Haji Shariatullah

Haji Shariatullah
Born 1781
Madaripur, Dacca, British India
(now in Dhaka, Bangladesh)
Died 1840
Dacca, British India
(now in Bangladesh)
Nationality Bengali
Known for Faraizi Movement
Children Mohsin-ud-din

Haji Shariatullah (1781–1840) was an eminent Islamic reformer of the Indian subcontinent in British India. He is known for founding Faraizi movement.[1]

Earlylife

Haji Shariat Ullah was born in 1781 in a petty Talukdar family at the village Shamail under the then Madaripur sub-district of greater Faridpur District in Bengal to Abdul Jalil Talukdar, a farmer who was not very well off. . He lost his father at the age of 8 years and was brought-up by his uncle Azimuddin. After his primary education he went to Calcutta and was admitted to Barasat Alia Madrasa. He then received education from famous madrassa of Furfura Sharif, Murshidabad.[2]

Life in Arabia

Haji Shariatullah stayed there from 1799 to 1818 and got his religious education. He learnt Arabic and Persian from his teacher, Maulana Basharat. During his stay in Arabia, he was influenced by the Najdi da'wah started by Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab,[1] through Tahir al-Sumbal Makki.[3] He even is said to have visited Al Azhar.[3]

The Faraizi Movement

See also Faraizi Movement

The Faraizi Movement essentially a religious reform movement had emerged forth during the 19th century, founded by Haji Shariatullah by the Bengali Muslims. The term Faraizi has been deduced from fard, standing for compulsory and mandatory duties ordained by Allah. The Faraizis are, thus, those bunch of men whose only objective is to implement and impose these mandatory religious duties. The promoter and initiator of the Faraizi Movement, Haji Shariatullah, however had represented the term in a different light and sense, implying to assimilate every religious duty ordained by the Quran as well as by the Sunnah of the Prophet, while remaining firmly in the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence.[4]

After his return to Bengal under British Indian rule, Haji Shariatullah had remained a continuous witness to the appalling and degenerating conditions of his brotherhood, calling them forth to give up un-Islamic practices (Bidah) and execute their honest duties as Muslims (Faraiz). Due to various accumulating historical reasons, the Muslims of Bengal had been merrily complying with umpteen local customs, rituals and observances, which were almost unimaginable and displaced from the principles of Islam. Most Bengali Muslims did not even abide by the basic principles of Islam and adhered to these Hindu customs.[5]

Haji Shariatullah then and there had sworn to bring the Bengali Muslims back in the true path of Islam, which later had churned into the gargantuan Faraizi Movement. He had assayed to lay paramount accentuation on the five fundamentals of Islam, insisted on the complete acceptance and strict observation of virginal monotheism and reprobated all digressions from the original doctrines as shirk (polytheism) and bid`at (sinful conception). Umpteen rituals and ceremonies affiliated with birth, marriage and death like Chuttee- Puttee, Chilla, Shabgasht procession, Fatihah, Milad and Urs were heavily prohibited by Shariatullah saint-worship, demonstrating unnecessary admiration to the pir, lifting of the taziah during Muharram were also adjudged shirk. Haji Shariatullah indeed had laid gross emphasis upon justice, social equality and universal fraternity of Muslims.[1] Haji Shariatullah deemed British domination in Bengal as exceedingly detrimental to the religious life of Muslims. Travelling in earnest quest of the Hanafi law, he spoke up that the complete non-existence of a lawfully-appointed Muslim caliph or representative administrator in Bengal had stripped the Muslims of the privilege of observing congregational prayers. To the Faraizis, Friday congregation was inexcusable in a predominantly non-Muslim state like Bengal.

Reception

The Faraizi movement thus began to circulate with astonishing promptness in the districts of Dhaka, Faridpur, Madaripur, Barisal, Mymensingh and Comilla.

Some Muslims, on the other hand, particularly the landlords of Dhaka, hence, reacted sharply against him and this caused a riot in Noyabari, Dhaka District.[1] Due to the reaction of these landlords and Hindu landlords and European indigo planters, this movement swelled into a socio-economic issue.[6]

The landlords levied numerous Abwabs (plural form of the Arabic term bab, signifying a door, a section, a chapter, a title). During Mughal India, all temporary and conditional taxes and impositions levied by the government over and above regular taxes were referred to as abwabs. More explicitly, abwab stood for all irregular impositions on Raiyats above the established assessment of land in the Pargana) over and above normal rent and such abwabs were horribly dishonest in the eye of law. Several abwabs were of religious nature. Haji Shariatullah then intervened to object to such a practice and commanded his disciples not to pay these dishonest cesses to the landlords. The landlords had even inflicted a ban on the slaughter of cow, especially on the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha. The Faraizis ordained their peasant followers not to cling and stick by to such a ban. All these heated instances added up to tensed and stressed relationships amongst the Faraizies and the landlords, who were nearly all Hindus. This was another major communal cause, which in the long run, had induced these two religious factions to stand against each other, leading to the Fairizi Movement.

Gradually gathering up incidents under the Islamic-led Faraizi movement could be witnessed in various parts of Bengal, with overwhelming English-Bengali agreement for perhaps the very first time. The outraged landlords built up a propaganda campaign with the British officials, incriminating the Faraizis with mutinous mood. In 1837, these Hindu landlords indicted Haji Shariatullah of attempting to build up a monarchy of his own, similar in lines to Titu Mir. They also brought several lawsuits against the Faraizis, in which they benefitted dynamic cooperation of the European indigo planters. Shariatullah was placed under the detention of the police in more than one instance, for purportedly inciting agrarian turbulences in Faridpur.[1]

Structure

In organising the Faraizi society and additional movement, Dudu Miyan primarily had two objectives in perspective, comprising: (i) safeguarding the Faraizi peasantry from the tyranny of the zamindars and European indigo planters and, (ii) guaranteeing social justice for the bulks. In order to guarantee the first objective, Dudu Miyan had parented up a volunteer corps of clubmen (lathial) and ordained for their regular training in the art of combating with clubs. For guaranteeing the second objective, he had resurrected the traditional system of local government (Panchayat) under Faraizi headship. The former came to be acknowledged as the Siyasti or political branch and the latter Dini or religious branch, which were consolidated later on into a hierarchical Khilafat system.

The Faraizi Khilafat system was contrived to bring together all the Faraizis under the direct control of the authorised representatives of Dudu Miyan who stood at the zenith of the hierarchy of khalifahs. He had thus appointed three grades of khalifahs, consisting of: (i) the Uparastha Khalifah, (ii) the Superintendent Khalifah and, (iii) the Gaon Khalifah.

Muhsinuddin Ahmad Dudu Miyan then had separated the Faraizi settlement into small units comprising 300 to 500 families and decreed a Gaon or ward Khalifah over each unit. Ten or more such units were classed together into a circle or Gird, which was placed under a Superintendent Khalifah. The Superintendent Khalifah was furnished with a peon and a piyadah or guard, who was despatched to and fro keeping contact with the Gaon Khalifaha on one hand and with the Ustad on the other. The Uparastha Khalifahs were consultants and experts to the Ustad and stayed back in Dudu Miyan`s company at Bahadurpur, the headquarters of the Faraizi movement.

The Gaon Khalifah represented himself as a community leader, whose duty was to circularise religious teaching, implement religious duties, preserve a prayer-hall, take care of the morals and parcel out justice by consulting with elders. He was also required to preserve a Maktab for preaching the Quran and elementary lessons to the children. The Superintendent Khalifah`s chief functions were to oversee the activities of the Gaon Khalifahs, take care of the well-being of the Faraizis of his Gird or jurisdiction, sermonise the fundamentals of religion and in particular, to sit as a Court of Appeal against the decisions of the Gaon Khalifahs, if any. In such cases, the Superintendent Khalifah heard the appeal sitting in a council of the Khalifahs of his Gird. In all affairs, religious as well as political, the decision of Dudu Miyan was final and as the ustad he also acted as the ultimate Court of Appeal

Succession

After the death of Haji Shariatullah in 1840, his only son Muhsinuddin Ahmad Dudu Miyan was heralded the chief of the Faraizi movement.[2] It was under Dudu Miyan`s leadership that the Faraizi movement took on agrarian disposition. He had machinated and masterminded the oppressed peasantry against the oppressive landlords. In trembling vengeance, the Hindu landlords and indigo planters tried to hold back Dudu Miyan by constituting false cases against him. But, he had turned so very iconic with the peasantry that in these several issued cases, courts hardly ever establish a witness against Dudu Miyan.[7]

Legacy

Palong thana of Madaripur, a district in the Dhaka Division of Bangladesh was named as Shariatpur District on the honor of Haji Shariatullah.[2]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Khan, Muin-ud-Din Ahmad. "Shariatullah, Haji". Banglapedia. Bangladesh Asiatic Society. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Haji Shariatullah". Muslim Ummah of North America. Muslim Ummah of North America. Retrieved 22 February 2015.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Banu, Razia Akter (1992). Islam in Bangladesh. BRILL. pp. 35–37. ISBN 9004094970. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
  4. ↑ Hua, Shiping. Islam and Democratization in Asia. Aligarh: Cambria Press. p. 160. ISBN 9781621969006.
  5. ↑ "THE STORY OF PAKISTAN". Retrieved 12 March 2014.
  6. ↑ Uddin, Sufia M. (2006). Constructing Bangladesh: Religion, Ethnicity, and Language in an Islamic Nation. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 53–54.
  7. ↑ Khan, Muin-ud-Din Ahmad. "Dudu Miyan". Banglapedia. Bangladesh Asiatic Society.

See also