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The Local Experiences of Reformist Islam in a ‘Muslim’ Town in Colonial India: The Case of Amroha

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2009

JUSTIN JONES
JUSTIN JONES*
Affiliation:
Centre of South Asian Studies, Laundress Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1SD, UK Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper discusses shifts within Islamic life, ritual and practice in the town of Amroha in the United Provinces of India, during the eventful period of approximately 1860–1930. Based primarily upon Urdu writings produced about or by Muslim residents of the town during this period, it examines the ways in which wider religious reformist movements such as those associated with Aligarh, Deoband and Bareilly were received and experienced within nearby smaller, supposedly marginal urban settlements. The paper argues that broader currents of religious reform were not unquestioningly accepted in Amroha, but were often engaged in a constant process of dialogue and accommodation with local particularities. The first section introduces Amroha and its sharif Muslim population, focusing upon how the town's Islamic identity was defined and described. The second section examines a plethora of public religious rites and institutions emerging during this period, including madrasas and imambaras, discussing how these were used by eminent local families to reinforce distinctly local hierarchies and cultural particularities. A third section considers public debates in Amroha concerning the Aligarh movement, arguing that these debates enhanced local rivalries, especially those between Shia and Sunni Muslims. A final section interrogates the growing culture of religious disputation in the town, suggesting that such debate facilitated the negotiation of religious change in a transitory social environment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , July 2009 , pp. 871 - 908
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 Metcalf, Barbara, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton, 1982), p. 63Google Scholar. Especially important in this regard are Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Shah Wali-Allah and His Times: A Study of Eighteenth Century Islam, Politics and Society in India (Marifat: Canberra, 1980) and Shah ‘Abd al-’Aziz: Puritanism, Sectarian Polemics and Jihad (Marifat: Canberra, 1982).

2 Cole, Juan R. I., Roots of North Indian Shi'ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley: California, 1988).Google Scholar

3 Lelyveld, David, Aligarh's First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India (Princeton: New Jersey, 1978)Google Scholar; Metcalf, Islamic revival; Sanyal, Usha, Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1870–1920 (Oxford: Delhi, 1996).Google Scholar

4 Janel L. Abu-Lughod, ‘The Islamic city – historic myth, Islamic essence and contemporary relevance’ in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1987), p. 156.

5 Over half of Aligarh's students shared a background in the small north Indian towns and qasbas. Lelyveld, Aligarh's First Generation, pp. 180–184. Metcalf cites the qasbati origins of many of the founders, teachers and pupils of Deoband's madrasa. E.g. Metcalf, Islamic Revival, p. 85. The qasba roots of many of the ‘separatist’ Muslim politicians of the colonial era are identified in Robinson, Francis, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923 (Cambridge: London, 1974), pp. 358–418.Google Scholar

6 H.R. Nevill, District Gazetteers of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, Volume XVI: Moradabad (Allahabad, 1911), pp. 68, 176–177.

7 Dumont, Louis, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Chicago: Chicago, 1981), pp. 158–164.Google Scholar

8 The only English-language discussion of Amroha of note is Husain, S.M. Azizuddin, Medieval Towns, a Case Study of Amroha and Jalali (Hira: New Delhi, 1995).Google Scholar

9 Amroha's wealth was mostly drawn from land revenues, and there was little industry to speak of. This said, the town acted as a market town for the pargana and there seem to have been small trades in pottery, toy making and other crafts, perhaps those connected to the periodic fairs held in the town during ‘urs, Muharram, Ramlila and other religious festivals.

10 Bayly, C.A., Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870 (Oxford: New Delhi, 1983), p. 192Google Scholar; Liebeskind, Claudia, Piety on Its Knees: Three Sufi Traditions in South Asia in Modern Times (Oxford: Delhi, 1998), p. 47.Google Scholar

11 This view has been wide-reaching and is common to Muzaffar Alam, ‘Religion and politics in Awadh society: 17th and early 18th centuries,’ in Anna Libera Dallapiccola and Stephanie Zingel-Ave Lallemant (eds.), Islam and Indian Religions (Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1993), pp. 326–329, 333–335, 343–349; Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, pp. 189–193, 349–354; Mushirul Hasan, From Pluralism to Separatism: Qasbas in Colonial Awadh (Oxford: New Delhi, 2004), pp. 1–46; Gyanandra Pandey, ‘“Encounters and calamities”: The history of a north Indian qasba in the nineteenth century,’ in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies III: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Oxford: New Delhi, 1984), 231–270; Khizar Humayun Ansari, The Emergence of Socialist Thought Among North Indian Muslims, 1917–1947 (Book traders: Lahore, 1990), pp. 119–130.

12 The history of the sayyids and their major families is available in the following works: Asghar Husain, Tarikh-i-Asghari (Moradabad, 1889); Mahmud Ahmad Hashmi, Tarikh-i-Amroha (Delhi, 1930); Jamal Ahmad Naqvi, Tarikh-i-sadat-i-Amroha (Hyderabad, 1934).

13 C.f. Janel L. Abu-Lughod, ‘The Islamic city’, pp. 163–164.

14 Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, pp. 78–79; Naqvi, Tarikh-i-sadat, p. 5; The Sunnis of Amroha to the Secretary of the North Western Provinces and Oudh, 29 February 1896, General Administration Department (GAD) 106C/64 of 1896, Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Lucknow (UPSA); Anonymous on behalf of Sadat of Amroha, 4 August 1902, GAD 255/1903.

15 Hashmi, Tarikh-i-Amroha, pp. 263–267 gives numerous examples of families who converted from Sunni to Shia Islam and vice versa.

16 Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, p. 177; Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims, pp. 399–400.

17 One example is Nawab Ali Khan, Shams ul-tawarikh (Lucknow, 1898), an account of the influential local family of Amjad Ali Khan and his descendants, who feature prominently in this paper. Amjad Ali was a respected Shia maulvi (intellectual) and Deputy Collector of Amroha in the 1880s, while some of his close relatives and descendants became known for their work in law and government service in Kanpur and Lucknow. Further documentation in English pertaining to this family is available in Hamid Ali Khan (ed.), The certificates etc of Hakim Mohamed Amjad Ali Khan, Hakim Mohamed Niaz Ali Khan, Khan Bahadur Shaikh Altaf Hasan Khan, and Munshi Shaukat Hasan (Lucknow, 1899).

18 Examples include Naqvi, Tarikh-i-sadat and Husain, Tarikh-i-Asghari.

19 For example, some families were accused of adding the prefix of ‘Sayyid’ to their names only after 1857, as a means of verifying the legitimacy of their mu'afi grants. A rebuke to such accusations by one individual is available in Sayyid Aal Ahmad Rizvi, Tarikh-i-Amroha ke ek not par ijmali nazar (Aligarh 1930), passim. On the ‘Musalmans of low caste who style themselves Sheikh for the purpose of respectability’, see Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, p. 77.

20 On the sense of social distinction derived from foreign ancestry, and the role of ashraf-ajlaf discrepancies in Muslim social stratification, see Zarina Bhatty, ‘Status and power in a Muslim dominated village of Uttar Pradesh’, in Imtiaz Ahmad (ed.), Caste and Social Stratification Among the Muslims (Manohar: Delhi, 1973), pp. 89–106; Richard Kurin, ‘The culture of ethnicity in Pakistan’, in Katherine Ewing (ed.), Shari'at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam (California: Berkeley, 1988), pp. 220–247; Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi'ism, pp. 72–84; Yoginder Sikand, The Origins and Development of the Tablighi-Jama'at: A Cross-Comparative Study (Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2002), pp. 18–20.

21 This phrase is borrowed from the discussion of how the village is continuously conceived and redefined in Marsden, Magnus, Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience on Pakistan's North-West Frontier (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2005), passim.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Naqvi, Tarikh-i-sadat, pp. 12–19.

23 An especially lucid example of the use of such language to describe Mecca drawn from the Indo-Persian literary culture of the north Indian qasbas is Ghulam Ali Azad Bilgrami's Subhat ul-marjan fi athar Hindustan, a section of which is available in Carl Ernst, ‘India as a sacred Islamic land’, in Donald S. Lopez (ed.), Religions of India in Practice (Princeton: Princeton, 1995), pp. 556–563.

24 Naqvi, Tarikh-i-sadat, pp. 9–12.

25 For an account of the management and thriving functions of some of these maqbaras and dargahs, see ibid, pp. 28–39.

26 Ibid, pp. 43–45; Husain, Tarikh-i-Asghari, pp. 25–32.

27 The most important Shia ‘alim to emerge from Amroha was Sayyid Najm ul-Hasan, who became one of the most prominent Indian mujtahids of the early twentieth century. See Sayyid Murtaza Husain, Matla‘-i-anwar: Tazkira-i-Shi'a afazil-va-‘ulama, kabar-i-bar-i-saghir-i-Pak-va-Hind (Karachi, 1981), pp. 675–678. For some examples of and biographical information on Amrohavi poets of marsiya, see Misbah Ahmad Saddiqi, Shoara-i-Amroha (Rampur, 2004).

28 These roles are seemingly used almost interchangeably in some accounts of notable Amrohavi families, e.g. Hashmi, Tarikh-i-Amroha, pp. 259–272; Naqvi, Tarikh-i-sadat, pp. 22–28. The town had so many active hakims that it was described as a ‘sanatorium’ for visiting wealthy Muslims. E. Alexander, Final Report of the Settlement of the Moradabad District (Allahabad, 1881), p. 66.

29 Khan, Shams-ul-tawarikh, pp. 113–114.

30 Ibid, pp. 114–115. Amjad Ali's extensive religious writings include Kanz-ul-ma'rifat (Lucknow, 1891), a work on kalam (dialectic), as well as Nasir-ul-Iman, which is discussed below.

31 Thomas Metcalf, Land, Landlords and the British Raj: Northern India in the Nineteenth Century (California: Berkeley, 1979), pp. 68–69; Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, p. 85. A more detailed account of British land policy in the district and its effects is available in Brennan, Lance, Land Policy and Social Change in North India: Rohilkhand 1800–1911 (Nedlands: University of Western Australia, 1978).Google Scholar

32 ‘Owing to constant subdivision . . . the state of the Amroha Saiyids in particular is far from satisfactory. Their number is very large, as they increase their property diminishes . . . until the large majority of them learn that they must seek their livelihood elsewhere than from the land, matters will not improve’. Boas, H.J., Final Report on the Eleventh Settlement of Moradabad District (Allahabad, 1909), p. 10b.Google Scholar

33 Alexander, Final Report, pp. 29–31; Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, p. 88.

34 Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, pp. 97, 176; also Hashmi, Tarikh-i-Amroha, pp. 340–341.

35 ‘The Mutiny marks a turning point, for thereafter the prices rose sharply, owing to a series of famines and the development of communications, accentuated by the introduction of railways and the growth of trade’. Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, pp. 46–47. For a discussion of the economic decline of the qasbas, see Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, pp. 355–358.

36 Liebeskind, Piety on Its Knees, pp. 251–264.

37 These arguments are evident in Hasan, From Pluralism to Separatism, pp. 46–51, 245–281.

38 See especially Metcalf, Islamic Revival, pp. 252–260.

39 E.g. Brennan, Lance, ‘The illusion of security: The background to Muslim separatism in the United Provinces’, in Hasan, Mushirul (ed.), India's Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilisation (Oxford: New Delhi, 1993), pp. 341–346.Google Scholar

40 Various examples, some of which are cited below, are available in Sayyid Ali Abbas Naqvi, Amroha ke ‘aza khane (Amroha, 2003), passim. Another batch of waqfs were apparently founded in the 1920s–1930s, perhaps those decades in which social and economic pressures were felt most acutely by sharif families. Ibid, pp. 66–67, 116.

41 Fyzee, Asaf A.A., Outlines of Muhammadan Law: Fourth Edition (Oxford: New Delhi, 2003), pp. 301–302Google Scholar; Kozlowski, Gregory C., Muslim Endowments and Society in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1985), pp. 150–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Most importantly, the Shia jama‘ masjid (Friday mosque), first constructed around 1817, was substantially enlarged in 1865–1866. Khan, Shams ul-tawarikh, pp. 114; Naqvi, Tarikh-i-sadat, pp. 44–45.

43 As is the case with, for instance, the Madrasa-i-Mu'aziya (founded 1726–1727), Madrasa-i-Maulvi Dost Muhammad and Madrasa-i-Mir Kullu (founded 1758–1759). Hashmi, Tarikh-i-Amroha, pp. 138–141.

44 Ibid, pp. 142–144.

45 Ibid, pp. 144–145; Khan, Shams ul-tawarikh, p. 114; General report upon public instruction in the North Western Provinces and Oudh 1912, V/24/916, Oriental and India Office Collections, London (OIOC), pp. 99–100.

46 Hashmi, Tarikh-i-Amroha, p. 146; Naqvi, Tarikh-i-sadat, p. 44.

47 Hashmi, Tarikh-i-Amroha, p. 145; Husain, Matla‘-i-anwar, p. 636.

48 For example Sayyid Sibte Nabi, a resident of the outpost of Nauganwan Sadat adjacent to Amroha who came to Amroha to study in Nor ul-Madaris, returned to his own settlement to found the Bab-ul-‘ilm maktab around 1914. Husain, Matla‘-i-anwar, p. 261.

49 Naqvi, Amroha ke ‘aza khane, pp. 68–70, 78–79, 91–93, 125; Hashmi, Tarikh-i-Amroha, pp. 367–371. Further imambaras were founded in the 1920s-40s, including Imambara Misma't-ul-Nisa in 1927 and Naqalon Imambara in 1928. Two of the town's largest imambaras were founded in 1942 and 1946 in Daneshmand and Bagla muhallas respectively. Ibid, pp. 39, 127; Husain, Medieval Towns, pp. 15–16.

50 These include Imambara Miswa't ul-Wahiden (founded 1873–1874), Imambara Miswa't ul-Khatun-i-Daulat (c.1880s) and Imambara Imamia Khatun (1928). Naqvi, Amroha ke ‘aza khane, pp. 78–79, 90–92, 140–141.

51 Famous preachers and reciters who visited Amroha during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries included Mir Anis, Zahoor Hasan and Maqbul Ahmad. Naqvi, Amroha ke ‘aza khane, pp. 63, 76–77, 83, 91–92; All India Shia Conference, Ro'idad-i-ijlas-i-chhata-i-Al Indiya Shi'a Kanferans munaqida 18–20 Aktuber 1912 (Lucknow, 1913), p. 182.

52 See especially Francis Robinson, ‘The Muslims of Upper India and the shock of the Mutiny’, in Robinson, Francis, Islam and Muslim History in South Asia (Oxford: Delhi, 2000), p. 151Google Scholar; Metcalf, Islamic Revival, pp. 11–12.

53 The phrase is taken from Freitag, Sandra, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in Colonial North India (California: Berkeley, 1989), p. 6.Google Scholar

54 Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, p. 176.

55 Petition from Musammat Zainab of Darbar Kalam mosque, 10 October 1895; Residents of Mohalla Darbar Kalam Amroha to Government of India, 19 October 1895; The Shias of Amroha to Mac Donnell, Lieutenant Governor of the North Western Provinces and Oudh, 19 December 1895, GAD 106C/64 of 1896. It was often newly built mosques into which this phrase was introduced. Husain, Matla’-i-Anwar, p. 36.

56 Naqvi, Amroha ke ‘aza khane, pp. 78–79, 94, 106; Official translation of a petition from Saiyid Gulsham Ali resident of Mohalla Qazizada and others, Amroha, 20 January 1896, to Government of India, GAD 106C/64 of 1896.

57 For instance, as in Shamra'l ud-din Ahmad, Shikast-i-‘azim ba'i-ada-i-Qur'an-i-karim (Lucknow, 1920), pp. 1–2.

58 E.g. Hashmi, Tarikh-i-Amroha, p. 144. This contrasts with the funding of the madrasa at Deoband and other such schools by multiple public donations as discussed in Metcalf, Islamic Revival, pp. 248–252.

59 To give just one example of this standard practice, the juloos and majalis administered from Imambara-i-Shaikh Auliya were named after Karam Ali Khan, the father of the man who founded them at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Naqvi, Amroha ke ‘aza khane, p. 63.

60 To give one example of how the rites of Muharram could heighten the status of sayyid ancestry, one text of this period which glorifies Muharram rites distinguishes the collective descendants of the Prophet (‘bet-i-nasb’) from other Muslims, and suggests that the Qur'an itself demands reverence for the relatives of the Prophet. Sa'id Abid Ali, Fazilat-nama-i- ta'ziya (Bahraich, 1908), p. 4.

61 Kurin, ‘The culture of ethnicity’, p. 221.

62 This take on the ashrafisation of Islam in Amroha bears some resemblance to what Oskar Verkaaik has called the ‘ethnicisation of Islam’, by which religious practices tend to divide along, communicate and enhance ethnic distinctions. Verkaaik, Oskar, Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan (Princeton: Princeton, 2004), pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

63 E.g. Metcalf, Islamic Revival, pp. 57, 157; Cole, The Roots of North Indian Shi'ism, pp. 152–156.

64 This is the argument of Lelyveld, Aligarh's first generation, passim.

65 From E.M. Cook, 4 February 1911, Education Department 21/1911, UPSA. This was a matter of concern for government, who perceived Amroha's young, madrasa-trained Muslims as ‘discontented and fanatical and disloyal’. From E.F.L.Winter, 19 November 1905, ibid.

66 A special arrangement was made between the government and Sayyid ul-Madaris, allowing an annual quota of five of the maktab's pupils to be admitted freely to the town's Government High School. Yakub Ali, headmaster of Amroha Goverment High School, to Inspector of Schools, Rohilkhand Division, 12 November 1910, ibid.

67 General Report on Public Instruction for the North Western Provinces and Oudh (1894–1895), p. 82; General Report on Public Instruction for the North Western Provinces and Oudh (1895–1896), p. 54.

68 For instance, the arrangement between Sayyid-ul-Madaris and the government school had limited success: a large proportion of its few beneficiaries withdrew or were expelled from the High School for unsatisfactory work. De La Fosse to Secretary to U.P. Government, 21 January 1911, Educational Dept. 21/1911.

69 All India Shia Conference, Ro'idad-i-ijlas-i-chhata, pp. 183–184. Shortly after its foundation Aftab Ahmad Khan, the Joint Secretary of the All India Muslim Educational Conference affiliated to Aligarh College, visited Amroha to promote Aligarh's educational model. Despite initially accepting the message, the Anjuman-i-Sadat-i-Amroha did not offer sustained support and instead sought solace in the expansion of Imam-ul-Madaris and the foundation of a new seminary for the training of Shia preachers. Hashmi, Tarikh-i-Amroha, p. 147; Sayyid Mumtaz Husain (ed.), Risala-i-kifan-posh lidaran-i-qom (Amroha, 1915), p. 106.

70 Husain (ed.), Risala-i-kifan-posh lidaran, p. 18. The campaign and fundraising for a Muslim University at Aligarh reached their height at this time, around 1910–1912.

71 As outlined in Mushtak Husain, A Scheme for the Introduction of Religious Instruction in Government Schools and Colleges, Proposed by Vikar-ud-dowlah Vikar-ul-Mulk Nawab Mushtak Husain Khan Bahadur, Intisar Jung of Amroha (Aligarh, 1894).

72 Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims, p. 400.

73 Sayyid Aijaz Husain Rizvi Jarchvi, Anjuman-i-wasifa-i-sadat-va-mominin, silvar jiubili nambar (Delhi, 1937), pp. 1–2.

74 The organisation claimed members and presence across Punjab, U.P. and Bihar, and even as far as Najaf, London and Oxbridge. Despite this, in its commemorative edition of 1937 perhaps approaching half of listed members and donors are cited as residents of Amroha. Ibid, passim.

75 A brief biography of Mujahid Husain Jauhar (b.1872–1873) is available in ibid, p. 12.

76 Ittehad (Amroha), 24 April and 24 September 1913, United Provinces Native Newspaper Reports (UPNNR), OIOC.

77 These grievances included the claims that Shia religious functionaries were not supported by the college, that Shias did not have their own mosque, that religious rites were restricted, and that the college would be renamed after the Caliph Umar. Husain (ed.), Risala-i-kifan-posh lidaran, pp. 68–87. I have discussed this issue in more detail in Justin Jones, ‘The Shi'a Muslims of the United Provinces of India, c.1890–1940’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis: Cambridge, 2007), pp. 140–146.

78 The newspaper ran a sustained discussion of the decline of Aligarh through the inventive medium of a mock-dialogue, conducted by renowned historical and present figureheads of such politics from Sayyid Ahmad Khan onwards. It depicted Sayyid Ahmad in conversation with a number of subsequent trustees and politicians of Aligarh, and portrayed his supposed frustration at their desertion of his legacy and the descent of Aligarh into sectarian controversy. This format compares with Sayyid Ahmad Khan's influential periodical Tehzib-ul-Akhlaq, and less directly, with Gandhi's Hind Swaraj. See Husain (ed.), Risala-i-kifan-posh lidaran, passim.

79 The number of distributed copies increased by some 350% between 1911 and 1915, primarily during its discussions of the Aligarh question. ‘Listings of the vernacular press’, 2 June 1911 and 2 July 1915, UPNNR.

80 Fateh Ali Khan Qizilbash to James Meston, 17 July 1916, Education Dept. ‘A’, 152/1914, UPSA.

81 Jones, ‘The Shi'a Muslims of the United Provinces’, pp. 157–165; Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims, pp. 234–235.

82 ‘Extract from a fortnightly report, dated 12 March 1916’, from the Commissioner of Rohilkhand Division; Meston to Fateh Ali Khan Qizilbash, 29 May 1916, Education Dept. ‘A’, 152/1914.

83 Sayyid Mujahid Husain Jauhar, Hayat-i-niswan (Amroha, circa 1925), passim.

84 Sayyid Mujahid Husain Jauhar, Masnawi Mewa-i-shirin (Amroha, 1915), passim; Jauhar, Hayat-i-niswan, pp. 115–116; Ittehad, 1 March 1914, UPNNR.

85 Khan, Abdul Rashid, The All India Muslim Educational Conference: Its Contribution to the Cultural Development of Indian Muslims, 1886–1947 (Oxford: Karachi, 2001), pp. 116–141Google Scholar; Gail Minault, Secluded Scholars: Women's Education and Muslim Social Reform in Colonial India (Oxford: New Delhi, 1998), passim.

86 Freitag, Collective action and community, passim.

87 Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth Century India (Cambrige: Cambridge, 2001), passim.

88 Pandey, ‘Encounters and calamities’, pp. 250, 258.

89 Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, p. 176.

90 Hasan, Mushirul, Legacy of a Divided Nation: India's Muslims Since Independence (Hurst: London, 1997), p. 146.Google Scholar

91 As documented thoroughly in GAD 106C/64 of 1896.

92 Anonymous on behalf of Sadat of Amroha, 4 August 1902, GAD 255/1903.

93 Ibid; E.F.L. Winter, Magistrate of Moradabad, to Commissioner of Rohilkhand Division, 13 November 1902, ibid.

94 Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, pp. 80–82. The Arya Samaj, an especially strong organisation in Rohilkhand and the Doab, held high-profile annual meetings in Amroha from around 1900. Muhammad Ashfaq Husain Saddiqi, Mujadila-i-hasna (Moradabad, 1918), p. 2.

95 Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, pp. 108–109; Alexander, Final Report, pp. 25–26.

96 Alexander, Final Report, pp. 25–31.

97 Official translation of a petition from Saiyid Gulsham Ali resident of Mohalla Qazizada and others of Amroha, 20 January 1896, to Government of India, GAD 106C/64 of 1896.

98 Nevill, District Gazetteer XVI, p. 176.

99 As, for instance, a row between three alternative trustees to an existing waqf which reached the High Court in 1923, with each trying to prove their rightful descent. Naqvi, Amroha ke ‘aza khane, pp. 97–98. On the tendency for religious endowments to provoke such family conflicts, see Kozlowski, Muslim Endowments and Society, pp. 80, 92–93.

100 Rizvi, Tarikh-i-Amroha ke ek not par, passim.

101 One example of this is the sayyid family who had always led the Muharram processions in Pachdara muhalla, hitherto with the collaboration of many of the muhalla's Sunnis. When the leading representative of the family died with no designated male successor, the sayyid residents of the muhalla convened a meeting and decided that they should manage the proceedings collectively. From this point, the rituals became increasingly resonant of Shi'ism and relinquished Sunni participation. Naqvi, Amroha ke ‘aza khane, pp. 63–64. In another example of how upheavals within sharif families could affect public religious life, a family dispute is shown to have disrupted the death anniversaries of a saint in Saddu muhalla. Husain, Medieval Towns, p. 28.

102 Hasan, From Pluralism to Separatism, pp. 36–37.

103 Much has been written on this brand of polemical literature. E.g. Kenneth W. Jones (ed.), Religious Controversy in British India: Dialogues in South Asian Languages (New York: Albany, 1992).

104 The Sunnis of Amroha to the Secretary of the North Western Provinces and Oudh, 29 February 1896; Official translation of a petition from Saiyid Gulsham Ali, resident of Mohalla Qazizada and others, Amroha, 20 January 1896, to Government of India, GAD 106C/64 of 1896.

105 Rahbar (Moradabad), 16 January 1893, UPNNR. At about the same time, the town's Shia munsif (judge) authored a similarly controversial sectarian treatise, Hamla-i-Haidari. It was said that Shias began to recite passages from both these texts in the streets, while some Sunnis accused the town's Shias of using their grasp over the local state machinery to shield the authors from reprimand and prevent the recall of the texts. Nizam-ul-Mulk (Moradabad), 10 February 1893 and Urdu Akhbar (Moradabad), 24 March 1893, UPNNR.

106 E.g. Ali, Sayyid Hamza, Haq ki kasoti (Delhi, 1916), passim.Google Scholar

107 Sayyid Hamza Ali, Tashih ul-aqa'id (Amroha, 1919). A Lahore newspaper serialised these debates in 1904 (pp. 1–2). Taqiya is also debated publicly in Ahmad, Shikast-i-‘azim, pp. 6–7.

108 Such debates have been discussed widely in scholarship, and have often been interpreted as a product of the aggressive attacks on indigenous religions by Christian missionaries. Metcalf, Islamic Revival, pp. 215–234; Powell, Avril Ann, Muslims and Missionaries in Pre-Mutiny India (Curzon: Richmond, London, 1993), passim.Google Scholar

109 Saddiqi, Mujadila-i-hasna, pp. 2–8.

110 Ibid, passim.

111 Ahmad, Shikast-i-‘azim, pp. 2–4.

112 Ibid, passim, especially p. 11.

113 Ibid, pp. 4–5.

114 Saddiqi, Mujadila-i-hasna, pp. 1–4.

115 Sayyid Husain Ahmad Madni, Naqsh-i-hayat, haisa-i-dom (Karachi, 1981), p. 122.

116 As is implied by Rizvi, Shah 'Abd al-‘Aziz; Cole, Roots of north Indian Shi'ism; Metcalf, Islamic revival.

117 This information is drawn from Naqvi, Amroha ke ‘aza khane, pp. 12–19, 40–42, 47, 64–65, 68–69, 112–113, 116–117.

118 Husain, Medieval towns, pp. 21–22.

119 The latter fact prompted Congress to substitute its Shia candidate of 1952 for a Sunni in 1957.

120 Syed Qurban Ali Naqvi, Social Change and Political Participation (Commonwealth: New Delhi, 1989), pp. 79–82.