Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion

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by Ilyse R Morgenstein Fuerst


  ethnicity, caste, and religion is a compilation of hotly debated topics with ties

  to imperial programs of colonization. See, as examples: Kavita Saraswathi

  Datla, The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India

  (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013); N. Krishnaswamy and

  Archana S. Burde, The Politics of Indians’ English: Linguistic Colonialism and the

  Expanding English Empire (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998); Bernard

  Spolsky, ed., The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy (Cambridge:

  Cambridge University Press, 2012).

  23. Khan, Causes of the Indian Revolt, 22.

  24. Ibid., 25. Each of these subjects is fodder for a fuller discussion that touches on a

  wide variety of issues in imperial history in South Asia. See, as examples: Dana

  Lee Robert, ed. Converting Colonialism: Visions and Realities in Mission History,

  1706– 1914, Studies in the History of Christian Missions (Grand Rapids, MI:

  William B. Eerdmans, 2008); Avril A. Powell, Muslims and Missionaries in Pre-

  mutiny India, London Studies on South Asia 7 (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press,

  1993); Rachel Lara Sturman, The Government of Social Life in Colonial India:

  Liberalism, Religious Law, and Women’s Rights, Cambridge Studies in Indian

  History and Society 21 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

  25. For a fuller discussion of Act XXI and its effects, see: Rachel Sturman,

  “Property and Attachments: Defining Autonomy and the Claims of Family in

  Nineteenth-Century Western India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History

  47, no. 3 (2005), 611 – 37.

  26. Khan, Causes of the Indian Revolt, 24.

  27. Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief

  (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 88.

  28. Khan, Causes of the Indian Revolt, 17 – 18. Emphasis mine.

  29. Ibid., 25.

  30. Ibid., 18.

  31. Missionaries were formally allowed access under the Charter Act of 1813, but

  with various regulations. For an excellent compilation of conflicting definitions,

  histories, and implications of missionary allowances and exclusion, see: Robert

  Eric Frykenberg and Alaine M. Low, eds. Christians and Missionaries in India:

  Cross-Cultural Communication Since 1500, with Special Reference to Caste, Conversion,

  and Colonialism (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Pub, 2003).

  32. Khan, Causes of the Indian Revolt, 18.

  33. 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

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

  of the Proprietors, Cox and Son, 1813), 283 – 7. NB: The 1813 Charter Act

  hearings were more fully discussed in chapter 1.

  34. Syed Ahmed Khan, Causes of the Indian Revolt, 23 – 6.

  182

  NOTES TO PAGES 95–103

  35. Ibid., 33.

  36. Ibid., 36.

  37. It is worth noting that in at least one Urdu reprint, citations and an appendix

  including selected full primary source texts are also present. See: Sayyid

  Ahmad K̲h̲an̲, and Salim al-Din Quraishi, The Causes of the Indian Revolt

  (Patna: Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, 1995).

  38. E. Edmonds in Ibid., 55.

  39. His Honourable Lieutenant Governor of Bengal in Ibid., 61.

  40. 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), 6.

  41. Ibid., 7 – 8.

  42. The Rebellion as jihad, along with debates about the legitimacy of fatwas, is

  discussed in the next chapter.

  43. 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), 7 – 8.

  44. Khan, Causes of the Indian Revolt, 17, 18 – 19, 26.

  45. Lieut.-Colonel. G. F. I. Graham, B. S. C., The Life and Work of Syed Ahmed Khan

  (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1885), 33.

  46. Ibid., 19, 31, 32.

  47. 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).

  48. Ibid., 3 – 5.

  49. Ibid.

  50. Ibid.

  51. Ibid., 6.

  52. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, n.p.

  53. Despite Hunter’s claims of neutrality and “demi-official” positionality, recall

  that Hunter was commissioned to write Indian Musalmans by the Viceroy Lord

  Mayo; even though it was typically a termed position, it was the highest-

  ranking administrative position in British India and answered directly to the

  sovereign.

  54. Khan, Review, 6.

  55. Ibid., 7.

  56. Ibid.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Ibid., 30 – 1.

  59. Ibid., 21, 32 – 3.

  60. Ibid., 37.

  61. Ibid., 42.

  62. Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan, An Account of the Loyal Mahomedans of India (Meerut:

  J. A. Gibbons, at Motussilite Press, 1860), 10 – 11, 19, 38.

  NOTES TO PAGES 103–107

  183

  63. Sean Oliver-Dee, Muslim Minorities and Citizenship: Authority, Communities and

  Islamic Law (London: I.B.Tauris, 2012), 81.

  64. Khan, Review, 42.

  65. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 140.

  66. Khan, Review, 44.

  67. Ibid. NB: The legal issues of a country’s status are more fully discussed in

  Chapter 1. The relationship between a country’s status and jihad are discussed

  more fully in Chapter 4.

  68. Ibid. Cf. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 141.

  69. Ibid., 44 – 5.

  70. Qur’an 5:85, trans. George Sale, in Khan, Review, 45. NB: Most standard

  translations of the Qur’an indicate that this verse is 5:82, not 5:85. Cf.

  Marmaduke William Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an: Text and

  Explanatory Translation (New York: Muslim World League, 1977). I have

  maintained the translation in the Review because of what it represents, not

  what it says particularly; i.e., its use symbolically and authoritatively is more

  important than its content.

  71. Khan, Review, 45.

  72. This is a well-rehearsed set of arguments, with proponents and detractors from

  all sides of many political spectra. Short pieces that feature purposeful

  considerations of “greater jihad,” i.e., the struggle against ones’ inner desires and

  demons, as the “real jihad,” include but are not limited to: Onder Bakircioglu,

  “A Socio-Legal Analysis of the Concept of Jihad,” The International and

  Comparative Law Quarterly 59, no. 2 (2010), 413– 40; Paul L. Heck, “’Jihad’

  Revisited,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 32, no. 1 (2004), 95 – 128; Mahmood

  Ahmad Ghazi, “The Law of War and Concept of Jihad in Islam,” Policy

  Perspectives 5, no. 1 (2008), 69– 86; Noor Mohammad, “The Doctrine of Jihad:

  An Introduction,” Journ
al of Law and Religion 3, no. 2 (1985), 381– 97; Mark

  Sedgwick, “Jihad, Modernity, and Sectarianism,” Nova Religio: The Journal of

  Alternative and Emergent Religions 11, no. 2 (2007), 6 – 27.

  73. Khan, Review, 47.

  74. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 145, FN 1. Cf. Khan, Review, 45.

  75. Khan, Review, 47.

  76. Ibid.

  77. Ibid.

  78. Ibid., 51.

  79. Ibid., 49.

  80. Ibid., 50.

  81. See, as examples: Aziz Ahmad, “The Role of Ulema in Indo-Muslim History,”

  Studia Islamica 31 (1970), 1 – 13; Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi, Ulema in Politics; A

  Study Relating to the Political Activities of the Ulema in the South-Asian

  Subcontinent from 1556 to 1947 (Karachi: Maʼaref, 1972); Asghar Ali Engineer,

  “Muslims and Education,” Economic and Political Weekly 36, no. 34 (2001),

  3221 – 2.

  184

  NOTES TO PAGES 108–112

  82. Ibid., 22 – 3. Cf. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 10.

  83. Khan, Review, 23.

  84. Ibid., 23.

  85. Ibid.

  86. Ibid., 23 – 4.

  87. R. C. Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857 (Calcutta: Firma K. L.

  Mukhopadhyay, 1963), 69 – 76, 99 – 107.

  88. E.g., ibid., 18, 25.

  89. Khan, Review, 20.

  90. Ibid., 26.

  91. Ibid., 27.

  92. E.g., Major Fosberry, “On Some of the Mountain Tribes of the N. W. Frontier

  of India,” The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1869 – 1870) 1, no. 2

  (1869), 182 – 93.

  93. Khan, Review, 19.

  94. Ibid., 25.

  95. Ibid., 35.

  96. Ibid., 55 – 7.

  97. Ibid., 62. NB: I assume Hunter relied here on the Islamic eschatological

  concept of mahdi, a prophesized redeemer whose appearance foreshadows the

  Day of Judgment (yawm al-qiyamah). Generally speaking, Shi’i Muslims have

  more fully developed this concept theologically, and understand the mahdi to

  have already been born; Sunni Muslims, on the other hand, typically state that

  mahdi is Muhammad’s successor who is yet to come. Of relevance are modern

  Sunni interpretations often that imagine the mahdi will come in the form of a

  political reformer – a person perhaps not unlike Syed Ahmed Barelvi. See:

  David Cook, Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature, 1st ed. (Syracuse, NY:

  Syracuse University Press, 2005). It is unclear, however, both from Hunter’s

  singular use of the term mahdi (63) as well as an atypical dearth of citations

  how he decided that Syed Ahmed’s role was that of “great Imam” that would

  “precede the final coming of Christ.”

  98. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 64.

  99. Ibid., 73.

  100. Ibid., 76, 78 – 9.

  101. Khan, Review, 39.

  102. Ibid., 70 – 5. These included: (1) the leadership and appearance of Syed Ahmed

  (1823 – 30), in which there was a legal jihad against Sikhs and Sikh armies;

  (2) a brief period, 1830 – 1, which Hunter called the “reconquest of Peshawar”

  and in which Syed Ahmed died; (3) the span of 1831 – 47 in which Wahhabis

  Inayat Ali and Waliyat Ali garnered great influence; (4) the passing of both

  Inayat and Waliyat Ali in 1847; and (5) the “present period,” which Hunter

  called the period of “Wahabi insurrection.”

  103. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 131.

  104. Khan, Review, 8.

  NOTES TO PAGES 112–120

  185

  105. Ibid., 11 – 12.

  106. E.g., Aamir Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony, 8 – 9, 41 – 69.

  107. The Proclamation, issued on November 1, 1858, formally announced the end

  of the East India Company’s rule in India, and declared they would thereafter

  govern India by proxy in the name of the British monarch. It made public and

  official the Government of India Act of 1858, and the Queen’s right to appoint

  a Principal Secretary of State. See: Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India,

  3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 239 – 40.

  108. Proclamation of the Queen to the Princes, Chiefs & People of India [giving Notice of the Transfer of the Affairs of the East India Company to the Government, and Declaring a

  General Amnesty for Political Offences Committed During the Mutiny]. 1 November

  1858. Translated into the Native Languages of British India. [with a Map of India

  Showing the Various Tracts Where the Several Languages Are Spoken.]. Calcutta,

  1858. British Library Shelfmark: 14999.e.1.

  109. C. S. Adcock, The Limits of Tolerance: Indian Secularism and the Politics of

  Religious Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 33.

  110. Khan, Review, 14.

  111. Ibid. NB: Khan dates this jihad to 1824, but most usually date it to 1826. See,

  for example: Mu’I¯n-Ud-Dı¯n Ahmad Kha¯n, “Sayyid Ahmad Shahı¯d’s Campaign

  ˙

  ˙

  Against the Sikhs,” Islamic Studies 7, no. 4 (1968), 317 – 38.

  112. Khan, Review, 16.

  113. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 126.

  114. Ibid., 9.

  115. Ibid.

  116. Ibid., 11.

  117. I have retained Syed Ahmad Khan’s spellings, but we would more readily

  encounter this term in transliteration as ahl al-hadith.

  118. Khan, Review, 12.

  119. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 78 – 80.

  120. Khan, Review of Hunter, 17.

  121. Ibid.

  122. Ibid., 18.

  123. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 125 – 6, 131.

  124. Ibid., 44.

  125. Ibid., 19 – 20.

  126. Ibid.

  127. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, 213 – 14.

  128. Khan, Review, 52.

  129. Ibid.

  130. Ibid., 53.

  131. Ibid., 53.

  132. Hunter, Indian Musalmans, n.p. (preface), 141, 196.

  133. Khan, Review, 6.

  134. Ibid., 53.

  186

  NOTES TO PAGES 120–123

  135. E.g., Nicholas B. Dirks, The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of

  Britain (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006),

  26 – 8; Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in

  Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 60 – 94;

  156 – 75.

  136. E.g., Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern

  Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton Studies in Culture/power/history

  (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Walter D. Mignolo,

  “The Global South and World Dis/Order,” Journal of Anthropological Research

  67, no. 2 (Summer 2011), 165 – 88; Nicholas B. Dirks, “Castes of Mind,”

  Representations 37, Special Issue: Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories

  (Winter 1992), 56 – 78.

  137. Franz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Constance Farrington, The Wretched of the

  Earth (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965).

  138. Graham, The Life and Work of Syed Ahmed Khan, 231.

  139. W. A. Wilson, “The Situation in India,” in Islam and Missions, 146, 147 – 9. Cf.

  Gottschalk and Greenberg, “Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear,” in

  Islamophobia in America, 32.

  140. Bashir Ahmed Dar, Religious Thought of Syed Ahmed Khan (Lahore: Jadeed Urdu

  Press, 1957), 14 – 15.

 
141. Padamsee, Representations of Indian Muslims, 155 – 7.

  142. Khan, Review, 40.

  143. Padamsee, Representations of Indian Muslims, 156.

  144. Khan, Review, 6.

  145. E.g., Faisal Devji, “Apologetic Modernity,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 1

  (April 2007), 61 – 76.

  Chapter 4

  Rebellion as Jihad, Jihad as Religion

  1. Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

  University Press, 2008), 3.

  2. Hunter uses “Puritan” to describe Muslims in a number of places. He describes

  Sunni Muslims as “the Puritans of Islam” in Indian Musalmans, 58. Elsewhere,

  he states that “abhorrence of the Infidel” is the “essence of Muhammadan

  Puritanism,” Imperial Gazetteer: Vol. 2. Bengal to Cutwa (London: Trubner and

  Co., 1881), 18. Where he refers to Muslims as Puritans – or as I have rendered

  it grammatically, puritanical – he indicates an austerity and an extremism in

  religion. Some continue to replicate this usage. See, as examples: Giovanni

  Bonacina, The Wahhabis Seen through European Eyes (1772 – 1830): Deists and

  Puritans of Islam, History of Oriental Studies, Volume 1 (Leiden; Boston: Brill,

  2015); Barry Vann, Puritan Islam: The Geoexpansion of the Muslim World

  (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2011).

  3. Khan, Review on Dr Hunter, 10 – 11.

  NOTES TO PAGES 124–127

  187

  4. I reference here with Benedict Anderson’s influential notion of imagined

  communities as part and parcel of developing the nation. See: Imagined

  Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso,

  1983).

  5. Zaheer Baber, “‘Race’, Religion and Riots: The ‘racialization’ of Communal

  Identity and Conflict in India,” Sociology 38, no. 4 (2004), 703.

  6. E.g., J. Rex, “The Concept of Race in Sociological Theory,” in Sami Zubaida,

  ed., Race and Racialism (London: Tavistock, 1970), 39; Robert Miles, Racism

  (London: Routledge, 1991), 75.

  7. Baber, “‘Race’, Religion and Riots,” 712.

  8. While Mughal authority did not de jure cease until 1857, Mughal leadership

  had de facto ceded its authority well before this date; many standard

  historiographies locate Mughal decline in the mid-eighteenth century. See:

  John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University

  Press, 1993), 253 – 81.

  9. Jalal, Partisans of Allah, 3.

  10. Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, NJ:

 

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