TRUMP: Islam hates us. There is something – there is
something there that is a tremendous hatred there. There’s a
tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There’s an
unbelievable hatred of us. 2
If you are a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you
hate terror, stay here and help us win and make the future together.
We want you.
– Former President Bill Clinton, July 26, 20163
American political hopefuls and major players, as in the examples
above, demonstrate the ways in which Muslims come to be portrayed in
terms of their (in)ability to be trusted to follow secular, state law. The
2016 American presidential election has depicted another context in
which Muslims and Islam are debated, and that is whether pundits have
been outwardly dismissive of the possibility of Muslims to live as
citizens – dismissive, that is, of Islam’s compatibility with the American
158
INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
Constitution – or whether they have offered qualified acceptance of
Muslim citizenship – that is, an assumption of Muslim inclusion if and
only if she is demonstrably anti-terror.
The view from the state of Vermont – where I have done the bulk of
the writing of this book – of the American contemporary political
moment strikes me as one of the tangible ways in which the legacies of the
Great Rebellion still linger. The 2016 presidential campaign bore the
mark of post-Rebellion discourse. The contemporary United States is
neither imperial India nor Britain, and of course, it has its own contextual
space for anti-Muslim, Islamophobic ideologies and conceptualizations.
Yet, a lasting and evident aspect of contemporary discourse about Muslims
directly evokes assumptions that became solidified, popularized, and
primary as a result of the Great Rebellion of 1857. As we see above,
Muslims are still imagined as suspect and disloyal in terms of law –
specifically their imagined inability to be citizens in light of Islamic law.
Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon and early contender for the
Republican party’s presidential nomination, talked on a few occasions
about Muslims and their compatibility with the US, American values,
and the US Constitution. In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” a
weekend political and the longest running show on American television,
Carson discussed Islam and Muslims. “Meet the Press” anchor Chuck
Todd asked Dr. Carson if a president’s faith should matter, and he
replied: “If it’s inconsistent with the values and principles of America,
then of course it should matter.” Todd followed up, and asked: “So, do
you believe Islam is consistent with the Constitution?” Carson replied,
without hesitation: “No, I don’t, I do not.” He added: “I would not
advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely
would not agree with that.”4
One day after the interview,
Ben Carson took to his public Facebook
page to clarify his comments. He wrote:
Know this, I meant exactly what I said. I could never support a
candidate for President of the United States that was Muslim and
had not renounced the central tenant of Islam: Sharia Law.5
He added: “Under Islamic Law, homosexuals – men and women alike –
must be killed. Women must be subservient. And people following
other religions must be killed.” 6
EPILOGUE
159
Carson’s sentiments are his own – they would not stand up to legal
scrutiny, given that the Constitution specifically bars the establishment
of any one religion as well as safeguards the free exercise of religion and
prohibits a religious test to take or hold office. 7 But it is worth noting
that Ben Carson offered his original, televised opinion as a Republican
primary candidate for the presidency as well as a co-author of a then-
forthcoming book on the Constitution, titled A More Perfect Union: What
We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties.8 As he
“doubled down” 9 on his claim that a Muslim could not be president, he
did so in the same vein: as a presidential hopeful, a frontrunner for
the Republican party’s nomination, a doctor, a leader – in short, an
authority. He claimed that because of (his gloss of) their religion and
specifically their religious laws, Muslims were neither suited to the
highest office in the United States nor was their religion, at its core,
compatible with the Constitution.
Carson, of course, is not alone. Donald Trump, America’s 45th
President as of January 2017, similarly portrayed Islam as textually
negative and legally exhorting Muslims to violence. In the interview
with CNN’s Anderson Cooper cited above, Trump echoed depictions of
Muslims that are racialized in terms of textuality and literalism: he
suggested that families can radicalize each other and that the families of
terrorists should be involved, in part, in the plans to go after terrorists. 10
Put differently, Trump imagined Islam as contagious, conspiratorial, and
corrosive. While Carson and Trump have necessarily garnered attention
as part of the presidential campaign, they reflect – as did our nineteenth-
century interlocutors – a popular discourse.
It is easy, perhaps, to dismiss the Republican hopeful Carson and later
Republican nominee (and eventual President) Trump – often assumed
hawkish and courting particular strains of Christian voters who have
historically been suspicious of non-Christians, immigrants, and other
“Others.” It is even easier, I imagine, to dismiss the rhetoric of Trump as
an outlier, whose presidential campaign was marked – frighteningly,
I will bluntly add – by the support of white supremacist and nationalist
organizations, including but not limited to current and former high-
profile members of the Klu Klux Klan and neo-Nazi organizations. 11
But while Trump and, though to a lesser degree, Carson represent
hardline rhetoric that fundamentally refuses to engage with Muslim
citizenship or Islam as “compatible,” Democratic presidential candidate
160 INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her campaign similarly trafficked in
conceptualizations of Muslims and Islam as necessarily suspect.
As quoted above, in his speech supporting her nomination, former
President Bill Clinton addressed Muslims in the audience by stating:
“We want you.” But he qualified these remarks – no doubt direct
reponses to the Republican National Convention’s many speeches
vilifying terrorism and Islam12 – with problematic language: “If you are
a Muslim and you love America and freedom and hate terror, stay here
and help us win and make a future together.” 13 Bill Clinton’s statement
qualifies not only to which Muslims he spoke but also which Muslims
can be reasonably viewed as desirable: Muslims who love America and
freedom and hate terror. Further, Clinton underscored a very real
stereotype of American Muslims by inviting qualified Muslims to “stay
here.” The Muslims Clinton addresses are immigrants – presumably
ones who could “leave” or “go home,” and not refugees, second or third
generation descendants of immigrants, and certainly neither African
American Muslims who might trace their lineage to the transatlantic
slave trade14 nor white converts. 15 In other words, Bill Clinton posits an American Muslim who must necessarily prove her loyalty via a
(demonstrable, one assumes) hatred of terror while he simultaneously
assumes that she is necessarily foreign to America.
Democratic candidate for President Hillary Clinton, in the last
weeks of her campaign, released an advertisement some deemed her
most emotional and effective.16 It featured Khizr Khan, a Muslim
American and father of United States Army Captain Humayun Khan, a
solider killed while serving during the Iraq War in 2004. Khizr Khan
had been a speaker at the Democratic National Convention, as well,
and was accompanied by his wife, Ghazala Khan; her silence during
his speech at the Convention garnered attention, with pundits and
politicians – most notably Donald Trump himself – claiming she was
not allowed to speak because of her religion. 17 In the 60-second
television ad, an emotional Khizr Khan recounts his son’s service to
the United States Army while the camera pans across Captain Khan’s
medals, awards, and diplomas; the elder Khan is shown holding
and gently touching the triangularly-folded American flag presented
to the families of deceased soldiers. At the end and climax of the
advertisement, Khan says, with tears in his eyes: “I want to ask
Mr. Trump: Would my son have a place in your America?”18
EPILOGUE
161
Captain Khan, a Bronze Medal and Purple Heart recipient, made “the
ultimate sacrifice” for America. Khizr Khan, highlighting his
unspeakable sorrow, tearfully asks if there would be space for his son,
the hero, the solider in Trump’s America. The ad hinges, of course, on
Trump’s anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Yet it also reveals
something about Clinton’s conception of Muslims, too. Specifically,
through this ad we see the casting of an ideal Muslim – one similar to
the assumed Muslim audience of Bill Clinton’s speech: a loyal Muslim, a
hater of terrorism, who has demonstrated his loyalty and dedication to
America (and antipathy to that which America hates) by making the
ultimate sacrifice. In other words, Clinton, like Trump and Carson,
participates in the estimation of Muslims as suspect and suspicious,
perhaps incompatible with America precisely because her campaign uses
an ideal type to ask Trump whether or not there would be room for
Muslims – and, vitally, Muslims like Captain Khan, willing to fight and
serve and die for American values.
Beyond the presidential campaign and beyond specific references
regarding the ability of Muslims to be American citizens, another way to
think about how the
1857 Rebellion’s legacy continues to reverberate is
through anti-shari’a laws. By way of further poignant example are the
numerous states that have sought or seek to ban shari’a law in their
jurisdictions, and while superior courts rule on the constitutionality of
such bans, other states have sought or seek to ban “foreign law.” 19
Between 2010 and 2012, lawmakers in at least 32 states
introduced bills to restrict the circumstances in which state courts
can consider foreign or religious laws in their decisions. 20
Jihad in the post-Rebellion context was held up as a requirement
Muslims could not escape because of Islam’s demands of legalism
and literalism; it was used as a mechanism to cast doubt upon the
collective ability of Muslims to be subjects of the British Empire, and
it was further used as evidence of their distinctive, immutable
character and intrinsic penchant for violence. Shari’a, here, holds a
similar discursive space: it is used as evidence that Muslims, always
already loyal to an external and incompatible legal system, cannot be
proper citizens of the United States. Moreover, the threat of Islamic
law is so great that the American legal and political system must
162 INDIAN MUSLIM MINORITIES AND THE 1857 REBELLION
preemptively challenge it – or risk losing the fundamentals of
American democracy altogether.21
America in the twenty-first century is a rather different place than
nineteenth-century South Asia. And yet the abovementioned
pronouncements are eerily similar to those that appeared in the wake
of the 1857 Rebellion. Then, Britons and Muslims argued about
whether and under what circumstances Muslims could be subjects of the
Queen, or more specifically, be trusted, loyal, and law-abiding subjects of
the Empire. Hunter, Muir, Carey, and all the aforementioned others
claimed that Muslims had legal obligations beyond and beside those to
the British Empire. This is what marked Muslims as a threat after the
Rebellion, and this is what marks Muslims as a threat in contemporary
America. The discursive shift inaugurated by the Great Rebellion lingers
in our contemporary characterizations of Muslims, often alongside other
historically located stereotypes and images. And so, as I continue to
witness the minoritized, racialized tropes of the 1857 Rebellion play out