The seat of liberal Islam

Composite heritage of the ‘qasbahs’

A WORD such as qasbah has no English equivalent. The generally accepted picture is of a place with a distinct urban status that possessed a mosque, a public bath and a judicial officer (qazi). As such, it was much more than a geographical statement. Moreover, as a product of economic and political dynamics and in its ethos and cultural manifestation, the qasbah as an entity did not exist outside Awadh.

The historian C.A. Bayly traces the evolution and significance of qasbahs, and sensitises us to the entrenched position of the ‘‘Islamic gentry’’ in the smaller qasbah and their role in transmitting Islamic learning. Put simply, in these units, gentry families — soldiers, administrators, scholars, theologians and Sufis — lived not as socially unified communities, but as aggregates of sub-communities. Just as Christianity played a fundamental part in developing the associational make-up of city life in Europe, so did Islam in qasbah life in Awadh without, of course, disturbing its social equilibrium.

What needs to be underlined is the composite heritage of the qasbah towns, to delineate how they formed an important background to, and produced a favourable environment for, the steady emergence of liberal and secular convictions. I also wish to suggest that the qasbahs predisposed ashraf, or gentry families, to the rational and ethical dime- nsions of Islam. Some of them thus became typical carriers of moral and ethical piety in urban areas. In their devotion and selfless service, they mirrored the values associated with qasbati living. Sliding into a world of new issues and diverted to new preoccupations, they commented on social issues — on women education and the abolition of the purdah system, for example.

The point to stress is that such men lived, contrary to popular supposition, in qasbahs and not just in the sprawling urban centres, and that their world-view was shaped by their local rather than a regional or a more cosmopolitan pan-Indian experience. Thus, Syed Mohammad Baqar, a rais of Ahrauli but married into a Rudauli-based Syed family, was a staunch supported of girls’ education, called upon the Congress to focus on such pressing issues, and appealed to its leaders to desist from frittering away its energy pursuing anti-government polices. The Lucknow-based journalist-essayist, Abdul Halim Sharar, wrote strongly against Muslim women observing purdah. Later, Mohammad Ali, a taluqdar of considerable stature from Rudauli, joined the ranks of such enthusiasts. His example as one of the influential men in Bara Banki district did, it was thought, sway the attitude of his more conservative fellow-taluqdars towards girl’s education.

This is not all. Proponents of socialist and communist ideas from the 1930s onwards were often drawn from qasbah-based families. Whether the strict upbringing of qasbah families, with its emphasis on acquiring knowledge and observing a degree of austerity, did actually engrain in the ‘‘Muslim socialists’’ universal humanist values or not is hard to ascertain. What is clear is the enunciation of socialist ideas by, say, Mushir Hosain Kidwai, the taluqdar of Gadia in Bara Banki. Urdu poet Syed Fazlul Hasan (Hasrat) of Mohan in Unnao district, emphasised that no struggle against exploitation and oppression can overlook the contribution of Marx, and the values brought to the forefront by communism in a form that has not been surpassed.

Quite a few liberal-radicals also belonged to Shia families. While the Shia claim implying an automatic progression from Shiaism to liberalism or socialism is dubious for the simple reason that among their ‘‘inherent’’ beliefs were those derived from a variety of sources and not just from their own ‘‘basic’’ cultural norms.

Yet, this fortification of the Shia tradition itself merits a proper explanation. It is doubtless true that Imam Husain’s martyrdom at the bank of the Euphrates in
Karbala in 680 AD has become a powerful, enduring, and evocative symbol of resistance to tyranny. I opened my eyes, recalled the Balrampur-born Urdu poet, Ali Sardar Jafri, in the shadows of knowledge and tazia. The first sound I heard was that of lamentation and mourning of the martyrdom of Husain. When I came of age, I found the whole world was a house of mourning.

Behind the facade of a benign existence, deep-seated tensions afflicted qasbah society. The ashraf groups themselves did not act in concert as a unified community, divided as they were by hierarchy, status and family feuds. They had complex, parallel, and interlocking in- terests that were expressed via different social networks. Besides, they were plagued by laziness, an extravagant life- style, internecine family disputes over property leading to endless litigation, and loss of land caused by huge debts.

Taking Mohammad Baqar as an example, we can see the difficulties experienced by ashraf families threatened by pauperisation. His ancestor, a petty landowner in Ahrauli, headed for Gorakhpur to take up a judicial appointment in the British court. But the fortunes of his family changed owing to disputes over property. Basharat Ali resigned from his government job in 1885 and returned to Ahrauli. The court case dragged on for years, and was ultimately decided against him. The bitter experiences of the family may well have led Baqar to comment, with a touch of irony, on the qasbah life, its value system, and the degenerative lifestyle of the local elites.

Max Weber stressed that honourable persons are expected to be above the claims of power based on mere wealth. In order for economically powerful persons to become honourable, they have to display an honorific style of life. Baqar defines, at the beginning of the 20th century, the content of piety and appropriate styles of life in a qasbati social milieu. He may well have established, unwittingly, the important connections between the qasbahs and status groups, styles of religiosity and everyday status.

Today, terms like qasbah or a qasbati culture do not convey the same meaning. Qasbah as a social and cultural entity is, in fact, not only a lost idea but has also vanished without leaving any substantial legacy behind it. Yet the qasbah has to be reinstated in our discourse to understand the confluence of ideas and movements, and to capture the continuum of high and low points in its histories. Hence it is important to explore at least one principal facet of qasbati living — the ideology of pluralism, and its strength in uniting different sections of society. Our students should be told how landed groups and service families built a partnership in the late-19th and early 20th centuries to manage their lives, and how they invested into strategies of collective action where mutual commitments overshadowed distinctive identities and communitarian pursuits.

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