The Image of the Prophet in Bengali Muslim Piety, 1850-1947

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The hnage o·i the Prophet in Bengali fViuslim Piety 1850-1 ~ 7 Amit Dey

AN t412736 Code I·E·2H6346'25 IS UNIVERSITY Of NJCHIGAH

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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

THE IMAGE OF THE PROPHET IN BENGALI MUSLIM PIETY, 1850-1947

AMIT DEY

R~~~ 59I 5A GARFA MAIN ROAD KOUCATA • 700 075

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THE IMAGE OF THE PROPHET IN BENGALI MUSLIM PIETY, 1850-1947 by AMIT DEY

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First P11b/isud January, 2006

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Dedicated to my Preceptor Professor Francis Robinson and Parents Mrs. Naseema Dey and Professor Amalendu De

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My research has been sponsored by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in UK which functions through collaboration with The British Council. Without the financial support of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, it would not have been possible for me to carry out my research leading to PhD in History in the Royal Holloway College, University of London. I also appreciate the kind cooperation of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of Education, Government of India, during my research. While I was doing my field-work in West Bengal and Bangladesh, the Central Research Fund, University of London offered my some financial help for photocopying and_ travelling inside Bengal. During the writing up stage of my research, I also received some funding from the Hammond Trust and the Mary Trevelyan Fund. I am grateful for all these helps. I had to visit several libraries in UK, West Bengal and. Bangladesh for my research, such as the India Office Library, SOAS Library, and the Royal Holloway College Libraries in UK, National Library, Calcutta, Dhaka University Library, Bangla Academy and Islamic Foundation in Bangladesh. I remember with gratitude the cooperation I have received from the librarians ~d staff of these libraries. Apart from including many Arabic and Persian .words, the Bengali Muslim writers often used many Persian and Urdu quotations. Moreover, I have also consulted two or three Urdu Journals and books, and for my linguistic skill, I am heavily indebted to my Persian and Urdu teacher, late Dr M. R. Shibli. My knowledge in Urdu and Persian proved very helpful as I had to translate many Bengali folk songs and punthis full of Persian words. : V

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My field-work in Bangladesh was successful mainly due to the guidance I have received from Professor Ratanlal Chakravarty, Dr Nurul Huda Abul Mansur, Associate Professor, (both from Dhaka University) and Mr Kajalendu De, Associate Professor, Dhaka City College. Besides, Mr Mainuddin Ahmad, Associate Professor, Dhaka City College, late Professor Ahmad. Sharif, . . Mr Asim Saha, poet, Mr Asaduznman, Administrative: Officer, Mrs Sur111a Zakariyah Chawdhury, Associate Professor, .Dhaka Univesity, Dr Nazr11a Khan Majlis, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dr Sarachish Sarkar and Mr Muhammad Saidur of Bangla Academy, Dr Shamsuz:raman Khan, director, Silpakala Academy,all proved very helpful. . While I was typing out my thesis in the computer, Mr Chris Horton, Computer Centre, Royal Holloway College, and my friend Dr Sang Seon Yun helped me a lot with . their computing skills. Besides, Dr Yoginder Sikand, Dr Mubashar Chughtai and Dr F. Ramutsindela also helped me to solve some computing problems. I offer my thanks to a-11 of them. I very much appreciate the kind cooperation of the Kalyani University Authorities for granting me nearly four years leave which enabled me to complete my research. I am particularly grateful to my former colleague~ Professor Rakhal Chandra Nath, Sri Alok Ghosh, Professor Amal Oas and others in the History Deparbl1ent of Kalyani University for sharing the teaching load amongst themselves duing my prolonged absence alongside boosting up my morale during those years. My telephonic interaction with professor Nath was really helpful. Dr Sarah Ansari, Lecturer in History, Royal Holloway, took the pain to go thrc,ugh my thesis and her constructive criticism of my work proved extremely helpful. My discussion with Dr Vanessa Martin, Lecturer in History, Royal Holloway, Dr Claudia Liebeskind, And Dr Azra A. Ali was also very fruitful. I was privileged enough to have the likes of Professor Tapan Raychaudhuri (Oxford) and Dr Avril Ann Powell SOAS) as my thesis examiners. Their suggestions proved extremely enriching. In . .

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spite of their busy schedule, they had been phenomenally quick to arrange my viva-voce which proved convenient. Dr Powell provided me. with the opportunity to stay in touch with her even after I got the PhD degree from the University of London in 1999. My postdoctoral interaction with an erudite scholar like her proved enriching for me. Calcutta based historians such as Professor Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, Late Professor Nemai Sadhan Bose, Professor Chittaranjan Panda, Secretary and Curator, Victoria Memorial, Professor Suranjan Das, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Calcutta University, Professor Chittabrata Palit, Professor Pranjal Kumar Bhattacharya, Professor Gautam Bhadra, late Professor Sachindra Kumar Maity, ·Professor Basudeb Chattopadhyay, Professor Arun Bandopadhyay, Professor Bhaskar Chakraborti, Dr Suparna Gooptu and others also obliged me by taking keen interest in my day to day progress. I am extremely grateful to Professor ·Chittaranjan Panda who initially inspired me to visit UK for my doctoral research and to Professor Suranjan Das who provided me with some rare books ·while we met in UK. My parents, Mrs Naseema Dey and Professor Amalendu De, my sister Tapti and cousin Jhoton supported me both emotionally and academically during my research. Our long time family friends and my local guardians in UK, Mrs Jayasree Roy and Mr Arup Roy along with their school-going daughters Rue and Rupon did not allow me to feel homesick during that long period of research through their remarkable hospitality which indeed included Jayasree di's matchless culinary skill. The manuscript went to press after I got married. My relation with Soma is so personal that I do not think it wise to for111alize it my expressing my gratitude in words for her constant cooperation during the publication phase. My 10 months old daughter Jija (Teesta), also played her part during the final phase by her inimitable gestures to dislodge me from my reading desk whenever I needed respite from proofreading. I also offer my heart felt thanks to Mr Ramaprasad Chandra of Readers Service for taking ••

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the necessary initiative to publish my thesis . • during the publication phase, I had the opportunity to visit several US Universities such as the North Carolina State University, The University of Chicago and Louisiana State University. In those places, my long discussions with professors Tony K Stweart, Carl Ernst, David Gilmartin, Mt1zaffar Alam, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Joanna Kirkpatrick and Arthur Buehler over my thesis proved extremely enriching ·for me. Among these noted scholars, I have never met Professor Joanna Kirkpatrick, South Asia/Bengal/Bangladesh Studies Bennington College, retd., however my regular e-mail correspondence with her from 1999 onwards proved extremely useful. On my way back home from the US, I was invited by Professor Mario Prayer to deliver a talk at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Roma. My interaction with Mario was very fruitful. Indeed, my greatest debt intellectually is to my supervisor Professor Francis Robinson who like a 'Kami/ Murshid' initiated me into the world of historical research by familiarizing me with the latest historiographical trends. He has been kind enough to write the Preface of this book as soon as the manuscript went to press in spite of his busy academic schedule. I can never forget the warn, hospitality of Mr and Mrs Robinson during my research days. At their residence and elsewhere, Professor Robinson gave me the opportunity to meet many great scholars such as Professors Mushirul Hasan, Barbara D Metcalf, Howard Brasted, Farhan Nizami and late Annemarie Schimmel. All these meetings were Highly illuminating. June,2004

AMIT DEY History Department, Calcutta University

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NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION Many different ways of spelling people's and places names are used in South Asia. ln order to maintain consistency the following conventions have been observed. Place names within Bengal have been spelled according to the Census of India, 1931, vol-V, Bengal and Sikkim, parts I and 11 Before the emergence of the People's Republic of Bangladesh in 1971, 'Dhaka' used to be spelled as 'Dacca', so, while mentioning the books published before that date, the latter spelling has been used. As regards the names of people, preferences have been given to the spellings as fancied by the respective individuals. For ·example, in case of Mozammel Haque, his surname has been spelled in tune with the spelling he used. ln ·case of others, this surname has been spelled either as 'Huq' or 'Haq', according to the preferences of the persons concerned. All non-English words and ter111s (with the exception of those included in the main text of the OED, 1987, such as muezzin) have been italicized, but to make things easier, diacritical marks have been avoided. With the same aim in view, the difference between long and short vowels have not been recognized. All the italicized terms have been spelled either according to the spelling listed in the supplement of South Asian words section of the OED ( 1987) or according to the spelling provided in Annemarie Schimmel's And Muhammad Is His Messenger; The Veneration of The Prophet In Islamic Piety, Chapel Hill, 1985. To avoid odd spellings, some of the words of Sanskrit origin have been spelled according to the conventional method observed in the OED ( 1987), for example, vyakula rather than byakula. For all other Bengali words, which are not mentioned in the OED, the following standard method of transliterations has been observed. •

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