Silk Letter Movement Can Not Be Compared with Jihadist Movements of India
By
New Age Islam Staff Writer
31 October
2023
Silk
Letter Movement Was Commemorated by Indian Government by Releasing a Postage
Stamp In 2013.
Main
Points:
1. Silk Letter Movement was a freedom
movement launched by Deoband school.
2. Its leaders were Ubaidullah Sindhi,
Maulana Mahmudul Hasan and Abdul Haque among others.
3. The movement died with the seizure
of the silk letter.
4. It was the second movement by the
ulema of Deoband after the defeat in Shamli.
5. SIMI and PFI cannot be clubbed with
Reshmi Rumal movement.
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Photo Courtesy Wikipedia
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Praveen
Swami recounts the history of Reshmi Rumal or Silk Letter Movement which
was launched by the leaders of Deoband school, Mohammad Mian Mansoor Ansari,
Ubaidullah Sindhi and Mahmood Hasan in 1913.
But after
giving a detailed account of the movement, he finds ideological links of SIMI
and the PFI with the Silk Letter Movement. In reality, there is no link,
ideological or political whatsoever between the Silk Letter Movement and SIMI
or PFI or for that matter ISIS and Al Qaida.
The
maulanas of Deoband were nationalists and planned to overthrow the British
government with the help of the Emirate of Afghanistan, Ottoman Empire and
German Empire. The leaders of the movement have been recognised by the
government of India as freedom fighters. The former President of India even
unveiled a postage stamp commemorating the sacrifices of the leaders of Deoband
for the Independence of India in 2013.
In 1857,
the first generation of the Deoband school had the battle of Shamli against the
East India Company under the leadership of Imdadullah Mohajir Makki and
defeated East India Company. This battle was a part of the Revolt of 1857. They
had established the first government of free India. The head of the state of
Shamli was Maulana Qasim Nanotawi while Maulana Rasheed Ahmad Gangohi was
appointed its Qazi. But the East India company reclaimed the territory with the
failure of the revolt led by Bahadur Shah Zafar. But Mr Praveen Swami writes:
"Even if the silk letter movement was
extinguished by blood, the millenarian impulses that powered it didn't go away.
Following the savage anti-Muslim communal pogroms that took place under Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi's watch in 1980s, a new generation of young Islamist
radicals was drawn to SIMI. The rapid growth of the organisation represented a
breakdown of faith among young Muslims in India's democratic promise and the
ability of state institutions to protect them".
The author
seems to be adopting a selective approach. SIMI came to existence in the 80s
but PFI came to existence in the 21st century when Indira Gandhi was not the
prime minister. Silk Letter Movement ended in 1920 and Indian freedom movement
gained momentum even after that.
It means that the fire of nationalism and
patriotism that was ignited by the Silk Letter Movement or by the victory of
'Mujahideen' in Shamli, no matter how short-lived, charged the overall
atmosphere and Indians nurtured the belief that the British government was not
invincible.
Therefore,
the Maulanas of Deoband did not inspire and influence the radical Islamists of
SIMI or ISIS or PFI but Maulana Abul Kalam Azad who formed a similar
revolutionary group called Hezbollah but this time the leaders of Deoband did
not join the group because they did not accept Abul Kalam Azad Amirul Hind (the
leader of the Indians). The leaders of Reshmi Rumal inspired and influenced
Khilafat Tehreek which won the support of both Hindus and Muslims but this
time, the ulema of Bareilly did not join the movement on the ground that Hindus
had also been roped in.
The birth
of SIMI, PFI or other radical Islamist organisations has its roots in the
global extremist ideas and organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaida,
Taliban and other sectarian ideology among the Muslims. The organisations
followed a supremacist interpretation of Islam and exploited the frustration of
Muslims under social and political circumstances.
Mr Praveen
Swami observes that the communal pogroms in the country resulted in the loss of
faith of the Muslims in the democratic institutions of India. But that is half-truth.
Al the Muslims did not join the SIMI or the PFI. Therefore, it cannot be said
that the entire Muslim population of India lost faith in India's democratic
system. Some disgruntled and frustrated youth radicalised by the extremist
ideology of foreign Islamic scholars joined these organisations in the false
hope of establishing a shariah rule in India where they will not be subjected
to oppression and injustice. That's why new organisations like PFI emerge and
gain popularity among the youth.
The problem
with the Muslims of India is that they believe in politics of alienation and
isolation, not in the politics of assimilation. In the recently concluded Moon
Mission, many Muslim scientists contributed to its success. Maulana Abul Kalam
Azad's contribution to the shaping up of the country's education system putting
special emphasis on science and technology is immense though he was a religious
person. The leaders of the Silk Letter Movement made contacts with the Ottoman
Caliphate, Emirate of Afghanistan and even with the German Empire o garner
global support for their ambitious plan. They were not narrow minded though
they were religious persons.
Today's
Muslim scholars cannot see outside their sect or school of thought. They form
religious organisations without any vision only to radicalise people and teach
them o slit the throats of those who do not subscribe to their ideology.
SIMI did
not achieve anything other than putting a stigma on the foreheads of hundreds
of Muslim youths. PFI also jeopardised the youth. They did not contribute to
the educational and economic progress of the community.
------
Gaza’s
Islamist Wave Can Fuel Jihadism in India—Don’t Forget The ‘Silk Letter
Movement’
By
Praveen Swami
29 October,
2023
Elegantly
written on yellow silk, sewn into the waistcoat of a new convert to Islam,
Shaikh Abdul Haq, the words were to be carried across the Khyber Pass, and set
India on fire. From his desk in Kabul, the cleric Ubaidullah Sindhi had laid
out his plans for a war against English rule in India, involving a revolt by
the tribes of Pakistan’s northwest, backed by the emirate of Afghanistan and
the rulers of the Hejaz, as well as the guns of imperial Germany and Turkey.
A rocket fired by Palestinian militants into Israel, in Gaza City |
Reuters
------
Like so
many insurrectionary fantasies, this one was “crazy in the extreme,” one
colonial civil servant noted, even “pathetic.”
For reasons
that have never become entirely clear, Haq handed the letters over to Khan
Bahadur Rab Nawaz Khan, a one-time major in the British Indian Army, whose sons
had left their studies to join the would-be insurrectionaries in Afghanistan.
Khan’s third son was a police officer, though, and the family remained loyal to
the Empire.
The
district commissioner in Multan, to whom Khan handed over the letters, deemed
them “childish rot.” The Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Michael O’Dwyer, was
less sure and handed the documents over to the Punjab Police’s Criminal
Investigation Department. The translators opened the doors to one of the most
incredible stories of the freedom movement.
For Indian
security services examining the fallout from the murderous Israel-Hamas war,
the story of the so-called Silk Letter Movement should be a cautionary tale.
The Islamic State and its Tehreek-e-Taliban allies are resurgent across
Pakistan’s northwest.
Local
communal hatreds, of the kinds that drew some Indians into the Islamic State,
have often been kindled by wider geopolitical events: The triumph of the
Taliban gave birth to jihadist movements like the Students Islamic Movement of
India (SIMI), and 9/11 fired the minds of a new generation of jihadists.
A hundred
years ago, imperial intelligence services worked adroitly with stations in the
Hejaz, Kabul and Istanbul to extinguish the threat. There are real questions,
though, over whether modern Indian intelligence services have the skill and
sophistication that’s needed.
The Dawn
of Danger
Like so
many stories about complex political struggles, the Silk Letter Movement
doesn’t have a neat beginning. Every story has to have a beginning, though, and
this one could start with the teenage Buta Singh Uppal, who converted to Islam
in his teens. Later, as he studied at the Dar-ul-Uloom seminary in Uttar
Pradesh’s Deoband, Ubaidullah attached himself to Mahmud Hassan, the
institution’s first student and mentor to generations of anti-colonial clerics.
Historian
Shehroze Ahmed Sheikh has noted in an unpublished journal that, from at least
1912, the iconography of Turkish power being martyred at the hands of predatory
European powers had embedded itself in religious processions in India. The
globalised Muslim identity, which emerged as a consequence of imperialism, was
considered a potent threat.
Like his
ideological predecessor, Syed Ahmad, Ubaidullah turned to the
Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands as base for revolution. The insurrection
against Sikh power led by Syed Ahmad had been crushed in 1842, historian Ayesha
Jalal has recorded. Learning from that bitter defeat, Ubaidullah sought to
create a disciplined army with the support of Afghanistan’s emir, Habibullah
Khan.
From
Peshawar, Chief Commissioner George Roos-Keppel informed his government that
some 15 students—most from the prestigious Government College in Lahore—had
joined Ubaidullah in Kabul.
The group
was joined by Mahendra Pratap, third son of the ruling family of Hathras in UP,
graduate of the Aligarh Muslim University, and self-appointed revolutionary
envoy to Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Sultan Mehmed Rishad of
Turkey. Mohamed Barakatullah Bhopali, after whom the Barkatullah University in
Bhopal is named, was appointed prime minister of the Indian state-in-exile,
while Pratap was president and Ubaidullah home minister.
The Empire
Strikes Back
Through
sub-inspector Muhammad Sheikh of the Mumbai CID, colonial authorities succeeded
in mounting undercover surveillance of the operations of the cell in Hejaz by
1916. The sub-inspector searched the baggage of the cleric Mahmud Hassan as he
carried Ubaidullah’s message to Hejaz. The sub-inspector found nothing—and the
cleric made no anti-British speeches—but, as per historian Saul Kelly, the
British deported them from Suez to Malta, where they were held until after the
end of the war in 1919.
King
Hussein bin Ali, the notionally independent ruler of the Hejaz, stonewalled
efforts by the British to crush the anti-India movement, rejecting a proposal
to allow Mumbai Police inspector Hamid Said to stay in Mecca and surveil
pilgrims, traders, visitors and political emissaries.
Together
with his colonial superiors, Kelly has recorded, Hassan continued to regularly
intercept Silk Letter missives. The authorities also stepped up surveillance of
the Anjuman-i Khuddam-i Kaaba, or the Society of the Guardians of the Kaaba,
through military officer Khan Bahadur Mubarak Ali. The organisation, set up in
1912, was funnelling funds to Turkey through the First World War, colonial
spies came to believe.
Eventually,
the course of the First World War shattered the Silk Letter revolutionaries’
hopes. The Hejaz rulers decided to sit out the conflict. Turkey, faced with
successive defeats, was barely in a position to protect itself, let alone
provide assurances to arm Afghanistan. King Amanullah Khan, who took power in
1919, saw no reason to confront England’s might.
Thousands
of Indian Muslims who sought to migrate from the Land of the Infidels to join
the anti-English jihad Afghanistan, scholar Dietrich Rietz records, were set on
by tribespeople and left to die on the wastes of the Khyber Pass.
Ignoring
Dangers
Even if the
Silk Letter movement was extinguished by blood, the millenarian impulses that
powered it didn’t go away. Following the savage anti-Muslim communal pogroms
that took place under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s watch in the 1980s, a new
generation of young Islamist radicals was drawn to SIMI. The rapid growth of
the organisation represented a breakdown of faith among young Muslims in
India’s democratic promise and the ability of State institutions to protect
them.
Since the
demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1993, SIMI’s language became increasingly
pro-jihadist. The organisation’s jihadist ambitions were also powered by the
triumph of the Taliban in Kabul, which brushed aside its opponents to form the
First Emirate in 1996.
At SIMI’s
Kanpur convention in 1999, seven-year-old Gulrez Siddiqui was held up before an
estimated 20,000 cheering members: “Islam ka ghazi, butshikan, mera sher, Osama
bin Laden [warrior of Islam, destroyer of idols/My lion, Osama bin Laden],” the
child intoned. SIMI called for a caliphate, claiming democracy had failed
India’s Muslims, and even appealed to God to send an avatar of the
temple-pillaging 11th-century conqueror Mahmud of Ghazni.
Large
numbers of former SIMI members would later form the Indian Mujahideen terrorist
group with the support of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, seeking to avenge the post-2002
riots in Gujarat.
The Indian
Mujahideen was eventually crushed by police, but fresh jihadist networks
formed—again inspired by global events. Ever since 2016, members of the
now-banned Popular Front of India (PFI) joined the flow of foreign fighters for
the Islamic State.
Kerala
resident Shajeer Mangalassery Abdulla, accused by the National Investigation
Agency of recruiting for the Islamic State in Afghanistan, was a supporter of
the PFI’s political wing, the Social Democratic Party of India. Safwan
Pookatail, a graphic designer with the PFI house journal Thejas, is alleged to
be among Shajeer’s recruits, along with Manseed Bin Mohamed, who researched
Hindutva for the now-banned group. Elements of these networks also joined
al-Qaeda, as well as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Even though
politicians often promise to annihilate terrorist threats, the ideas that power
them are remarkably hard to kill—especially in the absence of deep political
action to transform the conditions that empower them. Every past wave of Indian jihadist
mobilisation, inspired by events thousands of kilometres away, was ignored
until bombings began at home. This time, India’s intelligence and police
services ought to see the distant rising of the bloody tide—and prepare for it
to wash up on shores near home.
-----
Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya
Bhatti)
Source: Gaza’s
Islamist Wave Can Fuel Jihadism in India—Don’t Forget The ‘Silk Letter
Movement’
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/silk-letter-movement-jihadist-movements-india/d/131015
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