Islamic Modernism and Religious Community
This project examines key developments in the intellectual, social, religious, and political life of the Muslim community in the north Indian Punjab region between the 1880s and 1947 with a focus on the history of Islamic modernism. At its core is a case study of the Anjuman-i Himayat-i Islam (Society for the Defense of Islam, AHI), established in 1884 in Lahore, one of the most important reformist organizations in the wider region. The AHI was mainly carried by lay Muslim volunteers belonging to the new colonial middle classes, including civil servants, teachers, traders, shopkeepers, artisans, and journalists. In contrast to other reform organizations that were established and supported by Muslim religious scholars, community-run organizations from the lay Muslim spectrum have received considerably less attention so far. Their presence in the public sphere with regard to Islam, however, raises significant questions about religious authority, religious identity and the construction of communal boundaries in late 19th and early 20th-century South Asia.
The project reconstructs the AHI's history between its founding in 1884 and the partition of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947 from both internal and external documents. I prioritize a close reading of the local, decentralized, indigenous Archive over the colonial Archive, analyzing documents such as the AHI’s handwritten proceedings, meeting minutes, and published reports and newsletters. In addition, I examine a wide range of Urdu sources, including biographical dictionaries, pamphlets, newspaper articles, writings by Muslim reformers, and scholarly publications, all gathered in archives across Pakistan. This is complemented with material from the colonial Archive, including administrative records, periodicals, textbooks, and other published sources, including missionary records.
The book manuscript resulting from this research project provides the first in-depth history of the Anjuman-i Himayat-i Islam, covering its organizational history and activities in the fields of education, publishing, preaching, social welfare, proselytizing and religious reform. It writes the Anjuman-i Himayat-i Islam back into the historiography of Islam in South Asia, shows its evolution into a central meeting point for north Indian Muslims from a variety of sectarian and social backgrounds, demonstrates that it became a vital platform for the spread of modernist Muslim thought, and traces its influence on the formation of Muslim elites and Muslim intellectual life in colonial north India. My case study reveals that Islamic modernism in the Punjab deviated in important ways from the modernism propagated and taught at Aligarh, was intimately connected with the Ahmadiyya movement, had complex ways of dealing with the Islamic scholarly tradition, was socially conservative and overall politically loyal to colonial rule until the late 1930s, when it developed anti-colonial resistance, and disseminated Muslim modernist thought through a network of affiliated associations and supporters, which profoundly challenged and redefined Muslim religious authority and religious identity over the course of the colonial period.
