Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion

Home > Other > Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion > Page 27
Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion Page 27

by Ilyse R Morgenstein Fuerst


  58. Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi:

  Oxford, 1983).

  59. Biswamoy Pati, “Introduction: the Nature of 1857,” in The 1857 Rebellion, ed.

  Biswamoy Pati (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), xvii.

  60. Ibid. Cf. Subhas Bhattacharya, “The Indigo Revolt of Bengal,” Social Scientist

  5, no. 12 (July 1977), 13 – 23.

  61. Ian Copland, The British Raj and the Indian Princes: Paramountcy in Western

  India, 1857 – 1930 (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1982), 1.

  NOTES TO PAGES 28–33

  169

  62. E.g., Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857 (Calcutta: Firma K. L.

  Mukhopadhyay, 1957 (reprint 1963)).

  63. Francesca H. Wilson, Rambles in Northern India. With Incidents and Descriptions

  of Many Scenes of the Mutiny, Including Agra, Delhi, Lucknow, Cawnpore,

  Allahabad, Etc. With Twelve Large Photographic Views. (London: Sampson Low,

  Marston, Low, and Searle, 1876). Cf. Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt

  of 1857, 192 – 225.

  64. Many have written on women, gender, and the Rebellion. As examples: Alison

  Blunt, “Embodying war: British women and domestic defilement in the

  Indian ‘Mutiny’ 1857 – 8,” Journal Of Historical Geography 26, no. 3 (July

  2000), 403 – 28; Penelope Tuson, “Mutiny narratives and the imperial

  feminine: European Women’s Accounts of the Rebellion in India in 1857,”

  Women’s Studies International Forum 21, no. 3 (1998), 291 – 303.

  65. E.g., C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social

  Communication in India, 1780 – 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University

  Press, 1996), 315 – 37.

  66. Andrea Major and Crispin Bates, “Introduction: Fractured Narratives and

  Marginal Experiences,” in Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian

  Uprising of 1857, vol. 2: Britain and the Indian Uprising, eds. Andrea Major and

  Crispin Bates (London: Sage Publications, 2013), xvi.

  67. Sarmistha De, “Marginal Whites and the Great Uprising: A Case Study of the

  Bengal Presidency,” in Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian

  Uprising of 1857, vol. 2: Britain and the Indian Uprising, eds. Andrea Major and

  Crispin Bates (London: Sage Publications, 2013), 166 – 7.

  68. Arshad Islam, “The Backlash in Delhi: British Treatment of the Mughal Royal

  Family following the Indian ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ of 1857,” Journal Of Muslim

  Minority Affairs 31, no. 2 (June 2011), 197 – 215.

  69. Meredith Townsend, The Annals of Indian Administration, Volume III (Serampore:

  J. C. Murray, 1859), 129. Cf. Clare Anderson, The Indian Uprising of 1857– 8

  Prisons, Prisoners, and Rebellion (London: Anthem Press, 2007), 132.

  70. Andrea Major and Crispin Bates, “Introduction,” xvi – xvii.

  71. E.g., Colonel G. B., C. S. I. Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857 (London:

  Seeley and Co., Limited, 1891), vii – ix.

  72. E.g., T. R. Holmes, A History of the Indian Mutiny, 4th ed. (London: W. H.

  Allen, 1904), 98.

  73. Ibid., 34 – 5.

  74. E.g., Sir George Forrest, A History of the Indian Mutiny: Reviewed And Illustrated

  From Original Documents, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1904), 5; Syed

  Ahmed Khan, The Causes of the Indian Revolt, in Urdoo, in 1858, and translated

  into English by his two European friends (Benares: Benares Medical Hall Press,

  1873), 0.4 (2).

  75. Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857, 38.

  76. Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857, 76.

  77. Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857, viii.

  170

  NOTES TO PAGES 33–38

  78. Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857, 19.

  79. Ibid., 20.

  80. Ibid., 33.

  81. E.g., Syed Ahmed Khan, The Causes of the Indian Revolt, in Urdoo, in 1858, and

  translated into English by his two European friends (Benares: Benares Medical Hall

  Press, 1873), 0.4 (2); Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857, 375;

  Faisal Devji, “The Mutiny to Come,” New Literary History 40, no. 2, India and

  the West (Spring 2009), 412 – 14; Benjamin Disraeli in Salahuddin Malik,

  1857 War of Independence or Clash of Civilizations?, 64; Major and Bates,

  “Introduction,” in Mutiny at the Margins, xvii.

  82. Surendra Nath Sen, Eighteen Fifty-Seven (Delhi: Publications Division,

  Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1957), 398 – 401.

  NB: Passing chapatis was a common practice, and functioned similarly to

  “chain letters;” however, while a number of commentators note an increase in

  the appearance of chapatis near the beginning of the Great Rebellion, given

  the system’s clandestine nature, perhaps, hard evidence that the one necessarily

  indicates the other is lacking.

  83. Peter Burke, “The ‘Discovery’ of Popular Culture,” in People’s History and

  Socialist Theory, ed. Raphael Samuel (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981),

  218.

  84. Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857, 19.

  85. John William Kaye, A History of the Sepoy War in India, 1857 – 58 (London:

  W. H. Allen, 1880), 519.

  86. W. H. Carey, The Mahomedan Rebellion; Its Premonitory Symptoms, the Outbreak

  and Suppression; with an Appendix (Roorkee: The Directory Press, 1857).

  87. Malik, 1857 War of Independence or Clash of Civilizations?, 113.

  88. Carey, The Mahomedan Rebellion, 70 – 2.

  89. W. H. Carey, The Mahomedan Rebellion; Its Premonitory Symptoms, the Outbreak

  and Suppression; with an Appendix (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2007

  (reprint Roorkee: The Directory Press, 1857)), 9.

  90. Ibid.

  91. Ibid., 12.

  92. Ibid., 10 – 12.

  93. Ibid., 12.

  94. Senzil Nawid, “The State, the Clergy, and British Imperial Policy in

  Afghanistan during the 19th and Early 20th Centuries,” International Journal

  of Middle East Studies 29, no. 4 (November 1997), 581 – 2.

  95. Shah of Persia in Carey, The Mahomedan Rebellion, 11.

  96. Ibid., 12 – 13.

  97. Ibid., e.g., 70 – 2, 83, 85 – 7.

  98. Malik, 1857 War of Independence or Clash of Civilizations?, 114 – 17.

  99. Ibid., 115.

  100. The Examiner, 1 August 1857. For similar opinions, Cf. Malleson, The Indian

  Mutiny of 1857, 43; Sir Alfred Lyall, Race and Religion: An Address, May 5,

  NOTES TO PAGES 38–43

  171

  1902, Reprinted from The Fortnightly Review, December 1902 (London: Social

  and Political Education League, ND), 3, 11 – 14.

  101. Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857, viii – ix.

  102. Maulvi Ahmadulla of Faizabad is discussed more fully in chapter 4.

  103. Ibid., e.g., 33.

  104. R. C. Majumdar efficiently contends that there is both a lack of reliable

  evidence to demonstrate this and Malleson himself provided evidence that is

  incongruous with his own conclusions. See: Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and

  the Revolt of 1857, 339.

  105. Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857, 17.

  106. Ibid.

  107. Ibid., 18 – 19, 27, 356.

  108. Ibid., 114.

  109. This is the thrust of her varied and celebrated career. See, as pertinent

  examples: Romila Th
apar, “Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient

  History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity,” Modern Asian Studies 23,

  no. 2 (1989), 209 – 31; “Was there Historical Writing in early India?” in

  Knowing India: Colonial and Modern Constructions of the Past, ed. Cynthia Talbot

  (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2011), 281 – 307.

  110. Ibid., 170.

  111. E.g., S. M. Azizuddin Husain, “1857 as Reflected in Persian and Urdu

  Documents,” in Mutiny at the Margins: Volume VI: Perception, Narration and

  Reinvention: The Pedagogy and Historiography of the Indian Uprising (New Delhi:

  Sage Publications, 2014), 171.

  112. Arshad Islam, “The Backlash in Delhi: British Treatment of the Mughal Royal

  Family following the Indian ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ of 1857,” 197.

  113. E.g., W. Carey, The Mahomedan Rebellion, 1 – 4.

  114. Carey, The Mahomedan Rebellion, 249.

  115. Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857, 307.

  116. Islam, “The Backlash in Delhi: British Treatment of the Mughal Royal

  Family following the Indian ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ of 1857,” 199. Cf. Hasan

  Nizami, “Delhi ki Jankani” (Delhi: Near to Death), in 1857 Majmuah

  Khawaja Hasan Nizami, ed. Muhammad Ikram Chaghtai, “A Collection of

  Essays by Khawaja Hasan Nizami,” (Lahore: Sang-e-Mel Publications,

  2007), 496 – 7, 524.

  117. E.g., Chidester, Empire of Religion, 26 – 8, 46 – 7, 48.

  118. E.g., Jenny Berglund, “Princely Companion or Object of Offense? The Dog’s

  Ambiguous Status in Islam,” Society & Animals 22, no. 6 (December 15, 2014),

  545 – 59.

  119. Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays,

  with an introduction by Ranajit Guha (Delhi: Oxford University Press,

  1987), 646.

  120. G. C. Narang and Leslie Abel, “Ghalib and the Rebellion of 1857,” Mahfil 5,

  no. 4, GHALIB ISSUE (1968 – 9), 46.

  172

  NOTES TO PAGES 43–47

  121. E.g., ibid., 45, 51 – 3. Cf. Masood Ashraf Raja, “The Indian Rebellion of

  1857 and Mirza Ghalib’s Narrative of Survival,” Prose Studies 31, no. 1

  (2009), 40 – 54.

  122. Ibid., 52. Cf. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, and Imtiya¯z ʻAlı¯ Kha¯ ʻArshı¯,

  Maka¯tı¯b-i Gha¯lib (Ra¯mpu¯r: Ra¯mpu¯r Istat La¯ʼibrerı¯, 1949), 1, 8.

  ˙ ˙

  123. Masood Ashraf Raja, “The Indian Rebellion of 1857 and Mirza Ghalib’s

  Narrative of Survival,” 40.

  124. Ghalib in G. C. Narang and Leslie Abel, “Ghalib and the Rebellion of 1857,”

  53.

  125. Mushirul Hasan, “The Legacies of 1857 among the Muslim Intelligentsia of

  North India,” in Crispin Bates, ed., Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on

  the Indian Uprising of 1857 Vol. V: Muslim, Dalit and Subaltern Narratives (New

  Delhi: Sage Publications, 2014), 108.

  126. Avril A. Powell, “Questionable Loyalties: Muslim Government Servants and

  Rebellion,” in Crispin Bates, ed., Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the

  Indian Uprising of 1857 Vol. V: Muslim, Dalit and Subaltern Narratives (New

  Delhi: Sage Publications, 2014), 84.

  127. Ibid., 88.

  128. E.g., Alan Guenther, “A Colonial Court Defines a Muslim,” in Islam in South

  Asia in Practice, ed. Barbara D. Metcalf (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

  2009), 293 – 304.

  129. Husain, “1857 as Reflected in Persian and Urdu Documents,” 184.

  130. G. C. Narang and Leslie Abel, “Ghalib and the Rebellion of 1857,” 47 – 51.

  131. Husain, “1857 as Reflected in Persian and Urdu Documents,” 178.

  132. Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee of the Honourable House of

  Commons, 278 – 81.

  133. Ibid., e.g., 403 – 4, 408 – 9, 430.

  134. Malcolm Lewin, Esq., ed., Causes of the Indian Revolt, by a Hindu Bengali

  (London: Edward Stanford, 6, Charing Cross (October) 1857), 12.

  135. During this period, a number of British scholars or agents of the Company

  reported “authentic” accounts of “natives,” only later to be determined to have

  been written by British authors in the guise of Hindus or Muslims. Famously,

  Sir Alfred Lyall confessed to this type of writing. While I am not accusing

  Lewin of the same, the edited treatise he presents closely follows the style and

  assumptions of Lyall’s; it is merely worth noting that connection, the broader

  context of the valuation of “authentic” reports, and a desire by some Britons to

  critique British actions by way of native voices. See: Parveen Shaukat Ali,

  Pillars of British Imperialism: A Case Study of the Political Ideas of Sir Alfred Lyall,

  1873 – 1903 (Lahore: Aziz Publishers, 1976), 34.

  136. Chidester, Empire of Religion, 1; Gottschalk, Religion, Science, and Empire, 7 – 9.

  137. E.g., Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee of the Honourable House

  of Commons, appointed for the purpose of taking the examination of such Witnesses as

  shall be ordered by the House to attend the Committee of the Whole House, on the

  Affairs of the East-India Company, and to report the MINUTES of such Evidence

  NOTES TO PAGES 47–51

  173

  from time to time (London: by order of the Court of Directors for the information

  of the Proprietors, Cox and Son, 1813), 420 – 39.

  138. Ibid., 522.

  139. E.g., Abstract of the Minutes of Evidence Taken in the Honourable House of Commons

  before a Committee of the Whole House to Consider the Affairs of the East India

  Company, by the editor of the East India Debates (London: Black, Perry, and

  Co., 1813), 9 – 11, 34.

  140. E.g., Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857, 15 – 16.

  141. Bhagwan Josh, “V. D. Sarwarkar’s The Indian War of Independence: The First

  Nationalist Reconstruction of the Revolt of 1857,” in Crispin Bates, ed.,

  Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857 Vol. VI:

  Perception, Narration, and Reinvention: the Pedagogy and Historiography of the

  Indian Uprising (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2014), 34 – 5.

  Chapter 2

  Suspect Subjects: Hunter and the Making of a

  Muslim Minority

  1. P. Hardy, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

  Press, 1972), 62.

  2. As but one example on the castes of Muslims, see: Imtiaz Ahmad, ed., Caste and

  Social Stratification among the Muslims (Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1973).

  3. The Mughal Empire was an empire ruled by Muslims. I am careful not to

  insist that the Mughal Empire was “Muslim rule,” since this implies a

  contemporary notion of Islamic law governing all subjects. The Mughal

  emperors had varying and complex relationships to networks of Muslim

  authorities, including the ‘ulama and Sufi, especially Chishti, elite. Cf. Jamal

  Malik, Islam in South Asia: A Short History (Leiden: Brill, 2008), especially

  “Part II: Between Islamic and Islamicate,” pp. 85 – 213.

  4. Many have discussed, defined, and redefined “minoritization.” A particularly

  concise and productive definition appears in Wisdom Tettey, and Korbla

  P. Puplampu, The African Diaspora in Canada: Negotiating Identity & Belonging

  (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005), 94.

  5. E.g., Par
tha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative

  Discourse? (London: Zed, 1986).

  6. E.g., David Chidester, Empire of Religion, 45.

  7. S. C. Mittal, India Distorted: A Study of British Historians on India (New Delhi:

  M. D. Publications, 1996), 170.

  8. Alex Padamsee, Representations of Indian Muslims in British Colonial Discourse

  (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 151.

  9. Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, “Common Heritage, Uncommon

  Fear: Islamophobia in the United States and British India, 1687 – 1947,” in ed.

  Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America: Anatomy of Intolerance (New York:

  Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 32.

  174

  NOTES TO PAGES 51–54

  10. E.g., W. A. Wilson, “The Situation in India,” in Islam and Missions: Being

  Papers Read at the Second missionary Conference on Behalf of the Mohammedan World

  at Lucknow, January 28 – 29, 1911 (New York, London: Fleming H. Revell,

  1911). Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t6542ms59.

  Accessed April 10, 2017.

  11. I use scare quotes to mark Hunter’s use, and so retain his spelling of Wahabi,

  instead of Wahhabi.

  12. Hardy, The Muslims of British India, 62.

  13. Thomas R. Metcalf, The Aftermath of Revolt: India 1857 – 1870 (Princeton, NJ:

  Princeton University Press, 1965), 298.

  14. William Muir, and T. H. Weir. The Life of Mohammad from Original Sources

  ˙

  (London: Smith, 1878).

  15. William Muir, The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall, from Original Sources,

  2nd ed., Rev.; with Maps (London: Religious Tract Society, 1892).

  16. Hardy, The Muslims of British India, 62.

  17. William Muir, Records of the Intelligence Department of the North-West Provinces of

  India during the Mutiny of 1857, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1902), 46.

  18. William Muir, Records of the Intelligence Department of the North-West Provinces of

  India during the Mutiny of 1857, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1902), 258.

  19. Avril A. Powell, Scottish Orientalists and India: The Muir Brothers, Religion,

  Education and Empire (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2010), 256.

  20. Muhammad Bahadur Shah Zafar (r. 1837 – 57, d. 1862), also known popularly

  as Bahadur Shah II, was the last Mughal emperor, though his reign was more

  or less titular; the East India Company had long since assumed primary control

  of South Asia, had imprisoned his father Akbar II, and had even given the

 

‹ Prev