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Chapter Title Secularization and South Asian Islam

Copyright Year 2013
Copyright Holder Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
Corresponding Author Family Name Tareen
Particle
Given Name SherAli
Suffix
Division/Department Department of Religious Studies
Organization/University Franklin and Marshall College
City Lancaster
State PA
Postcode 17604
Country USA
Email thetareen@gmail.com
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1
S

2 Secularization and South Asian Islam Secularization as a process, like the ideology of 26

secularism that it supposedly sustains, is intimately 27

3 SherAli Tareen bound to a politics of “religion making” [15] invested 28

4 Department of Religious Studies, Franklin and in managing and constantly reconfiguring the ideolog- 29

5 Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, USA ical boundaries of religion. The objective of this chap- 30

ter is to highlight some of the major features of the 31

relationship between secularization and South Asian 32

6 Synonyms Islam. The focus of this chapter will be on the ruptures 33

and transformations brought about by colonial secular 34

7 Almaniyya; Colonialism; Modernity; Secularism modernity on the discursive tradition of South Asian 35

Islam, especially in relation to Islamic law, Muslim 36

reform movements, and intra-religious and inter- 37

8 Definition religious polemics involving Indian Muslim scholars. 38

The category of the secular is bound up with its two 39

9 Secularization signifies a discursive and institutional twins: colonialism and modernity. Critical to navigat- 40

10 process that strives to constantly control and reorga- ing the interplay between secularization and South 41

11 nize the limits of religion as a category of life, such that Asian Islam is the event of British colonialism during 42

12 religion is rendered more amenable to definition, ratio- which religious identities in South Asia were indelibly 43

13 nalization, and representation as the inverse of the transformed. Indeed, no exercise in thinking the ques- 44

14 secular. tion of religion in the postcolonial, post-secular present 45

can avoid the colonial secular history of this category. 46

That is especially true in the case of religious identities 47

15 Religion and the Colonial Event in South Asia in contemporary South Asia that in their various com- 48

munal and nationalist apparitions remain haunted by 49

16 The idea of the secular can be understood in different a colonial politics of representation. Perhaps that is 50

17 ways. For instance, the secular can be conceptualized why the question of how the experience of British 51

18 as the imposed relegation of religion to the private colonialism transformed religion in South Asia has 52

19 sphere of personal piety, the separation of politics dominated the problem space of South Asian studies. 53

20 and religion, the valorization of scientific rationalism Scholars have responded to this question in varied 54

21 over mysticism and the supernatural, and the reifica- ways. These responses range from “the category of 55

22 tion and rationalization of religion as a category of life. religion is itself a colonial construction” [15, 18], to 56

23 Underlying these varied modalities of the secular is the “religion may have existed before the onset of 57

24 modern promise of managing, controlling, and defin- colonialism but was no longer imagined the same 58

25 ing the limits of what counts as religion. way afterwards” [19, 22], to “the shift from the pre- 59

colonial to the colonial represents more of a continuity 60

A. Sharma (ed.), Encyclopedia of Indian Religions, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1989-7,

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61 than a rupture in how communities imagined their an identity also involves fashioning for it a memory 110

62 religious identities” [14, 17]. to which it might then be held accountable. An enu- 111

63 But however one engages the question of colonial merated identity is narratively committed to 112

64 power; what cannot be disputed is that the modern life a particular story of its memory. It is responsible to 113

65 of “religion” as a category is indelibly attached to the that memory. Therefore, in contrast to fuzzy identities, 114

66 colonial discursive economy. Indeed, one may argue enumerated identities are much more amenable for 115

67 that the very labor of approaching “religion” as rationalization, objectification, and ideological mobi- 116

68 a translatable object of analysis and critique is indebted lization against each other. 117

69 to the technologies of knowledge and governance inau- Central to this tectonic shift in how religious iden- 118

70 gurated by the British in India during the eighteenth tities were imagined was the role of knowledge and 119

71 and nineteenth centuries. translation in the consolidation of colonial power. The 120

72 As various scholars have shown, “the [British] con- colonial production of knowledge about native “reli- 121

73 quest of India was a conquest of knowledge” ([6], p. gions” was intimately connected to a larger vision of 122

74 16). The colonial empire was made possible by secular humanism whereby the state charged itself the 123

75 a discursive regime of “determining, codifying, con- mission of humanizing, rationalizing, and moderating 124

76 trolling, and representing the [Indian] past” ([6], p. 16). native religious traditions. Pivotal to this process was 125

77 Armed with modern instruments of manufacturing the labor of translating the diversity of native traditions 126

78 knowledge such as census and mapmaking, and abet- in a way that conformed to secular Protestant under- 127

79 ted by the work of missionaries, philologists, and ori- standings of religious authenticity. In the case of Islam, 128

80 entalists, the British constructed authoritative one of the arenas in which such a process of translation 129

81 knowledges of what India’s “culture/religion/history” generated far reaching consequences was that of 130

82 was/is all about. Through this tectonic epistemic Islamic law. 131

83 intervention in native society, the British sought to

84 reify India and its people into a series of religious
85 and cultural essences. These colonial regimes of Law, Knowledge, and Secularization 132

86 knowledge production profoundly altered the narrative

87 of native religious identities and the normative hori- The colonial cooption of the juridical landscape of 133

88 zons of how those identities were conceived and con- South Asia in the late eighteenth century was in 134

89 stituted [12]. many ways a hinge moment in the narrative of native 135

90 Prior to the colonial moment, identities and more religious traditions. After the British East India Com- 136

91 importantly the boundaries separating identity and pany established its political sovereignty over Bengal, 137

92 difference were porous and fuzzy. To be clear, it is Bihar, and Orissa in 1765, the British undertook 138

93 not as if a M(uslim would have not recognized herself a series of legal reforms and programs of codification 139

94 as such or have been unable to distinguish herself from [23]. These reforms produced major shifts in the con- 140

95 a Hindu, Sikh, and so forth. However, the idea of ceptual and institutional apparatus of how law was 141

96 a collective identity, a collective “we” bound by imagined, interpreted, and implemented. 142

97 a shared history, memory, and place, had not yet Underlying colonial attempts to codify and regulate 143

98 achieved ideological solidity. But following the epi- native legal discourses and traditions was the desire to 144

99 stemic interruptions brought about by colonialism, construct a legal system that most “authentically” 145

100 what it meant to be a Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh dramat- replicated the normative demands of authoritative reli- 146

101 ically changed. gious texts and scriptures. The colonial desire to locate 147

102 The fuzziness of previous identities was replaced by the authenticity of individual religious traditions in 148

103 a notion of the self that was more clearly defined and their “original” texts and scriptures is most clearly 149

104 sharply delineated [12]. Identity was now countable. reflected in the following British legal proclamation 150

105 Moreover, it was accountable to both itself and to its issued in 1772: “in all suits regarding inheritance, 151

106 various others. Accounting for an identity is not only succession, marriage and caste and other usages and 152

107 the insertion of numbers in a census record institutions, the law of the Koran with respect to 153

108 corresponding to such signifiers as “Hindu,” “Mus- Mahomedans, and those of the Shaster with respect to 154

109 lim,” “Sikh,” etc. More importantly, accounting for

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155 the Gentoos [Hindus] shall be invariably adhered to” vocation, the interpretation of the law, was effectively 203

156 ([23], p. 21). being removed from them” ([23], p. 25). 204

157 The result of this colonial attempt to craft a legal Apart from eroding traditional modes of religious 205

158 code in accordance with authoritative Muslim authority, the colonial construction of a new juridical 206

159 religious texts was what came to be known as the order also signified a massive rupture in the conceptual 207

160 “Anglo-Muhammadan law.” The Anglo- economy of religion as a category of life. The colonial 208

161 Muhammadan law was a juridical system that intervention in the discursive space of native tradition 209

162 represented a rather arbitrary composite of English was authorized through a particular hermeneutics of 210

163 common law and certain classical Muslim legal texts. religious authenticity. According to this hermeneutics, 211

164 These texts were primarily drawn from the Hanafi the authenticity of a religion was enshrined in its orig- 212

165 School of Islamic law that was dominant among inal scripture and authoritative texts. 213

166 South Asian Muslims. According to this new legal Moreover, that scripture was readily available for 214

167 system, the normative injunctions of Islamic law translation, evaluation, and comparison. In other 215

168 were to be implemented among Indian Muslims exclu- words, religion constituted a fully rationalized and 216

169 sively for matters of personal status such as marriage, unambiguous repository of knowledge crying out to 217

170 divorce, children, and inheritance. On the other hand, be canonized. By translating and canonizing particular 218

171 criminal law and laws of governance were derived texts, one could uncover the religious norms and laws 219

172 from the English common law. that must govern particular communities. The knowl- 220

173 But even in regard to matters of personal status, it edge contained in religious texts was perfectly trans- 221

174 was British colonial officers who ultimately decided on latable into positive law. Religion was not only 222

175 how particular tenets of Islamic law were to be timeless and unchanging; it was also rational and pre- 223

176 interpreted and enacted. Although native religious dictable and nestled in certitude. 224

177 assisted the British in codifying and constructing The colonial discourse on Islamic law was part of 225

178 laws, the power dynamics of this relationship were a much more significant movement: the production of 226

179 hardly egalitarian. The British were firmly in control religion as a translatable object of critique that was 227

180 of how the process of inventing a new juridical order readily available to be humanized, rationalized, and 228

181 unfolded. Moreover, following the abolishment of the canonized. Notice how the colonial attempt to deter- 229

182 office of Muslim judges (qādı̄/pl.qudāt) in the late mine and catalog the most authentic and authoritative 230
˙ ˙
183 eighteenth century, it was non-Muslim colonial offi- sources of Islamic law operated on the assumption that 231

184 cers who came to occupy the position of judges in there was an object out there called “Islam” that cried 232

185 cases concerning Indian Muslims. Therefore, it would out to be authenticated, verified, purified, and 233

186 be a mistake to call the “Anglo-Muhammadan” legal humanized. 234

187 system a “hybrid” of Islamic and British law. In other words, the colonial discourse on Islamic 235

188 The term “hybridity” masks the unevenness of law was inseparable to a modern secular politics of 236

189 power relations involved in the ostensible collabora- critique that sought to render religion – in this case 237

190 tion between the colonizers and the native scholars/ Islam – more responsible to its own memory. This way 238

191 informants. Certainly, the valorization of specific legal of imagining religion was leavened by the secular 239

192 texts as the unchallenged authentic reservoirs of promise of defining, limiting, and reifying the limits 240

193 Islamic law and norms may have conformed to the of what counted as “authentically” religious. In their 241

194 hermeneutical sensibilities of traditionally educated zeal to rationalize, systematize, and canonize Islamic 242

195 Muslim scholars (the ulamā). But by arrogating to law, the British advanced a new political rationality 243

196 itself the task of fashioning and generating religious governing the normativity of individual religious tra- 244

197 laws and, more importantly, by fundamentally ditions. According to this new political rationality, the 245

198 reorganizing the conceptual and institutional terrain relevance and authority of native religious scholars 246

199 on which the very idea of law was imagined, the depended on their capacity to demonstrate their adher- 247

200 colonial state dealt a massive blow to the religious ence to a certain, predictable, rational, and unchanging 248

201 authority of Indian Muslim scholars. “Historically, law. 249

202 the most distinctive aspect of their [the ‘ulamā’] To maintain their authority in the public sphere, 250

Indian Muslim scholars were obliged to act as the 251

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252 representatives of an unchanging corpus of law. Put constantly regulating and reorganizing the limits of 297

253 differently, Indian Muslim religious scholars were religion. 298

254 conscripted into a conceptual and institutional terrain In the context of British colonialism in India, the 299

255 that was not of their choosing or making. That terrain, seemingly ecumenical gesture of tolerating religious 300

256 on which the discursive tradition of Islam in South difference was inextricable to the ideological reifica- 301

257 Asia was to operate from the late nineteenth century tion of religion. It was precisely by showing deference 302

258 onwards, was dominated by the conceptual and polit- to religion that its boundaries were demarcated. The 303

259 ical hegemony of colonial secular modernity. moment of tolerating religion was also a moment of 304

issuing a sovereign decision on what did and did not 305

count as religion. The colonial state sought to establish 306

260 Tolerance and the Politics of Religion itself as the sovereign caretaker of religious difference 307

261 Making by mobilizing a discourse of tolerance. However, just 308

like the promise of canonizing and defining religion 309

262 The colonial secularization of religious identities in remains incomplete and deferred to an unspecified 310

263 South Asia, enabled through such mechanisms as the future, so does the promise of resolving the threat of 311

264 codification of native religious laws, was inseparable difference by making appeals to respect and tolerance. 312

265 to a liberal secular discourse of tolerance. In fact, the This is so because the desire to manage religious 313

266 idea of tolerating religious difference was at the heart diversity by making appeals to tolerance remains 314

267 of the very logic of colonial sovereignty in India. The arrested in an irresolvable contradiction. That irresolv- 315

268 intimate relationship between secularization, liberal able contradiction, that aporia, is this: the very diver- 316

269 tolerance, and colonial sovereignty is well captured sity and pluralism that form the identity of the liberal 317

270 in the British proclamation of sovereignty over Indian secular state, colonial or postcolonial, also threaten the 318

271 subjects as recorded in the Government of India Act of stability of that identity ([1], pp. 34–84). The promise 319

272 2 August 1858. In this proclamation, the colonial state of freedom and autonomy for all citizens represents 320

273 declared that it was “bound to the natives of Our Indian a central tenet that sustains the liberal secular state. 321

274 territories by the same obligations of duty which bind However, pluralism and difference threaten the sur- 322

275 us to all our other subjects” ([7], p. 165). Moreover, vival of that freedom. This threat becomes visible 323

276 according to this proclamation, all Indian subjects during such moments of crisis as the destruction of 324

277 “were to enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the Babri Mosque by Hindu nationalist fundamental- 325

278 the law. . .and they were to be secure in the practice of ists in Ayodhya in 1992, the attacks against Muslims/ 326

279 their religions” ([7], p. 165). “Muslim looking” Sikhs in post-9/11 America, and 327

280 This proclamation was based on two main assump- most recently, the Park 51 controversy that erupted in 328

281 tions on the part of the British: “firstly that there was an 2010 over the proposed construction of a mosque in 329

282 indigenous diversity in culture, society, and religion in New York City. 330

283 India, and secondly that the foreign rulers had These were all moments when the relationship 331

284 a responsibility for an equitable form of government between the nation, citizenship, and freedom that the 332

285 which would be directed. . .to protecting the integrity secular state strives to maintain was fractured. As 333

286 inherent in this diversity” ([7], p. 165, emphases a result, the state was compelled to remind its citizens 334

287 added). about the virtues of tolerance and respect and of their 335

288 Despite its claims to neutrality, the colonial promise responsibility to tolerate their minority others. But no 336

289 of protecting and tolerating the “inherent religious measure of reminders could possibly resolve the irre- 337

290 diversity” of India was anything but politically neutral. solvable contradiction of pluralism threatening free- 338

291 To the contrary, this fantastical promise was autho- dom. The liberal state strives to foster but is also 339

292 rized by a discursive regime of regulating and defining constantly threatened by a divergent politics of reli- 340

293 the limits of what counted as “religion” worthy of gious and cultural pluralism. That is the irresolvable 341

294 toleration. The colonial discourse of religious toler- aporia of liberal secular democracy ([1], pp. 34–84). 342

295 ance was enmeshed in a modern secular politics This aporia cannot be resolved by making appeals 343

296 whereby the state charges itself the responsibility of to tolerance, law, and justice. If anything, the reminder 344

to tolerate minority communities only reinforces the 345

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346 distinctions of majority/minority, self/other, and colo- that correspond to the master signifiers of religious 392

347 nizer/colonized. More than anything else, the moment and secular. Rather than a set of cultivated practices 393

348 of this aporetic deadlock allows the state to establish its unavailable for translation, religion emerges as 394

349 own sovereignty as the moderator of religious differ- a propositional truth claim that might be rationally 395

350 ence. This was precisely the mechanism through which interpreted, evaluated, and contested. Concomitantly, 396

351 the British authorized their sovereignty in India. the truth claims of a religion also become available for 397

352 A discourse of tolerance and pluralism was critical to ideological mobilization against other such competing 398

353 the construction of colonial sovereignty. Moreover, it truth claims. After all, “when there is no propositional 399

354 also played a crucial role in reifying religious identities ‘religion’ supposedly at the heart of the religious life, 400

355 and in further congealing the boundaries separating and when there are no ‘religions’ construed as mutu- 401

356 identity and difference both within and between reli- ally contradictory set of propositions, then the modern 402

357 gious communities. problem of ‘conflicting religious truth claims’ cannot 403

come into play” [11]. The story of the ideological 404

reification of religious identities in South Asia is also 405

358 Religion and the Specter of the Secular inseparable from the modern colonial rearrangement in 406

the epistemology of religion. 407

359 There is now a growing consensus among scholars that It is not a coincidence that the nineteenth century 408

360 “religion” cannot be treated as a culturally universal was a time of unprecedented intra-religious and inter- 409

361 construct. Rather, religion is a relatively recent inven- religious adversarial activity in India. Indeed, one of 410

362 tion that emerged during the nineteenth century and the most dramatic consequences of the secularizing 411

363 that is inseparable from the story of Western colonial- conditions of colonial modernity in India was the 412

364 ism and modernity [3, 4, 5, 8, 15, 16]. As one scholar explosion of both intra-religious and inter-religious 413

365 has commented, “religion. . .must be considered the polemics to which several prominent Muslim religious 414

366 locus in which the identity or figure of the West has scholars generously contributed. These polemics that 415

367 in principle been constituted and defined” ([8], p. 37). first erupted during the nineteenth century continue to 416

368 Therefore, “instead of speaking about the religious haunt the religious imagination of postcolonial South 417

369 consciousness of the West, it would be more judicious Asian Muslims even today. The polemical warfare of 418

370 to say that the West is religious only in the very exact the late nineteenth century was enabled by a set of 419

371 and strict sense that religion, as a notion intended to modern discursive and institutional conditions that 420

372 isolate a set of phenomena thenceforth considered were particularly well suited for the sustenance of 421

373 homogenous, is the exclusive creation of the West, doctrinal battles and rivalries. In a profound concep- 422

374 and is thus what may constitute its innermost nature” tual shift, religion was now seen as a set of proposi- 423

375 ([8], p. 37). tional truth claims readily available for translation, 424

376 An impressive body of recent scholarship has also evaluation, and ideological competition. This way of 425

377 shown that approaching the idea of the secular as the imagining religion was in complete harmony with the 426

378 inverse of religion or the process of secularization as liberal secular promise of defining and regulating the 427

379 a decline in religion is conceptually unsound. Rather, it limits of religion as a category of life. 428

380 is more helpful to think about the secular as The politico-conceptual terrain introduced by the 429

381 a fundamental epistemic shift in which a field of dis- British imperial project made thinkable the exercise 430

382 course and practice comes to be constituted as religion of mobilizing a set of propositional truths called “reli- 431

383 as such. Rather than a more or less of religion, the gion” against other rival religions. Indeed, the rele- 432

384 secular should instead be understood as a decisive vance of a religious community now depended on the 433

385 break in the epistemic field of what constituted capacity of its members to establish the supremacy of 434

386 “religion.” their truth claims over those of their rivals. In this 435

387 The modern concept of religion is embedded in competition for doctrinal legitimacy, the discourse of 436

388 a particular cognitive orientation that thrives on the religious polemics thrived. The native religious elite 437

389 intelligibility and translatability of life. According to (including Muslim scholars) and foreign Christian 438

390 such a narrative frame, life is readily available for missionaries participated in a number of polemics in 439

391 division into compartments of thought and practice

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440 which the truth and untruth of individual religions were divine will, the problem of evil, rebirth and transmi- 489

441 publically contested. gration, and so on, as each side strived to establish the 490

442 A particularly illustrative example of how the colo- exclusive authenticity of its doctrinal system. As one 491

443 nial political economy catalyzed the marketplace of might expect, no resolution was reached and each side 492

444 religious polemics is found in a public event called claimed victory. In addition to inter-religious polemics 493

445 “The Festival of Deciding the (True) God (mayla-yi such as the one in Shahjahanpur, the Muslim scholarly 494

446 khuda shinasi)” that was held for two consecutive elite in the nineteenth century also participated in 495

447 years in 1876–1877 in the North Indian district of a number of public intra-religious polemics that pitted 496

448 Shahjahanpur. Organized through the patronage of the pioneers and leading scholars of leading reform 497

449 the British magistrate of the district Robert George movements such as the Deobandis, Barelvis, Ahl-i 498

450 Gray, this festival brought together leading Christian, Hadith, the Ahmadiyya, and so on. 499

451 Hindu, and Muslim scholars to debate the authenticity There was something both old and new about these 500

452 of their respective traditions ([10], pp. 364–450). polemical moments. On the one hand, the genre of 501

453 Among the prominent figures who participated in this polemics (munāzarāt) has always been an important 502
˙
454 polemical festival were the founder of the Arya Samaj, part of the Muslim scholarly tradition in South Asia 503

455 Dayanand Saraswati (d. 1883), and one of the founders and elsewhere. However, the proliferation of polemi- 504

456 of the Deoband Madrasa, Qasim Nanautvi (d. 1877). cal activity in late nineteenth-century India also con- 505

457 The leading protagonist on the Christian side was stituted a significant rupture from the past. Unlike 506

458 Father Knowles, a British missionary in Shahjahanpur, premodern polemics, pivotal to the logic of religious 507

459 who also served as the headmaster of a local mission- polemics in the nineteenth century was the spectator- 508

460 ary school. Knowles had rapidly grown in prominence ship of a “public” readily available to be reformed, 509

461 due to his highly effective proselytizing efforts in the evangelized, and doctrinally persuaded by competing 510

462 region. A charismatic and aggressive debater, he had truth claims. The witnessing capacity of the public 511

463 participated in a series of such polemics in North India, represented the condition of possibility for such 512

464 though none of this scale ([10], pp. 364–450). polemics. 513

465 Preparations for this event had been under way for In fact, these polemics represented as much 514

466 many months in advance. It was heavily advertised in a competition for the assent of the public as they 515

467 local newspapers and through the distribution of pam- were invested with specific doctrinal positions and 516

468 phlets. In addition to the participants, hundreds of outcomes. There was something resoundingly modern 517

469 people from neighboring towns and villages attended about the idea of a “public” immediately available for 518

470 the event and served as spectators to this mega polem- persuasion through the display of doctrinal artifacts. 519

471 ical showdown. The participating scholars made their Moreover, the emergence of a public that represented 520

472 way to Shahjahanpur from various parts of North India the object of polemical spectacles was in turn made 521

473 on the train. For instance, Qasim Nanautvi, accompa- possible by the technologies of print, transportation, 522

474 nied by around twenty associates, traveled more than and commerce introduced by the British in India. The 523

475 400 miles on the train from Deoband to Shahjahanpur conceptual space in which religion as a discursive cat- 524

476 via Delhi. The actual event was held under large tents egory was imagined was inextricably bound to the 525

477 that had been put up on a tract of barren land in the institutional conditions that informed the contours of 526

478 village of Chandapur in Shahjahanpur. The British that space. Discourse and conditions were mutually 527

479 magistrate’s office provided more than 200 chairs, entangled, each reinforcing the other. The competition 528

480 food, and other necessary items for the event. They over religious authenticity that consumed Indian reli- 529

481 had also arranged for the local police to monitor the gious scholarly elite (including Muslim scholars) was 530

482 venue and to prevent the eruption of communal inseparable to the institutional conditions of colonial 531

483 violence. secular modernity. Indeed, the idea of public polemics 532

484 The format of the polemic was decided by the in which the veracity of religious truth was at stake 533

485 competing parties. It included both short and longer would have been unthinkable even a few decades 534

486 speeches on specific topics, followed by rebuttals and earlier. 535

487 questions. The debate largely focused on theological

488 and philosophical questions such as monotheism,
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536 Secularization and Native Projects of a certain ideology, or a particular thought style within 583

537 Religious Reform Sunni Islam in the modern world. 584

At the centerpiece of Deoband’s reformist platform 585

538 The colonial reconstitution of the Indian public sphere was an egalitarian imaginary of Prophet Muhammad’s 586

539 also facilitated the emergence and efflorescence of authority. For example, in the view of Deobandi 587

540 major Muslim reform movements that transformed scholars, calling the Prophet one’s brother would not 588

541 the religious consciousness of the elite and the masses amount to offensive or disrespectful speech or con- 589

542 alike. In the period following the 1857 mutiny (in duct. On the contrary, such an affirmation of the Proph- 590

543 which Indian Muslims were brutally defeated by the et’s human qualities was to be encouraged. The well- 591

544 British), the learned elite of Muslim India were divided known prophetic saying, “I am unlike any of you” 592

545 into competing “ideological orientations” (masālik, (lastu ka ahadin minkum), only referred to 593

546 sing. maslak), each offering contrasting programs of Muhammad’s unique status as a recipient of divine 594

547 religious reform. From this moment on, the production revelation, the Deobandis argued. In all other matters 595

548 and dissemination of knowledge took on an unprece- of human existence, he was much like anyone else. 596

549 dented group-centered orientation. The concept of Therefore, for the Deobandi scholars, it was intolerable 597

550 maslak which in its Urdu modality can best be rendered to believe that the Prophet possessed knowledge of the 598

551 as an “ideological orientation” flowered in the latter unknown (‘ilm al-ghayb). This theological position 599

552 half of the nineteenth century like it had never before in was pivotal to their opposition to rituals such as the 600

553 Muslim India. celebration of the Prophet’s birthday, during which he 601

554 Arguably the most prominent of the nineteenth- personally appeared at multiple gatherings simulta- 602

555 century Indian Muslim reform movements was the neously. For the pioneers of Deoband, the perfection 603

556 Islamic seminary cum ideological orientation, the of Muhammad’s prophecy was enabled by the perfec- 604

557 Deoband Madrasa. The Deoband Madrasa was tion of his humanity ([21], pp. 99–130). An important 605

558 established in the North Indian town of Deoband, offshoot of the Deoband Madrasa was the Tablighi 606

559 Uttar Pradesh, in 1867 by a group of prominent Indian Jama‘at, a transnational evangelical movement 607

560 Muslim scholars (ulamā). More specifically, it was the founded in 1926 by the North Indian scholar Muham- 608

561 charismatic scholars Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (d. 1906) mad Ilyas Kandlavi (d. 1944). Closely aligned to 609

562 and Qasim Nanautvi who set the foundations of this Deoband and its ideology, the centerpiece of the 610

563 educational institution of religious learning that has Tablighi Jama‘at’s reformist platform was the cultiva- 611

564 impacted the intellectual, social, and political history tion of personal piety through intense salvational activ- 612

565 of South Asian Islam in profound ways. Today, some ity involving devotional bodily practices and 613

566 150 years later, with its parent institution in India, the evangelizing missions. 614

567 Deoband School boasts the largest network of satellite Among traditionally educated scholars, the author- 615

568 madrasas all over Pakistan, Bangladesh, as well as ity of the Deoband Madrasa was most eagerly chal- 616

569 neighboring countries in Asia and beyond, in countries lenged by its chief competitors, the Barelvi and the 617

570 as far afield as those located in the Caribbean, South Ahl-i Hadith schools that were also born in the late 618

571 Africa, Britain, and the United States. Deoband affili- nineteenth century. The Barelvi school was founded by 619

572 ated Madrasas number circa 50,000–60,000 institu- the charismatic and prolific nineteenth-century scholar 620

573 tions on the Indian subcontinent alone, with the Ahmad Raza Khan (d. 1921) from the North Indian 621

574 largest concentration in India ([21], pp. 99–115). town of Barayli (hence the name Barelvi for his fol- 622

575 However, it is important to stress here that although lowers and group.) The pioneers of both the Barelvi 623

576 numerous Islamic seminaries in various countries call and Deobandi schools were prominent scholars of the 624

577 themselves “Deobandi,” their ties to the founding Hanafi School of Islamic law. They were also among 625

578 school in the town of Deoband, which continues to the most influential Sufi masters of their era. But while 626

579 exist until today, may well be only tenuous or even they were deeply invested in Hanafi law and Sufism, 627

580 nonexistent. This is an important point because it illus- the Deobandis and Barelvis differed sharply on the 628

581 trates that apart from the physical institution of the question of what it meant to be a Sunni Hanafi Muslim 629

582 seminary, the term “Deobandi” also connotes under conditions of colonialism. 630
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S 8 Secularization and South Asian Islam

631 In contrast to their Deoband rivals, the centerpiece bearers of religious reform established themselves in 680

632 of the Barelvi ideology valorized above all the element the public sphere. 681

633 of love characterizing the Prophet’s relationship with Among the Muslim modernists, arguably the most 682

634 God. For the Barelvis, any normative argument that influential religious reformer was Sayyid Ahmad Khan 683

635 might undermine the Prophet’s charisma as God’s (d. 1898), the founder of the famous Aligarh Muslim 684

636 most beloved subject, such as questioning his ability University. According to Khan’s conception of reform, 685

637 to intercede on behalf of sinners or calling his birthday it was incumbent on Indian Muslims to embrace West- 686

638 celebration a heresy, was nothing short of anathema. ern scientific knowledge as a way to restore the rational 687

639 Moreover, it was not only distasteful but also heretical foundations of Islam, a view for which he was 688

640 for anyone to even ponder, let alone actualize, such scathingly criticized by traditionally educated 689

641 utterances as calling the Prophet one’s brother. Any scholars. 690

642 speech or conduct that even theoretically punctured the His vision of normative Islam was also hostile to 691

643 aura of Muhammad’s prophetology was unpalatable to ritualism and popular practices that in his opinion were 692

644 Barelvi sensibilities ([21], pp. 165–200). unsanctioned by the Qur’an and the normative model 693

645 The Barelvi-Deobandi conflict, centered on com- of the Prophet. These two bodies of knowledge, he 694

646 peting imaginaries of prophetic charisma, generated argued, represented the exclusive sources of authority 695

647 a fair number of polemics, rebuttals and counter rebut- in Islam. Underlying his reform project was the desire 696

648 tals, and even charges of unbelief. But despite all their to establish compatibility between Muslim tradition 697

649 doctrinal animosities, because they were both adher- and the modes of reasoning operative and dominant 698

650 ents of the Hanafi School of law, Barelvis and in modernity. For instance, in just one among his many 699

651 Deobandis at least honored the authority of the same innovative moves, he argued that in modernity, it was 700

652 juridical texts and personalities. While their interpre- no longer viable for Muslims to argue that the 701

653 tations differed, they shared a common interpretive inimitability of the Qur’an was due to its unmatched 702

654 canvass. That was not the case with the Ahl-i Hadith, linguistic prowess, the traditional Muslim position 703

655 the other major Muslim reform movement in colonial regarding Qur’an’s inimitability. While he agreed 704

656 India, who rejected the very legitimacy of that canvass that the Qur’an was linguistically unparalleled, this 705

657 by denying the canonical authority of the four Sunni line of argument, Khan argued, was destined to fall 706

658 schools of law. on deaf ears during the modern moment. Instead, he 707

659 The pioneers of the Ahl-i Hadith, such as the foun- proposed, Muslims should argue that the Qur’an was 708

660 der of the school Siddiq Hasan Khan (d. 1890), argued inimitable because of the eternal nature of its message 709

661 for an interpretive canvass that restricted the sources of for humans of all generations. Grounding the reasoning 710

662 religious norms to the Qur’an and the normative model for Qur’an’s inimitability on its content rather than its 711

663 of the Prophet exclusively. Apart from this hermeneu- form, Khan suggested, represented a better strategy to 712

664 tical disagreement, Ahl-i Hadith scholars also convince non-Muslims in modernity of the Qur’an’s 713

665 quarreled with their Indian Hanafi counterparts on the and in turn Islam’s veracity. 714

666 normative legitimacy of three specific practices related Khan, a bureaucrat in the colonial administration, 715

667 to the performance of the fivefold daily prayers: raising strived to provide Indian Muslims with intellectual 716

668 both hands (raf‘al-yadayn) during prayers, saying resources that might facilitate their assimilation into 717

669 “Amin” aloud (amin bil-jahr), and reciting the Fātiha the political and institutional environs of colonial 718
˙
670 behind a prayer leader (fātiha khalf al-imām). modernity. To this end, he founded the Muhammadan 719
˙
671 In addition to the Deobandis, Barelvis, and the Ahl-i Anglo-Oriental College in 1875 (later Aligarh Muslim 720

672 Hadith, the religious landscape of nineteenth-century University). The mission of this university was to 721

673 Muslim South Asia was also populated by a number of produce graduates who were at once faithful to Muslim 722

674 other reformist movements, figures, and ideologies. tradition and active participants to colonial civil soci- 723

675 The growth of print in late nineteenth-century India ety. In addition to traditional sources of religious learn- 724

676 made it possible to access demographically and geo- ing, students were also taught Western science and 725

677 graphically diverse audiences. As a result, the author- English [13]. 726

678 ity of traditionally educated Muslim scholars was Another important movement of Muslim reform in 727

679 fragmented, as several new competitors and banner colonial India was represented by the Nadwat al- 728
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Secularization and South Asian Islam 9 S

729 ‘Ulamā’, an Islamic seminary cum ideological orien- exclusive sources of normativity in Islam, the 778

730 tation that originated in 1894 and was formally Jama‘at-i Islami’s notion of reform hinged on the 779

731 established as an institution of higher learning in promise of establishing an “Islamic state” that might 780

732 1906 in the North Indian city of Lucknow. The Nadwat materialize divine law in the temporal world. 781

733 al-‘Ulamā’ sought to harmonize the traditionalist and Mawdudi’s and Jama‘at-i Islami’s political theology 782

734 modernist currents of South Asian Islam by producing was detained in the irresolvable contradiction of seek- 783

735 Muslim scholars who were both intimately familiar ing to resist Western modernity and secularization 784

736 with traditional disciplines of knowledge and also through arguably the most modern of all institutions: 785

737 attuned to the epistemologies of modernity. At the the nation state [2]. Moreover, Mawdudi’s program of 786

738 heart of Nadwat al-‘Ulamā’s program of religious restoring the sovereignty of divine law by lending that 787

739 reform was the promise of fashioning a class of Indian responsibility to the man-made institution of the state 788

740 Muslim scholars who were at once cosmopolitan mod- was at once thoroughly modern and pregnant with 789

741 ern citizens and impeccable custodians of traditional irony. 790

742 knowledges, norms, and virtues. Among the most The reform movements described above articulated 791

743 influential scholars attached to Nadwat al-‘Ulamā’ overlapping yet contrasting narratives of ideal norms 792

744 were such towering figures as the founder of the school of life and ways of interpreting those norms. Each of 793

745 Muhammad ‘Ali Mongiri (d. 1927), Sayyid Abu’l- these movements sought to “reform” Islam in light of 794

746 Hasan ‘Ali Nadvi (d. 1999), and Shibli Nu‘mani (d. the new position of Indian Muslims as colonized sub- 795

747 1914). jects. However, what the work of reform meant for 796

748 A more messianic project of reform was them varied significantly, often resulting in heated 797

749 spearheaded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (d. 1908), debates and polemics. These competing currents of 798

750 a prolific scholar from the town of Qadian in Punjab. Muslim reform were as much products of 799

751 Ahmad claimed to be a reviver (mujaddid) of the a transformed colonial public sphere as they contrib- 800

752 Indian Muslim community. More controversially, he uted to that sphere’s transformation. The conceptual 801

753 also proclaimed to be the promised messiah (the and institutional terrain of colonial modernity 802

754 Mahdi) who was to appear at the end of time in Muslim represented their condition of possibility. Advance- 803

755 eschatology. Ahmad’s claims were based on ments in technologies of print and transportation, an 804

756 a complicated reading of the doctrine of prophecy in increased sophistication in networks of commerce, the 805

757 Islam that allowed for its continuity after Prophet introduction of new methods of education, and the 806

758 Muhammad’s death. His followers and the movement creation of vernacular languages were all critical fac- 807

759 they established came to be known as the Ahmadiyya. tors in making thinkable the idea of “reforming” 808

760 In addition to defending his views from the onslaught a public. 809

761 of other Muslim scholars in colonial India, Mirza Apart from propagating their ideologies through the 810

762 Ghulam Ahmad also engaged in several public debates technologies of colonial modernity, the pioneers of 811

763 and polemics with Christian missionaries and Hindu nineteenth-century Muslim reform movements were 812

764 religious figures. Despite being intensely persecuted, also indebted to the modern epistemic promise of 813

765 especially in Pakistan where the state declared them recovering an authentic religion unadulterated by the 814

766 unbelievers in 1974, the Ahmadiyya have thrived and corruptions of both internal and external others. As 815

767 grown not only in South Asia but also all over Asia, such, even as these Indian Muslim reformers contested 816

768 Europe, and North America [9]. each other’s normative claims, they shared the under- 817

769 The Jama‘at-i Islami, founded by the charismatic lying conceptual assumption that an ideological entity 818

770 journalist turned scholar Abu’l ‘Ala Mawdudi (d. called religion was available to be reformed, contested, 819

771 1979) towards the end of colonial rule in 1941, is and rationalized. 820

772 another Muslim reform movement cum political orga- In the new institutional terrain of colonial India, two 821

773 nization that continues to impact the religious and separate yet interconnected fields of moral contestation 822

774 political landscape of postcolonial South Asia in simultaneously operated. On the one hand was the field 823

775 important ways. While adopting the hermeneutical of inter-religious polemics that pitted against each 824

776 minimalism of the Ahl-i Hadith that valorized the other Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christian mission- 825

777 Qur’an and the Prophet’s normative model as the aries. At stake in this dialogue with the external 826
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S 10 Secularization and South Asian Islam

827 “others” was the legitimacy of individual religious To the contrary, after the demise of the Mughal 873

828 identities. On the other hand was the site of dialogue Empire in 1857, the variety of Indian Muslim 874

829 with the internal “others” [15]. responses to the changed conditions of colonial moder- 875

830 These internal antagonisms stemmed from compet- nity were staggering and in many ways unprecedented. 876

831 ing views on the limits of authenticity and tradition. Indian Muslim scholars who thrived during the nine- 877

832 While the first domain concerned the negotiation of the teenth century and onwards creatively mobilized and 878

833 self’s relationship with the other, the second revolved used the technological and institutional possibilities 879

834 around the character of the authentic self. Despite their made available by colonialism to their own benefit. 880

835 varied points of application, however, both these dis- Even as they were politically colonized, they colonized 881

836 courses of identity formation depended on a colonial the conditions of colonialism to advance their ideolog- 882

837 politics of representation. According to this politics of ical projects. One can even claim that the pioneers of 883

838 representation, accessing the self required the negation Indian Muslim reform movements, despite all their 884

839 of all its actual and potential competitors. Identity was internal disagreements and debates, were among the 885

840 constructed precisely through a relationship of antag- foremost beneficiaries of the secularizing conditions of 886

841 onism with difference. To be absolutely clear, these British colonialism. In fact, as I have argued in this 887

842 ideological projects of Muslim reform were not colo- chapter, the very idea of reforming a public and 888

843 nial inventions as they were equally the products of contesting the limits of an ideological entity called 889

844 pre-colonial discursive traditions. religion was indebted to the secularizing political 890

845 However, what cannot be disputed is that the con- rationality of colonial modernity. 891

846 ditions for the emergence of these native reform move- It is important to underscore that the secularization 892

847 ments “were defined by new forms of power, new of South Asian Islam was not some kind of a one-time 893

848 social technologies, new forms of knowledge, new event that has already happened in the past. The reli- 894

849 modes of social organization and political mobiliza- gious and moral lives of postcolonial South Asian 895

850 tion, and new forms of subjectivity that mark out the Muslims remain haunted by the colonial moment. For 896

851 modernizing and, specifically, secularizing space of instance, the intra-Muslim polemics that began during 897

852 what might be called colonial civil society” ([20], p. the late nineteenth century, such as those between the 898

853 55). Deobandis and the Barelvis, have only metastasized in 899

854 In short, the story of Muslim reform movements in recent decades. Moreover, following the legacy of 900

855 South Asia is inextricable to the master narrative of the their colonial predecessors, the postcolonial states in 901

856 modern colonial secular. The public competition South Asia have often played a violent role in 902

857 between rival ideologies of Muslim reform that metas- reorganizing the limits of what counts as Islam. 903

858 tasized during the late nineteenth century would have One of the most blatant and tragic examples of such 904

859 been unthinkable even a few decades before the con- state administered violence was witnessed in 1974 905

860 solidation of British colonial power. when the Pakistani government led by then Prime 906

Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto amended the constitution 907

to declare the Ahmadiyya a “non-Muslim minority.” 908

861 Conclusion To this day, Pakistanis wishing to receive or renew 909

their passports must declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims. 910

862 This chapter has focused on some of the major ways in The last section of the passport application entitled 911

863 which the discursive tradition of South Asian Islam “Declaration in Case of Muslim” requires applicants 912

864 was reconfigured by the conceptual and institutional to affirm the following statement: “I consider Mirza 913

865 ruptures of colonial secular modernity. From the early Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani to be an impostor nabi 914

866 nineteenth century onwards, the intellectual history of [prophet] and also consider his followers whether 915

867 Islam was characterized by an ever-intensifying com- belonging to the Lahori or Qadiyani group, to be non- 916

868 petition for religious authority and contestation over Muslim” [24]. In effect, any Pakistani wishing to 917

869 the limits of normativity. However, the remarkable renew her passport must affirm the sovereign decision 918

870 intellectual fermentation found in nineteenth-century of the state to deny the Ahmadiyya membership in 919

871 South Asian Islam amply demonstrates that this period Islam. In order to establish her loyalty to the state, 920

872 cannot be conceptualized as one of decline. a Pakistani must establish her otherness to the 921
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Secularization and South Asian Islam 11 S

922 Ahmadiyya. Similarly, for an Ahmadi to enjoy the 4. Asad T (1993) Genealogies of religion: discipline and rea- 964

923 privileges of Pakistani citizenship, she must account sons of power in Christianity and Islam. Johns Hopkins 965
University Press, Baltimore 966
924 for herself as a “minority” external to the fold of Islam. 5. Balagangadhara SN (1994) “The Heathen in His Blind- 967
925 While such exclusivism may seem like a product of ness”: Asia, the West, and the dynamic of religion. Brill, 968
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927 with the liberal secular valorization of the state as the 6. Cohn B (1996) Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: the 970
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928 regulator of religious authenticity. The idea that the 7. Cohn B (1992) Representing authority in Victorian India. 972
929 state represents the ultimate sovereign on the decision In: Hobswam E, Ranger T (eds) The invention of tradition. 973
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931 modernity. Similarly, the Pakistani state’s imposed 8. Dabuisson D (2003) The western construction of religion: 975
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932 exclusion of the Ahmadis from the fold of Islam is Press, Baltimore 977
933 ensconced in a politics of accountability that is thor- 9. Friedmann Y (1989) Prophecy continuous: aspects of 978
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935 According to this politics of accountability, identity University of California Press, Berkeley 980
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936 is not only countable; it is also accountable to both Rahmaniyya, Lahore 982
937 itself and its competing others. Moreover, both identity 11. Harrison P (1993) “Religion” and the religions in the 983
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942 manage, and control. However, the secular promise, 13. Lelyveld D (1978) Aligarh’s first generation: Muslim soli- 989

943 the secular fantasy if you will, of managing identity darity in British India. Princeton University Press, Princeton 990
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947 This way of imagining religion whereby the affir- tion. Columbia University Press, New York 995
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949 its various others is indebted to a secular colonial universalism. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 998
950 politics of representation. The event of colonialism 17. Nicholson A (2010) Unifying Hinduism: philosophy and 999

951 may have passed. But the secularizing disruptions identity in Indian intellectual history. Columbia University 1000
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