CHAPTER FOUR

ANGLICISATION AND THE ‘OLD ISLAM’

On the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan’s most populous city, stands the shrine of the 13th century Suhrawardi ‘saint’, Pir Haji Mango. Frequented by thousands of devotees—Muslims and non-Muslims, men and women—from the working-class neighbourhoods that now surround the shrine to the pilgrims from as far away as Punjab and Gujarat during the annual ‘urs, the shrine is a centre of prayer, song and dance, healing and, in some cases, the consumption of large quantities of hashish.1 Apart from circumambulating the pir’s grave in the main shrine, the most striking feature of worship is that barakat (grace) and manat (wishes) can be gained by feeding the scores of crocodiles that live in ponds within the complex—obviously a remnant of the area’s pre-Islamic past. Yet, none of the accounts of the shrine attendants and worshippers I gathered upon my visit make this connection. Instead, like the Chishtiyya reformers who linked obviously Yogic practices to Sufi fi gures, the sanctity of these crocodiles is invariably linked to the miraculous powers of Haji Mango, who is credited with converting local inhabitants to Islam. No matter how peculiar the ‘cult of crocodiles’ may be, this shrine is no more than an example of hundreds of others dotted across Sind, Punjab and beyond with similarly ‘hospitable’ practices. It, therefore, emphasises the fact that neither the ‘codifying’ exertions of Deobandis, Wahhabis and the British, nor the socio-economic and political changes that mark the period under discussion in this book, have succeeded in eradicating latitudinarianism in Sufi sm, so far as the accommodation of local custom is concerned. Th is is largely due to the eff orts of indi- vidual institutions, such as the shrine of Pir Haji Mango itself, however, and the antinomianism of the ‘Intoxicated Way’ is rare even in such contexts. Th e largely subaltern character of the place, therefore, only confi rms that the sheer number of institutions affi liated with Deoband,

1 Th is account is based on a visit to Pir Haji Mango’s shrine, among others of similar ilk in Sind and Punjab, in November 2000. For background on the Suhrawardiyya in Sind, see Sarah Ansari, Sufi Saints and State Power (Lahore: Vanguard, 1992). 178 chapter four

Ahl-i Hadith and Ahl-i Sunnat, the modes of funding and methods of administration and instruction employed in their madrasas, as well as their early and prolifi c use of short-tract literature, vernacular languages and print, have thoroughly discredited antinomian and/or latitudinarian doctrines in the religious consciousness of elite and capitalist classes. A similarly impactful competitor for the Intoxicated Way, has been the rise of English education under the auspices of the colonial state. Given that the ‘Old Islam’ noted to have carried largely unchallenged into the early 18th century, was dependent on the continued patronage of such institutions as maktabs and madrasas, any diversion of funding or defl ection of interest would obviously alter the complexion of doc- trine. Of course, such diversions and defl ections are exactly what the rise of British authority constituted. British intervention has, in fact, been well documented for some time. Th e earliest institutions patronised by the East India Company or its offi cers were known as ‘Oriental Colleges’, the fi rst being the ‘Muhammadan College of Calcutta’, inaugurated by 1781.2 As the reference to Muslims suggests, this college was opened when former Muslim elites and scholars from the region approached the East India Company to open a madrasa, being unable to fi nance it themselves. As Hastings wrote at the time: Aft er the take-over of Muslim rule in India [i.e. Bengal] by the British, the condition of Muslims in general beggars [sic] description. Th ey have gone to such a lower ebb that they cannot aff ord to send their children to schools.3 Hastings was moved enough to fund the madrasa himself, but very little offi cial interest was shown in these early years. Th e British govern- ment did not become involved until the Charter of 1813, in which a paltry Rs. 100,000 was allotted to education.4 A ‘Committee for Public Instruction’ was, however, established in 1823, but as late as 1838, one of the East India Company’s prime educational reformers, Charles Edward

2 Histories of the East India Company educational regime include M.A. Greaves, Education in British India, 1698–1947 (London: University of London, 1967); S.N. Sen, Scientifi c and Technical Education in India, 1781–1900 (New Delhi: Indian National Scientifi c Academy, 1991); and S.C. Dutta, History of Adult Education in India (New Delhi: Indian Adult Education Association, 1986). 3 Cited in Mujibur Rahman, History of Madrasa Education (Calcutta: Rais Anwar Rahman, 1977), p. 78. Also see Lynn Zastoupil and M. Moir, eds. Th e Great Indian Education Debate (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1999), pp. 73–76. 4 For a copy of the pertinent sections of the act, see Th e Great Indian Education Debate, pp. 90–92.