This year I have read three books on Islam in South Asia that are concerned with the period roughly from 1857 onwards: Francis Robinson’s collection of essays, The Muslim World in Modern South Asia; Brannon Ingram work on the Deobandi movement, Revival from Below; and Justin Jones work on the Shi’a minority of upper India in Shi’a Islam in Colonial India.
The books are all quite different. Robinson looks at the characteristics of the Islamic revival in the age of Western dominance. Ingram examines Deobandi thought in relation to Sufism, highlighting how many Deobandis understood Sufism as in essence standing for ethical self-fashioning. Jones outlines Shi'a religious change and the development of a harder sectarian identity in the colonial period. But where they converge, is on the changing nature of religious authority in the modern era.
Before the onset of colonial rule, mosques, madrasas, the law and the ulama were generally supported by Muslim state power. The authority of the individual alim rested on possession of ijazas and on a system of person to person transmission of religious knowledge.
With the waning of Mughal rule and the deepening of British rule, patronage of the ulama declined. No longer did the British fund madrasa education; no longer after 1865 was the advice of Muftis to be sought when administering Anglo-Muhammadan law. Revenue free grants that supported families of the ulama were reclaimed in many instances; religious knowledge was deemed inferior and government servants were increasingly expected to have obtained their qualifications from government schools.
It is in this context, that firstly, many worked to build a Muslim society from the bottom up; to mould the conscience of the believer. In Ingram’s words, “one had to reform the individual to reform society.” One also had to educate the individual. Thus, there was a profusion of madrasas after 1857 and the objective of the madrasa was now no longer to produce individuals who would serve the state as civil servants, but to produce individuals who would serve society through the religious knowledge that they learned. Fatwas once produced by and large for judges were now directed at individual Muslims.
In the process, a greater emphasis was placed on personal responsibility and in Robinson’s words, a “this-worldly Islam of action on earth to achieve salvation." Listen to the modernist, Sayyid Ahmad Khan: “I regard it as my duty to do all I can, right or wrong”, he said “to defend my religion and too show the people the true, shining countenance of Islam. This is what my conscience dictates and unless I do its bidding, I am a sinner before God.”
In the case of the Deobandi, Ashraf Ali Thanvi, he reminded his followers of the horrors of the Day of Judgment to focus their minds on their responsibilities. Ingram’s book in fact begins with a quote from a sermon delivered by Thanvi, in 1923:
“O Faithful, save yourself and your family from the torments of Hell.”
Secondly, we see in the colonial period the development of ‘brands’ such as Deobandi or Barelwi. Religious authority was now not just vested on those that possessed ijazas but was also based on ‘maslaki’ identity. It became more important for adherents to distinguish themselves from other denominations, to guard ‘their’ boundaries.
Thirdly, and related to this, the attempt to prove one’s authority in itself contributed greatly to the development of modern sectarianism. Indeed Jones stresses inner conflicts within the sects themselves. So he says, “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.” The same no doubt applies for many Sunnis who engaged in polemical religious debate. It became a more “crowded religious marketplace” and debates were often about the desire to “consolidate their own positions of internal leadership through the vituperation of manufactured external communities.”
Fourthly, the expansion of print also enabled those outside the religious establishment to speak on behalf of Islam. In Robinson’s words:
“Increasingly from now on any Ahmad, Mahmud or Muhammad could claim to speak for Islam. No longer was a sheaf of impeachable ijazas the buttress of authority…The force of 1200 years of oral transmission, of person-to-person transmission, came increasingly to be ignored.”
The emergence of religious thinkers outside of the ulama was a global phenomenon. Teachers, lawyers, journalists, intellectuals and engineers stepped forward to speak in the name of Islam. Think of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Iqbal and Maududi in South Asia; of al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb in Egypt; of Hasan al-Turabi in Sudan; of Rashid al-Ghannushi in Tunisia; of Mahdi Bazargan in Iran.
Fifthly, rather than seeking patronage of an elite, as they might have once done, many seeking a claim to religious leadership now looked to rally public opinion. Authority could be derived from public backing. Communication in vernacular languages and an emphasis on oratory, on stirring emotion, on demonstrating a devotion and commitment to Islam, was increasingly prevalent. Indeed Margrit Pernau in her book (Emotions and Modernity in Colonial India) has argued that in Colonial India there was an intensification of emotion in Muslim discourse. There was a shift from an emphasis on adl, that is balance, to josh, that is fervour, ebullience.
The following quote from Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari is indicative of this ethos, though it is not included in any of these books - I take this instead from David Gilmartin’s book, Empire and Islam. The Majlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islam, which emerged in 1929, composed mainly of Punjabis and those mainly from a Deobandi background. Most of their leaders relied on fiery oratory. None more so than Bukhari. “I would fain allow myself to be thrown before fierce lions as a punishment for my love of the Prophet,” he declared in a speech delivered at Saharanpur in 1935. He continued, “I would deem myself fortunate if those lions were to chew my bones in their jaws and I were conscious enough to hear them cracking.”