Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion

Religion, Rebels and Jihad

Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst

• Editorial: I.B. Tauris
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786722379
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: Indian & South Asian History

While jihad has been the subject of countless studies in the wake of recent terrorist attacks, scholarship on the topic has so far paid little attention to South Asian Islam and, more specifically, its place in South Asian history. Seeking to fill some gaps in the historiography, Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst examines the effects of the 1857 Rebellion (long taught in Britain as the 'Indian Mutiny') on debates about the issue of jihad during the British Raj. Morgenstein Fuerst shows that the Rebellion had lasting, pronounced effects on the understanding by their Indian subjects (whether Muslim, Hindu or Sikh) of imperial rule by distant outsiders. For India's Muslims their interpretation of the Rebellion as jihad shaped subsequent discourses, definitions and codifications of Islam in the region. Morgenstein Fuerst concludes by demonstrating how these perceptions of jihad, contextualised within the framework of the 19th century Rebellion, continue to influence contemporary rhetoric about Islam and Muslims in the Indian subcontinent.Drawing on extensive primary source analysis, this unique take on Islamic identities in South Asia will be invaluable to scholars working on British colonial history, India and the Raj, as well as to those studying Islam in the region and beyond.

CHAPTER 1

THE COMPANY, RELIGION, AND ISLAM

The very essence of Muhammadan Puritanism is abhorrence of the Infidel. The whole conception of Islam is that of a Church either actively militant or conclusively triumphant – forcibly converting the world, or ruling the stiff-necked unbeliever with a rod of iron.

– W. W. Hunter¹

In newspapers, I find the most bitter denunciations against the Mahomedans, who are being freely represented as everything that is vile, treacherous, and contemptible.

– Syed Ahmad Khan²

While Hunter and Khan epitomize a particular depiction of Muslims after the Great Rebellion, negative conceptualizations of Muslims and Islam had existed in Europe well before the East India Company came into existence, Britain colonized South Asia – or Hunter wrote a treatise expounding upon the ways in which Muslims fundamentally could not be loyal subjects of the Crown. These preexisting depictions range from portrayals of Muhammad as a fiendish, self-serving, maniacal fraud³ bent on personal glory, to dismissal of his visions as delusionary, epileptic seizures,⁴ to Muslims as lustful, violent fanatics.⁵ For Britons in South Asia, the decline of the Mughal Empire meant that no obvious, unified Muslim challenge to their imperial expansions existed; so, before 1857, we do not see a widespread fixation on an immediate Muslim threat, nor do we see condemnations of Islam, broadly, to the same degree as we do after the Rebellion.

Before the Great Rebellion, Mughals by and large stood in for Muslims, especially with respect to official or semi-official policies, procedures, tracts, and laws. Britons certainly saw Mughals either as excessive – in their palaces, architecture, and courtly lives – or as despotic, having enacted laws like the jizya (poll tax on non-Muslims); more often, they set a self-aggrandizing understanding of British rule in shining contrast to the previous, declining Mughal rule.⁶ British commentators often posited Muslims and Hindus as unique and oppositional; in the British imagination Muslims were violent, manly, and fanatic while Hindus were passive, effeminate, and flexible.⁷

The East India Company (the Company or EIC) looms large in any historical account of nineteenth-century India, and especially in those that think through official and unofficial stances, policies, and ideologies. The tracts, treatises, and demographic and cartographic data produced by various levels of administrators – from humble collectors to governor-generals – cannot be overstated in their heft or underestimated in their lasting import. The EIC was famously allergic to religion, deeming interference in religious matters as bad business. Yet, it was also famously attuned to matters of religion, regarding it as central to both sensible business and governance practice. As a result, the EIC commissioned both Indians and agents of the British Empire to research and write numerous tracts about India and its religions. Those varied documents tell us that religion mattered to the Company, and they characterize Muslims in very particular ways.⁸

Before the 1857 Rebellion, many imperial writings about Islam exhibited a missionizing or civilizing tone and seemed rather concerned with what religious deficiencies were left in the wake of the failing Mughal Empire. George Chapman, a Company employee, for example, in a text called Tracts of East India Affairs added a poem (in Latin) in which he retells a story about one of the Biblical Magi who is,

parabolically represented as standing on the bank of the river Ganges, near the city of Calcutta, and bewailing the calamites brought upon his country by the tyranny of its Mahometan conquerors, and their successive and desolating wars: and the angel Gabriel, the benevolent and ancient Announcer of the Messiah, is introduced as comforting him with the view of general Peace in that extensive country, and with a prospect of the introduction of the Christian Religion, in its primitive Purity, under circumstances highly favourable to so desirable an object.⁹

Chapman represents a particular Christian imagination of Muslims, and specifically of Mughals: they were despots who conquered India, tyrannically dealt with its original inhabitants, and then left it in a state of calamity, which could and ought to have been remedied by the new, British rulers, who helpfully and happily also brought Christianity with them. Chapman also presents a fairly typical early nineteenth-century tract, in which the affairs of the British in India are conflated with either (though in this case both) the spread of Christianity or of civilization. Chapman writes that it was by the “will of GOD” that India came to “obey the KING of GREAT BRITAIN,”¹⁰ later concluding that it was “by the appointment of Providence, for the purpose of enlightening and civilizing the blinded and infatuated Indians, and bestowing upon them the blessings of peace and of the Christian Religion.”¹¹

However, unlike Chapman, who called for conversion and religiously sanctioned rule in India, many imperialist agents explicitly criticized religious connections between Britain and the Indian subcontinent. Many East India Company officials vehemently opposed conflating Christianity – by way of missionaries – and their own presence in India. In fact, until 1813, missionaries were not granted permission to work or travel in India. A number of East India Company officials thought missionaries, in their roles as promulgators of Christianity, would damage the relationship between Britain and India. Sir Henry Montgomery (d. 1830) warned that widespread, unrestricted activity of missionaries in India would encourage feelings of suspicion and rebellion in India.¹² The Honorable Frederick Douglas (d. 1819) added that the EIC ought to tolerate but not encourage missionaries.¹³ While these men, among others, wanted to support Christianity and religious and civilizational change in India, they saw the work of missions as counter to the financial and administrative work of the Company – and to the tenuous peace it held over zealous natives.¹⁴

The East India Company was originally a joint-stock trading company, meant to solidify Britain's financial and political holdings in Asia. It was not necessarily conceived of as a religious force for native peoples; almost immediately upon its founding, the EIC functioned as a company-state, establishing not only trade routes, partners, and products, but also functional and self-sufficient governmental apparatuses, like tax collection, armies, and other civic institutions.¹⁵ In 1813, Parliament passed the Charter Act, which formally and fundamentally altered the Company's and the Crown's relationship to South Asia. The Charter Act expressly established the Crown's sovereignty over India and, significantly, ended the East India Company's monopoly on trade.¹⁶

During the official hearings for and about the Charter Act, religion – especially Hinduism and Islam – was fiercely discussed and debated. Members of the Houses of Commons and Lords alike cited the “natures” of Hindus and Muslims as part of the rationale for expanding British presence in South Asia; they debated what sort of market it would be for various goods; and they considered at length the role of missionaries and the merits of purposefully seeking to convert Indians to Christianity. They were particularly concerned with the possibilities of disorder, of threats to British power, and, ultimately, of revolt or rebellion.

Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Malcolm (d. 1833), a long-serving and high-achieving member of the East India Company's army, was called as an expert witness before both Houses of Parliament during the examinations on the East India Company's charter. When questioned by a member of the House of Commons about the Indian population and the possibility of stable, orderly rule, Malcolm stated: “That our territories in India contain a great number of seditious and discontented men, there can be no doubt.”¹⁷ During the same exchange, when asked to specify between Hindus and Muslims, he plainly asserted that the majority of the Hindu population was “contented,” but “the Mahomedan part may not be so much contented.”¹⁸ He added that “I certainly conceive that the attachment of the Hindoo population of India is the chief source of our security in India,” but that “our authority could not last a day” if Hindus and Muslims united in rebellion.¹⁹ Others during these hearings suggested the same: rule in India was to be maintained by virtue of a sleepy, submissive Hindu majority, but Britons ought to worry about Muslims disrupting the calm.²⁰

Sir Charles Warre Malet (d. 1815) echoed Malcolm's assessment and concerns. Malet was another long-serving and decorated officer of the East India Company who was questioned by the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the issue of the East India Charter. Like Malcolm, Malet was asked specifically – and at some length – about the trustworthiness of Indians, the ways in which Muslims and Hindus interacted, and how those interactions might shape unrest. He stated:

India is a country of vicissitude and revolution; I think it not at all improbable that some great genius, some extraordinary spirit, might arise, that could combine the present floating spirit of discontent in the Mahometans into one mass; in which case I think, notwithstanding the general amicable disposition of the Hindoos, that spirit might be dangerous and difficult to subdue.²¹

India, Malet attested, was a country of revolution despite the majority's amicability. He placed the possibility of rebellion upon the shoulders of a charismatic, dissenting leader who could mobilize the discontented Muslim masses and then excite the otherwise-agreeable Hindus. For Malet, only Muslims held the potential to set alight the rebellion, despite the majority Hindu population's general compliance.

Malet thought that Britons were the root cause of Muslim distress and dissatisfaction with British rule. He testified that “the hostile spirit” was “produced by any indiscretion or violations of the manners on the part of our countrymen,” and suggested that “only power and opportunity would be wanting to effect the suggestions of any indisposition which might have been created.”²² Others, too, believed that British religious policies and missionary activity in India brought about rebelliousness, especially in retrospect: after 1857, many pointed to British policies and events as having led Indians toward rebellion. Salahuddin Malik, a contemporary scholar, notes that “many Britons regarded the excessive missionary activity to be largely responsible for the uprising in India.”²³

We ought not dismiss anti-missionary pronouncements lightly. The Great Rebellion came to be portrayed as a religious rebellion, and both Indians and Britons cited the Charter Act which allowed admission of missionaries and enacted broad and formal changes to the Britons' religious policy toward native Indians, as a seismic shift and precursor to the Rebellion itself. In our contemporary moment, where post-colonial and decolonial studies of religion, the (former) Commonwealth, and India have successfully challenged historiographies of empire, it may seem unlikely to us that missionaries were problematic for the EIC. Certainly, missionaries and missions played a tremendous role in myriad expressions of colonialism, imperialism, and governmentality in South Asia. But before the Charter Act of 1813, the EIC was remarkably careful about allowing them access and permission to operate in India.

Salahuddin Malik notes that:

A cursory glance at the history of the rise to power of the East India Company would reveal an extremely cautious and conservative policy followed by them with regard to native religions, customs and conventions. There was a time when the Company's government would not let a missionary set foot on their territory, obviously for fear of offending native religious beliefs. Every conquest, every annexation and every occupation was invariably followed by a solemn pledge of non-interference and observance of complete neutrality in religious affairs.²⁴

Claims to neutrality do not actually vouchsafe it; and, as other scholars have noted, missions and missionaries, in spite of restrictions, operated with relative safety and freedom in South Asia well before 1813.²⁵ However, the Company's formal reluctance to allow missionaries, its policies – even if lip service – of noninterference, and its track record of denouncing missionaries should not be overlooked. Taken together, these earlier policies demonstrate what a fundamental change occurred with the Charter Act of 1813, reactions to which largely engendered both later hostility toward evangelizing Britons and a popular memory of unrest attributed to British disregard of native religions leading up to the Great Rebellion.

The East India Company's policies do not indicate a secularist ideal of equality of religions. Instead, they communicate real trepidation about the Company's ability to control a populace and represent a pragmatic attempt to mitigate Indic concerns about foreign rule, forced conversion, and the appearance of invasion. Some observers flatly commented that “Asiatic” or “Oriental” people – and especially Muslims – were known for their religious zeal, and controlling zealotry became a strategic device to maintain order. These commentators found all religious people in India to be swayed by emotion, especially religious emotion, but they reserved fears about fanaticism, and fanatic revolt, for the Muslim population of India.²⁶

For example, during the East India Company Charter Hearings of 1813, Thomas Sydenham stated that Muslims, across time and space, were well noted for their “bigotry and fanaticism,” and that the “very considerable body of the Mussalmen inhabitants of India” posed a “considerable danger” to British control.²⁷ Warren Hastings (d. 1818), the first governor-general of India who was infamous for being tried for (though acquitted of) corruption, likewise testified on the East India Charter before the House of Lords Select Committee. Despite a reputation for hardness vis-à-vis indigenous Indians, he strongly argued against a heightened British presence in India, calling such an influx of “foreigners” both “ruinous” and “hazardous.”²⁸ With regard to Muslims, Hastings insisted that arrivals of more Britons – which would certainly include missionaries and Christian officers – would yield “religious war,” because he could imagine that Britons “might speak in opprobrious epithets of the religious rites” of both Brahmins and “Mahometans,” adding that such behavior would no doubt “excite the zeal of thousands in defense of their religion.”²⁹

In 1813, as part of a debate about the nature of the East India Company before the Houses of Parliament in London, officials suggested that Muslims were predisposed to religious war against British rule, and that this predisposition should influence how Parliament proceeded with respect to the Charter Act. All of the men cited above had illustrious positions and careers in India and as part of the EIC, and all – among others – advocated cautious fortification of Britain's presence in India on the basis of the religious nature of Indians generally and Muslims particularly.

While some scholars have held that the Company remained resolutely cool toward introducing missions and Christianity in imperial India, others have convincingly argued that over time, these two facets of empire warmed to each other and found common cause in missionizing vis-à-vis either Christianity or “civilization.” Historian Ian Copland notes that, esp...