British India

Properties2
tagsplace, sacred-site, foreign-land, foreign, country, colonial, comparative, deccan, british-colony, south-asia, colonial-administration
aliasesBritish-India, Hindustan, the Deccan, India, Britsch-Indië, British Indian Empire, Bengal Government, Supreme Government of British India

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British India appears in the discussion of the holy war doctrine. ‘In British India the Shattarite mysticism still prevails here and there.’ The case of Muslim attitudes toward the British government in India is discussed at length: some Muslim leaders tried to demonstrate that rebellion would be unlawful jihad, while others upheld the contrary. The question was submitted to the Mekkan muftis who declared: ‘British India must be regarded as daral-Islam.’ Syed Amir Ali, a British-Indian writer, wrote works on Mohammed and Islamic law in English, aiming to make Islam palatable to a European public. Al-Jisr dedicated his book to the Sultan of Turkey. The Gayo Country (Telong / Gayo highland) The interior highland region of Acheh. A man from Telong in the Gayo country who bore the name of Teungku Tapa claimed to be Malem Diwa incarnate and caused a considerable commotion on the East and North Coasts in 1898-1900. He gave himself out to be Malem Diwa himself and promised invulnerability and victory over the unbelievers. The Dutch troops speedily put an end to his success. He was killed near Piadah in 1900. Also, many variants of the haba about two boys Amat and Muhamat are current in the Gayo and Alas countries. The Alas Country An interior region of Acheh. ‘Many varieties of this tale are current in the Gayo and Alas countries’ (referring to the haba about two boys whose mother had an intrigue with a snake). West Africa ‘It is especially in the more distant parts of the Mohammedan world, such as West Africa and the East Indies, that the wagiyyat (last admonition of the Prophet), in spite of its re- appearance at stated intervals, finds most widespread belief.’ Also: ‘It is said that they (wagiyyats) are in fact current at Medina but do not attract the serious attention of the public in the holy cities.’ Louis Rinn’s Marabouts et Khouans (Algiers 1884) is cited regarding the reputation of wagiyyats in West Africa. Algeria / Constantine / Beyrout Referenced in the discussion of Islam and modern pressures: ‘In 1893 Jules Cambon,

Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — British India

British India — the colonial possessions of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent — appears in The Achehnese Vol. I as one of the chief comparative reference points for Achehnese religious life, and as the place of origin of many of the legends, festivals and literatures that had passed eastward into the Malay Archipelago. Snouck Hurgronje often uses the term Hindustan or “the Deccan” as loose synonyms for British India when discussing these transmissions.

Source of Achehnese Religious Customs

Snouck’s central claim in his chapter on Achehno-Mohammedan feasts is that “the Deccan form of Mohammedanism exercised an influence on that of the Indonesians superior in force to that of any other agency.” He notes that “it is clear beyond all doubt that the Deccan form of Mohammedanism exercised an influence on that of the Indonesians superior in force to that of any other agency. This may at once be gathered from the character of the popular religious literature, even were there no other proof.” The popular stories of the Titanic wars of Amir Hamzah (the uncle of [[Prophet Muhammad|Mohammad]), of the romantic adventures of Mohammad (ibnu’l) Hanafiyyah, of the hero Sam’un, of Raja Badar and many more, “all in conflict both with the history and the legendary tradition of the Arabs,” come “more particularly in British India,” Snouck observes, “nor is it possible that they should have been disseminated to such an extent in any country closer to Arabia.”

The Hasan-Husain Festivals

The Hasan-Husain (or Muharram) festivals — examined in connection with the plains of Kerbela — Snouck explicitly attributes to “the Shi’ite portions of British India.” The festivals, he observes, “particularly common in Hindustan, and which remind one more of a fair or carnival than of a funeral pageant; all this specially belongs to Persia and the Shi’ite portions of British India, and need not occupy our attention here.” In different parts of Netherlands-India, and especially on the West Coast of Sumatra, “the Hasan-Husain festival is celebrated on a smaller scale, but in much the same manner as we find it described in the Qanoon-e-islam” of Jaffur Shurreef, translated by G. A. Herklots. Snouck notes that “it has been thought that it was introduced along the sea-board by the sipahis (sepoys) who immigrated thither during the English domination,” though he judges it more probable that “even previously to this a Hasan-Husain feast enjoyed much popularity both in Sumatra and elsewhere.”

The Saint of Nagore

British India is also the resting-place of the saint Mirah Sab (Meurasab), whose tomb at Nagore was the object of Achehnese votive offerings. Snouck writes that “when a gift of this sort has been vowed to the Prophet, to the saint Mirah Sab or Meurasab (who lies buried at Nagore in British India) or even to Teungku Anjong, whose tomb is in Gampong Jawa, the vow may be fulfilled by handing over the thing promised to a teungku for his own use.” The custom illustrates the spiritual traffic that bound Acheh to the Coromandel coast.

Hindus in the Hasan-Husain Feasts

Snouck adds in a footnote that “according to the Qanoon-e-islam, pp. 122, 142, Hindus in British India also take a considerable part in the Hasan-Husain feasts, pay vows to the holy relics paraded round on these occasions, etc.” — a fact that helps to explain the carnival-like character of the festival even where, as in Acheh, it was kept up mainly by Indian settlers.

Account from Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 — British India

British India (Dutch: Britsch-Indië) was the colonial possession of the British East India Company — and, after 1858, of the British Crown — on the Indian subcontinent. In the early nineteenth century its political centre was the city of Calcutta, where the Governor-General of Bengal resided and from which relations with the native states of the Eastern Seas, including Acheh, were conducted. Van der Kemp (1900) treats British India as one of the two metropolitan powers whose rivalry shaped the fortunes of the Atjeh agreement of 1819 and its successor, the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London 1824.

The Government of British India, headed in 1819 by Governor-General Lord Moira (later Earl of Moira and Hastings), was the authority that dispatched Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and Captain Coombs on their Acheh commission. Raffles had personally travelled from Bencoolen to Calcutta to persuade the Bengal administration that the Dutch threatened to monopolise the China trade, and that Acheh must therefore be drawn into the British sphere of influence to the exclusion of the Netherlands or any other foreign power. The Calcutta government, in its dispatch to London of 14 January 1819, expressed the hope that it might still be in time “to establish our political influence [in Acheh] to the exclusion of that of the Dutch or of any other foreign nation” (Van der Kemp, 1900, p. 163).

Throughout the 1820s the Supreme Government of British India continued to watch Acheh and the Straits of Malacca as objects of strategic concern. The commission instructions, signed by Raffles himself, describe the envoys as appointed by “the Governor-General of British India, &c., &c., &c.” to negotiate “all arrangements of a political and commercial nature between the countries of Acheen and Great Britain” (Van der Kemp, 1900, p. 220). Yet the same British Indian authorities soon let the treaty of 1819 lapse into a “dead letter,” as Van der Kemp styles it; they neither enforced its stipulations against the Sultan nor pressed them in subsequent negotiations with the Dutch.

After the London treaty of 17 March 1824 transferred Sumatra to the Dutch sphere, British India’s direct interest in Acheh declined, and the conduct of relations with the Netherlands Indies passed more firmly to the Court of Directors in London and to the colonial establishment at Penang, Malacca, and Singapore. Van der Kemp notes, however, that British Indian officials in Bengal continued to intrigue against Dutch authority on Sumatra and elsewhere in the Archipelago well into the 1820s, urging that the Netherlands surrender its Indian factories in exchange for compensation elsewhere.

See Also

Source

The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.

Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159–239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.

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