The Mosques of Colonial South Asia

A Social and Legal History of Muslim Worship

Sana Haroon

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780755634460
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

In a series of legal battles starting in 1882, South Asian Muslims made up of modernists, traditionalists, reformists, Shias and Sunnis attempted to modify the laws relating to their places of worship. Their efforts failed as the ideals they presented flew in the face of colonial secularism. This book looks at the legal history of Muslim endowments and the intellectual and social history of sectarian identities, demonstrating how these topics are interconnected in ways that affected the everyday lives of mosque congregants across North India. Through the use of legal records, archives and multiple case studies Sana Haroon ties a series of narrative threads stretching across multiple regions in Colonial South Asia.

Chapter 1

Tajpur, Bihar, 1891

Leadership in Congregational Prayer

Introduction

Hafiz Mowla Baksh, the muezzin of the Tajpur mosque in Bihar, preferred to vocalize the word “amin” and raise his hands up to his ears when pronouncing the greatness of God, when standing before the congregation in worship. Persianized dress, conduct, and tastes derived from a Mughal courtly culture still dominated life in this part of India, but a new society was emerging. From the late eighteenth century, the East India Company had worked to create a legal framework for resolution of civil disputes and to secure the revenues of the valuable estates, large and small, as the sovereign power of the Mughal Empire and the authority of its officials and deputies waned. Agriculturalists saw increases in efficiency of irrigation and cultivation through the 1870s as the population increased dramatically.¹ Merchants took on grand and public philanthropic projects and developed close relationships with the old military-bureaucratic nobility.² The officers of the massive estate of the Darbhanga Raj collected over 3 million rupees in rents just a few miles to the east.³

Omed Ali and the other challengers of Mowla Baksh were weavers and their profession itself was deeply connected to the burgeoning colonial economy. To the southwest, master carpet weavers fulfilled an almost unlimited demand for cheap floor coverings as well as producing exquisitely dyed and woven floor coverings on commission⁴ while Omed Ali and others produced fine tapestries under the supervision of their master tailor. While in many ways connected to a new colonial economy and society, Omed Ali and other worshippers’ understanding of Islamic normativity was a carryover from the late Mughal period. They described the significance of imperial patronage and the mosque infrastructure for civic life in their quarter of this town some forty-five miles from the city of Patna in Bihar, a predominantly agricultural region. Precolonial elites had built mosques and undertook a variety of other public works in Bihar from the sixteenth century onward. These projects had been both displays of political authority and acts of public welfare.⁵

Omed Ali and some members of the congregation objected to Mowla Baksh raising his hands to his ears in prayer, considering this to be a violation of prevailing norms. They began boycotting the prayer led by Mowla Baksh and convening their own congregation in the same mosque behind an imam of their own choosing. Mowla Baksh’s legal battle, supported by the custodians of the mosque and wealthy and influential north Indians identifying as Islamic reformist Ahl-i Hadith, outlasted his own lifetime. Omed Ali’s appeal for official admonishment of Mowla Baksh was rooted in memories of Mughal statecraft, support for and regulation for mosques, but the economy and political order which had knitted together an Islamic narrative and normativity had long been erased. The consequences of such change in the mosque did not become clear to Omed Ali and others until the conclusion of their suit in 1891: colonial law, which recognized and enforced the public right to worship, would not engage with or enforce Muslims’ expectations about the exact cadence of ritual, even if they were presented as norms of Muslim worship and the prevailing opinions of a Muslim public.

When confronted with the Tajpur mosque suit, the JCPC was unwilling to mediate the complex disagreement over ritual authenticity despite Omed Ali’s assertion that the innovation in prayer was profoundly offensive to those who observed the Hanafi norms which prevailed during the Mughal period. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled that an Ahl-i Hadith prayer leader was free to vocalize the amin and equally, a Hanafi prayer leader could prefer the silent observance. Colonial jurists were committed to a secularism whose rationalism and logic were informed by English law, religion, and culture and ignored demonstrated authoritative practices and reasoning embedded in the Islamic legal tradition.⁶ This ruling against conformity in worship undermined the widely subscribed and long established authority of the Hanafi ‘ulama,⁷ and removed congregational ritual from the concerns and oversight of a Muslim body politic. Granted the right to refuse the recommendations of the Hanafi ‘ulama an d the expectations of a general Muslim public in his ritual preferences, the prayer leader’s role crystalized in a new and hitherto unknown form of religious control within the mosque.⁸

State Authorization of Congregational Prayer in Mughal India

The denizens of mid-nineteenth-century Tajpur had inherited the culture of mosque worship prevalent in the late Mughal state. The emperor’s prerogative to convene the Friday congregation and maintain oversight over neighborhood mosques oriented religious practice around the doctrinal preferences of the state and conformity in ritual preference. The imams, muezzins, and custodians of mosques had no authority to set out ritual priorities for a mosque.

An ideal implicit in Mughal imperial administration was that the Friday congregation could only convene at the imperial mosque of a city whose boundaries were demarcated by a qazi, a legal officer of the king, and where a delegate of the king’s authority, had been appointed. An imam, a term which referred to an authority in religious interpretation, gave the Friday sermon.⁹ The imam of a Friday mosque had to be authorized by the king or his delegate, and he could only give the call to congregation for the Friday prayer in the presence of the king or his delegate. If the king or his representative was not present, no Friday prayers could be offered.¹⁰ A jurist of the emperor Jahangir’s era rationalized this control over the mosque, asserting that it was critical that the king, among other things, use his power to integrate the “community of the leader of humanity, the Prophet Muhammad,”¹¹ and Jahangir himself noted that the Shi‘as and Sunnis of his realm met together in prayer unlike the Muslims of Safavid and Ottoman lands.¹²

The five daily prayers could be offered at any neighborhood mosque. Congregations were within their rights to replace a prayer leader (imam) who was preferred by a minority with another more acceptable to the majority.¹³ However the king had the right to override popular consensus with regards to the appointment of a prayer leader in any mosque. Emperor Aurangzeb exercised this prerogative in Gujarat where he appointed a religious officer who was charged with “installing an orthodox imam and an orthodox prayer leader in the mosques erected by the Isma‘ili sect.”¹⁴ A prayer leader, therefore, nominally recognized and upheld the doctrinal preferences of the Mughal state. The shoe seller’s riot at the Friday mosque of Delhi in 1729 was put down through a violent enforcement of the state’s overarching authority over the congregation.¹⁵ Abishek Kaicker tells us that an “urban body politic” coalesced around religious symbols and affiliations as well as an expectation of justice for a murdered kinsman, but the mosque was not a freely accessible arena.¹⁶ Participants in a congregation observed normative political and religious strictures and the Delhi shoe sellers were quickly reminded of the state’s expectations of their self-conduct in the mosque.

The Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (1658–1707), the patron of the comprehensive review of Hanafi law Fatawa Alamgiriyya, designated this school of Islamic jurisprudence as the primary source of religious reason for the qazis and other law officers of his realm. Chroniclers of his time believed that he both sought to implement Hanafi laws in the courts and to encourage the people to “live according to the shari‘a.”¹⁷ The Fatawa Alamgiriyya included detailed instructions on the act of calling the faithful to prayer (azan) and the act of convening the congregation (aqamat).¹⁸ The reciter of the call to prayer, the muezzin, had no discretion over timing, bodily comportment or vocalization in prayer; his was a perfunctory role. He called the azan by determining the level of the sun against the horizon according to prescribed method,¹⁹ his recitation of the azan had to be uninterrupted and loud enough to be heard by more than one person, and he was expected to recite the azan with the pauses, repetitions, and emphases described in the important Hanafi text, the Hedaya.²⁰ A deviation from these norms such as elongating the pronunciation of Allah-hu Akbar at its beginning was described as heresy in one Hanafi text, the Fatawa noted. Elongating the pronunciation of Allah-hu Akbar at its end was described as embarrassing immoderation.²¹ If a muezzin’s recitation was not adequately loud or was interrupted, another could give the azan, starting over, assuming his role.²²

Prayer leaders were authorized by their appointers to convene the prayer, and efforts by members of a congregation to convene for prayer in mosques outside of their scheduled appearances were frowned upon, although not forbidden under Hanafi law. In the absence of an appointed muezzin or an imam, different groups among the people of the mosque could legitimately convene separate and independent congregations for prayer.²³ Although authorized to lead the congregation in prayer and not expect dissent, the prayer leader’s intonation was regulated by defined Hanafi precepts. An imam was expected to intone certain phrases loudly, notably the call of Allahu Akbar (takbir), in order that the congregation meditate on this pronouncement and experience spiritual awareness. Other words were to be recited silently, among them, the amin (amen).²⁴

In Tajpur, the local qazi had overseen the financial affairs and management of the small imperially endowed mosque. He appointed the muezzin to “call and lead the congregation” and to keep the mosque well lit and clean and to take care of any guests visiting the attached guesthouse. The qazi gave orders regarding the mosque and was within his rights to make enquiries as to whether the muezzin was fulfilling his responsibilities as expected, and to dismiss the muezzin if he did not do so. While the official post of qazi and with it the Mughal oversight over mosques were abolished in 1864, the people of Tajpur asked the qazi, Ramizuddin, to continue overseeing the mosque affairs. Qazi Ramizuddin hired Haji Mowla Baksh as a servant of the mosque, subject to his authority and his orders, in 1867.²⁵

Prayer leadership in Mughal India, and at the Tajpur mosque in 1867, was not an authoritative act imbued with discretionary power. Rather it was a perfunctory act scripted through reference to the same Hanafi sources which shaped public discourse and had directed the actions of Mughal state officials. The Mughal state had authorized references to Hanafi scholars and Hanafi law across the region and public observance of Hanafi ritual and congregation behind the emperor or one of his delegates at Friday prayer was an act of political fealty.

The ‘Ulama and the Ahl-i Hadith

The Ahl-i Hadith were self-identifying Muslims who believed that all Muslims should read the Quran and hadith themselves and should derive their everyday observances from a real understanding of divinity and individualism and the example of the Prophet Muhammad as described in these texts.²⁶ Ahl-i Hadith writers and preachers disputed the authority of the Hanafi ‘ulama to set out principles of interpretation of Islamic law and personal conduct and engaged in public sparring with Hanafis. This conflict has been exhaustively studied and there is little new information that this section will add to general understandings of nineteenth-century Muslim reformism and revivalism. However, because the tensions between the Hanafis and Ahl-i Hadith fueled tensions in the Tajpur mosque which in turn invited colonial adjudication, I recount them here.

‘Ulama trained in Hanafi jurisprudence had held positions at the Mughal court from the earliest times. The early colonial establishment of Bengal, engaged in the “reinvention” of Mughal government, appointed scholars trained in Hanafi law as Indian law officers overseen by Company officials.²⁷ These officers engaged principles of Islamic law to adjudicate disputes within a framework of colonial justice.²⁸ Scholars trained in Hanafi law and the textual tradition also engaged with the colonial project from the late eighteenth century, participating in the codification of Anglo-Muhammadan law and translating key texts including the Fatawa Alamgiriyya and Hedaya.²⁹ Among them were the ‘ulama of the Rampur and those of the Calcutta Madrassa founded by Warren Hastings in 1780 to train Muslims in Persian, Arabic, and Islamic law and prepare them to participate in the East India Company administration.³⁰ Up until 1857, the Rampur madrassa served the Rampur state, and its scholars engaged deeply with the Islamic textual tradition. Both madrassas’ graduates were employed as public officials, as teachers in private madrassas,³¹ and as qazis, occupying the position of legal officers in the courts, advisors, and marriage registrars and fulfilling colonial ambitions for the governance of...