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Next year, if grain is dear, I shall be a Sayyid: Sayyid Ahmad Khan, colonial constructions, and Muslim self-definitions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2020

DAVID LELYVELD
DAVID LELYVELD*
Affiliation:
William Paterson [email protected]
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Abstract

British social surveys and census statistics defined ‘Sayyid’ as a caste identity, while often casting a sceptical eye on the authenticity of genealogical claims associated with the concept. The article examines how Muslims, especially Sayyid Ahmad Khan, participated in the formulation of the concept of Sayyid identity and status. Islamic ideology and practice have long wrestled with conflicting claims of religious equality and hierarchical status, often based on concepts of sacred lineage. From his earliest writings Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–98) emphasised his descent from the Prophet Muhammad on his father's side alongside his somewhat less exalted relationship with his Kashmiri grandfather. In later years he tried to balance universalistic ideals with claims to status based on supposedly ‘foreign’ ancestry, which he cited as parallel to the supposed Aryan ancestry of high-status Hindus. His British allies used his Sayyid ancestry as reinforcement of his leadership of an India-wide Muslim ‘community’ and evidence that India was not prepared to develop into a national polity based on representative government. But the Aligarh movement's claim to represent the wider Muslim population and in particular its educational project at Aligarh struggled with a more egalitarian ethos, defining students and the members of voluntary associations as ‘brothers’, and quite prepared to cross ascriptive boundaries both in public life and personal relationships.

Keywords

Sayyid Ahmad KhanAligarh movement
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 433 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2020

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35 For example, in Ruʽdad Scientific Society, 9 January 1864 (Ghazipur, 1864).

36 A good source for the range of such words is in the work of another Sayyid Ahmad, namely Dihlavi, Sayyid Ahmad, Farhang-i Asafiya, 4 vols. (1888–1901)Google Scholar, available at https://rekhta.org/ebooks/farhang-e-asifiya-volume-001-syed-ahmad-dehlvii-ebooks/ (and following volumes) (accessed May 2019). See Hakala, Walter N., Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Definition of Modern South Asia (New York, 2017), pp. 115–133Google Scholar.

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38 British Indian Association, N.W.P. Article on the public education of India and correspondence with the British government concerning the education of the natives of India through the vernaculars (Allygurh, 1869)Google Scholar. This has both English and Urdu texts, with some significant differences. Sayyid Ahmad is quoted within the text, which suggests that he was not the major author of the rest of it. See https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=z5BeAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA1 (accessed June 2019).

39 ʽAbbas, Asghar (ed.), Sar Sayyid ka safarnamah, musafiran-i Landan (Aligarh, 2009), pp. 101–102Google Scholar; translation in Graham, G.F.I., The Life and Work of Syed Ahmed Khan, C.S.L. (Edinburgh, 1885), pp. 103–104Google Scholar.

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55 ‘Hindustan ke muʽazziz khandan’ [1876], in Maqalat-i Sar Sayyid, Vol. 5, pp. 87–96.

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62 Quoted and translated in Devji, ‘A Shadow Nation’, p. 129. I have made some small changes in Devji's translation. The original source is a speech that Sayyid Ahmad gave to the Anjuman Islamiya in Rai Bareilly in 1883, reprinted in Panipati, Muhammad Ismaiʽil (ed.), Khutbat-i Sar Sayyid, Vol. 1 (Lahore, 1972), p. 365Google Scholar.