BOOK REVIEW

Qeyamuddin Ahmad: The Wahhabi Movement in India, Manohar, New Delhi

Review by Tilak D. Gupta

The book tells us the fascinating story of a movement that began with the objective of restoring the purity of Islam among the Muslims in the Indian subcontinent but grew to reveal strong anti-colonial overtones. In a way, the Wahhabi movement of the 19th century demonstrates both the possibility as well as the limitations of religious fundamentalism as a weapon against colonialism.

Much has been written on the Wahhabi movement since William W. Hunter's account of this anti-British rebellion. Yet, the movement in all its complexities, perhaps, still remains inadequately understood. Qeyamuddin Ahmad's study, drawing on varied English, Arabic and Persian records of the time, indeed, helps to enhance our understanding of the subject.

The author quotes from various contemporary sources of depict the nature of resentment among the Muslim aristocracy in particular against the East India Company's spreading tentacles over the country in the late 18th and 19th century. The steep increase in land revenue rates, resumption of rent-free land holdings enjoyed by the Muslim gentry and the growing commercial hegemony of the company, argues the author, provide the economic backdrop for the Wahhabi movement. Besides, the unIslamic rituals adopted by the Indian Muslims and the prevailing corruption and extravagance among Muslim rulers, he points out, brought forth the urge for socio-religious reforms.

Ahmad makes an interesting point when he says that the economic decline of the erstwhile rulers led to their reduced capacity to patronize the scholars and theologians. That may partly explain the fact that spiritual figures were often influenced, overtly or blatantly, against the company's regime.

Sayyad Ahmad, the inspiration behind the Wahhabi movement, by way of his theologian-soldier background, was seemingly well suited for playing the role of a vanguard. The socio-religious manifesto of the movement fashioned by him, of course, urged its followers to return to the purity of Islam.

The author despite his sympathetic attitude to the movement concedes that Sayyad Ahmad was rather harsh on some of the Sufis whom he considered responsible for the present degradation of Indian Muslims. Some earlier works have also sought to highlight this fundamental aspect of the movement.

That the Wahhabis under Sayyad Ahmad fought, for a while, the Sikh durbar of Lahore in the North West Frontier areas, too, has prompted some authors to overlook the movement's anti-British nature. The book under review seeks to put the record straight by drawing attention to the developing anti-colonial character of the Wahhabi movement, especially at its later stages.

Drawing on many hitherto unpublished sources Ahmad has shown that the anti-British aspect of the movement "was gaining ascendancy, more clearly since 1840". In fact, the book breaks fresh grounds in detailing and analyzing the reorganization of the movement after the demise of Sayyad Ahmad (1736-1831) in the battle of Balakote.

The author underscores the fact that Wahhabi leaders were among the first in colonial India to have been tried and convicted on grounds of waging war against the British empire. The description of the state trials of the Wahhabi leaders at Ambala, Patna, Raj Mahal and Maida, between 1863 and 1871, and the suffering of the Wahhabi prisoners at Andamans, bear ample testimony to this fact.

The author, however, enters a disputed terrain when he opines that Sayyad Ahmad, represented "a happy blend of spiritual enlightenment and practical efficiency" in his socio-religious ideas. It is one thing to grasp the objective reasons behind the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the early period of British rule but quite another to justify it. Given the insufficient evidence, his suggestion that the support base of the movement broadened in the course of time to include non-Muslims, remains debatable.

Ahmad is on much stronger grounds when he reiterates that "the Wahhabi movement does not fit neatly into any one of the categories into which the study of the history of early resistance to foreign rule has been divided chronologically and thematically".

The movement, as it appears from the book, at one level, was the continuation of the inherent anti-firangi mindset of the Muslim ruling classes. At another plane, it also had an agrarian content in spite of its communal exclusiveness, as evident from the struggles led by Titu Mir in Bengal. Such communal exclusiveness is understandable in the social milieu of the 19th century.

K.M. Munshi on Ali Brothers

"Even during their honeymoon with the Congress, the Ali Brothers (Shaukat Ali and Muhammad Ali) were not slow to shout from the housetops that the Muslims were a master Race qua the Hindus. Muhammad Ali declared: 'Yes, according to my religion and creed I do hold an adulterous and a fallen Mussalman to be better than Mr. Gandhi'.

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