Religion, law and state policing: accusations, inquests and arbitration of religious conflicts in colonial India

ABSTRACT

While religious groups have recurrently approached the state and its institutions to rationalize their acts and selves, government taking recourse to referee religious concerns has had a long history. The colonial state in India was replete with specimens of the intermix of seemingly incompatible elements of the religious and the secular, in this case, religion and the legal network, avowedly one of modern state’s key secular institutions. In the qasbah town of Amroha where in 1895 a dispute occurred between Shia and Sunni Muslims about the wording of azan (call to prayer), both sides lined up with petitions and memoranda to win over a verdict on their side. The British authorities played it well, to their own advantages and whims. Similarly, over a communal strife between some Muslims and Parsis of Bombay in 1874, a series of letters to newspapers invoked the British sense of justice and fairness. While ‘a lover of peace’ sought strict actions against the perpetrators of violence, a certain ‘superior race’ pledged their loyalty and law-abiding nature. Several arrests were made as a follow up but charges could not be proved against a large number of the captives. Disputes and lawlessness thus became an arena for the government to play a role in determining what was right or wrong and who could have the final word where laws and rulings, not scriptures, determined the course of religious destinies and identities. This essay explores the intermediary nature and significant interventions of the state in handling the tumultuous relationship between religion and law, rendering them even more volatile.

KEYWORDS:

• Amroha
• Bombay
• colonial state
• police
• riots
• violence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. He further commented: ‘Under the Mughal Emperors a semblance to a Police system existed only in the big towns – the rural population being left to look after themselves. Ordinary crime received practically no attention, and it would appear that Police activities were limited to intervening with Military force only on such occasions as widespread violence or actual rebellion.’ Typescript lectures on the police in India by E. E. Turner.

2. Such an argument has been made by Gyanendra Pandey. See Pandey, The Construction of Communalism.

3. Panikkar, Against Lord and State.

4. Gilmartin, Empire and Islam, 13.

5. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, 3.

6. The statement itself underestimates the well-organized nature of the police system in India prior to 1860 such as under the Mughal Empire where perhaps, no city or town ‘was without a kotwal [who] was responsible for the safety and protection of the people living in a city or town. He would hunt down thieves, punish criminals, imprison delinquents and keep a record of all people living in the various quarters of town (muhalla).’ These were only a few of the many tasks that were bestowed on a kotwal. For details, see Hasan, State and Locality in Mughal India, 39.

7. Olivelle and McClish, The Arthasastra.

8. For a glimpse into the kind of network that engaged the Mughal kotwal, see Singha, A Despotism of Law, 6, 8.

9. Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics, 183.

10. Ibid., 164–8.

11. Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor, 113.

12. Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics, 182.

13. Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor, 180.

14. Arnold, Police Power and Colonial Rule.

15. Singha, A Despotism of Law, 125.

16. Jaffe, The Ironies of Colonial Governance, 189.

17. Bhat, Judiciary and the Police, 73.

18. Luhrmann, The Good Parsi, 88.

19. The term ‘loyal’ as applied to the Parsi community is to be noted. Since this event occurred in 1874 when Muslims continued to be seen by the British government as the instigators of the revolt of 1857. The Muslim social reformer Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) through his writings and actions was active during this time to prove that Muslims too were loyal to the British and it was in the interests of the Muslims to ally with the British and adopt Western learning.

20. The Bombay Riots of February 1874, 11.

21. The Times of India (Bombay), July 28, 1874.

22. Ibid., 14–15, 18.

23. Ibid., 29.

24. Pandey, The Construction of Communalism, 32–7, 66–108.

25. Graham, The Life and Work of Syed Ahmed Khan, 39–40.

26. For a flavour of the wide-ranging intellectual contributions of qasbah Amroha and what set it apart from other places, see Rahman, Locale, Everyday Islam, and Modernity, 52–65.

27. For a detailed account on communal conflicts and religious disputations in Amroha between Shia and Sunni Muslims, see: Jones, ‘The Local Experiences of Reformist Islam in a “Muslim” Town in Colonial India: The Case of Amroha’, 896–905. Imtiaz Ahmad has noted widespread Shia-Sunni conflicts and tensions of varying intensity but confines them mainly to Bombay and Lucknow and further qualifies that Shia-Sunni riots were not longstanding in Lucknow and did not occur until 1908. See, Ahmad, “Perspectives on the Communal Problem,” 144–9.

28. Dispute between Shias and Sunnis of Amroha, Moradabad District.

29. In a letter to his daughter Hima written in November 1948, Chaudhary Muhammad Ali mentions about a murder in the village of Jafar Mehdi on the occasion of Baqr Eid, Hindu outrage in Wazirganj over slaughter of goats, and Hindu insistence in Saiyidanpur that Muslims should not slaughter goats, leave aside cows. For details, see: Rudaulvi, Goya Dabistan Khul Gaya, 83–4.

30. Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims, 82.

31. Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, 126–7.

32. Brass, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence, 16.

33. Ibid., 34.

34. Article 295A of the Indian Penal Code contains the following: ‘Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs. – Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.’

35. Indian Statutory Commission, 13.

36. Ibid., 14.

37. Pandey, The Construction of Communalism, 23–6.

38. Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics, 162.