Encyclopedia of Islam

India

  

349  J

---

self-employed in traditional professions. Muslims 

are underrepresented in salaried professions and 

high-tech industries. Muslims also tend to have 

higher rates of illiteracy than Hindus or Chris-

tians, especially among 

Women

.

Muslims tend to be labeled as outsiders by 

members of other Indian groups, yet intermar-

riage and conversion have brought about a signifi-

cant degree of indigenization. The Indian census 

does not recognize racial or ethnic groups, but it 

does recognize language populations. There are 

22 official languages that belong to two main lan-

guage families—the Indo-European (in the north) 

and the Dravidian (in the south). Muslims speak 

the local languages of the regions where they 

live. The greatest number speaks Hindi-Urdu, but 

there are also many who speak Kashmiri, Ben-

gali, Marathi, Sindhi, Malayalam, Gujarati, and 

Kannada. Punjabi is another language spoken by 

Indian Muslims, but more so in nearby Pakistan 

than in India. Like other Indians, most speak more 

than one language, including English, another of 

India’s official languages. Within a particular lan-

guage-speaking domain, Muslims may distinguish 

themselves from Hindus and others by greater use 

of Arabic and Persian loanwords, and, in some 

areas, the use of Urdu script (a modified version 

of Perso-Arabic script) instead of Devanagari, the 

Sanskritic script. Also, many Arabic and Persian 

loanwords have entered into the languages spo-

ken by non-Muslims through the centuries. This 

process is slowly being reversed, however, as non-

Muslims attempt to replace these loanwords with 

Sanskritic ones.

All of the major expressions of Islam are pres-

ent in India, in addition to several that developed 

on Indian soil. Although many of these expres-

sions came from the Middle East and Central Asia, 

they have been shaped by centuries of Hindu-

Muslim interaction, both on the level of popular 

religion and on the level of formal institutions 

and doctrines. In terms of formal Islamic tradi-

tion, especially in urban India, most Muslims are 

Sunnis affiliated with the h

anaFi

  l

egal

  s

chool

.

The  s

haFii

  l

egal

  s

chool

 prevails in southern 

India, especially in the states of Kerala, Tamil 

Nadu, and somewhat less so in Karnataka. In 

recent years, Hanbali law may be gaining some 

influence through workers returning to India after 

living or studying in s

aUdi

  a

rabia

  and through 

the dissemination of Hanbali ideas via the print 

and electronic media. About 10 percent of Indian 

Muslims are Shii. t

Welve

-i

mam

 s

hiism

 is especially 

strong in Hyderabad in the south and the region 

of Awadh in the north (centered on Lucknow 

in Uttar Pradesh). Followers of i

smaili

  s

hiism

,

known as Bohras and Khojas, are found today 

mainly in Mumbai (Bombay), but they have been 

historically influential in a wider area encom-

passing the Sind (now in Pakistan), Gujarat, and 

Maharashtra. The number of Ismailis is much 

smaller than that of the Twelve-Imam Shiis. India 

is also the birthplace of the a

hmadiyya

 sect, which 

was founded by g

hUlam

 a

hmad

 (d. 1908) in the 

Punjab during the last decade of the 19th century. 

Moreover, Islam’s presence in South Asia contrib-

uted significantly to the emergence of Sikhism, a 

separate religious tradition, in the Punjab during 

the 16th and 17th centuries.

The shape Islam has taken in India and 

South Asia generally has been greatly influ-

enced by s

UFism

. The leading Indian Sufi orders 

are the Chishtis (since the 13th century), the 

Suhrawardis (since the 13th century), the Qadiris 

(since the 15th century), and the Naqshbandis 

(since the 16th century). Of these four orders, 

the Chishti is the one that has become most 

grounded in the Indian context, with major 

saint

shrines located in a

Jmer

, Delhi, Ahmedabad, 

and Gulbarga (other important Chishti shrines 

are located elsewhere in India and modern 

Pakistan). The other Sufi orders originated in 

the Middle East and Central Asia. They all ben-

efited from official patronage during the eras of 

the  d

elhi

  s

Ultanate

 and the m

Ughal

 

dynasty

.

Membership of the orders has been recruited 

from among the Sunni populace at large, but the 

festivals held at Sufi shrines (called dargahs in 

K  350  

India

---

eastern Islamicate lands) in honor of their saints 

(pirs) can attract hundreds of thousands from 

across a wide spectrum of religious traditions. 

The Shiis, for their part, have directed their piety 

toward the imams and their descendants. They 

hold large gatherings and processions during 

a

shUra

, the annual commemoration of the mar-

tyrdom of Imam Husayn. Ismailis have similar 

observances in honor of their Imams and pirs, 

and in difficult times, they have employed Sufi 

ideas and symbols to avoid persecution by liter-

ally minded Sunni jurists and judges.

When Muslim rule was declining and British 

colonial control was increasing, Islamic 

reneWal

and

 

reForm

 

movements

 began to arise in India. 

a

hmad

  s

irhindi

 (d. 1624) and Shah Wali Allah 

(d. 1762) were among the early pioneers in these 

reform movements. After the suppression of the 

1857 Muslim-Hindu uprising (known in British 

history as the Sepoy Mutiny) against the govern-

ment of the English East India Company, Sunni 

Ulama

 at the d

eoband

 

madrasa

 near Delhi sought 

to bolster Islamic 

edUcation

 among Indian Mus-

lims in order to preserve their tradition. Deobandi 

schools have since spread throughout South Asia, 

and the ulama continue to be active in adapting 

their religious traditions to the rapid changes 

brought with modernity. Another consequence 

of the 1857 uprising was the founding of the 

Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh 

by Sir s

ayyid

 a

hmad

 k

han

 (d. 1898), which was 

designed to educate Muslims in the modern sci-

ences and prepare them for leadership in colonial 

India. From 1919 to 1924, Muslims in northern 

India participated in the k

hilaFat

 m

ovement

 in an 

unsuccessful effort to revive a pan-Islamic 

caliph

-

ate

. Other important movements that originated 

in India that have since had global impact are the 

Deobandi missionary movement known as the 

t

ablighi

 J

amaat

 (founded in the late 1920s) and 

Abu al-Ala Mawdudi’s J

amaat

-

i

 i

slami

 (founded in 

1941), an Islamic political movement that became 

an increasingly important political force in Paki-

stan after its creation in 1947.

ISlAM IN SOuTh ASIA:  

A hISTOrICAl SKETCh

The conventional understanding found in modern 

India and often outside India is that its history 

consists of three phases: an ancient Hindu Vedic 

golden age from around 1200 

b

.

c

.

e

. to 1000 

c

.

e

.,

an Islamic age of foreign conquest and despotism 

from around 1000 to 1600, and a British colonial 

age that laid the foundations for modern inde-

pendent India from 1600 to 1947. An assortment 

of facts can be brought forth in support of this 

view of history. Such a view, however, tends to 

treat Islam in monolithic terms, exaggerating the 

role of religion at the expense of social, politi-

cal, and economic processes in Indian history. 

It relies on the misleading idea of irreconcilable 

gaps between Muslims and Hindus as well as 

between Muslims and the British. These per-

ceived gaps are the results of India’s experience 

with 

colonialism

 and communal politics since 

the 1930s and 1940s, rather than a reflection 

of precolonial historical realities in South Asia. 

In recent years, the three-phase model has been 

given new life by Hindu nationalists and Mus-

lim radicals, as well as Western scholars such 

as Samuel P. Huntington, who has proposed a 

post–cold war world of civilizational “clashes” 

based largely on religious identity. Now, however, 

some scholars are questioning the validity of the 

model, arguing that it is a gross oversimplifica-

tion and that nowhere is it more oversimplified 

than in its conceptualization of the “Islamic age.” 

It overlooks the variety of ways that Muslims 

used to indigenize their religion in India during 

the more than 1,000 years they have lived there, 

the complex array of forms that Islam took there 

(as described above), and how Indian Muslim 

rulers and the English engaged in various sorts 

of cooperation and power sharing even after the 

1857 uprising. Conflicts and acts of violence did 

occur and still do, but they were not confined 

to the eras of Muslim rule, nor did they always 

occur along religious or cultural “fault lines” 

between Muslims and non-Muslims.