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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2020
This article reflects on the significance of genealogy for Sayyids and other Muslim elites in British North India by exploring some literary productions and political endeavours of the Aligarh movement. At the end of the nineteenth century, poems recalling the extra-Indian origins of Muslim elites became increasingly popular, as Altaf Husain Hali's Musaddas best exemplified. Translating an anxiety of seeing their power and influence reduced in the colonial world, such nostalgic discourse, intertwining representations of lineage and authority, promptly entered the political realm. The genealogy rhetoric deployed in Urdu poetry played a significant role in sustaining the claims of the leaders of the Aligarh movement as they strove to bolster a cohesive sharīf community identity and secure political leadership during the anti-Congress propaganda of 1888 as well as to obtain advantages from British officials according to their so-called political importance. In this context, this article emphasises that in Aligarh's nostalgic poetry, the greatest political weight was put on belonging to the ashrāf category rather than to the Sayyids, who only occasionally feature in the sources.
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51 F. Devji, ‘Muslim nationalism: Founding identity in colonial India’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1993), p. 30.
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59 F. Robinson, Separatism, p. 120.
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61 Civil and Military Gazette, 19 May 1888, quoted in Pamphlets issued by the United Indian Patriotic Association, appendix, p. vi.
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75 Introduction to Sūr-e Isrāfīl, Awadh Punch, 3 May 1888.
76 Naqqārah-e Islām, Awadh Punch, 5 April 1888, verses 1–3.
77 Sūr-e Isrāfīl, Awadh Punch, 3 May 1888, verses 1 and 3.
78 Naqqārah-e Islām, verse 42.
79 Naqqārah-e Islām, verse 37.
80 One of the prominent opponents at the time was Imdadul Ali Deputy Collector Aligarh, who wrote a pamphlet entitled Nurul Afaq. See, for instance, S. A. Zaidi, ‘Contested identities and the Muslim Qaum’, p. 52.
81 Naqqārah-e Islām, verse 35.
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83 Shan, M., The Indian Muslims: a documentary record (Meerut, 1980), vol. 1Google Scholar: ‘Founding of the Muslim League’, pp. 193–194 (emphasis added).
84 ‘Presidential address of Saiyid Ali Imam at the second session of the All-India Muslim League, Amritsar, 30 December 1908’, quoted by Robinson, ‘Memory of Power’.
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92 The Comrade, 18 February 1911, 1, 6, p. 103.
93 F. Robinson, ‘Memory of power’.
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95 See Ansari, S., Sufi Saints and State Power: the Pirs of Sindh, 1843–1947 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 122CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and A. Buehler, ‘Trends of ashrāfization’, p. 239.