Revival From Below

by Brannon D Ingram

  Barahin-i qati‘a is probably the most salient example of a Deobandi text that embodies the culture and spirit of the munazara and exemplifies the overlap between reformed readers and colonial crowds. While many were discomfited by the sudden insertion of theological and legal issues (masa’il) into public debate, both in staged munazaras and in published texts styled like them, Saharanpuri seemed less concerned about these risks. In the wake of its publication, a certain Ya‘qub ‘Ali Khan, who taught Ahmad Raza Khan’s father but whose views inclined toward Muhammad Isma‘il’s, approached Saharanpuri. “This issue about the possibility of [God] lying, which is synonymous with divine power, is beyond the comprehension of most scholars [maulvis], let alone the masses,” he said. “Only an intelligent and extremely learned ‘alim can understand it. Scholars inclined toward bid‘a are causing a fuss over this issue among the masses and making them anxious about it. They make the masses suspicious of the pious [ahl-i haqq] and stir up mischief. You should not have written about this issue.” Saharanpuri replied that it was a necessary response to ‘Abd al-Sami‘ Rampuri’s critiques of Gangohi, and that he therefore had a responsibility to publish it. Besides, when the Prophet ascended to heaven and came back, he was ridiculed by those who could not understand it. Would it have been better, he asks rhetorically, if the Prophet had remained silent?36

  A few years after the publication of Barahin-i qati‘a, the mutual disdain that had begun to grow between Deobandis and the then-nascent Barelvi movement reached a fever pitch. In February 1906, Ahmad Raza Khan presented a series of Deobandis’ allegedly heretical statements to ‘ulama in Mecca and Medina, and published these statements, along with these ‘ulama’s responses, in his Husam al-haramayn ‘ala manhar al-kufr wa al-mayn (The sword of the two sanctuaries [Mecca and Medina] upon the throat of unbelief and falsehood). There is no room to analyze this text here, and others have done so in depth.37 The main point is that Khan accused key Deobandis of unbelief (kufr), citing reasons such as Deobandis’ belief that God’s omnipotence theoretically encompassed God’s ability to lie (imkan-i kizb).38 He concluded with the following verdict: “By the consensus [ijma‘] of the Ummah,” the Deobandis—along with adherents of other movements, like the Ahmadis—are “disbelievers [kafir] and apostates [murtad] and out of the fold of Islam.”39 Khan saw the Deobandis as purveyors of strife, tearing at the very fabric of the Ummah. “The creed [mazhab] of the Sunna is a stranger to Hindustan,” he wrote, ominously. “The darkness of tribulation [fitan] is in the ascendant. Evil is on the rise.”40

  Imdad Allah was deeply distressed by the rifts that had formed because of these polemics, among his disciples as well as in the public at large. He hoped Faisala-yi haft mas’ala (A decision on seven controversies) would be a balm for the wounds of “Muslims generally, but especially for those close to me”—which included disciples that were then in the process of polarizing along “Deobandi” and “Barelvi” lines. Imdad Allah saw no good in “fighting and altercation” (niza‘ o jidal). “My wish,” in fact, “is that my friends do not bother with publishing any responses to this, because I have no desire to engage in debate [munazara].”41 This aversion to the munazara was partly a plea to protect the public. For Imdad Allah, there was nothing positive to come out of involving the masses in these controversies. If scholars insist on discussing the possibility that God could lie or create other prophets, they should do so in “private conversation” (zaban-i khalwat) and never before a public audience. And if one must write about these issues, Imdad Allah says, one should do so in Arabic, lest the masses read it and feel the need to debate these issues among themselves.42

  Thanvi arguably had more in common with his mentor Imdad Allah on this issue than he did with Saharanpuri. For Thanvi, “it is the way of the Sufi masters to forsake debate [tark-i mubahasa], even when they are right.”43 Below, we will see how Thanvi took a middle path between the aggressive, confrontational approach of Saharanpuri and the conciliatory, irenic approach of Imdad Allah. At the same time, he thought that many misunderstood Faisala-yi haft mas’ala, taking it to be an endorsement of mawlud, ‘urs, and other practices. “This is absolutely not true,” Thanvi wrote in 1898. For these people, “[Imdad Allah’s] intention was to proclaim the truth to the masses. They believe I am guilty of hiding the truth while others have been freed from doubt and uncertainty. Yet it is clear that these widespread and common issues have led to all kinds of corruption in the belief and practice of the masses, and particularly the ignorant masses in India, as any intelligent writer can plainly see.”44 In any tension between conciliation and informing the masses of their errors, Thanvi always gave preference to the latter.

  FLUID PUBLICS: THE DEOBANDI PUBLIC BETWEEN ‘AMM AND KHASS

  There is yet another crucial lens through which to understand Deobandi efforts to reform the public—in fact, the principal lens through which they understood the public itself: ‘amm and khass. The hierarchy of common (‘amm) and elite (khass) is one that had been established, if often challenged, across the span of centuries. The meanings of ‘amm (in Arabic, “general”) and khass (in Arabic, “specific,” “particular”) have shifted across historical, social, and legal contexts. In most contexts, the hierarchy was a hermeneutic one. One need not scour early Islamic texts to find such hierarchies. Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 765), the sixth imam of the Shi‘a and a major influence on Sufism, opens his Qur’an commentary with the following typology of readers: “The Book of God has four things: literal expression [‘ibarah], allusions [isharah], subtleties [lata’if], and realities [haqa’iq]. The literal expression is for the commoners [‘awamm], allusion is for the elite [khawass], the subtleties are for the saints, and the realities are for the prophets.”45 If such a theological hierarchy was defined in terms of knowledge, the ‘amm/khass distinction was also often a spatial one. The Mughal court, for instance, distinguished between the public audience hall (divan-i ‘amm) and the private audience hall (divan-i khass), the latter conferring political capital on those who could access it.46 In some contexts, the “elite” (khawass) would have been defined primarily in terms of class; throughout the nineteenth century, the ashraf (“nobility,” denoting, in principle, Muslims of non-Indian ancestry, but a status that one could also earn) were, at this time, in the process of merging with a nascent “middle class.”47

  But for the ‘ulama, the ‘amm/khass distinction is most often a scholarly one: khass designates those who are defined by their mastery of religious knowledge (‘ilm-i din); ‘amm designates everyone else. We have already seen numerous times how that comparative lack of religious knowledge is the source of normative disorder among the masses. But in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Deobandis strived to change the ‘awamm in two ways: they encouraged, even demanded, that the ‘awamm distinguish themselves from non-Muslims, and at the same time, their efforts to foster religious knowledge among the ‘awamm blurred the very hierarchies on which their identity as ‘ulama were based. Stated differently, they sought to foster distinction on the horizontal axis between Muslims and others, while they blurred it on the vertical axis between ‘ulama and laity.

  Let us consider the first axis. Deobandis encouraged Muslims to distinguish themselves from non-Muslims in their demeanor, habits, daily routines, and dress. Nowhere is this more evident than in Deobandis’ warnings against “imitation of the unbeliever” (tashabbuh bi-l kuffar). This concept, to be sure, did not begin with the Deobandis. It is one that Indian reformists invoked long before the Deoband movement—Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi once rebuked Muhammad Isma‘il for attending a Hindu fair (mela)48—but is also a concept that has been invoked in various contexts for centuries.49 But it preoccupied Deobandis to a significant extent. Gangohi was especially vocal in calling out what he saw as “Hindu” or “Christian” elements in Muslim devotional practice, which was for him prima facie evidence of its normative illegality.50 The circumambulation of tombs, for instance, is “impermissible as it necessitates resemblance with i
dol worshipers, who engage in the same activity around their idols.”51 Lighting candles, hanging lamps, and leaving food at shrines also resembled polytheist practices and Hindu idolatry.52 Gangohi was averse to ostensibly Christian and Jewish practices as well: “Kissing tombs is the practice of the Jews and Christians, and is thus forbidden.”53 Gangohi and Saharanpuri both opposed the mawlud for, among other reasons, its ostensible resemblance to non-Muslim religious practices.54 The parallel with Christmas was the obvious one, but Gangohi also noted its resemblance to Shi‘a commemorations of ‘Ashura as well as the Hindu celebration of Krishna’s birth, the janmasthami, which entails reading stories about Krishna’s birth, analogous to the stories of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth recounted in the mawlud.55 Gangohi also asserted that the belief that the Prophet’s soul descends from the world of spirits (‘alam-i arvah) to the material world (‘alam-i dunya) each year on his birthday bears similarities (mushabahat) to Hindu beliefs about the annual rebirth of Krishna.56

  These admonitions went beyond devotional practice. They also concerned everyday social exchanges. Gangohi discouraged Muslims from doing business with Hindus, urged Muslims not to attend Hindu lectures and rallies, and criticized Muslims who retained trappings of “Hindu” custom and lifestyles. One fatwa permits the use of copper pots, which he associates with Hindus, so long as it is not done out of imitating (tashabbuh) unbelievers (kuffar).57 A similar fatwa banned Muslims from wearing “Hindu” and “English” clothing.58

  But Gangohi was not uniformly opposed to anything vaguely resembling “Hindu” belief and practice. He had no problem with the Sufi practice of holding the breath (habs-i dam) during meditation, as he explained to Thanvi, who was concerned about its potential similarity to Hindu yogic practices. Gangohi saw the matter as legally neutral (mubah), and, he adds, both yogis and Sufis adopted the practice because of its benefits in purifying the body through the regulation of bodily heat—central to both Chishti and Qadiri meditative practice, he notes. Its utility, then, precedes its adoption by both communities; it is not the case that Sufis adopted the practice from yogis.59

  Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, too, was determined to educate Muslims on the dangers of “imitation” (tashabbuh), couched within a broader conscientiousness about what he calls the signs (shi‘ar) and marks (‘alamat) of Islam in public space. Like Gangohi, he critiqued certain devotional practices for their resemblance to non-Sunni practices. He believed the distribution of sweets during mawlud may have derived from the Shi‘i practice of distributing sweets on the 10th of Muharram.60 But Thanvi’s anxiety about public distinction informed how he perceived Muslims’ sartorial choices and personal comportment as well. Thanvi explained the legal status of public distinction with the following analogy: suppose a man fills an empty liquor bottle with water and drinks it in public. He is not consuming liquor, to be sure; nonetheless “he is a criminal and, from the perspective of the Shari‘a, a sinner, because he appears [tashabbuh] to be among the consumers of liquor.”61 This is why Shari‘a norms mandate “distinguishing the Muslim community [qawm], the maintenance of difference in our clothing, our manners, our way of speaking, and our behavior.” Whereas the Shari‘a requires certain forms of Muslim distinction in any context—for example, the beard—some are mandated only in specific contexts. Thus, he says, “in our country, wearing coat and pants, wearing gurgabi [a type of shoe], tying a dhoti [worn by Hindu men around the waist], and women wearing the lahanga [a kind of skirt] are all things that are purely the characteristics of other communities [aqwam].”62 For Muslims to wear English dress in England was perfectly acceptable, as indeed he conceded that some did; but wearing such clothing in India was forbidden, precisely because it compromised public distinctions between Muslims and others.63 Even printing the Qur’an might unwittingly perpetuate illicit forms of imitation. In 1917 Thanvi responded to a question about the permissibility of printing an English translation and commentary on the Qur’an, with the Arabic and English side-by-side in parallel columns. Thanvi regarded this, with no explanation, as “an imitation of non-Muslims” and said that the Qur’an must come at the top of the page, with the English translation below it and the commentary at the bottom.64

  At the same time that Deobandis encouraged Muslims to differentiate themselves from non-Muslims (and from non-Sunni Muslims), they also encouraged Muslims to become “like” the ‘ulama. By Thanvi’s era, the distinction between lay Muslims and ‘ulama had also become more fluid. This was partly due to the very reformist activities that the Deobandis implemented. Those whom Thanvi purports to initiate into this rarefied scholarly discourse become part of a sort of quasi public of “middling” scholars—not quite the scholarly “elite,” but not entirely “common” either, a group he describes with the Urdu word mutawassit (“middling,” “midway,” “intermediate”).65 Besides, Thanvi was clear that many of the ‘ulama would benefit from reading reformist texts as well, not just the laity. But Thanvi also sought to open a space for Muslims to go beyond what they could learn from these texts. These texts represented, to be sure, a minimal effort needed to shore up the reformed subjectivities he sought to cultivate. He hoped that these texts would inspire some Muslims to become ‘ulama. In fact, Thanvi abbreviated the madrasa curriculum in an attempt to make the core features of a madrasa education available to lay Muslims:

  If one has a desire for Arabic but little time, one can read only the necessary books. After a curriculum has been abbreviated accordingly, what once entailed ten years will take only two and a half. Do not be alarmed at this novelty, and do not say earlier ‘ulama were wasting their time since what now takes two and a half years used to take ten. For my intention is not that the very same instruction that took ten years will now take two and a half, but we can conclude that a man, after such instruction, will become firm in his religion [din] and can become a scholar [maulvi] of moderate skill. Of course, his knowledge will not be vast, but if he so desires, he will have the ability to expand it.66

  Completing this abbreviated curriculum would make someone a “middling scholar” (mutawassit ‘alim), an opportunity he extended to women in Bihishti zewar (Heavenly ornaments), assuring them that “you will become within three years, God willing, a maulvi, a scholar of Arabic, and join the ranks of the ‘ulama. You will be able to give lectures on Qur’an and Hadith, just like the ‘ulama. You will be able to give fatwas, just like the ‘ulama. You will be able to teach Arabic to children, just like the ‘ulama.”67

  HOW TO DO REFORM: PRINT, PUBLICS, AND RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE

  Whether someone who simply reads reformist texts in his or her spare time, or someone aspiring to become a “middling” ‘alim, the individual was the central node in a reformist matrix that linked individuals to families, families to towns, and towns to the wider reading public of reformist literature. The introduction to Bihishti zewar, one of the most widely printed books in South Asia, makes this abundantly clear, linking the moral health of the individual with the moral health of the Muslim body politic in explicit terms. Thanvi explains why he composed the book: “The cause of the devastation” in which Indian Muslims find themselves “is women’s ignorance of religious knowledge, which in turn ruins their beliefs, deeds, social transactions, character, and public life. . . . The reason is that corrupt belief leads to corrupt ethics, corrupt ethics to corrupt actions, corrupt actions to corrupt social dealings, and corrupt social dealings lead to corrupt public life.”68

  Though Thanvi saw the reformist text as the primary instrument of effecting reform, this had not always been the case. Evidence suggests that he gradually came around to this strategy from an earlier inclination to reform individuals by going directly to them. In a series of letters between Gangohi and Thanvi in May and June of 1897, Gangohi admonished Thanvi for attempting to reform the mawlud in Kanpur by engaging with its participants directly. The correspondence began after Thanvi received word through a mutual acquaintance that Gangohi was angry at him. Gangohi wrote to him, saying, “I ov
erheard that you may be guilty of things I consider bid‘a. . . . This is difficult for me to believe.” It becomes clear, in Thanvi’s response, that the rumor to which Gangohi refers is that Thanvi had participated in a mawlud. A despondent Thanvi wrote back to defend his participation in the mawlud in the following terms:

  Where I was living then [in Kanpur], there were many assemblies [majalis] where people undoubtedly transgressed the limits. Initially people were opposed to my objections. After three or four months, I took my first journey to the Hijaz, and Hazrat [Imdad Allah] said to me: “There is no need to be so strict. Wherever the practice exists, do not object to it. Wherever it is absent, do not introduce it.” After my return [to Kanpur], I would participate [in such assemblies] upon request with a resolve to reform [islah] the beliefs of the people. Thus, I always spoke on these various occasions and explained clearly that if they believed these actions to be essential, they became bid‘a. . . . By virtue of how deeply rooted these habits are, I have no hope of upturning them. Yet if I did not participate at all, there would be no hope of reform. Another reason I participated is that I saw how few people came to sermons, but people of all different tastes and persuasions would come out in droves for these assemblies. This afforded me an opportunity to offer advice and counsel [pand o nasa’ih], reform their beliefs, and rectify their actions. Hundreds, even thousands, of people repented of their corrupt beliefs and evil deeds and became righteous. Many Shi‘a became Sunni. Usurers, drinkers, and people who did not pray were corrected. In short, I gave sermons [wa‘z] under the pretext of giving lectures [bayan]. Finally, I saw that it would not be possible to remain at these assemblies without participating. Upon even a slight objection [to participating], I would be called a Wahhabi and be degraded and abused verbally and physically.69