Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion
Page 28
emperor a pension. He was an Urdu poet, and while a majority of his works
was destroyed in the Rebellion, a large collection exists and is titled Kullı¯yyat-
i-Z
_ afar. See: Muhammad Bahadur Shah. Kulliya¯t-i Z_afar. Dihlı¯: Mashvarah
buk dipo, 1966.
˙
21. Charles Raikes, Notes on the Revolt in the North Western Provinces of India
(London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1858), 159.
22. John Lawrence in P. Hardy, Muslims of British India, 63.
23. Sir George Campbell, Memoirs of my Indian Career, vol. II (London and New
York: Macmillan and Co., 1893) 398 – 9.
24. Hardy, Muslims of British India, 68.
25. As discussed more fully in the previous chapter, these changes include: the
East India Company abolishment, the Queen’s assumption of full sovereignty
over India, and India not only becoming constitutionally part of the Empire,
but also beginning its transformation in a British imagination from far-most
imperial frontier to jewel in the English crown. On this last point, see
especially: Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British
in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 118 – 19.
26. Eric Stokes, “Traditional Elites in the Great Rebellion of 1857,” in The 1857
Rebellion, ed. Biswamoy Pati (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007),
NOTES TO PAGES 54–60
175
185; reprinted from Eric Stokes, The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian
Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1978).
27. I use “small-p protestant” following Winifred Sullivan’s astute observations.
See: Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, The Impossibility of Religious Freedom (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
28. Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony: the Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial
Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 2.
29. Ibid., 94.
30. Ibid., 1.
31. Ibid., 93.
32. Ibid., 111.
33. Metcalf, The Aftermath of Revolt, 301 – 4.
34. Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony, 112, 140 – 53.
35. Anne Norton masterfully takes on the theoretical labeling of Muslims as a
problem. See: Anne Norton, On the Muslim Question, Public Square (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
36. Christopher Hitchens, The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in India
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 80 – 2; Peter van der Veer,
Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in Britain and India (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2001), 13.
37. William Wilson Hunter, The Indian Musalmans: Are They Bound in Conscience to
Rebel against the Queen? (London: Tru¨bner and Co., 1872).
38. Francis Robinson, Islam and Muslim History in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 37 – 8.
39. Aaron Lazare, On Apology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 99.
See also: Bruce Mccall, “The perfect non-apology apology,” New York Times, 22
April 2001: WK, General OneFile, web, 23 December 2014, Document URL:
http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.uvm.edu/ps/i.do?id¼ GALE%7CA7354287
1&v¼2.1&u¼vol_b92b&it¼r&p¼ITOF&sw¼w&asid¼981b6e0280488
3288df015fde3768f81. Accessed December 23, 2014.
40. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 141.
41. Ibid.
42. Aryanism and theories of Aryan people and languages are complex and
tangential concepts here. It is worthy of note that W. W. Hunter’s
dissertation was on non-Aryan languages and literatures, titled: A Comparative
Dictionary of the Languages of India and High Asia, with a Dissertation Based on the
Hodgson Lists, Official Records, and Mss. (London: Tru¨bner, 1868). Available
digitally: http://ebooks.library.ualberta.ca/local/comparativedicti00huntuoft.
Accessed April 10, 2017.
43. E.g., Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee of The House of Lords,
appointed to enquire into the Present State of the Affairs of The East-India Company, and
into the Trade between Great Britain, the East-Indies, and China, and to Report to the
House (London: Parbury, Allen, and Co., 1830).
176
NOTES TO PAGES 60–64
44. E.g., Correspondence relating to the Establishment of an Oriental College in London:
Reprinted from the “Times,” with Notes and Additions (Edinburgh and London:
Williams and Norgate, 1858).
45. Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), 199.
46. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 10.
47. Gayatri Chakrabarty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the
Interpretation of Culture, Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271 – 313.
48. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 58.
49. Ibid., 71.
50. Harlan O. Pearson, Islamic Reform and Revival in Nineteenth-century India: the
Tarı¯qah-i-Muhmammadı¯yah (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2008), 33, 44 – 5.
51. E.g., Samira Haj, Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition: Reform, Rationality, and Modernity
(Cultural Memory in the Present) (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).
52. Ibid., 84 – 6. Cf. Muin-ud-din Ahmad Khan, Selections from Bengal Government
Records on Wahhabi Trials (1863 – 1870) (Dacca: Asiatic Society of Pakistan,
1961); Muhammad Abdul Bari, “A Comparative Study of the Early Wahha¯bi
Doctrines and Contemporary Reform Movements in Indian Isla¯m,”
Dissertation: D. Phil. University of Oxford, 1954.
53. Ibid., 11.
54. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 10.
55. There is, of course, nothing “natural” about legalism, nor any real evidence
that Muslims are distinctively legalistic; this is a part of the nineteenth-
century debates about race, ethnicity, and religion, where so-called Semitic
religions (Judaism, Islam) produce racially unique actors (Jews, Muslims) who
have particular characteristics, like legalism. See, as one example: Masuzawa,
“Chapter 6 – Islam: a Semitic religion,” in The Invention of World Religions,
179 – 206.
56. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 10.
57. Ibid., 10 – 11.
58. Ibid., 43.
59. Ibid., 11.
60. Ibid., 15 – 16, 22 – 6, 36, 38, 39, 41 – 6, 86, 97, 105, 147, 151.
61. Ibid., 24.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid.
64. Alex Padamsee, Representations of Indian Muslims in British Colonial Discourse,
168 – 9.
65. It is unclear precisely what Hunter means by “army.” In some cases, he moves
between lamenting the problem of formal armies while simultaneously
expressing scorn about the disorganized, chaotic nature of rebels; this is
especially the case where he mentions the frontiers, a source of fear for him and
concern for the Empire.
NOTES TO PAGES 65–73
177
66. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 15.
67. Ibid., 43.
68. As one might expect, as imperial forces and subjects moved into new areas,
these areas were called Frontier Settlements; thus, his use of that name does not
necessarily pinpoint his exact location. Based on the incidents described, and
as stated, his career in the Bengal settlement, it is likely this is the region in
question.
69. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 44.
70. Ibid., 48.
71. Ibid., 50 – 1.
72. This dyad is still operative in contemporary depictions of Muslims. See
especially: Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold
War, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004).
73. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 15.
74. Charles Allen, “The Hidden Roots of Wahhabism in British India,” World
Policy Journal 22, no. 2 (Summer 2005), 87 – 8.
75. Pearson, Islamic Reform and Revival in Nineteenth-century India, 39.
76. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 73.
77. Ibid., 66.
78. Ibid., 70 – 1. Cf. “Jama Tafasıŕ,” Calcutta Review (Delhi: 1857), 391 – 3.
79. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 78 – 9.
80. Ibid., 115.
81. Of course, Muslims do not believe that the Qur’an is comprised of
Muhammad’s precepts, as Hunter states, but rather is the direct word of God,
as heard (or recited) by Muhammad. Hunter’s technical understanding – or
lack thereof – is inconsequential for our purposes.
82. Hunter, n.p. Recall his prefatory statement to the 1872 reprint of Indian
Musalmans: the government sanctioned his work, and he wrote it with use of
the government’s archives, but it is merely “demi-official” in nature.
83. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 1.
84. Ibid., 109.
85. Ibid., 110.
86. Ibid., 122.
87. Ibid. Hunter inserts dar-ul-islam as the second footnote on this page, rather
than in the text, as I have.
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid., 124.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid. My emphasis.
92. 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), 35.
93. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 125.
178
NOTES TO PAGES 73–79
94. Ibid. Emphasis in original.
95. Ibid., 133.
96. Some transliterate Abdool Luteef following more contemporary conventions as
Abdul Latif.
97. Abstract of the Proceedings of the Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta at a
Meeting held at the Residence of Moulvie Abdool Luteef Khan Bahadoor on
Wednesday, the 23rd of November, 1870 (Calcutta: Erasmus Jones, Cambrian
Press, 1871), n.p.
98. E.g., Lester Hutchinson, The Empire of the Nabobs: A Short History of British India
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1937); Ivor Lewis, Sahibs, Nabobs, and Boxwallahs, a
Dictionary of the Words of Anglo-India (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1991).
99. Ibid., n.p.
100. Ibid., n.p.
101. I purposefully mention both peace and Islam, because it is clear that these
possible translations are at play, and the interplay between “Islam” and “peace”
are not lost on Muslim commentators, but unbelievable for Hunter and
British observers.
102. Ibid., 1.
103. Ibid., 4 – 5.
104. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 125.
105. Ibid.
106. Ibid., 126.
107. Ibid.
108. E.g., Peter Gottschalk, Religion, Science, and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and
Islam in British India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Tomoko
Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism was
Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995).
109. E.g., Carl W. Ernst, Following Muhammad (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2003), 3, 57 – 61; Bruce B. Lawrence, “The Eastward Journey
of Muslim Kingship: Islam in South and Southeast Asia,” in The Oxford History
of Islam, ed. John L. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999),
395 – 434.
110. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 126.
111. Abstract of the Proceedings of the Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta at a
Meeting held at the Residence of Moulvie Abdool Luteef Khan Bahadoor on
Wednesday, the 23rd of November, 1870 (Calcutta: Erasmus Jones, Cambrian
Press, 1871), n.p.
112. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 126.
113. Ibid., 128.
114. Ibid.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid.
117. Ibid., 131. FN 1: Bila´d-ul-Isla´m.
NOTES TO PAGES 79–88
179
118. Ibid., FN 2: Farz-aìn.
119. Ibid., 131.
120. E.g., Mary A. Procida, Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics and Imperialism in
India, 1883 – 1947, Studies in Imperialism (Manchester, UK: Manchester
University Press, 2014).
121. Ibid., e.g., 126.
122. Ibid., 132. Emphasis in original.
123. Ibid., 133.
124. Ibid., 76.
125. Jama Tafasıŕ, printed at Delhi 1867, 391. Cf. Hunter 70 – 1.
126. Ibid., 137 – 8.
127. Ibid., 139.
128. Ibid., 140.
129. Ibid.
130. Ibid., n. p.
131. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 196.
132. Ibid., 213.
133. Ibid., 214.
134. Ibid., 142.
135. State-based and secular educations have long been tools of governance and
dominance, across various imperial regimes and practices (albeit in differing
and particular ways). See: Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its forms of Knowledge,
45, 47 – 53.
136. P. Hardy, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1972), 62.
Chapter 3
“God save me from my friends!”: Syed Ahmad
Khan’s Review on Dr Hunter
1. Syed Ahmed Khan, B. D. R., C. S. I., Review on Dr Hunter’s Indian Musalmans:
Are they Bound in Conscience to Rebel Against the Queen? The Original English
Corrected by a Friend (Benares: Printed at the Medical Hall Press, 1872), 6.
2. Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst, “Sir Sayyid Ahmad Kha¯n,” in Biographical
˙
Dictionary of Islamic Civilisation and Culture, ed. Mustafa Shah (London:
I.B.Tauris, forthcoming).
3. E.g., Sayyid Ahmed Khan, “Lecture on Islam,” in Modernist Islam: A Sourcebook,
1840 – 1900, ed. Charles Kurzman (New York: Oxford University Press,
2002), 291 – 313. Cf. Ali Qadir, “Between secularism/s: Islam and the
institutionalization of modern higher education in mid-nineteenth century
British India,” British Journal Of Religious Education 35, no. 2 (March 2013),
125 – 139.
4. As mentioned above, I use small-p protestant following Winifred Sullivan.
She argues that protestant ideals are coded within Western conversations of
180
NOTES TO PAGES 88–93
civilization, even if those conversations do not specifically reference
Christianity. See: The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, 7 – 8.
5. E.g., J. S. Bandukwala, “Indian Muslims: Past, Present and Future,” Economic
and Political Weekly 41, no. 14 (2006), 1341 – 4.
6. Fa
isal Devji, “Apologetic Modernity,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 1
(April 2007), 64.
7. Syed Ahmed Khan, principal Sudder Ameen of Mordabad, An Essay on the
Causes of Indian Revolt (Agra: printed by J. A. Gibbons, Mofussilite Press,
1859). See also: Cause of the Indian Revolt: Three Essays, ed. Salim al-Din
Quraishi (Lahore: Sang-e Meel Publications, 1997).
8. 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).
9. The closeness in dates and reprinting in English may signal a timely interest in
these works, a need for dissenting critique of a normative depiction of Muslims
as suspicious, a British champion of Sir Syed, or a combination of these factors.
The closeness in publication in English certainly indicates, however, an
English-speaking audience for these texts.
10. This is reminiscent of the debates preceding the Charter Act of 1813, where
numerous Britons warned against missionary involvement for reasons quite
similar to the ones Sir Syed expressed some 45 years later. See chapter 1 for a fuller discussion.
11. Sullivan, The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, 7 – 8. Because Khan does not
specify denomination, I use “christianity” to highlight his broad-based
conceptualization of the factors at play. Within the colonial, imperial, and
civilizing missions at play within Khan’s historical moment, small-c christianity
better captures these overlapping ideological trends as he experienced them than
Sullivan’s small-p protestantism.
12. 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), 3.
13. Ibid., 5.
14. Ibid., 5, 6.
15. Ibid., 7.
16. Ibid., 10.
17. Ibid., 15 – 16.
18. Sanjay Sharma, “The 1837 – 38 Famine in U.P.: Some Dimensions of Popular
Action,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 30, no. 3 (1993), 341. Cf.
C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of
British Expansion 1770 – 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983), 263 – 302.
19. Khan, Causes of the Indian Revolt, 17.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., 19.
NOTES TO PAGES 93–95
181
22. Ibid., 19 – 20. NB: Politics of language, its formalization, and its ties to