british india--7/15/25

15 Jul 2025

british india--7/15/25

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Today's selection-- from Islam by John Tolan. Long before the British Crown ruled India, merchants, mercenaries, and missionaries laid the groundwork for the British Raj.

“We have seen that in 1602 the Dutch East India Company, or VOC, was created. Two years earlier, English merchants had founded the East India Company (EIC). Neither of these commercial associations were directly controlled by the governments of their home countries. British and Dutch colonialism was not, at the outset, an imperial expansion decreed by European states but rather a series of commercial operations. The military endeavors of the two companies were carried out by mercenaries, not state armies. The goal was commerce, though this in no way prevented the British and Dutch from practicing piracy when it proved lucrative.

“The Portuguese and the Dutch were active in the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, without ever achieving dominance: they were commercial and military actors among others. This was also true of the British in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The EIC was present in Indian ports such as Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta, where its merchants bought above all cotton cloth destined for European markets. In 1664, at the initiative of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, minister of King Louisxrv, France established the Compagnie des Indes Orientales, which, contrary to its British and Dutch counterparts, was a state initiative. It established trading posts in Pondicherry and Chandannagar.

“The Dutch and British did not attempt to Christianize their subjects. On the contrary, they in general respected the legal and religious traditions of the territories they ruled. The VOC hired and paid Muslim religious officials and in 1754 published a code of Islamic laws to regulate questions of inheritance, marriage, divorce, and other issues according to the sharia. In India, the EIC promulgated a code of personal law in 1772 that ruled that questions of marriage, divorce, and inheritance would be judged according to the Quran for Muslims and according to the Shastras for Hindus. European administrators found themselves in the paradoxical position of judging questions of Muslim law that had been the object of debate and discussion among Muslim jurists for centuries, using legal compilations like that of Aurangzeb. At the same time, British authorities compiled diverse religious and legal traditions in order to ‘invent’ Hinduism and formalize a ‘Hindu’ legal system. These colonial regimes reinforced confessionalism in their colonies.

“The British gradually expanded their territory, pushing north into the Punjab. Some leaders, such as Syed Ahmad Barelvi, adopted the new Wahhabi vision of purist Islam and fought jihad against the infidels; his forces were routed by a Sikh army at the Battle ofBalakot (1831), where he met his death. He was hailed as a martyr, but he had been able to do little to slow the British advance. Non-jihadist rulers fared no better. Wajid Ali Shah, nawab of Awadh, ruled from his sumptuous capital of Lucknow, where he patronized artists, musicians, and composers; he himself danced and wrote poetry. The EIC annexed Awadh and sent the nawab into exile.

The British Raj and surrounding countries are shown in 1909.

“The EIC had at its disposition an army whose soldiers were roughly 80 percent Indian. In 1857, the army introduced a new system of cartridges with a paper cover that the soldiers had to remove with their teeth before inserting them into the rifles. Rumors spread among the troops that the cartridges contained beef fat (prohibited to Hindus) or pork fat (prohibited to Muslims). This was the trigger for a mutiny of soldiers that turned into a popular uprising against British imperialism. It provoked a reorganization of the army and the British colonial system in India: the British Raj. Henceforth the British Crown, and no longer the EIC, governed India.

“The main forces of resistance to the colonizers also defined themselves according to religious criteria, Hindu and Muslim. In the aftermath of the 1857 rebellion, several revival movements emerged among Indian Muslims. The Deobandi movement was founded at the Darul Uloom madrasa in Deoband (150 kilometers north of Delhi), which became an important center of Muslim learning, following the Hanafi rite and continuing the traditions of Quran and hadith studies practiced in Lucknow. Deobandi scholars debated with Hindus and Muslims, and many of them sought to forge a unified, transconfessional identity in opposition to British rule. Deoband remains one of the world's prominent centers of Muslim learning today, and many mosques in India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere identify as Deobandi. In the 1880s, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad proclaimed himself Mahdi and Messiah and claimed to receive revelations as a new prophet (successor to Muhammad) and to perform miracles. He enjoined his followers to revive true Islamic teachings and bring about a spiritual renaissance, which came to be known as the Ahmadiyya. Ahmadis claim to follow the true, renewed doctrine ofJesus and Muhammad. They had little luck converting Hindus and Christians, but gained a considerable following among Muslims ofBritish India, provoking the hostility of many ulama. There are perhaps half a million Ahmadis today, principally in Pakistan, where they face intermittent persecution.

“The Raj invested in India's infrastructure, building port facilities, railways, and roads. The imperial government continued to rely on religious elites and to institutionalize and codify religious law, promulgating the Sharia Act in 1937. Some Indian subjects saw British domination as protection against incursion by external enemies (Persians or Afghans, in particular) or against breakup along religious and ethnic lines.Satirical poet Akbar lliahabi quipped,

“The Englishman can slander whom he will And fill your head with anything he pleases. He wields sharp weapons, Akbar. Best stand clear! He cuts up God himself into three pieces.”