Islam and the Army in Colonial India: Sepoy Religion in the Service of Empire (Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society)
Cambridge University Press, 5/14/2009
EAN 9780521898454, ISBN10: 0521898455
Hardcover, 236 pages, 23.5 x 16 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
Set in Hyderabad in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book, a study of the cultural world of the Muslim soldiers of colonial India, focuses on the soldiers' relationships with the faqir holy men who protected them and the British officers they served. Drawing on Urdu as well as European sources, the book uses the biographies of Muslim holy men and their military followers to recreate the extraordinary encounter between a barracks culture of miracle stories, carnivals, drug-use and madness with a colonial culture of mutiny memoirs, Evangelicalism, magistrates and the asylum. It explores the ways in which the colonial army helped promote this sepoy religion while at the same time attempting to control and suppress certain aspects of it. The book brings to light the existence of a distinct 'barracks Islam' and shows its importance to the cultural no less than the military history of colonial India.
Introduction
Islam and the army in colonial India
1. Traditions of supernatural warfare
2. The padre and his miraculous services
3. Allah's naked rebels
Conclusions.
'This fascinating study of religious practice and religious change amongst the Muslim sepoys of the British Indian army confirms Nile Green's position as one of the most gifted young scholars of South Asian History.' Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of London