Reforming the ‘Muslims’: Piety, State and Islamic Reform Movement in Bengal

Abstract

Muslims in Bengal constitute a distinct ethnic group in terms of language, culture and history. After the Arabs, Bengali Muslims constitute the second largest Muslim ethnic group in the world. This article is based on a historical and ethnographic study of an Islamic reform movement that emerged in colonial Bengal. It was initiated by late Abu Bakr Siddique (d. 1939) and presently is linked with his shrine at Furfura Sahreif, West Bengal. The movement was an offshoot of tariqa-e-muhammadiya movement that came up in the early nineteenth century northern India and had an important impact on the social–religious landscape of colonial Bengal. This article attempts to illustrate how modern Islamic reform movements with its emphasis on scriptural purity and abhorrence towards any localised ways of practicing Islam interact with its cultural and historical context. This problematises any neat distinction between the ‘scriptural’ or ‘textual’ Islam understood in terms of great Islamic traditions against the localised or lived Islam. Second, it highlights the various ways through which the reform movement is sustained by exploring the dynamic interface between religious reform, popular piety and the role of the post-colonial state in shaping Muslim subjectivities.