by NADEEM F. PARACHA
The mid and late 19th century was a highly charged period in India. The centuries-old Muslim Empire in the region had collapsed and the British were consolidating their colonial rule over a vast expanse teeming with millions of people belonging to a number of faiths.
Though powered by superior military might and the novel vintages of the ‘Industrial Age,’ the British colonialists somewhat struggled to determine the religious complexities found in the region — especially when a wave of reformist religious movements erupted in India just before and after the complete downfall of the Mughal Empire in 1857.
These movements emerged from within the Hindu majority as well as from among the significant Muslim and Sikh minorities of India. One of the triggers in this respect was the intensifying of Christian missionary activity that was indirectly encouraged by the British.
The reformist movements also tried to tackle ideas introduced by the British culled from the zeitgeists of the ‘Age of Reason’ and the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ that appeared in the West (in the 17th and 18th centuries).
During these eras, social and political emphasis in the West had gradually shifted away from religious / clerical authority, feudalism and tradition to reason / rationalism, empiricism and science.
In 1875 the Hindu reformist movement, the Arya Samaj, emerged. It attempted to configure Hinduism as a unified and ‘enlightened’ faith. To counter Christian and rationalist criticism of it being outmoded and even exploitative, the Samaj introduced a Hinduism that was centred entirely on the Vedas and devoid of idol worship. It accepted women’s rights and the belief in a single supreme deity, the Om. It also claimed to be superior to Christianity and Islam.
On the other hand, four strands of reformers appeared from among the Sunni Muslims. The ‘Deobandis’ were a kind of reformed believers of Sufism who advocated a more scholastic understanding of Islam as a ‘pristine faith’ that should be liberated from ‘innovations’ popular in South Asian folk Islam. They also rejected the modernist interpretations of the faith’s scriptures.
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