Shi'a Islam in Colonial India: Religion, Community and Sectarianism

Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India Religion, Community and Sectarianism Interest in Shi‘a Islam has increased greatly in re...

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Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India Religion, Community and Sectarianism

Interest in Shi‘a Islam has increased greatly in recent years, although Shi‘ism in the Indian subcontinent has remained relatively unexplored. Focusing on the influential Shi‘a minority of Lucknow and the United Provinces, a region that was largely under Shi‘a rule until 1856, this book traces the history of Indian Shi‘ism through the colonial period until Independence in 1947. Drawing on a range of new sources, including religious writing, polemical literature and clerical biography, it assesses seminal developments including the growth of Shi‘a religious activism, madrasa education, missionary activity, ritual innovation and the politicization of the Shi‘a community. As a consequence of these significant religious and social transformations, a Shi‘a sectarian identity developed that existed in separation from rather than in interaction with its Sunni counterparts. In this way the painful birth of modern sectarianism was initiated, the consequences of which are very much alive in South Asia today. The book makes a significant contribution to the global history of Shi‘ism, and to understandings of inner-Islamic conflicts in the colonial and post-colonial worlds. Justin Jones is Lecturer in South Asian history at the University of Exeter.

For my parents, Celia and Keith, and my wife, Aleksandra.

Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society 18 Editorial board C. A. Bayly Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St Catharine’s College Gordon Johnson President Emeritus, Wolfson College, University of Cambridge

Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society publishes monographs on the history and anthropology of modern India. In addition to its primary scholarly focus, the series includes work of an interdisciplinary nature which contributes to contemporary social and cultural debates about Indian history and society. In this way, the series furthers the general development of historical and anthropological knowledge to attract a wider readership than that concerned with India alone. A list of titles which have been published in the series is featured at the end of the book.

Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India Religion, Community and Sectarianism

JUSTIN JONES University of Exeter

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107004603 © Justin Jones 2012 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Jones, Justin, 1980– Shi‘a Islam in colonial India : religion, community and sectarianism / Justin Jones. p. cm. – (Cambridge studies in Indian history and society ; 18) isbn 978-1-107-00460-3 (hardback) 1. Shi‘ah – India – History. 2. Shi‘ah – Customs and practices. 3. Lucknow (India) – Religious life and customs. 4. Uttar Pradesh (India) – Religious life and customs. 5. Islam and politics – India. 6. Islamic sects – India. 7. Religious life – Shi‘ah. I. Title. II. Series. bp192.7.i4j66 2011 2011001005 297.80 2095409034–dc22 isbn 978-1-107-00460-3 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of figures and maps Preface and acknowledgements

page viii ix

Frequently used abbreviations Note on transliteration

xiii xv

Select glossary of terms

xvii

Introduction: Writing on Indian Shi‘ism

1

1

Madrasas, mujtahids and missionaries: Shi‘a clerical expansion in colonial India

32

2

Mosques, majalis and Muharram: Marketplace Shi‘ism

73

3

Anjumans, endowments and Indian Shi‘ism: The making of Shi‘a society Aligarh, jihad and pan-Islam: The politicization of the Indian Shi‘a

4 5

114 147

The tabarra agitation and Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts in late colonial India

186

Conclusion and epilogue: Shi‘ism and sectarianism in modern South Asia

222

Appendix: Select Shi‘a ‘ulama of colonial India

243

Select bibliography Index

251 267

vii

Figures and maps

Figures I.1. Asafi mosque and Asaf-ud-daula imambara, Lucknow. 1.1. Sultan ul-Madaris madrasa, Lucknow. 1.2. Maulana Sayyid Najm ul-Hasan, mujtahid.

page 9 36 48

1.3. Maulana Sayyid Aqa Hasan, mujtahid.

49

1.4. Maulana Sayyid Muhammad Baqir Rizvi, mujtahid. 2.1. Maulana Sayyid Sibte Hasan.

50 84

2.2. Ta‘ziya procession, Lucknow. 2.3. Dargah of Imam Husain and karbala ground at Talkatora, Lucknow.

96 101

3.1. Husainabad imambara, Lucknow. 4.1. Shi‘a College campaign deputation to Lieutenant-Governor James Meston, 1916.

127

5.1. Tabarra agitation protest, Lucknow, 1939.

195

5.2. Maulana Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi Naqvi, mujtahid.

211

163

Maps I.1. Major Muslim sites and institutions of colonial Lucknow.

9

I.2. Major Shi‘a centres of the colonial United Provinces, India.

11

viii

Preface and acknowledgements

This book has its origins in a number of research visits to the libraries, religious institutions and older neighbourhoods of the city and Shi‘a spiritual centre of Lucknow, undertaken over the course of the greater part of the last decade. Shi‘ism in north India has long been misunderstood, portrayed as the relatively homogenous religious confession of a small Muslim minority, or associated with the high cultures and graces of Nawabi Lucknow. By examining the workings of Shi‘ism in one regional context from the inside, exploring the shifts and nuances within the alleged Shi‘a community, this book seeks to bring to life a living, reflective and changing Shi‘ism, one scarcely bound by memories of its past. If this book can give a sense of the vigorous debates, differentiations and indeed internal contestations developing under the aegis of a united Shi‘a revival, it will have served its purpose. Over the obdurately long time that it has taken to bring this study to completion, I have accumulated many debts, and it gives me pleasure to acknowledge many of them here. First mention is due to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which funded the original incarnation of this work as a doctoral thesis, as well as to the Society of South Asian Studies for additional research support. Latterly, I was fortunate enough to take up the Smuts Research Fellowship in the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge, which gave me the opportunity to rework this research project into a book. Tremendous thanks are due to Kevin Greenbank, Barbara Roe, Rachel Rowe, Jan Thulborn and Anna Maria Motrescu-Mayes for making my years at the Centre of South Asian Studies so enjoyable, and for keeping me going on such an alarming quantity of caffeine. I was attached to Pembroke College, Cambridge, throughout this time as a doctoral student and postdoctoral researcher alike, and I am immensely grateful to all staff and Fellows for their support. I also owe much to my friends and contemporaries in the field with whom I shared many of the joys and otherwise of the academic experience whilst working on this project, among them Rachel Berger, Kaveri Gill, ix

x


Ben Hopkins, Humeira Iqtidar, Magnus Marsden, Eleanor Newbigin and Sarah Wilkerson. Over the last few years, many academics in the field have kindly offered me invaluable guidance and advice on aspects of this research. Particular mention is reserved for the late Raj Chandavarkar, under whose supervision I thoroughly enjoyed working in the short two years from 2004–2006. I can only hope that he would have been at least partially pleased with this final work. Special thanks are owed to Chris Bayly, who has offered all kinds of invaluable support and encouragement over a number of years, and to William Gould, who has helped me in every conceivable way since my early days as a graduate. Francis Robinson and Avril Powell have both provided advice and counsel well above and beyond the call of duty. For helpful conversations and suggestions or for their interest in aspects of this project, I owe additional thanks to many, including Arshad Alam, Seema Alavi, Hayden Bellenoit, Nandini Chatterjee, Joya Chatterji, Michael Dodson, Robert Gleave, Mushirul Hasan, Gordon Johnson, David Lelyveld, Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, Barbara Metcalf, Rosalind O’Hanlon, Francesca Orsini, Shweta Sachdeva Jha, Radhika Singha, Rais Suleiman, Anita Weiss, Akbar Zaidi and John Zavos. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers of this manuscript for their constructive comments and suggestions. As of more recent months, I am grateful to my colleagues in the History Department at the University of Exeter, who have provided me with a very pleasant and welcoming environment for the text to be finalized. I have also benefited much from the helpfulness of all at Cambridge University Press, especially Marigold Acland, Regina Paleski, Mary Starkey and Joy Mizan. The length of time taken to complete this book is matched only by the list of archives and libraries in which it was researched, in both the U.K. and India. My thanks to all of the following libraries, colleges and universities: the British Library, London; the libraries of the University of Cambridge and School of Oriental and African Studies; the Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi; the National Archives of India, New Delhi; the Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Lucknow; Kitab-Khana Shibli Numani of the madrasa Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama, Lucknow; the library of Jami‘a Millia Islamia, New Delhi; the Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh; the Tagore Library, Lucknow University; and the Amir-ud-daula Library, Lucknow. I would additionally like to acknowledge the invaluable help of the teachers and administrators of the following extant Shi‘a madrasas and religious organizations in Lucknow, from which I drew important source material: Nazimiya


xi

Arabic College; Sultan ul-Madaris; the Nor-i-Hidayat Foundation; and Tanzim-ul-Makatib. My research trips to India would not have been as enjoyable or as fruitful were it not for the contributions of the following. For such a warm welcome during some or all of many trips to Delhi, I am thankful to Shakti Sidhu and family, to Suneet Mani Aiyar and family, and to Sarfaraz Ahmad, Naseem Akhtar and Muhammad Shahnawaz. Particular gratitude is held for Kazim, Zakia and Ahmad Zaheer, for a huge amount of assistance of all personal and professional kinds in both Delhi and Lucknow. In Lucknow, Nirmala Sharma and Naheed Varma both provided me with a warm and friendly place to stay, and the legendary Ram Advani offered me the same excellent company, conversation and cups of tea as he has many researchers before me. Thanks also to the staff of the American Institute of Indian Studies in Lucknow, for their initial help with my orientation in their city. Research stints in Aligarh were enhanced by the good humour of Farhan and Fauzia Mujib, and Ataur Rehman. The key ideas and arguments of this study, while based on historical record and documentary evidence, were inevitably largely shaped and informed through conversations with influential members of the contemporary Shi‘a community of Lucknow. Special mention is reserved for all the following, many of whom are descendants of the key figures examined in this book, for the remarkable helpfulness and goodwill they showed to an outsider with a rather odd curiosity in their personal views and family histories. In view of their great willingness to share information with me and their frequently candid openness, I would like to take the opportunity to make clear that all arguments within this book are mine and mine alone. For his introduction to the ways of western Lucknow and access to useful sources, I thank Sultan ‘Ali Sadiq and family. Muhammad Amir Muhammad Khan, the current Raja of Mahmudabad, was extremely good-humoured and hospitable. The staff of the Shi‘a Postgraduate College were very welcoming, especially Bhaskar Srivastava and the principal Dr Naqvi. In particular, a number of active Shi‘a clergy within Lucknow were remarkably helpful and accepting of my interests, and this study would have been much different were it not for their assistance. For taking the time to speak with me, thanks to Maulanas Agha Roohi, Kalb-i-Jawad, Jamu Mian, Mirza Muhammad Athar and Safi Haider. Maulana Hamid ul-Hasan, principal of Nazimiya Arabic College, together with Dr Taqvi and Farid ul-Hasan, were endlessly helpful and a great pleasure to have met on several occasions. Among the Shi‘a religious

xii


community in Lucknow, my main gratitude goes to two scholars of exceptional generosity. Maulana Sajjad Nasir ‘Abaqati, the descendant of some of the key characters discussed in this book and the closest I could have to an ustad, furnished me with much of his wisdom and generosity. He and his relatives Kazim Jarwali, Jamal Kazim and Daniyal Kazim together provided me with a virtual second home and plenty of chai in their residence in Nakhhas, Lucknow. Maulana Mustafa Husain Asif Ja’isi also took me under his wing, allowing me access to his knowledge, home and bookshelves over a number of weeks, and facilitating my visit to some of the rural outposts of Awadhi Shi‘ism such as Ja‘is and Nasirabad. This study simply would not have been possible were it not for the tremendous collections of material that he made available to me. I am much indebted to him and to his nephews Kazim Mehdi and ‘Ali Mehdi for their formidable assistance. My greatest thanks, however, remain with those family and friends who have offered the encouragement to complete this work. Were it not for the unconditional support of my parents, Celia and Keith, and of my wife Aleksandra, whose faith in this project and patience during the interminable ‘final stages’ of writing have been remarkable, none of this would have been possible. It is to them that this book is dedicated. Justin Jones Exeter, 2010

Frequently used abbreviations

AMU CSAS CUL GAD NAI NML OIOC UPNNR UPSA

Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge Cambridge University Library General Administration Department files, UPSA National Archive of India, New Delhi Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi Oriental and India Office Collections, London United Provinces Native Newspaper Reports, L/R/5, OIOC Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Lucknow

xiii

Note on transliteration

For the sake of simplicity and elegance, long vowels are marked with diacritics (as below) in the titles of referenced texts only. In the main text, words have been written according to their pronunciation. In quotations from other transliterated sources, words are rendered as they appear in the original text. ‫ٵ‬ ‫ﺏ‬ ‫ﭖ‬ ‫ﺕ‬ ‫ﭦ‬ ‫ٽ‬ ‫ﺝ‬ ‫ﭺ‬ ‫ﺡ‬ ‫ﺥ‬ ‫ﺩ‬ ‫ﮈ‬ ‫ﺫ‬ ‫ﺭ‬ ‫ﮌ‬ ‫ﺯ‬ ‫ﮊ‬ ‫ﺱ‬ ‫ﺵ‬ ‫ﺹ‬ ‫ﺽ‬

a¯ b p t t s j ch h kh d dh z r r z s s sh s z

‫ﻁ‬ ‫ﻅ‬ ‫ﻉ‬ ‫ﻍ‬ ‫ﻑ‬ ‫ﻕ‬ ‫ﮎ‬ ‫ﮒ‬ ‫ﻝ‬ ‫ﻡ‬ ‫ﻥ‬ ‫ﻭ‬

t z ‘ gh f q k g l m n v, w, o¯, u¯

‫ﻩ‬ ‫ﻯ‬

h, or a at the end of a word e¯, ¯ı, y

xv


ajlaf akhlaq ‘alim (pl. ‘ulama) amir (pl. umara’) Amir-ul-mominin anjuman ‘Ashra ashraf

‘Ashura

‘atabat-i-‘aliyat

azadari azan Bara-Wafat begam bid‘a bila fasil

the indigenous castes of Muslims, as opposed to ashraf. moral or mannerly correctness. a scholar of Islamic knowledge. social or political leader; a nobleman. ‘leader of the people’, a title used by the Shi‘a to refer to the first Imam ‘Ali. a voluntary public association or society. the first ten days of Muharram. the high-caste, respectable Muslim communities, consisting of Sayyids, Sheikhs, Mughals and Pathans, descended from the Prophet’s family or from Muslim ruling classes. the tenth day of Muharram, upon which the death of Husain is commemorated and ta‘ziyas buried. the Shi‘a holy shrine cities of Iraq at Karbala, Najaf, Kazimain and Samarra. the practice of mourning for Imam Husain observed during Muharram. the call to daily prayer. the anniversary of the birth (and also death) of the Prophet. a married sharif Muslim woman. innovation. ‘without interruption’, a phrase used periodically by the Shi‘a to describe ‘Ali’s succession of Muhammad. xvii

xviii

biradari Caliph (Khalifa)

char-yari chauk dar-ul-‘ulum dargah dars-i-kharij dars-i-nizamiya

deen du‘a duldul fatwa (pl. fatawa) fazil

fiqh firqa hadis

hafiz Hanafi

Select glossary of terms endogamic kinship group. the personages charged with rightful succession of the Prophet according to Sunni Islam, the first and most important of whom are Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, Usman and ‘Ali. ‘four comrades’, the names of the first four Sunni Caliphs. the central market area of a city. an ‘abode of knowledge’, a madrasa. tomb of a saint, shrine. the course of study in some cases followed to become a mujtahid. the curriculum of learning of many madrasas in north India, associated primarily with Firangi Mahal of Lucknow, with a particular emphasis on rational disciplines and sciences. religion. prayer, recitation. effigy of the steed upon which Iman Husain was mounted at Karbala. a legal pronouncement issued by a mufti. distinction, glorification, often denoting the degree gained from education within a madrasa or under an elevated ‘alim. the science of Islamic jurisprudence. sect, faction. the written traditions of the Prophet and his Companions or, in Shi‘ism, of the Imams. one able to recite the Qur’an from memory. the branch of Sunni jurisprudence dominant in South Asia, encapsulating the Deobandi,


hawza hazrat husainiya ‘ibadat ijaza (pl. ijazat) ijtihad

ikhtilafat ‘ilm (pl. ‘ulum) Imam

imambara

Isna ‘Ashari

ittehad jhanda jihad

juda/judagana juloos kalam karbala

xix

Bareilvi, Firangi Mahal and Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama schools. circle of scholars, denoting a place of learning (e.g. Najaf). Muslim notables, elites. alternative term for an imambara. worship, religious practice. certificate authorizing its recipient to exercise ijtihad. the autonomous religious effort of a qualified mujtahid on a point of shari‘at. contradiction, disputation, opposition. science/knowledge. in Shi‘ism, one of the descendants and legitimate successor of the Prophet, beginning with ‘Ali and ending with the twelfth Imam; the personages at the doctrinal and devotional heart of Shi‘ism. the edifices in which Muharram is observed, and eulogies for Imam Husain recited. ‘Twelver’, the branch of Shi‘ism that subscribes to the authority of the twelve Imams, the two major branches of which are Usuli and Akhbari Shi‘ism. unity. flag, standard. effort or struggle, often used in the context of holy war in defence of Islam. separate/separateness. ta‘ziya procession, enacted during Muharram. the discipline of dialectical theology. a piece of ground symbolic of the land in Iraq upon which Imam Husain was

xx

khatib

Khilafat khutba

khwani madrasa majlis (pl. majalis)

mantiq marja‘

marsiya

mashk

Select glossary of terms martyred, where ta‘ziyas are buried during Muharram. sermonizer; one who delivers the khutbah from the mimbar after Friday prayers. office of the Caliph. the sermon or oratory delivered together with Friday prayers, and on other occasions. It generally contains Arabic exaltations of God, the Prophet and other personages, after which its content is left to the discretion of the khatib delivering it. narrative rendition of the Karbala tragedy, offered in some majalis. an educational institution of the Islamic sciences, training ‘ulama. council or gathering, or in the case of Shi‘ism congregations of mutual mourning for Husain. the discipline of logic. one who is seen as qualified to provide guidance in all points of religious practice and law by ordinary individuals. According to some interpretations, only one individual at any one time is entitled to this status, and becomes a universalistic leader (Marja‘ ul-Taqlid). a mostly Shi‘a genre of poetry associated with Muharram and especially famous in Lucknow, in which the glories of Husain and the other Imans are recited and their suffering evoked. a replica of the empty leather water-carrier said to have been carried by Husain’s daughter Sakina at Karbala, a replica of


masjid maslak matam(dari)

Maulana maulvi mazhab medan Mehdi mela millat mimbar minhaj mi‘raj mominin mu‘afidar muballigh (pl. muballighin) mufti muhalla Muharram

mujtahid

xxi

which was a feature of Muharram possessions in some U.P. towns, carried upon a tir. mosque. sect, school of thought. (the practice of) self-flagellation in mourning for the Imans. When blades are used, it is sometimes known as chako ki matam. designation of religious distinction and authority. religious speaker or preacher; learned man. religion, faith. ground. in Shi‘ism, the absent twelfth Imam, whose revelation is awaited. fair. religion, community. the stand from which preachers speak in a mosque. path, system. the ascension of the Prophet. ‘followers’, often used in juxtaposition with the leading sadat of Shi‘ism. a holder of revenue-free grants of land. missionary. one entitled to issue a fatwa. neighbourhood. the first month of the Muslim calendar, observed by both Shi‘as and Sunnis in distinct ways, during which the martyrdom of Imam Husain and other personages is commemorated. one qualified to perform ijtihad. In Shi‘ism, the title denotes the leading religious authorities, qualified to make rulings on the shari’a and

xxii

munazara/munazir munsif muqallid mut‘a

mutawalli nechri/nechriyat nisab peshnamaz purdah qasba

qaum/qaumi rais risala (pl. rasail) sadat sadr sadr-i-sadoor sahaba sajjada nashin sarparast(i) satyagraha

sayyid (pl. sadat)

Select glossary of terms subjects of allegiance for the Shi‘a community. religious disputation or debate/debater. judge. the individual adherent of a chosen mujtahid or marja‘. a form of contractual temporary marriage sanctioned by Shi‘a religious law. the trustee of a waqf or, sometimes, of another religious institution. atheist, materialist/atheism, materialism. the curriculum of an institution of Islamic learning. leader of congregational prayers. the veiling or seclusion of women. the Muslim-dominated rural towns and settlements of the North Western Provinces and Awadh. community or nation/the adjectival form, communal or national. rural landholder. treatise, tract. see sayyid. president, principal. ‘chief justice’, the term used in Awadh to refer to the chief mufti of a city. denotes the Companions of the Prophet, including the Caliph. successor to the leadership of a religious establishment. leader(ship). form of civil disobedience, practised by Gandhi and evoked during the tabarra agitation of 1939. a descendant of Muhammad via the Imams, the sharif community from whom all Shi‘a mujtahids and most Indian Shi‘a elites originate.

Select glossary of terms shahid/shahadat shajra/shajra-i-nasb

shari‘a(t) sharif soz swaraj tabarra tabligh tabut

tafriq tafsir takhlus ta‘lif

ta‘luqdar

taqiya

taqlid

taqrib tarjuma

xxiii

martyr/martyrdom. genealogy/‘family tree’, usually charting the lineage of sayyids to the Prophet’s family. the law of Islam. denotes ashraf status. lyrical or musical dirge for Husain, associated with Muharram. independence, self-rule. the Shi‘a cursing of the Sunni Caliphs for their usurpation of Iman ‘Ali. dissemination/proselytisation of Islamic knowledge. a Shi‘a custom performed in some towns such as Lucknow, in which a horse is adorned as the steed of Husain and led in the juloos. sectarianism, partisanship. the science of Qur’anic exegesis. the name of authorship. compendium of the writings of exalted past scholars, distinct from tasnif. a large-scale landowner whose proprietary rights were established by the British after 1857. in Shi‘ism, the concealment or dissimulation of true religious beliefs in circumstances of potential danger or humiliation from other religious communities. deference/submission; in Shi‘ism, the emulation of or subservience to a chosen mujtahid in matters of religious law; deference to the ijtihad of another. ‘ecumenism’, the project of constructing cross-confessional unity. translation.

xxiv

tasawwuf tasnif tauhid tawa’if ta‘ziya/ta’ziyadari

ta‘ziya-khana tazkira tehrif tehsildar tehzib ‘ulama ‘ulum umara’ ‘urs ustad (pl. ustaden) Usuli

Wahhabi

Select glossary of terms Islamic mysticism/Sufism. newly authored tract, distinct from ta‘lif. the oneness of God. courtesan, a female entertainer associated with the Awadh Court. an effigy of the tomb of Imam Husain, symbolically revered and sometimes interred during Muharram/the practice of carrying the ta‘ziya in a procession to its site of burial, conducted during Muharram. a space in a home or imambara in which a ta‘ziya is kept. a genre of biographical writing in Arabic, Persian and Urdu. alteration, corruption. collector, revenue collector. culture or etiquette, a term heavily associated with Lucknow. see ‘alim. see ‘ilm. see amir. the death anniversary of a Muslim saint. religious teacher. the dominant branch of Isna ‘Ashari Shi‘ism since the eighteenth century. It differs from Akhbari Shi‘ism in that it accepts forms of intellectual and analogical reasoning as legitimate methods of jurisprudence, and in consequence has come to imbue its religious leaders with a greater degree of legal and charismatic authority. a reformist school dating from the eighteenth century, renowned for their zealous and uncompromising opposition to any custom deemed to undermine the oneness of God.

Select glossary of terms wa‘iz (pl. wa‘izin) waqf

wasiqa/wasiqadar

waza’if zakir

zamindar ziarat

zikr

xxv

preacher. a religious endowment directed towards the upkeep of institutions such as mosques, madrasas and imambaras. pension agreement offered by the government of India/in Lucknow, the disenfranchised former nobility of the Nawabi Court. charity. one who remembers God by reciting his names and praises; in Shi‘ism, the term often refers to a preacher who renders the significances of the Imams during Muharram. landholder. in Shi‘ism, most commonly denotes pilgrimage to the shrine cities, or a visitation to other sacred ground. the ‘remembrance’ of God; the practice of reciting the names of God and, in the case of Shi‘ism, of the Imams.

Introduction Writing on Indian Shi‘ism

Whatever the differences between the manifold movements of Islamic renewal and reform that developed in north India during the second half of the nineteenth century, scholarship has been unanimous in identifying the cataclysmic events of 1856–8 as a defining moment. The annexation of new territory by the East India Company, the removal of the key figureheads of Muslim rule, the seizures of inherited landholdings and the imposition of ‘Western’ education all induced a sense of disenfranchisement and humiliation (zillat) among the Muslim elites of the region, and spurred them to devise new forms of Islam which could endure outside the framework of Muslim political control and state patronage.1 Yet, while the Rebellion has long been proven collectively important for the Muslims of north India, the case could be made that it was of particular significance for the Shi‘a minority. One of the most significant casualties of the events was Awadh, a Shi‘a-governed princely state which incorporated a swath of north India from 1722 until 1856. As a rich literature on Awadh has shown, not least Juan Cole’s masterful study, the ruling Nawabs, a dynasty of Nishapuri Persian origins, heavily co-opted Shi‘ism as a ‘dominant ideology’ of governance, and an agent of state legitimization. Throughout the early nineteenth century, and in the 1840s–50s in particular, a ‘formal religious establishment’ of Shi‘a

1

Classic works in this regard include Aziz Ahmad, Islamic modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857–1964 (London, 1967); Francis Robinson, ‘The Muslims of Upper India and the shock of the Mutiny’, in Francis Robinson, Islam and Muslim history in South Asia (Delhi, 2000), pp.138–55; Barbara Metcalf, Islamic revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton, 1982); Peter Hardy, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge, 1972); David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s first generation: Muslim solidarity in British India (Princeton, 1978).

1

2

Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India

clerics and courtiers was built up. Shi‘a cultural, religious and welfare institutions were richly fostered by the state and used to extend its outreach, while a new and increasingly powerful circle of ‘ulama were recruited as jurisconsults and advisers to the Nawabi court.2 Indelibly associated with Nawabi governance, in much of north India it was Shi‘ism, and the relatively small population that formally identified themselves as adherents of the religion, that was most bound up with the established securities of state patronage and servitude. The 1856 deposition of Wajid ‘Ali Shah, the final King of Awadh, and the exile of much of his staff to Metiaburj in Bengal, brought to an end one of the world’s most significant post-Safavid Shi‘a kingdoms. Thereafter, with courtly patronage all but dead, the two decades after 1858 proved especially ruinous for Shi‘ism in north India, especially in the city of Lucknow, the former Nawabi capital. The Awadh court was dismantled root and branch by the British, disenfranchizing many of its former advisers, while others were bought off with small pension agreements.3 The chief mufti (jurist) of the city in the last years of the Nawab’s reign, the exalted scholar Mirza Muhammad ‘Abbas, had his personal library destroyed in the 1857 violence, and was forced into self-imposed exile.4 The Urdu newspaper Tilism commented that the rites of Muharram, the annual commemorations for the martyred Shi‘a Imam Husain and his family which dominated Lucknow’s municipal calendar, experienced heavy depletion in tandem with the fortunes of the Nawabi elite and the realities of British policing: ‘The doors of fortune are closed. The fire of suffering is at its height. The imambaras (mourning halls) look deserted.’5 The city’s largest Shi‘a mosque, the Asafi masjid, and the adjoining Asafud-daula imambara, Lucknow’s most imposing religious building, were converted into British military garrisons, their religious functions shut down; over fifty other city mosques were appropriated to uses including offices, police depots, medical dispensaries and stables for livestock.6 New land-settlement policies, rewritten in 1858 around principles of perceived 2

3 4

5

6

Juan Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism in Iran and Iraq: religion and state in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 126–7, 217–18. Ibid, pp. 271–2. Sayyid Murtaza Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r: tazkira-i-Shı¯ ‘a afa¯zil-va-‘ulama¯, kaba¯r-i-bar-isaghı¯ r-i-Pa¯k-va-Hind (Karachi, 1981), p. 77. Faruqui Anjum Taban, ‘The coming of the revolt in Awadh: the evidence of Urdu newspapers’, Social Scientist 26 (1998), pp. 19–20. Veena Oldenburg, The making of colonial Lucknow, 1856–1877 (Princeton, 1984), pp. 35–7; Shakil Hasan Shamsi, Shı¯ ‘a–Sunnı¯ qazı¯ ya: kitna¯ mazhabı¯ kitna¯ sı¯ ya¯sı¯ ? (Lucknow, 2005), pp. 81–4.


3

‘loyalty’ to the British Raj, shut off the stipends of inherited land revenue on which many noble Shi‘a families and religious scholars had depended. Meanwhile, with the kings of Awadh no longer representing a solid source of patronage for Shi‘a scholars and preachers, the transnational clerical traffic between Iraq, Persia and India largely evaporated. Visits to India by Arab and Persian scholars, artists and physicians, commonplace under the nawabs, became less so, while the profile of Indian ‘ulama in Shi‘a clerical centres such as Najaf reciprocally dried up. Given the infliction of these numerous catastrophes upon Shi‘ism, there followed perhaps unsurprisingly a diminishment of the funding, visibility and popular support that the religion had previously enjoyed in north India. The two or three decades after 1857 were, as remarked in 1871–2 by Ahmad ‘Ali, one of the city’s leading scholars, an era of religious ‘weakness’ and ‘disorder’ (mazhabi kamzori, fitna-parwazi) for Indian Shi‘ism. He lamented widespread ‘misgivings’ (shubhat) among the population, their disregard for the ‘ulama (Muslim clergy), and the ‘selfinterest’ (khud-ra’i) which meant that Shi‘as had no sense of common brotherhood with one another.7 No meaningful organization, he complained, existed to serve or represent the Indian Shi‘a. Now let us jump forward a few decades, to around the 1910s, and one can see that a new Shi‘a organizational apparatus has come to exist in the city’s public life. The great mujtahids (religious scholars) of Lucknow are once again vocal public figures, using a series of new podiums and organizations to reclaim their public profile and social relevance in a way unseen in decades. A series of madrasas (religious schools) have recently been established, creating a refreshed, functional body of ‘ulama. Specialist preachers vie for invitations to offer sermons and dirges for the Imams in private and public, while a number of Shi‘a publishing-houses offer a new, Urdu-literate audience unprecedented access to religious knowledge. A new Shi‘a conference organization invites dignitaries to Lucknow from across India and beyond, and offers a wider matrix for bringing a diffuse array of Shi‘a organizations into contact. Shi‘a orphanages, charities and welfare institutions exist in numbers, while several campaigns for new religious colleges are making headway. Simultaneously, relations between the city’s Shi‘a and Sunni Muslim communities have deteriorated rapidly, with the occasional theological arguments of earlier decades having given way to orchestrated seasonal clashes, and taken on newly political intimations. 7

Habib Husain ibn Ahmad Husain, Sawa¯nih-i-‘umrı¯ -i-Ghula¯m Hasne¯n Kinto¯rı¯ (Lahore, 1904), pp. 185–8.

4


This apparent expansion of what one maulvi described in 1910 as a ‘fresh religious life’ (na’i mazhabi zindagi) among north India’s Shi‘a Muslims,8 one which apparently took root in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, forms the foreground of this book. This study has two central objectives. First, it presents an examination of religious and social change among the Shi‘a of colonial north India. Examining new forms of religious learning, participation and practice, this book discusses how Shi‘ism was dissociated from its background of state power, and reconstructed anew as a systematic religion, entailing new forms of engagement both with its adherents and with the historical setting in which it functioned. The second objective, heavily intertwined with the first, is to interrogate the growth during this period of Islamic ‘sectarianism’, a term that I use broadly to refer to an enhanced discourse of religious and communal difference between the members of Islamic groups or schools. While offering reflections relevant from 1857 until the present, the book’s main empirical focus is a rough six decades from the 1880s to the 1930s, a period which saw the formation of many significant Shi‘a institutions, and the most consequential attempts at religious transformation. It is comfortably bookended by, in the earlier dates, the formation of several significant madrasas, the emergence of a new generation of activist ‘ulama, and the institutionalization of manifold variations in religious practices; and in the later years, the extreme violence of the 1939 tabarra agitation, India’s most significant instance of Shi‘a–Sunni political conflict to date. So, the first task of this introduction is to offer at the outset an overview of the Shi‘a societies and the region at the heart of this study as they stood on the point of British annexation. It then offers a survey of the key themes and arguments at issue, contextualizing the study and its lines of enquiry in the existing historiography on Shi‘ism, and Muslim sectarianism, in modern South Asia.

sayyid s, nobles and cosmopolitans: shi‘ism in north india Shi‘a Islam has had a long history in the Indian subcontinent. Of earliest influence and importance were the Shi‘a-informed dynasties in the

8

Luckna’u ke¯ ması¯ bat-zada Sunnı¯ o¯n´ kı¯ farya¯d au¯r va¯qa‘ı¯ asba¯b-i-ması¯ bat (Lucknow, c. 1910), a pamphlet contained in GAD No. 366/1911, Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Lucknow (UPSA), p. 2; Shamra’l ud-din Ahmad, Shikast-i-‘azı¯ m ba¯’i-a¯da¯-i-Qur’a¯n-ikarı¯ m (Lucknow, 1920), p. 3.


5

Deccani south, such as the sultanates of Bijapur (c. 1489–1686), Golconda (1518–1617) and Ahmadnagar (1496–1636); indeed, it was here, rather than in north India, that many established Shi‘a cultural forms, such as the majlis sermon and marsiya poetry, first developed.9 Over time the religion also came to be associated with segments of the Muslim urban and landed elites in Bombay, Sindh, Punjab, Bengal and elsewhere. Indeed, many studies of South Asian Islam in its broadest senses, from the medieval period onwards, have demonstrated how these many historic associations with ruling Muslim dynasties have given Shi‘a cultural and religious traditions a permeating influence on religious practice and custom, even at those levels of society where they were not formally acknowledged as being exclusivist Shi‘a identifiers as such. For instance, study after study has documented participation by diverse religious communities – Sunnis, Hindus and others – in the nominally Shi‘a Muharram festival, held in commemoration of the martyred Imams. The veneration of the third Imam, Husain, and the manifold explorations and reworkings of the martyrdom motifs embedded in the Karbala story in South Asia, is testament to this long-standing Shi‘a influence in a diverse range of cultural settings.10 Equally, many studies of those Sufi orders (tariqas) most influential in South Asia, such as the Chishtiya and Qadiriya, have demonstrated how normative Sufi practice has shared certain synergies with Shi‘ism. Such orders, most of which trace the lineage of their saints back to the Imams, have historically sanctioned devotion to the family of the Prophet as an act of piety, and at local levels Sufi cults of devotion to ‘Ali and his descendants have often overlapped with ‘popular’ Shi‘a practice in a way that entirely belies the construction of difference between traditions at the level of some formal clergy.11 Hence, scholarship has largely been in agreement that Shi‘aderived cultural norms and practices have had a historical and social impact on South Asian Muslim culture and societies more broadly, out of all proportion to the sum of formally declared Shi‘a adherents. 9

10

11

Annemarie Schimmel, Islam in the Indian subcontinent (Leiden, 1980), pp. 51–62; Omar Khalidi, ‘The Shi‘ites of the Deccan: an introduction’, Rivista Degli Studi Orientali 64, 1–2 (1991); Franco Coslovi, ‘Shiism’s political valence in medieval Deccani kingdoms’, in Anna Libera Dallapiccola and Stephanie Zingel-Avé Lallemant, Islam and Indian religions (Stuttgart, 1993). E.g. David Pinault, Horse of Karbala: Muslim devotional life in India (New York, 2001); Syed Akbar Hyder, Reliving Karbala: martyrdom in South Asian memory (New York, 2006). E.g. Richard Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700: social roles of Sufis in medieval India (Princeton, 1978); S. M. Azizuddin Husain, ‘Sufi cults and the Shias’, in Anup Taneja, ed., Sufi cults and the evolution of medieval Indian culture (Delhi, 2003).

6


In view of this pervasive cultural influence across the subcontinent, it is important to impose some initial limits on this study. This book is solely concerned with the Isna‘Ashari branch of Shi‘ism (also known as Twelvers or Imamis, for their belief in the Twelve Imams as successors to the Prophet). It bypasses entirely communities such as the Isma‘ili and Dau’di Bohra often categorized under the Shi‘a umbrella, with whom the Isna ‘Ashari shared few associations of family, region, religious belief or political action – at least during the period under discussion here.12 This book will also confine itself tightly to the swath of north India encompassing Awadh, Rohilkhand and Doab, latterly known from 1901 as the United Provinces. By the eighteenth century Nawabi rule had given Shi‘ism an entrenched presence in this region, and from the peak of Nawabi power and patronage in the late eighteenth century onwards, Awadh has often been perceived as the intellectual, financial and psychological heartland of Shi‘ism in India. This book is located entirely in the Shi‘a societies of this region, examining the communities of the larger towns and rural townships (qasbas) dotted across the Gangetic plains. The reason for the largely local setting of this study is that, rather than resorting to the grandiose generalizations and tendencies to essentialization common to many studies of Shi‘ism, it seeks to assess evolving constructs of Shi‘a identity through an analysis of those environments in which it was most immediately lived and experienced. However, in no way is this regional focus intended to limit the scope of the study. Instead, the book’s description of how Shi‘ism was recrafted following the deprivation of its political power, the construction of new notions of religion and religious community, and the growth of a systematized Shi‘a sectarianism, are all stories with powerful resonances in other settings and in the modern world. For many observers, the elite social milieu and historical proximity to governance meant that it was still honour and respectability (adab or ‘izzat) which were identified as most characteristic of Shi‘ism in this region.

12

On these communities see Farhad Daftary, The Isma‘ilis: their history and doctrines (Cambridge, 1990); Jonah Blank, Mullahs on the mainframe: Islam and modernity among the Daudi Bohras (Chicago, 2001). Most studies have agreed that religious boundaries between Imami and Isma‘ili Shi‘as were more firmly consolidated in India during the 1840s–1850s, on account of Usuli Shi‘a consolidation in Nawabi Lucknow, and the simultaneous resettlement of the Isma‘ili leader Hasan ‘Ali Shah, Aga Khan I, in India from 1843. Judging from the sources consulted throughout this book, most north Indian Imami Shi‘a saw themselves as having little in common with the Isma‘ilis during the period under discussion.


7

Most north Indian Shi‘a communities conceived themselves as being of sayyid genealogy, one of several sharif (‘noble’) castes in Indian Islam and one linking them directly to the Prophet via the family of ‘Ali.13 In Shi‘ism especially, the conviction that religious authority was vested in the family of the Prophet has meant that the status of sayyid has long carried connotations of religious and cultural authority even in contemporary manifestations; the most senior ‘ulama are by necessity identified with it, as are most of the umara’, lay nobles and dignitaries. For all that has been said about the breakdown of traditional ashraf–ajlaf caste structures in Islam, in practice most Shi‘a in colonial India were members of particular sayyid clans or kinship groups (biradari), whose distinguished ancestral status was jealously guarded through endogamic marriage, social segregation and purity of religious practice. Many of the Shi‘a writings consulted for this study, right into the twentieth century, include shajra-i-nasb, genealogical trees which charted the lineage of their authors, tracing them back through the generations to the Imams and hence drawing sustained legitimacy from their own perceived ancestral authority. The association of Shi‘ism with forms of nobility, both in terms of sayyid descent and Nawabi cultural pedigree, was equally obvious to outsiders, and became the definitional feature of Shi‘ism to colonial observers. The first Census of India, as well known for informing the self-image of segments of the Indian population as much as it catalogued them, declared ‘the Shi‘a religion’ to be ‘the more fashionable and the more richly endowed . . . the greater part of the higher classes among the Muhammadan community belong to it’.14 The single setting closest to the heart of this study is the city of Lucknow, the former capital of the Shi‘a nawabs, and until today the South Asian city most intractably associated with Shi‘ism. Even after the destruction of the Nawabi state, Lucknow would remain by far the most important Shi‘a spiritual centre in north India. The city was home to a significant Shi‘a population at all social levels. Many of north India’s most senior Shi‘a scholars, known as mujtahids, originated in Lucknow or surrounding districts, and were largely resident in the city. There were also those Shi‘a who were left behind as part of the old Nawabi courtly nobility. Of these, around 1,700 or so belonged to a group known as wasiqadars. These, the pensioners and dependants formerly attached to

13

14

On the definition and significance of sayyids see esp. Barbara Metcalf, ed., Moral conduct and authority: the place of adab in South Asian Islam (London, 1984); Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 72–84. J.Charles William, The report on the Census of Oudh, Volume I (Lucknow, 1869), p. 76.

8


the Awadh court, continued in British India to draw tokenistic alms from the huge Nawabi religious endowments (waqfs) established to provide for them in perpetuity. The pensions they received were often very small, and increasingly so with the subdivision of this revenue among their descendants over successive generations. As such, they were often described by government as a ‘backward’ community, clinging to an outdated lifestyle in their ancestral homes in Lucknow. This ‘impoverished and declining class of persons’, crowding Lucknow’s old muhallas to the city’s west such as Kazimain, Daulatganj and Sa‘adatganj, became interpreted by the British administration as symptomatic of all that was wrong with the old regime, and rarely did colonial administrators miss an opportunity to castigate them for their assumed ‘backwardness’, their inability to modernize and their attachment to a life of leisure. Lucknow’s District Gazetteer evoked these pensioners and dependants as a people ‘mostly in debt, and lead[ing] a wretched hand-to-mouth existence, which also seems to have a demoralising effect on their fellow citizens’,15 while one Commissioner of Lucknow described them with disdain as ‘a feckless lot, who are degenerating’.16 They were stereotyped as shunning educational and commercial enterprise, and instead spending their time engaged in court cases and fratricidal feuds as they fought claims over inherited titles and access to rapidly sub-dividing pensions. The presence of the Shi‘a clergy, landed elite and old aristocracy in Lucknow, combined with a residual nostalgia and memory of the city’s historical significance, thus gave the city a particular significance as a convening point, publishing hub and religious and cultural centre for the Shi‘a more widely in early colonial India. Indeed, the fact that Lucknow itself dominates much of the narrative of this book is representative of its importance in north Indian Shi‘ism in general. In view of the great diversity of Shi‘a culture and leadership, both beyond and even within the region of north India under discussion, it would be entirely facile to suggest that the Lucknawi Shi‘a were representative of the Hindustani Shi‘a in totem and the guardians of the religion as a whole. Nevertheless, in many of the Shi‘aauthored tracts and speeches consulted for this volume, they certainly wrote and spoke as if they were.

15

16

H. R. Nevill, District Gazetteers of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, volume XXXVII: Lucknow (Allahabad, 1904), p. 65. R. Burn to His Honour, 27 September 1912, Political File No. 42/1913, UPSA; cf. Lovett to Chief Secretary, 31 January 1913, ibid.


m a p i . 1 . Major Muslim sites and institutions of colonial Lucknow.

fi g u r e i . 1 . Monuments of Nawabi Lucknow: the Asafi mosque and Asafud-daula imambara, photographed c. 1895 (MacPherson Collection, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge).

9

10


Leaving Lucknow aside, Shi‘ism was also prominent in many of the rural Muslim townships, or qasbas, in surrounding Awadhi districts such as Barabanki, Rae Bareili, Bahraich and Fyzabad. Many of these townships had been established by sayyid lineages from the Arab or Persian world who traced their arrival in India back as far as the tenth or twelfth centuries, but often became Shi‘a somewhat later. With the Nawabi court from the eighteenth century onwards enhancing its reach outside Lucknow itself through the cultivation of ties with the landed Muslim gentries of these towns, many sharif families accentuated their visible commitment to the Shi‘a religion, or even converted to Shi‘ism anew, for the advantages of land grants or courtly patronage, giving Shi‘ism a widespread and welldocumented influence in the Awadhi countryside. Some qasbas were associated with powerful Shi‘a magnates, of which the Rajas of Mahmudabad in Sitapur district, a family who converted to Shi‘ism in the 1820s–30s, were perhaps the most famous and influential Shi‘a landlords (and, later, political figures) of north India. Other qasbas became known as seats of learning, producing well-known religious authorities who drew their sustenance from land and professional ties to the court at Lucknow. As can be seen from the Appendix to this volume, a few key townships such as Kintor (Barabanki district) and Nasirabad (Rae Bareili district) became the seats of esteemed clerical families. Under the Nawabs of Awadh, these lineages of scholars had received preferential land settlements (nazrana), and had been heavily co-opted by the state as court advisers, educators and the testators of endowments. As we shall see, with these functions abolished in 1856, they were soon to have to seek new moulds of public relevance and legitimacy. Other significant Shi‘a populations existed in those parts of the United Provinces further afield from Lucknow, in districts which had been ceded to the British in 1775. Among these were the cities of Allahabad and Jaunpur, which had some of the largest and most influential Shi‘a populations in the province, often local landholding gentries resident in neighbourhoods on the peripheries of these towns or rural outposts in their hinterland, such as Kajgaon, Baragaon and Machhlishehr (outside Jaunpur), or Dariyabad and Phulpur (outside Allahabad).17 Another cluster of Shi‘a populations was consolidated within the divisions of Rohilkhand and the Doab to the west, a region that had been 17

E.g. John Hollister, The Shi‘a of India (London, 1953); Nevill, District Gazetteers, volume XXVIII: Jaunpur (Allahabad, 1908), pp. 84–5, 257; C. A. Bayly, The local roots of Indian politics: Allahabad 1880–1920 (Oxford, 1975), p. 41.


11

m a p i . 2 . Major Shi‘a centres of the colonial United Provinces, India.

under Nawabi control until 1801. The districts of Moradabad, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor and Saharanpur had sizeable, and highly influential, interlinked landowning Shi‘a biradaris. One prominent example were the sayyids of the town of Amroha in Moradabad district, a landed clique of Naqvi (descended from the tenth Imam) sayyids who traced their lineage to the town’s founder, Shah Wilayat Sharf-ud-din ‘Ali, a Sufi pir (saint) who came to Amroha from Wasit in Iraq in the thirteenth century.18 Another lineage of Shi‘a, Zaidi sayyids descended from the fifth Imam who also dated their ancestral entry into India to the thirteenth century, were scattered across small qasbas in Meerut, Bijnor and Bareilly districts. The most prominent branches of this family matured into two especially distinguished lineages: the sayyids of Barha, a community settled primarily at Jansath and Behra Sadat qasbas in Muzaffarnagar district, and the sayyids of Bilgram 18

For the history of Amroha and its important Shi‘a sayyid community see S. M. Azizuddin Husain, Medieval towns, a case study of Amroha and Jalali (Delhi, 1995); Justin Jones, ‘The local experiences of reformist Islam in a “Muslim” town in colonial India: the case of Amroha’, Modern Asian Studies 43, 4 (2009); Mahmud Ahmad Hashmi, Ta¯rı¯ kh-iAmro¯ha (Delhi, 1930); Jamal Ahmad Naqvi, Ta¯rı¯ kh-i-sa¯da¯t-i-Amro¯ha (Hyderabad, 1934).

12


near Hardoi.19 Also in the region were the influential Nawabs of Rampur, originally a clan of Sunni Rohilla Afghans who converted to Shi‘ism as late as the mid-nineteenth century.20 Having supported the British during 1857, their native state of Rampur retained its autonomy thereafter. It became a seat of exile for a number of disenfranchised scholars and officials of the former courts in Delhi and Lucknow, and the Nawabs of Rampur played a consistently prominent role in north Indian Muslim social and political affairs beyond the confines of their state throughout the colonial period. Most of these Shi‘a lineages across north India thus fall into a particular trajectory: early sayyid immigrants from the Perso-Arab world into India, who had historically switched their religious or sectarian allegiances according to the shifting preferences of Mughal, Rohilla, and ultimately Nawabi overlords, for advantages of land grants and government employment. Ultimately, receiving preferential land settlements and patronage from Lucknow during the Nawabi period, many of these various Shi‘a gentry families and lineages across north India over the course of the nineteenth century evolved into influential philanthropists, proclaiming and portraying themselves as the guardians of sharif Islamic scholarship and culture even after 1857. All flaunted their ancestral excellence and upheld a rich Indo-Persian Islamic educational and institutional life, in their own towns and beyond. By the colonial period Shi‘ism was thus certainly the religion of a small, though highly influential, section of the United Provinces’ Muslim elite. Holding on to many of the agrarian advantages they had secured under the Nawabs, the Shi‘a constituted a significant element among the ta‘luqdars, the reconstituted landowner class who increasingly made Lucknow their metropolitan centre in the 1860s–70s, and who dominated much of the city’s public and political life during these decades.21 Equally, the former ties of many sharif families to court service ensured that, after 1856, many were able to re-craft themselves as a professionalized Muslim middle class, and Shi‘as thus became generously represented among the deputy collectors, municipal administrators, registrars and ‘representative’ politicians who comprised the steel frame of the colonial administration in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, in parts of districts such as Lucknow, 19

20 21

H. R. Nevill, District Gazetteers, volume III: Muzaffarnagar (Allahabad, 1903), pp. 160–6; H. R. Nevill, District Gazetteers, volume XLI: Hardoi (Allahabad, 1904), p. 68; H. R. Nevill, District Gazetteers, volume XIV: Bijnor (Allahabad, 1908), pp. 101–3. Ahmad ‘Ali Khan Shauq, Tazkira-i-ka¯mila¯n-i-Ra¯mpu¯r (Delhi, 1929). Thomas Metcalf, The aftermath of revolt: India, 1857–1870 (Princeton, 1964), pp. 134–73.


13

Moradabad, Allahabad and Jaunpur, Shi‘as were perceived as comprising ‘family circles’ who held a virtual local stranglehold over land revenue and government careers, and who were widely perceived as able to direct government administration to their own ends.22 In the United Provinces, as for all regions of South Asia, the Shi‘a are often described, by themselves and others, as being a ‘Muslim minority’. Despite being one of the most significant footholds of Shi‘ism in India, most colonial Census records and District Gazetteers estimated the Shi‘a of most districts of even this region to comprise only around 3 per cent of the Muslim population, though with considerably higher proportions in those centres with which they were most associated (in Lucknow, for instance, the Shi‘a numbered perhaps a quarter or more of the city’s Muslims).23 However, such dry figures are scarcely meaningful as a starting-point for analysis. In the Awadh region, as in other parts of South Asia, the historical links between Shi‘ism and state power meant that Shi‘ism maintained a profound influence on sharif Muslim life and society in general. In the Nawabi period, Shi‘ism had existed as a particular Muslim subculture, a series of symbols, rituals and customs associated with the Muslim elite. It was linked to the project of governance, and inseparable from the cultural lives of many of those closest to the Nawabi court, regardless of their formal confession. The very different concept of the Shi‘a as a separate, clearly defined religious minority community makes sense only against the background of colonial knowledge and the ‘politics of enumeration’, by which the colonial administration attempted from the 1870s–1880s to definitively classify India’s population on the basis of homogeneous religious categories.24 This rejection of conceiving the Shi‘a in Nawabi Awadh as a clearly delineated minority brings us to one of the tropes through which Lucknow especially, and Awadh in general, have long been seen: their muchvenerated composite culture, embodying accommodation and interaction between all religious communities. Indeed, an ever-expanding interest and

22

23

24

E.g. Bayly, The local roots of Indian politics, pp. 24–5; and C. A. Bayly, Empire and information: intelligence gathering and social communication in India, 1780–1880 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 79–80. Census of India 1881, North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Part I: Report (Allahabad, 1882), p. 74. E.g. Nicholas Dirks, Castes of mind: colonialism and the making of modern India (Princeton, 2001), pp. 198–227.

14


literature on themes of Muslim cosmopolitanism in South Asia25 may well cite Nawabi Lucknow as one of its most vivid and archetypal examples. Much of the inspiration for this view lies with the influential Lucknawi essayist ‘Abd ul-Halim Sharar. His nostalgic ruminations on late Nawabi Lucknow, first serialized in an Urdu periodical in 1913 but later published as a single volume under the name of Guzashta Luckna’u ya¯ mashrı¯ q ke¯ tamadun ka¯ a¯khirı¯ numa¯na (lit. Old Lucknow: the last phase of an Oriental civilization), has become an endlessly influential statement on the city’s incorporative Islamicate high culture. Sharar presents a city in which the mixed Shi‘a and Sunni Muslim elite engaged culturally and socially, in which no-one knew who was a Sunni and who was a Shi‘a, and where the final king, Wajid ‘Ali Shah, could state in one of his poetic compositions: ‘Of my two eyes, one is Shia and the other is Sunni.’26 This idealized rendering of Lucknow might well be seen as part myth, representative of the efforts of later intellectuals to retrospectively reclaim and reify India’s imagined pre-colonial past. Indeed, our knowledge of Nawabi Lucknow, having filled out to include Shi‘a–Sunni riots during Muharram, the holding of acrimonious Shi‘a–Sunni clerical debates and the routine dispensation of preferential treatment to Shi‘a landowners and court employees, would all suggest that all within Lucknow’s legendary tehzib (culture) was not as harmonious as Sharar would have us believe. At the same time, evidence does suggest multiple aspects of Shi‘a–Sunni amity and accommodation among the Muslim ashraf. For this was a city where the secretaries and officials serving the later nawabs were often Sunnis – as were, remarkably, even those charged with the management of Muharram and guardianship of imambaras and Shi‘a waqfs (religious endowments). It was a city in which intermarriages between Shi‘a and Sunni sayyid lineages were far from unknown; and where Shi‘a and Sunni students took classes in certain aspects of philosophy and religious education together in the Sunni Firangi Mahal seminary. Numerous accounts describe how Shi‘a, Sunni and Hindu city residents participated together in Muharram, and how the greatest marsiya poets and khwanis (sermonizers), hired by the nobility to lead commemorations for Imam Husain,

25

26

E.g. Muzaffar Alam, ‘Competition and co-existence: Indo-Islamic interaction in medieval north India’, Itinerario 13, 1 (1989); and Muzaffar Alam, The languages of political Islam: India 1200–1800 (Chicago, 2004). Abdul Halim Sharar, Lucknow: the last phase of an oriental culture (London, 1975 [1913]), pp. 74–5.


15

were recruited from all religious communities.27 This lauded Islamic cosmopolitanism has informed much academic writing and popular cultural depiction of Lucknow and, significantly, has been widely portrayed as enduring comfortably into the colonial period.28 An entirely analogous perspective has consistently informed our understanding of the rural qasbas, the ancestral outposts of so many Shi‘a families. Studies have usually described these settlements in a similar language of cultural pluralism and a syncretistic local culture, an ‘ideal qasba society’ bound together by cross-communal Urdu literary and poetic traditions and often heavily tinged with Shi‘a emblems and symbols identified with their elites.29 The festival of Muharram, patronized by the landowning ashraf of these towns, elicited participation across communities of different religious confessions, with Shi‘a, Sunni and Hindu alike often taking part. In a similar vein, studies have shown how local dargahs (shrines to Muslim saints), often the focal points of these townships, incorporated certain Shi‘a elements under Nawabi influence. The shrine compounds of, for instance, Takiya Sharif at Kakori, Shah Wilayat at Amroha, or Dewa Sharif near Barabanki, were attended by many Shi‘as, and incorporated imambara halls for the commemoration of the Imams on ‘Ashura and other holy days. Equally, branches of the families of their saints were Shi‘a, as were some of the members who sat on the shrines’ trust committees.30 This study, it is worth mentioning here, paints a somewhat contrasting picture of these environments. It depicts the deterioration of this alleged assimilationist culture of Lucknow and the nineteenth-century Muslim 27

28

29

30

This perspective on Nawabi Lucknow’s Islamic cosmopolitanism is evident in a combination of primary and secondary accounts. See ibid., passim; Mrs Meer Hasan Ali, Observations on the Mussalmauns of India (Karachi, 1978 [1832]); Mir Babar ‘Ali Anis, The battle of Karbala: a marsiya of Anis, introd. David Matthews (Delhi, 2003), pp. 1–33; Choudhry Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore, 1961), pp. 5–8; Jamal Malik, Islamische gelehrtenkultur in Nordindien: entwicklungsgeschichte und tendenzen am beispiel von Lucknow (Leiden, 1997); Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, passim; Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Lucknow under the Shia Nawabs 1775–1856’, in Anna Libera Dallapiccola and Stephanie Zingel-Avé Lallemant, eds., Islam and Indian religions (Stuttgart, 1993). E.g. ‘The city’s history was characterised by . . . a continuation of the communal harmony of the Nawabi period’: Rama Amritmal Laws, ‘Lucknow: society and politics 1856–1885’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of South Wales, 1979), p. ii. E.g. Mushirul Hasan, From pluralism to separatism: qasbas in colonial Awadh (Delhi, 2004); C. A. Bayly, Rulers, townsmen and bazaars: north Indian society in the age of British expansion 1770–1870 (Delhi, 1983), pp. 189–93. Claudia Liebeskind, Piety on its knees: three Sufi traditions in South Asia in modern times (Delhi, 1998), pp. 187–9, 208–17, 252–4.

16


qasbas into a series of more rigid, compartmentalized equivalents, those which reflect a heightened consciousness of inner-Islamic sectarian difference taking root in colonial India.

shi‘ism as an indian religion Influenced by recent events in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and other countries, recent years have seen a burgeoning of scholarly interest in Shi‘a Islam. This said, advanced studies of the fate of the Shi‘a under colonial rule in India have lagged behind. The remit of Cole’s expert telling ends with British annexation, and while for the later period some sweeping historical overviews and sociological descriptions of the Imami Shi‘a exist,31 surprisingly little work on renewal and reform in Shi‘ism has been conducted to compare with the rich scholarship on the Sunni and ‘modernist’ reform movements that emerged in colonial India. The scriptural revitalization of the Hanafi Sunni dar-ul-‘ulum (seminary) at Deoband after 1867; the fusion between Islamic sciences and Western knowledge initiated in 1875 at Aligarh’s Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (Aligarh College); Ahmad Raza Khan’s ‘Barelwi’ Sufi devotional movement; the Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama’s attempted Islamic renaissance; and the lay Tablighi Jama‘at movement have all been the subjects of excellent studies,32 while the Shi‘a of the very same region and period that spawned these movements have not been researched with comparable rigour. Part of the reason for this may be the continued and intractable association, in scholarship and popular culture alike, of north India’s Shi‘a minority with its Nawabi incarnation. Just as colonial officials tended to describe Shi‘ism in the imagery of aristocracy and antiquity drawn from perceptions of the heyday of Nawabi rule, so later histories have somewhat presumptively evoked the persistent memories of Nawabi Lucknow as the foundation of a distinctive Shi‘a cultural identity in colonial India. One might recall an article by Sarojini Ganju, arguing that the Muslim elites of Lucknow continued to see and define themselves in terms of ‘the historical and religious background of the city’ and a ‘considerable influence from 31

32

E.g. Hollister, The Shi‘a of India; Nadeem Hasnain and Sheikh Abrar Husain, Shias and Shia Islam in India: a study in society and culture (Delhi, 1988); Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A socio-intellectual history of the Isna ‘Ashari Shi‘is in India (Delhi, 1986). E.g. Metcalf, Islamic revival in British India; Lelyveld, Aligarh’s first generation; Usha Sanyal, Devotional Islam and politics in British India: Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and his movement, 1870–1920 (Delhi, 1996); Yoginder Sikand, The origins and development of the Tablighi-Jama‘at: a cross-comparative study (Delhi, 2002).


17

the past’, echoing the themes of romanticism and continuity typical of much writing on Lucknow.33 Associated with pre-colonial religious structures and courtly nostalgia, Shi‘ism has rarely been framed in the terms of innovation and experimentation comparable with those that have helped us understand parallel Sunni and ‘modernist’ Islamic reformist movements during the same period. A second possible hindrance to studies of Shi‘ism in modern South Asia has been a continued emphasis upon the supposed geographical heartlands of Shi‘ism in the Middle East. Shi‘ism has often been interpreted within a mould that privileges discussion of Iran and the ‘atabat-i-‘aliyat, the shrine cities of southern Iraq, over other regions in which it exists. Much of the most authoritative recent scholarship on Shi‘ism, influenced by evergrowing commitments to globalized history, has emphasized modes of understanding according to a firmly transnational context, with Shi‘ism as a religion bound together by global networks of education and pilgrimage linked to particular shrine cities and educational centres, especially Najaf (or Qom after 1979). Chibli Mallat, for instance, has identified Najaf as the centre of a web of clerical and institutional connections labelled the ‘Shi‘i International’, implying the existence of a global Shi‘ism unconstrained by national borders.34 Indeed, this identification of the shrine cities of southern Iraq as the religious, educational and geographical nexus of the Shi‘a world applies acutely to much of the period covered by this book, namely, the late nineteenth century. According to conventional understandings, while religious learning sank in former Awadh following its annexation in 1856, Najaf and Karbala were established as the foremost global centres of Shi‘a knowledge and jurisprudence.35 The impression created is of a ‘centralization’ and ‘monopolization’ of Shi‘a leadership in the ‘atabat, a ‘concentric circles’ approach depicting religious authority emanating from a centre outwards to the farther corners of the world.36 33

34

35

36

Sarojini Ganju, ‘The Muslims of Lucknow, 1919–1939’, in Kenneth Ballhatchet and John Harrison, eds., The city in South Asia: pre-modern and modern (London, 1980), pp. 279, 294–5. Chibli Mallat, The renewal of Islamic law: Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr, Najaf and the Shi‘i International (Cambridge, 1993), passim. This new status of the shrine cities in global Shi‘ism is attributed to the immigration of ‘ulama from Iran, the relative autonomy of southern Iraq from the Ottoman administration in Baghdad, the growth of pilgrimage to the shrine cities, generous patronage and an expansion of popular Shi‘ism among the Mesopotamian tribes. Meir Litvak, Shi‘i scholars of nineteenth-century Iraq: the ‘ulama of Najaf and Karbala’ (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 16–18. Ibid., p. 45.

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Such a perspective, of course, risks relegating India to the periphery of the Shi‘a mental and religious universe. Indeed, it is significant that even the most authoritative work on Indian Shi‘ism has highlighted these links to a wider, transnational religious infrastructure. Cole’s work on the pre-colonial era emphasizes the idea of a cross-territorial ‘Indo-Persian milieu’, bound together by the Persian origins of the Nawabi dynasty, and the movements of scholars, pilgrims and corpse-traffic between India, Persia and the ‘atabat.37 Many other studies have implied a rather mono-directional approach by which, to quote one author, ‘ideas by and large travelled from the Shi‘a heartlands to India’ rather than vice versa.38 Hoping to challenge these several assumptions, the central purpose of this study is to present an account of religious transformation in Indian Shi‘ism for the colonial period. If, as I suggested above, Shi‘ism in Nawabi Awadh constituted a series of particular beliefs, cultures and practices associated with sections of a sharif Muslim elite, or existed as a particular legal tradition indelibly enmeshed with the practice of Nawabi governance, then, I argue, it was in the years after the fall of Awadh that we see something of an elemental redefinition of Shi‘ism itself in India. I suggest that it was primarily in the colonial period, and especially after the 1880s, that a cluster of doctrines, rituals and cultural identifiers were rationalized into a systematic Shi‘a religion. A series of recent studies have argued that the idea of free-standing ‘religions’ was very much a construct that emerged during the nineteenth century. Identifiable religious ‘systems’ were created as a result of the formalization and standardization of creeds and rites; the wider engagement with local, regional and transnational religious publics enabled by new technologies of travel, communication and public organization; and the influence of European ‘Orientalism’ in implanting senses of internal homogeneity within religious communities.39 Through these same processes, this study argues, Shi‘ism was gradually objectified, reconceived as a uniformized and universalistic religion which existed independently of the social, cultural and literary norms with which

37

38

39

Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, passim; Juan Cole, ‘Iranian culture and South Asia, 1500–1900’, in Nikki Keddie and Rudi Matthee, eds., Iran and the surrounding world: interactions in culture and cultural politics (Seattle, 2002). Francis Robinson, The ‘ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic culture in South Asia (Delhi, 2001), p. 26. C. A. Bayly, The birth of the modern world, 1780–1914: global connections and comparisons (Malden, 2004), pp. 325–65; Tomoko Masuzawa, The invention of world religions: or how European universalism was preserved in the language of pluralism (Chicago, 2005).


19

it had previously been associated. This, I argue, was a shift that took place in conjunction with, and was profoundly influenced by, concurrent renovations of religious, communal and national constructs of identity in colonial India. It was also one that encumbered Shi‘a individuals with new ethics of personal agency and moral duty, and which brought about ideas of religious community quite new to Indian Shi‘ism. This central theme has several significant strands. First, attempting to move away from the stereotypes of Nawabi antiquity and sharif respectability in which north Indian Shi‘ism has often been framed, this book emphasizes how Shi‘ism as a religion evolved distinctly contemporary manifestations. Far from being bound by pre-colonial norms and its aristocratic setting, it documents new forms of Shi‘ism that took shape through decidedly modern institutions such as religious schools, printingpresses and public forums. A fruitful recent literature on print capitalism and middle-class identity formation in colonial Lucknow has revealed to us a budding public sphere culture, one which necessarily had profound ramifications for the way in which religions were transmitted and received.40 Likewise, this study largely deserts the ‘establishment Shi‘ism’ of the old Nawabi nobility to focus upon this largely bourgeois public sphere of Shi‘a publishing and public organizations. So, we consider not simply how Shi‘ism acquired a new foundational apparatus and wider social base, but also how it was renovated in wholly original ways by the emergence of abundant, often conflicting, actors seeking to assert their custody over its traditions. In tandem with many studies of Shi‘a religious change, much attention in this study is given to the ‘ulama (formally trained religious scholars), and their efforts to claim sustained legitimacy and social leadership over the Shi‘a community. But just as important are those who have been termed ‘new religious intellectuals’,41 a motley array of lay or informal writers, preachers, debaters and secular patrons, who used new public forms of Shi‘ism to stake their own claims to worth and respectability at a time of massive social transition. With established ‘noble’ patronage drying up after 1857, it was often these latter intellectuals who had the greatest influence over the paths that religious change would take.

40

41

Ulrike Stark, An empire of books: the Naval Kishore Press and the diffusion of the printed word in colonial India (Delhi, 2007); Sanjay Joshi, Fractured modernity: making of a middle class in colonial India (Delhi, 2001). Joshi’s account of the formation of ‘middleclass religiosity’ has been useful for this study: see pp. 96–131. Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton, 1996), pp. 43–4.

20


Second, this study seeks to move away from the idea of an ‘Indo-Persian milieu’, and the assumption that modern religious developments in Shi‘ism can only be discussed with primary reference to globalization and the enhancement of ties to the Iraqi–Persian heartland. Suggesting that tropes of global Shi‘ism cannot fully describe how the Shi‘a of particular regions conceived their relationship with the lands they inhabited, this study charts the emergence of self-consciously ‘Hindustani’ or ‘Indian’ forms of Shi‘ism, territorially grounded in the Indian subcontinent, with their own religious leadership and inventories of practice. It may be posited, quite rightly, that the Western-inspired category of the territorial nation-state is an unsuitable starting-point for studying a religion with such heavy cultural and psychological ties to the ‘atabat and global networks of expertise and pilgrimage.42 However, this should not equate to a neglect of geographical identifiers. To illustrate this point, one only needs to look to the pamphlet from which this book’s cover image is taken. The caption to the portrait of Nasir Husain, one of the highest mujtahids of this period and a key character throughout this study, establishes him as ‘attentive to the Shi‘a of Hindustan’ (hindustani shi‘on ke taraf mutawajuh kiya).42A This idea of a ‘Hindustani’ Shi‘ism need not (and, as this study argues, does not) necessarily overlap with the contours of British India, but it does illustrate the understanding of a particular territorial grounding, one influenced by a series of Nawabi, colonial and nationalist imaginaries of an Indian domain. None of this is to suggest any kind of complete severance from the wider Shi‘a world. Rather than discounting transnational connections, this study seeks to emphasize how, for many among the functional clergy and lay community, Indian Shi‘ism carried within itself many of the chief mechanisms for its own regulation and renewal. Offering a framework for studies of Shi‘ism in other alleged ‘peripheral’ settings,43 it examines how, for many Shi‘a, their religion was conceived as distinctively Indian and in many ways functionally independent from, rather than subsidiary to, a Shi‘a International.

the dynamics of ‘sectarianism’ in colonial india Much of the literature produced on the embryonic Islamic reformist movements of colonial north India cited above has alluded to the atmosphere of 42

42A 43

Juan Cole, Sacred space and holy war: the politics, culture and history of Shi‘ite Islam (New York, 2002), p. 1. ‘Mazār-e-shahīd-e-sālis’, Sajjad Nasir ‘Abaqati Collection, Lucknow. Cf. Alessandro Monsutti, Silvia Naef and Farian Sabahi, eds., The other Shiites: from the Mediterranean to Central Asia (Berne, 2007).


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antagonism existing among them. It has narrated at length the episodes of polemical debate, fatwa controversy and periodic public conflicts which came to typify relations between ascendant schools such as the Shi‘a, Deobandi and Barelwi Sunnis, Ahl-i-Hadis, Ahmadis and others, portraying a perhaps inherent combativeness to the Islamic revival taking place in colonial India. Much earlier literature on these reformist movements assumed that they were primarily framed against a non-Muslim ‘Other’, be this an aggressive Hindu revivalism or the colonial state; and this assumption arguably sometimes offered the impression of degrees of contact and concomitance within a tangible ‘Islamic revival’ as various groups attempted to reinvigorate Islam and the community attached to it. A series of more recent studies have perhaps attributed greater significance to the existence of ‘sectarianism’ between these movements. They have argued that modern organs of Islamic renewal have been less concerned with widening Muslim consensus and identifying points of agreement, and more with ‘the production and reproduction of specific maslaki (sectarian) identities’. It was not a non-Muslim Other, but this ‘enemy within’, those alternative schools of thought within Islam, who were portrayed as the more significant challenge to true Muslims, on account of their claims to a rival legitimacy.44 The impression is thus given that what often appeared to outsiders as a relatively integrated ‘Islamic revival’ was, from the inside, experienced as a combative series of sectarian rivalries between opposing individuals and groups,45 all locked in perpetual competition and claiming for themselves singular authority over Islamic tradition. As such, alongside the examination of the transformation of Shi‘ism, the second major theme addressed by this study is the growth of Shi‘a– Sunni sectarianism. Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts were increasingly apparent in colonial India in the form of sporadic public violence, especially during the Muharram festival. They also occurred in the form of polemical writing, the ‘violence of the word’ and the mutual branding of respective groups as non-Muslims (qaziya-i-munh, takfir); and in various forms of public and social segregation and political differentiation. To put it another way,

44

45

Arshad Alam, ‘The enemy within: Madrasas and Muslim identity in north India’, Modern Asian Studies 42, 2/3 (2008), pp. 607, 624. For one example of how one particular local sectarian confrontation within Sunni Islam became ‘more conspicuous to the Hindu population of the city who, often unable to distinguish one Muslim section from another, interpret the process as being general’, see Mary Searle Chatterjee, ‘“Wahabi” sectarianism among Muslims of Banaras’, Contemporary South Asia 3, 2 (1994), p. 88.

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sectarianism developed as both a ‘practice’, manifested around particular acts and events, and a ‘discourse’, by which the identifying features separating Shi‘a and Sunni were increasingly emphasized in religious, cultural and political language and transactions.46 At least until the final chapter, the main focus of this book is on Shi‘ism rather than Islamic sectarianism; but so important is the latter to understanding the construction of the former that it is a theme pervading this work, and is elaborated upon throughout. The use of the term ‘sectarianism’ here takes its lead from a variety of studies which have used it to denote a similarly diverse array of conflicts between Islamic communities in contexts of somewhat tense Islamic pluralism, such as contemporary Iraq or Pakistan. Certainly, this term does not come without its problems. On one hand, the term is so diffuse that it risks forging links between a variety of unconnected or localized disputes by bringing them under the same abstract meta-narrative. On the other hand, as this book demonstrates, the colonial period represents what we might describe as the foundational period of sectarianism in South Asia, for it was during these years that sectarianism came to exist in its contemporary form as an abstract phenomenon. This study discusses how a variety of ‘inner-Islamic’47 conflicts, sparked by a variety of issues and in different social and geographical locations, often appeared to coincide and mutually inform each other, being bound in developing relationships of interaction and mutual effectuation. ‘Sectarianism’ (or its equivalent tafriq in Urdu) thereby came to be perceived, in both the colonial mind and indeed the Muslim public sphere, as something transcending the individual quarrels and episodes within which it was manifested. This said, the parameters according to which inner-Islamic sectarianism in colonial South Asia has been analyzed have often been somewhat limited. Treatments of the topic have predominantly portrayed it as a series of sporadic religious quarrels, such as debates over theological minutiae, or conflicts over practices such as the rites of Muharram.48 Certainly sectarianism has not been assessed with the same levels of 46

47

48

Cf. Ussama Makdisi, The culture of sectarianism: community, history and violence in nineteenth-century Ottoman Lebanon (London, 2000), p. 6. The phrase is used by Rainer Brunner, Islamic ecumenism in the 20th century: the Azhar and Shiism between rapprochement and restraint (Leiden, 2004), e.g. pp. 43–4. Most studies of Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts in pre-independence South Asia have focused predominantly on Muharram violence. See e.g. Imtiaz Ahmad, ‘The Shia–Sunni dispute in Lucknow, 1905–1980’, in Milton Israel and Narendra Wagle, eds., Islamic society and culture: essays in honour of Professor Aziz Ahmad (Delhi, 1983); Mushirul Hasan, ‘Traditional rites and contested meanings: sectarian strife in colonial Lucknow’, in Violette Graff, ed., Lucknow: memories of a city (Delhi, 1997).


23

attention or sophistication as has the grandiose notion of South Asian ‘communalism’, usually taken to refer primarily to Hindu–Muslim conflict, which has been examined in a vast canon of literature spanning local, provincial and national levels, as a religious and a secular phenomenon, and indeed as an alternative to a secular-leaning Indian ‘nationalism’ itself.49 In view of the ongoing emphasis on the Hindu–Muslim divide as the most frequently observed and historically consequential aspect of the communalization of colonial India, inner-Islamic conflict has often been treated as a secondary or subsidiary component of this process, indistinguishable from other communal conflicts in its manners and methods.50 It is, however, a key argument of this study that inner-Islamic sectarianism is a phenomenon distinct from Hindu–Muslim communalism in its manifestations and the functions it performs, and it hence needs to be interrogated on its own terms. In contrast to colonial India, the subject of Shi‘a–Sunni sectarianism in South Asia has gained a far greater level of attention when looking forwards, to more contemporary Pakistan. I return to this subject in the conclusion, but as has been well documented in academic and media coverage, Islamic sectarian conflict across categories of Shi‘a, Sunni, Ahmadi, Wahhabi and other Islamic subdivisions has been in the ascendant since the late 1970s, to the point where it has become a major challenge to Pakistan’s political and civil stability.51 However, while these modern conflicts differ in important ways from their precursors, it is worth remembering that inner-Islamic sectarianism in South Asia found its first matured forms not in late twentieth-century Pakistan, but in late nineteenth-century north India. In many ways it was the period and geographical theatre covered in this study, namely the colonial United Provinces, that provided modern sectarianism with its familiar vocabulary of maslaks (sects or 49

50

51

Most significantly, Gyanendra Pandey, The construction of communalism in colonial north India (Delhi, 1990). The term of ‘sectarianism’ has been used in a comparable way in scholarship on the Middle East, in which it signifies a schismatic ideology antithetical to state-led national coexistence: ta’ifiyya as opposed to ta‘ayush. Makdisi, The culture of sectarianism, pp. 166–7. According to Sandria Freitag, sectarianism ‘tap[ped] the range of organisations and ideological appeals that had been created for the political expression of Hindu–Muslim competition’: Collective action and community: public arenas and the emergence of communalism in colonial north India (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 249–50. Comparable are the words of Imtiaz Ahmad: ‘a consideration of the conflict between Shias and Sunnis . . . will show that the structural similarities between it and the conflict between Hindus and Muslims are . . . remarkable’: ‘Perspectives on the communal problem’, in Asghar Ali Engineer, ed., Communal riots in post-independence India (Hyderabad, 1984), pp. 150–1. See below, pp. 235–242.

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schools), and in which many of the major themes of sectarian polemic (munazara) were formulated. It was here that an organizational apparatus of sectarian organizations, religious colleges and political groups was first developed; and in which the most significant pre-independence sectarian violence occurred. Thus, it is hoped that this study will provide some useful reflections for understanding the forms of inner-Islamic conflict at work in South Asia today. Despite its growth in colonial India, sectarianism was a phenomenon widely misunderstood, and very frequently dismissed, as an outdated irrelevance. Colonial observers tended to describe it as something manufactured by fanatical ‘divines’ or ‘priests’, and a means by which they controlled the ignorant masses; concerns were raised at the Muslim ‘rank and file obeying their directions’ and ‘rendering unquestioning obedience’.52 Such descriptions, of course, equated sectarianism with its twin tropes of bigotry, violence and extremism which characterized much colonial language about Islam after the perceived Muslim role in the 1857 Rebellion. But just as significant is the fact that many Muslims of the period interpreted sectarianism in a similar way. As is well known, the period of around 1870 to 1940, into which this book largely falls, was in global terms significant for the development of ‘modernist’ movements within Islam, during which a number of attempts were made by intellectuals and thinkers to construct forms of their religion better adapted to the modern world.53 Modernist Islam is primarily associated with such tasks as the liberalization of Islamic knowledge, educational awakening and projects of social and political empowerment. However, one of the features common to many of these movements was their desire to shake off the old legacy of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict and build bridges in pursuit of inner-Islamic unity. Indeed, following this take on Islamic modernism, the early twentieth century has been recently, and importantly, described as a moment of rapprochement or ecumenism (taqrib), an inter-confessional movement which attempted to develop new avenues for Shi‘a–Sunni dialogue. This movement was most clearly embodied by the intellectual engagement between Sunni scholars, mostly those clustered around the Al-Azhar school in Cairo, and a number Shi‘a ‘ulama of Iraq and Lebanon after

52

53

‘Copy of Mr. Radice’s remarks’, Saunders to Hose, 12 February 1909, GAD No. 366/ 1911, UPSA. Charles Kurzman, ed., Modernist Islam, 1840–1940: a sourcebook (New York, 2002); Albert Hourani, Arabic thought in the liberal age, 1798–1939 (London, 1962), pp.vi–vii.


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the First World War.54 Part of their agenda for facilitating Shi‘a–Sunni reconciliation was the retrenchment of Islam into a core set of perceived common principles (usul-i-din), such as belief in the unity of God (tauhid), the authenticity of His message (risala) and the existence of the hereafter (ma‘ad). This allowed for the particularization of historical and legal differences between Shi‘a and Sunni Islam as distinctions of religious thought (mazhab), equivalent only to the differences between Sunni legal schools, which were framed in this same terminology of mazhabi distinction, rather than a basis for total separation of Sunni and Shi‘a denominations.55 To return to our immediate focus of colonial India, most ‘modernist’ Muslim intellectuals, the leading grandees who have constituted the focus of so much academic literature on South Asian Islam for this period, were vocally critical of the raising of Shi‘a–Sunni quarrels. They perceived sectarianism as complicit in Islam’s modern decline, and as antithetical to Muslim progress. So, for instance, Altaf Husain Hali in his influential poem Musaddas-i-mad-va-jazr-i-Isla¯m (‘The ebb and flow of Islam’, 1879) portrayed sectarianism as a form of ‘bigotry’ (ta‘asub), and one of the many factors responsible for the moral and material degradation of Indian Muslim society in the late nineteenth century: When there is no love between Sunni and Shi‘a, no sense of community between Numani and Shaf‘i,/no abatement of hatred between Wahhabi and Sufi . . . There is such civil war being waged by the People of the Qibla that the whole world laughs at God’s religion/. . . Bigotry came to this clear spring and befouled it with the thorns and weeds of ill-feeling/. . . Now it is impossible to find ten Muslims who will be happy to see one another.56

Twentieth-century modernists had similarly dismissive attitudes towards the sectarian argumentation they perceived to exist in Indian Muslim society. The poet Muhammad Iqbal spoke of sectarianism as an ‘idol’ that must be ‘smashed forever’, a threat to the idea of ‘unity’ (tauhid) 54 55

56

Brunner, Islamic ecumenism, passim. Ibid., pp. 109–10. These efforts had some successes to their name. Steps were put in place to begin admitting Shi‘a students into al-Azhar for the first time. Moreover, a number of Shi‘a scholars began to selectively appropriate the ideas of al-Azhar’s most famous figurehead, Muhammad ‘Abduh, appropriating his ideas on educational reform and even calling for a ‘Shi‘ite Muhammad ‘Abduh’ to modernize the Shi‘a community along similar lines. Sabrina Mervin, ‘The clerics of Jabal ‘Amil and the reform of religious teaching in Najaf since the beginning of the twentieth century’, in Rainer Brunner and Werner Ende, eds., The Twelver Shia in modern times (Leiden, 2001), p. 82. Altaf Husain Hali, Hali’s Musaddas: the flow and ebb of Islam, introd. Christopher Shackle and Javed Majeed (Delhi, 1997 [1879]), pp. 176–7.

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that for him described the intertwined concepts of God’s indivisibility, the bonds between Muslims and the circumambulation of the Ka‘aba. ‘I condemn this accursed religious and social sectarianism’, he wrote: ‘there are no Wahhabis, Shi‘as, Mirza’is or Sunnis. Fight not for interpretations of the truth, when the truth itself is in danger.’57 The third Aga Khan, Sultan Muhammad Shah, ever one of the most devoted advocates of Muslim modernism and himself the head of the Isma‘ili Muslim minority, consistently described sectarianism as ‘one of the misfortunes of Islam’ and a hindrance to educational, social and spiritual advancement.58 The Bengali reformist Muhammad Akram Khan spoke of ‘sectarian mentality’ as ‘wasting the brilliance’ of Islamic scholars and diverting their attentions from useful intellectual pursuits.59 In the same vein, most of the archetypal Islamic religio-political reformists of the colonial period were, like some of their contemporaries in the Middle East, ‘ecumenical’ in the sense that they sought to create Muslim modernities which deliberately transcended sectarian difference. Sayyid Ahmad Khan, the founder of the endlessly influential Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College established in Aligarh in 1875, spoke of his college as part of a moral ‘vision’, in which ‘Shi‘a and Sunni boys shall not discuss their religious differences’.60 Most of the major Muslim political organizations of the era, among them the All India Muslim League (founded 1906), blankly refused to engage or countenance Shi‘a–Sunni questions. Even Abul Ala Mawdudi, whose movement, the Jama‘at-i-Islami (founded 1941), would later become seen as rigidly Sunni, could be interpreted as initially fostering a new brand of Islamist political modernism which dismissed sectarian argumentation as petty wrangling. Indeed, there are even indications that some of India’s most influential Shi‘a, among them the young Raja Muhammad Amir Ahmad Khan of Mahmudabad, ‘in 1941–5 . . . came under [the Jama‘at-i-Islami’s] influence’ as a vehicle for cross-confessional Muslim empowerment.61 57

58

59

60

61

Muhammad Iqbal, ‘Islam as a moral and political ideal’ (1909), repr. in Kurzman, ed., Modernist Islam, p. 313; cf. Javed Majeed, Muhammad Iqbal: Islam, aesthetics and postcolonialism (Delhi, 2009), p. 3. K. K. Aziz, Aga Khan III: selected speeches and writings of Sultan Muhammad Shah (London, 1998), vol. I, pp. 204–15. Muhammad Akram Khan, ‘Back to the Qur’an’ [1929], repr. in Kurzman, ed., Modernist Islam, pp. 334–5. Sayyid Ahmad Khan, ‘A vision of the college’, repr. in Z. A. Nizami and Mazhar Ali Khan, eds., Reflections on Sir Syed and the Aligarh Movement (Karachi, 1981), pp. 63–4. Raja of Mahmudabad, ‘Some memories’, in Mushirul Hasan, ed., India’s partition: process, strategy and mobilisation (Delhi, 1993), p. 425.


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If colonial onlookers and Muslim modernist intellectuals alike thus viewed Muslim sectarianism with scorn and not a little bemusement, then academic treatments of the subject have often found an understanding of inner-Islamic conflicts equally elusive. In much recent literature attempting to ‘explain’ instances of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict, several informing assumptions or trajectories of analysis seem omnipresent. First, there is the somewhat essentialist historio-theological argument that modern manifestations of conflict are derivative of an ‘age-old scourge’ of religious, historical and legal differences between denominations, dating to the formative Islamic centuries but appearing in new forms.62 Locating the roots of Shi‘a–Sunni difference in the elemental controversies of Islamic history, modern sectarianism is attributed to the endurance of memories of conflict over the Prophet’s succession (indeed, it can be difficult to find commentaries on Shi‘a–Sunni conflict which do not start with an outline of the wars and splittage of early Islamic centuries), and the intensification of these memories accompanying modern processes of Islamic renewal. Second, and often simultaneously with the first, sectarianism has often been understood according to the framework of a historic majority–minority axis. With the Shi‘a comprising a minority, both within global Islam and in many regional settings, the argument runs that Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts are expressions of an enduring pattern of Sunni numerical supremacy and consequent cultural and political hegemony. By extension, the argument runs, Shi‘ism has historically developed subversive (or ‘sectarian’) tendencies on account of its habitual estrangement from the state and subjugation to Sunni dominance.63 This study attempts to move away from the idea of sectarianism as a periodically emergent conflagration between two fixed and clearly delineated 62

63

Vali Nasr, The Shia revival: how conflicts within Islam will shape the future (New York, 2006), pp. 22, 82. ‘The names of ‘Ali, Mu‘awiya and Yazid’, one author writes, ‘are as contemporary as this morning’s newspaper’: Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (New York, 1993), p. 159. E.g. Fuad Khuri, Imams and emirs: state, religion and sects in Islam (London, 1990), esp. pp. 17–22, 124–30. Khuri’s work connects the theological and legal tenets of both Shi‘a and Sunni Islam to their historic relations to the state. The doctrines of Sunni Islam, for instance, include standardized methods of Qur’anic and legal interpretation, accommodative legal discourses, and the sanction of the temporal order through belief in the Caliphate, all of which reflect the historical majority status of Sunni Islam and its command over political structures. Shi‘ism, by contrast, is marked by ideas of closure from the political order, functional legal independence embodied by its clergy, and the element of ‘rebelliousness’ carried by the idolization of martyrs and flamboyant ritualism, all of which reflect the historical minority status and ‘sectarian’ character of Shi‘ism. Similar ideas infuse a great number of introductory works on both Shi‘a and Sunni Islam. Cf. David Cook, Martyrdom in Islam (New York, 2007), pp. 52–62.

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religious communities. Rather, following some other recent studies, it interprets sectarianism as a delicate, discursive process, a fraught course of decision making with specifically contemporary reference points.64 Escaping ideas of historic and resurgent Islamic traditionalisms, the first major implication of this study for our understanding of sectarianism is its interpretation of the inherently modern character of the forms described. This book argues that sectarianism represented, to use an application of the term offered in a different context, one ‘vision of modernity’ in which many Muslims participated.65 Sectarianism is primarily explained as a phenomenon in some senses newly created in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a wholly novel expression of alternative doctrinal groups as entirely separate communities and as markers of modern public identity. Bound up with new language, ideas of religious knowledge and authority, constructs of community, changing leadership and the evolving public sphere of colonial north India, both the roots and manifestations of Shi‘a–Sunni sectarianism as described here are firmly located in the fourteenth Islamic century, rather than the first. It emerged as an important component of discourses of Islamic modernization, rather than an antithesis to them. As such, this study hopes to shed some light on why sectarianism has become such an integral component of discourses of Islamic reform in rapidly modernizing Islamic societies. Second, this assessment of sectarianism in a particular context allows us to look beyond the disposition of meta-narratives to convey the simplicity and unipolarity of sectarianism. Trying to escape the tendency of many commentaries to imply the fixed, predetermined and internally unified natures of respective Shi‘a and Sunni communities, this work demonstrates that sectarianism cannot be understood solely in terms of the simplistic clarification of boundaries between Islamic traditions, as has often been implied, but needs to be interpreted in terms of internal fluctuation and contestation within them. Looking solely at the Shi‘a, I argue that sectarianism contained important internal as well as external dynamics, carrying particular functional roles within Shi‘ism itself. In other words, sectarianism is not to be understood as the consequence of monolithic campaigns of religious renewal, but as an agent of religious transformation, the chosen means by which delicate internal shifts of doctrine, authority and leadership were debated, negotiated and communicated among the Shi‘a (and, indeed, within various Sunni schools) in colonial north India. 64

65

Cf. Magnus Marsden, Living Islam: Muslim religious experience in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 193–238. Makdisi, The culture of sectarianism, pp. 1–14, 174.


29

Developing this idea further, this book assesses the interface between Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts and the dynamics of inner-Shi‘a competition. Even the most cursory acquaintance with the internal workings of north India’s (or any other) ostensible Shi‘a community reveals that the idea of internal cohesion is a facile one, and this book documents at length the internal wranglings within Indian Shi‘ism, and the fragile foundations on which its structures of religious and communal leadership were built. As such, I suggest that the performance of Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts became a forum by which rival claimants to authority within Shi‘ism itself were able to assert their own legitimacy against that of their counterparts. Interpreting sectarianism not as the consequence of monolithic Shi‘a and Sunni revivalisms, but as a means by which changes within these two traditions were negotiated, it is hoped that this study will contribute to assessments of inner-Islamic conflicts in other regions and times, and will throw light on an experience of increasing importance in the contemporary world.

sources and structure This work is based primarily on the kinds of vernacular writings, authored by Shi‘a clerics, intellectuals and historians, through which a new Shi‘ism took shape during this half-century. Most prominent among these are clerical tracts, compendia of edicts and instructions, the proceedings of newly established Shi‘a organizations and institutions, and hagiographical tracts cataloguing the achievements of contemporaneous ‘ulama. This body of material locates the study firmly in the Shi‘a ‘ecumene’ of public debate and organization developing in Lucknow and other towns from the 1880s onwards.66 These have been supplemented by Urdu and English newspapers, government archival sources and, where appropriate, later vernacular literature such as Shi‘a histories and biographical dictionaries. Importantly, the bulk of the used sources were written in Urdu. This choice of language may seemingly require some justification, in view of the Indo-Persian roots of Nawabi high culture, the status of Arabic and Persian as the functional languages of religious scholarship and education, and the continued status of Lucknow as one of India’s foremost centres of Arabic and Persian printing. Certainly, the reliance on Urdu defines in some senses what this book is not: it is not a history of the transnational networks of education and pilgrimage in Shi‘ism; nor is it a study of the curricular 66

On this ‘ecumene’ in colonial India, and Muslim participation within it, see Bayly, Empire and information, pp. 180–211; Dietrich Reetz, Islam in the public sphere: religious groups in India, 1900–1947 (Delhi, 2006).

30


content of religious learning, high religious literature or the formal architecture of the clerical hierarchy, all of which are projects that would demand a multilingual approach. However, the choice of sources reflects the fact that it was Urdu, rather than Arabic or Persian, that became the most significant agent of religious change during this period. The official language of education and governmental administration from the 1830s, and the main choice of the evolving Muslim public sphere from around the 1860s–70s, Urdu was quickly established as the major language of thought and intellectual transmission for the Muslim ashraf in colonial India. It was the dominant verbal and written lingua franca of the Muslim elite and middle class, and the major medium of many of the era’s printing-presses; equally, during the heavily contested Urdu–Hindi language politics of the late nineteenth century, Urdu became a signifier of a distinctively Muslim community identity itself.67 As such, whatever the Indo-Persian roots of Shi‘ism, it was through Urdu that most of the Muslim population would have experienced and engaged their religion, and through which reformed versions of being Shi‘a would have blended most readily into their historical setting. The other reason why Urdu writing offers a particularly interesting basis for discussing religious change is that the language has long been identified as the vehicle of new and pioneering literary genres. Perhaps on account of its association with a sharif Muslim elite and its proximity to government education and employment, Urdu had a particular association with forms of instructive writing. As work on pioneers of Urdu literature from the 1870s onwards has widely shown, Urdu was in particular attached to the development of such literary forms as the treatise and periodical, and to new brands of moralizing verse, parable tales and advice literature, all of which gave the language a prescriptive association quite distinct from the more quixotic, courtly intimations of Persian.68 Significantly, all of these genres were taken up in their own right by Shi‘a authors. Many of the sources consulted for this study, then, from clerical tracts to organizational proceedings, contain within them this insinuation of a transition towards a more socially engaged, instrumental form of religion, one demanding the correction of its readers’ beliefs and behaviours, and a connected turn towards a greater social activism and proper public comportment. Exploring the linkages between 67

68

For a useful summary of such ideas see Christopher Shackle, ‘Urdu, nation and community’, in Shobna Nijhawan, ed., Nationalism in the vernacular: Hindi, Urdu and the literature of Indian freedom (Delhi, 2010). E.g. Nazir Ahmad, The repentance of Nussooh (Taubat al-Nasuh): the tale of a Muslim family a hundred years ago, introd. by Frances Pritchett (Delhi, 2004 [1874]), pp. 125–40; Hali, Hali’s Musaddas, passim.


31

religious and linguistic change, then, this work joins a series of studies which have assessed the ‘vernacularization’ of religious cultures in north India. Transitions in linguistic communication, as many have argued, did not simply facilitate wider exposure to established religious knowledge, but initiated an ‘undeclared revolution’ whereby the application of new languages itself inaugurated deep and structural change within religious traditions, allowing the absorption of elementally different idioms and reference points from earlier counterparts.69 The first two chapters of this book examine various facets of religious transformation within Shi‘ism. Chapter 1 documents manifold forms of clerical expansion, among them the evolving role of the senior ‘ulama, the expansion of religious education, publishing and proselytizing activity, and the growth of a culture of Shi‘a–Sunni polemic and disputation. Chapter 2 discusses Shi‘a popular practice and experience, focusing especially upon new forms of religious oratory, changing religious landscapes and innovations in Shi‘a ritual and performativity, as linked especially to the annual festival of Muharram. The three ensuing chapters focus upon the development of communitarian identities in Shi‘ism and explore the relationship of this process with wider processes of identity formation in South Asian Islam. Chapter 3 explores the organizational apparatus through which new definitions of community were actualized, assessing a new ‘sectarian’ trajectory of community foundation through a new network of public associations, ideas of charity and collective responsibility, and a vernacularized language of community. Assessing the implications of the increasing sense of separateness among the Shi‘a, Chapter 4 discusses the ways in which the Indian Shi‘a were politicized, with reference to a series of contemporary ‘Muslim’ concerns such as the modernist Aligarh Movement, anti-colonial jihadism and pan-Islam. Moving from the political quarrels of the mid-colonial period to the overt sectarian violence of the 1930s, Chapter 5 examines Shi‘a–Sunni conflict as embodied in the madh-i-sahaba and tabarra agitations of that decade, in particular examining the links between these nominally sectarian conflicts and changing structures of authority and influence within Shi‘ism itself. The conclusion evaluates some of the major implications of this study and also assesses their relevance for understanding present-day concerns – in particular, contemporary sectarian conflicts in India and Pakistan. 69

Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘Writing, speaking, being: language and the historical formation of identities in India’, in Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam and Dietmar Rothermund, eds., Nationalstaat und Sprachkonflikt in Sud- und Sudostasien (Stuttgart, 1992).

1 Madrasas, mujtahids and missionaries Shi‘a clerical expansion in colonial India

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were, paralleling simultaneous developments within other Muslim communities, a period of major transformation within Indian Shi‘ism. This chapter, the first of two to interrogate the aforementioned ‘fresh religious life’ within Shi‘ism, explores several aspects of Shi‘a clerical and lay religious expansion. Early sections examine the bureaucratization of religious learning through the expansion of madrasa education, and the reworking of the public role of the senior ‘ulama. Later sections turn away from this focus on the ‘formal’ clerical milieu towards the powerful, and often more diffuse, efforts at lay propagation in the early twentieth century, looking at engagement with printing technology and the language of religious proselytization (tabligh). Throughout, the chapter stresses how Shi‘ism, previously identified with an amorphous blend of sayyid cultural norms, doctrinal orientations and religious observances, was gradually articulated as something approximating a reconceptualized religion, one of objective relevance to a broad constituency of followers (mominin) as well as its sayyid spokesmen and public leaders. Later sections turn towards another facet of this expansion of religious knowledge, namely the growth of inner-Islamic religious polemic (munazara). The chapter thus interrogates the question of why the processes of religious proselytization (tabligh) and disputation (ikhtilafat) within Shi‘ism were apparently so functionally intertwined as to be often indistinguishable.

the formation of shi‘a madrasa s in colonial india As has been described in much scholarship, the late nineteenth century witnessed the foundation of numerous madrasas across the United 32

Shi‘a clerical expansion

33

Provinces, whether the dar-ul-‘ulum at Deoband (1867) and the various seminaries created across north India in its image; the Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama (established as a madrasa in 1898) as well as equivalent ‘Barelwi’ schools such as Misbah ul-‘Ulum (Mubarakpur, 1898) and Manzar-i-Islam (Bareilly, 1904). Some literature on these Sunni religious schools in India has interpreted them as linking India into transnational patterns of Arabic learning, and facilitating communication between Indian ‘ulama and global scholarly networks.1 Other studies have emphasized instead the impact of these madrasas within the Indian subcontinent itself, describing their creation of an indigenous clergy and their contributions to processes of Islamic renewal (tajdid) within a South Asian framework.2 Less frequently remarked upon is the foundation of a striking number of Shi‘a madrasas, especially in Lucknow, from 1889 onwards. These schools show a similarly multi-faceted impact, at once connecting the Indian Shi‘a with scholarly traditions observed in the wider world, but also creating a much enlarged body of Indian ‘ulama and the educational infrastructure for sustaining it on Indian soil. Emerging Shi‘a seminaries bore comparison with their Sunni counterparts in important ways: the formation of a recognized and ordered nisab (curriculum), the dispensation of agreed and distinguished qualifications of learning, and the dissemination of education across the ties of kinship and locality. The construction of specifically Shi‘a religious schools in India was, in fact, a fairly late phenomenon, and is best contextualized with a brief look back into the Nawabi period. For several generations from the 1780s, the majority of the most influential Indian Shi‘a ‘ulama had gained their education from mujtahids in Iraq rather than India. Indeed, the provision of generous endowed funding by the Nawabs to sustain the travel and education of their best clerical students, among them the pioneering mujtahid Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi (1753–1820), reflected the vigorous stature of religious scholarship in nineteenth-century Najaf.3 It was as late as 1843 that Nawab Amjad ‘Ali Shah founded the Madrasa-i-Shahi, Lucknow’s first exclusively Shi‘a seminary of importance. Set up within the mausoleum of Nawab Sa‘adat ‘Ali Khan, it was established in order to cultivate a body of senior ‘ulama with expertise in Shi‘a jurisprudence to advise the Nawabi court. With its eye on fulfilling Amjad ‘Ali Shah’s purpose of 1

2 3

Jan-Peter Hartung,‘The Nadwat al-‘Ulama’: chief patron of madrasa education in India and a turntable to the Arab world’, in Jan-Peter Hartung and Helmut Reifeld, eds., Islamic education, diversity and national identity: Dini madaris in India post 9/11 (Delhi, 2006). Metcalf, Islamic revival in British India, passim. Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, passim.

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furthering state administration in accordance with the Shi‘a religion, the madrasa promulgated a curriculum incorporating works of jurisprudence and theology born of the Usuli Shi‘a revivals in Safavid Persia, Ottoman Najaf and Nawabi India.4 However, when this school was closed following the British occupation of Lucknow in 1856, Lucknow was robbed of its only prescribed institution of formalized Shi‘a learning. For most of the early colonial period few Shi‘a religious schools existed in north India, and few of note were established.5 When attempts were made, as they were by the mujtahids Abul Hasan and Ghulam Hasnain Kintori to set up the Madrasa Imaniya in the early 1870s, they tended to collapse on the back of bungled organization, disagreement among the ‘ulama, and difficulties in eliciting pledges of financial help.6 With no authoritative madrasas existing in India after 1856, Iraq very often remained the focus of Shi‘a religious education. Indeed, many Indian students took advantage of the so-called ‘Indian fund’, part of an endowment known as the Awadh Bequest, which was tied to the Husainabad Trust.7 Running since the 1850s, the Indian fund had been specifically set up to fund pilgrimage and educational ventures in Iraq for Indian residents, and significantly buttressed the profile of Najaf as the educational hub of global Shi‘ism in the second half of the nineteenth century. As such, with some notable exceptions, many of those who were to emerge as senior ‘ulama in the late nineteenth century had received their ijazat in Iraq rather than India.8 For those who remained in India, religious education was for the most part received not in formal schools but on the level of informal instruction and personal tuition.9 Based upon personal networks and the weight of the familial name, religious education in India therefore tended to entrench kinship ties and personal acquaintance as the conduits for the transmission of knowledge. 4

5

6 7 8

9

Ibid., pp. 204–9; Sibte Muhammad Naqvi, Amja¯d ‘Ali Sha¯h: Awadh ka¯ musta¯shrı¯ h cho¯ta¯ ba¯dsha¯h (Karachi, 1976), pp. 214–37. The most significant example of a Shi‘a madrasa running early in the colonial period was the Madrasa Mansabiya, founded by a number of Shi‘a sayyids in the city of Meerut in 1878. Husain, Sawa¯nih-i-‘umrı¯ , pp. 178–9. Ibid., pp. 176–88. The administration of the Awadh Bequest is discussed in Chapter 3. Prominent examples of mujtahids who acquired their ijazat in Iraq in the last four decades of the nineteenth century include Aqa Hasan, Muhammad Baqir Rizvi and Sayyid Ahmad Hindi. See Appendix. Those who received ijazat within India itself, from Indian mujtahids, include Nasir Husain and Najm ul-Hasan. Ibid.


35

Quite in contrast with earlier failures, later attempts at the formation of a Shi‘a madrasa in India achieved greater success. In 1889 it was again Abul Hasan, this time with Mirza Muhammad ‘Abbas, the former chief mufti of Awadh, who founded Madrasa Nazimiya in Lucknow. The mujtahid Najm ul-Hasan, junior in age to both and a pupil and sonin-law of the latter, was declared the school’s first principal (sarparast) on account of his ‘scholarly and organizational talents’, and it was under him that the madrasa gained a building in the heart of Lucknow’s chauk.10 Conscious that Iraq, at this time, represented ‘the centre of Shi‘a usul-vafiqh (knowledge and jurisprudence)’, the distinguishing feature of the school was its building of collaborative ties with the mujtahids of Najaf. Aqa Sayyid Kazim Tabataba’i, the current representative of a dynasty of scholars considered among the Shi‘a world’s foremost in the discipline of fiqh, was enlisted as an examiner for Madrasa Nazimiya. Legal questions were sent from Najaf to Lucknow, and the answers of the school’s shagirds (students) returned to Najaf for examination under Tabataba’i’s authority.11 Just five years later, in 1894, it was yet again Abul Hasan who negotiated the establishment of Lucknow’s second Shi‘a school, the Sultan ulMadaris, with his son Muhammad Baqir Rizvi appointed as principal.12 Unlike Madrasa Nazimiya, which was founded on private donations and bequests from Awadhi families and followers of its affiliated scholars, this latter was funded from the coffers of the Husainabad Trust, tying it to the old nobility and former royal family who continued to act as its official trustees. Initially run in the corridors of the Rumi Darwaza adjacent to the Asaf-ud-daula imambara, the madrasa in 1913 gained its own striking building (Fig 1.1) in the heart of Lucknow on a grant from Mehdi Hasan Khan, a member of the former royal family, giving the school its own purpose-built classrooms and hostels. By this time it could apparently provide for 200 students at any one time, and could call upon the help of many of Lucknow’s most important ‘ulama as teachers in their own specialist disciplines.13

10 11

12

13

Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, pp. 49, 676. Imamiya Mission, Khatı¯ b-i-a¯l-i-Muhammad (Lucknow, 1933–4), p. 19. Kazim Tabataba’i would later become the highest mujtahid of Karbala. Sayyid Muhammad Naqi Rizvi, Farishtga¯n jaha¯n´: tazkira-i-kha¯nwa¯da-i-Sayı¯ d Muhammad Ba¯qir Rizvı¯ Kashmı¯ rı¯ Ba¯qir-ul-‘Ulu¯m (Lucknow, 2005), pp. 8–11. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim, munaqı¯ da 18–20 October 1914 (Lucknow, 1915), p. 98.

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fi g u r e 1 . 1 . Sultan ul-Madaris madrasa, Lucknow (author’s collection).

These schools together would have a path-breaking influence on Shi‘ism in north India. For one, the idea of a fully rationalized and systematized curriculum (nisab) of learning, one which would demand some ten to twelve years of study within one of these schools, was something of a novelty against the immediate historical context of post-occupation Awadh, in which religious education had largely been dispensed along the lines of personal tutorial and individual expertise. With the curriculum of each school directed by its principal, they both incorporated a broad expanse of literature on disciplines including classical languages, hadis (Traditions literature), kalam (theology), tafsir (Qur’anic exegesis) and fiqh (jurisprudence), amalgamating classical sources with more modern commentaries of Persian and Indian origins.14 Contradicting the view that religious education simply implanted into India a decontextualized curriculum of Arabic and Persian works imposed from outside, both madrasas took their choices of ‘rationalist’ works, within the disciplines of grammar 14

A fuller detailing of these madrasas’ curricula than is possible here is offered in Syed Najmul Raza Rizvi, ‘Shi‘a Madaris of Awadh: historical development and present situation’, in Hartung and Reifeld, eds., Islamic education, diversity and national identity, pp. 108–14, 121–30.


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(sarf-va-nahw) and logic (mantiq) for instance, from the curriculum developed by the ‘ulama of the Hanafi Sunni Firangi Mahal in Lucknow in the eighteenth century.15 Not only did this situate the roots of major aspects of their curricula in South Asia rather than Iran, but it gave the Shi‘a schools a point of comparison with contemporaneous Sunni schools such as Deoband, which in different ways had also borrowed extensively from a version of the traditional dars-i-nizamiya in their own syllabi. However, in a city whose connection with the dars-i-nizamiya had always given it an association with the rational (ma‘qulat) rather than received (manqulat) disciplines,16 it was perhaps the Shi‘a madrasas’ emphasis on the latter that was most striking. At the level of the qualification of fazil (certificate), students were subjected to a final crowning two years of rigorous training in fiqh and hadis. The emphasis on these received disciplines took its lead from the closed Madrasa-i-Shahi, which had promoted fiqh (jurisprudence) especially as a means of creating advisers for the court, but it also mirrors the parallel prioritization of the Traditions literature and legal scholarship on the Sunni side through schools such as Deoband. This common turn towards the hadis in the nineteenth century among South Asian reformist movements, as has been well argued, represents a renewed focus by the ‘ulama on religious instruction and guidance. The hadis offered directives on how Muslim lives should be led, which were felt necessary at this point if Islam was to remain uncontaminated by its distance from political power and the infiltration of Western knowledge.17 As well as forming a new curriculum, these madrasas were also significant for the simple fact of the expansion of a functional clergy. As far as can be discerned from clerical biographies, both schools attracted students from across north India, primarily the sons of sayyid families of small-scale landed or service backgrounds from cities and townships of the Hindustani plains. With such pupils often returning to their native districts, many of the most visible and prominent ‘ulama of north India from the early twentieth century onwards – men who became well known as tutors, writers, zakirs (narrators of the sufferings of Husain during Muharram), prayer-leaders and poets – were drawn from the first generation of students

15

16 17

For an account of the dars-i-nizamiya see Robinson, The ‘ulama of Farangi Mahall, pp. 41–55, 249–51; Muhammad Reza Ansari, Ba¯nı¯ -i-dars-i-Niza¯mı¯ (Lucknow, 1973). Sharar, Lucknow, p. 95. See esp. Metcalf, Islamic revival in British India, pp. 100–2, 349.

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educated in Madrasa Nazimiya and Sultan ul-Madaris.18 Moreover, there is also little doubt that these madrasas, through the congregation of Shi‘a students, the close bonds between tutors, students, donors and administrators, and apparently even the mehel (building) of the colleges, began to foster senses of corporate community among their membership.19 The sense of a growing corps of professional, systematically qualified ‘ulama was a significant aspect of the construction of notions of a singular, formally organized Shi‘ism, a theme which runs throughout this study. As well as expanding the clergy, these madrasas also somewhat standardized it. The names of both madrasas, of course, seemed to imply this need to ascertain and regulate the structures of Shi‘a clerical authority, and the qualifications offered in Madrasa Nazimiya and Sultan ul-Madaris, known respectively as Mumtaz-ul-Afazil and Sadr-ul-Afazil, were intended to be readily identifiable endorsements of expertise. One feature of the ruptures incurred in clerical authority after the dissolution of the Nawabi state had been, in the decades after 1857, a frequent inclarity in the designated authority of particular scholars. The exact qualifications of many were unclear, while stories were rife of particular clerics having exaggerated their ijazat, or forged them entirely.20 As such, the intention of the fazil obtainable within each of these schools was that it would be recognized and understood independently of the distinctions of influence, wealth and ancestral background of its holding ‘alim. The qualifications of the ‘ulama, in other words, were to be standardized, certified, and readily identifiable. These two madrasas in Lucknow were merely the starting-point, rather than the final result, in a process of the construction of new Shi‘a madrasas in many towns and cities across north India, and it is worth offering a few illustrative examples. The Bab-ul-‘Ulum of Multan, Madrasa Suleimaniya of Patna, Madrasa Nasiriya of Jaunpur, Hawza-i-‘Ilmiya Wasiqa of Fyzabad and Madrasa Imamiya of Benares are just a few of various Shi‘a schools which matured in late nineteenth-century north India, or at the very

18

19 20

Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwar, passim; Many of the ‘ulama discussed prominently in this book were affiliated to one or other of these madrasas, whether as teachers or students. The constitution and destinies of the student body of these two schools is too large a subject to be discussed here, but lists of famous students generated by these schools are available in All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, p. 98; Rizvi, Farishtga¯n jaha¯n´, p. 12. Imamiya Mission, Khatı¯ b-i-a¯l-i-Muhammad, p. 20. For example, see the claim of one maulana of Lucknow: ‘In Lucknow among the most famous Mujtahids there is a large number of those who do not possess certificate of Mujtahidship and this can be verified.’ Allamah Sayyid Ahmad Hindi to Burn, 19 September 1912, Political Department No. 84/1912, UPSA.


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beginning of the twentieth.21 The Nawab of Rampur, Mushtaq ‘Ali Khan, called in Najm ul-Hasan to remodel the curriculum of the Madrasa-i-‘Aliya Islamic school along lines similar to the Madrasa Nazimiya around 1889.22 The important Shi‘a outpost of Amroha gained Sayyid-ul-Madaris (1894), Imam-ul-Madaris (1901, also established by Najm ul-Hasan), and Nor ul-Madaris (1904), with the Bab ul-‘Ilm (1914) established in neighbouring Nauganwan Sadat.23 In later decades a notable number of former students of Madrasa Nazimiya would found schools in even more distant settings, including the Jami‘a Imamiya in Karachi (founded by Zafar Hasan), Madrasa Jawadiya in Benares (founded by Shaikh Jawad Husain) and additional schools in Lahore (Safdar Husain Jalali), Peshawar (Najm ul-Hasan Kararvi) and Bhagalpur (Samar Husain).24 Typically, these institutions followed curricula based on those formulated in Lucknow. Indeed, this predominance of Lucknow-educated ‘ulama in the foundation of such institutions across the northern part of the subcontinent, it could be speculated, established Lucknow as a kind of regional hawza, the central point of a web of educational activity expanding outwards through networks of students, existing in conjunction with but separately from the transnational webs emanating from contemporary Iraq. However, since none of these madrasas in India provided access to the dars-i-kharij, the course leading to the status of mujtahid that was most associated with Najaf, those among the early generations to gain certificates in these Indian schools still had to look to Iraq for the provision of further religious instruction. Hence it was not long after the establishment of these schools that appeals were made for a madrasa of higher religious education within India itself to serve these graduates. It was to this end that the Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin was established in Lucknow at the close of 1919. Pioneered by Najm ul-Hasan, and built and administered upon the funds of the Waqf-i-Madrasa-i-Ahmadiya established by Muhammad ‘Ali Muhammad, the Raja of Mahmudabad, it quickly became (and remains) the most esteemed Shi‘a madrasa of South Asia.25 The madrasa was the

21

22 23 24

25

Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, p. 285; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-awal (Lucknow, 1908), p. 108. Mirza Muhammad Hadi ‘Aziz, Ta¯rı¯ kh-i-‘Abba¯s (Lucknow, 1925), p. 206. Hashmi, Ta¯rı¯ kh-i-Amro¯ha, pp. 144–6. Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, pp. 153–4, 282, 293; Sayyid Sibt-ul Hasan, Tazkira-i-Majı¯ d, ahwa¯l-i-shahı¯ d (Agra, 1962–3), pp. 45–8. The Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin was founded in commemoration of the deaths of Najm ul-Hasan’s son and the Raja of Mahmudabad’s brother. Akbar Husain Rizvi, Madrasa’t ul-Wa¯‘ı¯ zı¯ n´ kı¯ a¯wa¯z (Lucknow, c. 1928), passim.

40


destination of a carefully selected crop of those most skilled ‘ulama who had claimed fazil in other north Indian schools, who then went there for practical training in order to reach the status of wa‘iz (‘preacher’, a role about which more is said below). This title did not necessarily entail formal scholarly accomplishment, and so it was still far short of the ijazat attainable under the mujtahids of contemporary Najaf and Karbala. However, as the highest institutional qualification obtainable in British India, it entitled its holders to speak to their followers under their own guidance on matters of fiqh and instruction, and many of the most prestigious graduates of the Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin were widely designated as mujtahid-ul-‘asr-ul-zaman (‘mujtahid of the age’), being to all intents and purposes popularly considered as mujtahids active in India.26 Do we, then, interpret these madrasas as tying the Indian Shi‘a into transnational webs of learning? Certainly the initial institutional links of some of these schools to the hawza in Najaf, and their propagation of a curriculum that drew heavily from commentaries and analytical works produced and taught there, would suggest that these schools integrated north India into a global pattern of Shi‘a education. However, into the twentieth century these schools could be seen as simultaneously strengthening religious education in India in a way that, at least for the lower levels of the clergy, diminished dependence upon the shrine cities. It is certainly significant that the development of these seminaries correlated with the heightening difficulties confronting those seeking to travel to or settle in southern Iraq during this period. Plague restrictions on the movement of travellers to Mesopotamia had been imposed from the early 1890s, with fewer Indians successful in gaining entry.27 A decade later, the abolition in 1903 of the ‘Indian fund’ made settlement or study in Iraq increasingly difficult or inadvisable for Indians; reports existed aplenty of Indian students and pilgrims stranded in the ‘atabat, unable to afford the journey back.28 This was compounded by the sharp decline of religious education 26

27

28

Imamiya Mission, Khatı¯ b-i-a¯l-i-Muhammad, pp. 17–20. This title dated from the Safavid period, although it did not designate systematic doctrinal authority or formal leadership. Litvak, Shi‘i scholars of nineteenth-century Iraq, p. 6. From W. S. Marris, 3 May 1903, Home Department (Sanitary A) Proceedings, July 1903, Nos. 298–302, NAI. For instance, A. L. Saunders to Chief Secretary to the Government of the United Provinces, 29 July 1910, Political Department A, May 1911, Nos. 10–44, UPSA. Karbala in the early twentieth century was already being described as a ‘sink of Indian pauperism’ on account of the drying up of Awadh Bequest funding and consequent impoverishment of Indians resident there. Lorimer to McMahon, 11 August 1911, Foreign Department (General A), June 1912, Nos. 7–33, NAI.


41

in Iraq, for a number of reasons, in the fifteen years after 1905.29 With this in mind, the situation in Iraq perhaps gave pressing urgency, whether real or imagined, to the sense of a need for workable institutions of religious learning within India itself. While Indian Shi‘a educational institutions would never be in a position to supplant their equivalents in Najaf, they did thus provide a foundational curriculum in religious education which enabled the autonomous development of a body of certified ‘ulama within India. Indeed, many of the most esteemed Indian ‘ulama of the generation who matured after the end of the nineteenth century did not study in Iraq at all, but exclusively in Indian schools. Hence, while Shi‘a education has long been assessed in primarily global terms, and while the madrasas of Lucknow were glorified by their founders as bringing something of the graces and treasures of Karbala and Najaf to India,30 perhaps they should be conceived as simultaneously performing a second, and slightly contrary, function: empowering the Indian Shi‘a to dispense and obtain their own religious education with a degree of functional autonomy from the Shi‘a International, and carrying the learning of Lucknow across the rest of north India.

‘religious and worldly’ leaders: the mujtahid s of colonial lucknow Part and parcel with the development of systematic education was the reinvigoration of the public profile of the Shi‘a ‘ulama. In the later decades of Awadh, as many studies have shown, the most senior ‘ulama had assumed roles in state counsel. Scholars such as Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi and his son Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi (1784–1867), both vastly influential members of the famous Khandan-i-Ijtihad family and muftis of Lucknow, were heavily co-opted by the Nawabi court; they acted as legal advisers, distributed alms-tax (khums) and offered Friday prayers in the king’s name. Part of the Shi‘a ‘establishment’ of Awadh, they were

29

30

The decline of the madrasa institution in Iraq was due in part to the return of many students to Iran during the Constitutional Revolution, the deterioration of student–mujtahid relations over funding issues, and Ottoman interference in religious education. It was also damaged via instability following the British occupation of 1914, and their expulsion of a number of clergy of Najaf after the 1920 revolt. Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq (Princeton, 2003), pp. 247–62. In addition to the declining number of students, the number of Indians visiting Iraq for pilgrimage or corpse burial fell gradually during this period. See ibid., pp. 164–73, 184–205. Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, p. 678.

42


indelibly tied to the ruling state, reliant upon it for the patronage and land grants (nazrana) on which they depended.31 These traditional functions were, of course, badly dented with the court’s demise in 1856. The high ‘ulama of Awadh remained comparatively quiet figures in the decades after annexation, both disenfranchised of their traditional roles and mistrusted by the government. Many of the most esteemed scholars of Lucknow were compelled, during the difficult decades of the 1860s–1870s, to return to their ancestral qasbas, flock to Metiaburj with the final king, or go on extended periods of learning in the more sympathetic political climate of Iraq.32 There was certainly little sense of the ‘ulama acting as a body or a corporate group during these years. However, in the two decades after 1885, a number of Lucknawi ‘ulama from established clerical families once again began making efforts to reestablish public roles reminiscent of the social and political stature their predecessors had held in the late Nawabi period. This generation, appearing in the late 1880s or 1890s, are often remembered today as an ‘exemplary generation’ of ‘ulama, and as the most authoritative and significant since the 1840s–1850s. Their various activities, it is said, ushered in a period of ‘unity and agreement’ (ittehad-va-ittefaq) among them, during which each contributed in his respective role to a coordinated project of revitalization: ‘The unity of action among ‘ulama at this time was such that in every department of religious duty, whether in madrasas or mosques, imambaras or mourning rites, every ‘alim (religious scholar) in whatever way showed complete commitment to the ideal, and set an example.’33 By assessing how this generation of ‘ulama made a number of new interventions into public life, we have a window into the tremendous adaptability of the ‘ulama to socio-political change, and the ways in which they used their ancestral mandate and perceived guardianship of religious tradition to assert their authority in wholly fresh ways, putting themselves at the vanguard of change rather than in opposition to it.34 The ‘ulama being too large and amorphous a body to discuss as a whole, the best way to examine this changing clerical role in colonial India is to look only at the most senior level of clergy present in India at this time, those who were often termed mujtahids, or its somewhat 31 32

33 34

Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 189–203. Hamid Husain and Abul Hasan are two examples of mujtahids who embarked on extended trips to Iraq for research and ziarat of at least a decade from the 1860s. Rizvi, Farishtga¯n jaha¯n´, p. 15. Cf. Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The ulama in contemporary Islam: custodians of change (Princeton, 2002).


43

coextensive equivalent, marja‘s.35 An investigation of the formal ijazat, qualifications, teaching networks and intellectual achievements of India’s mujtahids is beyond the scope of this study; our aim in this section is instead to view the mujtahids from the perspective of their public interventions, and the ways in which they constructed themselves as the social leaders of an alleged Indian Shi‘a community. In its most elementary definition, this title of mujtahid is assigned to an individual permitted to practise ijtihad, or the highest levels of individual jurisprudential reasoning. The aptitude and commitment required to reach this level mean that the title has continued to carry massive authority, being quite distinct from the wider and far more populist corpus of ‘ulama.36 Furthermore, according to classic understandings of Shi‘ism, the majority of the Shi‘a faithful, both lower ‘ulama and lay Shi‘a, are considered to hold deference (taqlid) to one or other chosen mujtahid, essentially acting as his followers or emulators (known as muqallids) on all intellectual and legal matters. As studies of clerical authority in Shi‘ism in various regions and contexts have frequently acknowledged, the means by which this title of mujtahid is conferred or assumed, and the precise dynamics of the mujtahid–muqallid relationship, can be fluid and difficult to decipher. This said, it is indeed an important retort to all that has been written about the alleged moves towards unipolarity of leadership in Usuli Shi‘ism since the eighteenth century,37 and the related focus on the scholars of Najaf as monopolizing religious authority during this period, that colonial India had a number of individuals who were consensually recognized as mujtahids. Moreover, as far as can be discerned, most of the sharif Shi‘a population of India defined themselves not as the muqallids of Arab or Persian scholars in Iraq, but of Indian mujtahids based in Hindustan. The most senior mujtahids of the era, individuals such as Nasir Husain, seemingly had networks of self-declared ‘muqallids’ stretching across north India, from Ambala and Lahore in the north-west to Siwan, Metiaburj and Calcutta in the east. These muqallids included many of

35

36

37

Marja‘ is a title assigned to a scholar worthy of obedience and emulation, and is thus partly (though not fully) coextensive with mujtahid in its general usage, though with a greater sense of leadership credential. E. g. Moojan Momen, An introduction to Shi‘i Islam: the history and doctrines of Twelver Shi‘ism (New York, 1985), pp. 184–207. On the institution of the marja‘ ul-taqlid, and the assumption developing from the eighteenth century that a single mujtahid should be revered as a foremost pole for emulation, see Linda Walbridge, ed., The most learned of the Shi‘a: the institution of the marja‘ taqlid (New York, 2001), passim.

44


the most influential north Indian Shi‘a nobles and landowners of the era. Even beyond north India, other emulators were present in Kashmir, Hyderabad and south India, as well as among diasporic Indian communities in Britain and East Africa.38 Such mujtahids were sometimes even assigned by their adherents the exalted status of marja‘ ul-taqlid, the single, inimitable pole of greatest religious authority, a fact which itself complicates the peripheralization of Indian Shi‘ism in much literature. Modern South Asia has no ‘ulama who have reached these exalted levels of marji‘at, and arguably none whose status as a mujtahid is agreed by all Shi‘a; but vindicating the stature of the South Asian clergy in the period under discussion, there were a number of consensually recognized mujtahids even in Lucknow alone. After 1885 the mujtahids started to attempt to reassert their profile and public relevance to a degree unprecedented since the late Nawabi period, in several distinct and interconnected ways. One was through their important role in founding a series of madrasas, as discussed above; the networks of students provided to them by these madrasas doubtless extended their profile and intellectual influence. A second means of doing this was by starting to organize public campaigns and negotiate with the ruling colonial power on issues seen as important to Shi‘a residents of Lucknow. Most notable was a visit by the mujtahid Muhammad Ibrahim to the commissioner of Lucknow in 1884, to ask that the compound of the Asaf-ud-daula imambara and Asafi masjid be abandoned by the British garrisons and handed back to the Khandan-i-Ijtihad family, who had led prayers in this mosque before annexation. The municipal government had received frequent such petitions for the release of the compound since Awadh’s annexation, but it is Muhammad Ibrahim’s intervention that is widely portrayed as having brokered the ultimate release. His petition initiated the liberation of the buildings, and meant that public prayers were reinstated for ‘Eid in that year under his guidance as peshnamaz (prayer-leader), allowing the congregation of the Shi‘a in the city’s largest mosque for the first time in almost thirty years.39 38

39

For instance, upon the death of Nasir Husain in 1942, messages of mourning came in from his ‘muqallids’ from all of these places, and many of them included pledges to transfer their allegiance to his son and successor, Muhammad Naseer. Sarfaraz (Lucknow), 24–9 July 1942, NML. Sayyid Agha Mehdi, Sawa¯nih-i-haya¯t-i-Firdo¯s-i-Maka¯n (Karachi, 1966–7), pp. 48–50; Aqa Hasan to Lieutenant Governor, 25 March 1906, Political Department No. 95/1906, UPSA; ‘The Shias of Lucknow’ to Lieutenant Governor, 12 April 1906, ibid. Muhammad Ibrahim had previously held prayers in the smaller Tehsin ‘Ali Khan mosque, but petitioned for the release of the Asafi mosque on the grounds that it was the only city mosque big enough to accommodate the numbers necessary for congregational prayers.


45

The increasing willingness of certain mujtahids to take this role of public representatives of the Shi‘a population vis-à-vis the colonial state then transmuted into the third means by which the high ‘ulama attempted to claim a role in socio-religious leadership, and one worth examining in some detail: the creation of a public podium through which they could directly address, and represent, their community as a whole. In July 1901, in the grounds of the Ghufran-i-Maab imambara in old Lucknow, three of the most senior mujtahids of the period, Aqa Hasan, Najm ul-Hasan and Nasir Husain, founded an association known as the Anjuman-i-Sadr-ulSadoor (‘Organization of the chief jurist’).40 The name of the organization, adopting the title formerly assigned to the chief mufti under the Nawabi court, seemed to hark back to a period of Shi‘a power when the senior ‘ulama held sway over state law and religious policy. But in reality this was exactly the kind of newly convened anjuman (association) that typified the urban public sphere in mid-colonial India, and one resonant of the kinds of councils that Deobandi and Nadwi ‘ulama were establishing around the same time to induce clerical collaboration and establish their own enduring public authority. Indeed, the organization represented the most serious attempt post-1857 by the senior Shi‘a ‘ulama to reclaim their sustained relevance across a broad spectrum of concerns spanning the sacred and the secular. Parting from the more retiring profile to which they had confined themselves in the decades after the Rebellion, the mujtahids now set up a two-pronged strategy for leadership and guidance in both ‘religious and worldly’ (dini aur dunyawi) matters. In the organization’s founding statement, religious and material furtherance were described as two shoots of the same branch, with economic prosperity only possible alongside the community’s perfection of its religious obligations.41 This said, the anjuman’s emphasis was unequivocally upon its religious activities; its early advertising flaunted the organization’s aims as the appointment of peshnamaz and wa‘izin . . . that they may tour different cities and villages and, after spending ten or fifteen days, may conduct congregational prayers and may continuously offer preachings and counsel, and religious and worldly education, and set essential examples. If the hazrat and mominin give 40

41

‘Ali Naqi Safi, Sahı¯ fa’t ul-millat-i-ma‘ru¯f be-lakhat jagir (Lucknow, n.d.), pp. 6–7; Mustafa Husain Asif Ja’isi, ed., Kha¯nda¯n-i-ijtiha¯d nambar (Lucknow, 2005), p. 74. It was also known as the Anjuman-i-Sadr-i-Imamiya and Anjuman-i-Imamiya. In successive years it was managed from the offices of Aqa Hasan in Jauhari muhalla. Aqa Hasan, Tarjuma-i-‘Ima¯d-ul-Isla¯m he¯sa-i-awal: kita¯b-ul-to¯hı¯ d (Lucknow, c. 1905), pp. 2–3; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-awal, p. 4.

46


them their attention, then the level of funding will grow, so that another peshnamaz or two may be appointed and another madrasa established.42

The organization had several achievements to this end, including the formation of a printing-press to publish religious tracts (the Dar-ulZikr), and the establishment of a maktab (school) in Lucknow. While the organization did not survive long or achieve much in itself, it would prove an important influence upon the nature of Shi‘a clerical leadership in India, and the ways the high ‘ulama would conceive their responsibilities and relationship with the public. First, after decades of minimal public engagement in which senior ‘ulama had been largely tied by necessity to their individual networks of noble patrons and personal muqallids, this influential organization evoked the Shi‘a as a single community. Addressing the Shi‘a population as a whole reflected clear aspirations to wider leadership, and implied the substance of a community transcending the inner sanctum of Lucknow’s old nobility. Second, this organization saw a number of key mujtahids evidently attempting to exhibit a united front. In the decades following the fragmentation of the Nawabi state in the 1850s, the collapse of state patronage meant that the most senior ‘ulama by and large had done little to collaborate, always maintaining separate individual networks of muqallids and institutional commitments; indeed, the fact that serious rows appeared to erupt between particular clerics with relative ease during the 1870s–80s perhaps reflects the instability introduced into the clerical hierarchy with the collapse of Nawabi dominance.43 By contrast, at the turn of the twentieth century a fluid and ambiguous clerical hierarchy in which particular scholars had operated largely independently of each other now came to look more like a ‘collective leadership’, based on the appearance of consensus and cooperation at the level of a few of the highest

42 43

Hasan, Tarjuma-i-‘Ima¯d-ul-Isla¯m, p. 2. The most significant instance of such an argument was a row running throughout the 1870s between the mujtahids of Lucknow and Metiaburj on the issue of Nawabi succession. It appears that Wajid ‘Ali Shah, the last king of Awadh now exiled to Metiaburj, enquired as to whether certain boys adopted by begams could be considered princes (shehzade), and therefore his successors. Muhammad ‘Ali Qa’imat-ud-din, mufti of Calcutta, issued an istiftah (legal declaration) saying not; while Abul Hasan, mujtahid of Lucknow, issued a contrary verdict which led to an enduring argument and legacy of acrimony between the mujtahids of the two cities. This argument was widely seen as the reason why attempts at the formation of clerical institutions, such as the Madrasa Imaniya, failed during the 1870s. Husain, Sawa¯nih-i-‘umrı¯ , pp. 192–7; Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, p. 577.


47

individuals.44 ‘Difference of opinion was not entertained’ among the high ‘ulama, it was said, lest it influence the public.45 Within this collective leadership, brought into existence by these new madrasas and fresh public associationalism, four mujtahids in particular ascended to the highest level of public prominence: Nasir Husain (cover image), perhaps the most regarded mujtahid of his generation; Aqa Hasan (Fig. 1.3), peshnamaz of Lucknow’s Asafi mosque and main founder of the Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor; and Najm ul-Hasan (Fig. 1.2) and Muhammad Baqir Rizvi (Fig. 1.4), respective principals of Lucknow’s two madrasas, and similarly associated with these new clerical associations.46 As can be seen from the biographies offered at the end of this book, these figures were hardly a homogeneous clique. They were from different family lineages and districts of Awadh and Rohilkhand, had distinct educational backgrounds, separate muqallid and student networks, and maintained their own individual public responsibilities and projects. But these differences aside, they did to some degree share a particular socio-cultural milieu. All were born in India in the 1860s, growing up in a context of decline for Indian Shi‘ism. All belonged to established sayyid clerical families, mostly from biradaris in rural qasbas but with a strong ancestral or occupational attachment to Lucknow. Equally, all ascended to public prominence as accomplished mujtahids in the vacuum that emerged in Lucknow in the years after the death of Awadh’s final mufti, Mirza Muhammad ‘Abbas, in 1889, and peshnamaz, Muhammad Ibrahim, in 1890. All, moreover, cultivated strong ties with the lay Shi‘a. Indeed, their active role in the formation and administration of Shi‘a religious institutions in Lucknow and beyond from 1890 onwards gave them a level of popular charisma and a bazaari following more resonant of the clergy in contemporaneous Iran,47 or the ‘dual role’ as ‘spiritual and social leaders’ enjoyed by their counterparts in Najaf,48 than the previous generation of reclusive scholar- and tutor-mujtahids of early colonial Lucknow. How are we to explain this heightened public activism of the senior mujtahids during these decades? In some ways, it parallels similar trends

44

45 47

48

This phrase has frequently been used to describe the emergence of a more plural conception of clerical leadership, emerging in Shi‘ism in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. E. g. Abbas Amanat, ‘In between the madrasa and the marketplace: the designation of clerical leadership in modern Shi‘ism’, in Said Amir Arjomand, ed., Authority and political culture in Shi‘ism (Albany, 1988), p. 111. Rizvi, Farishtga¯n jaha¯n´, p. 15. 46 Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, pp. 45, 666–7, 678–9. Hamid Algar, Religion and state in Iran, 1785–1906: the role of the ulama in the Qajar period (Berkeley, 1969), passim. Litvak, Shi‘i scholars of nineteenth-century Iraq, pp. 1–5.

48


fi g u r e 1 . 2 . Maulana Sayyid Najm ul-Hasan, mujtahid (author’s collection).

elsewhere in the Shi‘a world. In Iran, for instance, the mujtahids were emerging as increasingly powerful political reformers from the early 1890s; scholars including Mirza Hasan Shirazi organized major political protests against the Qajars’ Tobacco Concession in 1891–2, and then senior clerics once again found a major political voice during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–11. The activities of Indian mujtahids, albeit less spectacular, parallel those of their contemporary Persian counterparts, through features such as the construction of assemblies and councils as a means of reaching out to the population, the appropriation of printed edicts as means of mass communication, and their novel initiation of cooperation with lay reformists.49 We could also infer in a general sense that, in India as

49

Nikki Keddie, Religion and rebellion in Iran: the tobacco protest of 1891–1892 (London, 1966), pp. 114–33.


49

fi g u r e 1 . 3 . Maulana Sayyid Aqa Hasan, mujtahid (courtesy of Mustafa Husain Asif Ja’isi, Lucknow).

much as Qajar Iran or Mandate-era Iraq or Lebanon, the need to frame themselves as representatives of the Shi‘a before the colonial state transformed the ‘ulama from ‘traditional scholar[s] whose religious authority was derived from the clerical institution’ into ‘religious communal leader[s]’ engaged in community formation and acting as spokesmen on issues of social significance.50 However, rather than looking solely to their Middle Eastern counterparts, it is perhaps better to examine changing social conditions in India to explain the apparent new will for public exposure among the Indian 50

Tamara Chalabi, The Shi‘is of Jabal ‘Amil and the new Lebanon: community and nation state, 1918–1943 (New York, 2006), p. 140.

50


fi g u r e 1 . 4 . Maulana Sayyid Muhammad Baqir Rizvi, mujtahid (courtesy of Mustafa Husain Asif Ja’isi, Lucknow).

mujtahids. One might speculate that simple circumstance dictated the mujtahids’ need to widen their circles of patronage. With the disappearance of the Nawabi court, the impoverishment of much of the old royal family and Lucknawi nobility, not to mention the chaotic land legislation which impacted on many Muslim families, established Shi‘a patrons were perhaps no longer the unquestionable sources of support they once had been. This may explain in part the attempt of the senior ‘ulama to reach out


51

beyond their traditional networks of sponsors to the wider Shi‘a population. Participation in the public sphere of Lucknow was thus adopted by the senior ‘ulama as their means to a sustained mobility, a means of reorienting their focus towards engagement with a wider cross-section of Shi‘a society. These public sphere interventions, moreover, allowed the ‘ulama to present themselves as a modernized group, breaking their associations with the ‘old’ nobility, showcasing their youth and adaptability, and positioning themselves at the forefront of religious change. In this way, the high ‘ulama succeeded during these decades in presenting themselves as the public face of Shi‘ism. As would be claimed in public speeches from the 1880s onwards, they cast themselves as that group who could collectively offer the Shi‘a religion the ‘communal support and leadership’ (qaumi hami aur sarparasti) that the kings of Awadh had ceased to provide.51 Accompanying this shift in the way the ‘ulama presented their enduring public and social relevance, there was an accompanying reinterpretation of the ways in which clerical authority was received and understood. To generalize somewhat, Persian biographies of the ‘ulama written in the late nineteenth century had tended to predicate the authority of a given scholar on their ancestral pedigree as sayyids descended from the Imams, and the strength of their ijazat as bestowed by an esteemed predecessor; they documented at length a mujtahid’s scholarly achievements, the written works for which he was most known, and the connections of learning linking him into a lineage of teachers and pupils.52 By contrast, those Urdu equivalents of the early twentieth century emphasize to a far greater extent the importance of a cleric’s public achievements. They highlight the commitment of a given scholar to his ‘community’ through his public addresses and charitable and educational activities, and speak to a far greater extent of the ‘ulama as a united corporate bloc, synchronizing their energies and leadership.53 For re-establishing a profile as worldly as well as religious leaders, this generation of mujtahids are widely credited with enabling the renewal of Indian Shi‘ism in a much-changed world. As such, this particular finite clique of individuals named above are omnipresent figures throughout the remainder of this book.

51 52 53

Husain, Sawa¯nih-i-‘umrı¯ , p. 185. E. g. Muhammad ‘Ali Kashmiri, Nuju¯m us-sama¯ fı¯ tara¯jim ul-‘ulama¯ (Lucknow, 1884–5). E. g. Imamiya Mission, Khatı¯ b-i-a¯l-i-Muhammad, passim.

52


islamic ‘systems’ and the construction of religious boundaries: the clerical milieu in late nineteenth-century north india Alongside the formalization of clerical education and the augmentation of the public profile of the ‘ulama, the late nineteenth century was notable for the development of a culture of debate and antagonism between various Muslim schools. While this book does not seek to understand sectarianism solely in terms of the expansion of religious knowledge and doctrinal systematization of religious difference, it is worth explaining here some of the background to the emphasis upon religious polemic and disputation that began to take root among many of the formal ‘ulama in the nineteenth century. In some ways, the genesis of modern clerical confutation can be traced to the close of the eighteenth century onwards, when the parallel Mughal and Nawabi courts in Delhi and Lucknow sponsored a renaissance of forms of scholarship which clearly juxtaposed Shi‘a and Sunni tenets and traditions. This entailed a turn away from the more ‘rationalist’ dars-inizamiya curriculum pioneered in the eighteenth century, towards a heightened emphasis upon the ‘received’ disciplines, such as Qur’anic exegesis, hadis scholarship and fiqh. As was argued above, these scholarly disciplines were taken up with fresh vigour by both Shi‘a and Sunni clerical reformists since they were seen as the bedrock of discerning appropriate worldly action; study of the Traditions and Islamic law was a means of allowing full and solid guidance on the ethics and ritual practices of Muslim individuals.54 However, they were also disciplines that tended to emphasize the differences between Shi‘a and Sunni denominations, and contract the intellectual space on which they might collaborate.55 This turn to the ‘received’ traditions on both sides was thus accompanied by the production of notable systematic confutations of Shi‘a and Sunni Islam. A regularly identified starting-point in this regard was the contribution of Shah ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz, a leading Sunni scholar based in Delhi. His Tu¯hfa-i-Isna¯-‘Asharı¯ ya (The gift of the Shi‘a), a multi-volume Arabic and Persian opus completed in 1790, was a systematic confutation of Shi‘a beliefs, personages and practices, unprecedented in scale. Implicitly a response to Dildar ‘Ali’s simultaneous invigoration of Shi‘a scholarship 54 55

See above, n. 17. Shi‘a hadis is largely drawn from the words and deeds of the Imams, while most Sunni hadis is based upon oral traditions passed down by the Companions of the Prophet. Respective canons of fiqh, in turn, are drawn largely from hadis scholarship, leading to significant practical Shi‘a–Sunni differences in legal methodology and decisions.


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in Lucknow, the work’s introductory passages hint at the intertwined nature of Shi‘a and Sunni life and practice in contemporary north India, and offer a statement of intent to erode such composite influences from Sunni Islam through a systematic confutation of Shi‘ism: In the region where we live, the Isna ‘Ashariya faith has become so popular that there can be no house where one or two men have not adopted this vicious faith or are not inclined towards Shi‘a beliefs. The majority of these are wanting in knowledge of history and hadis and are uninformed and ignorant of the principles of their ancestral faith . . . I have written this book only to please God and to prevent the Sunnis from straying from their faith in polemics with the Shi‘as and to make them steadfast to their basic principles.56

Rich in references to classical scholarship, the Tu¯hfa moved through subjects including proofs of the Sunni Caliphate and refutations of the Shi‘a Traditions, Imamate, roots of jurisprudence, conceptions of ilahiyat (divinity), nubuwwa (prophethood), rija‘t (resurrection) and various other doctrinal, ritual and legal particularities.57 As such, beyond focusing upon a critique of individual Shi‘a texts, personages or practices, the work began the tangible trend of questioning the entire theological, historical and doctrinal foundations of Shi‘ism itself. This work was thereafter widely translated and published, in whole or in part, across India and the Arab and Persian worlds, eliciting a number of both friendly and hostile responses. In north India itself, Mirza Muhammad Kamil Dehlawi, Mirza Muhammad Akhbari Nishapuri, Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi, and Muhammad Quli Khan were just a few of the Shi‘a ‘ulama to write retorts to parts or aspects of the Tu¯hfa in the early or mid-nineteenth century, usually through detailed confutations of one of its specific books.58 However, a cornerstone in Shi‘a polemical scholarship was reached with the multi-volume ‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r fı¯ Ima¯mat ul-a’ı¯ mmat ulatha¯r (The sweet-smelling lights on the pure gift of the Imamate).59 This work, an explicit repudiation of Tu¯hfa, was begun by the mujtahid Hamid 56

57 58

59

Taken from Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Shah ‘Abd al-Aziz: Puritanism, sectarian polemics and jihad (Canberra, 1982), p. 256. For a detailed discussion of Tu¯hfa-i-Isna¯-‘Asharı¯ ya see ibid., pp. 245–355. Ibid., pp. 356–470; Sayyid Hamid Husain and Sayyid Nasir Husain, ‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r fi Ima¯ma¯t ul-a’ı¯ mmat ul-atha¯r (republ. Qom, 2001), pp. 22–7. Interestingly, the word used in this title for ‘gift’, a’imma, was sometimes used to denote grants of land or other wealth given by a ruler to a religious scholar; as such, it evoked something of the subsistence on which many of the north Indian ‘ulama depended in pre-1856 Awadh. Similarly, the perhaps surprising reference in the book’s title to ‘perfumes’ (‘abaqat) could be taken as evoking one of Islamic Lucknow’s most famous industries.

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Husain during his long sojourn in Iraq in the mid-1860s, and is perhaps the most influential Shi‘a clerical work ever produced in post-Nawabi South Asia. It offered a retort to Arabic portions of ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz’s work in Arabic and Persian portions in Persian, covering in defence of Shi‘ism an unprecedented range of subjects including the Imamate, tafsir, hadis and fiqh criticism, drawing from both Shi‘a and Sunni sources in support. While Hamid Husain produced seven volumes of the work, eight further volumes were produced after his death by his son and successor Nasir Husain, writing under the takhlus (pen-name) of his father.60 The importance of this work, written over two consecutive lifetimes, cannot be overstated. As a self-declared comprehensive ‘compendium of sciences’ or ‘path of knowledge’ (da’ira’t ul-ma‘rifat or minhaj ul-tehqiq), the work did much to articulate Shi‘ism not as a collection of distinguishable beliefs and elements, but as a singular, integrated and self-referencing religious ‘system’ or ‘path’ (minhaj).61 In the vein of both Tu¯hfa and ‘Abaqa¯t, both Shi‘a and Sunni scholarship in the nineteenth century tended to cast their own religions as independent and self-enclosed systems. Equally, whether acting as protagonist or respondent, Shi‘a and Sunni scholars alike tended to shift criticism of the opposite denomination away from deliberation on particulars such as one specific hadis, personage or historical event, and towards the castigation of the whole religious system as failing to comply with the fundamentals of Islam. This conception of Shi‘ism and Sunnism as entirely separate and selfcontained religious systems was entrenched further by the development of formal religious instruction later in the nineteenth century. As was suggested above, collective and specifically Shi‘a madrasa education came late to north India. In fact, for most of the Nawabi period, Shi‘a and Hanafi Sunni ‘ulama in Lucknow had cooperated closely in certain aspects of learning. No better instance of this existed than Firangi Mahal, Lucknow’s foremost madrasa and much the most influential religious school in Awadh throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. While administered by a Hanafi Sunni family, the school’s dars-i-nizamiya curriculum emphasized

60

61

Husain and Husain,‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r, pp. 41–60; Rizvi, Socio-intellectual history, vol. II, pp. 171–3. The names of many Persian and Arab ‘ulama who approved of the work is available in Husain and Husain, ‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r, pp. 49–50. Indeed, the fact that this work was widely translated, distributed and certified by ‘ulama in Iraq and Iran suggests, contrary to assumptions about the Najafi monopolization of Shi‘ism, that the writings of mujtahids in India influenced their co-religionists in the ‘atabat-i-‘aliyat as well as vice versa. Husain and Husain, ‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r, p. 48.


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rationalist disciplines such as kalam (dialectic theology), mantiq (logic), scientific knowledge (inclusive of philosophy, natural sciences and metaphysics) and mathematical knowledge (including geometry and astronomy). These were disciplines on which Shi‘a and Sunni scholars did not differ in fundamental ways, and hence throughout the Nawabi period Shi‘a students attended Firangi Mahal for instruction within certain subjects. This emphasis upon applied rather than received disciplines facilitated the instruction of judges and secular administrators as well as ‘ulama, and the madrasa had thereby emerged as essentially an institution of state administration for Shi‘a Awadh, fashioning much of the state’s juristic and administrative bureaucracy.62 However, the end of Firangi Mahalli dominance of institutional religious learning in Lucknow, at least for the Shi‘a, occurred with the formation of the Madrasa-i-Shahi, the first Shi‘a school, established in 1843. While the school closed on British annexation, its most enduring impact was the dissociation of Shi‘as from Firangi Mahal, one that would remain in place thereafter.63 The result of this was that the many Islamic schools formed after 1857 tended to display a far greater level of differentiation between Shi‘a and Sunni. The Deobandi schools emerging after 1867 emphasized the same received disciplines such as Qur’anic exegesis, hadis and fiqh as had Shah ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz. Over subsequent decades Deobandi ‘ulama would become prominent participants in written and spoken religious polemic, and known for their dismissal of the Shi‘a as kafirs (heretics or nonMuslims). When Shi‘a madrasas such as Madrasa Nazimiya and Sultan ul-Madaris began to appear after 1889, they tended to echo Deoband in their sectarian exclusivity and parallel emphasis on received disciplines. Until as late as the 1880s it had not been uncommon for Shi‘a clerics, including according to one source even Hamid Husain himself, to offer personal tuition in particular disciplines to Sunnis.64 Thereafter, with the consolidation of the madrasa as the major forum for the transmission of learning, these possibilities for educational collaboration increasingly dried up. The movements of educational provision and clerical consolidation occurring among both Shi‘a and Sunni clergy thus took place along separate, if parallel, lines. A major and highly consequential altercation between Shi‘a and Sunni ‘ulama came with the foundation of Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama, a council 62 63 64

Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 43–5. Amir Hasan, Palace culture of Lucknow (Delhi, 1983), p. 22. Amjad ‘Ali Khan, Sha¯ms-ul-Tawa¯rı¯ kh (Lucknow, 1898), pp. 113–14.

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founded by Shibli Numani in 1894 to promote cooperation between Islamic scholars across maslaki schools. At the point of its establishment, this organization sought to strengthen Islam through the initiation of dialogue and building of consensus among ‘ulama on matters of mutual importance; and part of this ambition was to end the sectarian rows that were perceived to be perpetuating the weakness of Islamic society and impeding its correct awakening (islah).65 As such, its initial committee of twelve members, founded to delineate the organization’s objectives and provisions, was self-consciously inclusive, incorporating representatives of the Barelwi and Deobandi ‘ulama, the Ahl-i-Hadis, Aligarh College and other groups. Ghulam Hasnain Kintori, one of the mujtahids most closely associated with the renewal of religious education and also with efforts to build ties between Shi‘a and Sunni scholars, came to the early sessions to represent Shi‘ism.66 Until its third session, these meetings evoked common Shi‘a and Sunni adherence to the unitary principles upon which Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama’s ethic was based; Shi‘a teachers of Rampur’s Madrasa-i-‘Aliya were enrolled as members, and its speakers referred to the question of diversity within Islam with the claim that ‘all are involved and all are invited’.67 However, despite the organization’s lofty aims, Ghulam Hasnain soon encountered opposition. During the annual meeting of 1895, three Barelwi maulvis, among them Ahmad Raza Khan himself, attacked the Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama as over-inclusive of minority groups, dubbing it a mixture of Shi‘as, nechris (referring to the supposed ‘materialists’ of Aligarh) and Wahhabis.68 Forced to vindicate its legitimacy, the organization’s committee allegedly ‘in a weak moment . . . decided to sever its connection with the Shias altogether’, shoring up its support through self-identification with a majoritarian Hanafi Sunni consensus.69 The withdrawal of Ghulam Hasnain left the organization as another narrowly Sunni establishment and ended Shibli Numani’s earlier pretensions to cross-sectarian participation. At the annual meeting of the organization the following

65 66

67

68

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Aligarh Institute Gazette, 12 March 1895 and 10 October 1901, CSAS. Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama, Ka¯rava¯’ı¯ -i-daftar-i-Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama¯, ya‘nı¯ jama¯‘at-ul-‘ulama¯ (Lucknow, 1894), p. 9. Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-jalsa-i-do¯m-i-Nadwa’t ul-‘ulama¯ (Lucknow, 1895), pp. 11–12; Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-jalsa-i-so¯m-i-Nadwa’t ul-‘ulama¯ (Lucknow, 1896), p. 89. Masroor Ali Akhtar Hashmi, Muslim response to Western education: a study of four pioneer institutions (Delhi, 1989), p. 143. Al-Bashir, 5 June 1899, UPNNR.


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year, one member defended Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama against these earlier accusations by depicting the school as broadly Sunni: ‘those who are Sunnis like myself and my friends act on the basis of the Qur’an and hadis and what is included in the books of fiqh . . . There are no Shi‘ah among us.’70 Once the Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama came into being as a madrasa on Lucknow’s north bank in 1898, it was perceived by the Shi‘a as a stringently Hanafi institution, indistinguishable from schools such as Deoband in its adherence to a rigidly sectarian creed and disposition for polemic. This experience of perceived expulsion (ikhraj) from the Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama certainly contributed, over future years, to the hostility of debate between Shi‘a and Sunni scholars. It also meant that the Shi‘a ‘ulama, through organizations such as the Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor, would thereafter tend to engage ‘sectarian’ modes of public organization as Shi‘as, rather than seeking early Nadwa-style cooperative agreements with their Sunni counterparts. A further point to be derived from this dispute is that, significantly, the exclusion of the Shi‘a was engineered by the Barelwi ‘ulama. The impression has sometimes been given in scholarship that Sunni polemic against Shi‘ism was more identified with the Deobandi than Barelwi reformist movement, perhaps on account of the former’s puritanical drive and the latter’s recognition of the intercessionary powers of saints and attachment to the family of ‘Ali.71 However, one does not get this impression from the colonial United Provinces, in which Barelwi spokesmen share at least equal presence as participants in anti-Shi‘a confutation.72 Instead, both appeared to make equal use of anti-Shi‘a polemics to present themselves as the most authentic Sunni school, by way of producing the most stringent and successful denunciation of their Shi‘a opponents. A careful inner-Sunni argument, between Deobandi and Barelwi maslaks, was thereby engineered and facilitated by engagement with anti-Shi‘a confutation. If Firangi Mahal, its inclusive curriculum and admission of Shi‘a students in certain disciplines exemplified aspects of Shi‘a and Sunni intellectual communication at the end of the eighteenth century, then the motley array of new and more compartmentalized Shi‘a, Deobandi, Barelwi and Nadwi madrasas encapsulated the religious landscape of north India by the end of the nineteenth. A switch towards ‘received’ religious sciences as a means of constructing more instrumentalist, temporally active forms of 70 71 72

Quoted in Metcalf, Islamic revival in British India, p. 344. Nasr, The Shia revival, pp. 60, 100–1. For just two examples of anti-Shi‘a polemics steered by Barelwi maulvis, see Sayyid Muhammad Hasan, Tashafı¯ -i-Khawa¯rij va ul-sunnata (Lucknow, 1896); Ahmad, Shikast-i-‘azı¯ m.

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religion, and a separation of educational endeavours through a pluralization and compartmentalization of madrasa education, meant that the Shi‘a and Sunni ‘ulama tended to conceive themselves in relation to each other not as maslaks, schools of thought within a combined body of religious belief and practice, but as separate religions. As Hamid Husain had evoked in ‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r since the 1870s, Shi‘a Islam was not a mere sect or school within Islam (maslak, firqa) but was the single legimitate Islamic ‘system’ or ‘path’. It held absolute categorical legitimacy as a self-standing religion, and had no substantive overlaps with alternative Sunni understandings. With its own educational infrastructure and consolidated clerical leadership in place by the 1890s, this impression seemed all the more palpable.

the shi‘a tabligh : printing and proselytization Alongside the councils of ‘ulama and expansion of a madrasa-educated clergy which marked Shi‘a religious change in the 1880s–1900s, a parallel effort at religious renewal by the early decades of the twentieth century was the attempt at proselytization, or tabligh, among the lay Shi‘a. As has been well described in scholarship, the theme of proselytization, whether addressing the lost of one’s own religious community or attempting to enrol the members of another, was a common feature of renewal across religious traditions in colonial India. However, this tablighi language is one with perhaps particular significance in Shi‘ism, for the idea of reaching out to a wider public might be assumed anathema to the realities of a confined, endogamic sharif aristocracy within which Indian Shi‘ism had historically been primarily contained. One of the primary means by which the lay Shi‘a could be newly engaged in their religion, and the one we examine here, was through the application of printing technology. Much research has been conducted on the implications of the emergence of print upon Islamic resurgence in South Asia, illuminating the role of publishing in objectifying religious knowledge, broadening public access to Islamic ideas and offering budding religious orators a new means of acquiring a public voice.73 The printingpress would have equal levels of significance for the Shi‘a. For one, the expanded availability of lithographic printing from the 1880s onwards facilitated the vernacularization of Shi‘ism, establishing Urdu as the 73

E. g. Francis Robinson, ‘Islam and the impact of print in South Asia’, in Robinson, Islam and Muslim history, pp. 66–104.


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predominant language of collective religious communication; in turn, this brought with it new genres of writing, and new framing concepts and terminologies with which the Shi‘a religion was described. Concomitant with this, the growth of Urdu printing opened access to Shi‘a literature and ideas to a new, younger Muslim middle class, and facilitated their engagement with their religion as thinkers, debaters and active participants, rather than passive adherents to a courtly Indo-Persian religion with which they were denied any reflective contact. Publishing-houses were becoming increasingly common in north Indian urban centres in the late nineteenth century, and Shi‘a writers in towns such as Lucknow, Meerut, Moradabad and Jaunpur were quick to take advantage of the profile that this medium could provide. And while Lucknow was most famous for its ‘mainstream’ presses such as Nawal Kishore, it was in fact privately owned lithographic Shi‘a presses that were responsible for much of this output. The Matba‘-i-Ja‘fari and Matba‘-iIsna ‘Ashariya, two specifically Shi‘a printing-presses, which published primarily Arabic and Persian (and a few Urdu) works, were functioning in the back rooms of the private dwellings of Lucknawi noble families as early as the 1870s, while in the 1880s a prolific Shi‘a publishing-house for primarily Urdu tracts arose in the private property of one ‘Abid ‘Ali Rizvi, a Shi‘a sayyid from the bustling central muhalla of Wazirganj.74 While an exhaustive study of the development of vernacular Shi‘a publishing in the late nineteenth and, especially, early twentieth centuries could be the subject of a study in its own right, it is worth discussing a few of its key genres and examples. A large number of such works were Urdu translations (tarjuma) or compilations (ta‘lifat) of authoritative classical texts: translations of the Qu’ran (for which some ‘ulama with links to Madrasa Nazimiya, including Firman ‘Ali and Maqbool Ahmad, were especially famous); of hadis collections, and sayings of the Imams. Long inventories of creeds and principles (usul) were compiled and published, providing the reader with a categorical description of the founding principles of Shi‘ism which, like ‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r before them but in a more concise and accessible manner, did much to evoke Shi‘ism as an ordered religious ‘system’.75 A striking number of legal treatises and compiled fatwa collections by Safavid and Nawabi masters of jurisprudence such

74

75

E. g. Aqa Hasan, Khaza¯na’t ul-masa¯’ı¯ l ul-fiqhı¯ ya (Lucknow, 1894), p. 218; Nur ul-Hasan, Tawa¯rı¯ kh shaha¯n-i-ma‘ziya-i-mazhab-i-Isna¯ ‘Asharı¯ ya (Lucknow, 1896), p. 1; Sa‘id Isma‘il bin Sadr ul-Din, Sı¯ ra¯t-ul-Mustaqı¯ m (Lucknow, 1898–9), passim. Hida¯ya¯-i-Rizvı¯ ya (Lucknow, 1897).

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as Muhammad Baqir Majlisi and Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi were translated and published in some numbers, often with modern additions or commentaries.76 Such texts and commentaries, as well as simply dispensing valuable knowledge to readers previously denied access by linguistic constraints, also had a very contemporary purpose. Modern scholars, by compiling, translating and rendering these works, were able to enhance their own authority and credibility, since these works bound them into a chain of taqlid (deference) linking them back to these masters, and so confirming them within their intellectual succession.77 This reprinting of translated or compiled versions of authoritative classical literature was also widely taken up by modern clerical organizations. When the Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor emerged among the Lucknawi ‘ulama in 1901, one of its first and most visible endeavours was the establishment of an organization called the Dar-ul-Tarjuma, to translate into Urdu and disseminate important Arabic and Persian scholarship.78 However, perhaps even more worthy of attention are those independent writings produced in some numbers in the burgeoning Shi‘a presses of urban north India. These were not simply fresh renderings of earlier writings, but independently authored tracts and treatises (rasa’il), which eschewed the constraints of traditional erudition and were circulated with considerable freedom and frequency. Their writers were sometimes ‘ulama; at other points they were simply free-working maulvis, many of whom were not formally certified clerics but merely figures of local prominence in their cities or townships, with some level of religious education.79 Such authors gained their stature less from their formal scholarly training than from their creative and persuasive abilities in the vernacular. While many senior ‘ulama engaged in translating Arabic and Persian literature into Urdu for public consumption, comparatively few made incursions into this sphere 76

77 78

79

E. g. Ja‘far ibn Sa‘id ul-Hilli, Ja¯mi‘ ul-Ja‘farı¯ : sharı¯ ‘at-ul-Isla¯m (Lucknow, c. 1870s); Aqa Hasan, Tarjuma-i-‘Ima¯d-ul-Isla¯m, passim. Ghulam Hasnain Kintori, in the preface to his translation of a text on mantiq by Allama al-Hilli (d. 1325), writes: ‘I have not seen such a book written by any other scholar . . . so I thought that the same proofs should be written in Urdu, so that all followers can benefit according to their level of understanding’: Kita¯b ulfaı¯ n (1904), pp. 4–5. Zaman, The ulama in contemporary Islam, pp. 38–59. For example, Aqa Hasan, Tarjuma-i-‘Ima¯d-ul-Isla¯m, pp. 2–3; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-awal, p. 117. To assess this we need only to look to Amroha, where two prolific writers of Shi‘a religious tracts were Amjad ‘Ali Khan, an honorary magistrate and for a long time the deputy collector of the district, and the town’s munsif (judge). See Amjad ‘Ali Khan, Kanz ul-ma‘rifa¯ta (Lucknow, 1891) and Sha¯ms-ul-Tawa¯rı¯ kh; Nizam-ul-Mulk (Moradabad), 10 February 1893 and Jam-i-Jamshed (Moradabad), 29 January 1893, UPNNR.


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of unbound, ‘popular’ vernacular literature. Indeed, it could be reasoned that these printing-presses gave aspiring lower clergy and lay authors the freedom to work outside the disciplines, and indeed purview, of the most senior religious authorities. Of the huge volumes of clerical writing published in the early decades of the twentieth century, a large proportion were works of instructive leanings, which strove in various ways towards the complete regulation of the proper Muslim life. We saw in the introduction that Urdu, a language very much associated with government administration, education and, by now, a sharif Muslim middle class, was often linked to new genres of instructive writing, and it is perhaps unsurprising that many Urdu Shi‘a texts of the period were in one way or another dominated by concerns with correct personal behaviour. Countless published works, both commentaries and treatises, outlined in detail the rites and behaviours expected of the Shi‘a faithful. A large number were detailed instructions on the precisions of prayers (du‘as) and daily worship and ritual practice (‘ibadat).80 Others were detailed behavioural compendia which ordered Shi‘ism, to use one frequently repeated phrase, as a complete ‘way of life’ (tarz-i-‘amal). For instance one such text, by a maulvi of Jaunpur, intimately outlined the obligations and organization of the life of the individual, running through various aspects of the appropriate observance (taqvim) of the religious calendar and festivals; the proper ethics of charity (waza’if), including commerce, finances, interest and management of endowments; and, finally, assorted actions (‘amal) encompassing issues as broad as prayers, rituals, hajj, slaughter, marriage, and the making of wills.81 One comparable, many-times-reprinted text was Maqbool Ahmad’s Tehzı¯ b ul-Isla¯m (Islamic manners). First published around 1920, this compilation of edicts and instructions from Muhammad Baqir Majlisi and other Safavid-era Persian mujtahids ran through subjects as diverse and intimate as manners of dress, dining, public greeting, social interactions, personal hygiene and bathroom etiquette. The hadis literature, he argued in his preface, maintained its relevance to the oft-cited ‘needs of the times’ (zamane ke zarorat) and across nations and communities, and it was the modern ‘ulama who maintained their relevance by rendering its message in the modern world.82

80

81 82

‘Ali Ha’iri, Nama¯z-i-mo¯minı¯ n-i-Shı¯ ‘a (Saharanpur, 1900); Ghulam Muhammad, Muqa¯dimat-i-nama¯z-i-Shı¯ ‘a (Lahore, 1900). Haji Sayyid ‘Ali Ansar, Masa¯’ı¯ l-i-Ja‘farı¯ ya (Fyzabad, 1915). Maqbool Ahmad Dehlawi, Tehzı¯ b ul-Isla¯m (Lucknow, 2005 [1920]), pp. 3–6.

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Importantly, a large proportion of such instructive texts were concerned with the correct religious and ethical conduct of women. Some such works laid down the regulation of appropriate lifestyles, morals and habits, discussing issues such as home-making, cooking and the raising of children.83 Many others were glorifications of the ‘sweet fruits’ of purdah (veiling or seclusion), one of the practices by which sharif Muslim women could exhibit their orthodox values, or otherwise aspire to such sharif status.84 It is tempting to interpret this vision of the austere, disciplined and pious life of the proper Muslim woman, rendered of course in Urdu, as part of an indirect critique on the classic stereotypes of the Nawabi begams (noblewomen) or tawa’if (courtesans): aspects of an ‘old’ Lucknawi nobility and culture which were widely reviled by many of this younger brand of reformists.85 Existing historiography has established beyond doubt how, from the late nineteenth century especially, the sense grew that women, as masters of their own intellect (‘aql), were thereby equally the guardians of their own moral destinies, as well as the transmitters of legitimate values to future generations. These new realities gave the regulation of women’s behaviour a particular significance for Muslim reformists.86 This incumbency of great responsibility on Shi‘a women, then, seems to parallel exactly the trajectories of religious change familiar to us from studies of Sunni experience, especially by the instructive literature for women produced by some well-known Deobandi scholars.87 This said, the frequent grounding in much of this literature of the model Muslim woman in personalities such as Fatima and Zainab served to create a level of Shi‘a symbolic and empathic distance from projects of Sunni women’s reform, which in other ways were highly comparable. A further recurrent genre of vernacular Shi‘a writing was that of populist biographies of historical figures: life histories of individuals such as the Prophet or the twelve Imams, rendering their lives and significance to a 83 84

85

86

87

Mujahid Husain Jauhar, Haya¯t-i-niswa¯n (Amroha, c. 1928), passim. Ibid., pp. 115–16; Mujahid Husain Jauhar, Masnawi Me¯wa¯-i-Shı¯ rı¯ n (Amroha, 1915), passim. On these respective roles see Juan Cole, ‘Shi’ite noblewomen and religious innovation in Awadh’, in Graff, ed., Lucknow, pp. 83–90; and Veena Oldenburg, ‘Lifestyle as resistance: the case of the courtesans of Lucknow’, in ibid. E. g. Gail Minault, Secluded scholars: women’s education and Muslim social reform in colonial India (Delhi, 1998); Barbara Metcalf, Islamic contestations: essays on Muslims in India and Pakistan (Delhi, 2004), pp. 99–119. Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi, Perfecting women: Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar, introd. Barbara Metcalf (Berkeley, 1990 [1933] ).


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wider audience. Some such texts were straightforward, factual affairs, easily accessible catechisms obviously aimed at presenting basic historical truths, names and events to an expanding lay readership.88 Particularly prominent among this genre of literature were reflections in poetry or prose on the personage of Imam Husain. A number of Urdu texts compiled, and partially translated, select Arabic traditions and Persian accounts, whether emphasizing his glories (faza’il) or lamenting his sufferings (masa’ib).89 This partially biographical genre could be seen as simply educating its readership on the finer points of Shi‘a history, but simultaneously it exhibited a feature that has long been identified as common across Islamic reformist movements throughout this period: an emphasis upon the major personalities of Islamic history, in this case Imam Husain. Holding up these exalted figures as suitable guides and moral exemplars for contemporary followers, these biographical works also contained within themselves a didactic leaning, being fully bound up with attempts to instruct individual readers as the custodians of their own morals and destinies.90 Supporting this point is the fact that, through the period in question here, there is a tangible trend towards emphasizing the humanity of the Shi‘a Imams, demystifying their significance and hence presenting them as worthy temporal guides. During the mid- and even late nineteenth century, biographical works on the Imams and (as discussed in the next chapter) marsiya poetry had often foregrounded their kingly, ‘heavenly, even divine characteristics’, and framed them in terms of their saintly charisma.91 Right through the 1870s–80s a number of works were produced that catalogued the stories of miracles purveyed by, among others, Imams ‘Ali, Hasan and Husain.92 But into the twentieth century, the best-known histories of the Imams were those that emphasized not their divine qualities, but their very human characteristics. One example will here suffice: 88

89

90

91 92

Sa‘adat ‘Ali Sufi, Tazkira-i-Ima¯me¯n´ (Moradabad, 1898) is representative of a wider number of works; a rather factual Urdu life history of the twelve Imams, it claims to be based upon Arabic histories, and published with the purpose of spreading awareness to Shi‘a and non-Shi‘a alike. For one example of each see Ja‘far ibn Husain, No¯r ul-‘aı¯ n (Lucknow, 1897); Muhammad Hadi ‘Ali, Khula¯sa’t ul-masa¯’ı¯ b (Lucknow, 1876–7). Avril Powell, Muslims and missionaries in pre-Mutiny India (London, 1993), pp. 286–7; Robinson, ‘Islam and the impact of print’, pp. 95–6. Matthews, ed., The battle of Karbala, p. 9. For one example of an account of the Twelve Imams which emphasizes their miraculous powers and heavenly attributes see Muzaffar ‘Ali Khan, Ma‘a¯rij ul-faza¯’ı¯ l (Lucknow, 1895), passim.

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Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi’s Shahı¯ d-i-insa¯nı¯ yat (Martyr for mankind), a towering rendition of Husain’s ordeals at Karbala, written in the 1930s and ultimately one of the most famous Shi‘a writings of colonial South Asia. While this work is of a later vintage than many of those discussed here, it is worthy of examination since it in many ways exemplifies a style of biographical reflection that was growing through the earlier decades of the twentieth century: a powerful description of Husain rooted in his humanity. In contrast to many earlier renditions, ‘Ali Naqi locates Husain’s significance in his ‘moral and civilisational message (akhlaqi aur tamadduni ta‘limat)’ as bound up with his impeccable personal character: his independence (istiqlal), personal honour (‘izzat-i-nafs), patience (sabir) and bravery (shaja‘at).93 Such a powerful ethical and de-mystified vision of Husain’s significance, well backed up with close reference to Islamic historiography, illustrates how biographical tracts themselves became a form of instructive (akhlaqi) writing. Equivalent to the Sufi-inspired ideal of the perfect man (insan-i-kamil) which influenced many contemporaneous Sunni attempts to instil self-perfection in their community, Husain essentially became the archetypal moral standard for his followers, placing obligation upon believers to emulate his qualities. Freshly published Shi‘a treatises of both instructive and biographical genres, therefore, shared in common a preoccupation with personal behaviour. As others have argued, such writings seem to confer an increasing sense of Muslim individuals as the agents of their own piety and comportment, placing on their readers a ‘new sense of responsibility’ and entailing ‘the empowerment of individuals, indeed the requirement placed on individuals, to act’.94 In other words, these initial attempts at lay communication through the printed word should be understood as offering individuals new levels of religious agency and personal instrumentality as well as responsibility, perhaps explaining the passionate communicative and pastoral zealousness of the writers, preachers and missionaries who came to represent the public face of Shi‘ism in north Indian towns from around the 1890s. If, around the turn of the century, this attempt at the promotion of knowledge and correct practice was primarily directed towards the internal perfection of the Shi‘a themselves, then after the 1910s it transmuted into a far more intensive, outward-looking tablighi (missionary) effort. As has been long acknowledged, the late 1910s and 1920s ushered in a new 93 94

Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi Naqvi, Shahı¯ d-i-insa¯nı¯ yat (Lucknow, 1995 [1941]), pp. 654–81. Francis Robinson, ‘Religious change and the Self in Muslim South Asia since 1800’, in Robinson, Islam and Muslim history, pp. 112, 116.


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sense of missionary zeal across religious communities. The Hindu shuddhi and Sunni Muslim tabligh campaigns both bore comparison in their combative public speaking, declared missionary intent and attempted ‘re-conversion’ of lower-caste Hindus and aljaf Muslims into the ‘great traditions’ of their religions.95 Likewise, the same period saw the development of a concurrent Shi‘a tabligh, framed no longer as simply a religious awakening but an active strategy of proselytization. This was exemplified most clearly by the newly established Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin, the foundation of which was described above. Termed an ‘abode of propagation’ (dar-ulasha‘at), this seminary presented itself as an active missionary organization. It ran its own printing-press, producing serialized religious publications including the regular al-Wa‘iz and the monthly English-language magazine Muslim Review, in order to address a new and wider audience.96 It also sent out emissaries to communicate with the population far beyond Lucknow. Trained wa‘izin and muballighin (missionaries) were dispatched in the 1920s to Punjab, Peshawar, Bihar, Bengal and Gujarat, by which the Shi‘a tabligh was allegedly presented ‘across approximately half of the area of British India, and 22 crores of population’, as well as, allegedly, in Kashmir, Tibet, Burma and Africa.97 Whatever the truth in these claims, there is certainly evidence of overt Imami missionary activity taking place around the time of the madrasa’s foundation; around 1918–19 certain ‘ulama of Lucknow were said to be sending trained zakirs and muballighin to Bombay, with the explicit aim of converting the Isma‘ili Khojas in particular to Isna ‘Ashari Shi‘ism.98 Indeed, the constant evocation by the Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin of the language of ‘Mission’, transliterated from English into Urdu, demonstrates how the Shi‘a tabligh was framed clearly in the language of overt proselytizing activity. The founders of Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin evoked the description of contemporary India as essentially a ‘battleground’ or ‘field of action’ (medan-i-‘amal). With imagery heavily resonant of Karbala, it thus depicted all faiths as possessed of new missionary organizations and locked in perpetual struggle with one another: ‘Every faith and every community in its freedom must be ready, with great seriousness and without surprise, for the questioning of faith, and the exchange of beliefs.’99 Indeed, one of the most striking features of Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin’s rhetoric was its implication that 95

96 98 99

E. g. Sikand, Tablighi-Jama‘at; John Zavos, The emergence of Hindu nationalism in India (Delhi, 2000). Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, pp. 676–7. 97 Rizvi, Madrasa’t ul-Wa¯‘ı¯ zı¯ n´ kı¯ a¯wa¯z, p. 12. Sayyid Baqir ‘Ali, Ya¯dga¯r-i-au¯lı¯ ya¯n´ (Lucknow, 1921), pp. 2–3. Rizvi, Madrasa’t ul-Wa¯‘ı¯ zı¯ n´ kı¯ a¯wa¯z, p. 8.

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its efforts should be projected not merely inwardly at the Shi‘a community, but outwardly at the non-Shi‘a. Publishing enterprises and the promotion of Husain’s message were framed as proselytizing tools. Indeed, its foundational statement was one of assured missionary zeal: ‘Within the constitution of all of us is the form of a missionary. Inside every member is present the armoury to be made into a missionary. The only necessity now is that these missionaries are given their direction with the apparatus of those modern formations and enterprises of the current times.’100 With this developing ethic of overt interreligious conversion, Shi‘ism came to look like a far more socially inclusive, temporally engaged religion than the sharif customary system that had preceded it. In one particularly telling moment, close affiliates of the Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin declared it unfortunate that, in India, the Shi‘a were invariably of sharif ancestry and contained few from among the ajlaf (lower castes); this, it was suggested, was something that should be rectified.101 There were even signs during this period that Shi‘a clerics were making active overtures to Hindu dalits (untouchables); according to one source, as senior a figure as Aqa Hasan was instructing zakirs and muballighin in Lucknow and Delhi to empower the lowest castes and oppose discrimination, by visibly dining with dalits, drinking from their wells, and teaching them the virtues of Islam.102 This example, of course, echoes a cross-confessional missionary tactic in colonial India of reaching out to the lower castes as suitable fodder for proselytizing efforts. But more than this, this bold missionary language contained within it an elemental redefinition of Shi‘ism as a religion. By taking up the issue of the low castes, religious scholars were able to distance Shi‘ism from the connotations of sharif cultural norms, the endogamy of its nobility and sayyid exclusivity of most of its established lay and secular leaders. Shi‘ism was, instead, articulated as a deen, an objective and universal religion, of relevance to all.

creative writing: shi‘a–sunni polemic in colonial india Alongside the production of instructive religious literature, another genre of particular note was that of religious polemic, commonly termed

100 101

102

Ibid., p. 10. All India Shia Conference, Calcutta 1928, Presidential address of His Highness Mir Ali Nawaz Khan Talpur, ruler of Khairpur State (Khairpur, c. 1930), p. 16. Jadu (Lucknow), 16 April 1907, Mustafa Husain Asif Ja’isi Collection, Lucknow.


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munazara. By the early 1900s polemical tracts and treatises were emerging on a far larger and more prolific scale, largely thanks to enhanced access to publishing. A great number of texts were produced that brought to light the specific histories of the key historical personages of Islam and attacked, respectively, the legitimacy or actions of the Sunni Caliphs or the Shi‘a Imams.103 One government report, rather haughtily, declared that ‘polemical publications supplied their usual quota. The differences between various Muhammadan sects, as for example, between Shi‘as and Sunnis, accounted as always for a certain number.’104 Such colonial officials, and not a few ‘modernist’ Muslims, remarked upon this seeming proliferation and popularity of inner-Islamic polemical writing with some derision. Portraying it as symptomatic of the excess and bigotry of the ‘ulama, many such observers understood such writing, as has some academic work since, as being a recycled and less prestigious spin-off of the confutative scholarship produced in late Mughal Delhi or Nawabi Lucknow. An alternative reading would be that, far from being a regurgitation of older literature, the polemical writing appearing in colonial India was a new, different and even somewhat creative genre of work. The rigid, empirically grounded and systematic confutations of ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz or Hamid Husain were densely academic, multilingual, multi-volume opuses, hardly accessible to a non-specialist audience. By contrast, the munazara treatises of the early twentieth century were possessed of a more fluid, even conversational, style of writing, one creatively driven by an array of vernacular writers, and appropriating distinctly contemporary needs and purposes. Far from it being merely a simplified, populist rendition of the Arabic and Persian debates that it cited, the munazara genre was used to fulfil a number of functions. Looking at just a few examples quickly reveals the role of Shi‘a confutative writing as a proselytizing tool within the Shi‘a community, and also as a means by which a number of maulvis sought to communicate their authenticity and initiate new forms of communication. Rather than being stand-alone texts, the polemical writings so frequently produced during the period were less individual pieces and more part of an ongoing literary dialogue among emerging writers, by which one 103

104

For a few representative Shi‘a attacks on the Sunni Caliphs see Sayyid Muhammad Husain, Budra-i-He¯darı¯ ya li-naqz-i-fe¯sla-i-Abı¯ Bakrı¯ ya (Muzaffarnagar, 1910); one tract, Sa’if-i-Qata (The sword of the Prophet), accused the first three Caliphs of infidelity to the Prophet and was circulated within a Shi‘a newspaper: Akhbar-i-Imamiya (Lucknow), April 1893, UPNNR. Report on the Administration of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, 1914–15 (Allahabad, 1916), V/10/1916, OIOC, p. 72.

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tract of polemical literature was followed by a counter-tract in specific refutation. To give just a few of many possible examples, one might cite the protracted penned contest between two sharif residents of adjacent neighbourhoods of Nagina qasba, in Bijnor district: one author consulted Sunni hadis collections to offer a systematic confutation of a series of Shi‘a personages and doctrines, prompting his respondent to concoct a similarly erudite defence explicitly written against the former.105 Similar literary conversations took place between two sayyids of Barha and Agra on the reliability of certain Sunni hadis collections, and between two residents of Amroha on the contentious Shi‘a principles of taqiya (concealment of religion) and mut‘a (Shi‘a temporary marriage).106 Some maulvis resident in different towns even came to use the postal system as a means of debating with each other, exchanging questions and answers on the loyalties and virtues of the Companions of ‘Ali,107 showing how the culture of written polemic took on wholly modern manifestations predicated upon the appropriation of new communications technologies. One particularly colourful printed debate, representative of the genre in many respects and so worth narrating in full, was that between Sajjad Husain, a Shi‘a maulvi of Behra Sadat, and Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri, a well-known Deobandi scholar. The former was commissioned to write a retort to some alleged criticisms by a Barelwi cleric of Shi‘a beliefs regarding the compilation of the Qur’an and the Caliphate of ‘Ali, which was printed as Mira¯’t-ul-ima¯mat fı¯ asba¯t ul-khila¯fat (The mirror of the Imams on the subject of proofs of the Caliphate), a book that described itself as intending to throw light on the question of the succession to the Prophet. In return, Khalil Ahmad was enrolled to construct a response, Mutaraqih-ulkara¯ma-i-‘Alı¯ (The accomplished hammer of ‘Ali), to smash the aforementioned mirror of the Shi‘a religion. Sajjad Husain’s counter-retort came a few years later: Ai‘ja¯z-i-Da¯’u¯dı¯ (The miracle of David), referring to the prophet David’s deed of softening iron, which he could repeat to melt Khalil Ahmad’s hammer. With his hammer melted, the latter argued, Khalil Ahmad ended up hitting only his own foot!108

105

106

107 108

Respectively, Muhammad Rahim-ullah Bijnori, Ibta¯l-i-usu¯l-ul-Shı¯ ‘a (Bijnor, 1903); and Sayyid Amir Kazim, Ehqa¯q-ul-ha¯q-ul-ibta¯l-ul-ba¯til (Bijnor, 1906), passim. On mut‘a see Muhammad Manzur Husain, Khu¯rshı¯ d-i-sudq, ma‘ruf manzu¯r ul-hudı¯ (Agra, 1897), p. iii; On taqiya see Sayyid Hamza ‘Ali, Tashı¯ h ul-aqa¯’ı¯ d (Amroha, 1919), pp. 1–4. Hasan, Tashafı¯ -i-Khawa¯rij, pp. 2–7. Sa‘id Sajjad Husain, Ai‘ja¯z-i-Da¯’u¯dı¯ (Delhi, 1912), pp. 2–5; cf. Qur’an 34:10.


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As a means of understanding literary polemical culture at this time, several features of this debate stand out. First, the fact that each of these maulvis was commissioned by a lay patron, respectively a schools inspector of Sitapur who had recently converted to Shi‘ism, and a Sunni landowner of Bulandshehr, shows how certain individuals were acting essentially as freelancing scholars, seeking commissions; indeed, one might speculate that it was in the personal interests of these scholars concerned to keep these debates going. Second, this inventive, freewheeling, somewhat witty debate is illustrative of the emerging genre of polemical writing in that, in style, it strays far from the point-by-point confutations of earlier generations. In its dialectical tone and rhetorical flourish, it is in many ways closer to the discursive treatises carried by contemporaneous Urdu didactic literature, or periodicals such as Tehzı¯ bul-Akhla¯q, the vernacular journal of the Aligarh Movement. Indeed, the fact that Aligarh pioneers such as Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Mehdi ‘Ali Khan (Mohsin ul-Mulk) were explicitly referenced in many of these texts situates such works within the reformist vernacular publishing of Aligarh and other Muslim public-sphere organizations, as much as the classical Perso-Arabic scholarship of pre-1857 India. Through this genre of writing, debates on the minutiae of hadis, history and fiqh had, by the beginning of the twentieth century, become much simplified and more intelligible to a novice audience. A turning-point in this brand of religious polemic came with ‘Abd ul-Shakoor, a Sunni maulvi from the qasba of Kakori outlying Lucknow, who became especially famous for his development of anti-Shi‘a confutation.109 Perhaps due to attempts to win association or dissociation from his controversial legacy, Shakoor’s intellectual background is elusive. He is often associated with the Deobandi tradition, though, as we shall see in further chapters, he diverged from it in important ways; alternative sources occasionally link him with Barelwi devotionalism, the Firangi Mahal, and the Ahl-i-Hadis movement. However, his conversion of classical scholarship into more accessible, vernacular confutation, whether spoken or written, set the bedrock for many of the arguments that have become the staple of Shi‘a– Sunni polemics in South Asia today. Among these were the following claims: that Shi‘ism is full of insult (be-‘izzat hone ke qabil) for its advocacy of tabarra (cursing the Caliphs); that the principle of taqiya is equivalent to dishonesty (nufaq); that its faith in the ghaib (absent) Twelfth Imam is synonymous with idolatory (shirk); that mut‘a (temporary marriage) was 109

Shamsi, Shı¯ ‘a–Sunnı¯ qazı¯ ya, pp. 87–9.

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indistinguishable from adultery or fornication (zina); and that the Shi‘a, believing in the existence of interpolations (tehrif) in the Qur’an, deny the revelation of the Prophet and cannot distinguish truth from falsehood.110 Another theme particular to Shakoor’s work, also enduringly influential, was his argument that Shi‘ism was an instrument of ‘human worship’ (insan parasti) based on the belief in the spiritual powers of the Imams, and the holiness of the sayyids descended from them. Implicit in this, of course, was a social critique of the Indian Shi‘a for using their believed sayyid ancestral pedigree to assert social and political hegemony anew, an argument which would have considerable resonance among the middle classes and urban professionals who would form the main bedrock of Shakoor’s Lucknawi readership. Strikingly, an additional important, pervading feature of much clerical polemic of this period was the motif of full religious conversion between Muslim denominations. Both before, and especially after, the accentuation of the tablighi theme in the 1910s–20s, such tracts were replete with references to explicit conversion. Polemical literature routinely mentioned individuals who exchanged their sectarian affiliations on the basis of religious conviction,111 and carried frequent exhortations upon readers to convert, or to convert others. Indeed, some explicitly Shi‘a historical works even boldly claimed that they were written for a Sunni readership, asking that the texts be handed out free of charge to Sunnis so that ‘they may see from their cold hearts and may distinguish truth from falsehood’.112 However, while such confident declarations of a will to convert surely did little to improve inter-community relations, these aspirations were largely cosmetic, and certainly secondary to the use of polemical writing as a means of addressing one’s own community. Indeed, one might easily argue that the framing of an alternative religious group as an opponent or would-be convert was, in fact, a stylistic mechanism whereby a writer could instead extrapolate on the historical and doctrinal particulars of Shi‘ism to a primarily Shi‘a audience. Systematic confutations of opposing traditions became one of the chosen means by which the specifics of Shi‘a doctrine, law and practice could be rendered and communicated to the

110 111

112

‘Abd ul-Shakoor, Tu¯hfa-i-lisa¯nı¯ (Lucknow, 1927), pp. 26–38. E. g. Husain, Ai‘ja¯z-i-Da¯’u¯dı¯ , p. 2. Maqbool Ahmad, a converted Shi‘a maulvi discussed in the next chapter, is one frequently cited example embodying a perceived triumph of Shi‘ism. Sayyid Hamza ‘Ali, Ha¯q kı¯ kaso¯tı¯ (Delhi, 1916), p. 80.


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unacquainted within one’s own community, while presenting this effort at internal communication as a bold and outward struggle. This suggestion that Shi‘a polemical writing was, first and foremost, a means of talking to the Shi‘a themselves about their religion is perhaps supported further by the continued references within this writing to ‘subversive’ tendencies within Shi‘ism. Indeed, far from polemical writing always carrying a binary Shi‘a–Sunni modus operandi, much such writing intertwined Shi‘a–Sunni questions with those relating to variants within the Shi‘a tradition. The Akhbari school of Shi‘a jurisprudence, for instance, continued to be the subject of prolific written attacks, despite the fact that it had been virtually extinct in north India since the late eighteenth century, and clearly presented little challenge to the contemporary dominance of Usuli thought.113 Other texts criticized the false beliefs of Zaidi Isma‘ilis, who were cast alongside Sunnis as ‘secessionists’ (kharijis) on account of their desertion from the message of the Imamate.114 In effect, it seems that polemical writing was in fact used by Shi‘a authors as a means of communicating and negotiating the specific tenets of Usuli Shi‘a thought, through a fluid series of comparisons with a combination of Shi‘a and non-Shi‘a opponents. Polemical literature in colonial India, then, was far from a straightforward rendition of the religious scholarship of the Mughal and Nawabi courts. Instead, a more fluid and unbound genre of vernacular writing, influenced by the modern Urdu treatise and periodical as much as classical Perso-Arabic religious commentary, appeared to fulfil a series of functions. For one, it was appropriated by a number of younger, experimental maulvis to craft themselves a meaningful voice in the written public sphere. Additionally, disputative literature proved a convenient explicatory tool for addressing a lay audience. It facilitated the description and elaboration of Shi‘a historical, legal and theological tenets to the population, while expressing this process as the victorious and confident castigation, and sometimes even conversion, of the rival group. With religious disputation thus playing a functional role in internal religious rejuvenation and the shaping of lay piety within Shi‘ism, ikhtilafat (religious disputation or argumentation) became a tool, rather than a product, of the Shi‘a tabligh.

113

114

Shaikh Muhammad Kazim, Tanqı¯ d-ul-taqlı¯ d (Jaunpur, 1915), passim. For background on the Akhbari–Usuli controversy see Cole, Sacred space and holy war, pp. 58–77. Hasan, Tashafı¯ -i-Khawa¯rij, passim.

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conclusion This chapter has argued that the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed a substantial renewal, and transformation, of Shi‘ism in India. Religious education was institutionalized and formalized within a nascent madrasa network spanning north India, one which fulfilled the slightly incongruous functions of, on the one hand, building educational ties between the Indian Shi‘a and their counterparts in Iraq, and, on the other, establishing Lucknow as a regional scholarly centre which acted as a focus independently from the ‘atabat-i-‘aliyat. The mujtahids, deprived of their governmental functions in 1857 and thereafter maintaining a low profile, began to craft themselves in the generation developing in the 1890s as social leaders and as representatives of their community, speaking to the Shi‘a population as a single entity; this shift in expectations of their role took place both in conjunction with events in the wider Shi‘a world, but also with the need to replace ‘noble’ patronage with an enlarged public role. Meanwhile, the utilization of new publishing technology brought with it a new emphasis on popular communication and expression in the vernacular, an encounter which changed the format of religious communication. With so many writers and orators pushing the theme of a singular Shi‘a tabligh, and with appeals made to the personal agency of lay followers, Shi‘ism was increasingly consolidated less as a particular sharif culture, and more as a religious system of universalistic beliefs and practices, with the notion of a pious community attached to it. Accompanying this revitalization of Indian Shi‘ism was a growing atmosphere of sectarian disputation within Indian Islam, expressed via increasingly compartmentalized madrasa education, a renewed emphasis on hadis and fiqh scholarship, and a developing genre of vernacular polemical writing. However, religious disputation was not simply a secondary consequence of religious renewal, but was in effect the device by which internal reform could be exercised. Confident and combative refutations of a supposed ‘other’ allowed individual writers to instruct or shape their own community, while conveying this with the sense of authority and moral purpose accompanying an inter-community struggle. Shi‘a–Sunni religious confutation, and internal processes of religious renewal and propagation among the Shi‘a themselves, found themselves inseparably intertwined.

2 Mosques, majalis and Muharram Marketplace Shi‘ism

introduction Alongside the expansion of the clerical milieu discussed earlier, a second facet of the religious renewal taking place during this period was the expansion of more informal or ‘popular’ aspects of religion: those of religious ceremony, display and public preaching. This chapter, the second to address aspects of Shi‘a religious revitalization from the late nineteenth century onwards, turns towards these public manifestations, examining the development of new religious institutions, forms of religious congregation, and the enhanced exuberance and experimentalism of public ritual. Compared to the formal ‘ulama and madrasas previously discussed, the amorphous webs of local functionaries, preachers and patrons who constituted Islam as lived in South Asia have sometimes remained poorly understood in historical contexts. Nevertheless, it was in the personages of the peshnamaz (prayer leader), wa‘iz (preacher) and zakir (sermonizer, usually indicating the ‘remembrance’ of the Imams during Muharram) and other functionaries that, to quote one author, ‘the passion of Shi‘ism [was] most clearly focused’.1 By necessity, this focus on public forms of religion ties this chapter to studies of how, in colonial north India, religious communities were defined, reworked and expressed through visual symbols and ceremonial activities in public spaces. It has been convincingly argued that a heavily ritualized urban public sphere, a ‘world of ritual, theatre and symbol’,

1

Michael Fischer, Iran: from religious dispute to revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1980), p. 100.

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emerged during this period as a platform of public communication and mobilization, partly on account of the insularity and inaccessibility of the formal political sphere.2 However, while arguing that these forms of public religious display performed a fundamental role in redefining Shi‘ism as a religion, this chapter also seeks to convey the ethos of innovation and experimentation in the public practices of Indian Shi‘ism. Religious rites and procedures were all subjected to multiple processes of reformulation and reconstruction, and became increasingly pluralized. This was, to borrow the words of one analyst writing on a different context, a ‘marketplace’ Shi‘ism, one in which an ever greater number of functionaries including patrons, preachers and professional mourners vied for attention, and attempted to craft meaningful roles in religious life.3 This chapter, then, is indirectly informed by comparative work on the modern evolution of a ‘religious marketplace’, within which religious forms and institutions are seen to be multiplied and diversified as a means of reaching out to new participants, whether as clients or patrons.4 Indeed, I argue that, in many cases, the new Shi‘a religious actors discussed in this chapter used innovations in religious organization or procedure in their towns to assert themselves against ‘establishment’ Shi‘ism, that associated with the former Nawabi nobilities, post-1857 landed magnates or municipal administrators. This chapter examines, respectively, new forms of religious intervention in urban landscapes; new cultures of expressive, vernacular preaching; and instances of novel public exuberance and innovative ritual. All of these subjects in some sense bind this chapter to an examination of Muharram, the annual period of mourning for Imam Husain and the martyrs of Karbala, which has always acted as a platform for the seasonal invigoration, renewal, and indeed transformation, of Shi‘a life and practice. The nature of the local – often transitory – organizations under discussion, and difficulties in tracing the nature of public speaking in any detail, mean that in many cases the sources consulted are suggestive rather than conclusive. That said, this chapter is at least able to offer some impression of the diversification of Shi‘a religious organization and practice in mid-colonial India, and the associated inter- and inner-community tensions that these changes entailed. 2 3 4

Freitag, Collective action and community, pp. 19, 280. Amanat, ‘In between the madrasa and the marketplace’, p. 101. Laurence Iannaconne, Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, ‘Deregulating religion: the economics of church and state’, Economic Enquiry 35 (April, 1997); Roger Finke, ‘The consequences of religious competition: supply-side explanations for religious change’, in Lawrence Young, ed., Rational choice theory and religion: summary and assessment (New York, 1997).

Marketplace Shi‘ism

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from buildings to bila fasil : visual and aural landscapes of urban shi‘ism One of the most noticeable aspects of the fresh religious life of the Shi‘a in the late nineteenth century was a series of interventions into the public spaces of important Shi‘a towns. This applies in both the visual and spatial sense of the establishment of new religious buildings, and the aural sense of public prayers and proclamations. Of course, on the supra-local level this new multiplication of religious edifices, congregational spaces and verbal declarations altered the civic character of these towns, imbuing them with a more overtly Shi‘a-informed geography as a whole, and vaguely recalling the state support enjoyed by Shi‘ism prior to 1857. But from a lower vantage-point, these same public interventions facilitated a diversification of religious organization within these towns, locating its workings at the level of particular muhallas and town quarters. New buildings, rituals and slogans facilitated the formation of ‘neighbourhood leaderships’, a series of interventions by individual families and local associations, as they sought to assert a role in the regulation of religious life and rites.5 This informal, deregulated sphere of local headship in numerous towns tended to develop underneath, or even contrary to, the formal structures of the Shi‘a establishment, which often controlled the major municipal Shi‘a congregational mosque (jama‘ masjid) and Muharram rites, and could call upon considerable landed wealth and the ear of the local authorities. Once again, Lucknow was of particular significance, for the demolition of much of the city’s Muslim centre in 1857 left old Lucknow as a particular tabula rasa which, as it was gradually reclaimed by urban development, became a site on which multiple Shi‘a individuals and organizations attempted to assert their own agency. The first clear observation worthy of attention is that the last two decades of the nineteenth century were clearly an era of religious building. In addition to the madrasas covered in the previous chapter, mosques and imambaras were also constructed in some numbers, while many others were refurbished or extended. In Lucknow itself, a series of Shi‘a imambaras sprang up in various neighbourhoods of the old city, including Imambara Mir Baqir in Jauhari muhalla, Imambara Agha ‘Ali Khan on Victoria Street (1875), Imambara Darab ‘Ali Khan in Maulviganj (1891) and others.6 Their founding deeds show some of their ‘Nawab’ founders to 5 6

Bayly, The local roots of Indian politics, pp. 77–87. Details on the registration of the waqfs upon which each of these was founded are available in GAD No. 806/1918, UPSA.

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be of old courtly families; but significantly, some carried no such hints of former pedigree. By the early twentieth century many older imambaras were being extended or refurbished, while further new imambaras and mosques were being constructed, often on the back of personal donations or by newly convened anjumans (associations) created specifically for that purpose.7 Lucknow was not the only city to see a spate of religious construction and refurbishment in the late nineteenth century. One of the most highprofile examples was the construction of a huge, posthumous tomb and shrine compound (mazar) in Agra for Qazi Nor-ullah Shastri (d. 1610), a Mughal-era Shi‘a jurist martyred by Emperor Aurangzeb. The tombimambara compound, known as the Mazar-i-Shahid-i-Salis, was unusual for India, and more reminiscent of the imamzada tradition known in Iran of building tomb-shrines for certain exalted descendants of the Imams. The construction of the shrine, which contained a large imambara and ran a programme of majalis sermons throughout the year, was initiated in 1873 by the mujtahid Hamid Husain, a fellow descendant of the seventh Imam, and funded by a number of sayyid patrons within Agra. In the early twentieth century the tomb evolved into a regional centre of Shi‘a pilgrimage, with a local anjuman, the Anjuman-i-Mu‘in-us-Za’irin, set up to preserve the compound and provide for visiting attendees and pilgrims; moreover, Nasir Husain would offer annual sermons here on the anniversary of Nor-ullah’s death and during Muharram, which would be among the best-known such occasions in north India.8 The construction of new Shi‘a institutions during this period was perhaps even more conspicuous in some of the smaller towns. Amroha, for instance, saw in three short decades between the 1860s and the 1880s the establishment of a new Shi‘a jama‘ masjid, a couple of ‘eidgahs and a remarkable number of imambaras. Imambara Shabbir ‘Ali (founded 1868), Imambara Shaikh Abdullah and Imambara Misma’t ul-Chaji

7

8

The famed Ghufran-i-Maab imambara and Imambara Akram-ullah Khan, both major imambaras, were restored in the early twentieth century, on the back of donations requested by the mujtahids during All India Shi‘a Conference sessions. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-cha¯rho¯m, munaqı¯ da 10–12 October 1910 (Lucknow 1911), pp. 121–2. The Anjuman-i-Ta‘mir-i-Masajid was formed in Lucknow to construct and maintain Shi‘a mosques in the city, and the Anjuman Mushir ul-Iman appeared to be conducting similar work in the decaying muhalla of Rustamnagar. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-ichhata¯, munaqı¯ da 18–20 October 1912 (Lucknow, 1913), pp. 71–2. Hasan, Tazkira-i-Majı¯ d, pp. 1–7; ‘Maza¯r-e-shahı¯d-e-sa¯lis’, Sajjad Nasir ‘Abaqati Collection, Lucknow.


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(both c. 1870), Imambara Randon (1878) and Imambara Miswa’t ul-Jiwani (1880s) were just a few of the larger examples.9 Indeed, while some new imambaras were free-standing edifices with public access, in other cases they were simply annexes in the homes or courtyards of Shi‘a families, intermediary spaces bridging public and private to which neighbourhood residents might be invited on holy days. Rather than viewing the multiplication of religious buildings as symptomatic of a uniform Shi‘a religious renewal, it is best understood in terms of evolving social conditions in these towns. Many of these institutions were established upon generous donations or bequests by established noble families, whether ex-courtly pensioners in Lucknow or landholding families in rural townships. These communities had been variously challenged after 1857 by a combination of land reform, political disenfranchisement and social change, and it seems that the formation of new religious institutions was a mechanism frequently used to combat perceived threats to their own profile. Imambaras, for instance those named above, would often carry their founders’ family names, as typically would some of the majlis sermons or ta‘ziya processions connected to them. They therefore allowed sharif families to communicate their piety and assert their enduring social relevance within their towns, by parading their headship of neighbourhood religious activity.10 Indeed, this assertion of substantive involvement in muhalla life was a striking feature of many of the new religious buildings established in the later decades of the nineteenth century. In Nawabi Lucknow, we are told that the imambaras maintained by noble or wealthy families were often closed to the general public, or the lower classes were asked to leave before the majlis was offered.11 In an apparent departure from this pre-1857 function of sharif social closure, many of the founders of newer imambaras seemed to be actively reaching out to the local population. Their proprietors actively organized public majalis, and often admitted, or allotted visiting times for, assumedly peripheral sections of the population, such as the Sunni and Hindu residents of their neighbourhoods, or women.12 As often enshrined in their founding documents, these imambaras were thus

9

10 12

Sayyid ‘Ali ‘Abbas Naqvi, Amro¯ha ke¯ a‘za¯-kha¯ne¯ (Amroha, 2003), pp. 68–70, 78–9, 91–3, 125; Hashmi, Ta¯rı¯ kh-i-Amro¯ha, pp. 367–71. Jones, ‘Local experiences’, pp. 887–9. 11 Ali, Observations on the Mussalmauns, p. 27. In Amroha, for instance, these included Imambara Miswa’t ul-Wahiden (founded 1873–4), Imambara Miswa’t ul-Khatun-i-Daulat (c. 1880s) and Imambara Imamiya Khatun (1928). Naqvi, Amro¯ha ke¯ a‘za¯-kha¯ne¯, pp. 78–9, 90–2, 140–1.

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taking on an enhanced social function, bidding for greater inclusivity and public attendance. Another factor that may have further encouraged the establishment of these numerous public religious institutions lies in changes to the administration of Islamic endowments (waqfs) during this period. Most of these new buildings were attached to, and funded by, newly created public waqfs, deeds set up to fund their running in perpetuity. In pre-colonial north India Muslim elites had long set up ‘family trusts’ (waqf-ala’laulad), as a way of consolidating their fortunes, keeping their estates intact and preventing their subdivision or sale by their heirs. However, after the Religious Endowments Act XX of 1863, British legal discourse and the colonial courts alike conceived family waqfs as invalid, and refused to recognize their foundation; waqf was conceived instead as an ‘Islamic’ institution, referring only to trusts of public, religious or charitable benefit.13 One might speculate that, if a family could no longer protect its fortunes through private waqf, then it could at least protect the family name and legacy in a different way, by establishing a public waqf for ‘pious purposes’. As such, it may be that this particularity of colonial interpretation, insisting that waqfs had to be connected with some already established or newly founded public religious institution, itself contributed to the formation of new mosques, imambaras and other buildings in some numbers after the 1860s. In turn, it is perhaps unsurprising that the founders or trustees of these institutions should seek to introduce distinguishing features into the customs and practices associated with them, in order to assert their own distinctiveness and make their wider municipal mark. We look at further examples related to Muharram below, but let us first examine one of the most contentious of these new innovations: the reconstruction of the Shi‘a azan (call to prayer) in particular mosques within several towns of the United Provinces from the 1880s. The Shi‘a azan in north India had long been largely coextensive with the Sunni equivalent, until the introduction of the phrase ‘Alı¯ wa¯lı¯ -Alla¯h va khalı¯ fa bila fasil (‘Ali, the beloved of God and Caliph without interruption), implying that the first three Caliphs were usurpers, rather than the predecessors of ‘Ali. The roots of this Shi‘a azan lay not in India, but in Safavid and Qajar Iran, where it had long been

13

Asaf A. A. Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan Law, 4th edn (Delhi, 2003 [1949]), pp. 301–2; Gregory Kozlowski, Muslim endowments and society in British India (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 150–1.


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adopted as a means of consolidating Shi‘ism as the state religion and communicating the state’s advancing hegemony over customary observance.14 The phrase was certainly known in India as a du‘a (prayer) for private recitation,15 but its novel inclusion in the azan meant that it was now reconstituted as a pioneering public declaration, an attempt to ‘sacralize’ the urban public space.16 The first prominent application of this phrase appears to have been in 1887 in Allahabad, when a local maulvi, Sayyid Aqa, inscribed the phrase into the wall of a mosque he was building, and further incorporated it into the azan.17 This set an influential precedent, with the phrase quickly appearing in the azan of one Shi‘a mosque in Lucknow in the same year, in the neighbourhood of Daliganj north of the river. It also appeared almost simultaneously in at least two other neighbourhood mosques in the city which were similarly small and peripheral: one in Maulviganj, and one in Chauk.18 What seemed initially like an audacious fringe custom was given credence in the months after its insertion by a fatwa issued by the mujtahid Muhammad Ibrahim, the peshnamaz of the Asafi mosque, declaring the amended azan to be legitimate since it was incumbent upon the Shi‘a to declare ‘Ali as the first Caliph.19 Within the next couple of years the renovated azan also appeared in certain mosques in Jaunpur and Amroha,20 and ultimately would develop into a common custom across South Asia. In Lucknow the insertion of the bila fasil declaration provoked a public riot in the vicinity of the Daliganj mosque, the most intense Shi‘a–Sunni violence hitherto seen in the city.21 In all the towns named, Sunni residents took the issue to court, arguing that the azan was an ‘innovation’ (bid‘a) of recent 14

15

16

17

18 19

20

21

Liyakat Takim, ‘From bid‘a to sunna: the wilaya of ‘Ali in the Shi‘i adhan’, in Paul Luft and Colin Turner, eds., Shi‘ism: critical concepts in Islamic studies (Abingdon, 2008), vol. III. Ali, Observations on the Mussalmauns, pp. 66–8, 72. This account, written in Lucknow in the 1830s, suggests that recitations of such verses were conducted in private contexts but generally left out of the azan. Cf. Lara Deeb, An enchanted modern: gender and public piety in Shi‘i Lebanon (Princeton, 2006), pp. 59–60. Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, pp. 41–2. This individual was also a writer of religious tracts, one of which was a somewhat typical biography of the Imams. Sayyid Aqa, Taqrı¯ r-ul-‘alı¯ ‘ate¯n´ (Lucknow, 1895–6). Mehdi, Sawa¯nih-i-haya¯t, pp. 18–20; Shamsi, Shı¯ ‘a–Sunnı¯ qazı¯ ya, pp. 86–7. Mehdi, Sawa¯nih-i-haya¯t, pp. 21–3. A comparable fatwa was later issued by the mujtahid Muhammad Baqir Rizvi. Rizvi, Farishtga¯n jaha¯n´, p. 19. Petition from Musammat Zainab of Darbar Kalam mosque and others to Government of India, 10 October 1895, GAD No. 106C(64)/1896, UPSA; The Shias of Amroha to Lieutenant-Governor MacDonnell, 19 December 1895, ibid. Mehdi, Sawa¯nih-i-haya¯t, pp. 18–20.

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invention, and should be removed. Additionally, the new azan began to earn the attentions of many of the most senior Sunni ‘ulama of north India, whose fatwas issued against the azan did much to convert a local controversy specific to particular cities into a key subject of many of the earliest and most injurious Shi‘a–Sunni disputes.22 However, to interpret this new azan as indicative of a uniform religious resurgence and a deliberate severance by Shi‘a residents from their Sunni counterparts – certainly the line taken by many Sunni plaintiffs in their legal deliberations – is somewhat simplistic. Rather, this new custom seemed to be an attempt by particular neighbourhood leaderships to assert their own relevance against what was perceived to be the establishment Shi‘ism in their own towns. This is clear from the fact that the new azan was implemented not in older religious institutions, but in mosques that might be seen as unestablished or peripheral. In Allahabad, Khalifa bila fasil was first recited in a mosque that had only just been built, on a new waqf trust. In Lucknow, the mosque in question was located far from the city’s central religious edifices, in a neighbourhood on the geographical and social periphery of the city’s main Muslim quarters. Equally, the fact that the new azan was established so quickly after the reopening of the city’s central Asafi mosque, the visible symbol of Nawabi grandeur, and the re-commencement of Friday prayers there in 1884, is hardly likely to be a coincidence: the guardians of the Daliganj, Maulviganj and Chauk mosques may well have used the azan to communicate their neighbourhood independence from the city’s major clerical establishment. In this sense, the retrospective approval offered by some of the city’s major mujtahids detracts in no way from the innovative nature of the custom at the point at which it was initiated. In Jaunpur and Amroha, meanwhile, just like Lucknow, the azan appeared at a time when the religious life of these towns was experiencing a comprehensive period of transition; not only were new religious institutions being created in numbers, but a series of ongoing court cases related to the administration of religious institutions such as mosques, trusts and graveyards were being fought.23 All of this binds the new azan to towns experiencing a context of particular religious flux. In this environment, the trustees and imams of particular mosques used new innovations and creativities to earn for themselves public visibility, and establish their own relevance in a changing urban landscape. 22

23

Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi, Imda¯d ul-fata¯we¯, tartı¯ b-i-jadı¯ d, jald-i-shashum (Deoband, 1974), pp. 334–5. Jones, ‘Local experiences’, passim; Michael Dodson, ‘Jaunpur, ruination and conservation during the colonial era’, in Indra Sengupta and Daud Ali, eds., Knowledge production, pedagogy and institutions in colonial India (New York, forthcoming (2011)).


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The two examples given here, of new religious building and public sloganeering in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, both caution against imposing grand narratives of communal unanimity on religious change. The conquests of the urban public space described represented manifestations of alternative, often competing, prognoses for religious observance and practice which emerged out of the changing social environments of Shi‘a communities in urban neighbourhoods. Far from indicating a singular consolidation of a uniform Shi‘a revival, they represented the diversification of the urban religious landscape through the activities of separate neighbourhood leaderships. To use the phrase of another analyst, this might be described as a form of ‘inter-muhalla competition’ between different organizations, trustees and preachers, fragmenting more inclusive forms of ‘civic’ culture into increasingly decentralized sites of activity more reflective of identities of class, occupation and muhalla.24 While the reworking of the azan was perhaps among the earliest, and most controversial, of such innovations, there were multiple further modifications to Shi‘a rites, recitations and practice, all of which form the major subject of further sections of this chapter.

khatib s, zakir s, munazir s: spoken religion In comparison with the rich sources available for the study of Shi‘a publishing, the re-creation of the spoken word obviously presents more difficulties for historians. Nevertheless, sources do seem to indicate that, whether manifested by the figure of the sermonizer (khatib), reciter of the Karbala story (zakir), or religious debater (munazir), there was an increasing prioritization of oratorical skill as the basis on which religious authority was designated. The previous chapter indicated how, in the first three decades of the twentieth century, a number of mujtahids had expressly sought to create a new body of wa‘izin and zakirs to communicate the passions of Shi‘ism to the pious public. And while not all preachers and sermonizers appearing during these decades emerged from within the madrasa network, the emphasis on public speaking was a consistent trend among both formal ‘ulama and informally educated lay maulvis alike. This section examines, in turn, the development of the majlis sermon in colonial India, and the convening of public religious debates (munazara). In each case it emphasizes how the moves towards vernacular and 24

Nita Kumar, Artisans of Banaras: popular culture and identity, 1880–1986 (Delhi, 1995), pp. 211–12.

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more emotive communication not only enhanced popular engagement, but brought to the fore a younger generation of religious speakers whose reputation was built on exuberant, and frequently contentious, public speaking. The majlis sermon is, in its broadest sense, a narration of the Karbala tragedy, ruminating on the sufferings of Imam Husain, his daughter Sakina, his standard-bearer Hazrat ‘Abbas and other martyrs. It is performed by a designated zakir, before crowds ranging from mass assemblies in the biggest city imambaras to private audiences in the homes of particular families. While most frequently conducted during Muharram, these sermons would also be held on other occasions throughout the year, including, for instance, on the days during which contemporary sayyid families would remember their own ancestors. The majlis was not of a single standardized format; different types of sermons were known, including the rendition of the Karbala tragedy from Arabic sources and sayings (hadis khwani), the recital of dirge poetry (marsiya), the vernacular, anecdotal telling of events (vaqi‘a-khwani), or even sung dirges with musical accompaniment (noha or soz khwani). However, what is uniformly clear is that from Nawabi times onwards there were numerous active zakirs trained in one or more of these forms of sermonizing, and that the art of instilling emotion in the crowd was every bit as important as the sermon’s content itself. ‘Abd ul-Halim Sharar, noting the expressive quirks of speech and body language used by professional narrators to intensify their performance, described how the misfortunes of the Prophet’s family were evoked ‘in such elegant language that people want to go on listening and weeping. The eloquence of these narrators has in fact made ordinary story-telling appear insipid.’25 The pre-colonial development of the majlis sermon has been amply documented elsewhere,26 but in the period of most concern to us here, the later nineteenth century and beyond, it gradually evolved in two principal, and interloped, ways: a shift of language from Arabic or Persian into the vernacular; and a shift of form from poetry into prose. In Nawabi Lucknow narrative renditions (khwani) of the Karbala tragedy were often based on Persian prototypes, a linguistic medium which bound them to the court and the Persian-educated nobility.27 This

25 26

27

Sharar, Lucknow, p. 215. E.g. Hyder, Reliving Karbala; Toby Howarth, The Twelver Shi‘a as a Muslim minority in India: pulpit of tears (London, 2005), pp. 3–20. Howarth, The Twelver Shi‘a as a Muslim minority, p. 14.


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perhaps helps to explain the vitality within popular Shi‘ism during the late Nawabi and early colonial period of marsiya, poetic tellings of the tale, which were more commonly conceived in Urdu and hence more intelligible to a wider public. The Urdu poetry of Mir Babar ‘Ali Anis (1802–1874) and Mirza Salamat ‘Ali Dabir (1803–1875) in particular led the marsiya genre and, especially around the middle decades of the nineteenth century, became the major medium of many majalis, and an essential tool for enhancing its accessibility.28 However, after 1857 the noble commissions upon which many classic khwani composers and marsiya poets had depended began to dry up, and hence the earlier significance of both classical recitations and poetic marsiya alike began to recede.29 Gradually, with funding for majlis gatherings coming from a younger generation of patrons and hosts less acquainted with the classic Arabic– Persian references of the khwani, or the careful twists of grammar and meaning that were common to the Urdu marsiya, there was a seeming preference for majlis sermons delivered in simpler, vernacular prose. This shift towards a vernacular form of sermonizing is evidenced by the fact that some of those regarded as the most significant religious authorities of the early twentieth century are simultaneously those with reputations as the most gifted Urdu orators. One key example is Sayyid Sibte Hasan (Fig 2.1), a scholar who carried the twin distinctions of being one of twentieth-century India’s most prominent ‘ulama, and one of the bestknown khutba and majlis deliverers of the early decades of the century. Encapsulating the orientation of many ‘ulama towards the task of public communication, he earned the title Khatib-i-‘Azam (‘Great Orator’). As is written in one contemporaneous tazkira, ‘Maulana Sibte Hasan was in all reality perfected in oratory, and oratory was perfected in him. The mimbar [speaking stand] was given grace by him, and he was its grace. If the skill of remembrance (fan-i-zakri) had come from the heavens, then he gave it the greatest throne.’30 Sibte Hasan embodies perfectly some of the transformations taking place in the Shi‘a clergy, and the way in which religious authority was designated, through the early twentieth century. While not a formal mujtahid, the fact that he was often declared as such by lay sources is evidence of the extent to which formal clerical authority,

28

29 30

See C. M. Naim, ‘The art of the Urdu Marsiya’, in Milton Israel and N. K. Wagle, eds., Islamic society and culture: essays in honour of Professor Aziz Ahmad (Delhi, 1983); Matthews, ed., The battle of Karbala. Howarth, The Twelver Shi‘a as a Muslim minority, pp. 15–16. Imamiya Mission, Khatı¯ b-i-a¯l-i-Muhammad, p. 61.

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fi g u r e 2 . 1 . Maulana Sayyid Sibte Hasan (courtesy of Mustafa Husain Asif Ja’isi).

and skill as a public orator and narrator of majalis, were becoming increasingly mixed and conflated at the level of popular religion. His reputation was built not on his educational qualifications or family reputation, but on the strength of his oratory – in both poetry and prose – which was mostly self-written rather than adapted from earlier sources, and was


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noted for being conducted exclusively in Urdu, rather than Arabic or Persian.31 Hand in hand with the turn towards Urdu was another change in the character of the majlis: the development of a freer, more open and expressive style of preaching than the more regulated recitations of earlier decades. Throughout the later decades of the nineteenth century many of the most significant majlis speakers in Lucknow were working primarily from Arabic and Persian sources and, as such, largely sticking to established prototypes for recitation.32 Thereafter there was an increasing tendency among sermonizers to take ownership of the Karbala tragedy themselves, using their own Urdu renditions as the means by which tellings of the Karbala story could be popularized. Reciters of sermons were apparently more willing to depart from the traditional format of the sermon drawn from established readings, and were increasingly flamboyant in their tellings. One compiler of a number of traditions on the sufferings of Husain, for instance, described clearly the direction that the majlis sermon was taking, with some trepidation. He noted the recent appearance of ‘more zakirs’ plying their wares in Lucknow, and an increasing tendency among them to relinquish reference to hadis and Arabic traditions, conducting the whole purely in unreferenced, unregimented Urdu. There was also a tendency among these zakirs, he said, to claim possession of the whole Karbala tradition rather than, as before, specific moments or aspects of it, depending on the significance of the day and their own personal expertise.33 Equally, perhaps in contrast to the sense of abstraction and metaphor that marked earlier marsiya poetry, the majlis by around the close of the nineteenth century carried two important additional developments, both of which were heavily bound with this shift of stylistic medium. First, there was the increasing emphasis upon the ‘ibadat (worship, or religious observance) to be drawn from the Karbala story. Using the majlis sermon not just as a historical rumination but as a moment for addressing the public on points of their own conduct and moral obligations gave the majlis a prominent place in the project of public instruction and propagation, as discussed in the previous chapter. Second, there was an 31 32

33

Ibid., pp. 36–9. A number of printed texts were compilations, with translations, of Arabic Traditions and sayings relevant to the commemoration of the Imams, suggesting that zakirs were working from original scriptures in their original language. For one example see ‘Ali, Khula¯sa’t ulmasa¯’ı¯ b, passim. ‘Ali, Ya¯dga¯r-i-au¯lı¯ ya¯n´, pp. 9–11; cf. Imamiya Mission, Khatı¯ b-i-a¯l-i-Muhammad, pp. 7–9.

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empathic focus upon the ‘minutiae’ (juziyat) of Husain’s afflictions (masa’ib), an enhanced focus on his sorrow and suffering (gham).34 Going into the details of Husain’s ordeals in this way perhaps gave the sermon an enhanced sense of passion and emotional immediacy. There are several reasons why recitations may have become even more dramatic and uninhibited around the turn of the century. One could relate to the wishes of their patrons, who would traditionally organize and fund the visiting speakers. With pressured noble, zamindari and wasiqadari households attempting to bolster their local relevance by holding the best majalis in their own neighbourhoods or family imambaras, there was perhaps a tendency to seek out the most animated and flamboyant sermonizers. The other relates to the professional needs of the zakirs themselves. The number of individuals seeking to act as occupational preachers and mourners seemed to be increasing in the early twentieth century; for not only were madrasas creating a larger number of ‘ulama to fulfil the role, but, with the turn to fully vernacularized majlis, a formal madrasa education in Arabic and Persian was not even necessarily needed. On top of this came the twin pressures of, first, the fact that many traditional patrons did not have the income that they once did, and second, that the greater ease of travel in the late nineteenth century had made would-be zakirs more mobile, no longer constrained to serving their own congregations but able to offer sermons elsewhere.35 For all these reasons, professional sermonizers increasingly found themselves in competition with others for patronage, and were forced to earn their invitations. This religious marketplace thus perhaps favoured individuals who were able to make the most dramatic impression, bringing to the fore those with the most eloquent or emotive vernacular delivery. The ever more dynamic, expressive and free-flowing character of the majlis sermon meant that, in turn, the tone often became more combative, or openly ‘sectarian’ in tone and content. The epitome of this trend perhaps came with Haji Maqbool Ahmad, a maulvi whose appearance in the early twentieth century was widely interpreted as having been a turning-point in the revitalization of Shi‘ism. A Sunni orphan of a courtly Delhi family by background, he converted to Shi‘ism by choice in his teens. Having gained early fame as a compelling speaker in Delhi, in the early

34 35

Ibid. The increase in the number of zakirs travelling north India to offer sermons is a general observation evident from the biographies of ‘ulama, especially Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, passim.


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years of the twentieth century he toured the fertile ground of the United Provinces, where he became a renowned preacher of khutba and majlis sermons. His reputation for expressive, popular speaking was perhaps unrivalled, so much so that (doubtlessly embellished) accounts describe congregations of hundreds or even thousands of attendees gathering, whenever word circulated of his presence.36 Frequently, his emotive speeches were described as pushing the boundaries of convention or acceptability. This was especially true during a string of consequential majlis recitations in 1904 in Lucknow, Jaunpur and Fyzabad in which, departing from the standard format of reflecting on the sufferings of the martyrs, he recited what is known as tabarra, verbal curses directed at the first three Caliphs and Companions of the Prophet.37 Like the bila fasil phrase discussed above, the custom of tabarra recitation was not an innovation in itself, being known in the context of personal du‘a or private majlis.38 However, its application by Maqbool Ahmad as phrases to be chanted by the crowds assembled at a large public majlis was highly contentious. The intervention poisoned Shi‘a–Sunni relations, led to Sunnis deserting majlis gatherings which they had hitherto attended, and led to the colonial state launching a court case against Maqbool Ahmad on charges of blasphemy.39 Maqbool Ahmad was loathed by many Shi‘a. He seemingly had few formal connections with Lucknow’s mujtahids, and he was drawn into rows with established formal ‘ulama, who sought to distance themselves from his contentious reputation.40 Meanwhile, some of the older nobility criticized him for delivering sermons in ‘common Hindustani’ rather than a chaste Perso-Arabic vocabulary.41 However, he exemplifies perfectly the kind of zakir appearing in the early twentieth century who, due to the demands of the developing public sphere and the occupational need to cultivate a public impression, performed with vernacular fluency and frequent subversion and audacity. Maqbool Ahmad’s most significant legacy, as summarized by one tract, was his giving the majlis the ‘blend’ or ‘character’ of polemic (munazare ki amizish),42 a feature that it would retain as recited by a number of zakirs thereafter. No longer simply a vehicle for commemorating the Imams, the 36 37

38 40 42

Imamiya Mission, Khatı¯ b-i-a¯l-i-Muhammad, pp. 11–12. ‘Luckna’u ke¯ ması¯bat-zada Sunı¯o¯n´ kı¯ farya¯d o¯r va¯qa‘ı¯ asba¯b-i-ması¯bat’ (Lucknow, c. 1910), GAD No. 591/1908, UPSA, pp. 2–3. Ali, Observations on the Mussalmauns, p. 23. 39 Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, pp. 650–1. Ibid., pp. 646–7. 41 All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-chhata¯ 1912, p. 123. Imamiya Mission, Khatı¯ b-i-a¯l-i-Muhammad, p. 12.

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majlis by the twentieth century increasingly came to focus on the defamation of their killers, partly on account of the new pressures incumbent upon emerging preachers and mourners to speak with subversion and audacity. This tendency of the majlis to fuse with religious disputation is reflected vividly in an observation of Muhammad Amir Ahmad Khan, the Raja of Mahmudabad, a couple of decades later in the 1930s. A figure well versed in the traditional literary forms and format of the majlis, he lamented what he saw as the growing precedence of its theatrical elements over pious reflection. The traditional large majalis in Lucknow, funded by the royal elite and delivered by ‘men well versed’, he argued, had declined in favour of ‘many small majalis’, lacking an orienting centre and offered by preachers who lacked the learned eminence of the senior mujtahids. Linked to this, he argued, the majlis had become increasingly antagonistic in nature, and there was an evident tendency ‘to convert these majalis into a debating society for attacking the beliefs of people of other sects’. He commented upon ‘the recent tendency of the Majalis to develop into a munazara . . . This tendency is neither good nor natural for Majalis . . . Majalis are sacred institutions, and they should not be dragged down from their high pedestals to serve such low ends.’43 If the majlis turned into one vehicle for the injection of munazara into seasonal religious life, then the holding of clerical debates was an even more extreme public expression of Shi‘a–Sunni difference. The holding of staged rhetorical duals between scholars of alternative religious traditions was hardly new to north India, and certainly not to Shi‘ism; Shi‘a–Sunni debates had taken place in late Nawabi Lucknow, and indeed, it has been convincingly shown that cultures of verbal religious disputation partially developed in early nineteenth century Lucknow through the holding of debates between Shi‘a scholars and Christian missionaries.44 However, public munazara expanded greatly in the opening years of the twentieth century, and just as genres of clerical writing were transformed through the nineteenth century by the encounter with Urdu and the focus on a public readership, so the kinds of ‘harmonious, elegantly conducted 43

44

Syed Ali Zaheer, ed., ‘The dead past’, MS (1950), Kazim Zaheer Collection, Delhi, pp. 112–13. Powell, Muslims and missionaries, pp. 118–19. Cultures of debating among all religious communities in colonial India have been widely attributed to the influence of Christian missionary activities, and this certainly applies to the Shi‘a; some Shi‘a texts and newspapers attacked Christian ideas, and established a comparison of the sufferings of Imam Husain and Christ as a point of contention. See Ghulam Haider Khan, Tehqı¯ q-i-Ja‘farı¯ (Lucknow, 1888); Mukhbir-i-Alam (Moradabad), 23 December 1912, UPNNR.


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discussion’ among the Muslim ashraf in Nawabi Awadh bore only passing resemblance to the ‘bitter disputation’ and bazaari altercations that characterized religious debates in the early twentieth.45 Public munazara was associated with particular scholars, on both sides, who crafted reputations as gifted debaters. Among the Shi‘a, once again, was Maqbool Ahmad, an orator who, after arriving in Lucknow in 1904, is said to have called munazara on a regular basis, sometimes even failing to attend the confrontations that he had organized.46 Of even more influence, and a turning-point in the public practice of munazara, was the appearance of ‘Abd ul-Shakoor, the Sunni polemicist discussed in the previous chapter, who effectively built a clerical career on his participation in these debates. A particularly prominent spoken munazara for the year 1910, classic and representative of the practice in many respects, is worth describing in detail. According to published proceedings, a pamphlet was circulated in a Shi‘a mosque in Lucknow which, lacking the name of author or publisher, praised the Caliphs ‘Umar and Mu‘awiya. As a result of the argument provoked, the involvement was secured of a Shi‘a maulvi named Mirza ‘Abd ul-Husain, an Arabic tutor from Hyderabad who claimed to be planning to convert the Nizam to Shi‘ism, and Sayyid ‘Ali Jaunpuri, an affiliate of Madrasa Nazimiya.47 Pledging to defend their religion, they organized a debate with ‘Abd ul-Shakoor. The ensuing debate, unravelling through a number of sessions over several days, concerns the virtue of these supposed Caliphs, with the Shi‘a representatives quoting their Traditions to blame them for major military defeats and for fleeing from the Prophet’s side in battle.48 Great length is also devoted to Shakoor’s trademark claim: that Shi‘as doubted the infallibility of the Qur’an, and thus had relinquished their right to be deemed true Muslims. Tellingly, the debate’s Shi‘a protagonists made the claim that key portions of the Qur’an had been excised by the enemies of the Prophet, a heavily uncompromising and far from consensual belief in Shi‘ism, castigating the Sunni Caliphs for their partiality and innovation in conducting the task of compiling the sacred book.49 But the debate encompasses a much wider breadth of subjects, including a debate over Shi‘a sayyid genealogy to the Prophet’s family, the ethics of the Shi‘a practice of taqiya, and Shi‘a convictions in God’s infallibility. Of course,

45 46 47 48

Powell, Muslims and missionaries, pp. 263–4. ‘Luckna’u ke¯ ması¯bat-zada Sunı¯o¯n´’, pp. 2–3. Shı¯ ‘a-va-Sunnı¯ ke¯ muna¯zare¯ san 1328 hijrı¯ par tehqı¯ qı¯ nazar (Lucknow, 1910), pp. 1–3. Ibid., pp. 7–12. 49 Ibid., pp. 68–77.

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this Shi‘a-written text proclaims a decisive victory for ‘Abd ul-Husain who, it is said, maintained perfect composure while ‘Abd ul-Shakoor became increasingly aggressive in his self-defence, and inarticulate and agitated in his responses.50 In common with the overt tablighi motifs and functions of much written disputation, as previously discussed, one stylistic flourish in this and other accounts of public munazara debates is the figure of a neutral spectator, in this case an Arabic-speaking Hindu pandit, who is presented as being so persuaded by ‘Abd ul-Husain that he comes round to the Shi‘a side.51 And, in another frequently repeated feature, we see both sides declaring victory, even hanging up posters around the city to proclaim it. Similar controversies, described as an ‘echo of the pamphlet controversy in Lucknow’ and imitative of the munazara culture and style that the city had fostered, quickly spread to other towns.52 In Fyzabad in 1915 efforts were made to draw ‘Abd ul-Shakoor into public debates with a local Shi‘a writer.53 Amroha saw a series of public debates between Shi‘a and Sunni representatives around 1919–20, with local sharif patrons inviting Sunni maulvis and the Shi‘a ‘ulama Sibte Hasan and Maqbool Ahmad, no doubt augmenting their own local standing in the process. The debate, said to have occurred in the town’s bazaar and presided over by a Hindu cloth merchant in order to guarantee fairness, took place largely on the question of whether the Shi‘a faith could be justified on the basis of the Qur’an; each side, it seems, accused the other of trying to instil partisanship and division within the Muslim population.54 The obvious popularity of such occasions entirely contradicts the view of some modern observers that munazaras were matters solely for theologians, eliciting little popular attention.55 In such towns, public munazaras apparently became highly anticipated public events, and increasingly took on the character of overt theatre. More than simple discussion of theological particulars, they were said to consider only ‘questions of the utmost importance’ (qiyamat-i-haisa-i-awal).56 Debates 50 51

52

53

54 56

Ibid., pp. 9–10. A similar figure is present in the account of the Amroha munazara described below, in which the debate is in fact delayed until a non-Muslim Arabic speaker is found. Ahmad, Shikast-i-‘azı¯ m, pp. 3–5. To Chief Secretary, 4 August 1914, GAD No. 480/1914, UPSA; From Commissioner of Lucknow Division, 20 July 1914, ibid. ‘Notice’ and ‘Proclamation of the Shi‘as for debate accepted’, A. W. McNair to Ferard, 20 July 1914, GAD No. 480/1914, UPSA. Ahmad, Shikast-i-‘azı¯ m, passim. 55 Hasan, From pluralism to separatism, pp. 36–7. Ahmad, Shikast-i-‘azı¯ m, p. 2.


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had a carefully selected audience which balanced religious communities; scribes were present to record the proceedings, and scholars on hand to consult classical texts for proofs; and the disputants were requested to speak in a clear and stylized manner, for the aid of the scribes and attendees.57 Such debates exuded much of the same sense of occasion and excitement as majlis congregations, and became a useful outlet by which particular scholars could boost their personal profile and prospects for further invitations. These two examples of, respectively, the majlis sermon and the public debate demonstrate how public religious oratory in the early twentieth century became increasingly expressive and, ultimately, subversive. The majlis sermon, formerly often a routinized recitation of established Urdu and Perso-Arabic prototypes, changed greatly from the close of the nineteenth century, becoming more impassioned in its anger towards Husain’s killers, and driving away non-Shi‘a communities who may previously have attended such sermons. The public munazara, meanwhile, fulfilled a similar role to polemical literature, in that it allowed maulvis to communicate the specific details of the Shi‘a religion to its followers, by contrasting them with their opposites. Outsiders often looked with bemusement at these cultures of deliberately antagonistic public speaking, situating them as evidence of Muslim extremism and intolerance. However, the move towards more emotive, expansive and improvised oratory by speakers was perhaps a symptom of a more competitive Shi‘a religious marketplace. With royal patronage having dried up, an Urdu-speaking audience replacing older congregations of Persianate nobility, and more sermonizers and debaters available and seeking invitations to speak, it was incumbent upon would-be reciters to speak with passion, combativeness and provocation. Frequently, this could appear as a more ‘sectarian’ mode of public communication.

karbala in practice: the renovation of muharram Muharram, the period of commemoration for the slaying of Imam Husain and his family at Karbala, has always represented the centre of the Shi‘a religious calendar, and so much attention has been given to Muharram in writing on Indian Shi‘ism that it has sometimes been portrayed as virtually

57

Ibid., pp. 4–5, 10–11.

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synonymous with the religion itself.58 The month of Muharram, and the first ten days (known as the ‘Ashra) in particular, would be marked by majlis gatherings, as discussed above, but also large public azadari (mourning) processions, unravelling according to a set calendar of commemoration for a succession of particular martyrs. But in every town where it was observed, the centrepiece of Muharram was its tenth day of ‘Ashura, the day on which Imam Husain’s death is remembered. This day is marked by the conduct of ta‘ziyadari, the parading of representations of the tomb (ta‘ziyas) of Husain and others. Made in materials ranging from precious metals to wood or paper, these effigy-tombs were escorted in pageants along prescribed routes to sites of actual or improvised burial (known as karbalas, after the site of Husain’s death in Iraq). The custom of ta‘ziyadari, while not exclusive to South Asia, is associated with the Indian subcontinent in particular, and in Nawabi and colonial Lucknow alike these ta‘ziyas were taken out in their hundreds, ranging from major public processions organized by the Husainabad Trust and other municipal institutions, to more modest routines in which individual families commissioned the making of their own ta‘ziyas and carried them out either alone or with a few acquaintances. These ta‘ziya processions would also be accompanied by demonstrative expressions of grief, as marchers engaged in chest-beating (matam), or even, in some ardent cases, self-flagellation with blades on chains (chako ki matam), in remembrance of Husain’s ordeals. The exuberance of these commemorations meant that, seasonally, the visual and aural landscapes of Shi‘adominated towns would come alive as spaces of intense public piety. The story of Husain’s martyrdom, or the ‘Karbala paradigm’ as it has come to be called in some works, has carried the kind of internal malleability which has allowed it at different historical moments to absorb and project a diversity of meanings.59 Consequently, as has been shown in a large body of literature, the rites and customs associated with Muharram in South Asia have been able to carry a multitude of complex and often

58

59

For useful studies of Muharram in South Asia, among many others, see Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 101–19; Ali, Observations on the Mussalmauns, passim; Howarth, The Twelver Shi‘a as a Muslim minority, passim; Hollister, The Shi‘a of India, pp. 164–80; Vernon Schubel, Religious performance in contemporary Islam: Shi‘i devotional rituals in South Asia (Columbia, 1993); Hyder, Reliving Karbala. ‘The story can be elaborated or abbreviated. It provides models for living and a mnemonic for thinking about how to live: there is a set of parables and moral lessons all connected with or part of the story of Karbala . . . to which all of life’s problems can be referred’: Fischer, Iran, p. 21.


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contradictory social and religious functions. Some studies have assessed the rituals of Muharram as ‘the matrix of community formation’, bringing together Shi‘a of all social groups, and from the urban hearts and rural outlands of particular towns, through collective reflection and ritual observance.60 Coming from another direction, others have emphasized how Muharram rites could allow nominally subjugated groups, such as lower classes or women, to exercise their own religious agency separately from established norms of social or religious hierarchy.61 Others still have looked at the subversive tendencies of Muharram, arguing that its emotive practices had the ability to transport their practitioners out of the everyday and to provide an outlet for expressing feelings of injustice and social grievance.62 Studies focused on north India have often reached two combined sets of conclusions about Muharram. One is that Muharram was frequently adopted to shore up the social authority of the royals, landlords and aristocrats who often acted as its main patrons. It was they who took their places at the head of ta‘ziya processions and who commissioned majalis, often held in the name of their own families. Additional to this is the fact that the commemoration of the Prophet’s family by definition reinforced the social authority of noble families. Since contemporary sayyids claimed direct descent from the Imams, their practice of remembrance for their ancestors staked their ‘retained claim to the leadership of the community, or at least to a respected place in it’.63 In late Nawabi Lucknow the marsiya sermon itself was evidently directed towards a similar purpose of reflecting the high culture of the sayyids who largely commissioned such works; C. M. Naim has noted how, in Urdu marsiya, ‘the heroes . . . behave like the gentle-folks of Lucknow. Their social mores, marriage customs . . . are all Indian, specifically of the Muslim upper classes.’64 One can see the same message implicit in many instructive edicts 60 61

62

63

64

Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, p. 92. On women’s participation in Muharram see Mary Hegland, ‘Shi‘a rituals in Northwest Pakistan: the shortcomings and significance of resistance’, Anthropological Quarterly 76, 3 (2003); Diane D’Souza, ‘Devotional practices among Shia women in South India’, in Imtiaz Ahmad and Helmut Reifeld, eds., Lived Islam in South Asia: adaptation, accommodation and conflict (Delhi, 2004); Cole, Sacred space and holy war, pp. 138–60. Keith Hjortshoj, ‘Shi‘i identity and the significance of Muharram in Lucknow, India’, in Martin Kramer, ed., Shi‘ism, resistance and revolution (London, 1987). Werner Ende, ‘The flagellations of Muharram and the Shi‘ite ‘ulama’, in Paul Luft and Colin Turner, eds., Shi‘ism: critical concepts in Islamic studies (Abingdon, 2008), vol. III, p. 42. Naim, ‘The art of the Urdu Marsiya’, p. 109. The marriage in question is that of Qasim, son of Imam Hasan, to Sakina, daughter of Imam Husain, believed to have taken place on

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on Muharram practice published in the colonial period. Some justify commemoration on the grounds that the family of the Prophet are part of the ‘treasure’ (khazana) left by him for his followers; others highlight the distinctions of his descendants (the bet-i-nasb), and suggest that the Qur’an itself demands reverence for the relatives of the Prophet.65 Both these arguments could be seen as carrying the same connotation of upholding the social authority of contemporaneous Shi‘a sayyids. The other major conclusion often reached about Muharram is its ability to assimilate with the cultural norms of the diverse centres in which it is observed.66 The heterogeneity of Muharram as practised and the various manifestations of the Karbala paradigm around the subcontinent have long been taken as evidence of Muslim syncretism, and the abilities of Islamic customary observance to adjust entirely to the Indian cultural settings in which it found itself. Interestingly, this idea that the ritual acts of Muharram facilitated the consolidation of a distinctively Indian form of Shi‘ism was a line taken by some Shi‘a writers of the period themselves, who produced long tracts cataloguing the historic presence of ta‘ziyadari in the subcontinent across various religious communities, and spanning regions stretching from Madras to Kashmir. Such writings had two aims. On one hand, they vindicated the central importance and legitimacy of ta‘ziyadari within the Shi‘a religion as a whole. On the other, by emphasizing the ‘native’ (vatani) origins of ta‘ziya rites in South Asia, they conveyed the distinctly indigenous character, or ‘Indianness’ (hindustan karivaj), of Muharram practice and, by extension, of South Asian Shi‘ism itself.67 Somewhat tied to this is the fact that, for much of the nineteenth century, Muharram frequently seemed to serve the purpose of facilitating integration between religious communities in various towns of Awadh and Rohilkhand. At the heart of Muharram was a consensual sympathy for Iman Husain. To generalize somewhat, those north Indian Sunnis who observed Muharram used it to reflect upon Husain’s heroism and sacrifice,

65

66 67

the fields of Karbala, and commemorated in South Asia on 7 Muharram with the mehendi procession. Hakim Ahmad ‘Ali Khan, ‘Aza¯da¯rı¯ -i-ma¯h-i-Muharram (Lucknow, 1905), p. 8; Sa‘id ‘Abid ‘Ali, Fa¯zilat-na¯ma-i-ta‘zı¯ ya (Bahraich, 1908), p. 4. E.g. Pinault, Horse of Karbala, passim. This is the theme, for instance, of Sayyid Sibt ul-Hasan Hansvi, Aza¯da¯rı¯ kı¯ ta¯rı¯ kh (Lucknow, 1941), which traces the development of ta‘ziyadari within the subcontinent. Connected with this point, some studies have shown how Muharram processions could be used to express cultural ‘Indianness’ in diasporic contexts. E.g. Prabhu Mohapatra, ‘Unmaking the coolie: resistance and accommodation among Indian labour in the Caribbean’, in Arvind N. Das and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Work and social change in Asia: essays in honour of Jan Breman (Delhi, 2003), p. 56.


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and so conducted processions with some bravado. Conversely, the Shi‘a reflected sorrowfully upon his martyrdom and sufferings, remembering him with unmitigated sorrow. Yet, while there remained a significant reflective distance between the experiences of Shi‘a and Sunni and the consequent tones in which the observances were conducted, the cultivation of Sunni marsiya writers and majlis reciters under the Nawabs, and the fact that many Sunni scholars and writings vindicated the commemoration of Husain, reveals some degree of exchange between them.68 Certainly in Lucknow the mutual attendance of Shi‘a, Sunni and Hindu in the same congregations and processions encapsulated better than anything the integration and cosmopolitanism with which the city has always been associated. Accounts of Nawabi and post-Nawabi Lucknow’s Muharram classically showcased the ‘countless multitude of every rank’ seen to be participating in them, with many Shi‘a, Sunni and Hindus attending the same majlis gatherings and combining to take out ta‘ziya processions.69 Despite occasional eruptions of Shi‘a–Sunni tensions on the ‘Ashura day, some accounts claimed that ‘good feelings’ between Lucknow’s communities were ‘more prominent during the Muharram than on other ordinary days’.70 Further ensuring its role in the often-lauded communal integration of Lucknow, Muharram was a key moment in the interaction of the city’s economic classes. The Shi‘a nobility dispensed public charity on Muharram days, while the attendance of all social groups at karbala grounds cemented forms of cross-social religious participation. Equally, the displays and parades of Muharram provided labour to paraders and (frequently Sunni) ta‘ziya craftsmen, generating such revenue that it was an important economic occasion for the city.71 Muharram was applied to similar purpose in many rural Muslim qasbas, where the festival similarly bound together a Shi‘a-tinged civic culture which, through most of the nineteenth century, fostered cohesion between religious communities, and integrated the town’s landed nobilities with the wider population.72 As conducted in Shi‘a-dominated townships such as

68

69 70

71

72

E.g. Hansvi, Aza¯da¯rı¯ kı¯ ta¯rı¯ kh compiles edicts from Sunni and Sufi scholars in support of the remembrance of Husain, among them members of the Firangi Mahal and ‘ulama of the Qadiri order. Ali, Observations on the Mussalmauns, pp. 30–6. ‘Note’ by Sayyid Shahinshah Husain Rizvie, 15 December 1908, GAD No. 591/1908, UPSA. Ali, Observations on the Mussalmauns, pp. 36, 53–4; Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 93–5. E.g. Hasan, From pluralism to separatism, pp. 21, 37–40.

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fi g u r e 2 . 2 . Ta‘ziya procession, Lucknow, c. 1931 (H. A. N. Barlow Collection, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge).


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Mahmudabad, Bilgram and Amroha, the lavish displays of Muharram apparently held the centre of municipal life.73 Nor was the patronage of Muharram necessarily confined to the Shi‘a. In Barabanki, for instance, it was a local Sunni zamindar who led the processions on ‘Ashura, parading distinctly Shi‘a iconography such as the standards of tir and mashk (a representation of the water-holding vessel of Sakina), with little apparent opposition.74 Such customs demonstrate how Muharram, permeating the public life of individual towns and cities, was able to act as a cementing force between the Muslim nobilities and populations, as well as between religious communities. However, just as from the 1880s onwards the intervention of new patrons and a new generation of maulvis fundamentally changed both the urban landscape of major Shi‘a centres and the character of public addresses, so these same decades hardly left the conduct of azadari untouched. From the late nineteenth century a plethora of innovations were introduced, of sometimes striking departure from the Nawabi legacy. Among these were a number of novel ta‘ziya processions. In Lucknow perhaps the most significant was the juloos of Akbar ‘Ali Khan, a former Nawabi official, set up in the decades after annexation. Wrongly accused of murdering a British civilian and later acquitted by the courts, he was given permission by the district magistrate to convene a new mourning procession on a newly established waqf. Hasan al-‘Askari, the eleventh Imam, was chosen as the worthy subject of the procession, since his death-anniversary on 8 Rabi‘-ul-awwal was not widely marked in India. With a government condition of its establishment being that the procession would be conducted in silence to avoid excessive public disturbance, it became known colloquially as the chup (‘silent’) ta‘ziya procession; once established in Lucknow, the procession spread elsewhere, and remains widely observed in many South Asian Shi‘a centres today.75 This juloos is significant for several reasons. First, it encapsulates perfectly the remarkable ability of certain sayyid families to appropriate the sufferings of the Imams as a symbol of their own tribulations after 1857, and a means of mourning their own disenfranchisement. Second, the procession’s date, several weeks after the previously recognized conclusion of Muharram, 73

74

75

For the annual practice of Muharram in Amroha see Asghar Husain, Ta¯rı¯ kh-i-Asgharı¯ (Moradabad, 1889), pp. 25–32. ‘Luckna’u ke¯ ması¯bat-zada Sunı¯o¯n´’, p. 6; ‘The humble petition of Mirza Mohammad Jelaluddin Bakht Bahadur to Victor Alexander Bruce’, 30 September 1894, Home Department (Public), January 1895, Nos. 123–46, NAI. Shamsi, Shı¯ ‘a–Sunnı¯ qazı¯ ya, pp. 84–5.

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extended the functional period of active mourning for that substantial portion of the Shi‘a population who observed it. Underneath these major interventions of city-wide visibility, many individuals or families who participated in Muharram practice seemed keen to make their own – albeit much smaller – marks on public life, by introducing flamboyant and distinguishing features of their own into azadari rituals. Essays written in colonial Lucknow evoke numerous experimental innovations injected into the Muharram observances in the late nineteenth century. These included the attachment of novel decorations to ta‘ziyas (for instance, the overt display of the names and emblems of the so-called panjetani, the five figures of Muhammad, ‘Ali, Hasan, Husain and Fatima, who are held in veneration by the Shi‘a); the adoption of new battle standards (‘alams) to be carried in ta‘ziya processions; and the positioning of painted backdrops of the Karbala tragedy in private ta‘ziya-khanas and imambaras to aid with meditation on the tragedy.76 The veneration of ta‘ziyas and practice of violent matamdari also seemed to be on the rise in Lucknow during these years, with professional mourners allegedly being commissioned by certain wealthy city residents.77 Lucknow was not the only town to see such significant departures from earlier ritual convention around the turn of the century. In both Lucknow and Fyzabad the lives of the Imams were apparently dramatized by actors, a custom more resonant of the ‘passion plays’ that developed as a feature of Muharram in Qajar Iran than anything drawn from traditional Awadhi Shi‘ism.78 In Delhi, large new majlis gatherings and ta‘ziya processions were established in 1896–7 with the strong help of Sayyid Muhabbat ‘Ali, a city fishmonger. In Jaunpur the Shi‘a of one muhalla started to take out the mehendi procession to mark Sakina’s wedding on 7 Muharram, primarily a largely Lucknawi custom, for the first time around 1899.79 The expansion of innovative public rituals was perhaps even more pronounced in some of the smaller towns. In Amroha, symbolic representations such as the tabut (wooden tomb representation) and the duldul (a replica of

76 77

78

79

Sharar, Lucknow, pp. 216–17. Hidayat-ul-Akhbar (Moradabad), 8 May 1900, and Shahna-i-Hind (Meerut), 15 February 1903, UPNNR. An-Najm (Lucknow), 5 May 1910, ibid.; Sharar, Lucknow, p. 217. On the custom of the passion play in Iranian Shi‘ism see Peter Chelkowski, ed., Ta‘ziyeh: ritual and drama in Iran (New York, 1979). Ar-Riyaz (Jaunpur), 18 June 1900, UPNNR; Census of India 1961, Monograph series no.3: Moharram in two cities, Lucknow and Delhi (Delhi, 1962), pp. 55–7. For the background to the mehendi procession see n. 64 above.


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Husain’s steed), once again previously occasional exceptionalisms in north Indian Muharram observance, were commonly enshrined in the deeds of the new endowments on which they were founded, and hence introduced as a matter of course in various neighbourhoods.80 While these varied interpolations offered a heightened degree of audacity and exuberance to Muharram as a visible whole in these towns, they were at heart the result of particular families or neighbourhoods attempting to make their mark on local practice. For Lucknow itself what all this means is that the ‘high level of organisation and corporate cooperation’ of Muharram in the Nawabi city, by which the major commemorations were tightly regulated by the bonds existing between the Nawab’s court, major patrons and the officials who administered and supervised the biggest public observances,81 was giving way to something increasingly diffuse, aggregated and chaotic. Thus, just as we have already seen how a collective of Shi‘a government employees, deputy collectors and school inspectors were commissioning printed works and organizing religious debates, so we see here how a younger generation of individuals and families of neighbourhood-level significance were using new majlis gatherings, ritual identifiers and ta‘ziya processions to craft their own meaningful religious agency in their own towns. To take Lucknow as an example, one can sense a trend whereby new actors were using the six weeks of Muharram to craft an independent social role separate from what was perceived as the ‘establishment Shi‘ism’ of the old nobility. So, on the one hand, the city’s formal Muharram commemorations continued to dominate municipal life, distinguished by a well-established itinerary of azadari processions headed by members of royal and other noble families, and funded by the Husainabad Trust. These processions were geographically located around the large Nawabi imambaras on the Husainabad Road, were often attended by large crowds, tourists and British officials, and administered with the cooperation of municipal government. But alongside these, the existence of many new imambaras, innovative processions and neighbourhood leaderships, most of which were tied to the knotted old area of the chauk, suggests that Muharram in the late nineteenth century shed many of its associations with an ‘old’ nobility, and became open to a series of specific experimentations.

80

81

Naqvi, Amro¯ha ke¯ a‘za¯-kha¯ne¯, pp. 78–9, 94, 106; ‘Petition from Sayyid Gulsham Ali and residents of Mohalla Qazizada, Amroha, to the Government of India’, 20 January 1896, GAD No. 106C(64)/1896, UPSA. Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 110–12.

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In turn, these would have a bearing on the former status of Muharram as the binding seal of Awadhi cosmopolitanism.

the separation of the karbala s: muharram conflict in mid-colonial india As with the azan or the majlis sermon, the inculcation of a context of experimentation into Muharram rituals had the capacity to stoke conflict with Sunni Muslims, who perceived these new customs from the outside not as the result of a pluralization of Shi‘a practice, but as attempts to assert a homogeneous Shi‘a specificity onto formerly incorporative observances. In Amroha the aforementioned introduction of the duldul provoked animosity between Shi‘a and Sunni residents, and the segregation of Muharram observances in the 1890s.82 Just across the United Provinces’ borders, in Gaya, Shi‘as freshly infused new ‘alams (standards) into the processions, an interpolation which was vigorously challenged by Sunnis and led to public disturbances from around 1885.83 In other towns the erosion of the composite character of Muharram similarly spilled over into Shi‘a–Sunni riots on ‘Ashura day. As a result of changes to established Muharram practices, Allahabad and Jaunpur both witnessed Shi‘a–Sunni skirmishes during Muharram between the 1880s and 1900s, despite the long-standing history of cross-confessional engagement with the festival in each of these towns.84 The central theatre for the re-negotiation of the character of Muharram was, predictably, Lucknow, and the evolution in this city of the Shi‘a Muharram towards a more exclusive, segregated character is worthy of some elaboration. One of Lucknow’s most important burial grounds for ta‘ziyas was the Talkatora karbala on the city’s south-western outskirts. The site, which also included a burial ground for the royal nobility and a dargah modelled on Husain’s mausoleum in Iraq, had been established as a karbala site during the reign of Nawab Sa‘adat ‘Ali Khan (1798–1814). However, it was only after 1857, with the British closure of the city’s formerly largest Nawabi karbala in the eastern Hazratganj area, that this 82

83

84

‘Petition from Sayyid Gulsham Ali’, UPSA; ‘Humble memorial of the undersigned Sayeds of Amroha’ to Lieutenant-Governor LaTouche, 7 May 1902, GAD No. 255/1903, UPSA. Babu Baij Nath Ojha to District Superintendent of Police, Gaya, 19 April 1892, Home Department (Public), January 1895, Nos. 123–46, NAI; ‘Appendix VIII: Resolutions passed by the Shia community of Bihar’, L. M. T. to Secretary, 27 November 1894, ibid. On Allahabad see Bayly, The local roots of Indian politics, pp. 129–30; on Jaunpur see ArRiyaz (Lucknow), 18 June 1901, UPNNR.


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fi g u r e 2 . 3 . Dargah of Imam Husain and karbala ground at Talkatora, Lucknow (author’s collection).

karbala at Talkatora evolved into the city’s most important and popular. Shi‘as, Sunnis and Hindus alike attended the same ground en masse for ta‘ziya burial on ‘Ashura throughout the several later decades of the nineteenth century. In view of this mass and cross-confessional participation on an occasion that was a public holiday, the event drew huge crowds. On this and a few other special days, a large temporary mela (fair) sprang up, on all sides of the karbala compound. It was, according to some witnesses, marked by entertainments for its predominantly Sunni and Hindu attendees, including ‘shops and booths . . . swings and merry-go-rounds’ and even, according to one claim, makeshift brothels which received visitors right outside the karbala ground.85 However, a number of Shi‘as began to protest against this hijacking of ‘Ashura as a day of revelry, and demanded that a more authentic atmosphere of mourning appropriate to the occasion should be instated. In 1905, one year after Maqbool Ahmad’s introduction of the tabarra into the majlis sermon, a consequential pamphlet was issued seeking to purify religious practice at Talkatora. Carrying the claimed authorship of the

85

Government Gazetteer of the United Provinces, Extraordinary (Lucknow, 1938), GAD No. 113/1939, UPSA, pp. 2–4.

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Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor, the organization of senior ‘ulama discussed in the previous chapter and spearheaded by the mujtahid Aqa Hasan, it set a series of new and stringent requirements for entry to the ground. The wearing of bright colours or singing of songs in the Talkatora vicinity was prohibited altogether. Demands were issued that entrants to the ground itself should be bare-headed and barefooted, should be wearing only black, and must recite a du‘a (prayer) for the Shi‘a Imams, all tokens of mourning hitherto practised by the Shi‘a alone. Food, drink and betel were banned, while the ‘leading Shi‘as’ apparently attached to this organization asked the proprietors of land around the karbala ground to close their properties to the revelries, entertainments and refreshment stalls of previous years, commands which many duly obeyed.86 Such regimented behavioural standards, apparently initiated by some of the city’s most esteemed scholars and orchestrated by powerful city elites with the support of the district magistrate, incurred a new blanket of solemnity and austerity upon the karbala ground. They also led most Sunnis and Hindus to desert the ground, and perhaps not a few among the Shi‘a too: it was said there was an 80 per cent drop in attendance at the site.87 But equally significantly, the purification of Talkatora was the trigger for the establishment in 1906 of a separate Sunni karbala at Phulkatora, on the city’s northern outskirts, separating the communities at an annual event that had previously encouraged their mutual participation. Most importantly, the segregation of the burial rites and ta‘ziya processions, the latter of which often proceeded in opposite directions down the same streets, led to the incorporation of additional novel particularities on both sides. Sunni maulvis active in the city, of whom the aforementioned ‘Abd ul-Shakoor was the most prominent, began to make interpolations in established ‘Ashura practice in diametrical opposition to the Shi‘a experiments discussed above. To emphasize the celebratory tone, participants were requested to wear red or yellow.88 The names of the char-yari (‘four comrades’, denoting the Sunni Caliphs, and an obvious retort to the Shi‘a panjetani) were freshly inscribed upon the corners of ta‘ziyas and accompanying flags and standards. ‘Abd ul-Shakoor and other maulvis also claimed that ta‘ziyadari was only permissible if accompanied by the recitation of madh-i-sahaba

86

87

‘Note’ by Saiyid Shahinshah Husain Rizvie, 15 December 1908, and ‘Note,’ Appendix to Piggott Committee Report, GAD No. 591/1908, UPSA; An-Najm and Oudh Akhbar (Lucknow), 10 March 1906, UPNNR. ‘Luckna’u ke¯ ması¯bat-zada Sunı¯o¯n´’, pp. 2–3. 88 Shamsi, Shı¯ ‘a–Sunnı¯ qazı¯ ya, p. 88.


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(lit. ‘praise of the Companions’), verses celebrating the virtues of the Caliphs and a clear marker of difference from Shi‘ism. The routinization of the madh-i-sahaba interpolation effectively transformed Muharram among many Sunnis from a moment of remembrance for Husain into – effectively – one for the valorization of the Sunni Caliphs. In contrast to earlier Sunni exaltations of the glories of Husain, a new and innovative genre of Sunni elegiac poetry in praise of the Caliphs emerged and was ‘published, sold, distributed, read and recited publicly everywhere’.89 A series of new mehfils (congregations) in honour of the Caliphs, entitled bazm-i-Saddiqi, bazm-i-Faruqi and bazm-i-Usmani, were established, advertised and convened during Muharram.90 The veneration of the Caliphs was clearly conceived as a diametric opposite to the Shi‘a idolization of the Imams; however, at the same time these practices ironically seemed to appropriate an adulation of individual personages and a ritual expression of their virtues which, paradoxically, was highly resonant of Shi‘a practice, and simply cast towards a different subject. Following the initial reconstruction of the Muharram rites at the older karbala, Shi‘a religious practice during Muharram showed the same broad fluidity and adaptability as that of Sunnis, and comparable further innovations took place. Reflecting the novel gatherings of Sunnis in honour of their personages, self-consciously comparable Shi‘a alternatives were freshly construed in their place: mock-janazas (funerals) of Sunni leaders were commenced, while bazm-i-Firozi meetings were held in celebration of the death of ‘Umar, taking the name of his murderer and even occasionally involving the immolation of ‘Umar’s effigy.91 They also included, controversially, the institutionalization of the recitation of the tabarra, which now evolved further from being a slogan adopted in the semi-private context of the majlis into the fully public context of the city street during ta‘ziya processions. Given the consolidation of Shi‘a and Sunni segregation around these rites, meetings and slogans, it is unsurprising that the ‘Ashra developed as a key period of sectarian conflict. A series of Shi‘a–Sunni riots followed the

89

90

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‘The humble memorial of the Shia residents of Lucknow’, to the Lieutenant Governor of UP, 8 April 1908, GAD No. 591/1908, UPSA; ‘The humble memorial of the Shia residents of Lucknow’ to A. L. Saunders, 22 March 1908, ibid.; Piggott Committee Report, ibid. ‘Notes of the proceedings of the committee, dated 18 April 1907’, and ‘The humble memorial of the Shias of Lucknow’ to T. C. Piggott, 24 November 1908, ibid. ‘The humble petition of the Sunni community of Lucknow’, ibid.; ‘Translation of the report of Maulvi Muhammad Abdush Shakur, 15 December 1908’, ibid.; Advocate (Lucknow), 21 May 1908, UPNNR.

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introduction of such religious practices, frequently portrayed in police records as some of the worst civil violence of the decade in north India. Major conflagrations occurred on the ‘Ashura day in 1907 and 1908, when the public recitation of madh-i-sahaba and tabarra slogans during respective Sunni and Shi‘a ta‘ziya processions provoked attacks from members of the other community. There had, of course, been a history of Shi‘a–Sunni disturbances during Muharram extending back to the Nawabi period, and Muharram had frequently acted as a theatre for the playing out of innumerable ‘private quarrels’ between individuals on both sides.92 But the new clashes were distinct not only in their sheer severity, but in their lasting legacy, poisoning Shi‘a–Sunni relations long after the close of Muharram and into the next decade. A vast literature on communal conflict in colonial South Asia offers various leads by which these unprecedented Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts may be understood. Some have argued that they resulted from the changing functionality of Muharram. In other words, prior to 1856 Muharram had been used primarily as a tool to cement the cultural hegemony of the Nawabi state; as such, the emphasis was on incorporative municipal rites which could be shared by a cross-confessional array of participants. Thereafter, with the old stature of state religion having dried up and Shi‘ism in danger of being swamped by other communities, Muharram became more useful as a means of reinforcing the exclusive identity of the Shi‘a as a religious minority. For this reason, it is argued, custom was purified in colonial India in order to seek ‘closure’ from other religious communities, as a form of self-preservation.93 Alternatively, we may assess this religious violence as a manifestation of particular social or class conflicts. This was certainly the case in the social rivalries between the ‘lower ranks’ of urban Sunnis, who were consistently identified as observing the instructions of ‘Abd ul-Shakoor and participating in these antagonistic theatricals,94 and the illustrious Shi‘a ‘ulama, nobles and landlords who orchestrated the purges of the karbala ground and who were seen by the former as using Muharram as a form of sustained cultural hegemony to retain their social dominance. ‘Abd ul-Shakoor himself, as we saw in the previous chapter, certainly played 92

93 94

‘The enthusiastic Sheahs and Soonies – having reserved their long hatred for a favourable opportunity of giving it vent – have found an early grave on the very ground to which their Tazia has been consigned. Private quarrels are often reserved for decision on the field of Kraabaallah’: Ali, Observations on the Mussalmauns, pp. 52–3. Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 170–1. Piggott Committee Report, GAD No. 591/1908, UPSA.


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up the ‘sayyid’ roots of his Shi‘a opponents, and contrasted their old Nawabi elitism (referring to them as ‘Naqi Khani’s’) with the younger, aspiring nature of the Sunni (‘Ahmad Khani’s’).95 Similar instances of class animosity between erstwhile Shi‘a landed nobilities and middle-class or artisan Sunnis were evident factors in Shi‘a–Sunni Muharram clashes in other north Indian towns. In the riots in Gaya mentioned above, for instance, disturbances occurred when Sunni ‘lower orders’ or ‘illiterate antagonists’ from inside the town challenged a Shi‘a zamindar who lived on the town’s peripheries, with a crowd preventing his ta‘ziya procession from departing the gates of his home.96 Significantly, a similar pattern of conflict between a landed Shi‘a aristocracy who patronize local Muharram rites, and an urban Sunni bourgeoisie who have felt marginalized by the former’s perceived socio-cultural influence, has also been a hallmark of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict in parts of contemporary Pakistan.97 These explanations, however, insinuate to some degree the internal homogeneity of respective Shi‘a and Sunni communities, suggesting the coordinated efforts of ‘ulama, preachers and patrons on each side and giving little sense of differentiation among them. For a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the experience of Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts, then, it becomes necessary to pay more attention to the internal debates active in each community, in this case among the Shi‘a themselves.

contesting shi‘ism: the internal dynamics of the shi‘a revival In 1900s Lucknow, Sunni opponents and British observers alike tended to view the increasing audacity of Shi‘a religious performance as indicative of a uniform ‘religious revival’ embedded in the community.98 Equally, most Shi‘a sources themselves were complicit in cultivating this impression of 95 96

97

98

‘Luckna’u ke¯ ması¯bat-zada Sunı¯o¯n´’, pp. 1–2. Taffazul Khan to Commissioner of Patna Division, 28 May 1893, Home Department (Public), January 1895, Nos. 123–46, NAI; MacPherson to Commissioner of Patna Division, 14 November 1893, ibid. Mariam Abou-Zahab, ‘The Sunni–Shia conflict in Jhang’, in Imtiaz Ahmad and Helmut Reifeld, eds., Lived Islam in South Asia: adaptation, accommodation and conflict (Delhi, 2004), pp. 135–48. The Piggott Committee, appointed in 1908 to examine the roots of Shi‘a–Sunni tensions in Lucknow, said that it was ‘not surprising that anything of the nature of a religious revival amongst the Shias should have produced as one of its consequences a desire to renew and accentuate the character of these festivals as days of mourning, and to free their celebration from . . . abuses’: Piggott Committee Report, GAD No. 591/1908, UPSA.

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internal unity. However, the production of sectarian conflict can only be properly understood against a background of diversity and differentiation within the Shi‘a fold. Despite the cosmetic appearance of a homogeneous religious awakening, the numerous processes of innovation and experimentation described above were of little consensus, provoking a number of intense, but frequently concealed, debates over the direction and leadership of religious renewal. This was a period of perhaps unprecedented inner-Shi‘a religious contestation. As a religious marketplace of new patrons, prayer-leaders, sermonizers and azadari practitioners was brought into being in the urban public sphere, implicit conflict began to unravel in various forms between the higher and lower ‘ulama, among the lower rungs of religious functionaries, and between this maulvi class and ‘popular’ customary practice. None of the big interpolations appearing in popular Shi‘a practice described in this chapter were matters of consensus. As we have seen, the amended azan appeared first in seemingly peripheral mosques; new brands of emotive majlis sermonizing had their critics; and many Shi‘a were heavily conscious of the damage that could be done by slogans such as tabarra: we need only to look at the example of Yad Husain, who put up posters around his town discouraging his community from reciting it even in private.99 These innovations, as argued above, were not drawn from traditional practice, but were adopted by newer actors as identifying features which could earn them profile in an ever more crowded religious marketplace. All had to assert their own credentials against those of others, in pursuit of popular acclamation. One of the most notable aspects of these numerous changes to practice was the ambivalence of many of the established ‘ulama towards them. It is certainly true that Aqa Hasan was largely responsible for initiating the purging of festive markers from the karbala. It is also the case that senior mujtahids at points seemed to vindicate some of these new interpolations: both Muhammad Ibrahim and Muhammad Baqir Rizvi, for instance, sanctioned the new azan as a legitimate practice, while Aqa Hasan in 1909 declared the recitation of tabarra to be a pious act.100 But in these latter cases, their declarations were retrospective rather than initiative; they voiced their approval only after the introduction of these novelties. Instead, most of these experiments were originally pioneered at lower 99 100

Amir ‘Ali ibn Hasan ‘Ali, Ha¯dı¯ ul-mo¯minı¯ n (Etawah, 1898–9), pp. 3–4. Mehdi, Sawa¯nih-i-haya¯t, pp. 21–3; ‘Note’ by Sayyid Shahinshah Husain Rizvie, 15 Dec 1908, GAD No. 591/1908, UPSA.


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echelons, by a new generation of energetic maulvis. In individuals such as Maqbool Ahmad, and in a wider community of professional zakirs and the graduates of new madrasas, we see fresh, young activists trumping the senior clergy in their public visibility. Much the same could be said of the Sunni side in these conflicts, which also exhibited a partial peripheralization of those who might be classed as traditional religious authorities. The elders of the long-established Firangi Mahal madrasa, for instance, remained sidelined from activities such as the new decoration of ta‘ziyas, extension of carnivalism or recitation of madh-i-sahaba.101 A few Firangi Mahallis, such as the tutor ‘Abd ul-Majeed, and the lesser-known Muhammad ‘Abd ul-Mughni, a scholar so marginal that he does not feature in most of the school’s own biographical dictionaries, issued edicts in support of madh-i-sahaba.102 But the institutions of Firangi Mahal and even the Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama both remained predominantly quiet throughout the controversies of the 1900s; and whatever the former ’s support for madh-i-sahaba, it did not extend to legitimizing the numerous other innovations in ritual and ceremony. Instead, these activities seemed to have been led by locally active preachers, and supported by edicts from undistinguished ‘ulama of small, recently founded Deobandi- and Barelwi-inspired madrasas outside Lucknow.103 Propelled from a lower level, Lucknow’s restricted circle of established Shi‘a or Sunni religious authorities were widely marginalized from these activities. Returning to the Shi‘a side, there is every reason to believe that the senior clergy regarded some of the new interpolations in popular religion with considerable suspicion. The high ‘ulama of Lucknow, like many of their counterparts in Iran and Iraq, had long advocated that Muharram should be observed with relative sobriety. While stressing the importance of the remembrance (zikr) of Husain, they had most commonly opposed more exuberant practices such as self-flagellation, the performance of 101

102 103

Indeed, Firangi Mahal had usually regarded the celebration during Muharram of Imam Husain’s life as legitimate and beneficial for Muslims. Hansvi, Aza¯da¯rı¯ kı¯ ta¯rı¯ kh, pp. 20–1. Hose to Saunders, 2 January 1911, GAD No. 366/1911, UPSA. See the edicts produced by Sunni ‘ulama declaring the recitation of madh-i-sahaba to be an obligatory act for Sunnis during any Muharram gathering, published in ‘Luckna’u ke¯ ması¯bat-zada Sunı¯o¯n´’, pp. 12–18. Their authors primarily comprise clerics from schools such as Muzahir-ul-‘Ulum, Saharanpur; Madrasa Fatepuri, Delhi; Madrasa Shahi Masjid, Moradabad; Madrasa Islamia, Amroha; and other relatively minor schools in the North Western Provinces. All petitioners were described as ‘persons of little importance’. From Way, 8 December 1910, GAD No. 366/1911, UPSA.

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mock-funerals and the heavy embellishment of azadari processions, seeing such practices as excessive and diversionary. Certainly in the 1870s–80s a number of ‘ulama in Lucknow were issuing edicts against the undue dramatization of matam, the parading of the ‘alams of ‘Abbas, and the belief in hazri, the spiritual presence of the Imams within ta‘ziyas.104 However, as Sharar was writing in the 1910s, while ‘mujtahids and Shia prelates do not approve of such innovations . . . popular interest in them is increasing day by day’.105 One implication of these experiments of particular concern to the senior ‘ulama was the so-called ‘Shaikhi’ tendency, referring to the teachings of Shaikh Ahmad al-Ahsa’i (1753–1826) that the Imams were endowed with spiritual powers and were the purveyors of miracles.106 Usuli ‘ulama had since Nawabi times condemned such beliefs in the divine agency of the Imams, seeing miracle tales as Hindu or Sufi interpolations, or as distractions from the Imams’ true significance. However, the enhancement of popular devotionalism and novel rites of Muharram during the period under discussion were apparently accompanied by stories of contemporary miracles associated with the practice of ta‘ziyadari and enacted by the Imams. One tract, for instance, flaunted recent examples of Shi‘a maulvis who had visions of the Imams Hasan and Husain while engaged in parading ta‘ziyas. The text concludes that It is justified to perform matam for the Prophet and Fatima, to shed tears of blood for the heavens and the earth, and to read prayers for lost spirits. The sayings of many eminent scholars of religion also prove that the Prophet and Husain are present within the ta‘ziyas . . . those who follow or consult those people who have observed such hidden events find no reason to doubt [the virtues of] ta‘ziyadari.107

Similarly revealing this miraculous twist of some forms of ‘popular’ Shi‘ism was one travelling writer’s account of Muharram in Bombay. There, he says, people had been reporting miracles associated with ta‘ziyas since about 1885, including visions of angels and Husain’s steed, and the incurring of punishments upon non-believers. Even the wisest of men have witnessed these miracles, he argues, and on this basis it is legitimate to call

104

105 107

See the fatwas from Mirza Muhammad ‘Ali, quoted in Husain, Sawa¯nih-i-‘umrı¯ , p. 189. Cf. Ende, ‘The flagellations of Muharram’, passim. On debates about such customs in the Arab world, see Deeb, An enchanted modern, pp. 131–2; Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 154–7. Sharar, Lucknow, p. 217. 106 Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 186–9. ‘Ali, Fa¯zilat-na¯ma-i-ta‘zı¯ ya, pp. 29–30.


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upon the worldly interventions of Husain and ‘Abbas.108 Such beliefs perhaps conveyed to the formal ‘ulama the impression of a ‘Shaikhi revival’ being manifested under the guise of renewed Muharram practice during these decades. They may also explain why mujtahids such as Nasir Husain were in 1908 writing refutations of al-Ahsa’i’s teachings, very possibly an indirect rebuttal of expanding aspects of popular practice.109 An equally contentious debate among the Shi‘a themselves, and one not confined to Muharram, was that relating to the popular interaction at local levels between Shi‘a and Sufi elements of practice. Many formal Shi‘a ‘ulama, in Nawabi Awadh as in post-Safavid Persia, had long opposed Sufi practices or attendance at the shrines of saints, castigating such deeds as equivalent to ecstatic vices or Hindu idolatory.110 Likewise, later scholars such as Maqbool Ahmad, influenced by these earlier Usuli revivals, selected the visiting of shrines, Sufi beliefs and the observance of saints’ days (‘urs) as some of the prime foci of their attack upon Sunni practice; Lucknow’s Shah Mina dargah, a Chishti shrine dating to the fifteenth century, in particular, attracted vocal scorn from some Shi‘a.111 Numerous other maulvis produced tracts railing against this ‘mystical’ tradition (tasawwuf), and its corruptive infusion into Shi‘ism.112 However, as argued in the introduction, there had long been a deep interconnection in north India between Sufi and more ‘popular’ Shi‘a observances, and this gap between forms of popular custom and scholarly teaching remained as wide as ever in the early twentieth century. To give one example, a number of Shi‘a-dominated towns, among them Lucknow and Mahmudabad, possessed so-called ‘dargahs’, replica-tombs of the Imams or their comrades in Iraq or Iran. Illustrating the influence of Sufi customs, many Shi‘a would pray in these dargahs to the Imams as intercessors, casting them as auliya’ (saints) and asking for the lifting of their afflictions. These dargahs were often funded by local nobilities, and while 108 109

110

111

112

Khan, Aza¯da¯rı¯ -i-ma¯h-i-Muharram, pp. 21–2. Syed Hussain Arif Naqvi, ‘The controversy about the Shaykhiyya tendency among the Shia ‘ulama’ in Pakistan’, in Rainer Brunner and Werner Ende, eds., The Twelver Shia in modern times (Leiden, 2001), pp. 138, 143. Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi had launched long-standing condemnations of Sufism, both for its doctrine of unity of being (wahdat-ul-wujud) and for its supposedly ecstatic practices. Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 152–6. His lead was followed by the major proportion of later Usuli ‘ulama. For some examples of the condemnation of saint worship and criticism of Sufi families by Shi‘a reformists see ‘The humble memorial of the Shias of Lucknow’ to T. C. Piggott, 24 November 1908, GAD No. 591/1908, UPSA; Tauhid (Meerut), 24 April 1913, UPNNR. Kazim, Tanqı¯ d-ul-taqlı¯ d, p. 12.

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the formal ‘ulama rarely condoned such practices as the visiting of shrines or praying for intercession, they also tacitly allowed space for the existence of such beliefs and practices in spheres outside their control, aware of the service of such practices in popular Shi‘ism.113 However, the simultaneous and contrary invigorations around the turn of the twentieth century – of the ‘ulama corps, on the one hand, and beliefs in the miraculous significance of the Imams, on the other – may well have exacerbated the differences between these two lines of thought ever more greatly. Even more strikingly at odds with formal Usuli teaching was the fact that, in towns such as Amroha, Dewa or Barha, Shi‘a sayyids would visit not merely replica-tombs of the Imams, but the shrines of local pirs: Sufi saints of sayyid background, to whom they traced their own hereditary descent. In such towns some Shi‘a attended the Sufi shrines and commemorated their saints, and marsiya was sometimes read within them on Muharram. In fact, in some cases Shi‘a sayyids continued until at least the 1930s to patronize both the maintenance of the saints’ shrines and the observance of Muharram, both of which were felt to represent distinct but entirely complementary means of commemorating the Imams and their descendants.114 As we saw above with the Mazar-i-Shahid-i-Salis in Agra, even the highest mujtahids on occasion had a hand in establishing tombs to Shi‘a martyrs which were, in effect, considered as shrines by their attendees and pilgrims. This gives just some sense of the diversionary paths that the alleged Shi‘a revival in north India was taking. Substantive gaps were apparently opening between certain local norms, according to which Shi‘a sayyids attended dargahs to the Imams, Shi‘a martyrs and Sufi saints, and many emerging maulvis, who worked to curb such practices and castigated them as Sunni interpolations. As such, the new context of innovation in Shi‘a practice during these decades led to a number of disagreements, often concealed rather than explicit, triangulated between the formally qualified ‘ulama, freelancing writers and preachers, and practitioners of ‘popular’ Shi‘ism. The expansion of madrasa education, an increasingly expressive and contentious tone of public preaching, and diversification of popular practice were all trends apparent during these decades which seemingly exacerbated these arguments. 113

114

For the dargah of Hazrat ‘Abbas, Lucknow’s best-known dargah, see Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 98–101; Ali, Observations on the Mussalmauns, pp. 33–6. For more information on Shi‘a attendance at the dargah of Shah Wilayat in Amroha, a dargah which some Shi‘as visited, even on ‘Ashura, see Jones, ‘Local experiences’, pp. 887–9, 905.


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Equally, these multiple innovations had the consequence of pluralizing claims to religious authority during this period. Evidencing the intensification of competition between rival candidates for religious leadership is the clear expansion of those terming themselves ‘mujtahids’ in early twentieth-century India. In the nineteenth century, the title mujtahid had been formally attributed to a relatively small and authoritative clique of individuals. By the early twentieth century, it seems that the title was adopted by a far wider breadth of maulvis, preachers or recipients of some form of fazil or equivalent qualification, most of whom had little formal claim to such clerical excellence but adopted the label to compete for a popular following.115 This meant that, to use a term employed by one British official to describe similar trends in Iraq, the title was ‘laicized’, used with less selectivity and in turn with less significance for its recipient: ‘If we follow the vox populi, the mujtahids may go up and down like puppets in a marionette show.’116 It thus seems clear that the parallel developments of a growing north Indian public sphere, the expansion of the formal clergy and the diversification of neighbourhood leaderships had, as one of their effects, the pluralization of religious leadership, with the grounds on which public religious authority was deemed to be based substantively muddied. Alterations in religious practice, then, are best understood not as creating homogeneity within Shi‘ism, but as entrenching disharmonies and disagreements within it. In this context, for many individuals the most immediate experience of the religious contestations discussed in this chapter was not Shi‘a–Sunni differentiation, but competition between alternative sections of Shi‘a. Sometimes this remained relatively unspoken, but in other cases intense quarrels took place between the supporters of innovations and those tied to more traditional practice. In the town of Barabanki, for instance, violent clashes occurred not between Shi‘as and Sunnis, but between different groups of Shi‘as, some protesting against the new 115

116

This is a general observation taken from many vernacular writings published during this period, the biographical accounts of ‘ulama, and discussions with certain present-day ‘ulama in Lucknow. Notwithstanding the important differences in clerical structure and derivation of clerical authority between Iraq and India, this description by the British Resident in Baghdad in the 1900s could equally have been written concurrently about Shi‘ism in contemporaneous north India: ‘The word [mujtahid] is loosely used . . . it seems to be that a man . . . with a sufficiently large following and . . . in most cases worldly wealth also or the command of it, may style himself and soon become a mujtahid’: Major L. S. Newmarch to Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department, 20 September 1902, Political Department A, May 1911, Nos. 10–44, UPSA.

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interpolation of using Muharram to mourn the death of the first Imam, ‘Ali, as well as Hasan and Husain.117 The existence of these powerful inner-Shi‘a contestations complicates any attempt to talk in terms of a homogeneous Shi‘a revival in colonial India. Moreover, its existence in tandem with the growth of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict similarly suggests that the latter cannot be discussed in terms of the internal consolidation of respective communities, but can only be properly understood in terms of the complex internal dynamics within each of them.

conclusion The apparent invigoration and extravagance of public practice and participation was a further aspect of the ‘new religious life’ in north Indian Shi‘ism. A newly amended azan, the establishment of new mosques and imambaras, and a newly exuberant ritualism and culture of display during Muharram, all served to reinforce Shi‘a imagery in the public space. The expansion of forms of public address such as the majlis sermon and munazara debate, both of which encapsulated a more free-flowing, unconstrained culture of public oratory among maulvis, added further to the developing sense of theatre and emotiveness that characterized developing religious practice. At the same time, many of these new religious experiments tended to stoke conflict with Sunnis, who perceived a new emphasis among the Shi‘a upon the importance of dramatic mourning for Husain, and a growing tendency to pour vocal public scorn on the Caliphs as the usurpers of ‘Ali and killers of the Imams. Customs associated with Muharram, such as the majlis sermon and ta‘ziya procession, had in pre-colonial Awadh been widely co-opted to foster civic cohesion and cooperation between religious communities, cementing the cultural hegemony of the Nawabi state. By the early twentieth century the performance of Muharram in north India showed a heightened emphasis on elements of difference, and fostered segregation between religious communities. One consequence of this reworking of Shi‘a religious practice was the production of Shi‘a– Sunni violence, which became a recurring feature in Lucknow and many other north Indian towns with little prior history of such conflagrations. However, while public and ritualized Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts were taking place with increasing frequency in urban centres, they cannot be understood in isolation from argument among and between the Shi‘a 117

Mehr-i-Nimroz (Bijnor), 14 May 1900, UPNNR.


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themselves, which was in the ascendant during the same period and surrounded by an equal level of contention. It seems, in fact, that apparent Shi‘a–Sunni sectarian arguments fulfilled a particular role within Shi‘ism itself, facilitating a discussion over religious authority and proper practice. Aspiring maulvis, patrons and sermonizers, at various points, adopted more ‘sectarian’ practices in order to procure public visibility, and secure themselves a role in an increasingly crowded religious marketplace. Discussions and disputes among numerous Shi‘a ‘ulama, maulvis, younger preachers and neighbourhood patrons, jostling over the appropriate nature and tone of Shi‘a prayers, sermons and commemorations, all took place under the outward cloak of apparently Shi‘a–Sunni conflict, being expressed as inter-community rather than internal debates. This idea that apparent Shi‘a–Sunni conflict was elementally connected with inner-Shi‘a argumentation and debate is a theme that will be built upon further in subsequent chapters.

3 Anjumans, endowments and Indian Shi‘ism The making of Shi‘a society

While ‘Abd ul-Halim Sharar’s ever-influential account of Nawabi Lucknow commended the city for its seeming promotion of crosscommunity accommodation and interaction between Shi‘a and Sunni residents, his view of the colonial city in which he resided was somewhat different. ‘The Shi‘a’, he wrote, ‘maintain a separateness (judagana) in their habits and customs’; instead of attempting to ‘unite into one fraternity’ with other Muslims, they ‘prefer to remain separate and exclusive (juda-va-mumtaz)’.1 As previous chapters of this book have shown, this separateness was manifested in aspects of religious change: the sectionalization of Shi‘a and Sunni madrasa education, clerical mobilization, majlis congregations and Muharram participation, for example. It was also communicated through the new adoption of particular cultural norms and identifiers. The Shi‘a, allegedly, began after the annexation of Awadh to use the address ‘Salam-un ‘Alaikum’ rather than the more traditional ‘As-Salam ‘Alaikum’, in order to distinguish themselves from Sunnis. Equally, when the Turkish cap was popularized among many young sharif Muslims by Sayyid Ahmad Khan and other Aligarh reformists from the 1870s onwards, many Shi‘a adopted the Persian kulah cap as a retort.2 It also came, with the help of the municipal administration in Lucknow, through the establishment of separate Shi‘a and Sunni graveyards from 1871.3

1

2 3

‘Abd ul-Halim Sharar, Guzashta Luckna’u ya¯ mashrı¯ q ke¯ tamadun ka¯ a¯khirı¯ numa¯na (Delhi, 1985 [1913]), pp. 310, 327. Sharar, Lucknow, pp. 175, 198. Oldenburg, The making of colonial Lucknow, pp. 112–13.

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The making of Shi‘a society

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This chapter expands analysis of this Shi‘a judagana from the assertion of religious and cultural distinctiveness to the appearance of active social and political demands to keep ‘separate’ (‘alehda).4 Departing the focus on religious change taken in earlier chapters, this chapter switches to the organizational, financial and linguistic apparatus on which a Shi‘a community was constructed in colonial India, with an examination of a number of newly founded Shi‘a organizations and charitable campaigns. The first section discusses the creation of a number of Shi‘a anjumans: public associations, charities and societies emerging around the turn of the twentieth century. This is conducted primarily through a discussion of the All India Shi‘a Conference, formed in 1907. The most significant and best documented of the various Shi‘a anjumans of the period, it became something of an umbrella for a wider network of interlinked associations. The chapter then discusses changes to the administration of Shi‘a endowments (waqfs), assessing their significance in attempts to regulate and manage the functional realities of lived Shi‘ism. The final section then examines the vocabulary and insinuations of the language of community used to describe the Shi‘a, examining in particular how they were presented as a distinctively Indian religious confession. Without being confined to it, the prime focus of this chapter is on the first two decades of the twentieth century, which constitute the moment at which this more exclusivist trajectory in Shi‘a public life was at its most active and pronounced. Throughout, the chapter demonstrates that while a sense of community within Indian Shi‘ism was articulated and promoted, it was also the source of a great deal of argument as many Shi‘a competed to define the nature and structure of the community under perpetual construction.

associational shi‘ism: anjuman-sazi , public service and charitable religion Sharar wrote of Nawabi Lucknow that it was ‘not the custom’ for Muslims or others ‘to form clubs and societies’. This was a custom associated with Europeans, Arabs and Persians, he argued, rather than Indians.5 While the truth of this statement may be disputed by studies of the vigorous public 4

5

This term for ‘separateness’ pervades Sayyid Mumtaz Husain, Risa¯la-i-kifan-po¯sh lı¯ darani-qo¯m (Amroha, 1915), passim. This text, used throughout this and the next chapter, is a compendium of articles originally published in the Shi‘a newspaper Ittehad, discussed below. Sharar, Lucknow, p. 195.

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life of Nawabi Lucknow, there is no doubting the importance of the large number of public Shi‘a organizations, associations and societies formed in the half-century after annexation. Commonly termed anjumans, they advocated projects of religious, cultural or social revitalization, and had a tremendous impact on how ideas of Shi‘a community were understood and embodied. A number of such public associations existed from (or even before) the 1880s, but their number accelerated greatly in the first decade of the twentieth century. One newspaper was claiming in 1907 that, in Lucknow, ‘the Shias have formed several societies of their own in almost every quarter of the town’.6 Among these were a number of organizations of types already discussed, including religious schools, printing-presses, ta‘ziya guilds and tablighi missionary outlets. But there were also a number of associations created in Lucknow of more social, cultural or charitable leanings. There were, for instance, new committees to oversee the conduct of Shi‘a funerals, observing the proper completion of the ablutions, preparation, parading and burial of the corpse.7 There were also charities established for poor sayyids; groups that fundraised for and organized the construction or repair of particular mosques and imambaras;8 and several cultural societies set up to represent and promote the cultural values of the city’s wasiqadars and former royal family.9 Just as significantly, and of most immediate concern here, there was a wide range of Indian Shi‘a conferences, commercial enterprises and welfare institutions. All of these initiated the construction of a novel form of associational Shi‘ism, one framed within an equally original discourse of modern Muslim respectability, and carrying within itself an implicit critique of the former aristocratic elitism of north Indian Shi‘ism. Recent scholarship has widely portrayed the innovative impact of the range of public meetings, reform societies and civic associations emerging in the broader urban public sphere of colonial north India. In Lucknow from the 1880s, such anjumans played an important role in the formation

6 7

8 9

An-Najm (Lucknow), 10 July 1907, UPNNR. Sharar, Lucknow, p. 213. Customs instilled into Shi‘a janazas around the turn of the twentieth century included the recitation of a du‘a declaring ‘Ali as khalifa bila fasil, and the carrying of the coffin by relatives of the deceased. Cf. Chapter 2, n. 7. Associations of former nobilities and royal descendants included the Anjuman-iMuhammadi, Anjuman-i-Khandan-i-Shahi, Anjuman ul-Irkan and the Anjuman-iWasiqadaran-va-Pensionaran-i-Shahi. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, p. 74.


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of a new, literate middle class, one tied together by aspects of social and occupational commonality and contrasted with the city’s ‘old’ nobility and aristocracy.10 Other studies have depicted how an ‘associational culture’ took root in north India more generally in the first two decades of the twentieth century, by which both nationalist and religio-culturalist activity were characterized by a ‘proliferation of organisations dedicated to social service and constructive public work’.11 For organizations such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s Servants of India and numerous religion- or caste-based groupings, notions of solidarity or even mutual citizenship could be constructed through an organizational engagement with activities of welfare, social service and charity. In a similar way this Shi‘a anjumansazi, the formation of an anjuman network based on comparable notions of collective charity and social service, had major implications for how this alleged Shi‘a community could be managed, shaped and adapted according to the mores and demands of modern times. As we have already seen, one of the first significant anjumans demanding a new ethic of public service and welfare was the the Anjuman-i-Sadrul-Sadoor, the association of Lucknow’s senior ‘ulama founded in 1901. However, a series of arguments and controversies around 1905 (the karbala controversy discussed in the previous chapter, and a row over education discussed in the next) fragmented this organization, and led to its dissolution. Thereafter, a number of ‘ulama, ta‘luqdars and barristers of Lucknow active in or sympathetic to the former organization agreed that an alternative Shi‘a organization was needed, one better able to negotiate a balance between the ‘ulama and umara’, the religious and secular elites respectively, and to better extend its vision beyond the confines of Lucknow.12 Following a tour of the United Provinces and Bengal by certain United Provinces landlords and ‘ulama to garner the enrollment of members and donations, the first session of the All India Shi‘a Conference, built out of the ashes of Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor and attended by some 450 delegates, was eventually convened in Lucknow in October 1907.13 The notion of a national ‘Conference’ which it appropriated bore the clear influence of contemporary organizations such as the Indian National Congress, All India Muhammadan Educational Conference and All India Muslim League (an organization which it for 10 11

12 13

Joshi, Fractured modernity, pp. 23–31. Carey Watt, Serving the nation: cultures of service, association and citizenship in colonial India (New Delhi, 2005), p. 20. Safi, Sahı¯ fa’t ul-millat, pp. 8–9; Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, p. 661. Tribune (Lahore), 18 October 1907, CSAS.

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the most part opposed), suggesting a meeting of community representatives for the exchange of views on modern socio-economic and educational questions. Moreover, the convening of this first session in the compound of the Rifah-i-‘Am (‘Association of Public Welfare’, an organization that had been active in safeguarding the interests of Lucknow’s citizens since the 1880s) was a telling decision. It demonstrated the extent to which the self-appointed religious and public representatives of Shi‘ism, rather than being bound to memories of their faded Nawabi grandeur, as has often been assumed, adapted entirely to the national currents of communitybased activism and pressure-group petitioning that characterized public life in the era of elite nationalism. The All India Shi‘a Conference would ultimately become one of the driving forces in the construction of a notion of Shi‘a community in colonial India. Convening annually, by 1910 it boasted some 5,000 members, many of whom were Shi‘as of the United Provinces, though with healthy participation from regions including Bihar, Punjab and Hyderabad.14 Significantly, the Shi‘a Conference even included some Isma‘ili envoys from Bombay, suggesting that, however tokenistically, it spoke of a Shi‘a community in wider parameters than the exclusively Isna ‘Ashari Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor. The Conference’s relative successes in gaining some wider participation was due in part to its deliberately vague promise to focus on ‘the advancement of the social, moral and intellectual condition of the Shi‘a in India’.15 While the Conference would begin to drift into more openly political activities in the 1910s, from 1907 it simply advanced a relatively consensual and uncontroversial platform of recuperation from perceived cultural, economic and educational ‘backwardness’ (gadda’i) from which few deemed it necessary to dissociate. The approximately 150 resolutions passed over its first eight sessions16 reflected this, focusing on a range of broad, interrelated and often somewhat abstract principles: the renewal of Islamic law and guidance on personal religious responsibility; the formation of Shi‘a madrasas, schools and colleges; the improvement of Shi‘a commercial enterprise and economic well-being; the foundation of Shi‘a printing-presses and newspapers and the distribution of religious literature; the preservation of knowledge of Arabic, Persian and Urdu; the enumeration of India’s Shi‘a population; the promotion of

14 15

16

All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-cha¯rho¯m 1910, passim. Oudh Akhbar (Lucknow), 15 October 1907, UPNNR; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-awal, p. 4. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, p. 9.


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good relations between the Shi‘a and other religious and Muslim communities in India; the repair, maintenance or correct management of religious foundations such as mosques, imambaras and waqfs; the dispensing of charity in the shape of education grants and places of refuge for the needy; and, not least, the consolidation of the Shi‘a Conference as the prime source of guidance (islah) for the Shi‘a of India.17 This apparently non-partisan approach allowed the Conference to incorporate a medley of participants of very different backgrounds. Consistent attendees included members of Lucknow’s wasiqadari elites and ex-royal family (the organization’s secretary, Sayyid ‘Ali Ghazanfar, was a former secretary to the latter); princely rulers and landed magnates such as Nawab Hamid ‘Ali Khan of Rampur, Raja Sayyid Abu Ja‘far of Pirpur, and Raja Muhammad ‘Ali Muhammad of Mahmudabad; largeand small-scale landholders from rural Awadh and Rohilkhand (one of the Conference’s most high profile figures, Yusuf Husain Khan, was a ta‘luqdar of Barabanki most famous for contributing newspaper articles asking for the reinstatement of Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s descendants to the throne in Lucknow); and young Aligarh-leaning modernizers and educationists such as the lawyer of Amroha and Lucknow Hamid ‘Ali Khan, and the public activist of Meerut and Lucknow Ghulam ul-Saqlain. Crucially, and in complete contrast to contemporaneous bodies such as the early All India Muslim League, the organization was able to sustain the support of the senior ‘ulama. Its initial declaration that ‘faith and the renewal of religious principles should assist in worldly life, which is not antagonistic to religion’,18 in effect lifted from the foundational statement of the Anjuman-iSadr-ul-Sadoor, was enough to ensure that the mujtahids of Lucknow would be consistently prominent figures in the Conference’s meetings and activities. Aqa Hasan was hailed as its founder, and Najm ul-Hasan and Nasir Husain were its first and second presidents respectively, giving the keynote addresses. Despite some internal opposition occasionally apparent from organizational proceedings, the mujtahids of Lucknow apparently held and jealously guarded the role of president (sajjada nashin) at annual sessions of the Conference, which they alternated among themselves year by year until at least the early 1920s. The Shi‘a Conference thereby became yet another vehicle for maintaining the newly established role of the senior clerical families of Lucknow as visible social activists and public speakers, as discussed in earlier chapters. 17 18

These are taken from All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-cha¯rho¯m 1910, passim. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-awal 1907, pp. 3–4; Safi, Sahı¯ fa’t ul-millat, pp. 9–10.

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While the Shi‘a Conference’s sessions pulled together claimants to these differing perspectives on collective leadership, the Conference was perhaps less influential for its annual sessions than for the pervasive network of anjumans that it established and co-ordinated across India. The Conference described itself less as the pinnacle of Shi‘a achievement, and more as a ‘congress of anjumans’, remarking that the refashioning of Shi‘a society rested upon the ‘pressing need to establish new anjumans and embolden current ones’.19 While the Conference established a number of Shi‘a associations, in other cases it simply supervised and compiled reports on a range of associations already in existence; but this nevertheless means that the Shi‘a Conference’s own proceedings give a wide glimpse into a range of Shi‘a associations appearing in north Indian towns in the 1910s– 1920s. Whatever their differences, such associations all propagated an ethic of charity which borrowed heavily from other socio-religious campaigns of the period, and predicated Shi‘a communal development upon a modern vision of welfare, social service and collective responsibility. It is worth examining a few of the most prominent Shi‘a anjumans established during these years. One was the Shi‘a Orphanage (yetimkhana), founded in Lucknow by some ta‘luqdars and the mujtahid Aqa Hasan in 1912. Within two years it offered respite to some 200 orphans, of whom – significantly – some 80 per cent were said to have sayyid ancestry.20 The orphanage was more than just a welfare institution; instead, as described by one supporter, it was ‘the centre of our communal activities’.21 The indivisible association between the provision of shelter and religious and moral education, provided by ‘ulama in special classes within the orphanage, ensured that the institution was effectively a religious congregation (hashr), which cultivated its occupants as good, selfreflecting Shi‘a individuals just as scrupulously as the city’s emerging maktabs.22 As has been well remarked in scholarship, orphanages in colonial India had long been used as the laboratories for generating new communitarian identities, by groups ranging from European Christian missionaries to the Arya Samaj.23 In this context, the orphanage became

19 20

21 22 23

All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-chhata¯ 1912, p. 71. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-chhata¯ 1912, pp. 114–23, 133–4; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, pp. 104–18. All India Shi‘a Conference, Calcutta 1928, pp. 11–13. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-chhata¯ 1912, p. 34. Cf. Satadru Sen, ‘The orphaned colony: orphanage, child and authority in British India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 44, 4 (2007); Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal


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an obvious symbol around which a strong, pious and self-reliant Shi‘a community could be articulated, a representation of how the community could act where the ties of kinship and biradari had failed. Alongside the orphanage, the following charitable enterprises were also established: educational grant schemes for poor students to attend madrasas and universities; the Shi‘a Boarding House, set up in Lucknow on the back of private donations in 1912; and a hospice for Shi‘a widows founded in 1916, again with the heavy involvement of Aqa Hasan.24 Combined, all of these activities of welfare provision demonstrate the centrality of the notions of charity and gift-giving (commonly waza’if, imdad) in the evolving language of this new associational Shi‘ism. Whether for those individuals offering contributions to these colleges and refuges, or for those receiving aid from them, all were articulated in organizational proceedings as ‘pillars’ (rukn): public servants, or even ‘citizens’ (shahri) of Shi‘a society itself.25 Alongside these projects of social service, other organizations were established as commercial (tijarati) enterprises, of which one of the most substantial was the so-called Shi‘a Sugar Company of Lucknow, established to contribute revenue to the Shi‘a Conference, Orphanage and Boarding House, and to provide business education and employment to former orphanage members.26 While the company appears to have been largely unsuccessful, succumbing to mismanagement and high inflation, it is perhaps more significant for the corporate vision of Shi‘ism that it represented. It illustrates how the Shi‘a Conference attempted to forge all the anjumans affiliated to it into relationships of moral and economic interdependence, actively cooperating and supporting each other in a way that could provide the foundations of a functioning, self-reliant community. Predictably, Lucknow remained the beating heart of this associational Shi‘ism, and the site of many of its most significant organizations. In some senses the city’s historical precedent of pre-colonial Shi‘a religious and cultural dominance set it up well for this role, but just as important was the colonial evolution of the city. As Lucknow was moulded from the declining ex-Nawabi city of the late nineteenth century into an emerging political centre in the early twentieth,27 it perhaps became a convenient point of

24

25 26 27

knowledge and imperial power: race and the intimate in colonial rule (Berkeley, 2002), pp. 69–70. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-chhata¯ 1912, pp. 23–68; Home Department (Political), August 1916, No. 34, NAI. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-chhata¯ 1912, p. 122. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-cha¯rho¯m 1910, pp. 103–14. Francis Robinson, ‘The re-emergence of Lucknow as a major political centre, 1899–early 1920s’, in Violette Graff, ed., Lucknow: memories of a city (New Delhi, 1997).

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cross-over and confluence for visiting dignitaries. Similarly, the city’s Shi‘a madrasas, colleges, printing-presses and other organizations carried a profile and stature that could attract attention and visitors from far beyond the city. Indeed, one might suggest that, with its resident ‘ulama, established history and new status as the central hub of the anjuman network collectively developing across north India, Lucknow was revitalized as essentially a ‘holy city’ for Indian Shi‘ism. Perhaps analogous to the enhanced status of Benares in the same period, the multiple Shi‘a religious institutions and philanthropic organizations now running in Lucknow began to offer the impression of comprising ‘a centralising force in the development of religion on the subcontinent’,28 or at least the northern part of it. However, while Lucknow’s anjumans were the largest and best known, a Shi‘a anjuman of some form appears to have emerged in virtually every town or qasba of the United Provinces with a significant Shi‘a population.29 Compounding this was a similar, albeit less spectacular, proliferation of Conference-linked anjumans outside the United Provinces, especially in Punjab and Bengal.30 These were often simple, localized affairs, leaving no significant documentary record and holding only limited functions such as overseeing azadari or striving for local communal betterment. Their links to the Shi‘a Conference organization also varied considerably; while some organizations (for example the Anjuman Imamiya Society, otherwise known as the Loyal Shi‘a Society of Bareilly) were founded by Conference envoys, others (such as the Anjuman-i-Ja‘fariya of Barha) pre-dated it, and were absorbed into it after its foundation.

28

29

30

Vasudha Dalmia, The nationalisation of Hindu traditions: Bharatendu Harischandra and nineteenth-century Banaras (New Delhi, 1996), p. 56. Just a few examples include the Anjuman-i-Ja‘fariya, Barha; Anjuman Nasir ul-Iman and Anjuman-i-Sadat-i-Amroha, Amroha; Anjuman-i-Imamiya, Machhlishehr; Anjuman Imamiya Society, Bareilly; Anjuman-i-Nasiriya, Bijnor; Anjuman-i-Rifah-ul-Islam, Dandopur, Allahabad; Anjuman-i-Shi‘a, Badaun; Anjuman-i-Imamiya, Shahganj, Agra; Anjuman-i-Mehdviya, Ghazipur; Anjuman-i-Sera’i Mir, Azamgarh; Anjumani-Husainiya, Allahabad; Anjuman-i-Isna ‘Ashariya, Hardoi. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-cha¯rho¯m 1910, pp. 33, 36, 41–2, 91–2; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-chhata¯ 1912, pp. 71, 143, 157; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-iijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, pp. 41, 47, 51, 108, 167. Outside the United Provinces they included Anjuman-i-Murtazwi, Amritsar; Anjumani-Muhammadi, Metiaburj, Bengal; Anjuman-i-Hifaz-i-Auqaf, Bengal; Anjuman-i-Shi‘a-ulSafa, Sonipat; Anjuman-i-Mu‘id-i-Shi‘a Kanferans, Hyderabad. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-cha¯rho¯m 1910, pp. 33, 36, 41–2, 91–2; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-chhata¯ 1912, pp. 71, 143, 157; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, pp. 41, 47, 51, 108, 167.


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However, the fact that the Shi‘a Conference claimed connection to them (by 1912 it claimed the existence of 123 anjumans working around the country at its behest31) did serve to give these organizations, at the very least, a psychological and rhetorical connection to a wider web of associational Shi‘ism, centred in Lucknow but reaching out beyond. This anjuman-sazi represents at once an interesting continuity with – and break from – its Nawabi precedents. On the one hand, it is resonant of the processes of ‘institution building’ within Nawabi Shi‘ism, which brought into being numerous Shi‘a schools and trusts in the later Nawabi period and was so crucial to cementing the socio-cultural hegemony of the Nawabi state.32 This is all the more true for the senior ‘ulama. Their public roles at the peak of Nawabi power as commissioned tutors, state emissaries and distributors of the charitable khums monies33 could be seen as echoed in the early twentieth century by their stewardship of Shi‘a Conference meetings, and their frequent profile as the founders or trustees of charitable foundations such as orphanages, boarding-houses and schools.34 On the other hand, this associational Shi‘ism frequently took memory of its Nawabi antecedents as its opponent. As has regularly been acknowledged, attempts at Muslim social reform in colonial India often seemed to entail at their heart a redefinition of Muslim respectability (adab or ‘izzat), defining it less in terms of ancestral pedigree and specific high birth, and more in the sense of good character and personal conduct.35 In a similar way, many of the key figureheads of new Shi‘a associations, many of whom were of a younger generation active in professions such as law, commerce and journalism, often appeared to define this alleged Shi‘a society in terms of the ethical perfection and collective responsibility embodied by this new anjuman network. Paralleling other forms of middle-class formation in Lucknow, which often took on an ‘anti-aristocratic edge’ and defined themselves against Lucknow’s old courtly nobility,36 these proponents of a new Shi‘a respectability often defined their own moral vision by contrasting it with the perceived decline, egocentricity and decadence of Nawabi Shi‘a society, and its modern remnants. 31 32 34

35 36

All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-chhata¯ 1912, p. 71. Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 194–220. 33 Ibid., pp. 199–209. For example, Aqa Hasan was president of the Shi‘a Orphanage and Boarding House after their foundation, while Sibte Hasan was one of the leading advocates of the Shi‘a College campaign. E. g. Minault, Secluded scholars, pp. 4–5; Lelyveld, Aligarh’s first generation, pp. 35–56. Joshi, Fractured modernity, pp. 15, 44–8.

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To prove this point one only needs to look to some of the writings of the essayist Muhammad Hadi, a Lucknawi activist who provided critical support to the Shi‘a Conference, Orphanage and other anjumans throughout their early years. In essays on Lucknawi culture he launched a tirade against the old noble families of neighbourhoods such as Muftiganj to the city’s west, in language that could have come out of any colonial statement on the endemic ‘backwardness’ of Nawabi society: This is the muhalla named after the distinctions of its people . . . this muhalla had a special influence on the whole city, and its own affairs were very much connected with the rest . . . but alas! The people of this muhalla, which used to prosper more than all the other muhallas . . . are forgetting all those virtues and ideals which are considered worldly.37

Hadi’s statement on the old ‘fashions’ of Muslim Lucknow, while sharing with Sharar’s more famous account the sense of antiquation and the passing of time, clearly carried none of the latter’s nostalgia. Speeches at Shi‘a Conference sessions also adopted similar themes, such as one presidential swipe at the sayyids of Lucknow and Barha: Today their property is alienated, their education is disappearing, even their character is suffering . . . they have slid down to the level of the low castes of India excepting that they still know that they had worthy ancestors . . . does it not touch this community that . . . the descendants of the Prophet from whose house were sent to the world the best lessons in principles of human intercourse . . . should have made itself a target for the adage which lays down that stretching hands for alms blackens one’s face in both the worlds?38

The fact that so many of the needy arriving in Lucknow’s Shi‘a orphanage and widows’ refuge were of sayyid ancestry was upheld as further evidence that the old nobilities were more preoccupied by their extravagant lifestyles, and family disputes over inheritance and access to hereditary pensions, than with any kind of responsibility to their wider community.39 This kind of rhetoric constitutes an important retort to the frequent insinuation by historians that the north Indian Shi‘a continued to define themselves within the parameters of their noble sayyid ancestry and former Nawabi credentials.40 But it additionally implies that this associational Shi‘ism was, in a sense, walking a particular tightrope. On one hand, it remained attentive to the language, custom and expectations of the old Muslim aristocracy, who still comprised so much of its attending 37 38 39

Sayyid Muhammad Hadi Lucknawi, Waz‘ida¯ra¯n-i-Luckna’u (Lucknow, 1908), pp. 36–7. All India Shi‘a Conference, Calcutta 1928, pp. 14–15. Ibid. 40 E. g. Ganju, ‘The Muslims of Lucknow’.


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membership and the donors to its welfare projects. Shi‘a Conference sessions and charitable fundraisings were conducted in gentlemanly Urdu, darbari (courtly) styles of gathering and in former Nawabi buildings, attentive to the decorous titles (hazrat, buzurg, janab, huzoor) in which their noble patrons and participants would expect to be addressed. But these new forms of public organization and motivational rhetoric, in their commitment to public responsibility and charitable provision, also carried within them a critique of perceived Nawabi excess and elitism. It was a discrepancy that would be particularly problematic when this ‘modern’ culture of Shi‘a public associationalism sought to co-opt what one might characterize as the ‘traditional’ institutions that stood as the key standing legacies of pre-colonial Shi‘ism.

waqf s and the regulation of shi‘a society in colonial india A full examination of this transmogrification of a pre-colonial ashrafbound Shi‘ism into a more activist, socially conscious religion cannot be complete without an assessment of changing understandings of waqf, Muslim religious endowments established in perpetuity according to the tenets of Islamic law. In Mughal, Nawabi and colonial India alike, such trusts were often founded by aristocratic Muslim families to entrench their wealth and prevent its erosion or subdivision. Other waqfs, categorized as ‘public’ trusts, funded religious institutions to which they were attached such as mosques, madrasas, imambaras or the rites of azadari. If waqfs are important to an understanding of the moral universe of the north Indian Muslim elite generally, then they are perhaps doubly so for the Shi‘a. The elite social milieu of Shi‘ism in Awadh meant that many of the religious trusts that survived them, both in Lucknow and numerous other cities and qasbas, were of often enviable wealth and tied to major public religious and charitable functions, all often carrying the names and intentions of their original benefactors. Perhaps the single most illustrative example was the Husainabad Endowed Fund (later and more generally known as the Husainabad Trust), an endowment set up by Nawab Muhammad ‘Ali Shah with East India Company assistance in 1838–9; its massive annual income, drawn from a combination of promissory note agreements and commercial enterprises, was equivalent to two-thirds of the average annual municipal budget of Lucknow. These monies were channelled towards established purposes, including the upkeep of the Husainabad (and later also

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Asaf-ud-daula) mosques and imambaras and the tombs of certain members of the royal family; the funding of the annual Muharram processions associated with these sites; the payment of the nawab’s descendants and pensioners of his court; and the funding of Shi‘a pilgrimage and study in Iraq.41 Given the size of this and other Lucknawi endowments, there is little doubting the truth in what one source described as the ‘peculiar importance’ to the Shi‘a of endowed wealth.42 As was suggested in the last chapter, Shi‘a sharif families continued to found religious endowments even after the deposition of the last nawab; although less grand, they were tied to similar functions and institutions. Funding the building or maintenance of mosques and imambaras, or azadari performances and majlis gatherings, they were a means by which such families sought to bolster their pious credentials and social relevance, at a time when they were otherwise under threat from financial ruination, land reform and the enforcement of inheritance provisions that encouraged the division of their estates.43 In the late nineteenth and, particularly, early twentieth centuries, religious endowments drew the attentions of the ongoing project of Shi‘a community formation. Certain activists, lawyers and public organizations began to identify the large holdings of land and money locked into Shi‘a waqfs as the primary means through which their notional community could be regulated and financed. A wide literature has shown how, in contexts ranging through the Ottoman Empire, British India and post-colonial Pakistan, those attempting to ‘modernize’ Islamic practice or society have often turned their attention towards exerting influence upon Muslim endowments.44 Co-option of

41

42

43 44

Captain Andrews to Secretary to Foreign Department, 8 August 1859, Foreign Department/Financial A, December 1862, Nos. 3–10, NAI; Oldenburg, The making of colonial Lucknow, p. 193. The Husainabad Trust was much the largest Shi‘a endowment, but Lucknow had various substantial endowed funds dating from the Nawabi period. Among these was the Shah Najaf Trust, dating from the approximate time of the foundation of the Shah Najaf imambara in 1816, founded to maintain the mausoleums of Nawab Ghazi ud-din Haider and his three wives; and several others named in this chapter. Trustees of the Husainabad Endowment to Horsfield, 5 July 1872, Political Department No. 91/1903, UPSA; ‘Muslim Trusts’ by Mahomedbhoy I. M. Rowjee, The Moonlight (Bombay) 27 October 1945, Public and Judicial Files (L/PJ) 8/693, OIOC. See above, pp. 77–78. A telling example of the attempt by colonial and post-colonial states to co-opt control of waqfs relates to the endowments attached to the shrines in Punjab. The colonial state built up strong links with the guardians and general management of these shrines as a means of cementing rural control, while both the Unionist Party of the 1930s–1940s and the postcolonial Pakistani state attempted to control the finances attached to these shrines and


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fi g u r e 3 . 1 . Lucknow’s ornate Husainabad imambara, built by Muhammad ‘Ali Shah in 1838 and thereafter maintained by the Husainabad Trust (author’s collection).

control over waqfs, whether direct or indirect, could allow the acquisition of the tremendous social influence to be had by the dispensation of their funds, not to mention also the potential religious charisma and authority sometimes enjoyed by the guardians of such institutions. For many Shi‘a in colonial India, efforts to influence the management of endowments was a comparable means of shaping the functioning of Shi‘a religious and cultural life. Crucially, the conceptual foundations that made this idea possible lay in the reinterpretation of the nature of waqf during the colonial period. Gregory Kozlowski in particular has shown how, after the Religious Endowments Act of 1863, colonial courts and legal discourse conceived waqfs less as varied contracts drawn up by individual founders in particular localities than as uniform ‘charitable’, ‘public’ or ‘religious’ institutions. As such, it was expected that waqfs should be administered according to the written tenets of Islamic law, and that they should serve the interests and needs of the alleged Muslim community at large rather hence appropriate some of the religious and cultural authority imparted by them. See David Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the making of Pakistan (Delhi, 1989), pp. 162–4, 230–2; Katherine Ewing, ‘The politics of Sufism: redefining the saints in Pakistan’, Journal of Asian Studies 42, 2 (1983), pp. 258–64.

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than simply the whims of their trustees (mutawallis).45 This rhetoric would, by the beginning of the twentieth century, be appropriated by many Shi‘a activists themselves, who used this language of authentic management and a ‘public’ interest to claim such endowments as properties belonging to the community as a whole. After 1907 the All India Shi‘a Conference used the rubric of public responsibility to declare waqfs charitable institutions, and to demand their correct administration. It quickly raised claims that the monies contained within Shi‘a waqfs were in many cases being mismanaged or embezzled by their trustees, figures who were often portrayed as corrupt hereditary appointees. One of its first and most influential anjumans was its own Central Standing Waqf Committee, appointed to supervise the condition and administration of Shi‘a endowments across India. This committee endeavoured to compile a complete list of Shi‘a waqfs in the subcontinent. It set up local committees in various towns composed of local members of the Shi‘a Conference, who were requested to list all local waqfs, together with the names of their trustees and their sums of revenue and expenditure.46 A motley collection of private trusts set up by individual sayyids and gentry families in numerous towns and qasbas, most of which had very personal written aims and aspired to no influence beyond their own familial or local contexts, were thus described as public institutions and related to the needs of a nebulously defined Shi‘a community. In a manner bizarrely reminiscent of colonial census-taking, Conference envoys sometimes turned up in towns such as Bareilly, Badaun, Bahraich, Moradabad and Nagina, to compile registries of all district Shi‘a endowments. These envoys attempted to seek out any existing documentation or deeds (waqfnamahs), identify their trustees and the size and composition of the Shi‘a ‘community’ they were meant to serve, and to provide assessments of the condition of their management.47 In cases of proven poor management or corruption, attempts would be made to force correctives, whether through requesting government intervention or circulating damaging revelations in the Muslim press.48 Moreover, newly founded Shi‘a associations, such as

45 46

47 48

Kozlowski, Muslim endowments, passim. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-awal, pp. 110–14; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-do¯m 1908 (Lucknow, 1909), p. 7; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯‘ı¯ da¯d-iijla¯s-i-cha¯rho¯m 1910, pp. 111–21. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, pp. 112–14. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-cha¯rho¯m 1910, pp. 111–13; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-chhata¯ 1912, pp. 138–9, 142–3; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯‘ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, p. 185.


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charities or azadari organizations, were encouraged to seek funds from waqfs already in local existence, often over the heads of their established trustees. Unsurprisingly, the large waqfs of Lucknow were among the first objects of the Central Standing Waqf Committee’s attentions, in particular the Husainabad Trust. The massive funds embedded within it had long earned the attentions of various elements within Lucknow, not least the British. The municipal government had, since 1858, continually sought ways to exert influence over the endowment. By negotiating for itself a hand in selecting its mutawallis, the British administration, indirectly but consistently, had managed to use it as a means of pacifying Lucknow’s ex-royal family and pensioners and ensuring their loyalty; the municipal government even sometimes succeeded in channelling the funds according to its own wishes, for instance, directing them towards projects such as the sanitization and beautification of Lucknow.49 In a way reminiscent of the colonial state’s attempts to pull the strings of the Husainabad administration, the Shi‘a Conference’s Waqf Committee quickly turned its attentions towards exerting influence over the same extensive pool of potential funding for its projects. Spokesmen demanded the streamlining of the management of the endowment, floated the idea that it should not be under purely ‘royal’ control, and asked that its revenue be used to support some of the Shi‘a Conference’s own endeavours, such as Shi‘a schools and the orphanage, and the repair of religious buildings.50 Unsurprisingly, as in other instances, this brought the Conference into conflict with the mutawallis of the endowment, those royal descendants who had fought hard for a place

49

50

An Act passed in 1878 for the restructuring of the Husainabad Trust precluded any direct British control of the trust, giving managerial rights to three trustees. Whenever a vacancy appeared on the Board of Trustees, the former Nawab’s descendants and pensioners were empowered to make nominations from among their contemporaries for the trusteeship, together nominating a maximum of four individuals. The British would then have the final say in the appointment from these nominations. This meant that trustees tended to secure their positions through their compliance, and the British at various points persuaded them to release the funds towards their preferred causes, such as the upkeep of roads, Queen Victoria Park and the government-aided Husainabad High School. For a longer-term and more detailed analysis of British involvement in the Husainabad and other Lucknawi endowments than is possible here, see Political Department No. 113/1908, UPSA, passim; Political Department No. 173/1909, passim; Political Department 63/1921, passim; ‘Copy of judgement in the Chief Court of Awadh’, GAD No. 524/1945, UPSA; Oldenburg, The making of colonial Lucknow, pp. 191–9. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-do¯m 1908, p. 15; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-cha¯rho¯m 1910, pp. 114–17.

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on the Board of Trustees and were loath to compromise their influence. The Shi‘a Conference was, then, implicitly placing itself in competition with the royal family and pensioners of Lucknow for control of the Trust, while in other contexts recruiting these individuals as some of its most ardent supporters. Inspired by the Shi‘a Conference, other Shi‘a representatives made audacious efforts to capture some of Lucknow’s most significant religious institutions through legal suits, claiming mismanagement of their trusts. Endowments to which they laid claim included the Waqf Mumtaz ul-‘Ulama; set up by one of late Nawabi Lucknow’s major mujtahids, it had a generous income from commercial property in the city and supported the Tehsin ‘Ali Khan masjid, one of the city’s largest Shi‘a mosques (indeed, the city’s de facto congregational mosque before the release of the Asafi masjid in 1884), and adjoining imambara. Despite the high status of its holding family, civil proceedings were initiated by city lawyers acting for the ‘Shi‘a public’ in the 1910s demanding the removal of its mutawalli.51 The same was true of the huge Sibtainabad Trust; set up on municipal rental income, it had been established to fund the upkeep of the imambara and mausoleum of Nawab Amjad ‘Ali Shah in Hazratganj. The Shi‘a lawyer–politician Sayyid Wazir Hasan launched civil proceedings against its trustees around 1915, claiming that the begam in charge, a daughter of the former nawab, had mortgaged the property to a Hindu kathak dancer.52 The case was fatally flawed, however, by the fact that the existing rukbars (deeds) did not declare the trust to be a waqf at all. The disputes around this property would carry on for many decades. Open challenges to established trustees were not confined to Lucknow. One of the Shi‘a Conference’s highest-profile early campaigns was the liberation of the Mansabiya Waqf, a large endowment set up in 1878 by a number of residents of Meerut in order to support the town’s new madrasa.53 In the Conference’s early sessions, members claimed that the second and current mutawalli of the endowment, Tajm ul-Husain Khan, was understating the amount of money released by the endowment, and pocketing a cut for personal ends. Sayyid Muzaffar ‘Ali Khan, a ra’is of Jansath in Muzaffarnagar district and consistently one of the Shi‘a Conference’s most

51 52 53

E. g. To O’Donnell, 9 October 1918, GAD No. 806/1918, UPSA. ‘Humble petition of members of the Shi‘a community’, 14 October 1918, ibid. Husain, Sawa¯nih-i-‘umrı¯ , pp. 178–9.


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proactive and vocal campaigners, arranged various inspections and interviews concerning the waqf, eventually enlisting local lawyers to take the matter to court, and forcing the resignation of the mutawalli.54 This story yet further reinforces the point that the Shi‘a Conference often defined its new respectability through critiques of the old Muslim elite as embodied by corrupt and wasteful hereditary trustees, and frequently came into conflict with established waqf custodians, who were often individuals of esteemed local reputation. One way in which the Shi‘a Conference sought to cultivate the issue of endowments into a question applicable to the whole community was by fabricating an issue of assumed importance to all: the alleged takeover of Shi‘a waqfs by Sunni trustees. This concern was a rather novel one; for just as during the Nawabi period it had sometimes been seen as acceptable for Sunnis to hold posts of state as ministers, it was far from unknown for Sunnis to be selected to administer Shi‘a endowments, and vice versa.55 It was only really after the foundation of the Shi‘a Conference that control of endowments became one of the most salient and surprising grounds for Shi‘a–Sunni competition. Allegations of Sunni appropriation of Shi‘a waqfs vindicated Shi‘a claims that they were subject to domination by the Muslim majority and thus required special consideration and safeguards from the government. Several examples of the Sunni seizure of Shi‘a trusts were raised by the Conference in its early years, but a discussion of just one will here suffice: the large waqf attached to the imambara of Gorakhpur. Founded by Nawab Asaf-ud-daula in 1788–9, this trust was one of the largest of Awadh, directing revenue generated by fifteen local villages and a sizeable sum of land towards the activities of the town’s imambara and associated functions. The trusteeship was first imparted upon a Shi‘a resident of the town, but, at some point during ensuing decades, was handed to a loyal Sunni zamindari family of solid local reputation and connections to the royal court.56 This issue raised little comment until the end of the nineteenth century, when criticisms began to emerge that the current trustee, the aptly named Wajid ‘Ali Shah, was guilty of embezzling the trust’s funds 54

55

56

All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-cha¯rho¯m 1910, pp. 147–9; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-chhata¯ 1912, pp. 138–9; All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, p. 4. Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan law, p. 313. For examples of such cases see ‘Copy of the old mutwalli’s remarks on the Shi‘a memorial, 19 May 1909’, Collection of papers relating to the Hooghly Imambara, 1815–1910 (Calcutta, 1914), CUL. ‘Extracts from proceedings of 9th session of the All India Shi‘a Conference, Allahabad, 15–17 October 1915’, GAD No. 488/1915, UPSA.

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and disregarding Shi‘a religious sensitivities. He was accused of holding excessively festive celebrations during Muharram – and even, it was claimed, drink parties for British visitors within the imambara compound.57 When he died in 1915, leading to the confirmation of his nineyear-old son, Jawad ‘Ali Shah, as his successor, the sudden fragility of the trust’s administration spurred the Shi‘a Conference to seek to depose the trustee and install its own representative. Mirza Muzaffar Husain, a Shi‘a Conference envoy and a self-styled ‘representative of the Shia community of Lucknow’, brought a suit against the trustee, calling for an enquiry into the mismanagement of the trust and requesting that it be brought under the control of a committee of management under public supervision.58 The Conference issued resolutions asking for government intervention to ‘save this important Waqf and thereby put an obligation on the whole Shi‘a community’,59 while fatwas were even elicited from senior Shi‘a ‘ulama of Lucknow which, rather ignoring historic precedents, pronounced it forbidden for Shi‘a trusts to be managed by Sunni trustees.60 Ultimately, this protracted case was something of a failure. The lack of clarity in the trust’s documentation made court action unfeasible. At the same time, the Shi‘a Conference fell prey to the suggestion that it represented a clique of Lucknawi Muslims, trying to manufacture a national Shi‘a debate out of a local issue which, within Gorakhpur itself, elicited little interest.61 But the dispute illustrates perfectly how arguments about specific Muslim endowments, through their dissemination in new Shi‘a newspapers and associations, were reconceived as issues affecting a Shi‘a community more generally. Such cases ultimately paved the way for a further parting of the ways for Shi‘a and Sunni advocates of waqf reform. Various campaigns for improved waqf management had been attempted over previous decades. A number of Muslim lawyers and politicians, most famously Sayyid Ameer ‘Ali and 57

58

59 60

61

Riaz-ul-Akhbar (Gorakhpur), 8 July 1896, UPNNR; UP Government Legal Remembrancer to Collector of Gorakhpur, 28 January 1907, GAD No. 488/1915; ‘Death of Mian Wajid Ali Shah and the fictitious gaddi-nashin ceremony of his son’, Ittehad, 8 September 1915, ibid. ‘Extract from the diary of the Superintendent of Police, Gorakhpur’, 11 September 1915, ibid.; ‘Copy of a petition from Mirza Muzaffar Husain to Collector of Gorakhpur’, 2 September 1915, ibid. It was suggested that he hoped to become trustee himself, backed by the Shi‘a Conference. ‘Extracts from the proceedings of the 9th session of the All India Shi‘a Conference’, ibid. ‘Copy of a petition from Mirza Muzaffar Husain to Collector of Gorakhpur’, 1 September 1915, ibid. ‘Extract from the diary of the Superintendent of Police, Gorakhpur’, ibid.


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Muhammad ‘Ali Jinnah, had campaigned for amendments to endowments administration with little sign of Shi‘a or Sunni specificity, embodied by the campaigns of the Central Muhammadan Association in the 1880s and the debates surrounding the Waqfs Validation Act of 1913. But cases such as that of Gorakhpur led to a gradual Shi‘a–Sunni separation on the issue of waqf reform even where the demands for greater regulation and transparency were similar, culminating with the formation of separate Shi‘a and Sunni Waqf Boards in 1936 to offer separate supervision of waqf administration.62 If the identification of particular trusts as public ‘Shi‘a’ properties justified the attempts by the Shi‘a Conference’s Waqf Committee to exert control over their management in some contexts, then it sought in others to flex its muscles on the grounds of its ‘Indianness’. One of the boldest and most sustained such actions was the protracted attempt by Shi‘a Conference emissaries to reform the workings of the Awadh Bequest. This important fund, a component of the Husainabad Trust, needs some initial introduction. It had been established by Nawab Ghazi-ud-din Haider (1814–27) on the back of the interest on a loan to the East India Company in 1825, in order to provide for several royal begams and, more significantly, to finance activities of Shi‘a learning and pilgrimage in the shrine cities of southern Iraq. For several decades from around 1850 onwards, the fund provided some Rs120,000 per year to the shrine cities: a vital chunk of their wealth and one of the main sources of income for circles of ‘ulama resident there. The money was directed towards a single senior mujtahid in each of the cities of Najaf and Karbala who was, by the terms of the Bequest’s deeds, given autonomy to distribute the funds according to his conscience among so-called ‘deserving persons’, among them established ‘ulama, young scholars and the guardians and managers of the cities’ holy shrines. An additional major administrative change was made by the British in 1867: the channelling of approximately a third of the revenues into the so-called ‘Indian fund’, to provide specifically for Indian residents, students and pilgrims in the cities. Providing money to the ‘ulama active in Najaf and Karbala and funding visits to Iraq by Indian and Persian pilgrims and scholars, the Bequest thus epitomized the transnational networks of learning and patronage often associated with Shi‘ism, and cemented the importance of India within these even after the fall of the nawabs. It also bound the prosperity of the shrine cities to the economic and political stability of British India. 62

See ‘The UP Hidayat Muslim Waqfs Bill’, L/PJ/7/1225, OIOC; ‘United Provinces of Agra and Oudh Waqf Bill, 1933’, in Home Department (Judicial), No. 1134/1933, NAI.

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Most discussions of the Awadh Bequest have primarily examined the impact at its destination in the shrine cities, focusing upon British efforts to shape its administration according to their priorities in Ottoman Iraq or late Qajar Persia.63 Less attention has been given to the deliberations over the Bequest at its source in Lucknow, and what it meant for the Indian Shi‘a. In fact, the negotiations taking place on the issue in early twentieth-century India demonstrate how the redefinition of a waqf as a public or charitable institution enabled the Indian Shi‘a to newly assert their right to administer the Bequest, thereby projecting their influence anew into the wider Shi‘a world. The process that allowed this new Indian engagement began in Iraq rather than India itself, and hence we need to briefly leave the Indian setting of this book for the ‘atabat-i-‘aliyat themselves. Around 1902–3, allegations of corruption and embezzlement against the two main distributing mujtahids of the funds in Karbala and Najaf prompted Major Newmarch, the British Resident in Baghdad, to seek the reorganization of the Bequest. British strategy for ensuring transparent distribution focused upon the replacement of the single distributing mujtahid in each city with a number of mukhassims (distributors), appointed by and collectively working under the supervision of the Resident.64 This led Newmarch to undertake the compilation of lists of ‘ulama resident in the shrine cities who were felt to carry suitable levels of both religious authority and compliance to play a role in the dispensation of the funds. The precondition of loyalty steered Newmarch away from the Persian mujtahids, who were widely perceived as disproportionately influential in the shrine cities, and as potentially hostile to British interests in the region. Instead, Newmarch turned increasingly towards Arab and, in particular, Indian ‘ulama.65 The latter, as British subjects, were widely perceived as inherently more amenable, but at the same time these ‘ulama themselves proved eager to use the reform of the Bequest as a means of

63

64

65

E. g. Meir Litvak, ‘A failed manipulation: the British, the Oudh Bequest and the Shi‘i ‘ulama of Najaf and Karbala’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 27, 1 (2000); Meir Litvak, ‘Money, religion and politics: the Oudh Bequest in Najaf and Karbala, 1850– 1903’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 33 (2001); Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 211–29; Cole, Sacred space and holy war, pp. 78–98. E. g. Syed Hasan Hakimzada to Viceroy, 16 April 1902, Foreign Department (External A), September 1903, Nos. 67–86, NAI; Letter from the Political Resident in Turkish Arabia, 30 September 1907, Foreign Department (Secret E), April 1908, Nos. 214–22, NAI. British officials in Iraq described the Persian mujtahids in the shrine cities as ‘very anti-British in feeling’, and hence argued that ‘distribution under the Resident’s control . . . might be made a valuable means of controlling political agitators’. B. H. Wahl to Chief Secretary, 17 January 1911, and Saiyid Ahmad to Commissioner of Lucknow Division, 28 July 1910, Political Department A, May 1911, Nos. 10–44, UPSA.


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renegotiating power and augmenting their influence in the ‘atabat against the current clerical hierarchy, which was dominated to their detriment by Persian mujtahids.66 When Newmarch visited the shrine cities in connection with the matter through the 1900s, it was primarily Indian clerics who visited him, hoping to secure appointments as distributors. They mostly claimed that, with the funds originating in India, the revenue should be directed primarily towards Indians resident in Iraq, especially those of Awadh.67 Newmarch’s own receptivity to this idea fully shows how the British increasingly conceived the Bequest as a public and charitable institution of India rather than the discretionary asset of the contemporary Persian mujtahids, an interpretation that worked strongly to the advantage of ‘ulama of Indian origin. By far the most influential mujtahid in Iraq willing to work with this reform scheme was Sayyid Ahmad Hindi, a young but well-regarded Lucknawi mujtahid of the Khandan-i-Ijtihad family who had qualified in Iraq and periodically resided there.68 He entered into close communications with British officials in both Iraq and Lucknow, impressing upon them the idea that, through the Awadh Bequest and with the support of the Indian Shi‘a, international Shi‘a loyalty to the British could be cultivated as a counterweight to the subversive pan-Islam championed by the Ottoman sultan.69 Travelling backwards and forwards, he acted as mediator between the British and the Shi‘a clergies of Iraq and India.70 Once the All India Shi‘a Conference was set up, it quickly attached itself to Sayyid Ahmad’s activities, seeking the opportunity to exert the Lucknawi voice over the endowment. Arguing that the Bequest was essentially a charitable fund emanating from Lucknow, the Conference similarly 66

67

68

69

70

An Indian mujtahid in Iraq was, according to one source, treated ‘like a whipped dog in the presence of the . . . all-powerful Persian hierarchy’. Lorimer to McMahon, Secretary to the Government of India Foreign Department, 11 November 1911, Foreign Department (General A), June 1912, Nos. 7–33, NAI. J. W. Hose to Secretary to Foreign Department, 18 March 1911, Foreign Department (General A), June 1912, Nos. 7–33, NAI. The government of India’s communications with Sayyid Ahmad are spelled out in great detail in Political Department No. 84/1912, UPSA. ‘Bluntly put, Sayad Ahmad’s contention was that with Rs. 10,000 per month which is already disbursed, the whole religious influence of Kerbala and Najaf could be bought, to the great advantage of Islamism, the British Government, and the poor pilgrims and residents at the shrines.’ Ramsey, Political Resident in Turkish Arabia, to the Secretary to Foreign Department, 30 September 1907, Foreign Department (Secret E), April 1908, Nos. 214–22, NAI. His ijazat, family history and the amount of correspondence he maintained with British officials ensured that these administrators came to understand him as representing ‘the general feeling among the Shias in Lucknow’. J. M. Holms, Chief Secretary to the UP Government, to Secretary to Foreign Department, undated, ibid.

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campaigned against discretionary dispensation by a single mujtahid. Instead, in 1909 it somewhat brashly proposed that it should be entitled to form a Standing Committee in Lucknow, composed of the Husainabad trustees, Lucknawi mujtahids and the city’s Commissioner, to appoint and supervise the distributors in the cities.71 Such proposals, if enacted, would have awarded the Indian Shi‘a an unprecedented influence in the ‘atabat. Proposals by Sayyid Ahmad and the Conference further advocated the allocation of a large share of the funds to establish hospitals, schools and pilgrimage facilities specifically for Indian residents. As one participant in these discussions noted, ‘public opinion in Lucknow demands nothing less than the devotion to charity of the whole of the income of the bequest’.72 Another commented that ‘the object of the Lucknow Shi‘ahs is apparently to devote the whole of the funds to “charity,” non-Indian Shi‘ahs perhaps excluded from the benefits of the distribution’.73 To convey this new interpretation of the Bequest’s set purpose, the phrase ‘deserving persons’ within the original treaty was reinterpreted to refer not to the recipients chosen by the two (usually Persian) distributing mujtahids, as originally understood; rather, the deserving were those construed as the beneficiaries intended by the original deeds, namely, Indians resident in the shrine cities.74 Campaigns protesting at the ‘partiality and favouritism’ of Persian distributors towards non-Indians, and demanding that the British should actively seek to target the funds at Indian distributors and beneficiaries, persisted right into the 1920s. Predictably, the All India Shi‘a Conference was the most conspicuous proponent of such schemes, claiming to be acting in accordance with the intentions of the nawabs and carrying the backing of some influential Shi‘a lawyers and newspapers.75 The reform of the Awadh Bequest in the early twentieth century has usually been discussed in terms of its failure, with British manipulation leading to an 71

72 73

74 75

From the Political Resident in Turkish Arabia, 31 March 1911, Foreign Department (General A), June 1912, Nos. 7–33, NAI; From A. H. Mahon, 7 September 1911, Political Department A, May 1911, Nos. 10–44, UPSA; B. H. Wahl to Chief Secretary, 17 January 1911, ibid.; A. L. Saunders to Chief Secretary to UP Government, 29 July 1910, ibid. J. W. Hose to Secretary to Foreign Department, 18 March 1911, ibid. Lorimer to McMahon, 11 August 1911, Foreign Department (General A), June 1912, Nos. 7–33, NAI. Note dated 11 April 1921, Political Department No. 147/1918, UPSA. Maulvi Sayyid Kalb-i-‘Abbas Naqvi Bar-at-Law, All India Shi‘a Conference Waqf Section, to Chief Secretary to the Viceroy, 1 April 1930, Home Department (Judicial) 421/1930, NAI. The Shi‘a newspaper Sarfaraz carried a series of articles bemoaning the poor condition of the Awadh Bequest’s management and distribution through 1929–30, and the Shi‘a Conference passed resolutions to the same ends during these years.


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erosion of its credibility and a deterioration of the stature of those ‘ulama willing to participate in its distribution.76 However, a concurrent story to this is that, on account of the close liaison between Sayyid Ahmad and Indian Shi‘a organizations with the British, in both Iraq and India, greater Indian influence was entrenched over the running of the Bequest and the dispensation of funds. While not all of the Shi‘a Conference’s proposals were actualized, the diversification of distributors and British retention of control over the appointment process were both factors that tended to favour Indian ‘ulama. With Arab and Persian clerics unwilling to collaborate so closely with the British, it was even intermittently admitted that ‘it may be necessary to fall back . . . on the exclusive agency of Indian mujtahids’.77 The search for suitable distributors even led to Newmarch requesting District Commissioners in the United Provinces to correspond with ‘ulama in Lucknow, Fyzabad and Jaunpur with the thorny task of identifying ‘mujtahids’ (this term, predictably, being much misused to refer to senior ‘ulama in general) both suitably qualified and willing to resettle permanently in Iraq.78 The management of the Bequest was, then, considerably Indianized, as Indian ‘ulama took over responsibilities largely shunned by their Persian and Arab counterparts. By 1911 three of the twenty distributors were Indians. By 1913 it was five of fourteen. By 1931 only one distributor was left in each of Najaf and Karbala, of whom the latter, Sayyid Mustafa Kashmiri, was of Indian origin. After the British exit from Iraq in 1932, control over the endowment was increasingly vested in the government of India, bringing the endowment further public attention. From 1938 Indian Shi‘a through the Shi‘a Conference made representations to the government asking that the Bequest be administered in its entirety by Indian mujtahids in situ, and that a full two-thirds of the fund be set aside for Indians in Iraq.79 Out of this motley array of individual attempts to reform the administration of particular Muslim endowments a series of common conclusions can be drawn. All reveal how a new brand of Shi‘a activists and 76

77

78

79

E. g. Litvak, ‘A failed manipulation’, passim; B. H. Wahl to Chief Secretary, 17 January 1911, Political Department A, May 1911, Nos. 10–44, UPSA. Lorimer to McMahon, 28 December 1912, Foreign Department (General A), March 1913, Nos. 25–43, NAI. E.g. ‘List of Indian mujtahids residing in Karbala and Najaf’, Deputy Commissioner to Commissioner of Lucknow, 20 August 1912, Political Department No. 84/1912, UPSA; Lorimer to Burn, 31 January 1913, ibid.; Assistant Secretary to Foreign Department to Chief Secretary to Governor of UP, 30 July 1912, Foreign Department (General A), March 1913, Nos. 25–43, NAI. Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 226–9.

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organizations, primarily those respective umara’ and ‘ulama clustered around the Shi‘a Conference and its affiliates, identified the wealth and assets locked into traditional religious endowments as the proposed basis of funding by which modern Shi‘a religious and cultural life could be revitalized and regulated. They thereby attempted to co-opt a series of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century endowments within a distinctively twentieth-century project of Shi‘a community formation. Efforts to stake a claim to this endowed money ranged from the attempted coercion or dismissal of existing trustees, to the attempted subordination of trustees to amenable new bureaucratic ‘committees’ with ultimate supervisory and distributive powers. Throughout, these efforts were commonly justified through a moralizing rhetoric of charity and public responsibility, heavily based upon the colonial understanding of waqfs as religious or charitable institutions intended for public benefit. But these stories of waqf reform also reveal clearly how innumerable conflicts were created between Shi‘a Conference envoys and existing mutawallis, with the latter frequently resenting the perceived attempts by a small circle of ‘ulama and bureaucrats centred on Lucknow to usurp their established positions. The new associational Shi‘ism and language of charitable religion were not uncontested, but frequently elicited disapproval or resistance from pre-existent structures of authority and patronage in many Indian, and indeed Iraqi, towns.

essential communities and indian shi‘ism: the shi‘a qaum While the project of anjuman-building and co-option of waqf funding provided the organizational and financial apparatus on which a new sense of Shi‘a society could be constructed, ideas of community also took shape through choices of language used in the evocation of the Shi‘a. A number of recent studies have investigated the diverse vernacular terminology with which many Muslim intellectuals of the colonial period referred to their community, to give a sense of the different moral universes that Muslims perceived themselves as inhabiting.80 Likewise, the Shi‘a 80

E. g. Ayesha Jalal, ‘Negotiating colonial modernity and cultural difference: Indian Muslim conceptions of community and nation, 1878–1914’, in Leila Fawaz and C. A. Bayly, eds., Modernity and culture: from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (New York, 2002); Farzana Shaikh, ‘Millat and mahzab: rethinking Iqbal’s political vision’, in Mushirul Hasan and Asim Roy, eds., Living together separately: cultural India in history and politics (Delhi, 2005), pp. 387–8; Majeed, Muhammad Iqbal, pp. 67–84.


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vernacular tracts consulted for this study applied a diverse range of expressions to denote the Shi‘a population (jama‘at, mominin, millat, deen etc.), each of which carries its own insinuations and implies different ways of navigating relations with global Shi‘ism, contemporary Hindustan and other Muslim communities. However, perhaps one of the most striking terminological shifts in these writings was the increasingly frequent articulation in the Urdu ecumene of the Shi‘a as a qaum, a term often translated as ‘community’ or ‘nation’. This qaumi terminology has long been identified as crucial in processes of community foundation in colonial India, carrying as it did a welldocumented ‘semantic flexibility’ by which it straddled ideas of caste and community, religion and nationality, making it an attractive framing term for communal spokesmen ranging from Sayyid Ahmad Khan to the Arya Samaj.81 In view of this intellectual backdrop, its appearance in dialogues of community among the Shi‘a is perhaps unsurprising, but the frequency of its application becomes striking. The term was sometimes applied in conjunction with others in the broad sweep of clerical tracts, histories and moralizing writings discussed in previous chapters, but its dominance as the major term for denoting the Indian Shi‘a was cemented in the literature and proceedings produced by public organizations such as madrasas, charities and the Shi‘a Conference itself. This was equally true of a budding genre of Shi‘a newspapers, which cemented the dominance of the qaumi language in vernacular discussions of Shi‘a community. Specifically Shi‘a periodical publications had existed in Lucknow since the 1890s.82 However, much the most important was Ittehad, founded in 1910 and affiliated with the Shi‘a Conference. Its editor, Sayyid Mujahid Husain Jauhar, was a young author from Amroha and consistent Shi‘a Conference attendee, who had earlier made his name as a contributor to Awadh Akhbar and staunch critic of the Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama madrasa.83 The newspaper was one of the great success stories of the United Provinces’ vigorous Urdu press in the 1910s, quickly switching from monthly to weekly circulation and increasing the

81

82

83

Safia Amir, ‘Semantics of the word Qawm: a study of Sir Sayyad Ahmad Khan’, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 49, 4 (2001); Lelyveld, Aligarh’s first generation, pp. 26–7, 300–48. All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, p. 72. Examples of early Shi‘a newspapers existing from the 1890s–1900s include Akhba¯r-i-Ima¯mı¯ ya, Shı¯ ‘a Gazette, Ima¯mı¯ ya ka¯ Qadı¯ m Tarı¯ qa, Sı¯ ya¯ra and al-Ma‘ru¯f. Sayyid Aja’iz Husain Rizvi Jarchwi, Anjuman-i-Wazı¯ fa-i-Sa¯da¯t-va-Mo¯minı¯ n´ (New Delhi, 1937), p. 12.

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number of copies distributed by some 350 per cent by 1915. Moreover, the fact that the newspaper attracted contributing writers from towns as diverse as Lucknow, Bijnor, Etawah and Ghazipur confirms the newspaper as a crucial factor in the qaumi construction of the Shi‘a, addressing them as a community in such a way as to transcend the municipal confines of individual towns. With the qaum thus established as perhaps the foremost term in which younger, Urdu-reading Shi‘a were primarily conceiving their religious identity in the early decades of the twentieth century, it is worth speculating on some of the connotations that it carried. The first of the inferences of a qaumi terminology is its implication of Shi‘ism as the elemental defining feature and rallying-point of the individual, the identity of the essential group. The qaum evoked that most innate and embedded affiliation, one that did not in any sense need learning, protecting or sustaining. To put it somewhat bluntly, the qaumi language carried the implication, as this terminology has in contemporary Pakistan, of being ‘first Shiites’, above anything else.84 Another major implication of this qaumi language was that it implied the vanquishing of all social and cultural differences that may have existed within it. For many Hindu and Muslim socio-religious reform movements alike, the development of a qaumi language promoted the eradication of all localism and caste cleavage which threatened to divide their communities.85 Likewise, among the Shi‘a this terminology was a means of creating an ideal of religious community which traversed the biradari distinctions and sayyid elitism that were seen, by some, as weakening it. The qaumi turn thus developed in tandem with the anjuman network, which was developing new ideas of Shi‘a respectability and collective responsibility independent of ancestral distinctions and purity of shajra. But even more significantly, the idea of a Shi‘a qaum carried a sense of empowerment. The Shi‘a were not to be described divisively as a mere ‘sect’ or ‘school of thought’ (firqa, maslak) within Islam, as Sunnis, Hindus or colonial ethnographers might have labelled them, but as holding the legitimacy of an independent, objectified religious community. Indeed, the 84

85

Mariam Abou Zahab, ‘The politicization of the Shia community in Pakistan in the 1970s and 1980s’, in Alessandro Monsutti, Silvia Naef and Farian Sabahi, eds., The other Shiites: from the Mediterranean to Central Asia (Berne, 2007), p. 111. For this significance of a ‘qaumik’ language in Hinduism as carrying a heavy communitarian connotation which transcended Hindu caste structures see Mark Juergensmeyer, Religion as social vision: the movement against untouchability in twentieth-century Punjab (Berkeley, 1982), pp. 2–6.


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fact that Shi‘a orators framed their distinctiveness as members of an independent religious community equivalent in its terminological standing to Sikhism, Hinduism or Christianity almost implied the Shi‘a to be of a different religious system, rather than a different sect, to other Muslims, one that entirely abrogated the idea that they should be described as a mere Muslim minority rather than a distinct community.86 By invoking the Shi‘a community in the same terminology with which the Muslim population was often cast, this language gave the Shi‘a a kind of functional independence, with their own separate identities, religion and institutions. The Shi‘a community was, in essence, seeking the same kind of freestanding communal legitimacy that the colonial state had, through special quotas of employment, education and political representation, long conferred on the Muslim community as a whole. In turn, this qaumi terminology severed the touchpoints of possible mutual identification, carrying within it a kind of implied secession of the Shi‘a from ideas of a generic Muslim community, and hence from wider projects of Muslim social reform. This implication was noted by much of the Urdu press, which began to express considerable trepidation that the Shi‘a should be defining their cultural, social and political independence from other Muslims in the same way as ‘Muslim’ spokesmen were asserting their equivalent separateness from Hindus. One Shi‘a writer of Bilgram, commenting in 1903 on the implications of the recent foundation of the Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor, lamented that the Shi‘a should not be ‘seeking to work separately, which will mean the frittering away of the energy and resources of the Muhammadan community’.87 Another newspaper deplored ‘the growing tendency among Muhammadans to carry on the work of national advancement on sectarian lines’.88 Indeed, the above discussion evidences a seeming sectarianization of projects of Muslim reform. Lucknawi organizations such as the Shi‘a Conference Waqf Board, Boarding House and Orphanage all expressed and propagated the sense of the Shi‘a as an independent and self-governing community, distinct from other Indian Muslims. While few of the Shi‘a associations discussed here were rhetorically antagonistic towards other religious communities, they were in effect ‘sectarian’ in terms of their 86

87 88

It is worth noting that the connotations of independence and autonomy carried by qaum contrast with the term mazhab, a term which was appropriated by some Muslim ecumenists during this period to stress the common Sunni and Shi‘a inclusion within a single, generic Islamic tradition. See Introduction, p. 25. Oudh Akhbar, 10 January 1903, UPNNR. Rohilkhand Gazette (Bareilly), 16 January 1909, ibid.

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promotion of Shi‘a separateness from the welfare and development agendas of other Muslim public organizations. This development was acknowledged by the Shi‘a Conference itself. While frequently giving exhortations to religious unity within Islam, it simultaneously noted with apparent concern the visible evolution of such a formerly cosmopolitan, integrated municipality as Lucknow into a stage comprising separate schools, orphanages, hostels and commercial enterprises for alternative religious communities.89 The other defining feature of this qaumi language was its insinuation of a ‘national’ connotation within Shi‘ism. Whether Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s attempts to distance the Hindustani Muslim qaum from an Ottoman-led pan-Islam in the 1870s, or Husain Ahmad Madani’s efforts to harmonize Sunni Islam with the ideals of the Indian nationalist movement in the 1930s, Muslim intellectuals were throughout the colonial period widely using the idea of the qaum to convey the distinct ‘Indianness’ of their religious community.90 Likewise, this terminology was another way in which Shi‘ism was conceived as bound to its national environment, as a clearly Indian religion. Most of the anjumans discussed in this and previous chapters flaunted their ‘Indian’ or ‘Hindustani’ focus. Indeed, for all the assumptions about the globalization of Shi‘a leadership and organization in the twentieth century, the absence of reference to events in Najaf or elsewhere within much of the Shi‘a Urdu public sphere is quite striking. Tellingly, it was efforts at socio-religious reform within India itself – the opening of colleges, hospitals, refuges and orphanages by Hindu, Muslim and Christian groups, for instance – rather than any contemporaneous Shi‘a organizational efforts in Iraq or Iran, that Shi‘a associations consistently cited as the foremost inspirations for their own activities.91 A ‘national’ Shi‘ism this may have been in rhetoric, but its contours did not necessarily overlap with those of British India; for the associational Shi‘ism framed around the public institutions hitherto described was one very much tied to its north Indian spiritual heartland. This was true of all the madrasa, printing and charity networks already discussed, but just looking at the nominally ‘All India’ Shi‘a Conference offers a case in point. 89 90

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All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, p. 73. Respectively see Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Asba¯b-i-bhaga¯vat-i-Hind and The Loyal Muhammadans in India, republished in Shan Mohammad, ed., Writings and speeches of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (Bombay, 1972), pp. 15–56; Sayyid Husain Ahmad Madani, Composite nationalism and Islam: muttahidah qaumiyat aur Islam, introd. Barbara Metcalf (Oxford, 2005 [1938]), passim. Rizvi, Madrasa’t ul-Wa¯‘ı¯ zı¯ n´ kı¯ a¯wa¯z, pp. 7–8.


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The Conference’s various committees were careful to present a broad, subcontinental composition through symbolic quotas of members from each Indian province, with Lucknawi Shi‘a standing alongside their coreligionists from Punjab, Hyderabad and elsewhere. Indeed, envoys from Persia and Afghanistan were even sometimes present at Conference meetings, as if to pay lip-service to the idea of attachment to a wider, transnational Shi‘ism. But in its substance, the Shi‘a Conference organization was very much one of the north Indian plains. It was a telling fact that, of its first nine sessions, four were held in Lucknow, with all others confined to the United Provinces and Patna.92 Despite tokenistic representation, its presence in provinces such as Punjab, Bengal and Madras remained minimal, and it was vocally regretted that the Conference had few connections with the Shi‘a population in many Indian regions.93 Narrower still, there was always a sense that this aspiring national forum remained a distinctly Lucknawi organization in its orientation. As was admitted by a speaker at one of its sessions, ‘all the hopes of the Shi‘a of Lucknow are attached to the Shi‘a Conference, and while this is clearly the Conference of all the Shi‘a of India, Lucknow is its presidential seat, and so necessarily it is most attentive to the Shi‘a of Lucknow’.94 Lucknow was the seat of the mujtahids who usually chaired its sessions, the site of its offices and most of its meetings, and the location from which its envoys were deputed. Strikingly, the Conference’s most influential body, the Intizamiya (Organizational) Committee, reserved a full half of its forty seats for Lucknawi residents.95 In other words, the ‘Hindustani’ Shi‘a qaum articulated in this period seemed to equate primarily with the word’s pre-colonial identification of the Mughal and Nawabi heartland of the Gangetic delta, rather than the later contours of British India. This was, moreover, an example of how a particular Shi‘a elite, primarily that resident in Lucknow and other post-Mughal north Indian Muslim settlements, used this contextual ambiguity in the idea of ‘Hindustan’ to stake their own claim to spokesmanship of communities across the subcontinent that, in reality, were far more diffuse and decentred. As such, this ascendant qaumi language communicated a number of insinuations: the essential nature of attachment to a Shi‘a community; the

92

93 94

The locations of its earliest sessions were Lucknow (1907, 1908, 1909, 1914), Amroha (1910), Benares (1911), Patna (1912), Jaunpur (1913) and Allahabad (1915). All India Shi‘a Conference, Ru¯’ı¯ da¯d-i-ijla¯s-i-hashtim 1914, p. 11. Ibid., p. 98. 95 Ibid., pp. 12–14.

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autonomy of the Shi‘a from other Muslim communities; and their identification with a national Indian environment. But it also has a series of implications for our understanding of how Shi‘a and Sunni defined their mutual difference. As already discussed, some attempts to understand Shi‘a–Sunni differentiation on the macro-level have long looked to developments such as expanding popular knowledge of the differences and historical grievances between respective religions, or to the effects of globalization in identifying each denomination with their own separate transnational networks and holy lands. This analysis, however, might lead to a different conclusion. Rather than acquaintance with religious knowledge or with the wider Islamic world separating Shi‘a and Sunni, one might suggest that it was in the language of qaum, generated by the communications of the modern public sphere, that this separateness was mostly manufactured. It was as much in their Indianness as their internationalism, and in their modern public organization as historical memory, that the Shi‘a primarily experienced and expressed their separateness from Sunni.

conclusion The early twentieth century saw the development of an organizational apparatus of Shi‘ism, marked by the formation of innumerable Shi‘a associations and societies. While these anjumans were many in number and often locally specific, their manifold spheres of activity were given some form of collaborative coherence by the All India Shi‘a Conference, which in effect sought to counter the perceived diversity and dispersion of Indian Shi‘a communities by incorporating them into a centralized regulatory network which could provide an integrated structure for wider reform. Together, these interdependent cultural, commercial and charitable anjumans brought about a language of charity and public responsibility, which redefined forms of Shi‘a respectability in terms of moral self-perfection. Moreover, the attempts by a number of Shi‘a activists to channel waqf funding towards their efforts, appropriating colonial legal discourse on the public and charitable nature of endowments as they did so, shows how this project of community formation entailed a protracted discussion of how this new, associational Shi‘ism would be directed, financed and administered. As with other, more thoroughly documented, processes of community formation in colonial South Asia, the notion of an ‘other’ played a crucial


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part in defining a religious community that had minimal established cohesion. Interestingly, however, this ‘other’ to the Shi‘a differed in various contexts. Predictably, an alleged Sunni community frequently took this role, as is elaborated upon further in subsequent chapters. In alternative instances it was represented by traditional Shi‘a elites and nobilities. Characterizations of the ‘backward’ old aristocracy of Lucknow, the decaying sayyid societies of the qasbas, or of the corrupt mutawallis of established endowments, were all means of describing a novel vision of a Shi‘a community unburdened by associations of elitism or decadence, at the same time as these same groups in other contexts provided much of the membership and funding of new Shi‘a associations. Equally, the ‘other’ was represented in some instances by the wider Shi‘a world. In fact, the qaumi language, the process of forming a ‘national’ Shi‘a Conference, and the indigenous inspirations for the web of anjuman building emanating from Lucknow, all suggest the consolidation of a distinctly Indian associational Shi‘ism. Furthermore, as is shown by the debates over the fate of the Awadh Bequest, this was an Indian Shi‘a community freshly emboldened to project its own influence into global Shi‘a affairs, against the perceived continuation of Persian and Arab hegemony over the Shi‘a voice in the wider world. However, while this chapter has documented the emergence of an organized apparatus of community, it is important not to oversimplify these developments into a singular, teleological narrative of community construction. The multifarious and disordered appearance of a complex plurality of Shi‘a anjumans under the guise of a singular language of organization is eloquently captured in a petition by Muhammad Amir Ahmad Khan, the Raja of Mahmudabad. Writing in the 1930s, some decades after the anjuman-building process had begun in earnest, he argued that such associations reflected not so much the organization and tight discipline of a well-guided community, but the purposeless generation of public alliances as self-interested bids for leadership by individuals. ‘It is open to everyone to start as many Anjumans as he chooses,’ he declared, ‘if he considers this to be the only vehicle for gaining popularity and fame.’ New anjumans were constantly emerging, he said, and were forced to call up ‘irrelevant and unnecessary’ questions in order to ‘justify the[ir] existence’. Moreover, the process of anjuman building was argued to be dissipating rather than constructing unity among the Shi‘a. ‘The best course for the Shias of Lucknow will be to cooperate with and strengthen the social and political organisations that are already in existence,’ he continued, while ‘the creation of numerous new Anjumans will only

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imperil the solidarity of the community of a whole.’96 His words were a perfect illustration of the fact that the construction of such a number of Shi‘a anjumans, while having done much to evoke impressions of a cohesive organized religion and Shi‘a qaum, would ultimately ensure that the nature of this alleged community would remain a continued source of inner-Shi‘a debate and contestation.

96

Syed Ali Zaheer, ed., ‘The dead past’, MS (1950), Kazim Zaheer Collection, Delhi, pp. 115–16.

4 Aligarh, jihad and pan-Islam The politicization of the Indian Shi‘a

Previous chapters of this book have demonstrated that, through a combination of religious change, new communication technologies, institutional networks and a plethora of anjuman-based activity in the urban public sphere, many Shi‘a began to see themselves as adherents of a freestanding Shi‘a religion, and members of a de facto community attached to it. This chapter further elaborates upon the significance of these changes, by examining the development of a distinctive Shi‘a politics in colonial India. Little significant work on the politicization of the Shi‘a in colonial India has been published; by contrast, a far greater emphasis has been placed upon the consolidation of the generic category of the Muslim as a basis of political mobilization. This chapter instead argues that, while a number of Shi‘a were heavily involved in a wider Muslim politics, both in Lucknow itself and in India more broadly, many Shi‘a organized independently and differed substantively on major political questions affecting Muslim and other communities. Implicit in this description of Shi‘a political mobilization is a corrective to long-standing assumptions about Muslim political organization in colonial India. Rather than assessing the respective evocations of Muslim and Shi‘a community as coextensive entities to which the individual could relate in different contexts, it argues that Shi‘a and Sunni political identities were increasingly construed as alternative – and even adversarial – forms of political affiliation, adding a political and very contemporary dimension to the experience of sectarianism in colonial India. This chapter first offers some comparative reflections on the role of Muslim minorities in politics in the colonial world. It then discusses, in turn, Indian Shi‘a responses to the Aligarh Movement, the application of 147

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a rhetoric of jihad, and pan-Islamic mobilization. The focus of this chapter is on a period that has long been identified as a determining moment in the development of Muslim separatism, beginning with the consolidation of the Aligarh Movement in the 1870s–80s, and ending with the collapse of the Khilafat Movement in 1924.

modernism, universalism, separatism: the politics of muslim unity However intensive and protracted Shi‘a–Sunni disputes may have been in religious dialogue or at local levels, studies of the period in question have been somewhat loath to acknowledge the appearance of inner-Islamic sectarian debates in significant political manifestations. Indeed, whether for South Asia or the wider Islamic world, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries into which this book falls have been widely depicted as an era that saw the increasing unification of the two denominations in the higher spheres of politics. Part of the justification for this lies in the identification of this period, as discussed in the introduction, as that of ‘modernist’ Islam. If, as discussed earlier, many have interpreted intellectual and social liberalization within Islam during these decades as opening new possibilities for dialogue between Shi‘a and Sunni thinkers, then this would naturally extend to new opportunities for political interaction. ‘With modernist trends gaining ground’, one study of the period argues, ‘the barriers between Sunnis and Shi‘is gradually became less insuperable, allowing a good many cross-sectarian currents’ in Muslim politics.1 As background to the analysis of specifically north Indian Shi‘a politics offered below, then, it is worth exploring some of the ideas of crosssectarian unity that have informed a good majority of studies of Muslim politics in many regions at the height of European imperialism. One of the major factors widely interpreted as bringing about Shi‘a– Sunni political cooperation was their common experience of subjugation under European colonialism. This, it is widely argued, spurred many anticolonial intellectuals and activists to construct new ideas of Islamic universalism which traversed the sectarian difference just as readily as they constructed empathic bonds between Muslims in different global regions. One may think here of Jamal al-Din Afghani, an influential pioneer of pan-Islam, who had a powerful influence on movements of Islamic 1

Hamid Enayat, Modern Islamic political thought: the response of the Shi‘i and Sunni Muslims to the twentieth century (London, 1982), pp. 41–3.

The politicization of the Indian Shi‘a

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political thought in India, Persia and the Ottoman Empire alike from the 1870s–80s onwards. Himself of Persian Shi‘a origins, he was keen to downplay any such particularities, and he conceived his own ideas of pan-Islamic political activism as equally applicable to both Shi‘a and Sunni Muslims. He spoke little of sectarian differences, and his notion of the spiritual khilafat (caliphate) and his vision of the empowerment of the global Islamic community have long been considered as drawing from a number of distinctly Shi‘a influences, and inspiring sections of both Shi‘a and Sunni.2 Al-Afghani’s ideas were subsequently a formative influence on ‘Abd ul-Hamid II, the Ottoman sultan from 1876–1909, who applied this broad imagery of Islamic universalism and military prowess to reinvigorate the Ottoman Empire and respond to the sense of encroachment by European powers. Concomitantly, part of his efforts were directed towards engaging the project of political Shi‘a–Sunni unity. From the 1890s his correspondence with al-Afghani and Shi‘a ‘ulama in Iran and Najaf, his dispensation of funding of Shi‘a shrines and educational institutions in Ottoman Iraq, and his creation of a new public forum for Shi‘a–Sunni dialogue, were all attempts to consolidate cross-confessional cooperation in society and politics. ‘According to the plain decrees of Allah’, he wrote in one piece of correspondence, ‘Muslims are brethren; the direction of our prayers is the same, towards the Ka‘aba.’3 This political trajectory, represented most clearly by al-Afghani and ‘Abd ul-Hamid II but influencing many contemporaries, attempted to reconcile the two Islamic traditions, creating space for Shi‘ism within a novel brand of Islamic universalism.4 The partial success of this transnational political project of Shi‘a–Sunni cooperation was reflected in the fact that, over the subsequent decades, Shi‘a and Sunni clerics sporadically combined in anti-colonial resistance movements in various global theatres. The fatwa of the mujtahid Mirza Hasan Shirazi against the Persian Tobacco Concessions in 1891, noted earlier, was one clear instance of the harmonization of Shi‘a clerical politics with that of many of their Sunni counterparts in the face of a

2

3

4

Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din Afghani: A political biography (London, 1972), pp. 10–22, 380–1. Azmi Ozcan, Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain 1877–1924 (Leiden, 1997), pp. 55–8. Cf. Hala Fattah, ‘Islamic universalism and the construction of regional identity in turn of the century Basra: Sheikh Ibrahim Haidari’s book revisited’, in Leila Fawaz and C. A. Bayly, eds., Modernity and culture: from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (New York, 2002), p. 125.

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combined imperial threat, conflating the politics of the Islamic world by evoking the common experience of European encroachment.5 However, perhaps the most illustrative instance of international Shi‘a–Sunni collaboration internationally against colonial intervention was the combined participation of Shi‘a and Sunni ‘ulama against the British Mandate in Mesopotamia after 1914. Iraqi nationalist organizations, oratory and political rallies during and after the First World War, among them secret political and nationalist organizations such as al-‘Ahd, Jami‘at-anNadha-al-Islamiya and al-Haras al-Istiqlal, were inclusive of Shi‘a and Sunni alike, and actively advocated cross-confessional combination.6 However, the climax of this was the decision in 1920–2 by the Shi‘a mujtahids, in particular Ayatollahs Muhammad Taqi al-Shirazi and Shaikh Mehdi al-Khalisi, to issue a jihad to revolt against British occupation, one that should be conducted together with Sunnis.7 This apparent cross-confessional political unanimity was orchestrated, by common consent, ‘in order to prevent the rule of non-Moslems over Moslems. This is a general Islamic religious principle and not a sectarian one.’8 Even as late as the interwar period, with new states having been created in the Middle East under Anglo-French Mandates, it has been widely shown that Shi‘a and Sunni often participated in the same nationalist and constitutionalist experiments. In new Mandate states such as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, Shi‘a politicians in practice often largely adopted the secular ideologies of pan-Arabism, socialism or state nationalism, as means of finding political consensus with Sunnis and of abrogating their Shi‘a minority status.9 The epitome of the kind of incorporative, cross-sectarian Islamic politics of the Mandate period is perhaps the foundation of the unitary General Islamic Conference in Jerusalem in 1931, formed to deliberate on matters of concern to all Muslims such as the fate of the Caliphate and the realities of colonial presence in the Islamic world.10 5 6

7

8 9 10

Keddie, Religion and rebellion in Iran. Amal Vinogradow, ‘The 1920 revolt in Iraq reconsidered: the role of tribes in national politics’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 3 (1972), pp. 133–5. Ibid., pp. 123–39; Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 66–72; Pierre-Jean Luizard, ‘Shaykh Muhammad al-Khalisi (1890–1963) and his political role in Iraq and Iran in the 1910s/ 20s’, in Rainer Brunner and Werner Ende, eds., The Twelver Shia in modern times (Leiden, 2001), pp. 226–7; Werner Ende, ‘Iraq in World War I: the Turks, the Germans and the Shi’ite Mujtahids’ call for jihad’, in Rudolph Peters, ed., Proceedings of the Ninth Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants (Leiden, 1981). Vinogradow, ‘The 1920 revolt in Iraq reconsidered’, p. 136. Nasr, The Shia revival, pp. 81–9; Enayat, Modern Islamic political thought, p. 42. Martin Kramer, Islam assembled: the advent of the Muslim Congresses (New York, 1986).


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Just as this belief in the unitary direction of Muslim politics in the era of European colonialism is widespread in scholarship on the Middle East, it holds true for the same period in the very different domain of the Indian subcontinent. Here, however, cross-confessional Muslim political unity was less the product of an Ottoman-led pan-Islam or of anti-colonial protest, but rather was the fruit of attempts by aspiring Muslim representatives to articulate and thereby represent a single ‘Muslim’ interest before the colonial state. A frequently applied and well-trodden historical narrative has emphasized the construction of a wider, generic Muslim identity politics in colonial India, one which is widely portrayed as having traversed kinship, class and sectarian differences. According to this argument, the idea of a separate Muslim community identity was actualized through a combination of the rhetoric of seminal figureheads including Sayyid Ahmad Khan, educational foundations such as the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh (founded 1875), and political movements such as the All India Muslim League (founded 1906). All these, it has been shown, shored up a cohesive Muslim minority identity and, in accordance with the demands of colonial knowledge, emphasized the internal homogeneity of the Muslim community. With the expansion of nominally representative political institutions during the colonial period, this communal identity would become the basis of the political doctrine of Muslim ‘separatism’, by which Muslims mobilized politically on the basis of their alleged apartness from other religious communities in order to protect their educational, linguistic and political interests.11 The debates on both the origins and realities of Muslim political separatism in colonial India have evolved considerably, and the question of whether these ideas of homogeneous community had any normative substance below the level of public rhetoric has been open to some valuable questioning.12 However, what has been widely implied about this kind of politics was its inclusion of Muslim minorities. Most associated studies have implied that Shi‘a and Sunni, at least in political life, largely buried their religious differences and worked on a common platform. This has been thought especially true for the formative moment of Muslim separatist 11

12

Especially influential works in this regard include Francis Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims: the politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923 (Cambridge, 1974); Robinson, Islam and Muslim history, pp. 156–209; Lelyveld, Aligarh’s first generation; Farzana Shaikh, Community and consensus in Islam: Muslim representation in colonial India (Cambridge, 1989). Most importantly, Ayesha Jalal, Self and sovereignty: individual and community in South Asian Islam since 1850 (London, 2000).

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politics, namely, the years bookended by the famed Muslim deputation to Lord Minto in 1906, and the end of the Khilafat Movement in 1924. During these years, as one author has argued, ‘certain developments in India and abroad created a favourable climate for . . . Shia–Sunni rapprochement. Whatever the depth of doctrinal cleavage, they shared the concern over the future of the MAO College at Aligarh and combined in protesting at the sacrilege of the Macchli Bazaar mosque in Kanpur. Above all, they shed quietism for political activism in trying to defend the Turkish Empire and the Holy Places.’13 Colonial India’s political sphere, then, has been widely evoked as one in which Shi‘a and Sunni politicians organized predominantly under the umbrella of a single ‘Muslim’ identity, an ecumenical Muslim politics running concurrently with that in the wider world. Backing this further, wherever Shi‘a individuals established reputations as major public or political representatives in colonial India, it was often in their capacity as Muslims rather than as Shi‘as. William Cantwell Smith, in his self-declared ‘study of changes wrought in Islam by modern social processes’, claimed that the Shi‘a ‘take their places in the development . . . of Islamic modernism’ perhaps even out of proportion to their numbers by virtue of their social and educational advancement; the most famous and enlightened Indian Shi‘a, he argued, ‘have functioned not qua Shi‘i but qua Muslim’.14 Indeed, with the Muslim political category being so much larger numerically than the Shi‘a counterpart, and carrying a far higher legitimacy within the political structures of the colonial state, the nature of political representation in colonial India perhaps made it opportune for Shi‘a would-be politicians and activists to downplay their specifically Shi‘a identity, and present themselves as the spokesmen of Muslims more widely. Shi‘a individuals from across India, ranging from late nineteenthcentury Muslim modernist intellectuals such as Chiragh ‘Ali, Badr-ud-din Tyabji or Sayyid Ameer ‘Ali to major Muslim nationalist politicians of the early twentieth century such as the Raja of Mahmudabad, Sayyid Wazir Hasan and Muhammad ‘Ali Jinnah, are just a few examples of spokesmen from the Shi‘a minority who crafted themselves as generic Indian Muslim leaders in order to consolidate wider representative roles. Concomitantly, academic treatments of their political biographies have overwhelmingly emphasized their legacies as Muslims, rather than as Shi‘as. 13

14

Mushirul Hasan, ‘Sectarianism in Indian Islam: the Shia–Sunni divide in the United Provinces’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review 27, 2 (1990), p. 212. William Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India: a social analysis (Lahore, 1963), p. 345.


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Hence, whether we look to Ottoman pan-Islam, Indian Muslim separatism or the forms of anti-colonial Muslim nationalism that developed in early twentieth-century India or the post-Ottoman Mandate territories, all of these political movements have been interpreted as, for different reasons, creating a basis for political collaboration between Shi‘as and Sunnis. Turning back to colonial India specifically, the realm of Muslim politics has been widely understood as a climate in which the interests of many Shi‘a public figures were best served by abrogating their Shi‘a status and framing themselves as Muslim representatives. While this interpretation has largely dominated studies of the higher echelons of national and provincial politics, it is the contention of this chapter that a different trajectory of Shi‘a political mobilization unravelled at more local or informal levels. Examining the politics of the ‘ulama and the developing Shi‘a Urdu ecumene in north India, the rest of this chapter now argues that many Shi‘a departed strongly from the agendas of wider Muslim politics, even in a city such as Lucknow that was simultaneously so heavily associated with the major ideologies and edifices of Muslim separatism.

‘the college of ‘umar’: the shi‘a and the aligarh movement The Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, established by Sayyid Ahmad Khan in 1875, has long been portrayed in the narrative of Muslim identity politics as the cradle of the Muslim modernist movement, acquainting Indian Muslims with Western knowledge and recrafting the old Muslim elite as a new and professionalized service class.15 Significantly, Aligarh College, and affiliated institutions such as its sisterorganization the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference [established in 1885], have been widely assumed to epitomize the aspirations of modernist Muslim intellectuals to construct an ecumenical educational brand around which both Shi‘a and Sunni could cooperate. Key studies have argued that Aligarh, in its lauded first generation, was able to ‘transcend sectarian narrowness’, exhibiting generous Shi‘a representation

15

Esp. Lelyveld, Aligarh’s first generation; Abdul Rashid Khan, The All-India Muslim Educational Conference: its contribution to the cultural development of Indian Muslims (Karachi, 2001).

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among its students, trustees and staff.16 Newspapers praised the ‘cordiality and friendship’ existing between Sunni and Shi‘a students, while the college boasted that it possessed the only mosque in India shared by Shi‘as and Sunnis, both of whom concordantly held their namaz at different times.17 Additionally, many of the college’s most influential supporters were Shi‘a, among them Mehdi ‘Ali Khan (‘Mohsin-ul-Mulk’), Sir Sayyid’s confidant and the college’s second Secretary;18 major landed patrons including Raja Muhammad ‘Ali Muhammad of Mahmudabad and Nawab Hamid ‘Ali Khan of Rampur; and educational advocates and professionals including Sayyid Husain Bilgrami (‘Imad-ul-Mulk’), Sayyid Karamat Husain and Sayyid Raza ‘Ali.19 A study from the perspective of those Shi‘a less imminently connected to Aligarh College, however, rather blurs this interpretation, revealing that in fact the college was viewed by many with varying degrees of suspicion and ambivalence. Indeed, few issues divided the Shi‘a of India from the 1870s onwards more than the question of the legitimacy of attendance at Aligarh, and the college’s brand of Muslim education. In the later decades of the nineteenth century a series of high-profile Shi‘a organizations and individuals launched heavy critiques against Aligarh and, perhaps predictably, the ‘ulama were foremost among these. Today, the Shi‘a ‘ulama are widely perceived as having been more sympathetic to Western knowledge and education than their Sunni counterparts in Deoband and other madrasas, but in truth they were heavily divided by the issue. For instance, in 1873–4 Sayyid Banda Husain, a descendant of the Khandan-i-Ijtihad clerical family, produced an edict which appeared in a published compilation of both Shi‘a and Sunni fatwas 16

17

18

19

Lelyveld, Aligarh’s first generation, pp. 123–4, 186, 200. Symbolically, just before its foundation, Aligarh College was allocated the collected revenues of the failed Shi‘a Madrasa Imaniya project of 1872–3. Husain, Sawa¯nih-i-‘umrı¯ , p. 199. Al-Bashir (Etawah), 5 June 1899, and Edward Gazette (Lucknow), 9 December 1902, UPNNR. Mehdi ‘Ali Khan in fact converted to Sunni Islam, specifically the Ahl-i-Hadis movement, by choice. Critics of Shi‘ism today suggest that his decision relates to his condemnation of the principle of taqlid, or deference to the decisions of past authorities, which he and other Aligarhists understood as an impediment to the acquisition of modern knowledge. Sunni ‘modernists’ have, in practice, often equated taqlid with Shi‘ism on account of the latter’s doctrine of deference to a mujtahid, believing the Shi‘a religion to disallow any form of personal ijtihad and hence inhibiting intellectual development. For biographies of these figures see Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims, pp. 395–8; Khan, The All India Muslim Educational Conference, pp. 258–60. Sayyid Karamat Husain, a major pioneer of educational reform and especially women’s education, was the cousin of the mujtahid Nasir Husain.


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(legal decisions) entitled Indād-ul-afāq (Gifts of the worlds), accusing Sir Sayyid of nechriyat (materialism) and of denying the mi‘raj (ascension of the Prophet).20 Ghulam Hasnain Kintori, the scholar so heavily involved in concurrent campaigns to reinstate madrasa education, published a similar tract, arguing that the sciences of the Aligarhists contradicted the Shi‘a belief in the occultation of the Mehdi.21 He also edited a periodical publication, Akhbar ul-Akhiyar, which offered one of the staunchest examples of opposition in the Urdu ecumene to Aligarh College and its associated periodical, Tehzib-ul-Akhlaq. In the late 1870s Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Mehdi ‘Ali Khan, Aligarh’s two most influential pioneers, attempted to gain Shi‘a support by making contact with Muhammad Ibrahim, the influential mujtahid and peshnamaz of Lucknow, and trying to convince him of the great virtues of modern education. However, his ambiguous decision, an edict permitting Western-style knowledge on condition that religious learning was not neglected and retained its rightful place,22 was hardly the explicit sanctification of their movement that they were hoping for. Indeed, opposition among many ‘ulama certainly remained strong enough for a group of ‘mujtahids’, unnamed but evidently very influential scholars of Lucknow, to force the Raja of Mahmudabad to withdraw his financial support for Aligarh College in 1891, a move that would incur significant financial damage upon the institution.23 No less vociferous opposition to Aligarh College came from a series of new Shi‘a educational anjumans, which rejected Aligarh’s prognosis for communal betterment. One key example was the Imamiya Educational Congress, founded by a number of landed sayyid families and ‘ulama from Saharanpur in the early 1890s. Originating within years of both the Indian National Congress and Muhammadan Educational Conference, the Imamiya Educational Congress openly acknowledged its structural and presentational resemblance to both.24 The organization accused Sayyid 20

21

22 23

24

Mehdi, Sawa¯nih-i-haya¯t, p. 12. The compilation brought together both Sunni and Shi‘a edicts dismissing the Aligarh project. Another descendant of this family, Sayyid ‘Ali Muhammad, similarly attacked Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s rationalism. Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 264–5. Ghulam Hasnain Kintori, No¯r ul-‘aı¯ n (Delhi, c. 1883–4), p. i; Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, p. 387. Mehdi, Sawa¯nih-i-haya¯t, pp. 13–15. All India Muhammadan Educational Conference, Ru¯’ ¯ıda¯d-i-sa¯la¯na, chhata¯ ijla¯s, 1891 (Aligarh, 1892), AMU, pp. 147–53. Agha Haider ‘Ali Beg, Ima¯mı¯ ya Eju¯keshanal Ka¯ngre¯s ka¯ ijla¯s-i-awal ma‘ru¯f jalsa-igulsha¯n-i-ta‘lı¯ m-i-Ima¯mı¯ ya (Fategarh, 1892), pp. 30–2.

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Ahmad and his clique of having ‘quaffed the cup of nechriyat’, of setting obstacles in the path of Islamic works, and of ‘failing to distinguish lawful and unlawful knowledge’.25 It thus declared the need for a renewal of traditional religious education, evoking explicitly the need for a ‘Shi‘a Deoband’, in a moment of acknowledged Shi‘a admiration, if not sympathy, for the vigour of the institution. Its main achievement to this end was the formation of the Madrasa Imamiya (later known as the Madrasa Hifz ul-Qur’an) in Delhi from 1890.26 The long and protracted suspicion of Aligarh among certain Shi‘a clergy and their associates would come to something of a head in 1904. At this point, to coincide with the convening of that year’s annual meeting of the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference in Lucknow, the newly established Shi‘a Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor organized a large and coordinated protest in Lucknow. A number of clerics of Lucknow, most prominently the mujtahid Aqa Hasan, managed to gather an assembly of some 5,000 Muslims, primarily wasiqadari and other elite Shi‘as from the old city (but also including some Sunnis and Firangi Mahalli ‘ulama), to protest at the policy of the Muhammadan Educational Conference. At the meeting and through subsequent pamphlets, Aqa Hasan declared that the Shi‘a should give no intellectual or financial support to Aligarh College until arrangements for satisfactory Shi‘a religious education had been put in place within it.27 The protest brought these mujtahids a high profile in keeping with their new aspirations for public influence, but at the same time the event provoked perhaps the most serious inner-Shi‘a row since 1857. Powerful opposition was generated among those Shi‘a closest to the Aligarh Movement, with Mehdi ‘Ali Khan, Sayyid Husain Bilgrami, the lawyeractivist Hamid ‘Ali Khan, and Badr-ud-din Tyabji of Bombay all launching scathing criticisms of the Shi‘a ‘ulama involved.28 There was also concern among many within the community that such an influential figure as Aqa Hasan, one of the city’s best-known mujtahids, should so unequivocally oppose the principles set by Aligarh. One rival ‘alim even wrote to Lucknow’s Commissioner, accusing Aqa Hasan of ‘prohibiting men 25 26

27

28

Ibid., pp. 28–9. Agha Haider ‘Ali Beg, Ima¯mı¯ ya Eju¯keshanal Ka¯ngre¯s ka¯ jalsa-i-sa¯la¯na imteha¯n sa¯l-i-do¯m 1310, ma‘ruf jalsa-i-gulsha¯n-i-ta‘lı¯ m-i-Ima¯mı¯ ya (Fategarh, 1892), p. 7. Aligarh Institute Gazette (Aligarh), 9 January 1905, CSAS; Akhbar-i-Imamia (Lucknow), 20 December 1904; Oudh Akhbar (Lucknow), 23 December 1904; Shahna-i-Hind (Meerut), 1 January 1905, UPNNR. Safi, Sahı¯ fa’t ul-millat, pp. 7–8.


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and women to learn English arts and language’ and suggesting that government should somehow demote him from his influential post of peshnamaz in Lucknow’s Asafi mosque.29 Ultimately, this row was perhaps the major factor leading to the dissolution of the Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor soon after. Yet even by the time of the foundation of the All India Shi‘a Conference in 1907, the debate had scarcely died down. The Conference witnessed ongoing spats over the benefits and pitfalls of modern education, with many of its presidential ‘ulama and old Lucknawi nobility demanding primary investment in Islamic learning, while its younger members fiercely pressed the importance of Western education and dismissed its opponents within the Conference as retrogressive. After the Conference’s first session, the Lucknawi barrister Agha Haider noted ‘with regret . . . [that] secular education is neglected and apparently made subordinate to sacred education . . . The special object of this Conference appears to be to found a College of Divinity and send out a Shia Mission.’30 A few years later Ghulam ul-Saqlain, a key educational modernist, resigned from the Conference following an ‘open breach’ between educationists and ‘ulama, and a persistent emphasis in its resolutions upon religious instruction.31 While the distrust of Western knowledge was common to many ‘ulama across denominations, relations between many Shi‘a and the Aligarh Movement would also remain strained on account of lingering mutual mistrust between many ‘old’ sharif Shi‘a nobilities and the emerging, Sunni-dominated professional class predominantly associated with Aligarh. In an indirect parallel with Shi‘a–Sunni sectarian mobilizations in modern Pakistan, which have often seen a newly empowered Sunni urban bourgeoisie adopt a critique of the backwardness and retrogression of an oligarchic Shi‘a elite, many advocates of the Aligarh Movement similarly identified the ‘old’ Shi‘a aristocracy as the obstacles to their programme. This was certainly true of the wasiqadars, the predominantly Shi‘a pensioners of the former Awadh court; they were routinely castigated in sessions of the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference for their ‘life of laziness and beggary’ and ‘moral decadence’ (akhlaqi 29

30 31

Sayyid Sibte Husain to Lieutenant Governor, 9 May 1906, Political Department No. 95/1906, UPSA. Tribune (Lahore), 18 October 1907, CSAS. Sayyid Raza ‘Ali, ‘The Khilafat and the Shia mujtahids’, in The Leader (Allahabad), 26 March 1920, CSAS. Ghulam ul-Saqlain’s distinguished record in supporting secular education is documented in Khan, The All-India Muslim Educational Conference, pp. 120–1, 132–4, 263.

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kamzori).32 As sitting targets for Aligarh’s self-proclaimed ‘modernist’ rhetoricians, the fact that they largely remained aloof from Aligarh College and Muhammadan Educational Conference sessions is perhaps unsurprising. The major public organizations of the old wasiqadar nobility, such as the Anjuman-i-Muhammadi, many of which had recently attached themselves to the All India Shi‘a Conference, had long widely opposed the Aligarh Movement, and even pulled closer to the Indian National Congress in response.33 Much the same was true of the Shi‘a notables of qasbas in the Rohilkhand and Doab regions such as Amroha, Nagina and Barha, many of whom remained vociferous opponents of the Aligarh Movement. Indeed, it was here that debate over the merits of traditionalist versus modernist forms of education came to intertwine most clearly with Shi‘a–Sunni polemic. The Urdu pamphlets and newspapers appearing from printingpresses in district towns of this region were some of the most significant conduits for Aligarh’s public activists, who locally often took on very different tones from the formal leaders of the movement. Often themselves of Sunni background, their writings on Muslim educational advance and political ambition often contained implied assaults upon pre-colonial Muslim social and aristocratic elites – who in local settings often happened to be Shi‘a landowning gentries – for their apparent hostility to modernization. For instance, in 1911 Moradabad’s Naiyar-i-‘Azam and Meerut’s Paisa-ul-Akhbar both carried a contributed article denouncing the ‘Shi‘a sayyids’ of the region’s rural townships for their ‘absence of education and extensive influence . . . for having absolutely no sense of the pace of the times’. Such articles allegedly spurred many of these sayyids in the 1910s to spurn Aligarh, cease their participation in the All India Muslim Educational Conference and withhold any contributions to the fund for converting Aligarh College into a university.34 It is a story that has seldom been told, but in local contexts in the qasbas of the Doab or Rohilkhand, the Aligarh Movement was perceived by many Shi‘a landed families not as a suitable

32

33

34

¯ l India¯ All India Muhammadan Educational Conference, Rapo¯rt-i-ijla¯s-i-sa¯la¯na-i-A Muhamada¯n Anglo¯-o¯rı¯ ’e¯ntal Eju¯keshanal Ka¯nferans, be¯maqa¯m Luckna’u 28–30 December 1912 (Aligarh, 1913), AMU, pp. 9, 103. Links between the Indian National Congress and wasiqadar organizations had existed since the 1890s: see Akhbar-ul-Momineen (Lucknow), 2 June 1890 and al-Bashir, 8 May 1900, UPNNR; John Hill, ‘Muslims and the Congress organisation in Lucknow, 1885– 1905’, in John Hill, ed., The Congress and Indian nationalism: historical perspectives (London, 1991), pp. 137–8. Husain, Risa¯la-i-kifan-po¯sh lı¯ daran, pp. 17–18.


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prognosis for collective Muslim modernization, but as an attempt by a nascent clique of primarily Sunni activists and professionals to weaken the economic influence and cultural legitimacy of the region’s Shi‘a communities.35 Suspicion of Aligarh College among many Shi‘a culminated in the 1910s, with an organized lambasting of what was assumed to be a nascent Sunnification of the college. This story of the descent of Aligarh from a space where a Muslim qaum was constructed into one of sectarian controversy has been almost entirely sidelined in a body of scholarship more preoccupied with Aligarh’s unitary qualities. But in 1913 the Shi‘a Conference issued a pamphlet which outlined a number of Shi‘a grievances within the college. It alleged, among other things, that the secretaryship and other senior posts had always been held by Sunnis; that Shi‘as were underrepresented on the board of trustees; that salaries and financial support were lower for Shi‘a staff and students; that Shi‘as were constrained in their use of the college mosque; and that the observance of Muharram and other Shi‘a festivals was restricted.36 All of these complaints compounded the perception among Shi‘as, both inside and outside the Aligarh campus, of a gradual drift in Aligarh’s character from an ecumenical Muslim institution into a Sunni college. Rumours even circulated that the college would be renamed ‘Umaran College (after the second Caliph), and would immerse all students in Sunni religious instruction.37 Particular blame fell on the embattled college secretary, ‘Ishaq Khan, who was drawn into very public rows with Shi‘a students and trustees.38 Importantly, it was coverage in newspapers that converted an internal debate within Aligarh into a wider debate with national ramifications. In particular, the new Shi‘a newspaper Ittehad gave the issue dense coverage, evoking a Shi‘a ‘expulsion’ (ikhraj) from the college and characterizing the institution as the next Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama: an institution created to bridge the Shi‘a–Sunni divide which had ultimately fallen under the direction of its Sunni majority.39 Employing the inventive medium of a mock dialogue,

35 36

37 38

39

Jones, ‘Local experiences’, pp. 889–96. For extracts of this pamphlet and widespread coverage in the press see Husain, Risa¯la-ikifan-po¯sh lı¯ daran, pp. 72–85; The Leader (Allahabad), 25 September 1913, CSAS; Ittehad (Amroha), 16 January, 23 March and 1 April 1914; Daily Prince (Meerut), 20 February 1914, UPNNR. Ittehad, 16 April 1914, UPNNR. Ittehad, 24 February, 23 March, 16 April and 1 May 1914; Oudh Akhbar, 2 April 1914; al-Bashir, 24 April and 1 May 1914, ibid. Jarchwi, Anjuman-i-Wazı¯ fa-i-Sa¯da¯t-va-Mo¯minı¯ n´, pp. 10–11.

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the paper printed imaginary conversations between Sir Sayyid and a number of past and present Aligarhist trustees, in which he accused them of preparing themselves for their own burial and expressed frustration at the descent of Aligarh from its glorious history into an arena of Shi‘a– Sunni conflict.40 At the same time the paper picked up a number of poetic lamentations of the changing character of Aligarh, one dimly reminiscent both of the mournful laments of the Shi‘a Muharram soz, and of the mobilizing function of Urdu verse during the Khilafat Movement a few years later: People used to say that Aligarh is a place of unity Everyone fights in his own place for unity Every atom composes a picture of unity From all sides you hear the cry of unity . . . The management of the College themselves demolished the foundation of unity, Such great holes appeared in [unity] that walls became doorways, Such hatred was unveiled and carried outside.41

The tensions within Aligarh paved the way for the formation of Lucknow’s Shi‘a College, one of the most significant Shi‘a anjumans of the period, which would ultimately be founded at the close of 1917. Given the importance of the college in Shi‘a politics during these years, its foundation is worthy of some elaboration. The establishment of such a college, run by Shi‘a staff and trustees and for Shi‘a students, had been the policy of the Shi‘a Conference since its foundation, but was given a tremendous boost by Shi‘a claims of the Sunnification of Aligarh. The campaign was spearheaded by Fateh ‘Ali Khan, a landed magnate of the well-known Qizilbash dynasty of Lahore, and a Shi‘a Conference loyalist. From 1914 onwards he organized a series of deputations around the United Provinces and ultimately the country, headed by a number of ta‘luqdars and representatives of landed sayyid gentries such as Muzaffar ‘Ali Khan – the ra’is of Jansath and the most famous of the Barha sayyids – to garner support and raise funds.42 Crucially, the campaign won the support of many key ‘ulama, who ultimately became key to its success. Sibte Hasan put his oratorical 40

41

42

This is the format of a large part of Husain, Risa¯la-i-kifan-po¯sh lı¯ daran. Its style of quoted dialogue may have precedent in both Islamic malfuzat (compiled sayings) literature, and, in a more contemporary sense, nationalist writings such as Mohandas Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909). Mushir Kazim Lucknawi, ‘Sho¯r-i-Ma¯shehr’ (The cry of Judgement), in Husain, Risa¯la-ikifan-po¯sh lı¯ daran, pp. 118, 127. Fateh Ali Khan to Meston, 19 May 1914, Meston Collection, Mss. Eur. F.136/6, OIOC; Ittehad, 15 December 1914 and 24 December 1915, UPNNR.


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skills towards the cause in a 1913 speech that was widely identified as marking the beginning of the Shi‘a College campaign.43 Nasir Husain, Najm ul-Hasan – and even Aqa Hasan, who in previous years had taken such a stand against the supposedly irreligious education of Aligarh – actively engaged with the college campaign’s deputations and committees. Supported by generous financial pledges from the Nawab of Rampur and other landowners, the college would become another highly visible bastion of Lucknow’s sustained Shi‘a institutional life and, combining a curriculum of secular education with compulsory religious learning for Shi‘a students, even managed to make itself eligible for government funding. Supporters of the Shi‘a College frequently intoned that the institution was not an ideological challenge to Aligarh; in fact, it would be a ‘branch of the same tree’ as Aligarh College, modelled on a similar kind of education.44 In truth, however, much of the campaigning took place on the theme of Aligarh’s ‘Sunni’ character and the ‘expulsion’ of its minority communities. Additionally, the foundation of the college would further separate many Shi‘a from the Aligarh Movement. Shi‘a participation in the Muhammadan Educational Conference largely ceased in the years leading up to its foundation.45 Moreover, many of the key donors recruited to the Shi‘a College cause were traditional Aligarh patrons, and from 1917 their gifts to the latter were severely diminished.46 Some of Aligarh’s wealthiest sponsors, such as even the Nawab of Rampur, resigned their trusteeships in Aligarh and became crucial contributors to the Shi‘a College. Perhaps more significant, however, was the ideological rather than financial destabilization of Aligarh College. The Shi‘a College undermined Aligarh’s long-established ideological claims to represent the entirety of India’s Muslim population, a point perhaps put most clearly by the Muslim nationalist newspaper al-Balagh of Calcutta: Is it not true that the real founding of the Shi‘a College was based on opposition to Aligarh College? . . . This is the most harmful movement of the present time and it will greatly injure the Muhammadans . . . In what corner has your appeal for a Muslim nationality been buried? . . . The fundamental foundation of Aligarh College is being demolished and Sir Sayyid’s principle of centralisation is being torn entirely.47

43 44 45 46 47

The Leader, 9 October 1913, CSAS. Shia College News (Lucknow), 10 May 1918, UPNNR. Fateh Ali Khan to Meston, 22 August 1917, Meston Collection F.136/15, OIOC. Al-Bashir, 5 April 1916, UPNNR. Al-Balagh (Calcutta), 25 February 1916, Education Department A, No. 152/1914, UPSA. Innumerable newspapers made similar claims that the creation of a separate Shi‘a college

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The question of the Shi‘a College’s relation to the Aligarh Movement can only be fully answered in connection with the proactive support of the British government, especially the Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces, James Meston. Meston himself showed great personal willingness to be openly associated with the scheme, and the fact that he would ultimately lay the foundation stone of the college was a telling piece of symbolism which seemed to encapsulate his central role in holding together a campaign that seemed to be frequently dogged by internal fractures.48 He consistently justified the proposed college as broadly complementary to Aligarh and other Muslim educational establishments, declaring that he was ‘not inspired by a desire to impair the usefulness of Aligarh College’.49 This said, Aligarh College in the 1910s had undeniably become a centre of anti-governmental protest. ‘Young Party’ activism and pan-Islamist politics were taking root among young nationalist students, and were beginning to influence the college’s major governing bodies. The main expression of this shifting political character of Aligarh College was the movement to convert it into a Muslim university, one that was widely seen by government as a considerable challenge to their influence over the college. As such, while since 1875 the British had strongly supported Aligarh as a means of pacifying the Muslim ashraf and securing their loyalty, from around 1913 British policy came to orient around reverse attempts to, in the words of the current viceroy, Charles Hardinge, ‘isolate Aligarh’.50 In this vein, the government seized upon the opportunity provided by the Shi‘a College to undermine Aligarh’s emergent student radicalism and to diffuse the funding, attention and ideological legitimacy that the latter had long procured. The Shi‘a–Sunni dispute within Aligarh, in other words, was deliberately engaged and appropriated by the colonial

48

49 50

would ‘create a gulf between the two sections of the Muhammadan community, which will considerably weaken the Muhammadans’, or ‘separate the two communities even in social and political matters’. Kaiser-i-Hind (Fyzabad), 23 January 1916, and Zulqarnain (Badaun), 14 May 1916, UPNNR. Nai Roshni, 15 December 1917, UPNNR. According to Meston, ‘I have worked very hard to get a start made with the Shia College and to stir up and maintain the necessary enthusiasm among the community. It had no previous experience in organisation or in the search for knowledge, and the whole of this business has been a very laborious enterprise.’ Meston to Education Department, 7 February 1918, Education Department No. 7/1918, UPSA. Burn to Meston, 28–9 March 1914, ibid. Hardinge to Butler, 13 April 1913, quoted in S. Y. Shah, Higher education and politics in colonial India: a study of Aligarh Muslim University, 1875–1920 (Delhi, 1996), p. 241.


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fi g u r e 4 . 1 . Shi‘a College campaign deputation to Lieutenant-Governor James Meston, 1916 (courtesy of Shi‘a Postgraduate College, Lucknow). Meston (front centre) is flanked by the major figures of the College movement: to his right, Nawab Hamid ‘Ali Khan of Rampur, and Maulana Aqa Hasan mujtahid; and to his left, Fateh ‘Ali Khan Qizilbash, and Muzaffar ‘Ali Khan, ra’is of Jansath.

state as part of a strategy of conferring support upon those willing to break ranks with Aligarh and establish alternative Muslim educational institutions. Fateh ‘Ali Khan alluded to this at one point, when he deemed Aligarh’s Shi‘a–Sunni quarrels ‘a lesser evil and a convenient opportunity to divert them from politics by keeping them for some time engaged in their own miserable . . . sectarian controversies’.51 Further vindicating this governmental cultivation of support for the Shi‘a College movement, it was certainly of note that the key figureheads of the campaign were government loyalists. Prime among these were the Nawab of Rampur and Fateh ‘Ali Khan himself, while the most prominent nationalist Shi‘a politicians, such as Wazir Hasan and the Raja of Mahmudabad, saw the campaign as a government-manipulated attempt to break Muslim solidarity, and so kept aloof from it.52 After its 51 52

Fateh Ali Khan to Meston, 19 May 1914, Meston Collection F.136/6, OIOC. Ittehad, 23 March 1914, and Sitara-i-Hind (Meerut), 16 May 1918, UPNNR.

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foundation, the college grant was consciously used by government as ‘a lever of our loyalty’, to ensure that the college maintained a suitable governing body and appropriate political opinions.53 In truth, the Shi‘a College’s success was owed to the fact that it was used by many Shi‘a factions as a way of building an apparent consensus on the question of education, when in fact any such common ground had been entirely elusive. The fractures that existed on the issue of Western education, perhaps the single most serious cause of cleavage among the Shi‘a throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were temporarily transmuted into a far more consensual attempt to focus solely on the educational advance of the Shi‘a community, framing this within a rhetoric of their historic domination within a Sunni Aligarh. In this regard, the uncharacteristic ‘absolute unity’54 shown in support for the college by all factions including old aristocrats, younger professionals and ‘ulama, depended upon the ambiguous nature of the college proposals before its foundation. Supportive ‘ulama such as Aqa Hasan were led to believe that ‘religious teaching will have the first place among all the teachings of the College’,55 while others supported the college on the assumption that it would modernize the community along wholesale Western lines. These arguments, deliberately unresolved prior to 1917 to maximize support, would erupt anew only after the college’s foundation. The college’s fate in the 1920s was marked by a series of rows on the exact role of religious education within, a ‘struggle between the old and the new’ which led to the ‘ulama demanding rights of veto over managerial appointments. These arguments led to a series of intrigues, including the disputation of elections to the board of trustees, staff and student strikes, and the consequent withdrawal of some government financial support.56 Comparable rows have periodically dogged the college ever since, indicating how its administrative turbulence, reaching even into the present, owes much to the vague constitutional principles on which it was initially marketed and established. This story of the many and complex Shi‘a responses to the Aligarh Movement reveals, first, how Aligarh College and its associated institutions did not succeed in consolidating the fully incorporative, ecumenical brand of 53

54 55

56

DeLa Fosse to Secretary, 28 January 1918, Education Department No. 7/1918, UPSA; From James Meston, 27 December 1917, ibid. Al-Bashir, 25 April 1916, UPNNR. ‘Memorandum of mujtahids: Why did we need the college?’ Educational Department A, No. 152/1914, UPSA. Indian Daily Telegraph (Lucknow), 24 June 1924; Education Department No. 93/1921, UPSA.


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Muslim modernism that has often been attributed to them in scholarship. Aligarh College was perceived by many Shi‘a as no less ‘sectarian’ an institution than was Deoband or Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama. Many of Aligarh’s key activists were seen as, at best, unable to safeguard the needs of minority communities; or, at worst, as blurring the lines between social satire of ‘old’ Muslim elites and aggressively anti-Shi‘a polemic. Second, it reveals how the formation of a separate infrastructure of Shi‘a educational institutions, of which Lucknow’s Shi‘a College was the most significant, became a mechanism for creating some form of functional Shi‘a unity. If overcoming the religious–secular divide and agreeing the minutiae of a suitable educational curriculum was beyond the community as a whole, then at least some form of shallow consensus was successfully created around the belief that Shi‘a education could only be properly dispensed in separate Shi‘a educational institutions. Shi‘a–Sunni rows over the character of Aligarh College, and a language of Shi‘a exclusivity, ultimately provided a useful mechanism for temporarily overcoming the inner-Shi‘a quarrels about Muslim education, which had blighted the community since the 1870s.

jihad , taqlid and shi‘a political quietism in colonial india At the most rudimentary and ahistorical level, Shi‘a attitudes towards the notion of holy struggle, or jihad, are based on the conviction that the full declaration of jihad on the community’s behalf is forbidden, since the Mehdi, the absent Twelfth Imam, is the only figure qualified to make such a declaration. However, the tremendous power of jurisprudential reasoning and charismatic authority carried by the senior mujtahids in Usuli Shi‘ism as deputies to the absent Imam means that, in practice, we are better off assuming that Shi‘a perspectives on jihad are not defined by an essential political quietism, but instead have historically been shaped around the expediencies of specific historical questions and circumstances. So, for instance, Shi‘a clerics in the modern period can frequently be found to have admitted the legitimacy of a defensive or qualified jihad (jihad-i-dafa’i) through which the community can be protected in the Mehdi’s absence. This applies, for instance, to the proclamation of jihad by the Persian ‘ulama during the Perso-Russian wars of 1808–13 and 1826–8, or again their fatwas of political resistance in 1891–2.57 No 57

Algar, Religion and state in Iran, pp. 79–90; Etan Kohlberg, ‘The development of the Imami Shi‘i doctrine of jihad’, in Paul Luft and Colin Turner, eds., Shi‘ism: critical concepts in Islamic studies (Abingdon, 2008), vol. III, pp. 23–5.

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less does it explain, as described above, the rebellion against the British Mandate in Iraq that erupted almost a century later, one sanctioned and often steered by the senior Shi‘a ‘ulama into the early 1920s. Indeed, these instances of Shi‘a resistance to colonial rule grounded in the principle of jihad represent an important aspect of the argument, alluded to above, that shared opposition to European imperialism often offered ground for intellectual and political understanding between Shi‘as and Sunnis. Moreover, as Faisal Devji has suggested, modern constructs of jihad have often carried novel languages of ethical self-perfection directed against traditional religious authority and outdated ideas of legal interpretation. Contemporary instances of jihad, he thus argues, have represented interesting platforms for Shi‘a–Sunni reconciliation, and can ‘facilitate the possibility of sectarian amity as much as of enmity’.58 In India as in the Middle East, many instances of Islamic resistance to colonial rule in India were framed in a language of jihad, one moulded with considerable creativity and adaptability to the historical contexts in which it was applied.59 Moreover, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, many of these exhortations of jihad seemed to carry within them hints of, or pleas for, Shi‘a–Sunni understanding in the face of a shared colonial enemy. Frequently grounded in idioms of ‘mourning, martyrdom and defeat’,60 languages of jihad often reflected the long and cross-confessional influence of the Karbala paradigm, and often offered possibilities for Shi‘a–Sunni combination. One key example is the Rebellion of 1857, a movement which was sometimes conceived and justified in the language of jihad. Importantly, the uprising that followed the British annexation of Awadh was espoused by many Shi‘a, who sought the restoration of Awadh under Birjis Qadar Mirza, the young son of the ex-King Wajid ‘Ali Shah. Major supporters of the restoration included the magnates of Mahmudabad and Bhatwamau, the Governor of Sultanpur Mehdi Husain, and, significantly, many Shi‘a ‘ulama, including several members of the influential Khandan-i-Ijtihad family.61 Additionally, the cries of ‘Ya ‘Ali’ which marked the revolt 58

59 60

61

Faisal Devji, Landscapes of the jihad: militancy, morality, modernity (London, 2005), p. 54, cf. 53–60. See Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah: jihad in South Asia (Delhi, 2008), pp. 114–238. Sandria Freitag, ‘Ambiguous public arenas and coherent personal practice: Kanpur Muslims 1913–1931’, in Katherine Ewing, ed., Shari‘at and ambiguity in South Asian Islam (Delhi, 1988), p. 151. Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 272–81; Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Awadh in revolt, 1857–1858: a study of popular resistance (Delhi, 2001), pp. 99–100, 147–54.


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during the siege of the British Residency and in parts of the countryside suggest that the famed ‘popular’ Rebellion, which took root among many urban artisans and rural cultivators in Awadh, did take on certain Shi‘a symbols and intimations, whether Shi‘a themselves participated or not.62 In addition to the historical reality of Shi‘a engagement with this particular jihad, the best-known written calls for jihad during the Rebellion tellingly addressed the ‘Muhammadan’ population and pledged loyalty to the ‘Kings’ of both Delhi and Lucknow, a clear effort to rally the Muslim community as a whole and downplay the significance of internal difference.63 While in 1857 some Shi‘a ‘ulama had not recoiled from sharing a declaration of jihad with Sunni maulvis in Awadh, divergences appeared to creep in on the issue thereafter. These divisions became visible around the 1870s, and had their origins in Shi‘a responses to colonial ruminations on the nature of Islamic jihad in the aftermath of 1857. As has been long argued, the British retrospectively assigned much culpability for the part played by Muslims in the Rebellion to a group they termed ‘Wahhabis’, who were believed to be inspired by the Arabian reform movement of the eighteenth century and to have a network of supporters across northern India. In effect, this meant that in the two decades after 1857 the British came to understand the Rebellion as partly inspired by a ‘Wahhabi conspiracy’ with its roots in Sunni traditionalism.64 This interpretation was encapsulated most clearly in The Indian Musalmans, a tract written by the Calcutta-based civil servant William Wilson Hunter in 1871, and a foundational text in the colonial belief of Indian Muslims as endemically inclined towards fanaticism. However, largely by focusing upon the Sunni ‘Wahhabis’ as the prime and continuing jihadist threat, he identified the Shi‘a community as, by way of comparison, inherently more loyal. This belief was heavily encouraged by certain Shi‘a themselves, hoping to secure Hunter’s favour. In 1871 one Munshi Ameer ‘Ali Khan submitted to Hunter a Persian pamphlet, On the word of Jihad, as it is understood and believed by the Shia Sect. The pamphlet carried an edict which apparently condemned the jihad of the Wahhabis and proclaimed that, for the Shi‘a, jihad was impermissible in the absence of the Twelfth Imam. ‘When 62 63

64

Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism, pp. 273–4. E.g. ‘Futteh Islam, an 1857 declaration of jihad’, repr. in Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi and Manohar Lal Bhargava, eds., Freedom struggle in Uttar Pradesh: source materials, vol. II: Awadh (Lucknow, 1958), pp. 150–62. Hardy, The Muslims of British India, pp. 79–88; Alex Padamsee, Representations of Indian Muslims in British colonial discourse (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 150–7.

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that innocent Apostle shall appear, is known only to the all-knowing God, and to no-one else,’ Hunter quotes from the Persian fatwa: ‘To commit bloodshed, except under the leadership of that Imam in person, is strictly forbidden by the Shia law. Those are the rebels and sinful ones who would revolt without the Divine Sanction of the Apostle.’65 Hunter, ignoring the complexity and pluralism of Shi‘a jurisprudence even within India itself, could scarcely have conferred a more singular authority on the pamphlet, pronouncing its author ‘a distinguished doctor’ of Shi‘a law and declaring the tract to have been written ‘in consultation with the chief authorities among his sect, including a great spiritual functionary of the ex-King of Oudh’.66 These details most likely identify the alleged ‘authorities’ responsible for this tract as a cluster of Shi‘a lawyers of Calcutta and client-clergy tied to the remnants of Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s exiled court at Metiaburj. Based in the heartland of British rule, they had much to gain personally and politically through pledges of loyalty on behalf of the Shi‘a religion as a whole. Certainly they were not representative of the opinion of all Indian Shi‘a. They certainly did not share the views of the senior ‘ulama of Lucknow, who at this point largely eschewed any kind of substantive contact with the British and would probably have been averse to such proactive declarations of loyalty. Moreover, some senior ‘ulama of Lucknow currently enjoyed an acrimonious relationship with their counterparts in Metiaburj, and were therefore unlikely to have been inclined towards agreement with them on such a crucial question as this.67 Little did these important differences occur to Hunter, who unhesitatingly drew wider conclusions about Indian Shi‘ism as a whole. ‘At least one small sect of our Muhammadan fellow-subjects are not bound by the first principles of their religion to rebel against the Queen’, he wrote; ‘they are naturally loyal, for they know that if either the Hindus or the Sunni Muhammadans ever get the upper hand in India, the days of tribulation for the Shias will begin.’68 Finding further comfort in the alleged similarity between the millenarian themes of the Christian belief in the second coming of Jesus and the Shi‘a expectation of the return of Imam Mehdi,69 the tract was a turning-point in the relationship between the Shi‘a and the colonial state.

65 67 69

W. W. Hunter, The Indian Musalmans (Delhi, 2002), pp. 110–11. 66 Ibid., p. 109. See Chapter 1, n. 43. 68 Hunter, The Indian Musalmans, pp. 112–13. The fatwa read: ‘At the time when the above-named Imam shall appear, Jesus Christ shall descend from the Fourth Heaven, and friendship, not enmity, shall exist between these two


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As well as Hunter’s writings, colonial views were perhaps influenced by a series of specific instances of the apparent loyalty of the Shi‘a in the complex aftermath of the Rebellion. In Allahabad some local Shi‘a sayyids declared their loyalty to the British and assisted in the conviction of Maulvi Liaquat ‘Ali, the Sunni leader of the local revolt.70 In 1885 the Hyderabadbased Aligarh modernist Chiragh ‘Ali wrote his influential tome, A critical exposition of the popular jihad, a condemnation of the idea of offensive jihad; though he was writing as a Muslim rather than a Shi‘a, the work was one of the most influential statements on the subject yet published.71 It would be wrong to suggest that Shi‘a, or indeed Sunni, perspectives on jihad were in any way consensual; in each case, views were as diverse as the individuals upholding them. Nevertheless, by the 1880s a colonial state that forever mapped the population in terms of internally homogeneous religious communities and their innate proclivities towards loyalty or rebellion was able to perceive a connecting link of Shi‘a apology for British rule, in which a wide selection of Shi‘a maulvis, intellectuals, landowners and lawyers were complicit. Playing up enduring fears of their vulnerability to Sunni domination, a number of Shi‘a thinkers were keen to prove their inherent acquiescence to colonial rule, allegedly sanctioned by the tenets of their religion, in order to secure governmental favour. Perhaps the most significant instance of Shi‘a resistance to wider Muslim engagement with jihad was the reaction to the Kanpur mosque agitation. This famous disturbance followed the destruction of a section of the Machhli Bazaar mosque in Kanpur to build a new road in 1913. It has been widely interpreted as one of the most significant Muslim nationalist campaigns of the period, having been supported by Muslim nationalist politicians and ‘ulama alike. Among many, there were hopes that the campaign could garner support across Shi‘a–Sunni boundaries in the same way as had the events of 1857. The destruction of the mosque was often discussed in the terminology of its shahadat (martyrdom),

70

71

Great Ones’: ibid., p. 112. British observers of Indian Shi‘ism often remarked at some length upon the emphasis upon the Mehdi’s return which, it was argued, gave the Shi‘a a particular empathy for Christian belief in the second coming of Christ. Hollister, The Shia of India, pp. 92–100; Powell, Muslims and missionaries, pp. 121–2. Clare Anderson, ‘A maulvi, a captive and a penal settlement: Liaquat Ali, Amelia Bennett and an early cultural history of the Andaman Islands’, paper presented at the annual conference of the British Association of South Asian Studies, Birkbeck College, London, 2006. Chiragh ‘Ali, A critical exposition of the popular ‘jihad’, showing that all the wars of Mohammad were defensive, and that aggressive war is not allowed in the Koran (Calcutta, 1885).

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and the protests in Kanpur, in which participants walked bareheaded and barefooted and paraded black jhandas (flags), were densely reminiscent of the Shi‘a Muharram commemorations in many north Indian towns.72 However, the declaration of jihad was in this instance widely resisted by the Shi‘a. While some newspapers commented that many Shi‘as were ‘aggrieved’ at the demolition of the mosque,73 in practice the Shi‘a reaction to the Kanpur mosque affair seemed to be in large part one of abstention. In Kanpur itself, leaders of the agitation were drawn into exasperation by the fact that two local Shi‘as, the city Collector and an honorary magistrate, led a campaign for the acceptance by Muslims of a separate portion of land for the re-building of the mosque.74 Muzaffar ‘Ali Khan, the ever-vocal ra’is of Jansath, issued a declaration that only the ablutions area and not the whole structure of the mosque had in fact been destroyed, and urged fellow Shi‘as to keep their distance from the campaign.75 A similar slant on the agitation was taken by the influential Shi‘a newspaper Ittehad, founded in 1910. Despite early indications that the publication would take a nationalist stance on political questions, it quickly changed direction and by 1913 was offering a determined appraisal of the benefits of colonial rule for the Shi‘a. The newspaper blamed the leaders of the Kanpur mosque agitation for prejudicing the government against Muslims, and even indirectly for the destruction of the mosque itself.76 In consequence, it dictated that it was the ‘duty of the Shias to publicly dissociate themselves from such an . . . agitation’.77 Urging submission to the colonial administration on the pretext that it had never interfered in religious practice or conspired against the descendants of the Imams, the newspaper boldly and repeatedly carried claims that ‘among Muhammadans, the Shias alone are truly loyal subjects of the British Government’ and ‘will never make Jehad’.78 It was a powerful attempt to articulate a separate Shi‘a politics, and mirrored the efforts of certain other Muslim minority communities, including the Ahmadiya, who

72 73 75 76 78

Advocate (Lucknow), 10 August 1913, UPNNR. Muslim Gazette (Lucknow), 23 July 1913, ibid. 74 Ibid. Husain, Risa¯la-i-kifan-po¯sh lı¯ daran, pp. 16, 23. Ittehad, 8 July and 8 September 1913, UPNNR. 77 Ittehad, 24 April 1913, ibid. Ittehad, 24 October 1913, 1 and 23 January and 8 April 1914, ibid.; Maulvi Sayyid Fasih-Ullah Manzur Ali, editor of ‘Shamim’, to James Meston, 1 December 1915, Education Department A, No. 152/1914, UPSA.


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similarly largely accepted the British Raj as the most effective political means of safeguarding their precarious Muslim minority status.79 The attempt to prove the inherent governmental loyalty of Shi‘ism sometimes took on some extraordinary manifestations, when religious scholars attempted to justify their politics through recourse to Shi‘ism’s inherent religious principles. One striking example was a tract called Tanqı¯ d-ul-taqlı¯ d (Interrogation of taqlid), compiled from the writings of Safavid-era scholars and printed from Jaunpur in 1915 in Arabic, Persian and Urdu editions. The tract in substance was a reaffirmation of the principle of taqlid, the doctrine of personal deference to a particular mujtahid, demanding of its readership submission to higher religious authorities. This was nothing unusual: being so fundamental a tenet to Usuli Shi‘ism, taqlid was explicitly defined in most credal tracts of the period, and indeed often outlined as a prescript or postscript.80 However, what was striking about this tract was that it conflated this first meaning of taqlid, in the sense of deference to clerical authority, with another potential second meaning: that of political quietism. In its opening pages, the tract begins with an express prohibition of jihad: ‘The subject of this tract concerns the following: that the jihad of the Imamiya, in the age of the absence of the [Twelfth] Imam . . . [and] without his inimitable declaration from any source, is not lawful in any way or on any point of the law.’81 The insinuation was that taqlid in the first of these senses forbade the kind of autonomous reasoning (ijtihad) and unqualified personal judgement upon which the declaration of jihad would have to be based, and hence carried within it the connotation of political quietism as well. Its introductory passages aside, this was an explicitly doctrinal rather than political treatise, treading the ground between different Shi‘a interpretations of the parameters of jurisprudential reasoning. Yet the fact that the tract caused such a stir on its release, even landing on the desks of surely baffled government intelligence officials, speaks volumes about the sensitivity of the jihad question in contemporary Muslim politics, and how alert the colonial state was to the pseudo-political implications of essentially clerical writings.82 79

80

81 82

Yohanan Friedmann, Prophecy continuous: aspects of Ahmadi religious thought and its medieval background (Delhi, 1989), pp. 34–8. E. g. Hasan, Khaza¯na’t ul-masa¯’ı¯ l, pp. 1–2; cf. Len Clarke, ‘The Shi‘i construction of taqlid,’ in Paul Luft and Colin Turner, eds., Shi‘ism: critical concepts in Islamic studies (Abingdon, 2008), vol. III, p. 352. Kazim, Tanqı¯ d-ul-taqlı¯ d, p. 4. Ibid., pp. 24–5; Home Department (Political B), May 1916, Nos. 289–90, NAI.

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While there was never a single Shi‘a response to British rule, and while Shi‘a positions on the political legitimacy of jihad were never consensual or codified, this section shows that there was an overall impression of a considerable and growing distance between Shi‘a and Sunni pronouncements on the question of anti-colonial jihad. At several points from the 1870s, a combination of Shi‘a ‘ulama, writers and politicians declared jihad incompatible with their belief in the sole jurisdiction of the absent Imam. This understanding departed from earlier historical precedent in India during the 1857 Rebellion. Just as significantly, it was a major diversion from the decisions made by scholars in parts of the early twentieth-century Middle East who, as we saw above, used the declaration of a form of jihad as a political basis for combined Muslim resistance to European occupation. This approach in colonial India was, then, a novel, quietist one. It contrasted with the anti-statist and subversive tendencies that have often been emphasized in Shi‘ism,83 and was instead inclined towards political deference. This had been the case with the ‘establishment Shi‘ism’ that had provided a suitable and controlled ideology of government legitimization under the Nawabs; and it now became the case under British rule, during which the continuous evocation of the historical tribulations suffered by the Shi‘a under Sunni domination were appropriated, alongside quietist interpretations of Shi‘a jurisprudence, to develop Shi‘ism as a religious system justifying submission to colonial government.

islamic universalism and indian shi‘ism: responses to pan-islam From the late nineteenth century the single question of the Prophet’s succession, at the root of centuries of Shi‘a–Sunni historical difference, rose to prominence as an acute issue in Muslim politics. Subjugation to British rule spurred sections of the Muslim ashraf in north India to locate their political identity in ideas of international Islamic statehood (dar-ul-khilafat), with the Ottoman sultan the figure in whom the institution of the khilafat would be vested. Pan-Islam, referring to this new consciousness of Islamic universalism rooted in the perpetuation of the Ottoman sultanate, was developed by many Muslim intellectuals and a newly politicized clique of ‘ulama in the late nineteenth and, especially, early twentieth centuries. Ultimately, it culminated in the Khilafat Movement (1919–24), 83

Juan Cole and Nikki Keddie, eds., Shi‘ism and social protest (New Haven, 1986).


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an ultimately doomed agitation of many Indian Muslims seeking to prevent the colonial dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the First World War. As outlined previously, a mass of literature has argued that pan-Islam frequently became a touchpoint for political cooperation between many Sunni and Shi‘a. Since, the argument runs, pan-Islam did not focus solely upon the status of the Ottoman sultan as the successor to the Caliphs, but upon the fate of the Muslim world entire under European machinations across the Middle East, it was able to incorporate Shi‘a as well as Sunni concerns. Pan-Islamist politicians thus routinely raised issues such as the bombardment of the shrine of Imam Reza at Mashhad (1912) and the occupation of southern Iraq (1914) just as enthusiastically as the tumult in Turkey. Writing on colonial India, Azmi Ozcan claims that during the pan-Islamic campaigns of the 1910s ‘the participation of the Muslims was almost total . . . for the first time in their history, the ulema appeared to have found an issue on which they could patch up their differences. Thus the Deobandis, the Barelvis, the Farang-i Mahalis and the Nadvatu‘l-Ulema, as well as the Shiis, came together’.84 Likewise, most academic discussions of the Khilafat Movement have similarly credited the movement with pulling together Shi‘a and Sunni.85 Supporting this argument is the clear fact that many Shi‘a were prominent among Indian pan-Islamic thinkers. Early colonial Indian intellectuals such as Chiragh ‘Ali and Badr-ud-din Tyabji were among those to pledge Turkey their support, seeing the sultan’s efforts as a means of renewing the Muslim millat around the world, including within India.86 A form of Shi‘a–Sunni ecumenism was even communicated by the histories of the two best-known pioneers of the pan-Islamic campaigns and Khilafat Movement of the 1910s–20s, the brothers Muhammad and Shaukat ‘Ali of Rampur: while personally and intellectually close to the Sunni Firangi Mahal, they were also the products of a mixed Shi‘a–Sunni family.87

84 85

86 87

Ozcan, Pan-Islamism, p. 147. Mushirul Hasan, Nationalism and communal politics in India, 1916–1928 (Delhi, 1991), pp. 136–7, 178; Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: religious symbolism and political mobilisation in India (Columbia, 1982), pp. 73–6, 97; Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims, p. 328. Ahmad, Islamic modernism, pp. 130–1. Their Sunni father had converted to Shi‘ism at the behest of his Shi‘a wife. Hasan, From pluralism to separatism, p. 145.

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It was also Indian Shi‘a who were perhaps most responsible for concocting ecumenical versions of the khilafat ideal, diluting the Sunni roots of the institution with a heavy blend of Shi‘a imagery and ideology. Most significant here was the intellectual contribution of Sayyid Ameer ‘Ali, a barrister of Calcutta based in London. He established himself as one of the key spokespersons for Indian Muslims to the British government on the khilafat question in India throughout the 1910s–1920s, and was even part of the internationally significant (though failed) deputation in 1924 which demanded the retention of the institution. While his influence among many Shi‘a of the United Provinces was questionable, he strikingly formulated a notion of the khilafat ideal which exhibited perfectly his own Shi‘a background. To understand his incorporative vision of the institution, we need only to look to his influential article ‘The Khilafat: a historical and juridical sketch’, published in 1915. In this, he often terms the khilafat an ‘Imamate’. This imamate, moreover, is characterized as being endowed with a ‘spiritual leadership’, and as being linked by a ‘spiritual tie’ to its ma‘mum (congregation); all of these are features that evoke the links between the Caliph and his followers in the language usually applied to the spiritual intercessions between the Imams and Shi‘a community.88 It was anything but a consensual interpretation,89 but for many Muslim modernists this was a welcome counter-narrative to narrower, established versions of the Sunni khilafat, one crafted to have cross-confessional appeal and incorporate specifically Shi‘a understandings and concerns. With these understandings in mind, scholarship has largely treated pan-Islam as part of an ecumenical Muslim identity politics which harmonized Shi‘a and Sunni political opinion. Indeed, the development of pan-Islam in north India in its earliest stages does seem to vindicate such a view. During the Russo-Turkish war in 1877–8, the event that first inspired pan-Islamic political mobilization in India, it seems that some Shi‘a did join the Firangi Mahalli ‘ulama in offering declarations of support for Turkey. One vernacular newspaper praised the ‘enlightened Shi‘as’ for joining hands with other Muslims, urging that Muslims ‘congratulate themselves that the feeling of unity of nation and religion now 88

89

‘The Khilafat: a historical and judicial sketch’, first published in The Contemporary Review, 1915. Syed Razi Wasti, ed., Syed Ameer Ali on Islamic history and culture (Lahore, 1968), pp. 116–25. Ameer ‘Ali’s vision was lambasted by many UP Shi‘a, who accused him of factual inaccuracy and flaws in his explication of the spiritual presence and attributes of the Imam. See the commentary offered by a maulvi of Ghazipur in Ittehad, 24 October, 1 and 11 November 1915, UPNNR.


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animates the two great divisions of Islam in matters which concern their common interest’.90 One religious scholar of Mecca evidenced the same point in writings addressed to Indian Muslims in 1877, and published in a major Delhi periodical: ‘O Mussulmans . . . the Sunnis and the Shiis, you have done very well indeed . . . You should continue to act in this manner as far as you can.’91 However, it was in later years, notably during the Greco-Turkish war in 1897, that such common ground evaporated. By now, a number of Shi‘a had begun to attack Ottoman claims to the khilafat. Of note was a tract written by Shaikh Ahmad Husain, the Shi‘a ta‘luqdar of Pariawan in Sultanpur division of Awadh, in which he condemned the ‘tragically false understanding (afsosnak ghalat fahmi)’ of many Muslims for believing that the Ottoman sultan could claim the mantle of the khilafat. He made the case that only ‘Ali could claim the title of Amir-ul-Mominin, and hence the Shi‘a ‘do not consider themselves religiously bound to any Muslim sovereign’.92 As a result, he argued, the Shi‘a could never accept an Ottoman declaration of jihad, and it was the duty of all Muslims to be ‘peaceful and loyal citizen[s]’ of India.93 The pamphlet received widespread circulation, was reprinted during subsequent pan-Islamic agitations, and of course was noted by a grateful government.94 Come the first two decades of the twentieth century, when many Sunnis were watching the growth of challenges to Ottoman rule in the Middle East and rallying in support for the Ottoman sultan, many Shi‘a public forums seemed to be striving to do the opposite. In 1906, Akhbar-i-Imamiya of Lucknow, then the most influential Shi‘a newspaper, stated that ‘British rule in Mecca and Medina will be more welcome than that of the Sultan’.95 In 1911, a date which coincides with the beginnings of a new wave of pan-Islam led by the ‘Ali brothers, a series of rumours spread that the sultan was planning to sell the treasures of Najaf and Karbala to fund the building of schools and hospitals, at the request of Sunni officers. They elicited vocal protests from Shi‘as in towns including Kanpur, Benares, Jaunpur and Ghazipur, while in 90 91 92

93 94

95

Aligarh Institute Gazette (Aligarh), 1 November 1876, UPNNR. Nusrat’ul-Akhbar (Delhi), 11 April 1877, ibid. Shaikh Ahmad Husain, Ba‘z Musulma¯no¯n´ ki afso¯sna¯k ghalat fehmı¯ (Lucknow, 1897), p. 2. Ibid., pp. 5–7. In 1915 the tract was republished by Muzaffar ‘Ali Khan of Jansath, who had two years earlier been key in mobilizing Shi‘a opposition to the Kanpur mosque agitation. Shaikh Ahmad Husain, Ba‘z Musulma¯no¯n´ ki afso¯sna¯k ghalat fehmı¯ , 2nd edn (Muzaffarnagar, 1915), p. 4. Rohilkhand Gazette (Bareilly), 24 November 1906, UPNNR.

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Lucknow the ever-active mujtahids Aqa Hasan and Najm ul-Hasan convened large public Shi‘a demonstrations to protest at the sultan’s alleged plunderings.96 Indeed, far from remaining an abstract political disagreement, Shi‘a refusal to join pan-Islamic demonstrations, such as that against the Italian assault on Tripoli in 1911, was said to be evolving into a direct cause of ‘illfeeling’ between Shi‘a and Sunni communities.97 Shi‘a distance from a Sunni-led discourse of pan-Islamic politics grew especially from 1913. When Sunni ‘ulama such as ‘Abd ul-Bari of Firangi Mahal founded the Anjuman-i-Khuddam-i-Ka‘aba, a new organization created to defend the khilafat and Ottoman control of the Holy Places, Shi‘a newspapers smeared the organization with the derogatory title ‘Anjuman-i-Jihad’. Taking a similarly prohibitive perspective on jihad to that discussed above, these newspapers claimed that the organization would preach religious war, exclusively admit Sunni members, and corrupt Muslim youth and women.98 In addition, Ittehad printed frequent condemnations of Turkish actions during the war, and an equally strong defence of loyalty to government; in one highly controversial moment it suggested that the atrocities and desecration of holy shrines committed by the early Sunni Caliphs were worse than anything inflicted in the Middle East by the modern Christian powers.99 During the First World War it was commonplace for Shi‘a associations, from the All India Shi‘a Conference right down to local anjumans, to offer explicit support for Britain and its army against alleged Ottoman aggressions, and to declare sympathy for Sharif Husain of Mecca’s revolt against Ottoman control in the Hedjaz in 1916.100 Lieutenant-Governor James Meston was happily noting by 1917 that the Shi‘a were ‘conspicuously friendly and loyal’, declaring that they ‘have withstood all suggestions for a Jihad and have justified their opposition on strict theological grounds. They have no feeling against the Khilafat passing away from the Sultan of Turkey.’101 96

97

98 99 100

101

Telegrams from Shi‘a anjumans in each of these towns are available in Political Department No. 156/1911, UPSA; cf. The Pioneer (Lucknow), 3 May 1911, NML. From Commissioner of Lucknow, 17 October 1911, Political Department No. 156/1911, UPSA. Husain, Risa¯la-i-kifan-po¯sh lı¯ daran, p. 19; Ittehad, 16 May and 1 June 1913, UPNNR. Ittehad, 1 June 1913, ibid. E.g. ‘The Shi‘a community of Bulandshehr’, Home Department (Political B), August 1916, Nos. 367–8, NAI. ‘Note on the future system of Government at Baghdad’, 21 May 1917, Meston Collection F.136/4, OIOC. Meston at one point even voiced concern to the viceroy that such pledges of loyalty from the Shi‘a could backfire, as they would encourage Sunni Khilafatists to


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This politically quietist Shi‘a counter-narrative to pan-Islam, fostered by many ‘ulama and political representatives alike, contrasted with the kinds of global awareness and transnational empathy that have often been identified as taking root in Muslim politics during these years. Taking this argument further, a perhaps striking impression to be gleaned from Shi‘a associational life in colonial India is the apparent lack of extensive direct engagement with issues affecting the Shi‘a in the wider world. While the All India Shi‘a Conference and other bodies sometimes passed tokenistic resolutions expressing ‘concern’ over events in Persia or Iraq, there were no substantial reactions to, for instance, events as momentous as the 1906–11 Constitutional Revolution in Iran, or the Russian incursions in Iran and their damaging of the holy shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad in 1912; one Shi‘a commentator even accused his co-religionists of shedding only ‘crocodile tears’ (char arso) for their brethren overseas.102 Indeed, many Sunni activists, and quite a few among the Shi‘a who were uncomfortable with this apparent political quietism, accused the old Shi‘a establishment of ‘apathy’ and ‘indifference’ towards global events.103 One might attribute this apparent unconcern for the transnational Shi‘a millat to, as argued in the previous chapter, the contemporaneous development in the Urdu ecumene of a qaumi construction of Shi‘ism, one which emphasized the autonomy of‘Indian’ manifestations of the religion, and, by extension, of its politics, from the wider world. With Shi‘a and Sunni having now diverged so decisively on major issues of Muslim politics, it was perhaps inevitable that these disagreements would be manifested not only in the formal political sphere, but in the themes picked up in vernacular polemical writing. Written religious disputation, far from being focused on fixed and unchanging doctrinal and historical questions, could take on slants and points of attack that reflected the contemporary political climate.104 We have seen how Shi‘a authors increasingly accused Sunnis of violent jihadism by tracing its alleged roots to the acts of the early Caliphs; in a similar way, Sunni polemicists attempted to ground the much-criticized political quietism of the Shi‘a in their religion’s most fundamental dogmas. So, while Shi‘a taqlid to its clergy was portrayed as an impediment to the modernization of the community

102 103

104

intensify their agitation in response. Hardinge to Meston, 5 September 1914, and Meston to Hardinge, Home Department (Political), April 1916, No. 2, NAI. Husain, Risa¯la-i-kifan-po¯sh lı¯ daran, pp. 19–20. Ittehad, 16 January 1913, Saiyara (Lucknow), 28 July 1914, and Ukhuwat (Lucknow), 28 March 1919, UPNNR. Cf. Werner Ende, ‘Sunni polemical writings on the Shi’a and the Iranian revolution’, in David Menashri, ed., The Iranian revolution and the Muslim world (Boulder, 1990).

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and to the declaration of jihad, the absence of the Twelfth Imam was depicted as depriving Shi‘ism of its ability to adapt to changing times. While the modern institution of the Caliphate (khalifa-i-vaqt), one protagonist argued, offered Sunni Islam adaptability and contemporary relevance, ensuring that the Prophet’s message ‘always remains modern and fresh’ (hamesha se jadid-laziz par chal rahe), Shi‘ism was conceived as ‘following the same old beaten path’ (usi purani lakir . . . pitte hain) on account of its vanished Imam and absence of temporal guidance.105 In a similar vein, other Sunni polemicists laid into Shi‘ism for its alleged inherent incompatibility with the politics of Muslim nationalism. Adopting some of the language of Gandhian nationalism, one Sunni scholar claimed that, rather than seeking the swaraj (self-rule) of India, the Shi‘a were instead preoccupied with waiting for the ‘Shi‘a swaraj’, the bountiful reality that would emanate from the return of Imam Mehdi to his followers.106 While buried in a typical polemical tract, this particular criticism probably alludes to the comparative invisibility of the Shi‘a that marked many of the Muslim political agitations of the 1910s–20s. It is against this background that Shi‘a reactions to the Khilafat Movement of 1919–24 need to be reassessed. It is indeed true that in a number of cities in the United Provinces, among them Allahabad, Jaunpur and Meerut, the Khilafat Movement gained considerable ground among Shi‘a communities on the basis of a shared Muslim concern for the fate of their holy places; in Allahabad it was even two Shi‘a lawyer-politicians, Sayyid Raza ‘Ali and Sayyid Haider Mehdi, who locally led the movement.107 However, powerful opposition to the movement was organized by the mujtahids of Lucknow. In advance of the second ‘Khilafat day’ in March 1920, a joint fatwa was issued by the three mujtahids Nasir Husain, Aqa Hasan and Muhammad Baqir Rizvi. It demanded that ‘the Shi‘a should strictly keep aloof from the proposals published by the Khilafat committees’. While expressing sympathy with all Islamic peoples, their edict stated that ‘the Shi‘a have no concern with the present Khilafat question, because according to the Shi‘a religion there is no Caliph . . . 105 106

107

Husain, Risa¯la-i-kifan-po¯sh lı¯ daran, pp. 23–4. He argues that ‘there is no doubt that such [Indian] swaraj . . . will bring the fortunes of restfulness to non-Shi‘a sects’. Conversely, since the Shi‘a obsessed over the coming of the absent Imam and the ‘fire and brimstone’ awaiting Abu Bakr and ‘Umar, ‘moments of trial and tribulation will always afflict the lives of the Shi‘a more than ours’. Shı¯ ‘a swa¯ra¯j au¯r is ke¯ va¯qi‘a¯t qa¯bil-indira¯j (Qadian, 1925), pp. 491–2. The Leader, 19 October 1919 and 21 March 1920, CSAS.


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except the Amir-ul-Mumineen ‘Ali . . . A Shi‘a who believes anyone else to be a Caliph . . . will thereby be totally excluded from the pale of Shi‘ism.’ Participation, they declared, was ‘not lawful under Shi‘a religious laws and . . . not advisable’.108 This edict entirely demonstrated how, over the previous two decades, the senior mujtahids had begun to seek new engagement with political questions, as well as attempting to speak as a collective leadership to the Shi‘a public. Moreover, this response to the issue of the Khilafat Movement diverged significantly from that of their counterparts in the Middle East. As indicated above, senior Arab and Persian Shi‘a ‘ulama, especially those in Iraq, engaged heavily with pan-Islamic politics during these same months as the best defence against the Anglo-French occupation of Muslim territories. It is tempting to speculate that this decision is evidence of the extent of the recent empowerment of the Indian mujtahids. Newly confident of their public relevance, they were now seemingly making their own rulings on political matters independently of trajectories of politics in the supposed Shi‘a heartlands, perhaps even seeking to further augment their autonomy and prestige through a deliberate departure from the views of the clerical leaderships of Najaf or elsewhere. Flying in the face of nationalist Muslim politics as well as a high-profile contingent of Shi‘a politicians, the fatwa elicited similar declarations of opposition to the khilafat agitation from other Shi‘a spokesmen and organizations, among them the Anjuman ul-Irkan of Lucknow’s old aristocracy.109 All such instances received profuse thanks from the British government, but simultaneously provoked ire from a combination of Muslim nationalists and Sunni polemicists. Tracts were printed from Lucknow accusing Nasir Husain of propagating false information about the Sunni Caliphs.110 Newspapers asked how the Indian Shi‘a could

108

109

110

Ibid., 21 March 1920. The other of the great mujtahids of the period, Najm ul-Hasan, produced written repudiations of the legitimacy of the khilafat at around the same time. Syed Najm ul-Hasan, an-Nubuwwat-wa’l-khilafat, trans. L. A. Haidari as The Prophetship and the caliphate being a translation of al-Nubuwwatwa-al-Khilafat (Lucknow, 1924). The Independent (Allahabad), 21 March 1920, OIOC; To Secretary of United Provinces Government, 22 March 1920, GAD No. 189/1920, UPSA. The UP governor picked up on this declaration, expressing pleasure that ‘you have given expression to your loyalty in many ways . . . I am glad to hear that you condemn in the strongest terms the noncooperation movement’. The Leader, 25 March 1921, CSAS. Ta¯rı¯ kh-i-Khila¯fa¯t (Lucknow, 1924), passim.

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oppose the Khilafat and non-cooperation movements while the mujtahids of Iraq were so vehemently advocating jihad against British occupation.111 However, hostility to the mujtahids’ declaration was just as strong among many Shi‘a themselves, leading to perhaps unprecedented criticism of the political conservatism of the senior clergy. One sarcastic Lucknawi Shi‘a wrote of the pronouncements of his co-religionists that their ‘voice . . . is not at all in harmony with public opinion [and] . . . fell from their mouths like a bolt from the blue . . . let them rest assured that we do not require their valuable services’.112 The Khilafatist Shi‘a politician Sayyid Raza ‘Ali, very soon after the mujtahids’ declaration, wrote a widely circulated diatribe condemning them for their political backwardness and ineptitude. Declaring that ‘there is no religious community in which the gulf between the common people and the religious heads is wider or more unbridgeable than among the Shi‘a’, he offered a series of examples, ranging from the 1904–5 education controversies, the fights over the character of the Shi‘a College, and the increasingly politicized agenda of the Shi‘a Conference organization, by which the mujtahids had brought about their own ‘complete estrangement’ from their public.113 The influential piece directed a level of venom against the clerical leadership that was perhaps unprecedented. It shows how the emergence of an anti-establishment ‘Young Party’ Muslim politics during and after the First World War fundamentally fractured the deference to established religious leadership that the mujtahids may previously have expected, and precipitated a major shake-up in relations between the established clergy and nationalist politicians. Shi‘a quietude was maintained in Lucknow until a sudden entry into the Khilafat Movement a year later in March 1921. Rumours began to circulate in a number of north Indian and Afghan newspapers that the shrine of ‘Ali in Najaf had been bombarded by the British occupying forces in Mesopotamia, and that the recent deaths of two venerated Iraqi mujtahids were due to British actions.114 It was not an established religious leader who organized Indian Shi‘a protest against these alleged events, but one of 111 112 113

114

The Independent, 18 July 1920, OIOC; al-Bureed (Kanpur), 20 October 1920, UPNNR. The Independent, 25 and 30 March 1920, OIOC. Sayyid Raza ‘Ali, ‘The Khilafat and the Shia mujtahids’, in The Leader (Allahabad), 26 March 1920, CSAS. Muhammad Taqi Shirazi was said to have been poisoned in August 1920, and his successor, Fateh-Ullah Ispahani, to have died of despair following the bombing of the holy shrine. Secretary of UP Government to Secretary of the Government of India, 9 March 1921, Home Department (Political B), May 1921, Nos. 482–490, NAI. The newspapers carrying these rumours included Zamindar and Siyasat of Lahore. The former of these actually contained an article by Shaukat ‘Ali, imploring the Shi‘a to


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only the most recent ascendancy: Mirza Muhammad Rahim Bulbula, a preacher from Baku who had arrived in India in 1917. Basing himself in Bombay and later in Lucknow, he was labelled by the British as an ‘extremist and . . . confirmed pan-Islamist’, conferring with ‘Abd ul-Bari and ‘mixed up with the ‘Ali brothers’.115 He managed to establish his influence among not only the Isna ‘Ashari Shi‘a of the United Provinces, but the Khojas of Bombay and other multifarious Shi‘a communities of only tenuous denominational or associational congruence with the former. The Anjuman-i-Khuddam-i-‘Atabat-i-‘Aliyat (Organization of the servants of the shrine cities), an obvious Shi‘a counterpart to the Sunni Anjuman-i-Khuddam-i-Ka‘aba, was set up to investigate the realities in Mesopotomia and to harmonize Shi‘a concerns with the wider Khilafat Movement, and brought Mirza Muhammad Rahim considerable profile and support in each of these cities.116 This sudden Shi‘a engagement with the khilafat agitation demonstrated how a number of new activists and anjumans only recently apparent in public life managed to trump the networks of magnates, institutions and ‘ulama that had for some decades represented the public face of Shi‘ism. Mirza Muhammad Rahim’s emergence had a great impact upon structures of religious authority in Lucknow, comprising a key moment in the transfer of agency away from the city’s traditional Shi‘a religious and political elites towards a younger, reactionary and more populist leadership. Indeed, it was the appearance of this group that prompted the mujtahids of Lucknow to reverse their previous stance on the Khilafat Movement. Nasir Husain, after communications with other mujtahids in Lucknow, led a deputation to the Lieutenant Governor to voice his concerns about the Najaf rumours.117 Aqa Hasan, still the highly influential peshnamaz of Lucknow’s Asafi mosque, delivered a speech after congregational prayers urging that the Shi‘a should now join with the other sects of Islam in the khilafat agitation.118 It was, however, a sudden and somewhat

115

116

117 118

engage in civil protest alongside Sunnis. Chief Secretary of the Punjab Government to Secretary of the Home Department, 11 March 1921, ibid. H. S. Craik to Chief Secretary of Government of Bombay, 8 June 1921, ibid.; From J. H. Adam, 28 October 1921, ibid.; ‘Note’ dated 31 March 1921, Home Department (Political), No. 161, 1921, NAI; To Muhammad Qujam-ud-din Abdul Bari Ansari, Firangi Mahal, Lucknow 24 Shaban 1339, ibid. Secretary of Anjuman-i-Khuddam-i-‘Atabat-i-‘Aliyat, Lucknow, to Viceroy, 30 September 1921, Home Department (Political), No. 161/II, 1921, NAI; ‘Translation copy of Resolution 3, passed at the meeting of Anjuman Khuddam Attabat-i-Aliat, 1 May 1921’, ibid. Telegram from the Government of the United Provinces, 16 March 1921, ibid. Extract from the newspaper “Siasat”, Lahore, 10 March 1921, ibid.

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embarrassing volte-face on their part. After some thirty years of high public visibility and uncontested guardianship of vested authority, the mujtahids were reduced by the strength of this new political populism to making concessions to existing public opinion in a bid to maintain their profile. It was a telling moment indeed when none of Lucknow’s senior mujtahids were selected as members of Mirza Muhammad Rahim’s proposed deputation to Mesopotamia. The isolation of traditional religious leadership was also mirrored among secular representatives. Indeed, the absence from the deputation of ta‘luqdars such as the Raja of Mahmudabad, or of ‘Old Party’ politicians and Shi‘a Conference figureheads such as Fateh ‘Ali Khan Qizilbash, represented a similar ‘want of confidence’ in the secular establishment.119 The deputation itself was ultimately never realized, with the colonial state using long-mastered techniques of postponement, threat and bureaucratic delay to ensure the ultimate disintegration of the campaign. Ultimately, Mirza Muhammad Rahim retired into relative obscurity, working in Shi‘a orphanages and charities in Bombay. But rather than the deputation itself, perhaps the most consequential legacy of the events of 1920–1 was the momentary elevation of a group of young, largely unknown Shi‘a maulvis and political activists over the traditional Lucknawi religious and political headship, and an increasing lay willingness to challenge the formerly inviolable supremacy of the senior mujtahids. The events revealed how the political context of heightened agitationalism and public protest in the post-war years had serious ramifications for the internal structures of religious authority within Shi‘ism. As is vindicated in the next chapter, the Khilafat Movement marked a rough turning-point, after which newly arising Shi‘a maulvis and orators were increasingly willing to challenge their formal seniors, and to cultivate their public leadership credentials anew, without restriction or reference to existing convention or custom. This interpretation offers a necessary corrective to the large body of scholarship that has argued that, in both the Middle East and India, pan-Islam fostered a form of Islamic universalism that facilitated Shi‘a– Sunni reconciliation. In India, pan-Islam and the Khilafat Movement in fact incurred much disagreement, enhancing and politicizing the

119

Lambert to H. D. Craik, 29 July 1921, ibid. This compares with the ‘jealousy’ that Mirza Muhammad Rahim was said to have produced among established Isna ‘Ashari Khoja leaders in Bombay, having apparently eclipsed their public influence. From the Commissioner of Police, Bombay, 19 July 1921, ibid.


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Shi‘a–Sunni difference. Far from providing unqualified support, Shi‘a responses to pan-Islam were frequently ambivalent, or even openly hostile, with large Shi‘a participation in the Khilafat Movement only brief and belated. Moreover, pan-Islam proved a serious source of disagreement within Shi‘ism, causing rows across generations, between national spokesmen and provincial elites, and between secular politicians and religious leaders. Like Shi‘a responses to the questions of Western education and jihad, the politicization of the Shi‘a as a community was compounded with divergent, often bitterly competing, understandings of what their political destiny should be.

conclusion This chapter has demonstrated that, contrary to the unitary trajectory that has often been written into studies of the development of Muslim identity politics in colonial India, there was a powerful Shi‘a counter-narrative to it. Far from the Aligarh Movement, anti-colonial agitationalism and panIslam being issues of cross-sectarian consensus as they have been described in much scholarship, this chapter has argued that in reality these mobilizations isolated many Shi‘a. By the 1910s a Shi‘a communal rejoinder to all these issues had been manufactured, and largely standardized as antithetical to its Sunni counterpart. This was achieved despite the major role played by many Shi‘a at the highest levels of nominally ‘Muslim’ politics, and hence created powerful inner-Shi‘a political divisions as well as Shi‘a–Sunni ones.120 This chapter suggests the need for a wide reappraisal of the effects of modern political mobilization on Shi‘a–Sunni relations, both beyond and within India. For one, the politics of Muslim ‘modernism’, manifested here around discussions of Muslim education and transnational pan-Islam, did not offer a new and ecumenical space for cross-confessional interaction. Rather, as demonstrated above, many Shi‘a perceived Muslim politics in the colonial period as being dominated by Sunni personnel and ideals, and unable to incorporate their distinctive identity and interests. This chapter gives credence to suggestions that Islamic ‘modernism’, in India or beyond, was sometimes perceived by the Shi‘a as simply ‘yet another face of 120

Prominent Shi‘a exponents of Muslim nationalism during this era such as the Raja of Mahmudabad, Wazir Hasan and Sayyid Raza ‘Ali, despite their national fame, were widely interpreted by local Shi‘a institutions and newspapers in UP as distant from the realities of the community’s predicament: ‘by fate the Shi‘a decide against them, and together separate off from them’. Husain, Risa¯la-i-kifan-po¯sh lı¯ daran, p. 20.

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anti-Shi‘a polemic’.121 The fact that populist appeals for Muslim social and political modernization so often apparently dovetailed with castigation of the Shi‘a meant that ‘modernist’ politics tended to entrench or reshape, rather than erode, Shi‘a–Sunni divisions. More specifically, this argument extends to the need to rethink the established narrative of Muslim separatist politics, in its formative heartland of the colonial United Provinces. Muslim separatism, in effect, was interpreted by many Shi‘a as a majoritarian, Sunni-dominated political doctrine that was incapable of safeguarding the independent interests of Muslim minority communities. Even more threateningly, it was perceived by some as intending not solely to protect the political identity of the Muslim minority against the Hindu majority, but also to secure the political subjugation by Sunni Muslim politicians of an ever more self-aware Shi‘a community. An additional insight to be gleaned from this chapter is the surprisingly direct role of British political machinations in the widening and politicization of Muslim sectarian difference. The relevant historiography has long emphasized the role of colonial knowledge and the structures of political representation in British India in homogenizing a single ‘Muslim’ community and underplaying its internal differences. By contrast, this chapter shows how the British government at provincial and local levels tended to glean advantage from the sectarian divide, informally pulling closer to the Shi‘a at times when Muslim politics was moving in a more reactionary and anti-government direction. As Muslim organizations and political parties fell under the control of ‘Young Party’ activists, the British tended to initiate communication with Shi‘a ‘ulama, magnates or public organizations, and encourage their separate political enterprises. This occurred on the Aligarh, jihad and pan-Islam questions alike, and at times took on the character of an overt divide et impera method of colonial politics at least as blatant as any of their (far more famous) tactical manipulations of Hindu–Muslim relations. Finally, far from sectarianism being a throwback to old controversies, as it has been described by a combination of colonial observers, Muslim reformists and modern commentators alike, this chapter shows how the forms of sectarianism discussed instead appropriated distinctly contemporary forms in the context of modern politics. It essentially matured as an alternative prognosis for political mobilization, taking on many of the

121

Nasr, The Shia revival, p. 103.


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linguistic themes and institutional forms of Muslim political organizations, but recasting them towards a different objective, namely securing the functional political independence of the Shi‘a community. The newly created Shi‘a qaum, far from being co-extensive with the Muslim community or one category of identity within it, was construed as its opposite. It came to sit on a competitive parity with the Muslim qaum, and posed a substantive challenge to the political evocation of a unitary Islam. No longer simply a conflagration of religious passions, sectarianism by the twentieth century found its own space in political discourse, acting as a serious practical and ideological challenge to the politics of Muslim communitarianism.

5 The tabarra agitation and Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts in late colonial India

Earlier chapters of this book have hinted at the growth of increasingly frequent and standardized manifestations of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict in colonial India, taking place around cultures of written and spoken religious polemic, the renovation of religious rituals and custom, discourses of community formation which emphasized their separateness and, later, the systematization of political differences. However, these developments only partially foreshadow the momentous disputes of the 1930s, a decade which saw a series of agitations by both communities in alleged defence of their religious rights. The culmination of these events was the tabarra agitation of 1939, when some 18,000 Shi‘as were jailed over a matter of months in Lucknow for the organized and collective recitation of the long-banned curses cast upon the early Caliphs. Accompanied by tense negotiations and several serious riots, the event remains perhaps the most significant instance of sectarian conflict in colonial or post-colonial India to date. Unlike many of the subjects addressed in earlier chapters of this book, several analyses of these sectarian rows in 1930s Lucknow already exist. Most of these discussions, it will be shown here, have situated them within the wider ‘communalization’ of Indian society and politics in the 1920s– 1930s, and ascendant social, economic and political developments which are identified as having tarnished Shi‘a–Sunni relations.1 Contrasting with these approaches, the main aim of this chapter is to locate their origins 1

E.g. Freitag, Collective action and community, pp. 249–80; Ahmad, ‘The Shia–Sunni dispute in Lucknow’; Shereen Ilahi, ‘Sectarian violence and the British Raj: the Muharram riots of Lucknow’, India Review 6, 3 (2007).

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The tabarra agitation and Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts

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within a context of enhanced differentiation not merely between, but also within, Shi‘a and Sunni denominations. This will involve an interrogation of Shi‘a–Sunni sectarianism through the lens of change in leadership, participation and practice internal to these communities themselves – of course with the focus here primarily being on the Shi‘a – and to explore the interactions between apparently Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts and inner-Shi‘a contestation.

from madh-i-sahaba to tabarra , 1931–1939 As a background to this reflection, however, it is first necessary to offer an account of the complex and often labyrinthine events unfolding in Lucknow, prior to the tabarra agitation itself. Scholarship on 1920s–30s north India has understood these two decades as witnessing the growth of various, and often intense, communal conflicts.2 These have been attributed to numerous causes, not least the different paths taken by Hindu and Muslim politicians after the end of the non-cooperation movement in 1922, the expansion of mass political participation along the lines of religious community as instituted in the 1919 Government of India Act, and a new era of cross-community missionary activity as represented by the Hindu shuddhi and sangathan campaigns and the Sunni tanzim and tabligh movements. With regard to Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts, one can speculate that the Shi‘a during these decades were increasingly conscious of the ascending political profile of influential Sunni ‘ulama. Significant activity among the ‘ulama during the Khilafat Movement, the convening of the council of the Jami‘at-i-‘Ulama-i-Hind in 1919 and, in particular, the involvement of the presidents and senior figureheads of the dar-ul-‘ulum of Deoband in the nationalist movement from the First World War onwards, were all factors that expanded the visibility of the Sunni ‘ulama generally, and those of Deoband in particular.3 This broadly 2

3

Cf. Freitag, Collective action and community; Nandini Gooptu, The politics of the urban poor in early twentieth century India (Cambridge, 2001); William Gould, Hindu nationalism and the language of politics in late colonial India (Cambridge, 2004). E.g. Barbara Metcalf, ‘Reinventing Islamic politics in interwar India: the clergy commitment to composite nationalism’, in Mushirul Hasan and Asim Roy, eds., Living together separately: cultural India in history and politics (New Delhi, 2005); Yohanan Friedmann, ‘The attitude of the Jami‘yyat-i ‘Ulama-i Hind to the Indian national movement and the establishment of Pakistan’, in Mushirul Hasan, ed., Inventing boundaries: gender, politics and the partition of India (New Delhi, 2000); Mushirul Hasan, ‘Religion and politics in India: The ulama and the Khilafat Movement’, in Mushirul Hasan, ed., Communal and pan-Islamic trends in colonial India (Delhi, 1985).

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defined enhancement of the public and political roles of the Sunni – and especially Deobandi – ‘ulama seemed to have as one of its side effects the general stoking of more religious argumentation with Muslim minorities in north India from the mid-1920s. With the years after the Khilafat Movement having been relatively uneventful in terms of Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts, the formation of a series of new schools and anjumans in Lucknow around the turn of the 1930s once again brought them to public attention. On the Sunni side, the key example was the appearance of ‘Abd ul-Shakoor Farooqi, the namesake of his famed Kakorwi father discussed in earlier chapters. Like his father, but named in honour of the second Caliph, ‘Umar, the second ‘Abd ul-Shakoor was an equally virulent writer and public speaker, adopting his father’s central argument that the Shi‘a faith and its doctrines could not be justified from the Qur’an, and propounding a sustained critique of Shi‘a customs. In 1931–2 he became the principal of a new Sunni school in Lucknow known as the Dar-ul-Muballighin. Often dismissed by the Shi‘a and also many Sunni opponents as ‘Wahhabi’ in its ideals (a term which, as we shall see below, is misleading in view of Shakoor’s promulgation of extravagant devotionalist practices), the organization’s main purpose was the propagation of munazara and contradiction of Shi‘a doctrines.4 Consisting of a seminary for the training of orators, and a publishinghouse (the Jama‘at-i-Tahaffuz-i-Millat) which printed many of ‘Abd ulShakoor’s writings, in a roundabout way it clearly echoed the Shi‘a Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin, founded twelve years earlier and geographically just a stone’s throw away, in its desire to create a clique of missionary preachers and its publication of religious tracts for wide consumption. Claiming that ‘Shi‘a maulvis generally and the Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin especially are widening the sectarian gulf . . . raising disputed examples, provoking munazara and turning unenlightened Sunnis into Shi‘as’, the organization framed itself as protecting Sunni Islam from the Shi‘a tabligh, and defending the timelessness and infallibility of the Qur’an.5 This development coalesced with the re-emergence of the question of the madh-i-sahaba, the verses recited in praise of the Sunni Caliphs. As we saw earlier, these phrases had first been consolidated and introduced as a public recitation among Sunnis in Lucknow in the 1900s, following the

4 5

Shamsi, Shı¯ ‘a–Sunnı¯ qazı¯ ya, p. 87; Hardy, The Muslims of British India, p. 245. ‘Abd ul-Shakoor Farooqi, Tehrı¯ f kı¯ kha¯na sa¯z haqı¯ qa¯t ka¯ jawa¯b (Lucknow, 1933), p. 10. This text was part of a debate with Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi on the issue of interpolations in the Qur’an. See below, pp.209–10.


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separation of Shi‘a and Sunni ta‘ziya processions and karbala burial sites. The decisions of the Piggott Committee of 1909, appointed in the wake of the Shi‘a–Sunni riots of 1907–8, had recommended that the government put restrictions upon the recitation of these phrases, as well as the Shi‘a tabarra cursings upon the same figures. While neither side had welcomed this decision, the Sunni side were especially aggrieved. Many Sunnis maintained that madh-i-sahaba, phrases of praise, were incomparable to the tabarra, words of cursing which far more directly intended to cause offence, and so should never have been understood by the district magistrate as equivalents. Furthermore, it was a common accusation of many of the Sunnis who supported madh-i-sahaba recitation that Lucknow’s Shi‘as, being of noble birth and better networked within the government, had managed to coax the municipal administration into supporting their desired prohibition of madh-i-sahaba slogans.6 Nevertheless, while some Sunni plaintiffs had challenged the Piggott Committee verdict in 1910–12,7 the arrangement had rested firm in Lucknow for some twenty-five years without organized challenge. Serious opposition to the verdict was then freshly raised in the early 1930s, when a number of Sunni maulvis, led at this stage by Shakoor, began to campaign for the lifting of restrictions on praising the Caliphs.8 The issue now caught the eye of the Majlis-i-Ahrar, a martialized Sunni activist organization founded in 1931 by a group of former Khilafatist ‘ulama and activists, and drawn from the urban artisan and middle classes of Punjab and the United Provinces. This anjuman, one with local connections to the tanzim movement supported by some Deobandis, worked on the loose premise of, on the one hand, opposing colonial rule through the cultivation of a vague recourse to an undefined political Islam and, on the other, purging the alleged Muslim community of any practices that it perceived as unscriptural accretions.9 Following a sustained campaign 6

7

8

9

E.g. Zafar ul-Mulk, Shia–Sunni dispute: its causes and cure, a critical analysis of the presidential address of Sir Sultan Ahmed (Badaun, c. 1940), pp. 14–15. Some of these (unsuccessful) Sunni challenges to the verdict are contained in GAD No. 366/ 1911, UPSA. ‘Fortnightly report for the second half of June 1930’, Public and Judicial (L/PJ) 12/22; ‘Fortnightly report for the first half of July 1933’, L/PJ/12/56, OIOC. While no substantial study of the Majlis-i-Ahrar exists, it is discussed in Y. B. Mathur, Muslims and changing India (New Delhi, 1972), pp. 109–19; Sana Haroon, ‘The rise of Deobandi Islam in the North-West Frontier Province and its implications in colonial India and Pakistan, 1914–1996’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 18, 1 (2008), pp. 55–8; Jalal, Self and sovereignty, pp. 356–82. Interestingly, in Punjab some of its major leaders were Shi‘a, among them Mazhar ‘Ali Azhar. Tamir, 8 May 1937, UPNNR.

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against the religious and missionary activities of the Ahmadi community in Punjab and Kashmir, the organization transferred its attentions in the mid-1930s to the madh-i-sahaba cause, and the confutation of the dissenting Shi‘a of Lucknow.10 It began to demand that government reinstate the right to madh-i-sahaba recitation. Their spokesman here was Zafar ul-Mulk, a maulvi skilled in public speaking who had been involved in the Khilafat Movement and thereafter loosely connected with the Indian National Congress. The Majlis-i-Ahrar was successful in recruiting activists in Lucknow and around, where ‘they espoused the cause of the Sunnis and with their powerful oratory succeeded in creating a good atmosphere for themselves’.11 With the invigorated madh-i-sahaba demand straining local Shi‘a– Sunni relations, the same few years saw a heightening audacity of local Shi‘a practice, with Muharram once again the canvas on which a diverse array of local anjumans attempted to make their municipal mark. A series of Muharram guilds and societies, among them the Anjuman-i-Ja‘fariya, Anjuman-i-Baqariya, Anjuman-i-Mehdiviya, Anjuman-i-Panjetani and Anjuman-i-Maqbool-i-Husaini, were established to organize majlis readings, sponsor ta‘ziya processions and organize professional mourning.12 As early as 1932–3 observers started to remark that Muharram was becoming ever more schismatic, increasingly marked by the separation of Shi‘a and Sunni majlis assemblies and processions, and the conflation of mourning with munazara.13 Within a few years an ever wider range of new associations, such as the Darbar-i-Husaini, the Idara-i-Yadgar-i-Husaini and the prolifically active Anjuman-i-Nasir-ul-‘Aza, were continuing to invigorate ta‘ziyadari and emphasize the specifically Shi‘a understanding of Muharram as an occasion of lamentation.14 In this way Muharram increasingly became a month that Shi‘a and Sunni would experience in isolation from each other, and which would be appropriated to emphasize their differences. Going one step further than his father, who had argued that the taking out of ta‘ziyas had to be

10

11 12 14

Interestingly, this is comparable to modern anti-Shi‘a organizations in Pakistan, whose main protagonists were previously involved in organizing anti-Ahmadi agitations in the 1950s and 1970s before turning to anti-Shi‘a confutation. Muhammad Qasim Zaman, ‘Sectarianism in Pakistan: the radicalization of Shi‘i and Sunni identities’, Modern Asian Studies 36, 3 (2000), pp. 691–2. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, pp. 150–1. Farooqi, Tehrı¯ f kı¯ kha¯na, p. 4. 13 Imamiya Mission, Sa¯la¯na rapo¯rt, p. 22. Mehdi Husain, ‘Arf Chatan, Anjuman-i-Na¯sir-ul-‘a‘za (Lucknow, 1942), Sultan ‘Ali Sadiq Collection, Lucknow, pp. 8–10.


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accompanied by the recitation of praises for the Caliphs, Shakoor’s proselytizing machine and the Majlis-i-Ahrar alike were united in the belief that Shi‘a ‘innovations’, particularly the custom of ta‘ziyadari itself, should be ceased entirely among Sunnis. What was new by comparison with earlier precedents was the gradual abandonment by these Sunni spokesmen of criticism of Shi‘a Muharram practices as merely overindulgent interpolations, and the assumption of the claim that the Shi‘a were utilizing the ritualism of Muharram as a tool for the tacit conversion of their Sunni brethren. Zafar ul-Mulk began referring to ta‘ziyadari as the ‘main plank in the Shia tabligh’, an opportunity for ‘the ignorant Sunni masses to be absorbed and converted by the Shias’ through participation in their rites.15 This rhetoric of the threat from religious conversion openly drew from the themes of tabligh and shuddhi which characterized Muslim–Hindu religious conflict in the 1920s–30s as well as, as argued in Chapter 1, the increasing centrality of the theme of cross-sectarian proselytization in Muslim religious disputation. It also allowed the Dar-ul-Muballighin and Majlis-i-Ahrar to laud themselves as a kind of counter-mission, trying to pull Sunnis away from the proselytizing threats of ritualized mourning. Their attempts to withdraw their followers from the Shi‘a-led practices of Muharram were met with increasing success. By the mid-1930s, Sunnis had ceased almost completely the taking out of ta‘ziyas, while Shi‘a azadari conversely became more elaborate and better attended.16 Ironically, however, ‘Abd ul-Shakoor’s desire to purge what he saw as excessive populist ritualism was also compounded with a somewhat contradictory re-casting of devotional and commemorative activity away from the Shi‘a martyrs and towards the Sunni Caliphs. From 1935 to 1936 ‘Abd ul-Shakoor began to hold what he called bayan, narrations of the achievements of Abu Bakr and ‘Umar, during the first ten days of Muharram; these were held in Deorhi Agha Mir, a crowded and mixed Shi‘a–Sunni neighbourhood right next to the Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin and major ta‘ziya procession routes.17 Thereafter, Sunni attempts to abolish ta‘ziyadari were supplemented with efforts to essentially replace Muharram ta‘ziya processions with madh-i-sahaba rallies in honour of the Caliphs. These collective pageants, taking place on the same days and casting many of the same ritual displays 15

16 17

The Pioneer (Lucknow), 6 June 1939, Quaid-i-Azam Collection, Ior. Neg. Pos.10773, OIOC. The Leader (Allahabad), 26 March and 4 May 1937, OIOC. Census of India 1961, pp. 22, 38; Jasbir Singh to Harper, 22 Feb 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA.

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of Shi‘ism upon a different subject, rather ironically resembled ta‘ziyadari processions in fundamental ways. Sunni reformists were essentially encouraging open and routinized devotional acts entirely resonant of normative Shi‘a practices, emulating what was perceived to be its successful and proselytizing ceremonialism.18 This meant, in turn, that madh-isahaba rallies and displays of veneration for the Caliphs were construed not merely as virtuous acts but, to use Zafar ul-Mulk’s term, as ‘antidotes’ to Shi‘a conversion efforts, bringing fallen Sunnis back into the fold. By the end of the decade Sunni anjumans were not merely organizing recitations and rallies in praise of the Caliphs, but went so far as to convene vocal rejections of the Imams and eulogies for their murderers. A new association known as Anjuman-i-Tahaffuz-i-Namoos-i-Sahaba, extending the leads set by the Majlis-i-Ahrar and Dar-ul-Muballighin, organized recitations in honour of the Caliphs, but also vocally attacked Shi‘a azadari practices.19 Meanwhile, another group calling themselves ‘Kharijis’, in an example of an incredible departure from normative Sunni religious belief and practice, reviled ‘Ali and praised his murderer.20 These diffuse campaigns, however, finally crystallized into a single agitation, one demanding permission from the district magistrate for an organized madh-i-sahaba procession on the day of Bara-Wafat, the anniversary of the Prophet’s birth (and death). As well as antagonizing the Shi‘a, it was a cause through which the Majlis-i-Ahrar and their local allies were able to realize their credentials as political agitationalists by placing pressure on the reluctant provincial government. Following government’s initial refusal, the Ahrars in 1936 launched a civil disobedience movement, during which their activists publicly recited the controversial phrases. The madh-i-sahaba agitation, one that drew selectively from the tactics of the Congress-led civil disobedience movement of the early 1930s, focused upon the Tila masjid, Lucknow’s main Sunni mosque, where activists would collectively recite the madh-i-sahaba phrases after weekly Friday prayers in defiance of court orders and court arrest.21 An ‘All India Madhi-Sahaba Day’, organized in August 1936 to coordinate a wider north Indian protest, recorded large gatherings in cities as diverse as Meerut, 18 19

20 21

Cf. Zaman, ‘Sectarianism in Pakistan’, pp. 702–3. Mirza Sajjad Ali Khan, ed., Why 14,000 Shias went to jail? UP Congress government and justice, ‘Fundamental rights of people overthrown’, severe repression of the Shia minority (Lucknow, c. 1939), p. 37; Jasbir Singh to Harper, 10 February 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA. Jasbir Singh to Harper, 15 and 18 April 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA. For instance, The Leader, 2 and 17 August 1936.


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Aligarh and Allahabad.22 Over the next three years the government held talks and appointed enquiry committees in order to bring the issue to a close, but with little success.23 As Sunni recitations of madh-i-sahaba became more frequent, so some Shi‘a began to express opposition through counter-recitations of tabarra. These invective verses against the Sunni Caliphs were declared both during congregational prayers and, especially, during the ten days of the annual ‘Ashra. During Muharram, government restrictions had to be applied to Shi‘a ta‘ziya processions in order to maintain peace, and were met with organized resistance, with some Shi‘a reciting tabarra and courting arrest.24 Despite these efforts, public recitations of tabarra sparked Sunni–Shi‘a violence in old Lucknow in May 1937, the most serious since the 1900s.25 An even bigger riot occurred in the next Muharram in April 1938, when a Shi‘a ta‘ziya procession was attacked outside the Darul-Muballighin, resulting in several deaths and numerous injuries. Indeed, as is testified by police and newspaper reports, instances of assaults and localized violence linked to Shi‘a–Sunni tensions increased greatly from this date. Unlike before, violence was not restricted to the period and fixed locations of the Muharram festival, but occurred sporadically across the calendar and far from the main ta‘ziya procession routes, where it had earlier been focused. All of this caused a rapid deterioration of relations between Shi‘as and Sunnis across Lucknow throughout the late 1930s. A general atmosphere of ‘social estrangement’ was said to have taken root between the communities, with Shi‘a clients abandoning trade with Sunni businesses in favour of those of their own co-religionists, and Sunni doctors, tailors and barbers refusing to serve Shi‘a clientele.26 Also significant was the growth of a 22 23

24 25

26

Ibid., 1 September 1936. The most notable government attempt to resolve the question was its appointment of the Allsop Committee in 1937, reporting a year later. It largely upheld the conclusions of its predecessor, the Piggott Committee Report, arguing that ‘the desire to recite Madh-isahaba arose out of a feeling directed against the Shias’, and thus should not be permitted in any circumstances in the current climate. For a copy of the report see Government Gazette of the United Provinces, 28 March 1938, Quaid-i-Azam Collection, Pos.10773, OIOC. The Leader, 1 April 1937. Indian Annual Register: July–December 1937 (Delhi, 1938), CSAS, p. 142; Haig to Linlithgow, 7 June 1937, Haig Collection, Mss. Eur. F.115/17, OIOC; The Leader, 23 May 1937; Naqqara (Lucknow) and Oudh Akhbar (Lucknow), 29 May 1937, UPNNR. Naqqara, 19 September 1936 and Hamdam (Lucknow), 15 May 1937, UPNNR; Extract from fortnightly letter from the Commissioner, Lucknow Division, 15 September 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA.

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deregulated press, with the finite inventory of publishing-houses of earlier decades giving way to a far enhanced access to printing technology and the issuing of an array of serialized sectarian publications. Sunni (al-Najm, Haram, Asad, Naqqara etc.) and Shi‘a (Sarfaraz, Zulfiqar, al-Wa‘iz, Hukumaran etc.) newspapers propounded the causes of their respective communities. Sunni poets crafted compositions claiming for themselves the legacy of ‘Ali at Kufa, claiming ‘My path is that of tawalla (love), yours of tabarra’, while Shi‘a authors produced diatribes against the Sunni Companions for betraying the Prophet at the battle of Uhud, in each case raising old questions of the legitimacy of early Islamic leaders and relating historical grievances to current events.27 A new phase of the controversy began in 1938, when the principal of Deoband, Husain Ahmad Madani, by now one of India’s best-known Islamic scholars and political activists, assumed spokesmanship of the madh-i-sahaba campaign, bringing it greater national prominence and legitimacy.28 Simultaneously, the debate shifted following the formation of a government by the Indian National Congress in the United Provinces during the ministry period of 1937–9. With Husain Ahmad Madani a known nationalist activist and holding a leading role in the Provincial Congress Committee, the administration proved reluctant to contest his demands, and in the latter half of 1938 the call for a madh-i-sahaba procession intensified. With increasing signs that the Congress ministry was shifting towards capitulating to the requests of its ally, civil disobedience was vigorously revived by the Majlis-i-Ahrar and others in March 1939, with groups of Sunni volunteers flooding into Lucknow from outside in support. Finally, permission was granted for a madh-i-sahaba procession on Bara-Wafat, falling on 31 March 1939.29 The setting of the procession route near the city’s train station, away from Shi‘a neighbourhoods, was an attempt by the goverment to ensure that the event would pass without incident. This same day saw the first major organized Shi‘a protest, one intended to pressure the government into revoking its permission for the procession to take place. Concurrently with the madh-i-sahaba procession, a large crowd of Shi‘as congregated in the grounds of the Asaf-ud-daula 27

28

29

Respectively, ‘Abid Zuberi, Ba¯l-i-huma¯ (Lucknow, 1940), passim; Hukumaran (Lucknow), 27 April 1939, Proscribed Publications (Urdu), OIOC. On Husain Ahmad’s illustrious religious and political career see Madani, Composite nationalism and Islam; Metcalf, ‘Reinventing Islamic politics in interwar India’. Gwynne to Puckle, 7 and 26 March 1939, L/PJ/5/267, OIOC; The Leader, 3 and 4 April 1939.


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fi g u r e 5 . 1 . Crowds of volunteer arrestees assemble in the compound of the Asaf-ud-daula imambara in preparation for the recitation of tabarra. Hukumaran (Lucknow), 27 April 1939 (courtesy of the British Library).

imambara, to recite tabarra and themselves court arrest. This pattern repeated itself over subsequent months, during which the Shi‘a would synchronize the shouts of tabarra from the roof and balconies of the imambara compound, often to coincide with congregational prayers in the nearby Sunni mosque.30 This quickly became characterized as a singular agitation, and like the madh-i-sahaba campaign before it, took on all the trappings of organized civil disobedience, with a growing number of participants courting arrest in a deliberate and disciplined fashion. The agitation persisted against all attempts at a settlement and movements towards conciliation, and dragged on for months. A look at the numbers alone shows the scale of the reaction; while the number of Sunni courting arrest for madh-i-sahaba agitation before March 1939 totalled around 3000,31 the equivalent number of Shi‘a seeking arrest during the tabarra agitation reached up to 14,000 in just the next four months, with several thousand more before the end of the year.32 30

31

Communique from the District Magistrate of Lucknow, 5 July 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA. The Leader, 6 April 1939. 32 Khan, ed., Why 14,000 Shias went to jail?, passim.

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The tabarra agitation induced what startled officials routinely characterized as ‘intense emotional hysteria’33 among the Shi‘a of Lucknow. Participation in tabarra in April–May 1939 notably transcended all boundaries of neighbourhood, family, class and political persuasion. Many Shi‘a ‘ulama courted arrest, most prominent among whom were the mujtahid Sayyid Kalb-i-Husain and his son Kalb-i-‘Abid, both ‘ulama of the Nasirabadi family, and in particular the mujtahid Sayyid Muhammad Naseer, the eldest son, student and designated successor of Nasir Husain.34 They were joined by members of the former royal family of Lucknow, including the grandchildren of Wajid ‘Ali Shah.35 Some landed Shi‘a of Awadh participated, and the sayyids of Bilgram and other outlying townships led Shi‘a deputations to Lucknow in support of the cause.36 A number of nationalist Shi‘a politicians, including Mirza Ja‘far Husain, Sayyid Kalb-i-‘Abbas and Sayyid ‘Ali Zaheer, recited tabarra and handed themselves over.37 Many of these were attached to an organization known as the Shi‘a Political Conference, which had been set up to recruit Shi‘a support for the Congress Party. At various points this organization would provide a leading role within the tabarra agitation.38 Other supposedly marginalized groups found means of expressing themselves through the tabarra agitation. A new anjuman, the Lucknow Shi‘a Students’ Federation, worked to coordinate the bands of arrestees.39 Perhaps most 33 34

35 36

37

38

39

‘The Madhe Sahaba controversy,’ Haig to Linlithgow, 18 April 1939, L/PJ/7/2587, OIOC. The important role of these clerics in the tabarra agitation is recorded in Hukumaran, 27 April 1939, passim. The Leader, 13, 24, 25 and 27 April 1939. Ibid., 22 and 25 April 1939. For details and photographs of Shi‘a ra’is and ta‘luqdars courting arrest see Hukumaran, 27 April 1939. The Leader, 24–6 April 1939; National Herald (Lucknow), 23 April 1939, CSAS; ‘Who is responsible for the Shia/Sunni dispute?’, by Sayyid Akbar Ali, L/PJ/7/2587, OIOC. The Shi‘a Political Conference had been set up in 1925 by the established Muslim nationalist politician Sayyid Wazir Hasan, his son Sayyid ‘Ali Zaheer and the former Khilafatist Sayyid Haider Mehdi of Allahabad. The organization carried little fixed policy or prominence until 1937. During this year, when the coalition negotiations between Congress and the Muslim League collapsed, the Conference ‘decided that we should start a movement among the Shi‘as and should wean them away from the Muslim League fold’. In a significant speech in October 1937 Wazir Hasan, the Conference president, offered a speech in which ‘he vehemently opposed the ideology of the Muslim League to form a separate Muslim block, and opined that the Muslim League alone did not represent all the Muslims of India’, formalizing the organization’s support of Congress. Syed Kazim Zaheer, ed., The memoirs of Syed Ali Zaheer (New Delhi, 2004), p. 19. Wazir Hasan and ‘his army of Congressite Shias’ were frequently blamed by some for some of the force of the tabarra agitation. Statement by Abdul Waheed Khan, Joint Secretary of the Provincial Muslim League, The Pioneer (Lucknow), 22 June 1939, Quaid-i-Azam Collection, Pos.10773, OIOC. The Leader, 4 and 11 May 1939.


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remarkable was the formation of a protest movement for sharif Shi‘a women, allowing the begams (noblewomen) of both secular and religious elite families to shed their purdah, shout tabarra and even plan to lie in the road blocking the Bara-Wafat procession.40 Lucknow, of course, had a history of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict, but the successive Sunni and Shi‘a agitations of the late 1930s differed in important ways from any precursors. First was the simple fact of their public impact, advanced organization and heavy public participation; far from being the religious campaigns of a minority of religious orators and leaders, these agitations were actualized as mass mobilizations, couched in the language of government petitioning and highly resonant of the political activism that typified north India from the 1920s. In turn, these conflicts escaped the episodic limits of Muharram and the local contexts of meaning in which they had previously been experienced. The phrases of madh-isahaba and tabarra were isolated from their earlier religious application, as verses recited during personal or collective piety, and appropriated in entirely novel circumstances as demonstrative slogans and tools of communal politics. Second, it was during the 1930s that Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts took on the shape and language of an all-India struggle. As we have seen, in previous years such conflicts had often reflected local rivalries and animosities within Lucknow itself but, to the great surprise of observers, during the 1930s Lucknow became simply the main stage to which a number of Shi‘a and Sunni ‘outsiders’ would flock to participate.41 The Majlis-i-Ahrar, for instance, seemed to recruit most of its volunteers from so-called ‘outstations’, especially neighbouring qasbas and towns such as Kakori, Malihabad and Barabanki, as well as from the United Provinces and Punjab more widely.42 Much the same could be seen on the Shi‘a side. Hopeful predictions that the tabarra agitation would cease after the arrest of a substantial portion of Lucknow’s Shi‘a population were dashed by an influx of activists from outside Lucknow. Deputations of volunteers travelled from districts including Rampur, Agra, Fyzabad, Barabanki and Allahabad, greatly assisting in sustaining the tabarra agitation after its 40

41

42

On this interesting movement see The Leader, 14 April, 4 May and 3 June 1939; National Herald, 25 and 28 April 1939; Haig to Linlithgow, 26 April 1939, Linlithgow Collection, Mss. Eur. F.125/102, OIOC; Member of the Legislative Assembly for Shahjahanpur to Jinnah, 27 April 1939, Quaid-i-Azam Collection, Pos.10773, OIOC. E.g. Jasbir Singh to Harper, 18 and 25 April 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA. Jasbir Singh to Harper, 16 May 1939, ibid.

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first two weeks.43 After the first couple of months of the tabarra agitation, perhaps the bulk of Shi‘a activists originated from Punjab, making the possibility of a resolution of the conflict by religious or political leaders of the United Provinces ever more remote.44 No less significantly, the tabarra agitation in Lucknow attracted the interest of a number of Shi‘a organizations from far afield. An array of newly convened anjumans appeared as if from nowhere, hurling petitions in the direction of the government and the press asking for a revocation of the madh-i-sahaba right and expressing sympathy for their Lucknawi brethren.45 Equally illustrative of the new ability of the sectarian conflict to transcend the local dynamics of Lucknow was the fact that parallel agitations, albeit on a smaller scale, spread to other districts. Watching events in Lucknow, Sunnis in other towns including Kanpur, Muzaffarnagar and Rae Bareili took up new demands to carry out madh-i-sahaba processions of their own.46 Shi‘a–Sunni relations were strained considerably in all these places, with Shi‘as in response committing such acts of protest as daubing the tabarra slogans in public places and raising black flags on the roofs of their homes.47 Shi‘a–Sunni conflict, previously something castigated and compartmentalized by its opponents as something bound up with the specific local environment of Lucknow, became something much wider: an abstract phenomenon with many manifestations and resonance across the northern half of the subcontinent. Organized recitations of tabarra continued in Lucknow throughout 1939, as did occasional Shi‘a–Sunni riots. A series of negotiations was held throughout 1939 to seek resolution of the conflict, involving a number of ‘ulama on both sides, other community representatives, the British governor and provincial and national Congress politicians, but at each stage they were thwarted by one or other faction. Ultimately, the intervention of 43 44

45

46

47

Jasbir Singh to Harper, 6, 18, 25 April and 2 May 1939, ibid. ‘Fortnightly report for the second half of May 1940’, Mudie to Conran Smith, 22 June 1940, L/PJ/5/269, OIOC. Organizations that came to express their contempt for lifting of the ban on madh-i-sahaba and sympathy for their co-religionists in Lucknow included the Anjuman-i-Shi‘a-i-Bengal, Calcutta; the Anjuman-i-Mustafawi, Bengal; the Shi‘a Tanzim Committee, Bareilly; the Shi‘a Association, Shahpur; as well as individual maulvis of places as diverse as Meerut, Sonipat and Murshidabad. Telegrams from all of these anjumans offering support to their co-religionists in Lucknow are available in Home (Political), 5/3/1939, NAI. The Pioneer, 13 June 1939, and District Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar to T. B. W. Bishop, 5 May 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA. The Pioneer, 24 August 1939, and ‘Diaries’, 10 June 1939, Harold Charles Mitchell papers, Mss. Eur. E.255/14, OIOC; Harper to Gwynne, 20 May 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA.


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Abul Kalam Azad, the most senior Muslim member of the Indian National Congress, induced a tense lull by the close of 1939.48 However, despite the capitulation of the main tabarra leaders and the formal calling-off of the agitation, the dispute would continue well into the 1940s, with the annual madh-i-sahaba processions on Bara-Wafat being responded to violently by Shi‘a opponents, and tabarra counter-recitations continuing with some frequency. Even into the 1940s, the decade normally portrayed as that in which the need for unity overcame all other factors in Muslim politics, Shi‘a–Sunni relations would remain heavily strained. Some noted that, in Lucknow, several elections to Muslim seats on the municipal board in 1943–4, and even the hugely significant 1945–6 elections to the central and provincial legislatures which sealed the All India Muslim League’s national rise, were fought on the issue of permissions for madhi-sahaba recitation.49 Others pointed out that, right into the 1940s, sectarian animosities between different Muslim groups and organizations were often more immediate and intense than the bipolar Muslim–Hindu dichotomy which has often been applied to the trajectories of United Provinces politics during this decade.50 While there is not the space to cover these implications here, the huge increase in Shi‘a–Sunni conflict in the 1930s considerably complicates our knowledge of Muslim politics in the decade prior to the partition of the subcontinent.

understanding sectarianism in inter-war north india Given the remarkable medley of Shi‘a nobilities, artisans, professionals, students, landowners, aristocrats and formal ‘ulama participating in the tabarra agitation, it is futile to try to posit a single or dominant explanation for the sudden rise in Shi‘a–Sunni conflict throughout the decade. While later sections of this chapter will look at the religious dynamics implicit within these disputes in more detail, most analyses of these events hitherto published have focused upon the interaction between sectarian conflict and the socio-political transformations of 1920s–1930s north India, and it is important to rehearse these at the outset. 48 49

50

Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, pp. 215–16. National Herald, 13 December 1945, and 10, 17, 21 January and 11 March 1946; ‘Fortnightly report for the second half of November 1945’, and ‘Fortnightly report for the first half of December 1945’, Frampton papers, CSAS. ‘Fortnightly report for the second half of February, 1946’, and ‘Fortnightly report for the first half of March 1946’, Frampton papers, CSAS.

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Many attempts to ‘explain’ the vigour of these agitations have tended to track their intersections with contemporary politics. On the broadest level, both agitations can be interpreted as having taken on the style and idioms of popular politics as it matured during the inter-war years, commonly characterized as the era of ascendant mass-nationalism. In their attempts to craft organized and often surprisingly peaceful resistance to the government, both agitations were frequently resonant of the distinctly Congress-attached tactics of organized civil disobedience. Indeed, the madh-i-sahaba and tabarra agitations alike were frequently evoked in the Gandhian ethical language of satyagraha (non-violent protest).51 Further backing up this argument is the fact that many of the leading protagonists of both agitations were attached to the Indian National Congress. This was true of the nationalist Majlis-i-Ahrar and the following of Husain Ahmad Madani on the Sunni side, and no less so among the Shi‘a, for politicians such as sayyid Wazir Hasan and Sayyid ‘Ali Zaheer who directed the Shi‘a Political Conference. Prior to the formation of a Congress ministry in the province in 1937 it may thus be argued that the madh-i-sahaba agitation in its early stages presented a convenient cause for inciting anti-government protest. As has been long argued, colonial attempts to suppress demonstrative public processions and rallies under the guise of protecting order often meant direct governmental involvement in the regulation of religious rituals and festivities. This intimate involvement by the colonial state meant, in turn, that mere matters of religious procedure could transmute into political and legal disputes.52 Given the ubiquitous hand of the British government and municipal authorities in attempts to bring the troubles to a close, the Shi‘a– Sunni conflicts were appropriated and expanded by many participants as a means of demonstrating their defiance of government orders. This perhaps further helps to explain the presence of many quasi-nationalist individuals and Congress-affiliated groups in both the madh-i-sahaba and tabarra agitations. Other authors have, more specifically, located the conflicts in the machinations of party politics during the years of Congress ministry. After some thirty years of relative public peace in Lucknow predicated upon the proscription of madh-i-sahaba in public contexts, it was the new Congress ministry that conceded to the demands, and hence reignited the dispute. One theory is that many of the most prominent Muslims in the 51 52

The Leader, 11 May 1939. Ahmad, ‘The Shia–Sunni dispute in Lucknow’, p. 341.


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United Provinces Congress were personally sympathetic to the madh-isahaba demand, not least Husain Ahmad Madani, and both Muslim members of the United Provinces Congress Committee.53 Another connected possibility is that Congress was attempting to expand its fragile support in the United Provinces’ Muslim community; this was, of course, a moment when the All India Muslim League was building up considerable popular support in the United Provinces, while Congress’s ongoing ‘mass contact campaign’ to recruit Muslim support was haemorrhaging spectacularly. In this context, by allowing the madh-i-sahaba agitation, Congress may have been making what it believed to be a concession to the desires of the Sunni majority.54 Alternatively, it has been suggested that Congress actively encouraged the dispute in order to ‘split the Muslims’ and break the Muslim vote-bank on which the Muslim League was attempting to predicate its ideological platform.55 Muhammad ‘Ali Jinnah himself, who looked upon the sectarian conflicts with a combination of disdain and indecision, consistently described the dispute as demonstrating ‘the surreptitious machinations of the enemies of the Musulmans’ to ‘create and exploit the differences between them’, noting that ‘those responsible for leading, rather misleading, sections of both the Shi‘as and Sunnis in a fratricidal struggle are prominent Muslim Congressites’.56 Such an interpretation would suggest that the Congress administration handled Shi‘a–Sunni relations with the same manipulative skill as had their British predecessors during their earlier attempts to find cracks in Muslim unity during the Muslim University, jihadist and pan-Islamic agitations, as discussed in the previous chapter. Whichever of these explanations is prioritized, all are in agreement on the appropriation of the madh-i-sahaba and tabarra as a garb under which essentially political battles could be fought. Many of the main political leaders of the tabarra movement were careful to stress that, in the words of 53

54

55

56

Hafiz Muhammad Ibrahim, one of the two serving Muslim members of the UPCC, was from a family of which other members courted arrest. ‘Who is responsible for the Shia/ Sunni dispute?’, by Sayyid Akbar Ali, L/PJ/7/2587, OIOC. It was widely rumoured that Husain Ahmad Madani had promised to reward Congress with Sunni support for allowing the madh-i-sahaba procession. Haig to Linlithgow, 23 October 1938, Linlithgow Collection, F.125/101. ‘Shia–Sunni trouble’, Haig to Linlithgow, 18 April 1939, L/PJ/7/2587, OIOC. On the eve of elections one member of the Ahrars even suggested that the organization could ‘retard Muslim League propaganda by creating internal religious differences’. Jalal, Self and sovereignty, p. 458. The Leader, 10 May 1939. For a comparable interpretation see Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, pp. 212–15.

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Wazir Hasan, the campaign was ‘in no sense a sectarian agitation but is directed only against the Government’.57 Sayyid Haider Mehdi, another prominent Shi‘a Congressman, claimed that the agitation was ‘in the nature of a defiance of government order’, stating: ‘I have not been able to find any other front from which Shi‘as can give a fight to the Government.’58 Often the Congress party specifically suffered the vitriol of the tabarra agitation, a remarkable example being the inclusion of the names of senior Congress leaders such as Nehru and Gandhi alongside the Caliphs in the curses of the tabarra.59 Alternatively, and in common with earlier Shi‘a–Sunni confrontations in Lucknow, one might identify an intersection with social and class rivalries. For instance, there was a clear polarization between the urban, middle-class and artisan backgrounds of many of the Ahrar volunteers who requested the right to recite madh-i-sahaba and the ‘noble’, aristocratic Shi‘as close to the municipal government, who were most often seen as the architects of the three-decade ban. In British eyes the Ahrar organization ‘contained no man of even a moderate social position within its ranks’ and drew its support from the ‘lowest strata of Lucknow’s Muslims’, allowing them to frequently characterize its activists as degenerates.60 As such, the Sunni agitation could be interpreted in the context of contemporary political assertion by artisan groups, as an ‘attempt by the poor to seize political control and initiative’.61 This was, at least superficially, in contrast to the Shi‘a tabarra campaign, which most surprised the government for the presence of ‘Shias of the most respectable families’ within the agitation, and the resulting ‘gentlemanly lines’ along which the agitation was largely conducted.62 However, far from being solely located in class difference, one of the greatest contributing social factors to Shi‘a–Sunni conflict throughout the 1930s was the massive shift of population and demography taking place in Lucknow. Before the 1920s colonial Lucknow had been slow to modernize and remained largely stagnant both in terms of economic and population 57 58

59 60 61 62

The Leader, 11 May 1939. Ibid., 1 May 1939. Participants were careful to stress that ‘the present question is more political than religious and it is carried . . . without any disrespect to the Sunnis’. Sayyid Shibli Ali to Liaquat Ali Khan, 15 April 1939, Quaid-i-Azam Collection, Pos.10773, OIOC. Lall to Conran Smith, 22 August 1939, L/PJ/5/268, OIOC. Haig to Linlithgow, 7 June 1937, L/PJ/5/267, OIOC. Gooptu, The politics of the urban poor, pp. 301–3. ‘The Madhe Sahaba controversy’, Haig to Linlithgow, 18 April and 12 June 1939, L/PJ/5/ 267, OIOC.


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growth. However, Lucknow’s quick development thereafter into a major provincial centre of industry and trade saw the city’s population spiral after 1921 from some 217,000 to 387,000 in just twenty years.63 This sudden increase stemmed partly from a wider trend of urbanization in inter-war north India, but also owed to the establishment of Lucknow as the United Provinces’ political capital, becoming the location of the seat of the provincial governor and the United Provinces Legislative Council in the aftermath of the 1919 Government of India Act. As a result, Lucknow suddenly became a magnet for ever-increasing numbers of politicos, officials and investors, quickly transforming the city’s size, composition and character.64 On the one hand, the sudden expansion of the population would have altered the proportional balance between Shi‘as and Sunnis. A disproportionate number of these immigrants were Muslims,65 and an overwhelming majority would have been Sunni, perhaps cementing the impression of fresh numerical Sunni dominance and empowerment. At the same time, far from Lucknow simply expanding outwards, much of the burden of population growth fell upon the city’s bustling inner centre, in particular the predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods in western Lucknow adjacent to the chauk.66 These muhallas tended to contain both Shi‘a and Sunni residents, either mixed or in close proximity, as well as being significant routes for ta‘ziya processions and the locations of the offices of most of the major Shi‘a and Sunni anjumans to have come into being in previous decades.67 Enhanced conflict, then, can probably be attributed in part to the augmentation of social pressures in those parts of the city that bore the

63

64

65 66

67

Census of India 1921, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, Part I: Report (Allahabad, 1923), pp. 34–6; Census of India, 1931, United Provinces, Part I: Report (Allahabad, 1933), pp. 141–2; Census of India 1951, Uttar Pradesh, Part 1-A, Report (Allahabad, 1953), p. 169. Peter Reeves, ‘Lucknow politics: 1920–1947’, in Violette Graff, ed., Lucknow: memories of a city (New Delhi, 1997), pp. 216–19. Census of India, 1931, United Provinces, Part I: Report, pp. 522–3. There was, for instance, a strong increase in the 1930s of the population in the crowded ward of Yahiyaganj, a central quarter nestled between Nakhhas, Patanala and the Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin in which several incidents of sectarian violence occurred. R. Mukerjee and B. Singh, Social profiles of a metropolis: social and economic structure of Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh, 1954–56 (London, 1961), p. 32. A particularly notable example was Patanala. This narrow lane, with Sunni houses on one side and Shi‘a on the other, was one of the main sites of physical conflict between the two communities. It fitted a number of the criteria associated with conflict: it adjoined a number of important imambaras, the Dar ul-Muballighin and the homes of a number of Shi‘a and Sunni ‘ulama and preachers; it was also a major route for ta‘ziya processions.

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brunt of immigration and suffered the accompanying overcrowding and enhanced economic competition. In addition to these various possible factors feeding into Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts, there is also the fact that the reception and profile of sectarianism was transformed by the simultaneous metamorphosis of Lucknow into a major north Indian political centre. The unprecedented volume of British, Congress, Muslim League and other political activity and the accompanying increase in journalistic output that accompanied Lucknow’s new status as provincial capital gave wider resonance to municipal events. As such, it could be argued that the widening of the realms in which Shi‘a–Sunni questions were discussed, from the local associations, printed books and civic vernaculars discussed in earlier chapters, to the provincial assemblies and the national press, which took up the issue in the 1930s, began to extrapolate these conflicts. The disputes certainly began for the first time to attract the attentions of movements and leaders of provincial and national prominence. This began with the entry of the Majlis-i-Ahrar, and the Deobandi combination of Husain Ahmad Madani and the Jami‘at-i‘Ulama-i-Hind, into the dispute.68 It was then followed by the mediatory efforts of senior politicians, among them Congress leaders such as Nehru, Gandhi and Abul Kalam Azad, as well as the governor of the United Provinces and the viceroy. Such interventions seemed to bring more attention to the controversy and make it a focus for political agitation, thwarting attempts to ‘soften and localise’ the trouble and turning it into a ‘general question between Sunnis and Shi‘as all over India’.69 As such, the expansion of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict coincides definitively with the shifting character of Lucknow, as it evolved from a provincial ta‘luqdari backwater into a city of increased size, commercial and political importance. Once again, Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts and the fate of the city of Lucknow found their own development inextricably intertwined, as they together moved towards a level of higher exposure.

easing the transition: generational sectarianism and new religious leadership It is clear from the above discussions that the sectarian animosities of 1930s Lucknow drew from a combination of social transformation, 68 69

National Herald, 9, 17 and 19 May 1939. Statement by Muhammad Yakub, The Leader, 18 May 1939; Haig to Linlithgow, 24 May 1937, L/PJ/5/267, OIOC.


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political machination and the development of volunteer activism in the public spaces of north Indian cities in the inter-war period. In turn, it is these manifold factors that gained the attention of the contemporaneous press and political observers as they sought an understanding or resolution of these conflicts, and that have similarly most occupied the bulk of academic assessments of the subject. However, while commentators tended to discuss the Shi‘a and Sunni communities engaged in these debates as homogeneous entities, the fact is that these nominally Shi‘a– Sunni conflicts were in fact unfolding at a time when both communities were experiencing perhaps unprecedented processes of internal transition. The rest of this chapter now seeks to analyze these conflicts from the alternative angle of shifting constructs of religious leadership and authority taking place within each of these communities themselves. As such, we turn away from the political negotiations and press commentaries discussed above, towards the local print culture and ritual innovation in Lucknow, as viewed through the tablighi printing and written munazara dating from the period. The wider social, economic and topographical changes affecting the city of Lucknow in the late colonial period were hardly likely to leave configurations of religious hierarchy unchanged. Indeed, the long moment of the mid-1920s–1930s undoubtedly represented what one scholar has described as a ‘climacteric’ for traditional religious leadership in Lucknow.70 On the Sunni side, the gradual retreat of the established Firangi Mahalli family of ‘ulama from their former prominence during these years represents a lucid example. This may have much to do with the death of the unsurpassable family figurehead ‘Abd ul-Bari in 1926, and with their uneasy position in the aftermath of the failure in 1924 of the Khilafat Movement in which they had played a prominent part. But it also owed to broader social and economic changes affecting the old clerical families. The drying up of traditional sources of funding and patronage for such families, the professionalization of many younger members of clerical lineages into vocations such as law or government service, their migration to other regions, and the loosening of piri-muridi (the ties between holy men and their followers), all badly dented some of the major scholarly and Sufi families during these decades.71 This meant that esteemed scholarly figures, such as the elders of the Firangi Mahal, the Shah Mina dargah or

70 71

Robinson, The ‘ulama of Farangi Mahall, p. 128. Ibid., pp. 128–9; Liebeskind, Piety on its knees, pp. 254–7.

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even of Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama, were increasingly losing their former preeminence as the leading public spokesmen of Islam in their towns. This decade, then, saw the effective opening of new space in Lucknow’s religious life, in which new aspiring leaders – primarily younger, middleclass maulvis with activist or political leanings – were empowered to claim new agency. New Sunni orators such as ‘Abd ul-Shakoor Farooqi and Zafar ul-Mulk, as well as newspaper presses, Majlis-i-Ahrar activists and the various madh-i-sahaba groups that would emerge during the decade, built up their own stature in the chaotic old city. The social and educational roles they sought through sectarian publishing, speaking and activism offered them their own autonomous profile and neighbourhood authority, in a sphere quite separate from the perceived nepotism of Lucknow’s established sharif networks, or the city’s formal educational institutions. There was a palpable geographical separation implicit here; these new Sunni leaders and organizations were most active in the crowded market lanes of the chauk, Yahiyaganj and Deorhi Agha Mir muhallas, in the dense centre of the old city. They were far, geographically and socially, from many of the more exclusive neighbourhoods and ‘formal’ religious and political institutions in which Lucknow’s more elite Sunni families would have participated: the Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama and Lucknow University north of the river, Qaiserbagh, Hazratganj and the developing commercial and political districts in the city’s east, for example. The new agency conferred on these new orators and anjumans was mirrored by that of their new constituency of participants, to whom they offered a fresh and determining role in Lucknow’s religious life, unbound by the city’s traditional structures of religious hierarchy. As just noted, organizations such as the Majlis-i-Ahrar and Dar-ul-Muballighin were primarily based and active in the bazaari old city in the neighbourhoods around the chauk. As neighbourhoods where many of the Sunni residents were largely poor workers engaged in trades such as weaving and handicrafts, we can assume that these Sunni organizations took root especially among Muslim artisan and trading populations. Sectarian organizations, therefore, offered them a subaltern sphere of religious participation to which they had ready access, one often sneered at by Sunni elites. Moreover, as shown above, these anjumans had a strong qasbati membership, maintaining affiliations with towns and rural outposts around Lucknow, such as Kakori, Malihabad and Rae Bareili. This further suggests that many of the members of these organizations were residents of townships around Lucknow, temporarily settled in Lucknow for work. These religious organizations, then, may well have performed an integrative role,


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assimilating a displaced immigrant population into a new urban environment, and offsetting a sense of alienation and displacement.72 As such, rather than seeing the events of the 1930s solely in the terms of Sunni–Shi‘a boundaries, a perhaps more nuanced interpretation would suggest that the reawakening of the madh-i-sahaba demand represented a movement that allowed a delicate restructuring of Sunni leadership in the city. An ascendant, amorphous and deregulated generation of Sunni maulvis, most of whom had scant profile before the 1920s or even the 1930s, actively used the madh-i-sahaba agitation to augment their own profile and relevance. Their success in doing so is clear from the virtual invisibility of many of Lucknow’s formerly ‘established’ ‘ulama. The scholars of the Firangi Mahal and Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama, or those scholars who had been at the head of the pan-Islamic agitations just a decade earlier, remained conspicuously distant from the proceedings of the 1930s.73 This multi-layered changing of the guard in agency, leadership and participation in Sunni Islam in Lucknow was mirrored with remarkable similarity within the city’s Shi‘a community. Designations of Shi‘a religious leadership comparably shifted, both on account of these same general processes of social and economic change affecting the ‘ulama, but also, more directly, because many of the city’s most esteemed scholars died during this period. Muhammad Baqir Rizvi (d. 1928), Aqa Hasan (d. 1929), Sibte Hasan (d. 1935), Najm ul-Hasan (d. 1938) and Nasir Husain (d. 1942), all five of them perhaps the city’s most revered clerics and omnipresent through earlier chapters of this book, passed away in the fifteen years after 1928. Even the latter, who lived the longest, remained in old age distant from the immediacy of events. Contrasting with their powerful authority and public interventions in earlier decades, even the surviving senior clergy were described as merely ‘swimming with the tide’ through the momentous events of the late 1930s.74 The result was the creation of a vacuum of religious headship in the regulation of the Shi ‘a

72

73

74

For a comparable function played by sectarian organizations in modern urban Pakistan see Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, ‘The rise of Sunni militancy in Pakistan: the changing role of Islamism and the ulama in society and politics’, Modern Asian Studies 34, 1 (2000), pp. 168–9; Zaman, ‘Sectarianism in Pakistan’, pp. 708–9. The aloofness of Firangi Mahalli ‘ulama from the controversy, as well as of Sunni lay scholars who were of highest profile during the Khilafat Movement, such as Shaukat ‘Ali, was frequently noted. E.g. Hamdam (Lucknow), 13 June 1936, Naqqara (Lucknow), 17 October 1936, Ittehad (Amroha), 12 December 1936, UPNNR. Jasbir Singh to Harper, 11 October 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA.

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community, which would come to be filled by a conglomerate of aspiring alternatives.75 As with the Sunni side, we cannot fully understand the rapid growth and intensity of Shi‘a activism without framing it in terms of the ascendancy of a new generation of would-be leaders to prominence. Aspirants to leadership, often relatively unknown and inexperienced, used the production of, or engagement with, Shi‘a–Sunni conflict as a means of crafting a meaningful space for their own agency, and building their own profile. In some cases the transitions taking place were generational, as particular clerics took over the reins from their ailing or deceased parents. To give one example, the prominent and forceful participation in the tabarra agitation of Muhammad Naseer, the eldest son of Nasir Husain and a certified mujtahid himself, played an instrumental part in offering him some needed public gravitas.76 The agitation thus enabled a virtual handover of responsibility within the family of Kintori mujtahids, paralleling the now elderly Nasir Husain’s increasing retreat from public action in old age, and ultimately his death in 1942. It closely mirrored the role of engagement with sectarian conflict in Lucknow in allowing ‘Abd ul-Shakoor Farooqi to virtually claim his late father’s mantle as champion of Sunni polemicism, with such smooth bestowal. However, one of the most remarkable handovers of religious authority to have taken place through the context of 1930s sectarianism took place within the Khandan-i-Ijtihad family of ‘ulama. One of the key clerics of the generation, Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi Naqvi (Fig.5.2), was still in his late twenties when, after qualifying as a mujtahid in Najaf, he returned to his family’s seat of Lucknow in 1932–3.77 Once established, he set up a highly influential organization known as the Imamiya Mission, which would evolve into perhaps the most organized and successful Shi‘a proselytizing organization of colonial India.78 ‘Ali Naqi encapsulates more clearly than any other single individual the transition of religious leadership to a new generation, supplanting the now-elderly religious authorities who had

75

76 77

78

For a comparison with a different context in which the deaths of established mujtahids promoted change within Shi‘ism by creating a space for younger generations of leaders to fill, see Amanat, ‘In between the madrasa and the marketplace’, pp. 109–10. Hukumaran, 27 April 1939, passim. On Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi’s life and works see Salamat Rizvi, Sayı¯ d-ul-‘ulama¯: haya¯t au¯r ka¯rna¯me¯ (Lucknow, 1988). Imamiya Mission, Sa¯la¯na rapo¯rt, p. 13. For a rather less enthusiastic Sunni perspective on the movement and its revivalist impact on the city’s Shi‘a community see Farooqi, Tehrı¯ f kı¯ kha¯na, pp. 1–3.


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dominated public life in earlier decades, and hence previous chapters of this book. As such, as an accessible example of the new forms of clerical leadership developing in the 1930s, he and his organization are worth discussing in some detail. Although much of the Imamiya Mission’s legitimacy initially came from ‘Ali Naqi’s ijazat and family distinction, it was in an atmosphere of considerable tension and experimentation by Ahrari activists, Sunni seminaries and other recent anjumans that he established his public fame. This he achieved primarily through his vigorous output of proselytizing literature for the city’s Shi‘a population. Most of his tracts, combative and polemical in nature, referred to particular allegations made publicly by contemporaneous Sunni preachers and newspapers which, he claimed, he was obliged to confute. For instance, his first such tract, Qa¯tila¯n-i-Huse¯n ka¯ mazhab (The religion of the murderers of Husain), a well-known and still widely published treatise, was a response to allegations recently circulated by the Darul-Muballighin that it was the Shi‘a who had been responsible for the death of the third Imam. ‘It is lamentable’, he writes, ‘that certain people, who take pleasure in inciting and furthering division and stirring up troubles within the [Muslim] community, put much emphasis on the view that the killers of Husain were themselves Shi‘a, and these claims are forever being perpetuated with great noise and force.’ The treatise offered a series of so-called ‘historical demonstrations and proofs’ seeking to prove that, ‘to refer blame for the murder of Imam Husain upon the community of the city of Kufa is completely without foundation, and to say that it was the Shi‘a is mere fantasy’.79 ‘Ali Naqi’s second tract, Tehrı¯ f-i-Qur’a¯n kı¯ haqı¯ qa¯t (The truth about the adulteration of the Qur’an), equally well known, was similarly a response to recent verbal rumour allegedly spread by Shakoor that the Shi‘a believed in the existence of interpolations in the Qur’an, and therefore disputed its sanctity.80 Within the first year of its existence the Mission was able to publish an impressive twenty-five titles written by ‘Ali Naqi, on a variety of subjects related to Shi‘a belief, practice, biographies, correct ethics and contestations of Sunni equivalents. Few examples demonstrate more clearly than the Imamiya Mission the decisive role of the application of the print media (the ‘effort of the pen’ (jihad-i-qalam), as it was described by the Mission’s managers81) in building up the influence of a new religious organization 79 80 81

Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi Naqvi, Qa¯tila¯n-i-Huse¯n ka¯ mazhab (Lucknow, 1932–3), pp. 16, 51. Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi Naqvi, Tehrı¯ f-i-Qur’a¯n kı¯ haqı¯ qa¯t (Lucknow, 1932–3), pp. 2–7. Imamiya Mission, Sa¯la¯na rapo¯rt, p. 45.

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among a comparatively untapped constituency of lay Muslims. In Lucknow and also Fyzabad, the Imamiya Mission adhered rigorously to the seasonal publication of its du‘as, biographies of the Imams, munazara and other tracts, setting up temporary bookstalls in the proximity of the best-attended imambaras during Muharram. Equally, few organizations so decisively harnessed the promulgatory power of Urdu. ‘Urdu is the language of the writings of the Mission and it will remain so,’ the Mission’s secretary claimed; its application reflected the often-cited ‘needs of the times’.82 This choice of linguistic medium was also a fundamental factor in generating ‘Ali Naqi’s authority, which was drawn as much from the maximization of his readership as through his traditional erudition. A modern mujtahid in more than simply his youth, ‘Ali Naqi’s prolific writing in the vernacular distinguished him from other mujtahids past and present, who had continued to predicate their authority on their proficiencies in classical Arabic and Persian. Indeed, his claim in some of his tracts that the meaning, as well as the word, of the Qur’an was a source of benefit for Muslims, could be construed as an attempt to reach out to and empower a popular lay readership which was unacquainted with the classical languages.83 At first the Imamiya Mission was little more than a publishing-house which printed ‘Ali Naqi’s expanding canon of treatises. However, it quickly evolved into a far wider organization with a number of regional and district branches, membership schemes and hierarchies, and affiliations with other Shi‘a organizations. It was successful in co-opting as its managers key figures from contemporary or earlier Shi‘a anjumans such as the Shi‘a Conference, as well as, interestingly, the trustees of the Husainabad and Shah Najaf waqfs, from which it was able to draw some public funding.84 The organization also cemented something of a presence outside Lucknow. Like many of the contemporaneous Sunni organizations discussed above, it had a successful organizational and publishing presence in surrounding districts, such as Hardoi, Barabanki and Rae Bareili, similarly linking these small-town Shi‘a communities with the Lucknawi metropole; but it also managed to build up branches and recruit a membership further afield in the early 1930s, including in cities as distant as Delhi, Lahore, Hyderabad, Patiala, Jabalpur and Peshawar.85 The Mission’s public constituency, as much as its leadership, also reflected this wholesale modification of Shi‘a religious organization. ‘Ali 82 83 84

Ibid., p. 16. Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi Naqvi, Tazkira-i-hifa¯z Shı¯ ‘a, he¯sa-i-awal (Lucknow, 1933), pp. 15–27. Imamiya Mission, Sa¯la¯na rapo¯rt, pp. 24–7. 85 Ibid., pp. 36–42, 80–2.


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fi g u r e 5 . 2 . Maulana Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi Naqvi, mujtahid, as depicted on an Imamiya Mission pamphlet, c.1932–3 (courtesy of Mustafa Husain Asif Ja’isi, Lucknow). Note his comparative youth for a mujtahid of his stature and prominence.

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Naqi’s tracts evidence a search for a new audience, reaching out beyond the old Lucknawi nobility and landowners with whom many of the traditional ‘ulama had been connected. To see this, we only need to look at one of his tracts, Tija¯rat au¯r Isla¯m (Commerce and Islam), based on a series of ‘Ali Naqi’s sermons and published in 1933. Referring implicitly to the economic poverty and educational decline of many of the Shi‘a of Lucknow, he argues that Imam ‘Ali’s sayings demonstrate that the Shi‘a should participate fully in worldly enterprise and commerce.86 It was a clear attempt to reach out to middle-class and professional Muslim readers, those isolated from Lucknow’s ancestry-bound inner sanctum of old aristocracy. Moreover, his suggestion that the role of the ‘ulama was to respond to practical and worldly concerns rather than eschew them was a clear effort to assert their temporal relevance, following the frequent accusations since the clerical responses to the Aligarh and Khilafat Movements that the Shi‘a ‘ulama were locked in the past and reluctant to modernize.87 Indeed, some of the Mission’s other activities echoed the populist religio-political anjumans that characterized urban society during the period. With the clear aim of building up a new body of young activists, the Mission established a so-called ‘Comrades of Action’ scheme and organized a camp in Delhi to this end, recruiting young volunteers and training them to work for it across north Indian towns.88 The extent to which the Imamiya Mission could be described as ‘sectarian’ is open to debate. It did not itself openly instigate Shi‘a–Sunni antagonism. Its published writings self-consciously referenced Sunni as well as Shi‘a texts, and pledged cooperation with all Muslim organizations. Some of its tracts, such as ‘Ali Naqi’s Itteha¯d ul-farı¯ qe¯n´ (The unity of the sects) were apparently calls for both Shi‘a and Sunni to emphasize their common beliefs and relinquish the more controversial of their practices; albeit through a process asking more from the latter.89 Indeed, ‘Ali Naqi’s histories of the Imams written in the 1930s–1940s were often conceived as a bid for Islamic universalism. This was especially true of his Shahı¯ d-iinsa¯nı¯ yat, his biography of Imam Husain discussed earlier, and probably the Imamiya Mission’s most famous text. With its powerful depiction of Husain’s humanity and consummate personal qualities, and downplaying the questions of the Prophet’s succession and the institution of the

86 87 89

Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi Naqvi, Tija¯rat au¯r Isla¯m (1933), pp. 4–6. Ibid., pp. 71–2. 88 Imamiya Mission, Sa¯la¯na rapo¯rt, pp. 34–5. Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi Naqvi, Itteha¯d ul-farı¯ qe¯n´ (Lucknow, 1933), passim; Imamiya Mission, Sa¯la¯na rapo¯rt, p. 8.


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Caliphate, the work was a clear attempt to engage Husain as a common exemplar for all of humanity, and certainly all Muslims, rather than simply the Shi‘a.90 All this said, and whatever ‘Ali Naqi’s own bid for the cultivation of Shi‘a–Sunni understanding, it is clear that the Imamiya Mission’s success was interwoven with the polarized realities of 1930s Lucknow. Many of its writings were direct retorts to currently active individuals such as ‘Abd ul-Shakoor, and it was surely on account of the city’s poisoned atmosphere that a municipal audience was so apparently receptive to the historical controversies reiterated in its published treatises. The Mission profited from its cultivation of the culture of written munazara, and its seeming association with provocative forms of majlis sermonizing further deterred the participation of non-Shi‘a at these events. The Imamiya Mission was by no means the only Shi‘a organization to rise to prominence in the context of the 1930s. A few years younger but of equal significance was the Tanzim-ul-Mominin. Founded in May 1938 and controlled from offices in the chauk, it was headed by a retired judge, Asghar Husain, and a Patna lawyer, Sultan Ahmad.91 In some ways it represented an equivalent to the Sunni Majlis-ul-Ahrar, in its social base among lower professionals and artisans, and its drift between religious and political action. Reflecting other volunteer movements of the era, it apparently carried a socialist leaning and eschewed the support of the rich and noble; it was even accused of deliberately discrediting aristocratic Shi‘a leaders, and criticized professional Muslim politicians of all parties. It focused its attention upon an ardent defence of ta‘ziyadari and opposition to the madh-i-sahaba demand, and was responsible for organizing some of the most heavily contested practices, such as convening celebrations on the anniversary of Caliph ‘Umar’s murder.92 In 1939 the Tanzim-ul-Mominin was ultimately the major organizing force in the tabarra agitation. It took a lead in organizing groups of volunteer activists to recite tabarra, and even brought together a military corps known as the Sipah-i-‘Abbasiya (‘Army of ‘Abbas’) to identify young tabarra recruits and cultivate a ‘martial spirit’.93 When the tabarra agitation was at

90 91

92 93

Naqvi, Shahı¯ d-i-insa¯nı¯ yat, passim. See also above, pp.63–4. Khan, ed., Why 14,000 Shias went to jail?, pp. 3–7; ‘Note’, Deputy Commissioner of Lucknow, 8 April 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA. Jasbir Singh to Harper, 10 February 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA. District Magistrate of Lucknow to Chief Secretary, 25 March 1939, ibid.; ‘Note’, Deputy Commissioner of Lucknow, 8 April 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA; Khan, ed., Why 14,000 Shias went to jail?, p. 3.

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its height the organization built up a so-called ‘war council’ for the orchestration of the agitation and the coordination of deputations of arrestees.94 By now it will be apparent that these various Shi‘a preachers and organizations, all of whom took leading roles in the tabarra agitation, shared the common feature of being of relatively recent fame and ascendancy. The death or disappearance of the former clergy, the aspirations of a new generation of religious orators, and a changing population with shifting expectations of their clergy, were all factors bringing this new cohort of more ‘sectarian’ leaders to prominence. In each case, their involvement in Shi‘a–Sunni munazara or political disputes enabled them to cultivate a role of leadership and credibility within Shi‘ism itself. In the case of mujtahids such as Muhammad Naseer and ‘Ali Naqi, the transition in question was primarily generational. Their engagement with sectarian polemic or the tabarra agitation allowed them to assume the leadership and credibility invested in their better-known forebears, essentially facilitating a handover of public responsibility within these particular clerical families. In other cases, such as the Imamiya Mission organization itself or the Tanzim-ul-Mominin, the transition was not merely generational, but represented the ascendancy of entirely new organizations, formerly isolated from the city’s major religious institutions and hierarchies, to a position of prominence. But each of these examples reveals a new brand of predominantly young and inexperienced aspirants using ‘sectarian’ mobilization as a means of facilitating a transition of religious leadership towards themselves. One might say the same about their following, often a wider section of the population drawn from urban middle-class and professional backgrounds, and often of small-town origins or recently settled in Lucknow; for them, sectarian mobilization provided a similar form of empowerment, something very different from the establishment Shi‘ism of old. However, we can also now see a wider paradox appearing: that while participation in Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts helped to facilitate these elemental transformations of Shi‘a religious leadership, these same transformations were in fact causal factors in increasing competition and tension within Shi‘ism itself.

94

Jasbir Singh to Harper, 11 May 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA; ‘Note’, Deputy Commissioner of Lucknow, 8 April 1939, ibid.; Jasbir Singh to Harper, 25 August 1939, ibid.; Syed Ali Zaheer, ed., ‘The dead past’, MS (1950), Kazim Zaheer Collection, Delhi, p. 115.


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cohesion and competition: the dual dynamics of sectarianism As was frequently expressed by observers, the tabarra agitation was remarkable for its apparent internal cohesion. The involvement of a medley of participants ranging from the ex-royal family, nationalist politicians and formal ‘ulama to activist groups, not to mention the careful coordination of the deployment of volunteer arrestees, presented a high level of organization among a community that in recent decades had had little. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, the wide-scale changeover of Shi‘a religious and political leadership that had taken place over the past decade created a number of internal contestations within Shi‘ism. The process by which this medley of new participants were elevated to positions of prominence in Lucknow’s religious life was not an uncontested coronation, but a vibrant and heavily combative bid for influence by a number of actors, all of recent profile and isolated from the structures of established influence. A few examples will suffice. For one, predictable rifts opened up between a variety of new populist organizations and established clergy who, as we saw in previous chapters, diverged over the demonstrative practices of azadari and the conversion of tabarra invectives into political weapons. Most distinctively, the Tanzim-ul-Mominin and formal ‘ulama, with the exception of a month or two at the peak of the tabarra agitation, enjoyed a highly antagonistic relationship. Their contestation for supremacy peaked during 1939, when the Tanzim-ul-Mominin even went to ‘the length of suggesting that their ulamas are useless persons and are not worthy of the positions they hold’ in an attempt ‘to frustrate the object of the Ulamas’ and deprive them of a following.95 By the end of the year, when the mujtahid Muhammad Naseer issued instructions for the Shi‘a to halt the agitation, the Tanzim-ul-Mominin directed that these be ignored. It was a bold gesture against a scholar who was by this time one of the country’s most elevated religious authorities and, one may speculate, something that would have been anathema a couple of decades earlier.96 Perhaps more surprising was the simultaneous growth of squabbling among the senior ‘ulama themselves. Indeed, the profound shake-up of Lucknow’s religious life apparently ruptured relations among even the city’s principal clerics, several of whom had in different ways experienced 95

96

Jasbir Singh to Harper, 20 October and 3 November 1939, Political Department No. 65/ 1939, UPSA. Ibid.

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an augmentation of their own profile through the sectarian conflicts of the 1930s, and found themselves in direct competition for influence. Such tensions rarely found their way directly into writing, but occasional public wrangles suggest the existence of sustained mutual antagonism among Lucknow’s religious headship by the time of the tabarra agitation, as newly established clerics endeavoured to authenticate their own leadership through the character assassination of their peers. One key example was a row that occurred between ‘Ali Naqi and several ‘ulama of other clerical families, over a series of majlis sermons offered by the former in the late 1930s, and thereafter published in Shahı¯ d-i-insa¯nı¯ yat. ‘Ali Naqi had claimed that Imam Husain and his family were brought water by their comrades during their ordeals in Karbala, a statement that was alleged to disregard thirst as a key aspect of their suffering, and hence temper the message of the Karbala story.97 This claim was heavily criticized by Muhammad Naseer and some other senior ‘ulama; one even wrote a tract, Pı¯ ya¯s (Thirst), as a direct retort.98 This specific argument continued as a subject of rancour between a number of clerical families for some generations. What might appear, at first glance, to be a quarrel over a trivial historical detail in fact became a proxy argument over the bases of clerical authority itself. It was appropriated by various clerics to challenge the hegemony of the Khandan-i-Ijtihad family in Lucknow as a whole, and in particular, what was seen as ‘Ali Naqi’s excessive and expanding influence among the Shi‘a public.99 These various arguments ensured that diversification, rather than harmonization, of Shi‘a leadership became the most immediate experience of the sectarian quarrels of the decade. In this context the tabarra agitation carried two somewhat paradoxical functions. First, it offered the symbolic demonstration of Shi‘a consensus. A single Shi‘a will could be projected by the tabarra agitation, offering the impression of Shi‘a unity both internally and towards other communities at a time when it was palpably lacking. But second, and at its most functional level, the tabarra agitation became an acceptable forum in which competition for leadership could take place

97 98

99

Naqvi, Shahı¯ d-i-insa¯nı¯ yat, pp. 349–54. For information on this controversy see Zafar Sherwani, Kita¯b-i-shahı¯ d-i-insa¯nı¯ yat: azha¯ri-ha¯q (Hyderabad, 1954), passim. For another example of how a seemingly specific issue was debated as a means of discussing the basis of religious authority and methods of argumentation itself see William Roff, ‘An argument about how to argue’, in Muhammad Khalid Masud, Brinkley Messick and David Powers, eds., Islamic legal interpretation: muftis and their fatwas (Cambridge, MA, 1996).


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between Shi‘a individuals and organizations. A number of actors, among them the Tanzim-ul-Mominin, the mujtahids, old aristocrats and young politicians, all at various points used the tabarra agitation to assert their own leadership role within their community, against that of other aspiring Shi‘a spokesmen. The agitation constituted a smokescreen under which a number of inner-Shi‘a competitions for influence could be played out, while paradoxically projecting these as a collaborative mobilization against a single Sunni opponent. That there was constant competition, rather than cooperation, between these groups for leadership of the tabarra agitation perhaps explains how it took on such a life of its own. A number of negotiations between Shi‘a and Sunni religious and political leaders were held throughout 1939 to seek a compromise, and at respective points the Tanzim-ul-Mominin, certain mujtahids and secular politicians all attempted to bring the agitation to a close. However, whenever one faction appeared close to a settlement, another would intensify the agitation once again, asserting its own potency against other claimants to communal leadership.100 In the transitional context of 1930s Lucknow it seemed that the manufacturing of Shi‘a– Sunni conflicts was a means of staking a claim to authority within Shi‘ism: in other words, the tabarra agitation was not so much ‘led’ by established authorities as used as a platform on which rival claims to leadership could be contested. If these contradictions were rife within Shi‘ism, they were perhaps even more so on the Sunni side. Just as Shi‘a–Sunni quarrels provided an accessible forum through which a number of discontinuities and rivalries within Shi‘ism could be covertly played out, so they also seemed to reveal a growing array of contestations within Sunni Islam through the 1930s, many of which were apparently unspoken but must have been palpable. For instance, there were obvious tensions throughout the late 1930s between the activities of the Majlis-i-Ahrar, Anjuman-i-Tahaffuz-iNamoos-i-Sahaba and other new formations, and the norms of Sunni customary practice. There were reports of Ahrari activists in Lucknow setting fire to Sunni-led ta‘ziyas or attacking Sunnis who wore black on 100

As happened around May 1939, when Nasir Husain and some other mujtahids obstructed attempts by the Shi‘a Political Conference to end the agitation. ‘It is well known that after discussing the situation and consulting people from other provinces our Mujtaheds came to the conclusion that the agitation should not be suspended under the circumstances, for the reasons best known to them.’ Some months later, the Tanzim-ulMominin kept the agitation alive when the mujtahids attempted to end it. Khan, ed., Why 14,000 Shias went to jail?, p. 98.

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Muharram days, both accretions perceived to be of Shi‘a origin.101 There were also signs, especially in towns such as Rae Bareili and Sitapur which were visited by activists from Lucknow, that attempts to instigate the overt recitation of madh-i-sahaba on Bara-Wafat, or to convert ta‘ziya processions into occasions for the veneration of the Caliphs, often failed on account of the reluctance of the local population.102 One observer wrote that ‘no Sunni has as yet recited madh-i-sahaba outside Lucknow, and when an attempt was made by the Ahrars to do so at other places, it was the Sunnis who discouraged it’.103 Meanwhile, the act of new groups mentioned above such as the ‘Kharijis’, in celebrating the murder of ‘Ali, went far beyond the beliefs of mainstream Sunnis, who had long held the family of the Prophet in high esteem, and most especially their fourth Caliph himself. Even among the major proponents of madh-i-sahaba, who generally spoke in terms of their unity and determination, there were sharp disagreements, often kept below the surface but visible nonetheless. For instance, there were clear contradictions between ‘Abd ul-Shakoor’s peculiarly devotional brand of Islam, a ritualized veneration of historical figures on the Prophet’s death-anniversary which seemed to incorporate elements of both Shi‘a and Sufi practice, and the formal teachings of clerical movements such as Deoband, which tended in other contexts to frown upon flamboyant ceremonialism and the idolization of charismatic exemplars. Little comment emerged publicly on these obvious paradoxes separating madh-i-sahaba leaders such as Shakoor from Husain Ahmad and other formal Deobandis, let alone those groups who reified the murderers of the Shi‘a Imams, but it is difficult to believe that the exact practice and procedure of the madh-i-sahaba agitation was something of full consensus, even if the legitimacy of the agitation itself was. Similarly, there seemed to be considerable animosity at work among the many Sunni anjumans participant in the events. It was observed that, in spite of the sporadic moments of cooperation, ‘good feelings between the Ahrars and local Sunni associations interested in the Madh-i-sahaba have never existed’. The Majlis-i-Ahrar, while selectively encouraging the BaraWafat pageantry, sometimes evidently disapproved of the penchant of groups such as the Anjuman-i-Tahaffuz-i-Namoos-i-Sahaba for imbuing 101 102

103

Haqiqat, 29 March 1937, UPNNR; Shamsi, Shı¯ ‘a–Sunnı¯ qazı¯ ya, p. 88. ‘Fortnightly report for the first half of April 1940’, Mudie to Conran Smith, 1 June 1940, and ‘Fortnightly report for the second half of May 1940’, Mudie to Conran Smith, 22 June 1940, L/PJ/5/269, OIOC. Aziz Ahmad Khan to Jinnah, 11 June 1939, Quaid-i-Azam Collection Pos. 10773, OIOC.


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a political campaign with excessive display and carnivalism, hence the existence of ‘constant jealousy between them . . . each has tried to outdo the other’.104 Indeed, in April 1939 Husain Ahmad Madani and the Majlis-i-Ahrar briefly tried to call off civil disobedience, but local Sunni groups such as the Jama‘at-i-Tahaffuz-i-Millat persisted, bringing the former parties back into line.105 As such, paralleling its use among the Shi‘a, we might think of the production of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict as a useful proxy for playing out forms of inner-Sunni competition. Intra-Sunni maslaki debates, indeed, were on the increase. New madrasa networks and the propagation of printed and public munazara meant that differences between Deobandi, Barelwi and other Sunni schools of thought were becoming ever more codified and rigidified, especially during the 1920s–1930s.106 With this in mind, one might speculate, all parties were engaged, through the madhi-sahaba agitation, in a tacit struggle to establish themselves as the foremost voice of the ‘true’ Sunni Islam, by conjuring the most successful confutation of Shi‘ism. Through the involvement of Deobandi-inspired maulvis on the one hand, and a parallel reworking of devotional custom resonant of some ‘Sufi’ practice on the other, an ongoing inner-Sunni argument was played out under the guise of polemic against a collective Shi‘a opponent.107 Alternatively, and somewhat paradoxically, the madh-i-sahaba agitation itself allowed the cosmetic presentation of a strong interconnection between the various Sunni actors at work. Husain Ahmad Madani, the Majlis-iAhrar, the Dar-ul-Muballighin and other movements often acted in close correspondence and in deference to each other’s commands.108 This interchangeable leadership of the madh-i-sahaba cause did more to present a functioning ‘Sunni’ Islam than any of the debates between Sunni groups would normally allow, blending together a contradictory combination of Deobandi puritanism, ‘Wahhabi’ polemicism, novel devotional ceremonialism and popular Muharram processionary practice. Through the constant repetition of particular phrases and practices, a novel language of unitary

104

105 106 107

108

Jasbir Singh to Harper, 1 April 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA; Haram (Lucknow), 20 March 1937, UPNNR. Jasbir Singh to Harper, 1 April 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA. E.g. Alam, ‘The enemy within’, pp. 608–13. On the comparable use of anti-Shi‘a polemic in articulating and contesting distinct interpretations of Sunni Islam in the alternative context of post-colonial Pakistan see Nasr, ‘The rise of Sunni militancy’, pp. 176–7. To Gwynne, 17 February 1939, Political Department No. 65/1939, UPSA.

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Sunnism, spanning the discrepancies within it, was brought into being as a form of anti-Shi‘ism.

conclusion The isolation of the controversial and antagonistic slogans of madh-isahaba and tabarra from their immediate religious context, and their conversion into metaphors for the religious and political rights of respective Sunni and Shi‘a communities, instigated wider social segregation and political differentiation between the communities during a decade that is commonly identified as most marked by the development of a unitary Muslim politics. The growth of sectarianism during this period was due to a number of factors. Looking to north India as a whole, one might identify the wider communalization of politics from the 1920s, and the fact that the entry of the Sunni (and especially Deobandi) ‘ulama into political campaigns during and after the Khilafat Movement exacerbated tensions between Muslim minorities and those that they perceived as the representatives of the Sunni majority. More locally, one can link sectarianism to the machinations of municipal politics, especially attempts by the Congress party to cement its own support and damage its opponents, and to the growth of the socio-economic tensions that accompanied rapid urbanization and overcrowding in old Lucknow. One might also speculate that Lucknow’s increasing political and commercial importance and media exposure tended to transmute formerly local conflicts into a far wider regional, or even national, experience. The tabarra agitation was almost universally described both by its participants and external onlookers as demonstrating remarkable Shi‘a unanimity. However, this chapter has suggested that the development of apparently Shi‘a–Sunni conflict was in fact symptomatic of severe ruptures and alterations in Shi‘a leadership taking place from the end of the 1920s. A combination of the dispersal, diminution or death of earlier religious leaders, municipal transformation, rising population and the reactive brands of politics that characterized the 1930s all conspired to undermine the influence of those who had hitherto comprised the most senior religious authorities in Shi‘a public life. As represented by characters ranging from Muhammad Naseer to Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi, from the Tanzim-ul-Mominin to a variety of new azadari associations, a number of young scholars and organizations, all of only the most recent ascendance, used their participation in the tabarra agitation to articulate and define their leadership roles within their community. Quite comparably, a number of urban


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artisan and immigrant communities from Lucknow’s surrounds were able to use these more ‘sectarian’ organizations and campaigns as a means of crafting themselves meaningful religious agency, one sought independently from the perceived establishment Shi‘ism of the older nobility, magnates and formal politicians. As shown above, an entirely analogous process was also occurring on the Sunni side during much the same period, via the madh-i-sahaba agitation. But in addition to facilitating these social and generational transitions of religious leadership in the city, the madh-i-sahaba and tabarra agitations both fulfilled the internal function of initiating active competition between alternative leaders and organizations within their respective communities. This chapter suggests that, underneath the language of united mobilization, alternative Shi‘a religious and political representatives appropriated the tabarra campaign in order to vindicate their own primacy and sideline adversaries from within their own community. The collective tabarra agitation was thus a presentational proxy for a series of inner-Shi‘a debates – on issues of religious practice, disputes between different clerical families and approaches to politics. It was the gravity and complexity of all these inner-Shi‘a arguments, rather than the salience of the tabarra agitation’s aim in itself, that gave so many parties an interest in perpetuating it, and which thus made it so difficult to bring to a close. Whoever best guided the tabarra agitation, it often seemed, best defended their own position in a rapidly changing Shi‘ism. This interpretation of these sectarian conflicts in the 1930s as having a fundamental and complex functional role, facilitating transitions in religious spokesmanship and providing new stature to ascendant clerics previously isolated from public prominence, is one that suggests the need for a broader reflection on sectarianism in general, and in particular on its manifestations post-1939, in the rapidly shifting contexts of late colonial and post-colonial South Asia.

Conclusion and epilogue Shi‘ism and sectarianism in modern South Asia

If this book began with one moment of crisis for north Indian Shi‘ism, namely the 1860s–1870s, then the 1940s–1950s, which fall just outside its closing boundary, marked another. The partition of India meant that many of the Muslim zamindars and landed sayyids who had provided Shi‘ism with much of its economic patronage and cultural vigour left for Pakistan or elsewhere, while zamindari abolition put strain upon the Muslim notables who remained. This impoverishment of influential sections of the Shi‘a community was visible in the drying-up of the funds through which majlis gatherings and ta‘ziya processions had been held and orchestrated, meaning that Shi‘a Muharram became less exuberant in smaller towns, and to some degree even in Lucknow itself.1 Its impact on religious education was no less. The major madrasas discussed in this book, through which Shi‘ism was so substantially revitalized in colonial India, went into decline as financial donations dried up, as the largesse of the major benefactors of Rampur and Mahmudabad evaporated, as clerical qualifications were devalued, and as formerly landed scholarly families could simply no longer afford the luxury of a lifestyle of learning for their next generation.2 In turn, this combined financial, cultural and educational pauperization of Indian Shi‘ism has also powerfully impacted upon its clergy. In contrast to the period discussed in this book, when as we have seen there

1

2

E.g. Census of India 1961, pp. 8–9. The same trend was apparent in Hyderabad. Howarth, The Twelver Shi‘a as a Muslim minority, pp. 25–6. Cf. Yoginder Sikand, Bastions of the believers: madrasas and Islamic education in India (Delhi, 2005), pp. 96–7.

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Conclusion and epilogue

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were a large number of consensually accepted Shi‘a mujtahids even in Lucknow alone, modern South Asia as a whole has few mujtahids, most of whom in any case have their status or qualifications disputed by their opponents.3 Certainly none today are considered as holding the status of marja‘ or marja‘ ul-taqlid, as were some of the most exalted Lucknawi scholars until the 1930s–1940s. There are various reasons why the number of mujtahids and the standard of clerical guidance in India are widely perceived to have diminished. One is the absence of a madrasa in South Asia where one can pursue the dars-i-kharij, the curriculum to become a mujtahid. Another relates to the inaccessibility of the educational centres of Iraq to many Indian Muslims in much of the second half of the twentieth century, on account of a combination of financial limitation and Iraqi political instability. Another still relates to the decision by some major Indian Shi‘a mujtahids after independence to instruct their muqallids to confer their deference away from themselves and towards the more distant marji‘at of the scholars of Najaf.4 For all these reasons most Indian Shi‘a clergy and laity have since the 1950s come to consider themselves the muqallids of mujtahids in Iraq (or more recently and to a lesser extent Iran), rather than India, whether nominally or substantively. This shift of deference could, of course, be interpreted in terms of the internationalization of Shi‘ism on account of globalization, and the deliberate outreach of scholars in Najaf or Qom to Shi‘a in the wider world.5 Perhaps more appropriately, it needs to be assessed in terms of the attempts of the Indian Shi‘a to find new solutions to their precarious religious and political predicament in the wake of partition, the emigration or impoverishment of major secular patrons and clerical families, and the often-cited ‘double minority’ status by

3

4

5

Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi remained one of the most prominent clerics of Lucknow and one of few post-1947 to have been universally recognized as a mujtahid, but since his death in 1988 few have held his stature. Muhammad Naseer, the son and successor of Nasir Husain, advised his muqallids in the 1950s to confer their allegiance to the marji‘at of the mujtahids in Najaf, especially Ayatollah Muhsin ul-Hakim Tabataba’i (1889–1970). Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, pp. 546–50, 619–20; Sajjad Nasir ‘Abaqati, oral communication, 18 November 2007. In many cases after al-Tabataba’i’s death, Indian Shi‘a transferred their taqlid to Abu ul-Qasim ul-Khoe’i (d. 1992), and today consider the contemporary ‘Ali Sistani of Najaf as their supreme marja‘. On the ‘Iranianization’ of a significant minority of South Asian Shi‘a since 1979 see Munir D. Ahmed, ‘The Shi‘is of Pakistan’, in Martin Kramer, ed., Shi‘ism: resistance and revolution (Boulder, 1987), p. 284.

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which the Shi‘a have felt ever more conscious of their position of marginality vis-à-vis both Hindus and Sunni Muslims.6 These brief indications imply that the period covered in this book, namely those decades between the 1880s and the 1930s, is widely viewed within the community today as constituting the final flourishing period for Indian Shi‘ism. The clique of ‘ulama described at length in this study – figures such as Nasir Husain, Najm ul-Hasan, Aqa Hasan, Muhammad Baqir Rizvi and others, all of whom expired in the fifteen years after 1928 – are frequently exalted as the last collective generation of great Indian mujtahids, the collective authority and profile of whom would be matched by none of their successors. The volumes of reprinted clerical writing dating from this period, and the modern biographies of the luminaries of these decades that are still being sold in Lucknow today, are testament to the ongoing admiration and contemporary relevance still attributed to them. Meanwhile, the continued existence of most of the important madrasas, waqfs, charities and colleges whose foundation was discussed in this study further establishes the massive significance of this period as a psychological anchor for the Indian Shi‘a. Akin to the resonant nostalgia that still surrounds the Nawabi period, memories of this half-century remain crucial for how the Indian Shi‘a today recall their own history, and construct their own collective identity in the present. This final part of the book seeks, first, to bring together some of the major arguments and implications of the study, before offering a brief assessment of the implications of these arguments for our understanding of Shi‘a–Sunni sectarianism in modern South Asia.

religion, community and sectarianism: major implications of the study This book has explored the intertwined processes of religious, social and political change among a Muslim community in India which, despite its great historical influence, has too often been defined within the contained vacuum of its Nawabi past, or seen as existing on the peripheries of a global community primarily defined in the Persian and Iraqi heartland. By any interpretation, the period discussed witnessed the growth of a fresh religious life within Indian Shi‘ism, alluded to from the beginning of this 6

On this ‘double-minority’ self-image and ‘identity crisis’ among the Shi‘a in post-colonial Lucknow see Nirmala Srinivasan, Identity crisis of Muslims: profiles of Lucknow youth (Delhi, 1981), pp. 87–9.


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book. The ‘ulama strengthened their social roles and public profile, and formed the educational infrastructure to sustain themselves as a professionalized group. Meanwhile, the lay Shi‘a were engaged with their religion as active agents through new and active cultures of exuberant ritualism, personal piety, public propagation and creative debating. Equally, a whole range of activities was employed in the name of Shi‘a communal solidarity: public charity, social action and, ultimately, political mobilization. But this was much more than a simple process of religious renewal or internal modification. The first major implication of this book, then, has been its depiction of what can reasonably be interpreted as an elemental redefinition of Shi‘ism itself. In its Nawabi and early colonial incarnations Shi‘ism had been partially defined in terms of the ancestral distinctions and sharif lifestyles of its adherents; it was identified as much with a particular social or cultural milieu as with a religious or doctrinal orientation. It was primarily from the 1880s–1890s that this amorphous medley of doctrines, practices and sharif cultural associations was steadily reconceptualized as a systematic religion of the Indian subcontinent. We might understand this conception of Shi‘ism as a free-standing religion, to use a term applied by another author, as a process of objectification, by which those elements, symbols and acts that distinguished Shi‘ism were identified, systematized and regarded as existing in isolation from the sharif social, cultural and literary milieu with which they had previously been assimilated.7 But in many ways it was more than this, since it related each of these particular ‘Shi‘a’ elements to the religion as a whole. From Hamid Husain’s discussion of Shi‘ism as da’ira’t ul-m‘arifat (a compendium of sciences) or minhaj (path), to the ‘way of life’ (tarz-i‘amal) Shi‘ism evoked by a number of maulvis discussed in this book as a means to personal and collective empowerment, the overall impression is one of a move away from discussing Shi‘ism within the framework of isolated elements and features. Rather, in much of the Urdu rhetoric and writing in the particular setting discussed, Shi‘ism was conceived as an

7

According to Dale Eickelman’s influential assessment, objectification is the process by which ‘the formal principles of Islamic doctrine and practice are compartmentalised and made an object . . . the overall trend has been one of turning away from situating meaning in local and immediate ritual and symbolic contexts . . . instead, meaning becomes situated in explicit statements of belief’. Dale F. Eickelman, ‘Mass higher education and the religious imagination in contemporary Arab societies’, American Ethnologist 19, 4 (1992), pp. 647–8.

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entirely self-contained and autonomous religious system, in which each element related to and informed another. As well as facilitating the endurance of Shi‘ism in a historical context in which it was deprived of its earlier luxuries of statehood and social elitism, this evocation of Shi‘ism as a free-standing religion also entailed a demand for full recognition, evading the attempts of many – colonial observers, ‘modernist’ Muslim intellectuals and not a few among the Shi‘a themselves – to compartmentalize the Shi‘a to the mere status of a minority group encompassed within a wider, generic Islam. Indeed, the whole language of ‘sect’ and ‘school’ that modern literature often applies to Shi‘ism looks somewhat misleading, in view of the demands of many Shi‘a for the full communal legitimacy and group parity that would abrogate this assumed Muslim minority status. Shi‘ism was gradually articulated as historically, legally and ritualistically separate from other South Asian Islamic traditions; it was distinct not on individual points of tenet, text or custom, but as an explicit religious system itself.8 A second major implication of this study has been its argument that Shi‘ism in South Asia should not be analyzed purely in terms of the tropes of courtly nostalgia and collective memory that have often been applied. Each chapter of this book has illustrated how the Shi‘a engagement with modernity in all its myriad forms was far more complex, and did not entail a simple retreat into Nawabi heritage or sharif cultural norms. One might cite, for example, the remarkable adaptability of the high ‘ulama, who shifted in two or three generations from roles in state counsel to lay guidance as pastoral and social leaders. In terms of the development of more temporally engaged, participatory forms of religion, one may allude to the appropriation of new technologies of print; the growth of new intellectual, educational and preaching networks; and the new demands of ethical and religious self-perfection imposed on the individual. All of these are examples of a more interactive, inclusive, meritocratic and self-critical form of religion than the professedly more parochial ‘establishment Shi‘ism’ of the pre-1857 period. Equally, the efforts at bureaucratization and regulation that marked approaches to a number of religious institutions ranging through madrasas, Muharram guilds and waqf endowments; or the adoption of a vigorous culture of public 8

For another perspective on the significance of the difference between disputation over ‘narrowly defined single aspects of Shi‘ism’ and ‘the theological, doctrinal or historical identity and distinctness of Shi‘ism itself’ see Rainer Brunner, ‘A Shiite cleric’s criticism of Shiism: Musa al-Musawi’, in Rainer Brunner and Werner Ende, eds., The Twelver Shia in modern times (Leiden, 2001).


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associationalism and creation of a new religious and secular organizational apparatus in public life; all are just a few of many examples running through this study which illustrate how Shi‘ism was constructed anew and with considerable creativity, rather than being defined solely by past glories. In fact, many of the key Shi‘a ‘ulama and umara’, the religious and secular headships alike, had a decidedly ambivalent relationship with the Nawabi legacy, at once turning to it as a cultural anchor and source of collective legitimization, while simultaneously and selectively turning their backs on its perceived elitism, retrogression and decadence. Third, the book has sought to document the many and complex ways in which Shi‘ism interacted with its specifically Indian environment. While studies of Shi‘ism have all too often conflated modernity with globalization, and hence emphasized a global turn towards centres such as Najaf or Qom as constituting a centralization of the religion and the absorption of the peripheries, this study instead emphasizes a simultaneous enunciation of the distinctly ‘Indian’ character and infrastructure of Shi‘ism as lived in the setting of the Hindustani plains. One might emphasize the fact that it was to Indian – rather than Arab or Persian – mujtahids that the educated lay Shi‘a turned throughout these decades as their marja‘s, those who offered binding religious and pastoral guidance. There was also the adjustment to Urdu as the main conduit of authorship, communication and preaching, and the related development of vernacular genres of religious writing such as elegies for the Imams, akhlaq literatures, creative munazara and periodical journalism, all of which changed Shi‘ism in its substance. There was also the proud validation of customs such as ta‘ziyadari on the grounds of their Indianness and sensitivity to Indian cultural norms. One might also note the formation of a succession of nominally ‘Indian’ Shi‘a seminaries and conferences on a rhetoric of self-determination for the Indian Shi‘a, each with curricula and social agendas that differed in significant ways from their counterparts in Iraq or Iran; the attempted Indianization of the administration of the Awadh Bequest; the divergence of the Indian Shi‘a from those in Iraq or Iran on major political questions such as pan-Islam; and the appropriation of a language of qaum which framed the Indian contours of a Shi‘a community as it did for religious ‘nationalists’ in other traditions. All this demonstrates how many Shi‘a were from the late nineteenth century moving away from the conception of Shi‘ism as an Indo-Persian religion, with its cultural, religious and psychological leadership located in the wider Perso-Arab world, into a religion with legitimate and independent

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Indian manifestations. The framing in much Urdu writing of sites such as Lucknow as a hawza, a Shi‘a scholarly and political centre acting as an effective holy city within its own global region, shows how the Indian Shi‘a positioned themselves as holding a meaningful and semi-autonomous role within Shi‘ism, rather than being cast to the margins of a global confession. However, to look at these macro-trends of religious change implies a level of cohesion and linearity to a multiplicity of processes that were collectively more complex, unruly and chaotic. Each chapter of this book has in some way hinted at the increasingly diverse, disaggregated array of religious and secular Shi‘a activists entering into these processes of change, as wider sections of the population attempted to influence the internal workings of the religion under perpetual definition. This often led to the expansion of inner-Shi‘a debates and wranglings among religious functionaries during the half-century discussed, as an ever larger body of clerics and preachers were being created by new madrasas, and as younger clerics and aspiring intellectuals used new forms of sermon, debate and religious practice as means of establishing their own role in an ever more crowded religious marketplace. Nor were these discrepancies among maulvis the only disharmonies at work within Shi‘ism. As we have seen, a diverse array of ‘ulama, writers, landlords, old nobility, social reformists and journalists all competed through Shi‘a bodies to define contrasting notions of Shi‘a respectability and behaviours. The directions of social, educational and political reform tended to open divisions within the Shi‘a as much as between Shi‘a and Sunni. Many of these substantive rivalries rarely reached the printed word in any extensive fashion, with all sides being keen to present the façade of a united Shi‘ism;9 however, this does not mean that we should deny their intense and determining influence within inner-Shi‘a dialogue. This atmosphere of unsteadiness within the structures of Shi‘ism in colonial India might remind us of arguments about the impact of modernity as enacting a fragmentation of religious authority within Islam. As new facilities such as wider access to religious knowledge, technologies of communication and avenues of public participation have all served to erode established structures of leadership and influence.10 None of this, of course, is intended to imply the existence of some facile golden age of unity

9

10

For another context in which rampant conflicts within the clerical hierarchy never reached the printed word see Ende, ‘The flagellations of Muharram’, pp. 37–41. On the ‘fragmentation of religious authority’ in modern Muslim societies see Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics, pp. 68–79, 131–5.


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for Shi‘ism in pre-colonial north India. However, work on the Shi‘a ‘establishment’ in Nawabi Lucknow has identified the existence of a particular corporate structure marked by binds between the mujtahids, the Nawabs and the courtly nobility, giving some sense of constancy to the complex ways in which religious authority was designated and maintained. By contrast, as this book has shown, the demise of the hierarchies of patronage and influence that existed under the Nawabs gave way to the series of disorderly and schismatic forces at work under the cloak of a superficially united ‘Shi‘a revival’ during the colonial period. As sociologists of religion might put it, a context of ‘religious competition and pluralism’ was apparently enhanced within Sh‘ism, following the breaking of the ties between the religion and regulation by the state.10A This neatly brings us to the other major theme addressed throughout this study: that of Shi‘a–Sunni sectarianism. One might take from this book the simple fact that inner-Islamic sectarianism increased dramatically in India in the half-century from the 1880s. As a result of the sectionalization of madrasas and other religious institutions, the ever-increasing production of written and oral religious polemics, and enhanced incidents of religious altercation and violence, Shi‘a–Sunni mutual dissociation and competition were trends becoming apparent across all spectra of public and political life. A consciousness of Shi‘a–Sunni difference was also transmitted to new sections of the population, with an earlier awareness of specific religious differences endemic to the sharif elite and functional clergy transmuting into a more expansive dialogue of difference between free-standing religious communities. However, it is worth taking the opportunity here to collate some of the observations made in earlier chapters, and hence elaborate on the implications of this study for how sectarianism might be understood in other time periods and settings. First, this study has attempted to question those assumptions – common to colonial observers, ‘modernist’ Muslim intellectuals and some academic studies alike – that Islamic sectarianism was somehow a pre-modern or antiquated phenomenon, one primarily derived from reinforced doctrinal and legal differences, or from Shi‘ism’s long-standing historical experience as the minority group in Islam. Instead, it has emphasized the essentially contemporaneous character of the forms of sectarianism discussed, the ‘vision of modernity’ to which I alluded at the outset of this study. Sectarianism was novel in terms of the apparatus through which it was enacted, primarily the printing-press and various kinds of public association. It was also a fundamentally dynamic and creative process, entailing new cultures of religious 10A

Finke, ‘The consequences of religious competition’, pp. 52–3

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learning, speaking, debating and behaving. Moreover, with sectarianism appropriating much of the language and organizational apparatus of evolving constructs of community and nationhood, it entirely transcended the status of maslaki quarrels over religious minutiae between different Muslim schools. Sectarianism became a means by which a Shi‘a community was defined, negotiated and presented, an alternative framework for collective modernization, emerging in association with, and in selective opposition to, alternative constructs of secular or religious nationalism. Authors have continued to remark with some surprise upon the degree of energy channelled into sectarian conflicts up to the modern day by maulvis across South Asia. Often such conflicts have been portrayed as episodes of petty wrangling in view of the immense contemporary social and political questions affecting their communities.11 Such views, while implying sectarianism to be somehow pre-modern and regressive, also convey the belief that sectarianism constitutes a product of religious change, rather than something that plays an active role in it. The second implication of this book’s argument on sectarianism, then, involves looking at it the other way round: sectarianism is best understood not as the end consequence of a process of Islamic revivalism or community construction, as it has often been in South Asian contexts, but as an ongoing means by which the directions of religious change were debated and negotiated. At various points I have alluded to the suggestion that sectarianism often carried significant functional roles. Apparent conflict with a Sunni ‘other’ became a mechanism for effecting delicate changes internal to Shi‘ism itself. In some cases it was an explicatory tool, an effective mechanism for exercising internal religious renewal. Activities such as polemical debates and the castigation of a Sunni opponent provided means of communicating religious doctrines, and enabled the rendition of the particulars of Shi‘ism to a new and wider audience, all under the guise of the defence of Shi‘a Islam itself. In other cases we have seen how sectarianism acted as a mechanism for negotiating structures of leadership and influence within Shi‘ism. Assorted individuals, spanning formal ‘ulama and informal preachers, selectively pushed the boundaries of conventional acceptability in order to stake their claim to religious authority and legitimacy, at a time when they had to make these claims against an ever greater number of active counterparts. In other instances still, sectarianism provided empowerment to entire groups who felt marginalized within the infrastructure of their own religious communities. 11

E.g. Yoginder Sikand, ‘How many more Karbalas and Quettas?’, The Milli Gazette 16–31 March 2004, www.milligazette.com/Archives/2004, last accessed 14 May 2009.


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In different ways, a range of ‘sectarian’ enterprises, whether local bodies such as new anjumans, majlis gatherings and neighbourhood Muharram guilds, or bigger formalized organizations such as the Imamiya Mission or Tanzim-ul-Mominin, were all means by which some Shi‘a were able to cultivate their own agency, and to gain a voice in their community’s religious life against its perceived domination by the formal clerical hierarchy or the Shi‘a secular ‘establishment’ of the old nobles and landlords. This focus on the internal dynamics of sectarianism, within rather than between communities, carries a third implication; that while Shi‘a–Sunni arguments received all the contemporaneous comment and press attention, they were in fact frequently something of a smokescreen for competition, or even conflict, within Shi‘ism itself. In a period marked by a number of alternative prescriptions for religious or communal reform, the jostling for influence between various Shi‘a ‘ulama, preachers and leaders was habitually imparted under the presented mask of sectarian controversy. Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts were engaged by particular Shi‘a religious leaders, politicians and activists in an attempt to prevail over alternative leaders within their own community. In each case the otherization of an external community allowed these internal debates to be presented as a mark of collective strength, rather than fragility or uncertainty. Of course, this argument implies that the precise identity of the opponent was something of an irrelevance. Like the greatly overplayed Sunni missionaries or almost non-existent Akhbaris, who were described as grave and present enemies in some polemical tracts in spite of all evidence, their identity barely mattered. The ‘other’ was primarily a stylistic mechanism, by which particular dynamics of change internal to Shi‘ism could be facilitated. This argument that Shi‘a–Sunni conflict and inner-Shi‘a contestation were deeply intertwined, with the former often presenting an internally acceptable means of acting out the latter, has various possible implications. On the broadest level, one might fruitfully compare this perspective on innerIslamic sectarianism with modern scholarship on Hindu–Muslim communalism, which has increasingly understood apparently ‘communal’ conflicts less as inter-community clashes and more as fulfilling a far more complex function in defining ‘Hindu’ communal identities and the ways in which Hindu religious rites and social relations should be lived and managed.12 Coming 12

For just three examples from a number of studies of the functional role of Hindu–Muslim conflicts in shaping or manipulating ‘Hindu’ identities see Paul Brass, The production of Hindu–Muslim violence in contemporary India (Delhi, 2003); Dilip Menon, ‘An inner violence: why communalism in India is about caste’, in T. N. Srinivasan, ed., The future of secularism (Delhi, 2007); Ornit Shani, Communalism, caste and Hindu nationalism: the violence in Gujarat (Cambridge, 2007).

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from another direction, another implication of this argument is that Shi‘a– Sunni conflicts in India often seemed to be at their most intense at those moments of greatest internal transition within Shi‘ism itself, as alternative sections among the Shi‘a sought to consolidate their own positions of internal leadership through the vituperation of manufactured external communities. Indeed, the defining moments of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict as described in the book, among them the rough decades starting around 1886, 1900 and 1931, were also perhaps the decades of greatest inner-Shi‘a change, in terms of the handover of religious authority to new generations of clergy, and competitions for influence within or between newly established Shi‘a institutions and organizations. This argument posits new possibilities for understanding sectarian conflicts in the wider Islamic world. It implies the need for future studies to situate the roots of sectarian conflict less in the hardening of external boundaries between Islamic groups, and more in the internal debates over leadership and religious practice existent within those schools themselves. At the same time, if any more evidence was needed of the essentially modern character of the forms of sectarianism under discussion here, this argument binds sectarianism to the massive shifts in structures of authority and leadership occurring in contexts of socio-religious upheaval. It goes some way to explaining why the production of sectarian conflict has become such a recurrent feature of processes of Islamic renewal and transformation in the modern world.

epilogue: sectarianism in modern south asia Since 1947, Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts have occurred with unfailing regularity in many parts of South Asia; in many cases, especially for modern Pakistan, they have generated a body of academic literature of their own. In view of the modern relevance of this subject, it is worth devoting the remaining pages of this book to assessing the implications of this study for our understandings of modern South Asian sectarianism. The following assessment is in no way intended to be comprehensive; instead, it merely seeks suggestively to explore the ramifications of this book for the ways in which we might interpret controversies that have remained prevalent until the present day. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts that evolved in colonial India in towns such as Lucknow dragged on long after independence. Between 1962 and 1969 several public disturbances took place over the recitation of tabarra and madh-i-sahaba, with a serious spate of violence in


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western Lucknow in May 1969, and then again in 1972, 1974 and 1977.13 Several Muharram riots have also occurred in the last decade, most critically in the winter of 2005. As well as the manifestation of sectarian tensions around the rites of Muharram, another major echo connecting these post-colonial conflicts with their colonial predecessors has been the major role played by volunteer movements emerging in the highly deregulated modern public sphere. The prominence in these conflicts of so-called ‘sectarian youth organizations’, such as (among the Shi‘a) the Tabarra Volunteer Corps in the 1960s–1970s, ‘Ali Congress in the 1980s and the Imamiya Youth Association in the present, reveals an anjuman-led unravelling of sectarian conflict similar to that of the colonial period.14 Like the anjumans discussed in this volume, some such associations have been formed by established clerics seeking wider public influence, while others have been founded outside the formal clerical hierarchy as a means to empowerment. Another clear parallel with colonial India was the response of the government to these tensions, with a series of politically led attempts to regulate the numbers, duration and conduct of ta‘ziya processions, and a blanket ban on tabarra recitation. In response to civil violence in the 1970s, the Indian National Congress government took the decision in 1977 to ban the major azadari processions in their entirety in Lucknow, and they remained formally prohibited for two decades thereafter.15 The original decision to effect this ban was seen by some as an attempt by Congress to accentuate its popularity among Sunnis; moreover, it also meant that during the 1970s–1990s the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Jan Sangh alliance made efforts to infiltrate Shi‘a voting constituencies in Lucknow by upholding the right to ta‘ziyadari, a tactic continued thereafter by its modern incarnation, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). While it would be too strong to suggest consistent Shi‘a affiliation with the BJP, many observers of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict in Lucknow have identified sporadic alliances between major Shi‘a clerics and BJP politicians, and have noted how modern Shi‘a–Sunni divisions have, like their precursors in the 1930s, thus been drawn into the ever-convoluted machinations of Uttar 13

14

15

For Shi‘a–Sunni conflict in post-colonial India see Arun Sinha, ‘Shia–Sunni conflict’, Economic and Political Weekly, 11 November 1978; Hjortshoj, ‘Shi‘i identity’, pp. 300–5; Theodore Wright, ‘The politics of Moslim sectarian conflict in India’, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Spring, 1980). Ahmad, ‘The Shia–Sunni dispute in Lucknow’, p. 344; Srinivasan, Identity crisis of Muslims, pp. 79, 86, 102. Ahmad, ‘The Shia–Sunni dispute in Lucknow’, pp. 344–6.

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Pradesh’s politics. The sustained involvement of the provincial government in regulating, permitting and prohibiting religious rites has, as in the colonial period, left Shi‘a–Sunni arguments open to various attempts at political exploitation. Moreover, backing up the arguments of this book, preliminary observation suggests that recent sectarian conflicts have to some extent been reflections of ongoing animosities within the Shi‘a community itself. One illustrative example will here suffice: the extreme Muharram violence of January–February 2005, in which ta‘ziya processions were attacked with explosives, Sunni neighbourhoods were targeted in retaliatory attacks, and in which several lives were lost. The intensity of Shi‘a–Sunni feeling at this time was widely attributed in the media to the recent foundation of a Shi‘a ‘sectarian’ organization, the All India Shi‘a Muslim Personal Law Board, which had been convened just weeks earlier by a number of ‘ulama to speak for the Shi‘a on affairs relating to personal and family matters (regulations of marriage, divorce, inheritance etc.). Many Sunnis in particular saw this association as an attempt to initiate Shi‘a secession from counterpart Muslim organizations such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (founded in 1972–3), and its formation was widely interpreted as causing the deterioration of Shi‘a–Sunni relations and hence contributing to the ensuing violence.16 However, another interpretation of these events is that the formation of the Shi‘a Personal Law Board reflected not a singular unanimity of opinion among the Shi‘a, but a serious controversy internal to the community. The Shi‘a Personal Law Board was opposed by many established Shi‘a ‘ulama, and it often appeared that the major clerics attached to the organization, most of whom were of relative youth and recent fame, founded it in order to enhance their own profile and undermine their opponents. Each side in the debate, moreover, blamed the other for engineering the Shi‘a–Sunni riots in order to boost its own profile and confirm its leadership of the community. One maulvi in Lucknow even tellingly described the Shi‘a–Sunni riots as ‘a sequel to the internal strife among the Shia Ulema’ following the foundation of the Shi‘a Personal Law Board.17 The nominally ‘sectarian’ conflicts surrounding the Shi‘a Personal Law Board, in other words, fulfil a precedent set throughout this study, demonstrating powerfully the deep interconnectedness of 16 17

Qaumi Khabren (Lucknow), 22 and 25 February 2005. The Hindustan Times (Lucknow), 22 February 2005. I discuss the formation of the Shi‘a Personal Law Board and these inner-Shi‘a arguments further in Justin Jones, ‘“Signs of churning”: Muslim Personal Law and public contestation in twenty-first century India’, Modern Asian Studies 44, 1 (2010).


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Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts, and those internal arguments unravelling among the Shi‘a themselves. Eliciting more academic and media comment, meanwhile, has been the expansion of sectarianism in post-colonial Pakistan. A thriving body of literature has considered the development of a complex array of overlapping and intertwined religio-political conflicts along various fault-lines: between Shi‘as, Ahmadis and Sunnis; discords within Sunni Islam such as those between Deobandis and Barelwis; and, indeed, between circles of ‘traditional’ ‘ulama and modern political Islamists. Looking specifically at the subject of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict in Pakistan, most of this scholarship has established that it really came into the ascendant in the 1980s, during the presidency of General Zia ul-Haq (1977–88). By common interpretation, Zia’s attempt to redefine the state through his ‘Islamization’ programme, a project formulated in correspondence with sympathetic Sunni ‘ulama and Islamist parties and groups, sparked widespread conflicts with the Shi‘a in Pakistan, who began to agitate for their political rights, and often to take up arms against counterpart Sunni organizations. Shi‘a anjumans such as the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqh-i-Ja‘fariya (Movement for the preservation of Shi‘a law (TNFJ), founded in 1979), Imamiya Student Organization (ISO) and Sipah-i-Muhammad (founded in 1991) emerged alongside militant Sunni groups which interpreted the Shi‘a as the enemies of Pakistan and the source of all its problems, among them the Sipah-i-Sahaba (established by the young Punjabi ‘alim Haq Nawaz Jhangwi in 1985) and Lashkar-i-Jhangwi (founded in 1996 and named after the assassinated leader of the former). Militant wings of some of these outfits, as has been widely reported, have periodically instigated the targeted assassinations of Shi‘a and Sunni religious and political leaders, and attacks on places of religious worship and assembly.18 The result of this is that the last three decades have seen a massive increase in Shi‘a–Sunni violence in Pakistan, so much so that it is frequently cast as an imminent threat to the ideological and political viability of the Pakistani state itself. A phenomenon that had earlier been restricted to its core cradle of the towns of central Punjab and Karachi has recently appeared in a wider span of towns and cities across all Pakistani provinces, and has become increasingly enmeshed with a complex web of religious

18

For a few examples of a huge literature on this subject see Ahmed, ‘The Shi‘is of Pakistan’; Zaman, ‘Sectarianism in Pakistan’; Nasr, ‘The rise of Sunni militancy’; Maleeha Lodhi, ‘Pakistan’s Shia movement: an interview with Arif Hussaini’, Third World Quarterly 10, 2 (1988), pp. 806–17. A number of other examples are cited below.

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groups, criminal syndicates and paramilitary organizations. Needless to say, these instances of extreme religio-political violence are of a very different nature to the forms of sectarianism discussed in this book – which, at least initially, emerged out of comparatively restrained debates in public forums and printed words among the north Indian Muslim ashraf. This said, it will be fruitful here to briefly indicate some of the possible implications of this study for our understanding of these modern conflicts. Certainly these conflicts in post-colonial Pakistan exhibit certain resonant parallels with those in colonial India. One might cite, once again, the anjuman-based infrastructure around which Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts have been manufactured. One might also identify the overlaps between notionally sectarian clashes and socio-political rivalries, as have been discussed in this book. For instance, in districts of post-colonial Punjab such as Jhang, Shi‘a–Sunni discord has emerged from enduring enmity between a Sunni-dominated urban commercial class and an established aristocracy of Shi‘a sayyids and rural landlords, the former rebelling against the perceived socio-political dominance of the latter.19 This local experience of sectarianism, it could be argued, closely mirrors formative sectarian conflicts in districts of the colonial United Provinces such as Lucknow, Jaunpur, Moradabad or Allahabad. Points of indirect comparison aside, this study perhaps suggests two possible correctives to our understanding of Muslim sectarianism in modern Pakistan. First, one might argue that much existing literature on the subject has tended to assume an easy classification of Shi‘as, Sunnis, Ahmadis and so forth, entrenching the impression of homogeneity within these categories of identity and so describing a linear process of hardening boundaries between them. By contrast, this study might perhaps argue for an approach that takes into account the internal dynamics of belief, authority and control within, as well as between, these broad groupings. Some analyses of sectarian conflict in Pakistan have, on occasion, already suggested how Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts often accompanied moments of transition within particular Shi‘a and Sunni communities. For instance, some of the earliest Shi‘a–Sunni skirmishes in post-colonial Pakistan took place during Muharram in 1956–7 and 1963, in Punjab and Karachi

19

See esp. Mariam Abou Zahab, ‘The regional dimension of sectarian conflicts in Pakistan’, in Christophe Jaffrelot, ed., Pakistan: nationalism without a nation? (Delhi, 2002); Tahir Kamran, ‘Contextualizing sectarian militancy in Pakistan: a case study of Jhang’, Journal of Islamic Studies 20, 1 (2009).


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respectively. These riots, like many of those in colonial India, occurred when amendments were made by the Shi‘a to established customary practice, including new interpolations into azadari rituals and the recitation of tabarra, which were considered offensive. However, it has simultaneously been shown that the scale of azadari rites grew substantially in Punjabi and Sindhi towns during these same years, due to the involvement of a new component of muhajirs (immigrants from north India), who in many cases introduced new practices and slogans into processions, resonant of those discussed in this volume.20 The implication here might be that Muharram innovations, whether new interpolations into ta‘ziya processions or vilifications of the Caliphs, represented a form of competition between established vatani (‘native’) Punjabi or Sindhi Shi‘a, and those muhajir Shi‘a who used Muharram ritual as a means of assimilating themselves into a new environment and seeking local relevance. It was, then, this inner-Shi‘a debate over ritual observance that ultimately dovetailed with Shi‘a–Sunni conflict. Equally, looking to localized controversies, some have noted the interplay of Shi‘a–Sunni division in districts such as Jhang with cleavages between muhajir and local Shi‘a.21 More research needs to be done, but the possibility remains that Shi‘a–Sunni conflict in various instances was, as before, simply the most visible derivative of a struggle for influence within a much-altered Shi‘a community itself, manifested through changes to customary Muharram performance. As well as investigating the implications of the inner-Shi‘a muhajir– vatani divide and the consequent contests over the rituals and leadership of Shi‘ism in Pakistan, further nuance to our understanding of Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts might be sought by looking at divisions within the Shi‘a clerical establishment in recent decades. Some of the most insightful literature on the growth of sectarianism in Pakistan in the later decades of the twentieth century has hinted at an implicit inner-Shi‘a conflict spurred by the development of a new, young and formally trained clique of ‘ulama (sometimes known as the ‘Dhakko’ group) in control of Pakistan’s Shi‘a madrasas and other institutions. This class of younger ‘ulama, the product of a number of new sectarian schools and organizations during the 1980s–1990s, have sometimes been branded ‘new Shi‘ites’ or ‘Shi‘a Wahhabis’ by their opponents. They were drawn into rivalries with that lower stratum of lay preachers and

20

21

Andreas Rieck, ‘The struggle for equal rights as a minority: Shia communal organisations in Pakistan, 1948–1968’, in Rainer Brunner and Werner Ende, eds., The Twelver Shia in modern times (Leiden, 2001), pp. 272–3. Abou Zahab, ‘The politicization of the Shia community’, pp. 110–11.

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zakirs working through established networks of acquaintance and patronage within their communities, who they dismissed as Shaikhis or Sufis for their alleged proclivities for customary and devotional practice. No less, they were also heavily at odds with more established Shi‘a ‘ulama and community leaders, whom they cast as parochial, superstitious and outdated.22 These triangulated inner-Shi‘a rows, between a complex combination of Shi‘a established elders, emerging activist ‘ulama and lay maulvis, seemed to be growing alongside Shi‘a–Sunni conflict during these years. As such, it is clear that the interaction between these two sets of dynamics needs to be properly interrogated. It certainly seems on preliminary evidence that Shi‘a clergy of all sides selectively used nominally ‘sectarian’ organizations, whether madrasas, political groups or azadari associations, to secure their own visions for Shi‘ism over those of their opponents, hardening their language and demands in order to bolster their voice within the Shi‘a community itself.23 These observations demonstrate that academic assessments of sectarianism need to take greater account of discordances among the Shi‘a (and, equally, among Sunni communities) subsisting underneath the impression of bi-lateral Shi‘a–Sunni conflict. On evidence available, it appears likely that Shi‘a–Sunni conflicts in modern Pakistan, as throughout this book, have continued to provide an acceptable forum for the playing out of arguments within as well as between respective communities. This work hopefully opens the way for further studies to deconstruct the simplified categories of Shi‘a versus Sunni according to which Muslim sectarianism has often been examined, interrogating the interrelations between the internal and external dynamics of these conflicts. Second, this book perhaps reminds us that the roots of modern sectarianism need to be located, partially but substantively, in the earlier context of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century north India. Existing studies of sectarian conflict in Pakistan on the macro-level have tended to take a somewhat myopic perspective, explaining it in varying proportions according to two developments. The first of these is to link it to the Pakistani state’s ongoing political flirtations with Islam as a potential source of national legitimacy and integration. Before and especially during Zia’s ‘Islamization’ programme, this argument runs, the state conducted a

22

23

Naqvi, ‘The controversy about the Shaykhiyya tendency’, pp. 141–8; Zaman, ‘Sectarianism in Pakistan’, p. 697; Abou Zahab, ‘The politicization of the Shia community’, pp. 101–2, 109. As hinted at in Rieck, ‘The struggle for equal rights’, pp. 276–81.


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broad rhetorical and political recourse to a Sunni majoritarian consensus which marginalized non-Sunnis and induced political conflicts with religious minorities.24 The second explanation, often used alongside the former, is to situate domestic Shi‘a–Sunni tensions within Pakistan within a wider geo-political struggle within the Islamic world. The Iranian revolution of 1979, it is argued, led to the Iranian state’s bankrolling of Shi‘a organizations within Pakistan both financially and ideologically, while other countries such as Saudi Arabia sought to combat Iranian influence through global sponsorship of Sunni organizations. Pakistan effectively became the site of a proxy war between these powers, contested through the competing patronage of Shi‘a and Sunni religious ideologues and institutions.25 Without denying the importance of either of these arguments, they both consolidate the frequent insinuation that ‘it was . . . after the creation of Pakistan that [sectarianism] forcefully surfaced’.26 By contrast, this study has perhaps demonstrated that such conflicts did not simply arise anew in Pakistan, but are best understood as possessing a powerful continuity with the formative phases of South Asian sectarianism in the colonial United Provinces. Muslim sectarianism in Pakistan has continued to bear the direct mark of the religious educational institutions, polemical traditions and sectarian anjumans described in this book. This is, of course, true in the case of Sunni polemical discourse. Prominent groups of the 1930s, such as the Majlis-i-Ahrar, remained active in Pakistan during its first three decades. No less important was the so-called ‘Madani Group’ of Deobandi ‘ulama, named after Husain Ahmad Madani of Deoband, who played such a central role in the madhi-sahaba agitation of the 1930s. Many of the ‘ulama of this group were Husain Ahmad’s students, natives of the Pakistan provinces who had received their education in the late colonial United Provinces and settled in Pakistan after partition; they continued to maintain intellectual ties with 24

25

26

Almost every study of sectarianism in Pakistan ties it to some degree to the state’s Islamization programme, especially in the 1980s. On processes of political and legal ‘Islamization’ in Zia-era Pakistan see esp. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the making of state power (New York, 2001). E.g. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, ‘The Iranian revolution and changes in Islamism in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan’, in Nikki Keddie and Rudi Matthee, eds., Iran and the surrounding world: interactions in culture and cultural politics (Washington, 2002), pp. 327–54. For a survey of Shi‘a–Sunni political conflict in the modern world see Rainer Brunner, ‘Shiism in the modern context: from religious quietism to political activism’, Religion Compass 3, 1 (2009), pp. 136–53. Zaman, ‘Sectarianism in Pakistan’, p. 691.

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Husain Ahmad and other Deobandis in India even after 1947. Vulnerable within Pakistan due to their earlier association with the Indian nationalist movement, they attempted to shore up their loyalty to ‘Islamic’ Pakistan through high-profile pronouncements of the Ahmadi and Shi‘a minorities as non-Muslims.27 This group, and later organizations such as the Sipahi-Sahaba, continued to utilize established traditions of anti-Shi‘a polemic, and were influenced by a continuing anti-Shi‘a discourse flowing out of Lucknow and other north Indian towns. Indeed, not only were a series of globally influential anti-Shi‘a polemics still being published by the ‘ulama of Deoband and Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama in the 1980s, but the polemical writings of colonial-era polemicists such as ‘Abd ul-Shakoor Farooqi have continued to be published and have influence in Pakistan.28 Much the same is true of the Shi‘a side, whose main protagonists in various ways often link back to colonial Lucknow. In view of colonial Lucknow’s importance, as established in this book, as the central hub of a Shi‘a network spanning the northern part of the subcontinent, many of those who would become the most prominent Shi‘a ‘ulama or activists in post-1947 Pakistan had, in fact, obtained their education in colonial Lucknow. A particularly prominent example is Mufti Ja‘far Husain (1914–1980), a scholar of Punjabi origins who became the influential founder of the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqh-i-Ja‘fariya; he received his education in Lucknow at Madrasa Nazimiya and, in the 1940s, as a student of the mujtahid Muhammad Naseer.29 An equally significant batch of clergy in Pakistan were in fact muhajirs who hailed originally from the Shi‘a gentries of the pre-partition United Provinces, a large number of whom were graduates of the province’s madrasas. This is certainly the case, for instance, for Hafiz Kifayat Husain (1898–1968), consistently one of the most prominent and outspoken Shi‘a clerics of Pakistan’s early decades. The functional leader throughout the 1960s of the Idara-i-Tahaffuz-i-Huqooq-i-Shi‘a (ITHS), the first Pakistani Shi‘a political association of importance,30 he was a former resident of the United Provinces’ Bulandshehr district; he had attended religious schools in his home district and later in Lucknow, where

27 28

29

30

Nasr, ‘The rise of Sunni militancy’, pp. 169–79. Ibid., pp. 161–3; Nasr, The Shia revival, pp. 164–5; ‘Abd ul-Shakoor Farooqi, Butla¯n mazhab-i-Shı¯ ‘a (Faisalabad, 1986). Other examples include Ghulab ‘Ali Shah Naqvi, ‘Inayat ‘Ali Shah Naqvi, ‘Abdul Ghaffar Ja‘fri and Ghulam Haider Kallu. Naqvi, ‘The controversy about the Shaykhiyya tendency’, p. 140. Rieck, ‘The struggle for equal rights’, pp. 271–7; Ahmed, ‘The Shi‘is of Pakistan’, pp. 278–9.


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he was a pupil of Najm ul-Hasan.31 Comparable life-stories applied to Sayyid Muhammad Dehlawi, one of the leading political ‘ulama of 1960s Pakistan, and Mushtaq Husain Naqvi, a key secretary of the influential Shi‘a Mutalabat Committee, both of whom hailed from the colonial North Western Provinces and were products of the schools and scholarly networks described in this volume.32 The particularly prominent role of such muhajirs in new Shi‘a activist and political associations in Pakistan, of course, further supports the point made above, that many ‘ulama from north India used new sectarian organizations to find fresh public roles in unfamiliar contexts where they were estranged from local influence and structures of authority.33 The completion of this study with reference to religious conflict in urban centres of twenty-first-century Pakistan means that this book finishes in a very different place from the classic image of the Islamic cosmopolitanism of nineteenth-century Lucknow and the Awadhi qasbas in which it started. However, all these examples demonstrate strong continuities between the development of sectarianism in colonial India and modern manifestations of Shi‘a–Sunni conflict in post-colonial South Asia. There are certainly intuitive and thematic parallels, but there is also a tangible network of leading personages, educational institutions and sectarian organizations which bind the colonial United Provinces into a relationship of direct connection with Muslim sectarianism in modern South Asia. Events in Islamic societies in the twenty-first century, in South Asia and elsewhere, are likely to generate a continuing wealth of literature on the subject of Muslim sectarianism. Much of this literature, as it has thus far, is likely to depict a conflict between a monolithic and ever more politicized ‘Shi‘a revival’ and its rival Sunni counterpart. Such a conflict is frequently perceived as centred in the Middle East and the Gulf, and as being transmitted to other regions largely on account of the promulgation of intellectual and political developments from the Arab and Persian heartland across an ever more globalized Islamic world. This approach runs the

31 32

33

Rieck, ‘The struggle for equal rights’, p. 276; Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, pp. 428–33. Rizvi, Socio-intellectual history, vol. II, p. 102; Rieck, ‘The struggle for equal rights’, pp. 278–81. Prominent examples of muhajir clergy active in post-1947 Pakistan include Muhammad Bashir Ansari, Zafar Hasan Naqvi Amrohawi, Shaikh Jawad Husain, Muhammad ‘Arif Naqvi, Damir al-Hasan Rizvi, Najm ul-Hasan Kararvi, ‘Ali Hasnain Shifta, and Mirza Yusuf Husain, the latter of whom was a prominent wa‘iz and teacher in Lahore. See Naqvi, ‘The controversy about the Shaykhiyya tendency’, p. 140; Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r, pp. 354–5n.

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risk of depicting manifestations of Muslim sectarianism in South Asia as directed by events in regions to the west, with north India especially being placed on the very peripheries of relevance. By contrast, this book makes the claim that the practices and discourses of modern Muslim sectarianism in South Asia deserve to be understood according to traditions that were nurtured, first and foremost, in the muhallas, madrasas and meeting-halls of colonial Lucknow. It is frequently lamented in modern Lucknow that the city’s esteemed historic tehzib and lauded Muslim cosmopolitanism have all largely evaporated, whether through post-1947 migration, economic stagnation or the notoriously communalized politics of contemporary Uttar Pradesh. It is thus perhaps one of the ultimate ironies of Lucknow’s twentieth-century decline that it is modern manifestations of Muslim sectarianism, having been cultivated here and thereafter imparted more widely, that have instead become one of the city’s most enduring religious and political legacies for the Indian subcontinent.

Appendix Select Shi‘a ‘ulama of colonial India

This section offers brief biographical synopses of a number of the most prominent ‘ulama discussed in this book; they are just a select few among the many influential and significant mujtahids and scholars active in north India around 1870–1940.1 Where appropriate they have been grouped by household (khandan-wada), the wider idea of family relational groups bonded by biradari links and endogamy. The Kintori ‘ulama

Descendants of the Seventh Imam, Moussa, the sayyids who settled in the qasba of Kintor, Barabanki district, around the thirteenth century were of Nishapuri origin. Many of them matured as ‘ulama, and were settled on nazrana land grants in Barabanki and Bahraich districts of Awadh, which they largely retained into the colonial period. Kintor produced a number of related and exemplary scholars from the eighteenth century onwards; alongside those named here, this biradari included Sayyid Ahmad Moussawi 1

For concision, sources have not been listed individually, but the information contained in these biographies is primarily obtained from the following: Sayyid Hamid Husain and Sayyid Nasir Husain, ‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r fi Ima¯ma¯t ul-a’ı¯ mmat ul-atha¯r (Qom, 2001); Muhammad ‘Ali Kashmiri, Nuju¯m us-sama¯ fı¯ tara¯jim ul-‘ulama¯ (Lucknow, 1884–5); Habib Husain ibn Ahmad Husain, Sawa¯nih-i-‘umrı¯ -i-Ghula¯m Hasne¯n Kinto¯rı¯ (Lahore, 1904); Imamiya Mission, Khatı¯ b-i-a¯l-i-Muhammad (Lucknow, 1933–4); Sayyid Murtaza Husain, Matla‘-i-Anwa¯r: tazkira-i-Shı¯ ‘a afa¯zil-va-‘ulama¯, kaba¯r-i-bar-i-saghı¯ r-i-Pa¯k-vaHind (Karachi, 1981); Mustafa Husain Asif Ja’isi, ed., Kha¯nda¯n-i-ijtiha¯d nambar (Lucknow, 2005); Sayyid Muhammad Naqi Rizvi, Farishtga¯n jaha¯n´: tazkira-i-kha¯nwa¯dai-Sayı¯ d Muhammad Ba¯qir Rizvı¯ Kashmı¯ rı¯ Ba¯qir-ul-‘Ulu¯m (Lucknow, 2005); Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A socio-intellectual history of the Isna ‘Ashari Shi‘is in India (Delhi, 1986).

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Appendix: Select Shi‘a ‘ulama

Hindi, the paternal grandfather of Ruhollah Khomeini, who emigrated from India to Iran in the 1830s. Mir Hamid Husain, 1830–1888 (‘Firdos-i-Maab’, ‘Sahib-i-‘Abaqati’)

From a family that had long worked in service of the Nawabs of Awadh, his father, Muhammad Quli Khan, had been the chief mufti (sadr-i-sadoor) of Meerut until this function of state was abolished. Widely regarded as one of the great Shi‘a luminaries of the era, Hamid Husain was educated by his father, then by Mirza Muhammad ‘Abbas, and is widely considered to have become one of India’s most exemplary scholars in hadis and fiqh. He seems to have spent much of the 1860s in Iraq, where he accumulated a number of the books and manuscripts that would later comprise the Kitabkhana Nasiriya (Nasiriya library) in Lucknow; it was back in Lucknow, in the 1870s–1880s, that he wrote the first nine books of ‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r, widely acknowledged as one of the most influential Shi‘a writings produced in South Asia. The library functioned on donations received from, among others, the Raja of Mahmudabad, some Agra sayyid families and the Nizam of Hyderabad. It is said that Sayyid Ahmad Khan tried, and failed, to recruit him as a teacher in the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College. A close female relative married the Raja of Mahmudabad, while his nephew Sayyid Karamat Husain became a major pioneer of Aligarh’s educational and political agenda; both examples of the frequent endogamic ties binding Shi‘a clerical and political families. Ghulam Hasnain Kintori, 1831–1918

An exemplary scholar who married Hamid Husain’s sister, he was awarded his ijazat in Lucknow, thereafter becoming close to the Nawab’s court and being appointed the sajjada nashin of the short-lived Madrasa-i-Shahi from 1855 to 1856. More broadly, he was known for his prolific and multilingual scholarship; especially for his Arabic and Persian writings on kalam and philosophy, but he was also one of the most prolific translators of kalam and hadis scholarship into Urdu. He is best remembered for a series of high-profile interventions in education. In the 1870s he was closely associated with the failed Madrasa Imaniya project. He was among the most significant clerical opponents of the Aligarh Movement, and a short-lived newspaper he established in the 1870s, Akhba¯r-ul-Akhı¯ ya¯r, was consistently critical of Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Tehzı¯ b-ul-Akhla¯q. In the 1890s he was the main Shi‘a representative in the Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama


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council, until his expulsion. He suffered from paralysis in later life, and was a quiet figure in his later years. Sayyid Nasir Husain, 1867–1942 (‘Nasir-ul-Millat’)

Sometimes described as the only marja‘ ul-taqlid of the era, Nasir Husain is frequently revered as the single most influential Indian Shi‘a scholar since Dildar ‘Ali, and is widely referenced in much contemporaneous literature as the chosen mujtahid of most north Indian Shi‘a, and as having transnational networks of muqallids. Receiving his ijazat from Hamid Husain, his father, and other ‘ulama in India around the age of sixteen, he inherited his father’s scholarly and pastoral tasks after the latter’s death in 1888, including the accumulation of the Nasiriya library and the continuation of the ‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r opus. His scholarly abilities across both ma‘qulat and manqulat (rational and received disciplines) are widely portrayed as unparalleled; it is widely suggested that even the Firangi Mahalli ‘ulama held his works as sacrosanct. He was peshnamaz of Lucknow’s Kufa mosque and also known for a series of famous annual majlis sermons delivered in Lucknow and Agra. An early pioneer of the Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor and the Shi‘a Conference, he was one of the architects of the clerical collective leadership of the era. He was also a senior supporter of the tabarra agitation in his later years. Sayyid Muhammad Naseer, 1895–1966 (‘Naseer-ul-Millat’)

Nasir Husain’s eldest son and successor, he was educated by his father, and then in Iraq in the 1910s–1920s, where he became a mujtahid; it is rumoured that he became sympathetic to the Iraqi nationalist movement, especially during the 1920 revolt. After returning to India his stature built up immensely during the tabarra agitation, within which he was one of the highest-profile ‘ulama to court arrest. After his father’s death in 1942 he inherited most of his muqallids; however, soon after independence he embarked upon a political career, spending much of the next fourteen years as a Congress-affiliated member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council. Believing that his political commitments were incompatible with his religious and pastoral duties to India’s Shi‘a population, he declared that his muqallids should confer their allegiance to the mujtahids in Najaf, most prominently Ayatollah Muhsin ul-Hakim Tabataba’i (1889–1970). This decision was far-reaching in impact, with

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most north Indian Shi‘a since then having considered the hawza of Najaf as providing their religious leadership. The Nasirabadi ‘ulama (‘Khandan-i-Ijtihad’)

This lineage descended from Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi (‘Ghufran-iMaab’), the scholar who most prominently made Usuli Shi‘ism the state religion of Awadh, and advised the Nawabi project of Shi‘a state formation. The family was settled on landholdings in Rae Bareili district, and held many formal posts in state management of religion, drawing commissions from the nawabs for various state functions including acting as jurisconsults, supervising endowments and leading Friday prayers. The six scholars discussed here are only a few indicative examples among a vast number of clergy associated with this family, who collectively held a wide influence within Shi‘ism in and beyond Lucknow. Sayyid Muhammad Ibrahim, 1843–1890 (‘Firdos-i-Makan’)

One of Lucknow’s highest mujtahids throughout the 1870s–1880s, he inherited the role of city peshnamaz around 1868, though congregational prayers were held under him in Masjid Tehsin ‘Ali Khan until the release of the Asafi mosque in 1884. Muhammad Ibrahim exemplifies the approach of safeguarding the Shi‘a religion through scholarship, publication and pastoral work, at a time when religious rites and organization were heavily curtailed by British surveillance and control. He was credited as a prolific author and issuer of fatawa; it is said that he maintained an office in Lucknow to receive questions and dispense responses to his muqallids across the United Provinces. In the 1880s it seems that he was the first mujtahid to initiate meaningful contact with the municipal government on matters of public interest. His claimed achievements included the release of the Asaf-ud-daula imambara and Asafi masjid in 1884, and persuading the district magistrate in 1887 to accept the amended Shi‘a azan as ‘authentic’ custom. Sayyid Aqa Hasan, 1860–1929 (‘Qutva’t ul-‘Ulama’)

Originally from a family of Naqvi sayyids settled in the township of Ja’is, he achieved his ijazat in Najaf around 1893–5, under a number of scholars; upon returning to Lucknow he built up considerable public influence after succeeding Muhammad Ibrahim in the coveted role of peshnamaz in the Asafi mosque. Seemingly a charismatic and audacious figure with many


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admirers and many enemies, he exemplified perhaps better than any other cleric the trend towards a bolder social and public activism among the senior ‘ulama from around 1900. His achievements to this end included the foundation of the Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor, deep involvement in setting up the Shi‘a Conference, and the establishment of a Shi‘a orphanage and several maktabs and imambaras in Lucknow. Controversial interventions included the purification of practice at the Talkatora karbala ground; the condoning of tabarra recitation as permissible; leading initial clerical opposition to both the Aligarh and Khilafat Movements; and his forceful demand that the ‘ulama be given major supervisory roles in the Shi‘a College. Sayyid Ahmad Lucknawi, 1878–1947 (‘Allama Hindi’)

A son of Muhammad Ibrahim, he was initially educated at the Madrasa Nazimiya, and later received his certification as a mujtahid in Iraq from many of the most famous scholars of Najaf. He made numerous trips to Iraq and was resident there throughout much of his life (hence his title ‘Allama Hindi’); it is said that he offered tuition in a madrasa in Karbala in the 1910s. He was best known in India for his role in the reorganization of the Awadh Bequest, in such a way as to pluralize the distribution of the funds and oversee their dispensation, and to increase the influence of the Indian Shi‘a in its management. Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi, 1902–1988 (‘Sayyid ul-‘Ulama’)

Of a younger generation than those discussed above, ‘Ali Naqi became one of the subcontinent’s most prominent ‘ulama in the 1930s–1940s when, coming back to Lucknow after a long educational spell in Najaf, he set up the Imamiya Mission in 1932 to defend and propagate Shi‘ism. ‘Ali Naqi quickly established himself as a lauded public speaker and prolific writer; in particular, his authorship of Urdu tasnifat was without parallel among the formal ‘ulama. His writings and speeches often contained calls for Muslim unity, though the manner of the Imamiya Mission’s rise often somewhat contradicted this message. After independence he would remain the most well-known, widely published and widely quoted Shi‘a ‘alim in the country for four decades, and spent part of his career as the principal of Shi‘a diniyat (theology) at Aligarh Muslim University. ‘Ali Naqi is commonly said today to have been the final great mujtahid of South Asia.

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Appendix: Select Shi‘a ‘ulama Sayyid Abul Hasan, 1844–1895 (‘Abu Sahib’)

A leading mujtahid with substantial influence in post-Rebellion north India, he was related by marriage to the Khandan-i-Ijtihad family. He appears to have gained his ijazat in Iraq, and spent some years there after the Rebellion. Returning to India around 1870, he was apparently spurred to return to Iraq once again in the mid-1870s, after both becoming embroiled in a major argument with the ‘ulama clustered around Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s exiled court in Metiaburj on the matter of princely succession, and trying and failing to set up the Madrasa Imaniya enterprise in Lucknow. He returned to Lucknow in later years, and was credited as the initial founder of both Madrasa Nazimiya and Sultan ul-Madaris, Lucknow’s two most important religious seminaries. He died and was buried in Karbala. Sayyid Muhammad Baqir ibn ul-Hasan Rizvi, 1868–1928 (‘Baqir ul-‘Ulum’)

Abul Hasan’s son, he became one of India’s most academically accomplished mujtahids, having spent ten years in Iraq from around 1883 and receiving certification from a number of scholars of the Tabataba’i, Khurasani and Isphahani families; he was believed especially accomplished in fiqh. Immediately after returning to India he was made principal of Sultan ul-Madaris, and his teaching in the school through most of the rest of his life gave him a wide following of muqallids which was said to spread as far as Europe and Africa. While not as publicly or politically active as some contemporary mujtahids, he was involved in opposing the Khilafat Movement on religious grounds. He died and is buried in Karbala.

Other Mirza Muhammad ‘Abbas, 1809–1889 (‘Taj ul-‘Ulama’)

‘Mufti’ Muhammad ‘Abbas was the chief mufti (judge) of Lucknow from 1845 to 1856, an adviser to the Nawabi court, and a teacher in Madrasai-Shahi until its closure. His library was allegedly destroyed in the 1857 violence, after which he left the city, moving between Patna, Calcutta, Kanpur and Benares in subsequent years. He returned to Lucknow a couple of decades later, and is credited as the co-founder of Madrasa Nazimiya in 1889. He taught a number of influential later mujtahids, including Nasir Husain and Najm ul-Hasan.


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Sayyid Najm ul-Hasan, 1862–1938 (‘Najm ul-Millat’)

One of the most revered mujtahids of colonial India, Najm ul-Hasan was from a biradari of sayyids based primarily in the qasbas of Amroha and Sambhal in Moradabad district. He was related to numerous zakirs and poets, though he appears to have been the first mujtahid in his family. He did not study in Iraq, but received his ijazat in Lucknow from Mirza Muhammad ‘Abbas, whose daughter he later married, and a number of other ‘ulama. Najm ul-Hasan was perhaps colonial India’s most significant pioneer of Shi‘a religious education. He was appointed as the first principal of Madrasa Nazimiya, and would thereafter found a number of significant religious schools, including those in Amroha, Rampur and, most importantly, the Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin in Lucknow, of which he became the first principal. His involvement in all of these schools gave him a perhaps unparalleled network of students in the subcontinent. He was also highly active within the Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor, Shi‘a Conference and Shi‘a College movements, and worked closely with Nasir Husain throughout. He was close to the Nawabs of Rampur, his most influential patrons, and, perhaps for the same reason, was less averse to the Aligarh brand of Muslim modernism than many of his scholarcontemporaries. Sayyid Sibte Hasan Ja’isi, 1878–1935 (Khatib-i-‘Azam)

From the qasba of Ja’is, Sibte Hasan never became a mujtahid but was widely acclaimed as such, evidencing the extent to which formal religious authority and popular acclamation became conflated during the early twentieth century. Encapsulating the ability of Indian seminaries to offer a complete institutional framework for Shi‘a religious education, he completed the entirety of his education in India, in Lucknow’s Madrasa Nazimiya, Sultan ul-Madaris and Madrasa’t ulWa‘izin, eventually becoming the principal of the latter. While erudite in Arabic and Persian, he was more influential for his own compositions in Urdu. He composed majlis poetry, wrote poetic commentaries, and played an important part in the transition to more vernacular, expressive and free-flowing styles of khutba and sermonizing. He was publicly revered, known for his dynamic speaking style and for putting his oratorical skills towards a number of communal projects, most notably the Shi‘a College movement, of which he was seen as one of the key figureheads.

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Appendix: Select Shi‘a ‘ulama Haji Maqbool Ahmad Dehlawi, 1870–1921

One of the more contentious scholars of the period, he was originally from a Sunni service family who had served the Mughal court in Delhi; orphaned at a young age, he converted to Shi‘ism – according to some at the behest of his Arabic teacher – in his teens. Perhaps mirroring his own decision to convert, he developed the theme of a Shi‘a tabligh, and spoke of active proselytization among non-Shi‘a communities. He was one of the most prolific translators of classical texts into Urdu of the period, with his translations of the Qur’an, tafsir and collections of du‘as and fatwas being especially influential. He was commissioned in the early 1900s by some influential Shi‘a including the Nawab of Rampur and the Raja of Pinjrawal, Bulandshehr, who hired him for majlis sermonizing and legal consultation. He also built up a formidable reputation as a khatib, zakir and munazir, and it was during a series of majlis sermons in 1904 that he incited the first major public recitation of tabarra. With government seeking to charge him with blasphemy, he was ultimately given sanctuary by the Nawab of Rampur, who allowed him to teach in Madrasa-i-‘Aliya, where he seemingly entered into rows with some more established tutors. Maqbool Ahmad was deeply mistrusted by much of the old clerical hierarchy and aristocracy, who questioned his qualifications and methods; but his popular acclamation and expressive sermonizing were unrivalled.

Select bibliography

Private papers and manuscripts Oriental and India Office Collections, London (OIOC) Haig Collection, Mss. Eur. F.115 Linlithgow Collection, Mss. Eur. F.125 Meston Collection, Mss. Eur. F.136 Mitchell Collection, Mss. Eur. F.255 Quaid-i-Azam Collection, Ior. Neg. Pos.10760–10826 Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge (CSAS) Frampton Papers Other Collections of Maulana Sajjad Nasir ‘Abaqati, Lucknow Collections of Maulana Mustafa Husain Asif Ja’isi, Lucknow Collections of Sultan ‘Ali Sadiq, Lucknow Collections of Sayyid Kazim Zaheer, Delhi Official Records Oriental and India Office Collections Public and Judicial Department Proceedings (L/PJ) United Provinces Native Newspaper Reports (UPNNR) National Archives of India, Delhi (NAI) Government of India, Home Department Files: Judicial, Public, Political, Revenue and Sanitary Proceedings Government of India, Foreign Department Files: General, External and Secret Proceedings 251

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Proceedings and Files of the Government of the United Provinces: Education, General Administration, Political, Public and Public Information Department Files

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Hasan, Sayyid Shafiq, Asl ul-usu¯l (Bijnor, 1918) Hashmi, Mahmud Ahmad, Ta¯rı¯ kh-i-Amro¯ha (Delhi, 1930) ul-Hilli, Ja‘far ibn Sa‘id, Ja¯mi‘ ul-Ja‘frı¯ : sharı¯ ‘at-ul-Isla¯m (Lucknow, c. 1870s) Husain, Asghar, Ta¯rı¯ kh-i-Asgharı¯ (Moradabad, 1889) Husain, Habib Husain ibn Ahmad, Sawa¯nih-i-‘umrı¯ -i-Ghula¯m Hasne¯n Kinto¯rı¯ (Lahore, 1904) Husain, Ja‘far ibn, No¯r ul-‘aı¯ n (Lucknow, 1897) Husain, Muhammad Manzur, Khu¯rshı¯ d-i-sudq, ma‘ruf manzu¯r ul-hudı¯ (Agra, 1897) Husain, Sa‘id Sajjad, Ai‘ja¯z-i-Da¯’u¯dı¯ (Delhi, 1912) Husain, Sayyid Muhammad, Budra-i-He¯darı¯ ya li-naqz-i-fe¯sla-i-Abı¯ Bakrı¯ ya (Muzaffarnagar, 1910) Husain, Sayyid Mumtaz, Risa¯la-i-kifan-po¯sh lı¯ daran-i-qo¯m (Amroha, 1915) Husain, Sayyid Nasir, Mo¯‘iza¯-i-sa¯bi‘a (Lucknow, 1904) Husain, Shaikh Ahmad, Ba‘z Musulma¯no¯n´ ki afso¯sna¯k ghalat fehmı¯ (Lucknow, 1897); 2nd edn (Muzaffarnagar, 1915) Imamiya Mission, Khatı¯ b-i-a¯l-i-Muhammad (Lucknow, 1933–4) Jarchwi, Sayyid, Aja‘iz Husain Rizvi, Anjuman-i-Wazı¯ fa-i-Sa¯da¯t-va-Mo¯minı¯ n´ (Delhi, 1937) Jauhar, Sayyid Mujahid Husain, Haya¯t-i-niswa¯n (Amroha, c. 1928) Masnawi Me¯wa¯-i-Shı¯ rı¯ n (Amroha, 1915) Kashmiri, Muhammad ‘Ali, Nuju¯m us-sama¯ fı¯ tara¯jim ul-‘ulama¯ (Lucknow, 1884–5) Kazim, Sayyid Amir, Ehqa¯q-ul-ha¯q-ul-ibta¯l-ul-ba¯til (Bijnor, 1906) Kazim, Shaikh Muhammad, Tanqı¯ d-ul-taqlı¯ d (Jaunpur, 1915) Khan, Amjad ‘Ali, Kanz ul-ma‘rifa¯ta (Lucknow, 1891) Sha¯ms-ul-Tawa¯rı¯ kh (Lucknow, 1898) Khan, Ghulam Haider, Tehqı¯ q-i-Ja‘farı¯ (Lucknow, 1888) Khan, Hakim Ahmad ‘Ali, Aza¯da¯rı¯ -i-ma¯h-i-Muharram (Lucknow, 1905) Khan, Muzaffar ‘Ali, Ma‘a¯rij ul-faza¯’ı¯ l (Lucknow, 1895) Kintori, Ghulam Hasnain, Kita¯b ul-faı¯ n (1904) No¯r ul-‘aı¯ n (Delhi, c. 1883–4) Lucknawi, Sayyid Muhammad Hadi, Wazi‘da¯ra¯n-i-Luckna’u (Lucknow, 1908) Mehdi, Sayyid Agha, ‘Alı¯ au¯r Ka‘ba (Lucknow, 1933) Muhammad, Ghulam, Muqa¯dimat-i-nama¯z-i-Shı¯ ‘a (Lahore, 1900) Naqvi, Jamal Ahmad, Ta¯rı¯ kh-i-sa¯da¯t-i-Amro¯ha (Hyderabad, 1934) Naqvi, Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi, Itteha¯d ul-farı¯ qe¯n´ (Lucknow, 1933) Qa¯tila¯n-i-Huse¯n ka¯ mazhab (Lucknow, 1932–3) Tazkira-i-hifa¯z Shı¯ ‘a, he¯sa-i-awal (Lucknow, 1933) Tehrı¯ f-i-Qur’a¯n kı¯ haqı¯ qa¯t (Lucknow, 1932–3) Tija¯rat au¯r Isla¯m (Lucknow, 1933) Rizvi, Akbar Husain, Madrasa’t ul-Wa¯‘ı¯ zı¯ n´ kı¯ a¯wa¯z (Lucknow, c. 1928) Saddiqi, Muhammad Ashfaq Husain, Muja¯dala-i-hasna (Moradabad, 1918) Sadr ul-Din, Sa‘id Isma‘il bin, Sı¯ ra¯t-ul-Mustaqı¯ m (Lucknow, 1898–9) Safi, ‘Ali Naqi, Sahı¯ fa’t ul-millat-i-ma‘ru¯f be-lakhat jagir (Lucknow, n.d.) ul-Shakoor, ‘Abd, Tu¯hfa-i-lisa¯nı¯ (Lucknow, 1927) Sherwani, Zafar, Kita¯b-i-shahı¯ d-i-insa¯nı¯ yat: azha¯r-i-ha¯q (Hyderabad, 1954)

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Shauq, Ahmad ‘Ali Khan, Tazkira-i-ka¯mila¯n-i-Ra¯mpu¯r (Delhi, 1929) Sufi, Sa‘adat ‘Ali, Tazkira-i-Ima¯me¯n´ (Moradabad, 1898) Zuberi, ‘Abid, Ba¯l-i-huma¯ (Lucknow, 1940) Hida¯ya¯-i-Rizvı¯ ya (Lucknow, 1897) Shı¯ ‘a-va-Sunnı¯ ke¯ muna¯zare¯ san 1328 hijrı¯ par tehqı¯ qı¯ nazar (Lucknow, 1910) Shı¯ ‘a swa¯ra¯j au¯r is ke¯ va¯qi‘a¯t qa¯bil-indira¯j (Qadian, 1925) Ta¯rı¯ kh-i-khila¯fa¯t (Lucknow, 1924) Re-printed primary sources English Ahmad, Nazir, The repentance of Nussooh (Taubat al-Nasuh): the tale of a Muslim family a hundred years ago, introd. by Frances Pritchett (Delhi, 2004 [1874]) Ali, Mrs Meer Hasan, Observations on the Mussalmauns of India (Karachi, 1978 [1832]) Anis, Mir Babar ‘Ali, The battle of Karbala: a marsiya of Anis, introd. David Matthews (Delhi, 2003) Aziz, Kursheed Kamal, Aga Khan III: selected speeches and writings of Sultan Muhammad Shah (London, 1998) Aziz, Kursheed Kamal, ed., Ameer Ali: his life and work (Lahore, 1968) Fyzee, Asaf A. A., Outlines of Muhammadan Law, 4th edn (Delhi, 2003 [1949]) Hali, Altaf Husain, Hali’s Musaddas: the flow and ebb of Islam, introd. by Javed Majeed and Christopher Shackle (Delhi, 1997 [1879]) Hunter, William Wilson, The Indian Musalmans (Delhi, 2002 [1871]) Kurzman, Charles, ed., Modernist Islam 1840–1940: a sourcebook (New York, 2002) Madani, Sayyid Husain Ahmad, Composite nationalism and Islam: muttahidah qaumiyat aur Islam, introd. Barbara Metcalf (Oxford, 2005 [1938]) Mahmudabad, Raja Muhammad Amir Akhtar Khan, ‘Some memories’, in Mushirul Hasan, ed., India’s partition: process, strategy and mobilisation (Delhi, 1993), pp. 415–26. Mohammad, Shan, ed., Writings and speeches of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (Bombay, 1972) Nizami, Z. A. and Mazhar Ali Khan, eds., Reflections on Sir Syed and the Aligarh Movement (Karachi, 1981) Rizvi, Saiyid Athar Abbas and Manohar Lal Bhargava, eds., Freedom struggle in Uttar Pradesh: source materials (Lucknow, 1958) Sharar, Abdul Halim, Lucknow: the last phase of an oriental culture (London, 1975 [1913]) Thanawi, Ashraf ‘Ali, Perfecting women: Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar , introd. Barbara Metcalf (Berkeley, 1990 [1933]) Wasti, Syed Razi, ed., Syed Ameer Ali on Islamic history and culture (Lahore, 1968) Zaheer, Syed Kazim, ed., The memoirs of Syed Ali Zaheer (Delhi, 2004)

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Dehlawi, Maqbool Ahmad, Tehzı¯ b ul-Isla¯m (Lucknow, 2005 [1920]) Husain, Sayyid Hamid and Sayyid Nasir Husain, ‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r fi Ima¯ma¯t ula’ı¯ mmat ul-atha¯r (Qom, 2001) Naqvi, Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi, Shahı¯ d-i-insa¯nı¯ yat (Lucknow, 1995 [1941]) Sharar, ‘Abd ul-Halim, Guzashta Luckna’u ya¯ mashrı¯ q ke¯ tamadun ka¯ a¯khirı¯ numa¯na (Delhi, 1985 [1913]) Thanawi, Ashraf ‘Ali, Imda¯d ul-fata¯we¯, tartı¯ b-i-jadı¯ d, jald-i-shashum (Deoband, 1974) Newspapers and periodicals English The Hindustan Times (Lucknow) The Independent (Allahabad), CSAS and OIOC The Leader (Allahabad), CSAS and OIOC National Herald (Lucknow), CSAS The Pioneer (Lucknow), NML Tribune (Lahore), CSAS Urdu Aligarh Institute Gazette (Aligarh), CSAS Al-Hilal (Calcutta), NML Hukumaran (Lucknow, 1939), Proscribed Publications (Urdu), OIOC Qaumi Khabren (Lucknow) Sarfaraz (Lucknow), NML Books, articles and theses English and other European languages Abou Zahab, Mariam, ‘The politicization of the Shia community in Pakistan in the 1970s and 1980s’, in Alessandro Monsutti, Silvia Naef and Farian Sabahi, eds., The other Shiites: from the Mediterranean to Central Asia (Berne, 2007), pp. 97–114 ‘The regional dimension of sectarian conflicts in Pakistan’, in Christophe Jaffrelot, ed., Pakistan: nationalism without a nation? (Delhi, 2002), pp. 115–30 ‘The Sunni–Shia conflict in Jhang’, in Imtiaz Ahmad and Helmut Reifeld, eds., Lived Islam in South Asia: adaptation, accommodation and conflict (Delhi, 2004), pp. 135–48 Ahmad, Aziz, Islamic modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857–1964 (London, 1967) Ahmad, Imtiaz, ‘The Shia–Sunni dispute in Lucknow, 1905–1980’, in Milton Israel and Narendra Wagle, eds., Islamic society and culture: essays in honour of Professor Aziz Ahmad (Delhi, 1983), pp. 335–50

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‘Perspectives on the communal problem’, in Asghar Ali Engineer, ed., Communal riots in post-independence India (Hyderabad, 1984), pp. 130–55 Ahmed, Munir D., ‘The Shi‘is of Pakistan’, in Martin Kramer, ed., Shi‘ism: resistance and revolution (Boulder, 1987), pp. 275–87 Alam, Arshad, ‘The enemy within: Madrasas and Muslim identity in north India’, Modern Asian Studies 42, 2/3 (2008), pp. 605–27 Alam, Muzaffar, ‘Competition and co-existence: Indo-Islamic interaction in medieval north India’, Itinerario 13, 1 (1989), pp. 37–59 The languages of political Islam: India 1200–1800 (Chicago, 2004) Algar, Hamid, Religion and state in Iran, 1785–1906: the role of the ulama in the Qajar period (Berkeley, 1969) Amanat, Abbas, ‘In between the madrasa and the marketplace: the designation of clerical leadership in modern Shi‘ism’, in Said Amir Arjomand, ed., Authority and political culture in Shi‘ism (Albany, 1988), pp. 98–132 Amir, Safia, ‘Semantics of the word Qawm: a study of Sir Sayyad Ahmad Khan’, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 49, 4 (2001), pp. 53–61 Anderson, Clare, ‘A maulvi, a captive and a penal settlement: Liaquat Ali, Amelia Bennett and an early cultural history of the Andaman Islands’, paper presented at the British Association of South Asian Studies conference, London, 2006 Arjomand, Said Amir, ‘Ideological revolution in Shi‘ism’, in Said Amir Arjomand, ed., Authority and political culture in Shi‘ism (Albany, 1988), pp. 178–212 Bayly, Christopher A., The birth of the modern world, 1780–1914: global connections and comparisons (Malden, 2004) Empire and information: intelligence gathering and social communication in India, 1780–1880 (Cambridge, 1996) The local roots of Indian politics: Allahabad 1880–1920 (Oxford, 1975) Rulers, townsmen and bazaars: north Indian society in the age of British expansion 1770–1870 (Delhi, 1983) Blank, Jonah, Mullahs on the mainframe: Islam and modernity among the Daudi Bohras (Chicago, 2001) Brass, Paul, The production of Hindu–Muslim violence in contemporary India (Delhi, 2003) Brunner, Rainer, Islamic ecumenism in the 20th century: the Azhar and Shiism between rapprochement and restraint (Leiden, 2004) ‘Shiism in the modern context: from religious quietism to political activism’, Religion Compass 3, 1 (2009), pp. 136–53 ‘A Shiite cleric’s criticism of Shiism: Musa al-Musawi’, in Rainer Brunner and Werner Ende, eds., The Twelver Shia in modern times (Leiden, 2001), pp. 178–87 Chalabi, Tamara, The Shi‘is of Jabal ‘Amil and the new Lebanon: community and nation state, 1918–1943 (New York, 2006) Chelkowski, Peter, ed., Ta‘ziyeh: ritual and drama in Iran (New York, 1979) Clarke, Len, ‘The Shi‘i construction of taqlid’, in Paul Luft and Colin Turner, eds., Shi‘ism: critical concepts in Islamic studies (Abingdon, 2008), vol. III, pp. 351–74

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Cole, Juan, ‘Iranian culture and South Asia, 1500–1900’, in Nikki Keddie and Rudi Matthee, eds., Iran and the surrounding world: interactions in culture and cultural politics (Seattle, 2002), pp. 15–35 Roots of north Indian Shi‘ism in Iran and Iraq: religion and state in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley, 1988) Sacred space and holy war: the politics, culture and history of Shi‘ite Islam (New York, 2002) ‘Shi’ite noblewomen and religious innovation in Awadh’, in Violette Graff, ed., Lucknow: memories of a city (Delhi, 1997), pp. 83–90 Cole, Juan, and Nikki Keddie, eds., Shi‘ism and social protest (New Haven, 1986) Cook, David, Martyrdom in Islam (New York, 2007) Coslovi, Franco, ‘Shiism’s political valence in medieval Deccani kingdoms’, in Anna Libera Dallapiccola and Stephanie Zingel-Avé Lallemant, eds., Islam and Indian religions (Stuttgart, 1993), pp. 137–54 D’Souza, Diane, ‘Devotional practices among Shia women in South India’, in Imtiaz Ahmad and Helmut Reifeld, eds., Lived Islam in South Asia: adaptation, accommodation and conflict (Delhi, 2004), pp. 187–208 Daftary, Farhad, The Isma‘ilis: their history and doctrines (Cambridge, 1990) Dalmia, Vasudha, The nationalisation of Hindu traditions: Bharatendu Harischandra and nineteenth-century Banaras (Delhi, 1996) Deeb, Lara, An enchanted modern: gender and public piety in Shi‘i Lebanon (Princeton, 2006) Devji, Faisal, Landscapes of the jihad: militancy, morality, modernity (London, 2005) Dirks, Nicholas, Castes of mind: colonialism and the making of modern India (Princeton, 2001) Dodson, Michael, ‘Jaunpur, ruination and conservation during the colonial era’, in Indra Sengupta and Daud Ali, eds., Knowledge production, pedagogy and institutions in colonial India (New York, forthcoming (2011)) Eaton, Richard, Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700: social roles of Sufis in medieval India (Princeton, 1978) Eccel, Christopher, Egypt, Islam and social change: al-Azhar in conflict and accommodation (Berlin, 1984) Eickelman, Dale F., ‘Mass higher education and the religious imagination in contemporary Arab societies’, American Ethnologist 19, 4 (1992), pp. 643–55 Eickelman, Dale and James Piscatori, Muslim politics (Princeton, 1996) Enayat, Hamid, Modern Islamic political thought: the response of the Shi‘i and Sunni Muslims to the twentieth century (London, 1982) Ende, Werner, ‘The flagellations of Muharram and the Shi‘ite ‘ulama’’, in Paul Luft and Colin Turner, eds., Shi‘ism: critical concepts in Islamic studies (Abingdon, 2008), vol. III, pp. 33–49. ‘Iraq in World War I: the Turks, the Germans and the Shi’ite Mujtahids’ call for jihad’, in Rudolph Peters, ed., Proceedings of the Ninth Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants (Leiden, 1981), pp. 57–71 ‘Sunni polemical writings on the Shi’a and the Iranian Revolution’, in David Menashri, ed., The Iranian revolution and the Muslim world (Boulder, 1990), pp. 219–32

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Ewing, Katherine, ‘The politics of Sufism: redefining the saints in Pakistan’, Journal of Asian Studies 42, 2 (1983), pp. 251–68 Fattah, Hala, ‘Islamic universalism and the construction of regional identity in turn of the century Basra: Sheikh Ibrahim Haidari’s book revisited’, in Leila Tarazi Fawaz and C. A. Bayly, eds., Modernity and culture: from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (New York, 2002), pp. 112–29 Finke, Roger, ‘The consequences of religious competition: supply-side explanations for religious change’, in Lawrence Young, ed., Rational choice theory and religion: summary and assessment (New York, 1997), pp. 45–64. Fischer, Michael, Iran: from religious dispute to revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1980) Fisher, Michael, A clash of cultures: Awadh, the British and the Mughals (Delhi, 1987) Forward, Martin, The failure of Islamic modernism? Syed Ameer Ali’s interpretation of Islam (Berne, 1999) Freitag, Sandria, ‘Ambiguous public arenas and coherent personal practice: Kanpur Muslims 1913–1931’, in Katherine Ewing, ed., Shari’at and ambiguity in South Asian Islam (Delhi, 1988), pp. 143–63 Collective action and community: public arenas and the emergence of communalism in colonial north India (Berkeley, 1989) Friedmann, Yohanan, ‘The attitude of the Jami‘yyat-i ‘Ulama-i Hind to the Indian national movement and the establishment of Pakistan’, in Mushirul Hasan, ed., Inventing boundaries: gender, politics and the partition of India (Delhi, 2000), pp. 157–77 Prophecy continuous: aspects of Ahmadi religious thought and its medieval background (Delhi, 1989) Ganju, Sarojini, ‘The Muslims of Lucknow, 1919–1939’, in Kenneth Ballhatchet and John Harrison, eds., The city in South Asia: pre-modern and modern (London, 1980), pp. 279–99 Gilmartin, David, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the making of Pakistan (Delhi, 1989) Gooptu, Nandini, The politics of the urban poor in early twentieth century India (Cambridge, 2001) Gould, William, Hindu nationalism and the language of politics in late colonial India (Cambridge, 2004) Graff, Violette, ed., Lucknow: memories of a city (Delhi, 1997) Hardy, Peter, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge, 1972) Haroon, Sana, ‘The rise of Deobandi Islam in the North-West Frontier Province and its implications in colonial India and Pakistan, 1914–1996’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 18, 1 (2008), pp. 47–70 Hartung, Jan-Peter, ‘Affection and aversion: ambivalences among Muslim intellectual elites in contemporary South Asia’, South Asia Research 21, 2 (2001), pp. 189–202 ‘The Nadwat al-‘Ulama’: chief patron of madrasa education in India and a turntable to the Arab world’, in Jan-Peter Hartung and Helmut Reifeld, eds., Islamic education, diversity and national identity: Dini madaris in India post 9/11 (Delhi, 2006), pp. 135–57 Hasan, Amir, Palace culture of Lucknow (Delhi, 1983) Hasan, Mushirul, Nationalism and communal politics in India, 1916–1928 (Delhi, 1991)

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Index

‘Abaqa¯t ul-Anwa¯r, 53–4, 59, 243–5, 254 ‘Abbas, Hazrat, 82, 108, 109, 110, 213 ‘Abbas, Mirza Muhammad (mufti), 2, 35, 47, 244, 248, 249 ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz, Shah, 52, 54, 55, 67 ‘Abd ul-Bari (Firangi Mahal), 176, 181, 205 ‘Abd ul-Hamid II (Ottoman Sultan), 149 ‘Abd ul-Majeed (Firangi Mahal), 107 ‘Abd ul-Mughni, Muhammad (Firangi Mahal), 107 ‘Abd ul-Shakoor (Farooqi), 189–9, 191, 206, 208, 209, 213, 218, 240 ‘Abd ul-Shakoor (Kakorwi), 69–70, 89–90, 102, 104–5 Abduh Mahammad, 25 Abul Hasan, Sayyid (mujtahid), 34, 35, 42, 46, 248 adab, 6, 123 advice literature, 30, 61–6 al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din, 148–9 Afghanistan, 143 Africa Shi‘ism in, 44, 65, 248 Aga Khan Aga Khan I Hasan ‘Ali Shah, 6 Aga Khan III Sultan Muhammad Shah, 26 Agha Haider (bar-at-law), 155, 157 Agra, 68, 76, 110, 197, 244, 245 Ahl-i-Hadis movement, 21, 56, 69, 154 Ahmad ‘Ali (maulvi), 3 Ahmad Hindi, Sayyid (mujtahid), 135 Ahmad Husain, Shaikh (ta’luqdar), 175 Ahmad Khan, Sayyid, 26, 69, 114, 139, 142, 151, 153, 155, 160, 244 Ahmadi movement, 21, 23, 170, 190, 235, 236, 240 Ahmadnagar, 5 Ahrars. See Majlis-i-Ahrar al-Ahs’i, Shaikh Ahmad, 108–9, 238 ajlaf (indigenous castes), 7, 66

Akhbar ul-Akhiyar, 155 Akhbari Shi‘ism, 71, 231 Akhbar-i-Imamiya, Lucknow, 175 akhlaq, See advice literature al-Azhar, Cairo, 24, 25 ‘Ali (Imam), 7, 57, 63, 68, 78, 79, 98, 112, 175, 180, 192, 194, 212, 218, 233 ‘Ali Naqi Naqvi, Sayyid (mujtahid), 64, 208–14, 216, 220, 223, 247 ‘Ali Zaheer, Sayyid, 196, 200 Aligarh. See also, Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College town, 192 Aligarh Movement, 31, 56, 69, 114, 147, 148, 153–65, 169, 183, 184, 212, 244, 247, 249 All India Muslim League, 26, 117, 119, 151, 196, 199, 201 All India Shi‘a Conference, 3, 76, 115, 117–123, 125, 128, 130, 132, 135, 137–9, 142–4, 145, 157–9, 160, 176, 177, 180, 210, 247, 249 Intizamiya Committee, 143 Waqf Committee, 128–31, 133, 141 All India Shi‘a Personal Law Board, 234–5 Allahabad, 8, 10, 12, 13, 75, 79, 80, 100, 122, 131, 143, 157, 159, 169, 178, 179, 191, 193, 196, 197, 203, 236 Allsop Committee (1937), 193 Ambala, 43 Ameer ‘Ali Khan, Munshi, 167 Ameer ‘Ali, Sayyid, 132, 152, 174 Amjad ‘Ali Khan (of Amroha), 60 Amjad ‘Ali Shah (Nawab), 33, 130 Amroha, 11, 60, 80, 97, 98, 122, 139, 143, 158, 249 dargahs in, 110

267

268

Index

Amroha (cont.) imambaras in, 76–7 madrasas in, 39, 249 Shi‘a-Sunni debates in, 68, 79, 90, 100. See also, Sharf-ud-din ‘Ali Amrohawi, Zafar Hasan Naqvi, 39, 241 Anis, Mir, 83 Anjuman ul-Irkan, 116, 179 Anjuman-i-Khuddam-i-Ka‘aba, 176, 181 Anjuman-i-Mu‘in-us-Za’irin, Agra, 76 Anjuman-i-Muhammadi, 116, 158 Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor, 45–7, 57, 60, 101, 117–9, 141, 156, 157, 245, 247, 249 Anjuman-i-Sadr-ul-Sadoor, Lucknow, 45 Anjuman-i-Tahaffuz-i-Namoos-i-Sahaba, 192, 217, 218 anjumans (Shi‘a), 45, 76, 115–25, 138, 140, 142, 144–6, 155, 176, 181, 190, 196, 198, 203, 206, 209, 210, 231 post-1947, 233, 235, 236 pre-1857, 115–16 Aqa Hasan, Sayyid (mujtahid), 34, 45, 47, 66, 102, 106, 119–21, 123, 156–7, 161, 164, 176, 178, 181, 207, 224, 246–7 Arabic (language), 29, 30, 33, 36, 52, 59, 60 education in, 86, 118 literature in, 60, 63, 67, 82, 85, 210, 244 recitation in, 85 Arya Samaj, 120, 139 Asafi Masjid, Lucknow, 2, 44, 79, 80, 130, 157, 181, 246 Asaf-ud-daula (Nawab), 131 imambara, 2, 35, 44, 126, 194–5, 246 Asghar Husain (Tanzim ul-Mominin), 213 ‘Ashra, 92, 103, 193 ashraf (Muslim nobility), 6–7, 12–5, 18, 30, 43, 58, 61, 62, 66, 68, 72, 77, 89, 114, 125, 126, 157, 162, 172, 206, 225, 226, 229, 236 ‘Ashura, 15, 92, 95, 97, 100–2, 104, 110 ‘associational Shi‘ism’, 116, 121, 123, 124, 138, 142, 144, 145 ‘associational Shi‘ism’, 125, 227 ‘Atabat-i-‘Aliyat (in Iraq), 17–8, 20, 40, 54, 72, 134–6, 181. See also, Najaf, Karbala Awadh annexation of, 2–3, 17, 166

Court of, 8, 10, 12, 37, 42, 50, 99, 126, 157, 229 mufti of, 35, 45, 248 post-annexation, 36 religious education in, 54, 55 Shi‘ism in, 6, 13, 18, 41, 98, 246 State of, 1, 6, 123 ‘ulama of, 41, 42, 47, 109 Awadh Bequest, 34, 40, 133–7, 145, 227, 247 Azad, Abul Kalam, 199, 204 azadari (mourning), 92, 97, 98, 99, 106, 108, 122, 125, 126, 129, 191, 192, 215, 220, 233, 237, 238 Azamgarh, 122 azan, 79–80, 100, 106, 112, 246 Bab ul-‘ilm, Nauganwan Sadat, 39 Bab-ul-‘ulum, Multan, 38 Badaun, 128 Bahraich, 10, 128, 243 Baku, Azerbaijan, 181 Banda Husain, Sayyid (maulvi), 154 Barabanki, 10, 15, 97, 111, 119, 197, 210, 243 Baragaon, Jaunpur, 10 Bara-Wafat, 192, 194, 197, 199, 218 Bareilly, 11, 33, 122, 128, 246 Barelwi movement, 16, 21, 33, 56, 57, 68, 69, 107, 219, 235 Barelwi, Ahmad Raza Khan, 16, 56 Barha, sayyids of, 11, 68, 110, 122, 124, 158, 160 ‘bayan’, 191 Behra Sadat, Muzaffarnagar, 11, 68 Benares, 38, 39, 122, 175, 248 Bengal, 2, 5, 65, 117, 122, 143 Bhagalpur, Bihar, 39 Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS), 233 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). See Bharatiya Jan Sangh Bhatwamau, ta‘luqdar of, 166 bid‘a (innovation), 79 Bihar, 65, 118 Bilgram, 141 sayyids of, 11, 196 town, 97 Bilgrami, Sayyid Husain (‘‘Imad ul-Mulk’), 154, 156 Birjis Qadar Mirza, 166 Bombay, 5, 65, 108, 118, 156, 181, 182

Index Britain (Muslims in), 44, 174 Bulandshehr, 69, 176, 240, 250 Bulbula, Mirza Muhammad Rahim (of Baku), 180–2 Calcutta, 43, 161, 167, 168, 174, 248 Caliphate ecumenical interpretations of, 174 institution of, 53, 68, 212 Ottoman, 149, 150, 172, 175, 176 in Shi‘a-Sunni polemic, 67, 178 call to prayer. See azan Cantwell Smith, William, 152 caste, 65, 66, 117, 124, 139, 140 Census of India, 7, 13, 128 Central Muhammadan Association, 133 charity, 31, 61, 95, 117, 119, 120–1, 136, 138, 142, 144, 225 Chauk, Lucknow, 35, 99, 203, 206, 213 Chiragh ‘Ali, 152, 169, 173 Chishtiya (Sufi order), 5, 109 Christians, 88, 141 groups in India, 142 missionaries, 88, 120 Shi‘a relations with, 168, 169 civil disobedience movement, 192, 194, 195, 200, 219 communalism, 23, 191, 231 conversion (between religions), 10, 64–6, 69, 71, 86, 89, 154, 173, 191, 192, 250 conversion (religious). See proselytization cosmopolitanism (Muslim), 14, 241 in Awadh, 14 in Lucknow, 14, 15, 95, 142, 242 courtesans, 62 Dabir, Mirza Salamat ‘Ali, 83 Daliganj, Lucknow, 79, 80 Dar-ul-Muballighin, Lucknow, 188, 191, 192, 193, 203, 206, 209, 219 Dar-ul-Tarjuma, Lucknow, 60 Dar-ul-Zikr, Lucknow, 46 dargahs, Shi‘a attendance at, 109–10 Dariyabad, Allahabad, 10 dars-i-kharij, 39, 223 Dars-i-Nizamiya, 34, 37, 52, 54 Dau’di Bohra, 6 Deccan Shi‘ism in, 4 Dehlawi, Mirza Muhammad Kamil, 53 Dehlawi, Sayyid Muhammad (Maulana), 241

269

Delhi, 98, 212 Deoband and other Sunni schools, 57, 218–9 and Shi‘ism, 55, 57, 165 and the Khilafat Movement, 173 madrasa at, 16, 33, 37, 55, 107, 156 ‘ulama of, 21, 45, 55, 56, 62, 68, 69, 154, 187–8, 189, 194, 220, 239, 240 Deorhi Agha Mir, Lucknow, 191, 206 Dewa Sharif, Barabanki, 15 ‘Dhakko’ Shi‘ism, 237 duldul, 98, 100 East India Company, 1, 125, 133 ecumenism in Islam (taqrib), 24–6, 141, 148, 152, 153, 164, 173, 174, 183, 212 education, 117 Fatima (daughter of the Prophet), 62, 98, 108 fatwa, 21, 59, 79, 132, 149, 154, 165, 168, 178 fiqh, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 52, 54, 55, 57, 69, 72, 244, 248 Firangi Mahal, Lucknow, 14, 37, 54, 55, 57, 69, 95, 107, 173, 205, 207, 245 Firman ‘Ali (maulvi), 59 flagellation. See matam Friday prayers, 41, 80, 192, 246 funeral practice, 116 Fyzabad, 10, 38, 87, 90, 98, 137, 197, 210 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 160, 178, 200, 202, 204 Gaya, 100, 105 General Islamic Conference (1931), 150 Ghazanfar, Sayyid ‘Ali, 119 Ghazi ud-din Haider (Nawab), 126, 133 Ghazipur, 122, 140, 174, 175 Ghufran-i-Maab imambara, 45, 76 Ghulam Hasnain Kintori (Maulana), 34, 56, 60, 155, 244–5 Ghulam ul-Saqlain, Sayyid, 119, 157 Gokhale, Gopal Krishna, 117 Golconda, 5 Gorakhpur, imambara of, 131–2 graveyards, 80, 114 Greco-Turkish war (1897), 175 Gujarat, 65

270

Index

Hadi, Sayyid Muhammad, 124 hadis, 36, 37, 52–5, 57, 59, 61, 68, 69, 72, 82, 85, 244 Shi‘a and Sunni differences in, 52 Haider Mehdi, Sayyid (bar-at-law), 178, 196, 202 Hali, Altaf Husain, 25 Hamid ‘Ali Khan (bar-at-law), 119, 156 Hamid Husain, Mir (mujtahid), 42, 53–5, 58, 67, 76, 225, 243–5 Hanafi Sunni, 16, 37, 54, 56, 57 Haq Nawaz Jhangwi, 235 Hardinge, Charles (Viceroy), 162 Hardoi, 11, 122, 210 Hasan (Imam), 63, 98, 108, 112 Hasan al-‘Askari (Imam), 97 hawza, 39, 40, 228, 246 Hawza-i-‘Ilmiya Wasiqa, Fyzabad, 38 Hazratganj, Lucknow, 100, 130, 206 Hindi, Sayyid Ahmad (mujtahid), 38, 135, 137, 247 Hindu-Muslim conflict. See communalism Hindustani Shi‘ism, 20, 93–4, 142, 143, 227–8 Hunter, William Wilson (ICS), 167–9 Husain (Imam), 2, 5, 14, 37, 63–4, 66, 74, 82, 85, 86, 88, 91, 92, 94–5, 98, 100, 103, 107, 108, 112, 209, 212–13, 216 Husainabad High School, Lucknow, 129 Husainabad Trust, 34, 35, 92, 99, 125–6, 129–30, 133, 210 Husainabad, Lucknow, 99 Hyderabad, 44, 118, 143, 169, 210, 222 Nizam of, 89, 244 ‘ibadat (worship), 61 ijazat, 34, 38, 40, 43, 51, 209, 244–9 ijtihad, 43, 154 Imamate, 53, 54, 71, 174 imambara, 15, 42, 75, 82, 86, 112, 119, 125, 126 construction or refurbishment of, 75–7, 116 of Amroha, 76–7 of Lucknow, 2, 14, 75–6, 98, 99, 130, 210, 247 social functions of, 77–8 Imamiya Educational Congress, 155 Imamiya Mission, Lucknow, 208–13, 214, 231, 247 Imam-ul-Madaris, Amroha, 39

imamzada, 76 ‘Indian fund’, 34, 40, 133 Indian National Congress, 117, 155, 158, 190, 192, 194, 196, 199, 200, 204, 220, 233, 245 Ministry period (1937–39), 194, 200, 204 and sectarian conflict, 200–02, 233 ‘Indo-Persian milieu’, 18, 20, 30 instructive writing. See advice literature Iqbal, Muhammad, 25, 26, 138 Iran, 16, 17, 143, 149 Constitutional Revolution (1906–11), 41, 48, 177 links with India, 3, 18 Perso-Russian wars (1808–13, 1826–28), 165 Qajar Iran, 49, 78, 134 Safavid, 34, 40, 78 Shi‘ism in, 76, 98, 109, 142, 224 since 1979, 223, 239 Tobacco Concession Protests (1891–2), 48, 149, 165 ‘ulama in, 47, 48, 107, 149, 165, 179, 227 Iranianization of Shi‘ism, 223 Iraq. See also, ‘Atabat-i-‘Aliyat, Najaf, karbala British Mandate in, 41, 49, 137, 150, 166 Indian attitudes to, 177 Indians resident in, 137 nationalism in, 150, 173, 245 Ottoman rule in, 149 religious education in, 34, 35, 39, 41, 72, 245 revolt (1920), 41, 150, 166, 245 Shi‘ism in, 16, 17, 142, 224, 227 travel to and from, 3, 34, 40–2, 54, 126, 133, 223, 244, 248 ‘ulama in, 24, 33, 107, 111, 135, 137, 179, 180, 223, 247 ‘Ishaq Khan, Muhammad (Aligarh College), 159 Isma‘ili Shi‘ism, 6, 26, 65, 71, 118 Isna ‘Ashari, 6, 53, 65, 118, 181 Ittehad (newspaper), 115, 139, 159, 170, 175, 176 ‘izzat, 6, 64, 123 Ja‘far Husain, Mufti, 240 Jam‘iat-i-‘Ulama-i-Hind, 187, 204 Jama‘at-i-Islami, 26

Index Jama‘at-i-Tahaffuz-i-Millat, 188, 219 Jami‘a Imamiya, Karachi, 39 Jansath, 11. See also, Muzaffar ‘Ali khan Jauhar, Sayyid Mujahid Husain (Ittehad), 139 Jauhari muhalla, Lucknow, 45, 75 Jaunpur, 10, 13, 38, 59, 61, 79, 80, 87, 98, 100, 137, 143, 171, 175, 178, 236 Jaunpuri, Sayyid ‘Ali (maulvi), 89 Jawad Husain, Shaikh (maulvi), 39, 241 Jhang, Punjab, 236, 237 jihad, 31, 148, 150, 165–72, 175–8, 180, 183, 184, 201 Jinnah, Muhammad ‘Ali, 133, 152, 201 Kakori, 69, 197, 206 Takiya Sharif, 15 kalam, 36, 55, 244 Kalb-i-‘Abbas, Sayyid, 196 Kalb-i-Husain, Sayyid (mujtahid), 196 Kanpur, 175, 198, 248 Kanpur mosque agitation (1913), 152, 169–70, 175 Karachi, 39, 235, 236 Karamat Husain, Sayyid, 154, 244 Kararvi, Najm ul-Hasan (maulvi), 39, 241 Karbala (in Iraq), 17, 40, 41, 133, 134, 137, 175, 247 battle of, 5, 64, 98 imagery of, 65 Indians in, 40 martyrs of, 74, 91, 216 narration of, 37, 81, 82, 85 Karbala paradigm, 92, 94, 166 karbala (burial ground), 92, 95, 100, 101, 102, 104, 106, 189 Kashmir, 44, 65, 94, 190 Kashmiri, Sayyid Mustafa (Maulana), 137 Kazimain, Lucknow, 8 ‘Khalifa bila fasil’, 79, 80, 116. See also, azan Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri (Deobandi), 69 al-Khalisi Shaikh Mehdi (Ayatollah), 150 Khandan-i-Ijtihad (family of ‘ulama), 41, 44, 135, 154, 166, 208, 216, 246–8 ‘khariji’s, 71, 192, 218 khatib/ khutbah. See sermonizing

271

Khilafat Movement, 148, 152, 160, 172, 173, 178, 179, 182, 187, 188, 190, 205, 207, 220, 248, 262 Shi‘a responses to, 180–2 ul-Khoe’i, ‘Abd ul–Qasim (Ayatollah), 223 Khojas, 65, 181–2 khums (tax), 41, 123 khwani (recitations), 14, 82, 83 Kifayat Husain, Hafiz (Maulana), 240–1 Kintor, Barabanki, 10, 243 Kufa mosque, Lucknow, 245 kulah cap, 114 Lahore, 39, 43, 160, 210 landholdings, 1, 2, 10–2, 42, 50, 77, 119, 126, 222 See zamindari Lashkar-i-Jhangwi, Pakistan, 235 Lebanon, 16, 24, 49, 150 Liaquat ‘Ali (maulvi), 169 Lucknow changing religious leadership in, 205–8 colonial history of, 153, 204 cosmopolitanism of, 13–15, 95, 241 effects of Rebellion in, 2, 75 geography of, 75, 80, 92, 99 legacies of, 241–2 public life in, 116, 118 religious education in, 33–5 as a Shi‘a centre, 39, 65, 122, 138, 143, 197–8, 228 Shi‘a society in, 7–8, 12, 46, 114–7, 129–30 Machhlishehr, Jaunpur, 10, 122 Madani, Husain Ahmad (of Deoband), 142, 194, 201, 204, 219 ‘Madani group’ of ‘ulama, 239 madh-i-sahaba, 102, 103, 104, 107, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 197, 198, 200, 220 agitation, 31, 192–5, 198–202, 218, 219, 221, 239 post-1947, 232 Madras, 94, 143 Madrasa Hifz ul-Qur’an, Delhi, 156 Madrasa Imamiya, Benares, 38 Madrasa Imaniya, Lucknow, 34, 154 Madrasa Nasiriya, Jaunpur, 38 Madrasa Nazimiya, Lucknow, 35, 38, 39, 55, 59, 89, 247–9 Madrasa Suleimaniya, Patna, 38 Madrasa-i-‘Aliya, Rampur, 39, 56, 250

272

Index

Madrasa-i-Shahi, Lucknow, 33, 37, 248 madrasas (Shi‘a), 4, 32–41, 44, 46, 47, 58, 65, 72, 73, 75, 81, 86, 107, 110, 118, 121, 125, 139, 155, 224, 226, 228, 229, 240, 242 curricula of, 37, 55, 72 in Pakistan, 237, 238 post-1947, 222, 223 Madrasa’t ul-Wa‘izin, Lucknow, 39–40, 65–6, 188, 191, 249 Mahmudabad Rajas of, 10, 166, 222, 244 Raja Muhammad ‘Ali Muhammad of, 39, 119, 152, 154, 155, 163, 182, 183, 244 Raja Muhammad Amir Ahmad Khan of, 26, 88, 145 town of, 95, 109 majlis, 5, 77, 81–8, 91, 92, 95, 98–101, 112, 114, 126, 190, 213, 216, 222, 231, 245, 249, 250 Majlisi, Muhammad Baqir (Ayatollah), 60, 61 Majlis-i-Ahrar movement (Ahrars), 189–92, 194, 197, 200–2, 204, 206, 213, 217–9, 239 Malihabad, 197, 206 Maqbool Ahmad Dehlawi (Haji), 59, 61, 86–7, 89, 90, 101, 107, 109, 250 marja‘, 43, 223, 227, 247 marja‘ ul-taqlid, 43–4, 223, 245 marketplace religion, 73, 74, 106, 228 marriage Shi‘a-Sunni, 14 marriage (Muslim), 7, 61, 93, 234 Shi‘a marriage (mut‘a), 68, 69 marsiya, 5, 14, 63, 82, 83, 85, 93, 95, 110 martyr. See Karbala; martyrs of Mashhad, Iran, 173, 177 maslak, 21, 23, 56–8, 140, 219, 226, 230 matam (flagellation), 92, 98, 107, 108 Mawdudi, Abul Ala, 26 Mazar-i-Shahid-i-Salis, Agra, 76, 110 Meerut, 11, 59, 158, 178, 192, 244 Madrasa Mansabiya, 34, 130 Mehdi (Twelfth Imam), 155, 165, 168, 178 Mehdi ‘Ali Khan (Mohsin ul-Mulk), 69, 154–6 Mehdi Hasan Khan (nawab), 35 mehendi procession, 93–4, 98 Meston, James (Lieutenant Governor of UP), 162, 176, 251

Metiaburj, Bengal, 2, 42, 43, 46, 122, 168, 248 minhaj, 54, 225 miracles, 63, 108, 110 Mirza Muhammad ‘Ali (Maulana), 108 ‘Modernist’ Islam, 16, 17, 24–7, 148, 152, 153, 183, 184, 226, 229 Moradabad, 11, 12, 59, 107, 128, 158, 236 mosques, 2, 42, 75, 76, 78–80, 106, 112, 116, 119, 125, 126, 130 Moussawi Hindi, Sayyid Ahmad, 243 Muftiganj, Lucknow, 124 muhajir community, Pakistan, 237, 240, 241 Muhammad ‘Ali Shah (Nawab), 125 Muhammad Akram Khan, 26 Muhammad ‘Ali Jauhar, 173, 181 See Shaukat ‘Ali Jauhar Muhammad Baqir Rizvi, Sayyid (mujtahid), 34, 35, 47, 79, 106, 178, 207, 224, 248 Muhammad Ibrahim, Sayyid (mujtahid), 44, 47, 79, 106, 155, 246 Muhammad Naseer, Sayyid (mujtahid), 44, 196, 208, 214–6, 220, 223, 240, 245–6 Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, Aligarh, 16, 26, 56, 151–65, 244. See also, Aligarh Muhammadan Educational Conference, 153, 155–8, 161 Muharram, 14, 73, 74, 75, 76, 91–105, 112, 126, 159, 170 in Lucknow, 2, 92, 95, 97–9, 122, 190–1 observance of, 107–10, 222, 231 participation in, 5, 14, 15, 112, 114, 237 riots, 14, 21, 22, 193, 233, 236 Sunni observance, 94–5, 191, 218 mujtahid identification of, 42–3, 83, 137, 165, 171 in Iraq, 33, 111, 133–5 of Lucknow, 3, 7, 41–51, 72, 80, 81, 87, 88, 106, 110–1, 136, 143, 155, 181, 224, 227, 229, 243–50 in modern South Asia, 223, 247 political roles of, 91, 178–80, 182, 217 social roles of, 119, 156 mujtahid-ul-‘asr-ul-zaman, 40 Multan, 38 munazara, 21, 24, 31, 55, 57, 66–71, 81, 88, 112, 188, 190, 205, 210, 213, 214, 219, 227 functional role of, 70–1, 91, 214, 230

Index overlap with socio-political debate, 158, 177, 178, 184 polemical writing, 52–4, 209 spoken debate, 91 Sunni confutations of Shi‘ism, 69–70 within majlis, 87 muqallid, 35, 43, 46, 47, 223, 245, 246, 248, 249 See taqlid Musaddas-i-mad-va-jazr-i-Isla¯m. See Hali, Altaf Husain Mushtaq Husain Naqvi, 241 music, 82, 160 Muslim nationalism (in India), 153, 178, 183 Muslim separatism, 148, 151, 153, 184, 185 Mutalabat Committee, Pakistan, 241 Muzaffar ‘Ali Khan of Jansath, 130, 160, 170, 175 Muzaffarnagar, 11, 130, 198 Nadwa’t ul-‘Ulama, Lucknow, 16, 33, 55–7, 107, 139, 159, 165, 206, 207, 240 Nagina, Bijnor, 68, 128, 158 Najaf. See also, ‘Atabat-i-‘Aliyat as a scholarly centre, 17, 33, 34, 39, 41, 43, 54, 208, 223, 246, 247 shrine of ‘Ali at, 180–2 travel to and from, 3, 133, 247 treasures of, 175 ‘ulama of, 35, 40, 47, 133, 149, 179, 223, 245, 246 Najm ul-Hasan, Sayyid (mujtahid), 34, 35, 39, 45, 47, 119, 161, 176, 179, 207, 224, 241, 248, 249 Nakhhas, Lucknow, 203 Nasir Husain, Sayyid (mujtahid), 20, 34, 43, 44, 45, 47, 54, 76, 109, 119, 154, 161, 178, 179, 181, 196, 207, 208, 224, 245, 248, 249 Nasirabad, Rae Bareili, 10, 246 Nasirabadi, Dildar ‘Ali (mujtahid), 41, 52, 53, 60, 109, 245, 246 Nasirabadi, Sayyid ‘Ali Muhammad, 155 Nasirabadi, Sayyid Muhammad (mujtahid), 41 Nauganwan Sadat, Moradabad, 39 Nawabs of Awadh, 1, 14, 33, 51, 172, 229, 244, 246

273

descendants of, 35, 46, 50, 116, 119, 126, 129, 129, 196, 215 Nawal Kishore, Lucknow, 59, 85 Nechri (materialist), 56, 155, 156 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 202, 204 ‘neighbourhood leaderships’, 75, 80, 81, 99, 111 ‘new religious intellectuals’ 19 Newmarch, Major (British resident in Baghdad, 134–5, 137 Nishapur, Iran, 1, 243 Nishapuri, Mirza Muhammad Akhbari, 53 non-cooperation movement, 179, 180, 187 Nor ul-Madaris, Amroha, 39 North Western Provinces, 107, 241 Nor-ullah Shastri, Qazi, 76 Numani, Shibli, 56 objectification (of religions), 32, 225 oratory. See sermonizing Orientalism, 13, 18 orphanages, 3, 123, 142, 182 See Shi‘a Orphanage, Lucknow Ottoman rule, 126, 142, 149, 173–6 rule in Iraq, 17, 41, 134, 149, 175 rule in the Hedjaz, 176 Sultan, 135, 172, 173, 175 Pakistan, 126, 222 Islamization of, 238, 239 sectarianism in, 23, 105, 157, 190, 207, 232, 235–41 pan-Arabism, 150 pan-Islam, 31, 135, 142, 148, 151, 153, 162, 172–84, 207, 227 panjetani, 98, 102 passion plays, 98 Patanala, Lucknow, 203 Patna, 38, 143, 213, 248 Persian (language), 29, 30, 36, 59, 60, 118 literature in, 51, 52, 60, 63, 67, 82, 244 recitations in, 82, 85–6 Peshawar, 39, 65, 210 peshnamaz (prayer leader), 44–7, 73, 79, 155, 157, 181, 245, 246 Phulkatora, Lucknow, 102 Piggott Committee Report (1909), 105, 189, 193

274

Index

pilgrimage, 17, 20, 29, 34, 41, 76, 126, 133, 136 Pirpur, Rajas of, 119 plague restrictions, 40 polemic. See munazara printing and publishing (Shi‘a), 3, 19, 30, 46, 58–65, 116, 118, 142, 194, 205, 209–10, 229 Prophet Muhammad, 5, 6, 7, 27, 52, 62, 67, 68, 70, 82, 87, 89, 93, 94, 98, 108, 124, 155, 172, 178, 192, 194, 212, 218 proselytization, 32, 58–66, 71, 231. See also, conversion public sphere, 29 of north India, 28–30, 45, 69, 71, 73, 87, 106, 111, 116, 144, 147 of north India, post-1947, 233 of Lucknow, 19, 51, 81 Punjab, 5, 65, 118, 122, 143, 189, 190, 197, 198, 235, 236 shrines in, 126 Qa’imat-ud-din, Muhammad ‘Ali (mufti), 46 Qaiserbagh, Lucknow, 206 qasbas, 125, 145 Muslim society in, 15–16, 125 Shi‘a society in, 12, 15–16, 95, 145 qaum (Shi‘a), 138–44, 145, 153, 177, 185, 227 Qizilbash, Fateh ‘Ali Khan, 160, 163, 182 Qom, Iran, 17, 223, 227 Quli Khan, Sayyid Muhammad (mujtahid), 53, 244 Rae Bareili, 10, 198, 206, 210, 218, 246 Rampur Nawabs of, 39, 222, 249 Nawab Hamid ‘Ali Khan of, 119, 154, 161, 163, 250 town, 56, 87, 173, 197, 249 rational disciplines (ma‘qulat), 37, 52, 54, 245 Raza ‘Ali, Sayyid, 154, 178, 180, 183 Rebellion (1857) aftermath of, 1–3, 19, 77, 248 Muslim role in, 24, 169, 172 received disciplines (manqulat), 37, 52, 245 Religious Endowments Act (1863), 78, 127 Rifah-i-‘Am, Lucknow, 118 Rohilkhand, 6, 10, 47, 94, 119, 158 Rohilla, 12 Rumi Darwaza, Lucknow, 35

Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), 174 Rustamnagar, Lucknow, 76 Sa‘adat ‘Ali Khan (Nawab), 33 Safdar Husain Jalali (maulvi), 39 Saharanpur, 11, 107, 155 Sakina (daughter of Imam Husain), 82, 93, 97 Samar Husain, 39 satyagraha (non-violent protest), 200. See also, civil disobedience Saudi Arabia, 239 sayyid, 7, 32, 37, 47, 140, 145 See ashraf ancestry in Shi‘ism, 10, 14, 32, 51, 66, 93–4, 105 and charity, 116, 120, 124 Muharram practice of, 82, 97, 110 polemic against, 70, 158 Sayyid Aqa (maulvi), 79 Sayyid Karamat Husain, 154, 244 sectarianism, 4, 20–9, 52, 86–91, 206–7, 229–31 in the 1940s, 199 and inner-Shi‘a contestation, 105–13, 183, 215–20, 231–2, 234–5, 237–8 and inner-Sunni contestation, 57, 217–19 and Muharram conflict, 100–5, 232–3 as organizational separation, 141, 144 in Pakistan. See Pakistan, sectarianism in in politics, 147, 183–5, 197, 234, 236 and public disputes, 131, 158, 159, 165, 178 as religious debate, 71, 72, 86–91, 188 sectarian violence, 79, 186, 193 as social conflict, 199–204, 220–1 sermonizing, 14, 65, 73, 81–6, 91, 106, 113, 213, 238, 249, 250 Servants of India, 117 Shah Mina dargah, Lucknow, 109, 205 Shah Najaf, 126 imambara, 126 Trust, 210 Shahı¯ d-i-insa¯nı¯ yat, 64, 212, 216 ‘Shaikhi’ practice, 108, 109, 238 Sharar, ‘Abd ul-Halim, 14, 82, 108, 114, 115, 124 Sharf-ud-din ‘Ali, Shah Wilayat (of Amroha), 11, 15, 110 Sharif Husain of Mecca, 176 Shaukat ‘Ali Jauhar, 173, 207 Shi‘a Boarding House, Lucknow, 121, 141

Index Shi‘a College, Lucknow, 160–5, 180, 247, 249 Shi‘a Muslims as a community, 51, 72, 115, 121, 128, 131, 132, 138–44, 152 disputes among, 112, 228 noble roots of, 7, 12–13 as a religious minority, 2, 13, 27, 150, 151, 152, 164, 184, 226 ties to Awadh, 16–17, 118 Shi‘a Orphanage, Lucknow, 120–1, 124, 129, 141, 142 Shi‘a Political Conference, 196, 200 ‘Shi‘i International’ 17, 20, 41, 223 Shi‘ism after 1947, 222 as an ‘establishment religion’, 19, 41, 74, 75, 99, 172, 226, 229, 231 as an Indian religion, 94, 142, 145 as Indo-Persian religion, 12, 29, 59, 227 in Indian subcontinent, 5, 227–8 as a Muslim ‘subculture’, 13 and political quietism, 171, 172, 177 as a religious system, 54, 58, 72, 225, 226 transformation in, 16, 18–20, 74, 81, 106, 125, 147, 224, 226–7 al-Shirazi, Mirza Hasan (Ayatollah), 48, 149 al-Shirazi, Muhammad Taqi (Ayatollah), 150, 180 shuddhi movement, 65, 187, 191 Sibtainabad Trust, 130 Sibte Hasan, Sayyid (maulvi), 83–5, 90, 160, 207, 249 Sindh, 5, 237 Sipah-i-Sahaba, Pakistan, 235, 240 Sistani, ‘Ali (Ayatollah), 223 Sitapur, 10, 69, 218 Siwan, Bihar, 43 social work. See charity Sufism, 5, 15, 64, 95, 108, 109, 205, 218, 219 Shi‘a critiques of, 109 Shi‘a participation in, 110 Sugar Company, Lucknow, 121 Sultan Ahmad (Tanzim ul-Mominin), 213 Sultan ul-Madaris, Lucknow, 35, 38, 55, 248, 249

275

Sultanpur, 166 swaraj, 178 tabarra agitation, 4, 31, 186, 187, 194–202, 208, 213–7, 220, 221, 245 recitation, 69, 87, 101, 103, 104, 106, 189, 193, 220, 232, 233, 237, 247, 250 al-Tabataba‘i Aqa Kazim (Ayatollah), 35 clerical family, 248 Muhsin ul-Hakim (Ayatollah), 223, 245 tabligh (Shi‘a), 58, 65, 72, 188, 250. See also, proselytization Tablighi Jama‘at, 16, 65 tabut, 98 tafsir, 36, 54, 250 takfir, 21 Talkatora karbala, Lucknow, 100–2, 104, 117, 247 Tanzim ul-Mominin, 214, 217, 220, 231 taqiya, 68, 69, 89 taqlid, 60, 154, 165, 171, 177, 223 ta‘ziya, 100, 116 of Akbar ‘Ali Khan (‘chup ta‘ziya’), 97–8 innovations to, 98–102, 107, 237 making of, 95 presence of the Imams within, 108 processions, 77, 93, 95, 102–5, 112, 189–93, 203, 222, 233, 234 Sunni, 218 ta‘ziyadari, 108, 191, 213, 233 conduct of, 92 as an Indian practice, 94, 227 Sunni, 192, 218 Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqh-i-Ja‘fariya (TNFJ), Pakistan, 235, 240 Tehsin ‘Ali Khan Masjid, Lucknow, 44, 130, 246 Tehzı¯ b-ul-Akhla¯q (newspaper), 69, 155, 244 Tila Masjid, Lucknow, 192, 194 tir, 97 translation, 59, 60, 63, 244, 250 Tripoli, Libya, 176 trustee (mutawalli), 35, 78, 80, 81, 123, 128–32, 132, 136, 138, 154, 159, 210 Tu¯hfa-i-Isna¯-‘Asharı¯ ya. See ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz, Shah Turkish cap, 114 Tyabji, Badr-ud-din, 152, 156, 173

276

Index

‘ulama (Shi‘a), 41, 52, 73 conflict with Sunni ‘ulama, 53–8 as a corporate group, 38 and ecumenism, 24, 150 and education, 33, 35, 39, 86, 154, 157, 160, 164 disagreements among, 34, 46, 106, 108, 109, 110, 168, 181, 215, 216, 230, 237, 238 generational change, 207, 226 in politics, 153, 156, 172 post-1857, 3, 34 post-1947, 234, 240, 241 pre-1857, 2, 33, 123 in public life, 119, 138, 224, 225 qualifications of, 38, 40, 41 and reform, 19, 105, 227, 228 role in Rebellion, 166, 167 scholarship of, 59, 60 and sectarianism, 231 and secular elites, 117 social role of, 61, 117, 120, 123, 212 in tabarra agitation, 196, 198, 199, 215 United Provinces, 6, 10, 13, 23, 57, 162, 184, 194, 236, 239, 240 Urdu address in, 125 biography, 51 as an Indian language, 3, 15, 61, 69, 71, 91, 118 oratory in, 83, 85, 88, 91 poetry, 83, 160 public sphere, 29–31, 138, 139, 140, 141, 153, 155, 158, 177 Shi‘a literature in, 58–62, 210, 225, 227 ‘urs (saints’ days), 109 Usuli Shi‘ism, 34, 43, 71, 108–10, 165, 171, 246

vernacularization, 31, 58, 86 Wahhabi as a sect, 23, 26, 56, 188, 219 ‘Shi‘a Wahhabis’, 237 ‘Wahhabi conspiracy’, 167 wa‘iz See sermonizing Wajid ‘Ali Shah (Nawab), 2, 46, 119, 166, 168, 196, 248 waqf, 8, 125–38, 210. See also, Husainabad Trust; Shah Najaf Trust creation of new, 78, 80, 97 of Lucknow, 224 as public properties, 78 supervision of, 119, 144, 226 waqf-ala‘l-aulad (family trusts), 78 Waqf Board (1936), 133 Waqf Mumtaz ul-‘Ulama, 130 Waqf-i-Madrasa-i-Ahmadiya, 39 Waqfs Validation Act (1913), 133 wasiqadar, 7, 86, 116, 119, 156–8 Wasit, Iraq, 11 waza’if. See charity Wazir Hasan, Sayyid (bar-at-law), 130, 152, 163, 183, 196, 200, 201 Wazirganj, Lucknow, 59 widows, 121, 124 women (Shi‘a), 62, 77, 93, 157, 176, 197 Yahiyaganj, Lucknow, 203, 206 Yusuf Husain Khan, 119 Zafar ul-Mulk, 190–2, 206 Zainab, 62, 79 zakir See sermonizing zamindari (landholdings), 86, 97, 105, 131, 222 Zia ul-Haq (General), 235

Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society Other titles in the series 1. C. A. Bayly, Empire and information: intelligence gathering and social communication in India, 1780–1880 2. Ian Copland, The princes of India in the endgame of empire, 1917–1947 3. Samita Sen, Women and labour in late colonial India: the Bengal jute industry 4. Sumit Guha, Environment and ethnicity in India from the thirteenth to the twentieth century 5. Tirthankar Roy, Traditional industry in the economy of colonial India 6. Claude Markovits, The global world of Indian merchants, 1750–1947: traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama 7. Prasannan Parthasarathi, The transition to a colonial economy: weavers, merchants and kings in South India, 1720–1800 8. Nandini Gooptu, The politics of the urban poor in early twentieth-century India 9. Norbert Peabody, Hindu kingship and polity in pre colonial India 10. Daud Ali, Courtly culture and political life in early medieval India 11. William Gould, Hindu nationalism and the language of politics in late colonial India 12. William R. Pinch, Warrior ascetics and Indian empires 13. Durba Ghosh, Sex and the family in colonial India: the making of Empire 14. Robert Travers, Ideology and empire in eighteenth-century India: the British in Bengal 15. Joya Chatterji, The spoils of partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967 16. Nile Green, Islam and the army in colonial India: Sepoy religion in the service of Empire 17. Elizabeth Kolsky, Colonial justice in British India: white violence and the rule of law

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