The ‘Ulama and the Religio-Political Developments in Modern India

Abstract

This paper is not an exercise in or a contribution to the ongoing debate in the Muslim world about the nature of the relationship between Islamic principles and Western statecraft, or the inseparability of spiritual and profane in a Muslim state. While all these issues are in one way or another relevant to the subject under discussion here, they do not form its core. This paper has two major objectives. The first is to attempt to analyze how the ’ulama viewed political developments in the late 19th and early 20th century in India. The second, equally important but only indirectly touched on in this paper (and the two are interrelated), is an investigation into whether it was Islamic religious issues or the presence of the British that engrossed the attention of the ‘ulama. This is essential if one is to understand the nature of the ‘ulama’s participation in the formative phase of religio-political developments in 19th and 20th century Indian Islam, and in particular, its impact in later years on the interaction between the ’ulama and the Muslim League. It is in relation to both these objectives that a great deal of analysis-both from objective and polemical points of view-regarding the nature and content of the role of the ‘ulama in politics suffers from a great degree of biases and confusion. Before discussing the political role of the Indian ‘ulama, it is necessary to observe that it would be wrong to think of the ‘ulama in terms of an “estate” within the Muslim community or to assume that the ‘ulama were, as a body, capable of generating a joint political will. The reason for ‘ulama to take so long to appear on the political horizon of India was one of principle and expediency, that stopped the ’ulama from hurling futiiwa of condemnation at the East India Company when it eventually superseded Mughal power in India. Until 1790, penal justice in Bengal continued to be dispensed under the revised Shari’ah forms of Aurengzeb’s time. In the sphere of civil law, ...