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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2010
This paper analyzes the political project of secular Islam as outlined by the Indian political and religious leader, Muhammad Shah—also known as Aga Khan III (1877–1957). As first president of the All India Muslim League, Muhammad Shah facilitated the installation of separate electorates for Muslims as well as the call for Partition. The reformist notion of Islam he invoked for this separatist programme was informed by the secular and modernizing projects of the colonial public sphere. Simultaneously, however, Muhammad Shah claimed a divine role as Imam of the Ismaili Muslim community—a position validated by Ismaili beliefs and teachings of messianic Islam. The paper engages Muhammad Shah's writings and the devotional texts of the Ismailis to illustrate how the heterogeneous forms of practices peculiar to the vernacular history of Islam in early modern South Asia were displaced by the discourse of religious identity in the colonial period.
I would like to thank Arvind Mandair and Marcus Dressler for inviting me to participate in the ‘Politics of Religion-Making’ conference at Hofstra University in October 2007, where I presented the first version of this paper. I would also like to thank Kavita Datla and the anonymous reviewers of Modern Asian Studies for providing critical feedback and comments to recent drafts of this article. Finally, Hent de Vries and Stathis Gourgouris both offered insightful thoughts and important references on the subject of the messianic that have been crucial in the formulation of this paper's argument.
1 Viswanathan, Gauri, ‘Secularism in the Framework of Heterodoxy’, in PMLA, Vol. 123, No. 2 (2008), pp. 466–476CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Ibid., pp. 466–467.
3 Ibid., p. 476.
4 For an overview of the political life and teachings of Muhammad Shah, see Boivin, Michel, Le Renovation Du Shi'ism Ismaelien En Inde Et Au Pakistan: D'Apres Les Ecrits Et Les Discours De Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003)Google Scholar.
5 Devji, Faisal, ‘Minority as a Political Form’, in Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Majumdar, Rochana and Sartori, Andrew (eds), From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 89–90Google Scholar.
6 Muhammad Shah, like many nineteenth-century reformists, developed his ideas about Islam in response to ‘new concepts’ generated from encounters between western secularism and Islam. As Talal Asad explains, ‘Secularism as a political doctrine arose in modern Euro-America. It is easy to think of it as requiring the separation of religious from secular institutions in government, but that is not all it is. Abstractly stated, examples of this separation can be found in medieval Christendom and in the Islamic empires—and no doubt elsewhere too. What is distinctive about “secularism” is that it presupposes new concepts of “religion”, “ethics”, and politics, and new imperatives associated with them’. See Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 1–2Google Scholar.
7 Aamir Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony: the Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
8 Here, I draw from Talal Asad's point about what he calls the ‘grammar’ of the secular: ‘I take the secular to be a concept that brings together certain behaviors, knowledges, and sensibilities in modern life. To appreciate this it is not enough to show that what appears to be necessary is really contingent—that in certain respects “the secular” obviously overlaps with the “religious”. It is a matter of showing how contingencies relate to changes in the grammar of concepts—that is, how the changes in concepts articulate changes in practices. . . . In my view the secular is neither singular in origin nor stable in its historical identity, although it works through a series of particular oppositions’. Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 25–26Google Scholar.
9 What is interesting about this particular dialectic of the secular and religious is how this seeming paradox of Aga Khan III as a secular public leader of reform, on the one hand, and divine Imam on the other, relates to what Partha Chatterjee has argued about many Indian nationalists, who moved between secular domains of the state and religious domains of culture to consolidate their anti-colonial agenda in the nationalist period. Whereas the Hindu nationalist ideology incorporated all Indians and drew from the domain of (Hindu) Indian culture to fight colonial state rule, the Aga Khan's role as pan-Muslim representative ultimately prioritized the Muslim community over Indian national identity and supported continuing colonial rule. Similar to Indian nationalists, however, Muhammad Shah ‘fought relentlessly to erase the marks of colonial difference’ by engaging in the public sphere with speeches campaigning against sectarianism within Islam, purdah, and Muslim backwardness. At the same time, his assertion as living Imam and descendent of Muhammad among the Ismaili community allowed him to occupy an inner domain as a veritable sovereign of the Ismaili community, undoubtedly ‘premised upon a difference between the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized’. Chatterjee, Partha, Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 1–3Google Scholar.
10 The gināns are a body of poems that were composed primarily in the languages of Gujarati/Hindustani/Sindhi, between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the areas of Gujarat, Sindh and Punjab. For both literary and historical discussion of the poetry see Asani, Ali, ‘The Ginan Literature of the Ismailis of Indo-Pakistan’, in Eck, D. L. and Mallison, F. (eds), Devotion Divine: Bhakti Traditions from the Regions of India (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1991), pp. 1–18Google Scholar; Esmail, Aziz, A Scent of Sandalwood: Indo-Ismaili Religious Lyrics (Surrey: Curzon Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Kassam, Tazim, Songs of Wisdom and Circles of Dance: Hymns of the Satpanth Ismaili Muslim Saint Pir Shams (Albany, SUNY Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Shackle, Christopher and Moir, Zawahir, Ismaili Hymns from South Asia: An Introduction to the Ginans (London: SOAS, 1992)Google Scholar.
11 Hunter, W. W., The Indian Musalmans (London: Trubner and Co., 1872), p. 33Google Scholar.
12 Ibid.
13 Nehru, Jawaharlal, Discovery of India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 390Google Scholar.
14 Ibid.
15 Khan, Aga III, ‘Presidential Address to the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference: Delhi 1902’, in Aziz, K. K. (ed.), Aga Khan III: Selected Speeches and Writings of Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah (London: Kegan Paul International, 1998), pp. 205–210Google Scholar.
16 Ibid., p. 206.
17 Ibid., p. 201.
18 Ibid., p. 207.
19 Ibid., p. 207.
20 Ibid., p. 207.
21 Ibid., p. 209.
22 Ibid., p. 210.
23 Ibid., p. 210.
24 Ibid., p. 210.
25 Hardy, Peter, ‘Modern European and Muslim Explanations of Conversion to Islam in South Asia: A Preliminary Survey of the Literature’, in Levtzion, Nehemia (ed.), Conversion to Islam (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1979), p. 79Google Scholar.
26 Cohn, Bernard S., ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification of South Asia’, in An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 224–254Google Scholar; Dirks, NicholasCastes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Jones, Kenneth W., ‘Religious Identity and the Indian Census’, in Barrier, N. Gerald (ed.), The Census of British India: New Perspectives (Delhi: Manohar Press, 1981), pp. 73–101Google Scholar.
27 Needham, Anuradha DingwaneyRajan, Rajeswari Sundar, The Crisis of Secularism in India (Duke: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Documents, such as a letter to The Pioneer on 16 August, 1903, and to the Aligarh Institute Gazette that same month, stress issues like the importance of recognizing Muslim representation, the beneficence of British rule, and the importance of Muslims in ‘keeping themselves aloof from the Indian National Congress’. N/A, ‘Mahommedan Political Association: Nawab Viqarul Mulk to Editor’ and The Pioneer, 16 August 1903, in Mujahid, Sharif Al (ed.), Muslim League Documents: 1900–1947 (Karachi: Quaid-i-Azam Academy, 1990), p. 29Google Scholar.
29 The Aga Khan was the head negotiator in this exchange, as the first signature to ‘Address’, presented by the Mohammedan Deputation to Lord Minto, Simla, 1 October 1906’, is that of the Aga Khan's. Ibid., pp. 95–102.
30 By 1909, Viceroy Minto formerly institutionalized this request for a separate electorate for Muslims in what became known as ‘The Morley-Minto reforms of 1909’. The Morley-Minto Reforms followed three important events: first, the partition of Bengal in 1905, led by western-educated Brahmins that prompted colonial officials to seek a balance of loyalty from loyal and conservative sections of society—Muslims and landlords; second, the greater demands of Congress, led by Gokhale; and third, the pressure from a group of Muslims to state their case that Muslims, on account of their minority status in India, ought to be considered an electoral category in their own right. Tejani, Shabum, ‘Reflections on the Category of Secularism in India: Gandhi, Ambedkar, and the Ethics of Communal Representation’, in Rajan, Rajeshwari Sundar and Needham, Anuradha Dingwaney (eds.), The Crisis of Secularism in India (Duke: Duke University Press), p. 48Google Scholar.
31 This position can be traced to a much earlier period than the Morely-Minto Reforms. In a speech that took up the question of the empire's rule, Syed Ahmad has stated that since foreigners will necessarily rule India, all other foreigners—Russians, French, Germans are much worse: ‘It is therefore necessary that for the peace of India and the progress of everything in India the English Government should remain for many years—in fact forever’ See Sir Syed Ahmed Khan's Speech, Meerut, 16 March 1888, in Muslim League Documents, p. 207.
32 Gilmartin, David, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 3Google Scholar.
33 Robinson, Francis, ‘Islam and Muslim Separatism’, in Taylor, David and Yapp, Malcolm (eds), Political Identity in South Asia (London: Curzon Press, 1979), pp. 78–112Google Scholar.
34 Brass, Paul, Language, Religion, and Politics in North India (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.
35 Pandey, Gyanendra, The Construction of Communalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.
36 Mufti, pp. 12–13.
37 Asad, p. 25.
38 Asad describes the concept of the secular as ‘neither singular in origin nor stable in its historical identity, although it works through a series of oppositions’. Ibid., p. 25.
39 For the most comprehensive analysis of how this property dispute was arbitrated through the terms of religious identity, see Shodhan, Amrita, A Question of Community: Religious Groups and Colonial Law (Calcutta: Samya Press, 2001)Google Scholar.
40 The Dasavatār ginān exists in three separate manuscript versions and is attributed to three different authors: Pir Shams, Pir Sadrudin, and Pir Imam Shah. Of these three, the longest version of Dasavatār is attributed to Imam Shah. Gulshan Khakee has translated the tenth avatar portion (Dasamo Avatār) of this particular version of Dasavatār into English. Khakee explains that her translation emerges from two manuscripts. The first is an Imam Shahi manuscript belonging to the Pir of the Imam Shahi satpanthis of the Khandesh area, which is dated 1823, and another, older, version found at the Ismaili Research Association at Karachi, which is dated 1781. Since there is no published Dasavatār, I will be working from Khakee's transliteration and translation. Gulshan Khakee, ‘The Dasavatara of the Satpanthi Ismailis and the Imam Shahis of Indo-Pakistan’ (Harvard University: unpublished thesis, 1972).
41 Justice Arnould ‘The Aga Khan Case’, in the Judgment of the Advocate General vs. Muhammed Husen Huseni, Bombay High Court Reports, 1866, pp. 359–360. This official reading of Dasavatār as part of a continuum of Ismaili Islam was determined through a procrustean framework premised on a classical western division between church and sect—where ‘church’ represents a corporate centre and sects are understood as groups that break off from the official centre while retaining certain elements fundamental to the doctrines of the ‘church’. See definitions of church and sect in Troeltsch, Ernst, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, Vol. 1 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1931), pp. 331–334Google Scholar. For an examination of the ways in which ‘sect’ has been applied in the Indian context, see Weber, Max, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1922)Google Scholar. See also Wilson, H. H., Religious Sects of the Hindus (London: Christian Literature Society for India, 1904)Google Scholar.
42 Christopher Shackle and Zawahir Moir explain that these editions, printed in both khojki and Gujarati script, were regarded as canonical within the Ismaili community until their revisions were undertaken in 1978–1979. See Christopher Shackle and Zawahir Moir, pp. 16–17.
43 In the supplementary notes to the translated gināns collection Christopher Shackle and Zawahir Moir describe this particular ginān, ‘Enthronement Hymn’ in the following way: ‘This hymn of praise to the Imam is sung in the congregations every year on Imamate Day, celebrating the anniversary of the current Aga Khan's accession. With the accession of Aga Khan IV in 1957, the words mahamad shāh [10:1, 10:3] were changed to karim shāh. . . . It was probably composed in 1885 when Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III (1877–1957) ascended the throne of the Imamate as a boy, after the premature death of his father Aga Ali Shah Aga Khan II, although there is an alternative belief that it was composed on the slightly later occasion of Aga Khan III's first marriage. At all events, this is the most recently composed of all the recognized hymns’. Shackle and Moir, p. 165.
44 ‘Mubāraki dhani salāmat je takhat ji’ | yā ali khub majālas jinat kar-ke, phiras bichāi gāli | ān baethe haye takhat up, sulatān mahamad shāhā vāli. | Āj rāj mubārak hove, nur aen ali kun rāj mubārak hove; | Shāha āl-e nabi kun rāj mubārak hove, hove hove āj rāj mubārak hove. | Yā ali didār lene kun āe shāhā ter, hindi jamāet sāri; | Shāhā bajā-kar najarān deve, jān apani kun vār. | Yā ali terā nasibā roj-eaval se, detā hae re kamāli; | Shāhā ali shāhā ke mukh men se nikalā, sultān mahamad shāhā vāli. | Yā ali shāhā kahu to tunjh kun bajāve, bakhat buland peshāni; | Choti umar men āle maratabā, talu ki nishāni. | Yā ali takhat ne chatr tunjh kun mubārak, jeherā ji ke piyāre; | Abul hasan shāha karani so teri, janat āp savāre. | Yā ali takhat ne chatr sun-ke tere, phalak se barase nurā | Moti tabākā hāthun men le-kar, shāhā kun vadhāve hurān. | Yā ali mehemān-khane men moman kun jab, lāe id musale; | Shamasi jo salavāt padh-kar, māraphat ki khusiyāli | Yā lai teri mubārak-bādi ke khātar, sayad karate munājāt | Shāhā najaph tere pushat-panah, tere dushaman hoy phanā. Transliterated and translated by Christopher Shackle and Zawahir Moir, p. 83.
45 Te popata rupe gura pīra samasa thaeā: jīhā surajā rānī hotī tene sata khane tīhā popata rupe hoi pīra samasa bhane | Jīhā suraja rānī bethī che sata khanāe: tīhā popata rupe hoi pīra samasa bhanee | Tame suno suraja rānī atharaveda bharana gināna: jethi tame pāo āgara pāo amarāpurīno thāma | Āja tu rānī rādya dhuāra daita ghara āi: have taro janama varāratha gaeo | Eso vacana sunīne suraja rānī acabī raheā: rānī te gura popatane pīra samasane lāgā jāi pāheāa | Tabha pīra samasa boleā vasāta: tume suno surajā rānī athara vedakī vāta | Rānī amare karatā juga māhe rugha veda vepāra: te bagata pāmce korīese sidho pralhāda | Te juga māhe cāra rupa harīe dharea: deva chāra dānava sāhe āpe saghāreā | Rānī tame dujā tretā juga māhe jāna: tare jujara ved hotā paramāna | Tare deve sāte kirorīsu bhagata udhāreā hirīcadra: te juga māhe trana dānava sāhe āpe saghāreā | Rānī trīja duāpura jugano sehena jāna: tare sāma veda hotā paramāna | Nava kirorīso pādhava udhareā: te juga māhe deva doe dānava shāha āpe saghāreā | Te nave kirorīese sīdha jujosatara rāe: te pāmeā amarapurīnā thāma | Āja kalījuga māhe athara veda māhe thāra: te āja kalajuga māhe harī dasmu avatāra | Te deva nakalakī avatāra dhareo sirī murāra: | Te tone bharathāra mare ho nāra. Khakee, pp. 75–86.
46 It is apparent that Dasavatar replicates the genre of the puranas, in which the heroic acts avatars perform for the welfare of humankind form the primary subject matter. Dimmitt, Cornelia and Buitenen, J. A. B. Van, Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978), p. 62Google Scholar.
47 te tame sno surajā rāni pira samasa kahe vicāra: āja rāni tame juga māhe satapantha dhiāvo sāra | te rāni āge satapanth vina sidha na koe: te tume rāni satagura vinā mugata na hoe | rāni ā jugamā satapanth a dhyāvo sāra: to teme surajā rāni utaro pāra | rāni tame pārajo satapatha gubataja hoi: jema daita dānava na jāne koi. Khakee, pp. 89–92.
48 Je sāmi purabha janamani sirevā ama siri rahi: te sāmia me daita dānava ghara āveā sahi. Khakee, p. 102.
49 Sāmi te ghara janamma bhaeā: pana ame satagura sārathi amara thaeā. Gulshan Khakee, p. 105.
50 Pollock, Sheldon, ‘The Cosmopolitan Vernacular’, in Journal of Asian Studies Volume 57, No. 1 (1998), pp. 6–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 Lorenzen, David, Religious Movements in South Asia 600–1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 16–17Google Scholar.
52 Ibid., pp. 16–17.
53 Abbas Amanat explains ‘Contrary to the Sunni madhi, whose advent was aimed to enhance the foundations of Islam on a periodic [centennial] basis, Shi'i Islam essentially strived to invoke the Imamate paradigm so as to bring about the resurrection and an end to the prevailing dispensation. The Imam's advent will differentiate the forces of good from evil in two confronting armies and establish the sovereignty of the House of the Prophet’. Amanat, Abbas, ‘The Resurgence of Apocalyptic in Modern Islam’ in The Encyclopedia of Apocalyticism, vol. III: Apolcalypticism in the Modern Period and the Contemporary Age (New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 238Google Scholar.
54 Abudulaziz Sachedina explains ‘While belief in the future coming of an Imam is a salient feature of all Shi'ite sects in Islam, in Imami Shi'ism the belief in the messianic Imam becomes not only a basic tenet of the creed, but also the foundation on which the entire spiritual edifice of the Imamite religion rests. It is the acknowledgement of this Imam which can ensure salvation’. Sachedina, Abdulaziz, Islamic Messianism: The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shi'ism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1981), p. 9Google Scholar.
55 Āja te dasame harī pātra nakalakī avatāra; te āja baetha ārabha desa majhāra | Te ketāka calatra harīna kahe; te deva āja kalajuga māhe gubata hoi rahe | Te karajuga māhe gura bhiramā pīra samasa avatāra; te gur fakir firiā covīsa mulaka majhāra. Khakee, pp. 70–72.
56 Sachedina, p. 1.
57 Sachedina explains that the occultation (ghayba) and return (raj'a) form the two central beliefs of Shiite messianism. Ibid, p. 2.
58 Khakee, pp. 153–162.
59 ye nīshāni puri padase | bhai tare so nīshānī āvī jāna | tām pīra imāma shā sata vacanām bolyā sahī | bhai ye chelu che nīdāmna. Khakee, pp. 182–183.
60 tām takhata sigāsamna shāhā baisiya | tām gor iimāma shāhā sāte vāto kare. Khakee, pp. 310.
61 te khādu manam viicārii mele jādu rāye | te daitanu sarave dala māru tene thāra. Khakee, pp. 362–363.
62 tāre pache sirita sajoga sarave racanā thāe | tāresarave rakhiyāne sāhā rādya karāe | tām sarave bheli bese gora mahamda sāthe vajiira | tām trabhavanamā svāmi rāja karāvase: | sarave rakhayāne da sadhira. Khakee, pp. 375–376.
63 Farhad Daftary, Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Wladmir Ivanow, Brief Survey of the Evolution of Ismailism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1952); Azim Nanji, The Nizari Ismaili Tradition in the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent (New York: Caravan Books, 1978).
64 Agamben, Giorgio, The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 1Google Scholar.
65 Ibid., p. 2.
66 Agamben explains that ‘To be messianic, to live in the Messiah signifies the expropriation of each and every juridical-factical property (circumcised/uncircumcised; free/slave; man/woman). . . . This expropriation does not, however, found a new identity; ‘the new creature’ is none other than the use and messianic vocation of the old. . . .’, Agamben, p. 26.
67 Ibid., p. 24.
68 Ibid., pp. 4–5.
69 In this way, my point about language would follow Stathis Gourgouris's recent critique of Agamben's Greek. Gourgouris argues that Paul's Greek is in no way ‘jargonish’. He disagrees with Agamben on both accounts of language and message, claiming that Paul's language (his social codes and modes of address) were entirely products of his environment and his message was unequivocally Christian. See Gourgouris, Sthathis, ‘The Present of a Delusion’ in Blanton, Ward and de Vries, Hent (eds), forthcoming in Paul and the Philosophers (Duke: Duke University Press)Google Scholar.
70 In another ginān, titled Buddhavatār, similar kinds of ideas are conveyed through the protagonist named ‘Shribuddha’. He does not take the form of a hidden Imam, but strangely, a form of a dalit Muslim. The messianic theology of Buddhavatār, conveyed through the paradox of the Buddha's guise is articulated through a simultaneous critique of Brahmanic caste hierarchy and an assertion of Islam.
