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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2017
During the 1920s, a new genre of didactic poems prescribing the proper Islamic practice of everyday peasant lives were published out of printing presses in deltaic, eastern Bengal's small towns. This article argues that these printed poems constituted a discourse of agrarian Islam that prescribed reforms in peasant material life—work, commerce, consumption, attire, hairstyle, and patriarchal authority—as a means of ensuring the viability of peasants’ market-based livelihoods. The article examines the emergence of a small-town Muslim intelligentsia that authored and financed the publications of these poems out of the Bengal delta's small-town printing industry. Eschewing communalism as an analytical frame in understanding South Asian Muslim identities, this article argues that Bengali peasant Muslim subjectivity was located in peasant engagements with agrarian markets. Agrarian Islamic texts urged Muslim cultivators to be good Muslims and good peasants, by working hard, reducing consumption, and balancing household budgets.
I would like to thank the following for having carefully read and commented upon various drafts of this article: Firdous Azim, Sugata Bose, Antoinette Burton, Ken Cuno, Behrooz Ghamari, Radhika Govindrajan, Simin Patel, Mark Steinberg, the attendees of the History Workshop at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the anonymous Modern Asian Studies reviewers for their suggestions, comments, and criticisms.
1 The Hobson-Jobson dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and phrases provides the following definition of the mofussil: ‘The provinces—the country stations and districts, as conta-distinguished from “the Presidency”; or, relatively rural localities of district as contra-distinguished from the sudder or chief station, which is the residence of the district authorities’, Yule, H. and Burnell, A. C., Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, J. Murray, London, 1903, p. 570 Google Scholar.
2 ‘Shuno bhai Mussalman ek hakikat/Mussalmaner shob kam ebadat./Babsha, banijya, adi karbar/Ebadat bina kichhu nahi aar’, Abdul Aziz, Dunia O Akherat Do Jahaner Najat, Noakhali, 1922, p. 2.
3 My emphasis on the production and circulation of printed agrarian Islamic texts is indebted to Nile Green's analytical model of a ‘religious economy’ in the western Indian Ocean world. Green, N., Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Joya Chatterji emphasizes the emergence of the mofussil intelligentsia in provincial Bengal politics after the government of India reforms of 1935. Chatterji, J., Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially Chapter 2.
5 Omkar Goswami and Sugata Bose have both emphasized the importance of commodity markets to peasant economic wellbeing in the Bengal delta. Goswami, O., Industry, Trade and Peasant Society: The Jute Economy of Eastern India, 1900–1947, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1991 Google Scholar; Bose, S., Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal Since 1770, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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7 Bose, S., ‘The roots of “communal” violence in rural Bengal’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 16, 1982, pp. 463–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Chatterjee, P., ‘Agrarian relations and communalism in Bengal, 1926–1935’, in Guha, R. (ed.), Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society, vol. I, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1982 Google Scholar. Chatterjee develops his argument further in a subsequent article, ‘More on modes of power and the peasantry’, in Subaltern Studies, vol. II, R. Guha (ed.), Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1983.
9 Chatterjee, ‘Agrarian relations and communalism in Bengal, 1926–1935’, p. 27.
10 Datta, P. K., Carving Blocs: Communal Ideology in Twentieth Century Bengal, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1999 Google Scholar.
11 Sartori, A., Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 2014 Google Scholar, particularly Chapter 5.
12 Siddiqi, M. M. A., Sirajganjer Itihas, Siddheswar Machine Press, Sirajganj, 1916, p. 53 Google Scholar.
13 K. C. Dey to GOB, Revenue Dept, 4 February 1914, in Agriculture Dept, GoB, August 1914, in ibid.
14 L. Birley, District Magistrate, Dacca, to Commissioner of Dacca, 5 October 1914, in ‘Depression in jute trade on account of the outbreak of war in Europe’, February, 1915, GoB, Proc A, Agri Dept, Agri Branch, List 14, Bundle 29, NAB.
15 Survey and Settlement Report: Rangpur, 1930–38, p. 4, emphasis added.
16 Government of India, Census of India: 1901, Vol. VI: Bengal, Part I, Calcutta, 1901, p. 33.
17 In urban areas in north Bengal, which includes, amongst others, Rangpur, Bogra, and Pabna, there were 579 Hindus per square mile and 367 Muslims. In urban areas of Dacca Division, which includes the larger city of Dacca and the smaller towns such as Mymensingh, Jamalpur, Kishorganj, Faridpur, and Madaripur, there were 562 Hindus versus 427 Muslims per square mile. And in Chittagong Division, including Noakhali, Comilla, Chandpur, and Brahmanbaria as well as the secondary port city of Chittagong, there were 502 versus 459 Muslims per square mile. Additionally, the towns of Comilla, Kishorganj, Jamalpur, and Sherpur had Muslim majorities. Census of India, 1921, Vol. VI: Bengal, p. 117.
18 Karmayogin, No. 27, 8 January 1910.
19 The catalogues of the Vernacular Tracts Collection at the British Library lists 32 books published in Noakhali during the 1920s. The Noakhali presses were the Noakhali Press and the Noakhali Mill Press, the latter of which was owned by a businessmen who owned an oil-pressing mill. These presses produced the following newspapers: the Desher Bani (circulation of 500), the Noakhali Sammilani (circulation of 200), and the Tanzeem (circulation of 300). The two Faridpur presses, the Ambica and Kamala presses, produced three newspapers—the Kangal (circulation 750), Krishi Katha (circulation 700), and the Chikandi Hitaishini (circulation 200). Among the small towns of eastern Bengal, more books were published in Mymensingh during the 1920s than anywhere else—the Vernacular Tracts Collection catalogue lists over 70 original texts published in Mymensingh in this period. The main Mymensingh newspaper, the Charu Mihir, is the only mofussil paper with a circulation of over 1,000. Statement of Newspapers and Periodicals Published in Bengal, revised up to 31st December, 1926, IOR/L/PJ/6/1762, File 4929, IOR.
20 A. Ahmed, Muslim Bani, Islamia Press, Comilla, Tippera, 1927, p. 1.
21 Statement of Newspapers and Periodicals Published in Bengal, revised up to 31st December 1926, IOR/L/PJ/6/1762, File 4929, IOR.
22 Government of Bengal, Report on the Working of the Reformed Constitution in Bengal, 1921–27, Part I: Calcutta, 1929, p. 8.
23 Karmayogin, No. 27, 8 January 1910.
24 S. A. Hamid, Krishak Bilap, Lily Press, Mymensingh, 1922.
25 A. Hossain, Bangla'r Bolshi, Islamia Press, Dacca, 1926. At the time of publication of this pamphlet, Abul Hussain was a lecturer at Dacca University but the articles in the book were written in the early 1920s when he was still a student. Fazlul Karim was a landlord in Dacca, who had purchased the estate of Haturia—60 miles from Dacca city—in 1919.
26 Hamid, Krishak Bilap, p. ii.
27 Hai, Adarsha Krishak, Mymensingh Zila Bhandar Press, Mymensingh, 1920, p. 33.
28 Ibid., p. 46
29 ‘Mussalman goney aaj dekhiya/Hai Hai bukta jai fatiya’, Aziz, Dunia O Akherat Do Jahaner Najat, p. 1.
30 ‘Kobita shuru kori paye dhori kandi koi/Bangali hoiya mora koto dukkho shoi’, Ahmed, Muslim Bani, p. 1.
31 ‘Ei jomanar loker astha dekhiya/Osthir hoinu dil gelo ghabriya/Khaite na pay mana bostro na gay/Dinek dui din onahare jay’, M. A. Ali, Keno Lok Gorib Hoy, Islamia Press, Comilla, 1917–18.
32 Rahim, A., Nur-ul-Islam, 2nd edn, Azimi Press, Dhaka, 1924, p. 2 Google Scholar.
33 ‘Behuda khoroch jeba korilo/Shoitaner bhai shei hoilo’, Aziz, Dunia O Akherat Do Jahaner Najat, p. 13.
34 Ahmed, Muslim Bani p. 11.
35 ‘Mathhay Albat rakha kemon baka mali'r chhat/Albatey toilo dite toilor porlo bat/Deshey napiter kachhay nahi boshey aar/Shohore dui anna diye chhatay baha bahar’, ibid., p. 7.
36 ‘Hindu ukil babu pailey babu pondo mari debo koshi/Nijer chhela murkho shala naila niray boshi’, ibid., p. 8.
37 ‘Je jati babsha banijyo chharilo/Duniya akherey tara dubilo’, Aziz, Dunia O Akherat Do Jahaner Najat, p. 21.
38 ‘Korite nahok lojja halal kam/Jei kore ghrina shei beiman’, ibid., p. 21.
39 ‘Dekho bhinno jati babosha koriya/Amaderi taka nei lutiya/Ei baboshar jorey tahara/holo probhu, deen honu amra’, ibid., p. 20.
40 Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of wealth. Muslim texts in the Bengal delta often referred to Hindu gods, goddesses, and festivals, evidence against Asim Roy's and Pradip Datta's arguments that Bengali Muslim thought in the 1920s and 1930s was about purifying Islam and removing the taint of syncretism: Hossain, Bangla'r Bolshi, p. 45. The original lines in transliterated Bengali are below: ‘Bilat hoite dekho shetango shokol/Baboshar jorey korey Bharat dokhol/Aar dekho Bikaneri Marwari eshey/Banglar dhon rotno shob loy chushey/Pohela loiya ashey dhuti o kombol/Tarpor korey koto bishal shombol/Babshar jal petey Marwarigon/Rokto mangsho shushe loy nashiya jibon/Rokto shosha kaj shudhu ihaderi bhai/Obojh Bangali mora dishe nahi pai/Takar karoney mora kaka bole daki/Babu bole salam kori mathha niche rakhi/Tader nikote thaki jor hatey mora/Bujhe dekho kishe mora hoi Lakshmi chhara’, Hussain, A., Hok Kotha, Ahya Press, Sirajganj, 1933, p. 9 Google Scholar
41 ‘Koshtar majhete bhai shudhu dekhi churi/Kheyal koriya bujho joto noro nari’, ibid., p. 19.
42 ‘Shokol chizer dor prokashiya bole/Paat Becha kaley haat kaporer toley/Paat becha shesh holey dey torey roka/Bichar koriya dekho tumi koto boka’, ibid., p. 50.
43 ‘Prithibitey hoy beshi murgi aar hash/Ei dui cheez kore dhormo-kormo nash’, ibid., p. 24.
44 ‘Iaha shuney dokandar shemanatey boshey/Tarpor aorotera dim liya ashey/Eshe tara dekho bhai kiba kam korey/Char poyshar dimey chay der poysha dam/Dokandar taha shuney poyshay dui koy/Nari lokey boley tobey na dibo tomay/Akherey she dokandar hoye gelo raji/Dim guney dey tarey joto nari paji’, ibid., p. 25.
45 ‘Daladali chacha o bhatija koto kore maramari/Mamu o bhaginar koto hobe foujdari’, Rahim, Nur-ul-Islam, p. 12.
46 Sen, A., Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982, particularly Chapter 6, pp. 52–86 Google Scholar.
47 Jalal, A., Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, Routledge, New York, 2000 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 Bose, N., Recasting the Region: Language, Culture, and Islam in Colonial Bengal, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2014 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Bose, S., Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure, and Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986 Google Scholar.
50 Iqbal, I., The Bengal Delta: Ecology, State, and Social Change, 1840–1943, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 Ranajit Guha's analysis of the ‘elementary aspects of peasant insurgency’ is the most cogent statement of the subalternist view of an autonomous domain. Guha, R., Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1983 Google Scholar.