Biography and Charisma as Cultural Capital in Traditionalist Educational Reform in Colonial India

The Case of Madrasatul Iṣlāḥ in Azamgarh

Abstract

A range of reformist ideas have been studied in Islam over the past 200 years, yet few studies have focused on moderate traditional-reformist efforts in South Asia. A few important traditional ʿulamā in South Asia had taken seriously the need to articulate the message of Islam in a world changed by colonial and Western modernity, yet they have received little scholarly attention. Change and reform in some societies occur at the hands of exemplary and charismatic scholars who can persuade audiences about the need and necessity for change in the interest of the common good. A select sample of such pioneering thinkers exercised their influence to realize their goals. Their biographical histories not only shed light on the nature of their persons, their visions and their effects on society but served as cultural capital to advance Islamic education along a moderate reform-minded traditional agenda. The article concludes by pointing to these efforts as contributing indirectly to the emergence of one seminary (madrasa) belonging to this genealogy of thought, established in colonial India, known as the Madrasatul Iṣlāḥ, now in Sarā-yi Mīr, near Azamgarh in India today. Featured prominently is the figure of Nawāb Ḥabībur Raḥmān Shervānī. One impetus for this trend has been the religio-political movement in the first quarter of the nineteenth century known as the Ṭarīqa Muḥammadīya and its charismatic pioneers. This movement cast long shadows on the understanding and practice of Islam in South Asia which promoted a Qurʾān-centered interpretation of Islam, subtly separating itself from the complex hermeneutical tradition that informed the understanding of the Qurʾān and the persona of the Prophet Muḥammad in history in line with the altering experiences of the Muslim community over time. This paper argues that these reform-minded traditional ʿulamā in a sense also reduced the influence of the classical tradition and veered towards a more scriptural bent. Although they do not abandon the classical interpretative tradition and its apparatus, they do not allow the historical tradition to have the final word. The meanings they freshly derive from the Qurʾān and the Sunna set the parameters and limit the authority of the historical tradition. This framework decides which interpretations are permissible and the grounds for their existence. In another sense, it is a tradition within a tradition, less complex, easily accessible and transmissible, and very persuasive to modern educated Muslims, but at the cost of complexity.