Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India
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THE NEW CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF INDIA Socio-religious reform movements in British India Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 THE NEW CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF INDIA General editor GORDON JOHNSON President of Wolfson College, and Director, Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge Associate editors C. A. BAYLY Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St Catharines College and JOHN F. RICHARDS Professor of History, Duke University Although the original Cambridge History of India, published between 1922 and 1937, did much to formulate a chronology for Indian history and describe the administrative structures of government in India, it has inevitably been over taken by the mass of new research published over the last fifty years. Designed to take full account of recent scholarship and changing conceptions of South Asia's historical development, The New Cambridge History of India will be published as a series of short, self-contained volumes, each dealing with a sep arate theme and written by a single person, within an overall four-part structure. Most volumes conclude with a substantial bibliographical essay designed to lead non-specialists further into the literature. The four parts are as follows: I The Mughals and their contemporaries II Indian states and the transition to colonialism III The Indian Empire and the beginnings of modern society IV The evolution of contemporary South Asia A list of individual titles already published and in preparation will be found at the end of the volume. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 THE NEW CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF INDIA III -1 Socio-religious reform movements in British India KENNETH W.JONES DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Säo Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521249867 © Cambridge University Press 1989 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1989 Reprinted 1997, 2003 This digitally printed first paperback version 2006 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Jones, Kenneth W. Socio-religious reform movements in British India. (The New Cambridge history of India; III. 1). Bibliography. Includes index. 1. India - Religion. 2. Religion and sociology - India. I. Title. II. Series. BL2007.5.J65 1989 306'.6'0954 88-30433 ISBN-13 978-0-521-24986-7 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-24986-4 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-03105-9 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-03105-2 paperback Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 To PROFESSOR WOLFRAM EBERHARD who introduced me to the relations between society and religion Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 CONTENTS List of maps page viii Preface ix Note on transliteration xi 1 Concepts and context i 2 Bengal and north-eastern India 15 3 The Gangetic core: Uttar Pradesh and Bihar 48 4 Punjab and the North-West 85 5 The central belt and Maharashtra 122 6 The Dravidian South 152 7 The twentieth century: socio-religious movements in a politicized world 184 8 Conclusion: religion in history 210 Glossary of Indian terms 222 Bibliographical essay 228 Index 235 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 MAPS 1 Bengal and north-eastern India page 16 2 The Gangetic core: Uttar Pradesh and Bihar 49 3 Punjab and north-western India 86 4 The central belt and Maharashtra 123 5 The Dravidian South 153 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 PREFACE In keeping with the general intent of The New Cambridge History of India, this volume explores a single historical subject, that of social and cultural change in the British-Indian Empire as expressed in numerous religious movements. Because of the breadth of this study, which examines investigated religious developments among Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians, a diverse body of nine teenth and twentieth-century literature in the social sciences and humanities was consulted as well as government reports and unpub lished manuscripts. These included sources in English, Hindi, and Urdu. The volume that resulted begins with a chapter that presents a conceptual framework for socio-religious movements. It then exam ines traditions of religious dissent within western, Perso-Arabic, and Hindu-Buddhist civilizations, traditions that interacted within the South Asian subcontinent and created the basic forms of socio-re ligious movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Four regionally defined chapters follow that investigate these movements in the context of place, time, and culture. Next, a single chapter discusses five successful movements in the twentieth century and their role within the context of increasing politicization and competing national isms. A final chapter analyses the interaction between the dynamic civilizations of South Asia and the imported British version of western civilization. This volume should provide a basic reference for those who seek to explore social and religious change in modern South Asia. It also contains a new vision of this change and a method of differ entiating between what was new in the nineteenth century and what was a modification of long-standing cultural patterns. Such an approach entails certain sacrifices particularly given the necessity of covering a vast scope within the limits of a single volume. Consequently, this meant that not every socio-religious movement nor every historical event could be included. The decision on what to include or exclude rested on several factors: the existence of infor mation, the relative importance of a given group, and the value in illustrating examples of different forms of dissent. Scholars have just IX Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 SOCIO-RELIGIOUS REFORM MOVEMENTS IN BRITISH INDIA begun to explore the social and religious history of modern South Asia. Yet even today a complete and comprehensive picture would require several volumes rather than just one. This book has two levels of approach: first, it contains a wide-ranging examination of the period and of scholarship as it now exists; secondly, it presents one vision, one set of concepts that provide a manner of viewing socio-religious change. It is, consequently, a source from which students and scholars can initiate further reading or research. Several individuals and one institution aided in the preparation of this volume. I would like to give particularly warm thanks to Kansas State University, the sole provider of financial support for the research and writing. They made possible several trips to Chicago, a semester sabbatical leave, and yearly research expenses. I also received invaluable assistance from Maureen Patterson and her staff at the University of Chicago Library. She graciously made available to me the card files used in preparation for her monumental bibliography, thus saving me hours of tedious work. I would also like to thank Mark Juergensmeyer and Elleanor Zelliot, who sent me their unpublished manuscripts, and Sheikh Mubarak Ahmad of the American Fazl Mosque in Washington DC, who supplied me with crucial literature on the Ahmadiyah move ment. I wish to express my appreciation to the editors of The New Cambridge History of India, whose comments and criticism proved extremely useful, and my wife, Marguerite, for a great deal of support, patience, and helpful criticisms. The final results are, of course, my own and so responsibility rests solely with me and not with those who kindly aided in the completion of this study. x Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION The policy of transliteration in this volume is one of compromise since words rendered into the Roman alphabet are derived from one Semitic language, Arabic, a number of Indo-European languages of north and central South Asia, as well as from the Dravidian languages of the South. No standard transliteration system for such a diverse group of languages exists, nor in most cases is there agreement among linguists as to a single system for a given language. In addition, transliterations in the sources for this volume are often inconsistent and without relation to any linguistic principle. Consequently transliterations are founded on several basic principles. First, diacriticals have been kept to a mini mum, with long vowels demarcated as much as possible according to the original language by tracing the word back to the script in which it was written. For languages using the Arabic script or a version of it, such as Persian and Urdu, the hamza is indicated with a' and the letter *ain with a \ Some variations in regional languages are not shown in favour of an overall standardization: for example, the common spelling of guru in Hindi versus the spelling of guru in Punjabi. In the case of names, which