Altaf Fatima

We all know the old adage that “history belongs to the victors.” In the case of Muslim India, this is reflected in the historical accounts ofMuslim South Asia’s decline during the eighteenth century and its final defeat in 1857. Written mainly by European and Hindu historians who often had no contacts beyond the Mughal court’s outer fringes, they could hardly be expected to present theMuslim interpretation of events. Closer to our own time, the success of M. K. Gandhi’s (1869-1948) non-violent mass movement, which finally forced the British out of India, has overshadowed earlier Muslim efforts to obtain the same goal. In this article, a glimpse is offered into this often ignored history in order to remind people that Gandhi’s movement did not arise in a vacuum, but rather in a particular historical context in which Muslims had played a prominent role.

Ground Realities

The death of Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir (1618-1707; r. 1658-1707) ushered in a period of destabilization characterized by wars of succession among his descendants and incessant attacks by the Marahata and Sikh forces. The political situation and heartbreaking accounts of military and other losses helped to create an air of defeatism. As a result, Muslim South Asians lost their will to live as self-respecting citizens, gave up their dynamism and urge to learn and advance, and actually severed their relationship with learning. Thus they lost their own history, a discipline that owed much of its development to Muslims, and became dependent upon others to tell their story. Unfortunately, these “others” have never been fair in their accounts.

For example, nothing could be further from the truth than the European and Hindu accounts alleging that Islam was spread in South Asia by the sword after the Muslim invasion. In fact, the Muslims brought learning and a new manifesto that attracted the disenfranchised masses without coercion. Poet-philosopher Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) encapsulates this era in the following couplet:

huay iss shan say jadah paymah ihrare millat keh hain tamashaee shigafay darr say sadiyiuoun kay zindani.
The ummah’s freedom lovers stepped forward with such dignity that the [dispossessed members of society who had been] prisoners of [their deprivation for] centuries watched from the crevices of their doors [with great admiration].

Those who invited the Indians to Islam were not soldiers, but the religious scholars, saintly personalities who served God through learning and piety, dervishes, and members of Sufi orders who accompanied the soldiers and settled down to teach and instruct. No ruler guided or paid them, for such undertakings were volunteer efforts to share the message of Islam. Inspired by a desire to share Islam, which offered liberty and equality to all people, they attracted many local people. There were many instances of one branch of the family entering Islam while the other continued in its traditional faith. India’s first Muslim emperor, Zahir-ud-din Mohammad Babur (1483-1530; r. 1526-30) states in his autobiography, Tuzuk-e Babari, that the aims of his conquest did not include forced conversions to Islam.As neither the Mughals nor the earlier Muslim rulers forced their beliefs on the local populace, the majority of the people retained their traditional beliefs and their places of worship remained safe and secure.

Islam spread because of the teachings imparted by its scholars and spiritual leaders. In fact, under the Mughals, Delhi used to be called the baees khwaja ki chawkhat (the doorstep of twenty-two scholarly giants). But its rapid spread created its own challenges, among them providing the necessary training and education to maintain such a pace. At first, these sages trained and entrusted their successors and murids (scholar-disciples) to meet this need and asked them to nurture their own assistant scholar-representatives. However, this system could not prevent the emergence of a great uneducated and semi-literate new Muslim population that kept many of its un-Islamic local customs and practices. Over time, the followers of a religion that taught action and advancement fell prey to alien ways and customs, a development that led to the Mughal Empire’s weakening and destabilization.

While this was going on, the European powers, especially the French, the British, and the Portuguese who had come to India for trade, started warring among themselves for control. It was at this time that the British East India Company’s (hereinafter “Company”) officers correctly assessed that the Marahatas and Sikhs had weakened the Mughal Empire and that the Company would benefit by finishing it off. In addition, such a victory would help themoverpower the French and Portuguese and turn India into a British fiefdom. This plan came to fruition in 1857, when the Red Fort fell to the British and they arrested the last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775-1862; r. 1838-57). Finally, the largest hurdle to Britain’s direct rule of India, namely, the Muslims, was removed and ruling through surrogates became unnecessary.

However, this scenario was far from being the walkover as some British and Company officials had imagined. British historians mislabeled India’s 1857 war of independence as a “mutiny,” and although Queen Victoria assumed the title “Empress of India” in 1877, the anti-British struggle continued. The British pretense of subordination to the emperor in Delhi was abandoned, his name was removed from all coinage in 1835.1 Two years later, Persian was abandoned as the language of record and the courts and replaced by English and regional languages, a decision welcomed by the Anglicized Bengali Hindus. Muslims deplored it, however, and their numbers in the administration steadily declined. Consequently, British officials, now trained initially in England and increasingly accompanied by their wives, became socially and intellectually more aloof from their Indian subjects.

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