I - 2 CONTACT AND CONTROVERSY BETWEEN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN NORTHERN INDIA, 1833-1857: THE RELATIONS BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES IN THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES AND OUDH by AVRIL ANN POWELL (School of Oriental and African Studies) Thesis submitted to the University of London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1983 ProQuest Number: 11010473 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11010473 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 3 ABSTRACT In the period 1833 to 1857 some 'ulama from the three north Indian cities of Lucknow, Agra and Delhi were drawn into open controversy with Protestant missionaries in the region. Initial contacts which began in Lucknow in 1833, were turned into prolonged and bitter encounter in the North-Western Provinces, by the dissemination from Agra of publications against Islam by a German Pietist missionary, the Reverend Carl Pfander^/ The two-fold objective of the thesis is to throw light on the backgrounds and motives of his 'ulama opponents, and to examine the types of argument they used in response to his evangelical challenge. The response came initially from some Lucknow Shi'I 'ulama, and in the second stage from some Muslim residents of Agra who served in the East India Company's subordinate services, notably in clerical capacities in the law courts. By the early 1850s concern had spread to some prominent Sunni 'ulama of Delhi who were led by Maulana Rahmat Allah Kairanawi and a Bengali medical doctor, Muhammad Wazir Khan. An examination of the arguments which were used by the 'ulama shows that although the 'Mohammedan controversy' drew on some traditional objections to Christianity, a number of new as well as local factors determined the emphasis which was placed on claiming the irrationality of Christianity and the corruption of its scriptures. Important here was the 'ulama1s contact with recent European biblical criticism which they utilized in their own attacks on the Bible. A debate held in Agra in 1854, which was hailed as a victory by the Muslims, marked the climax of religious controversy during this era. Within three years the risings of 1857 in north India, in which some of the leading controversialists were implicated, rendered both 'ulama and missionaries unable or reluctant to re-open the controversies. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 ABBREVIATIONS 5 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION 6 INTRODUCTION 7 CHAPTER ONE: 'Ulama and Missionaries in Northern India in the early Nineteenth Century 21 CHAPTER TWO: The Evolution of an Evangelical Apologetic directed at Muslims 96 CHAPTER THREE The Processes of Encounter (1) Contact and Controversy 1833-1848 151 CHAPTER FOUR: The Processes of Encounter (2) Contact and Controversy 1848-1857 223 CHAPTER FIVE: The Themes of Controversy (1) Reason and Revelation 298 CHAPTER SIX: The Themes of Controversy (2) The Corruption of the Scriptures 362 CONCLUSIONS 426 APPENDIX 466 GLOSSARY 472 BIBLIOGRAPHY 477 MAP: The North-Western Provinces and Oudh in the early 1850s. 493 SUPPLEMENTARY ARTICLE 'Maulana Rahmat Allah Kairanawl and Muslim-Christian Controversy in India in the Mid-19th Century', Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, No.l (1976), pp.42-63. 5 ABBREVIATIONS B.F.B.S. British and Foreign Bible Society B.M.S. Baptist Missionary Society C.M.I, Church Missionary Intelligencer C.M.S. Church Missionary Society C .R. Calcutta Review D.I. T.P. Hughes, Dictionary of Islam (London, 1885) D.N.B. Dictionary of National Biography E .B . Encyclopaedia Britannica E.I.^ Encyclopaedia of Islam (1st ed. Leiden, 1913-42) 2 E .I. Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed. London and Leiden, 1960 continuing) G ,C .P . I. General Committee of Public Instruction I.O.L. India Office Library and Records, London J.R.A.S. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society K.K.H. Khair Khwah-i Hind L.M.S. London Missionary Society M.A.S. Modern Asian Studies M.M. 'Missions Magazin' (Magazin flir die neueste Geschichte der evangelischen Missions und Bibel-Gesellschaften) N.W.P. North-Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency P.P. Parliamentary Papers S .E .I. Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam S.P.G. Society for the Propagation of the Gospel T .U .H. Rahman 'Ali, Tagkira-i fulama-i Hind (Karachi, 1961). 6 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION Transliteration follows the system used in John T. Platts's Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English (see Preface, Tables I and II) with some modifications, mainly for convenience in typing. Thus, ’ain (£) and hamza {&) are both represented by an inverted _ * • comma ('), <$> by ch,£^ by kh, by gh. The Persian izafat is denoted by -i. Persian and Arabic words are transliterated according to the Urdu system, as are English words used in Urdu book titles. The familiar English forms of some Indian place-names have been retained (e.g. Delhi and Lucknow), but most other place-names have been trans­ literated according to Platts’s system, omitting diacritical marks. 7 INTRODUCTION The era of 'contact and controversy' between Protestant missionaries and Indian 'ulama which began in 1833 and came to a climax and a sudden end in 1854-55 has not previously been examined. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the partici­ pants, their motives and their arguments in order to assess the significance of the so-called 'Mohammedan controversies'^ in the history of contact between Islam and Christianity, and to examine the reaction of the 'ulama to the missionaries in the broader context of Indian Muslim responses to the impact of British rule on northern India. The scene is set in the first chapter by considering the situation of the Muslims of northern India after the English East India Company's conquest and annexation of the region in 1803, but before the beginning of the religious encounters in 1833. The evolution of Protestant missionary interest in India during this period is examined against the background of the evangelical revival, with the object of identifying the emergence of missionary interest in, and knowledge of, Indian Islam. Particular attention is paid to the reasons why the 'ulama seldom came into contact with missionaries before 1833. Once encounter had begun and had escalated in the period between 1833 and 1854, the preaching and the publications of the Reverend Carl Gottlieb 1. The term 'Mohammedan controversy' was first used in the title of an article submitted to the Calcutta Review in 1845 by an East India Company civilian, William Muir. Pfander and other missionaries used the term 'controversies', while 'ulama publications described the encounters variously as religious mqnazara or mubahasa (disputation, debate). 8 Pfander played a crucial part in turning ’contact’ into 'controversy’. Thus although Pfander did not reach India until the late 1830s, the object of the second chapter is an examination of the attitudes, knowledge and strategies of this Pietist missionary whose activities would subsequently be viewed on both sides as the main catalyst in the contro­ versies. Chapters three and four are concerned with the reasons why some ’ulama of various sectarian, educational and occupational backgrounds in the three north Indian cities of Lucknow, Agra and Delhi, decided to come forward to refute Pfander by the publication of replies to his books on Islam, and by the holding of discussions and public debates. In thus clarifying the ’processes of encounter’ some light is thrown on the place of the ’anti-missionary ’ulama’ in the broader community of north Indian Muslims, and on the responses of some individual ’ulama to their new situation under British rule in a reforming and ’interfering’ era. An attempt is made to relate the chronology of the encounters to the changing political con­ text, and in particular to identify contrasts between the early responses in Lucknow, the capital of the state of Oudh, and the subsequent reaction in Agra and Delhi, the foci of Muslim religious and cultural concerns in the North-Western Provinces. In chapters five and six the arguments used by the ’ulama in their counter-attack on the missionaries are examined in detail. Although the Indian ’ulama drew on many of the arguments against Christianity which had been utilized in Muslim-Christian controversies from the first preaching of Islam until the Jesuit encounters at the Mughal court, they chose to concentrate their attack on two main charges. These were first, the charge that some crucial Christian doctrines were irrational, 9 and second, the charge that the Christian scriptures had been corrupted. In making a detailed examination of these questions, particular attention is paid to the effects on the reformulation of these charges, of local conditions in north India, and of the adoption of European critical assumptions. The controversies ended with a public debate in Agra in April 1854, which the 'ulama claimed as a decisive victory over Pfander. This debate engendered some further correspondence and publications, but by the middle of 1855 both 'ulama and missionaries had relapsed into silence. There was to be no resumption of their encounters on a significant scale until the 1870s. Reference will be made in the concluding section to the possible after-effects of the era of controversies, both in India and in the wider context of subsequent Muslim-Christian encounters in other parts of the Muslim world.