Islamic Revivalism: The Wahabi Movement
- The Wahabi Movement was a revivalist movement that sought to purify Islam by eliminating the un-Islamic practices that had crept into Muslim society over the ages. (Period of the movement: 1820s to 1870s.)
- It offered the most serious and well-planned challenge to British supremacy in India between the 1830s and 1860s.
Saiyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly (1786–1831)
- Saiyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly was the founder of the Wahabi Movement in India.
- He was influenced by the teachings of Abdul Wahab of Arabia (1703–87), but even more directly by the preaching of the Delhi saint Shah Waliullah (1702–62) and his son, Abdul Aziz.
- Shah Waliullah’s contribution to Muslim reform was twofold:
- He urged the creation of harmony among the four schools of Muslim jurisprudence that had divided Indian Muslims, seeking to integrate the best elements of each.
- He emphasised the role of individual conscience in religion, holding that where the Quran and Hadis were open to conflicting interpretations, the individual could decide on the basis of their own judgement and conscience.
- Shah Abdul Aziz and Saiyid Ahmad Barelvi popularised Waliullah’s teachings but also lent them a distinctly political colour, aiming at the creation of a homeland for Muslims.
- This political turn began with a Fatwa issued by Abdul Aziz declaring India to be Dar-ul-Harb (“land of the kafirs”) and calling for its transformation into Dar-ul-Islam.
- Saiyid Ahmad first preached his doctrines in Rohilkhand, before choosing Patna as the centre of his activities in 1822.
- He appointed four Khalifas as spiritual agents to propagate his ideas, condemning all accretions and innovations within Islam and advocating a return to the pure Islam and society of Arabia in the time of the Prophet.
- To achieve his objectives, Saiyid Ahmad sought three things: the right leader, a proper organisation, and a safe territory from which to launch his Jihad.
- He declared the country Dar-ul-Harb, giving rise to the idea of Jihad, aiming to restore Muslim power in India by ousting the Sikhs from Punjab and the British from Bengal.
- In doing so, he gave the movement a distinctly military character, transforming it into a religio-political movement, and put forward the doctrine of Hijrat (migration).
- He subsequently moved to the North-West Frontier Province, captured Peshawar, and even issued coins in his own name there.
- Saiyid Ahmad built a countrywide organisation with an elaborate secret code for its operations.
- Its strongholds lay at Sithana, in the north-western tribal belt, and at Patna, though it also maintained missions in Hyderabad, Madras, Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Bombay.
- Wahabism spread rapidly across Bihar, Bengal, U.P., and north-western India.
- Peshawar was captured in 1830 but lost to the Sikhs the following year, with Saiyid Ahmad losing his life in action at the Battle of Balakot (1831).
- After his death, Patna became the movement’s new centre, and his followers came to be known as Maulvis.
- The Wahabi campaign was initially directed against the Sikhs of Punjab, with Jihad declared against the Sikh kingdom ruled by Ranjit Singh in 1826; Saiyid Ahmad issued a pamphlet, the Targhiz-ul-Jihad, against the Sikhs in this connection.
- After the overthrow of Sikh rule and the annexation of Punjab into East India Company territory in 1849, the movement’s sole target shifted decisively to British rule in India.
Suppression of the Wahabi Movement
- During the Revolt of 1857, the Wahabis played a notable role in spreading anti-British sentiment.
- General Bakht Khan, the leader of the mutineers at Delhi during the revolt, was himself a Wahabi.
- The British viewed the Wahabi base of operations at Sithana as a potential danger, particularly against the backdrop of a possible war between Britain and Afghanistan or Russia.
- In the 1860s, the Government launched a multi-pronged offensive, combining a series of military operations against the Wahabi base at Sithana with a number of sedition trials registered against Wahabi leaders within India.
- The movement was ultimately crushed by superior British military force in the 1870s.
- The period between 1863 and 1865 saw a series of trials in which nearly all the principal leaders of the movement were arrested — the Ambala trial of 1864 and the Patna trial of 1865 being closely interlinked.
- Though the movement lost its vitality after this suppression, Wahabi fanatics continued to assist the frontier hill tribes in their encounters with the English through the 1880s and 1890s.
Movement of Titu Mir (Mir Nasir Ali): Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya
- During the 1820s and 1830s, a parallel religious movement called the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya developed in Bengal under the leadership of Titu Mir (also known as Syed Mir Nisar Ali) — an independent offshoot of the Wahabi movement.
- Titu Mir began his career as a hired strongman for local zamindars before travelling to Mecca, where he was initiated by Saiyid Ahmad Barelvi.
- He preached Wahabi doctrine at Barasat in 1827, later returning to preach Islam across a roughly 250-square-mile area in the northern part of the 24 Parganas district.
- His followers were drawn mainly from poor Muslim peasants and weavers, whom he organised into a community marked by a distinctive dress and beard as identity markers.
- He advocated a change in dress to distinguish Muslims from Hindus, and his movement pushed back against customs and beliefs that had been absorbed from popular Hinduism.
- As this assertion of peasant identity challenged existing power structures, local zamindars sought to curb it in various ways — including, notably, by imposing a tax on beards.
- The movement soon came into conflict with Hindu landlords and British indigo planters, and eventually with the British administration itself.
- Titu Mir proclaimed the end of British rule and stormed Nadia, Faridpur, and the 24 Parganas, with his lieutenant Ghulam Masum playing a significant role in these actions.
- He and his followers defied the existing authority represented by local zamindars, indigo planters, and the colonial state, establishing their own regime, collecting their own taxes, and striking considerable fear across the region.
- The government eventually mobilised its army and artillery, destroying Titu Mir’s bamboo fortress on 16 November 1831 to crush the uprising; Titu Mir was killed in the ensuing action.
- Other important Wahabi leaders of the period included Vilayat Ali, Inayat Ali, Shah Md. Hussain, and Farhat Hussain.
Analysis of the Wahabi Movement
- The Wahabi Movement was, at its core, a movement of the Muslims, by the Muslims, and for the Muslims, aimed at establishing Dar-ul-Islam in India.
- At no stage did it assume the character of a genuinely nationalist movement.
- Instead, it left behind a legacy of isolationist and separatist tendencies among Indian Muslims.
