Making New Muslim Arains: Reform, Law, and Politics in Colonial Punjab, 1890S-1940S
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Making New Muslim Arains: Reform, Law, and Politics in Colonial Punjab, 1890s-1940s By Ashish Koul Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History August 11, 2017 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Samira Sheikh, Ph.D. James Epstein, Ph.D. Leor Halevi, Ph.D. Brooke Ackerly, Ph.D. David Gilmartin, Ph.D. Copyright © 2017 by Ashish Koul All Rights Reserved To my beloved parents and To my wonderful sisters iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to Samira Sheikh for her unwavering support and invaluable guidance as my dissertation adviser. She encouraged me to venture outside my intellectual comfort zones throughout my years at Vanderbilt. Partly by example, she instilled in me a love for the process of scholarly articulation and rearticulation, in spite of its challenging and exhausting nature. I am grateful to the members of my dissertation committee—James Epstein, Leor Halevi, Brooke Ackerly, and David Gilmartin—for their engagement with this project and their insightful commentary on its scope and objectives. This project would have been impossible without the financial support provided by the following institutions: the International Dissertation Research Fellowship program of the Social Science Research Council, Summer Research Awards from the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University, and, the 2015-16 Sawyer Seminar at Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. During research for this dissertation, I received help from archivists and librarians in the United States, India and Britain. In Nashville, I would like to thank the Interlibrary Loan team at Vanderbilt University’s Jean and Alexander Heard Library for their tireless efforts in locating materials for this project. In India, I express my gratitude to the staff of the following institutions: the National Archives of India and Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi; the Maulana Azad Library and the Sir Syed Academy at Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh; the Punjab State Archives in Chandigarh and the Central State Library in Patiala, Punjab; and, the Central Library at Hyderabad Central University and the Aiwan-i-Urdu Library in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. I feel particularly privileged to have crossed paths with iv Abdus Samad Khan in Hyderabad and benefitted from his encyclopedic knowledge of the Urdu literary world. In London, I thank the staff and archivists of the British Library for their help in navigating the labyrinthine collections of the India Office Library. It was my good fortune to find friends in Nashville who sustained me during my time at Vanderbilt. Amidst my wonderful cohort in the Department of History, I found much camaraderie and fellowship. To friends in Nashville outside the Department: Thank you for your constant good cheer, long conversations over lunches, dinners, and endless cups of tea, and for reminding me of the world beyond graduate school, especially when things got a little rough. Finally, I thank my family in Delhi, Singapore, and Philadelphia for their unconditional love and faith in me. My parents taught me the value of hard work and perseverance. And my three sisters—resilient, intelligent, and infinitely generous women—inspire me every day. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 Colonial knowledge and policies in late nineteenth century Punjab .............................................. 11 Arains, Islam and politics in colonial Punjab ................................................................................ 21 Thesis Statement ............................................................................................................................ 26 Historiographical contributions and chapter outline ...................................................................... 31 Chapter 1. Making Arains Martial: Colonial Policy and Political Mobilization ........................................ 40 Arains of Colonial Punjab .............................................................................................................. 47 Arain elites, biradari history and military recruitment ................................................................... 59 The politics of biradari mobilization .............................................................................................. 70 2. Salim al-tavarikh: Arabness, Reformist Islam, and Social Mobility ........................................ 80 Arains’ history in colonial ethnography......................................................................................... 94 Contesting Arains of colonial ethnography ................................................................................. 100 Reforming Arains ........................................................................................................................ 107 Reforming Arains in colonial Punjab .......................................................................................... 112 3. Between Customary and Quranic Inheritance: Arains and Personal Law .............................. 126 Recording Custom, Making Law ................................................................................................. 137 Reformist Islam and the Perils of Personal Law .......................................................................... 149 Inheritance Rights and Arain Identity in Colonial Courtrooms ................................................... 159 4. Bridging Biradari and Religion: Arains as Muslims in Colonial Indian Politics ................... 175 Reformist education for political mobilization ............................................................................ 188 Political mobilization for representative government .................................................................. 198 vi Diversity, hierarchy, and ideal political representation ............................................................... 209 5. Religion against Biradari? Arains and Electoral Politics ........................................................ 216 Arains and electoral politics ......................................................................................................... 227 Arains and political parties .......................................................................................................... 239 Biradari identity and Muslim politics .......................................................................................... 248 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 252 Arains and Muslim politics in South Asia ................................................................................... 263 Caste and religion in South Asia .................................................................................................. 270 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................ 274 APPENDIX I: Arain Population in Colonial Punjab ................................................................... 274 APPENDIX II: Mian Family of Baghbanpura ............................................................................. 275 APPENDIX III: Jalandhari’s Genealogy of Arains ..................................................................... 276 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 277 vii INTRODUCTION Behind them an angry farmer brandished a bamboo pole. He was a market- gardener, Arain by caste, growing vegetables and flowers for Umballa city, and well Kim knew the breed. 'Such an one,' said the lama, disregarding the dogs, 'is impolite to strangers, intemperate of speech and uncharitable. Be warned by his demeanour, my disciple.' 'Ho, shameless beggars!' shouted the farmer. 'Begone! Get hence!'… 'And by what sign didst thou know that we would beg from thee, O Mali?' said Kim tartly, using the name that a market-gardener least likes.1 In the third chapter of Rudyard Kipling’s famous novel Kim, the eponymous protagonist, passing through the outskirts of Ambala City, encountered an Arain man diligently cultivating vegetables and flowers on his small patch of land. Taking Kim and his companion for beggars, the Arain tried to shoo them off, to which Kim responded by derogatorily calling the farmer a Mali (gardener), “the name that a market-gardener least likes.” Chastened by the insult, the Arain man’s demeanor changed quickly into one of a self-consciously dignified famer, respectful to passers-by and generous toward travelers.2 In referring to the farmer as a mali, Kim insinuated that someone who cultivated vegetables on a narrow piece of land was neither a real landowner nor a true farmer. This brief encounter encapsulates the socio-economic position of the Arains of colonial Punjab. The Arains inhabited a context in which landownership was the primary determinant of socio-economic status and political personhood.