The New Cambridge History of India. III.1 Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India

Abstract

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 I would also like to thank Mark Juergensmeyer and Elleanor Zelliot, who sent me their unpublished manuscripts, and Sheikh Mubarak Ahmad of the American Fazl Mosque in Washington D C , who supplied me with crucial literature on the Ahmadiyah move ment.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

The Barelvi movement in South Asian Islam

“…Named after the town of Bareli in northern India, Barelvism emerged in colonial India as a tradition of the venerated Sufi-scholar Ahmed Raza Khan (1856Khan ( -1921. Khan was part of a tumultuous phase of Indian Muslim history when reformist and traditionalist ulema were debating multiple aspects of their religion-popular practices, education, politics, beliefs, and so on (see Jones, 2008;Metcalf, 1982;Sanyal, 1996;Tareen, 2020;Zaidi, 2009;Zaman, 2010a). He emerged as a defender of many popular rituals and customs linked with shrine-based Sufism, and staunchly opposed almost every other competing tradition, declaring some among them non-Muslim in his fatwas (legal opinions).…”