SHAH WALIULLAH: IDEALOGUE OF NATIONAL-DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION IN SOUTH ASIA!
21st February marks the 315th birth anniversary of Shah Waliullah, perhaps the greatest thinker-revolutionary of the Indian sub-continent.
In South Asia, the development of rational critiques of socio-economic-political systems, the labour theory of value, and a sense of history, including the idea of progress, are mostly seen as a European-western ‘gift’ to Asia and the East. Not true.
These themes were propounded first by Shah Waliullah (born 1703). Sheikh Abdur Rahim, Shah Waliullah’s father, one of the leading intellectual figures of Aurangzeb’s era, played a major role in the compilation of ‘Fatwa-e-Alamgiri’.
The level of ignorance is such that we jump at the word, Fatwa — images of a Mullah condemning hapless women for ‘adultery’ play in our minds.
But this is just a phobia created by the West. Otherwise, Fatwa simply means ‘opinion’. And ‘Fatwa-e-Alamgiri’ is one of the most sophisticated compendia of a whole range of opinions from religion to the economy. Without reading this book, one wonders how ‘scholars’ of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have written anything worthwhile on any subject!
SHAH WALIULLAH AND ROUSSEAU
The West would like you to believe that in the 18th century, it was the French philosopher Rousseau who defined the theory of General Will. It was this idea, it is said, that brought the concept of anti-feudal democracy into frution, led to the declaration of the ‘Rights of Man’ during the French revolution (1789), and the constitution of a ‘Bill of Rights’, during the American War of Independence (1776–1783).
Taken together, these developments are seen generally, as starting the ‘modern era’.
Rousseau wrote about ‘General Will’ in the 1760s. By that time, Shah Waliullah, as the regent of Madarsa-i-Rahimiya of Delhi, founded by his father, had died (1761). But only after completing ‘Hujjat Allah al-Balighah’, a tome encompassing virtually every subject on the earth.
In Hujjat, Shah Waliullah snatches sovereignty from monarchs; analysing the causes of the decline of the Mughal Empire, Shah Waliullah points out heavy taxation, the rule of privileged, unproductive forces (parasites) over productive elements, as the basic issue. In both French and American revolutions, middle classes rebelled against taxes imposed by the feudal nobility or colonial powers. Shah Waliullah anticipated this phenomenon by decades; for him, the denial of justice to artisans, traders and peasants doom monarchies and Imperialists. As an antidote, Shah Waliullah proposed a system of governance through a democratic order with a non-hereditary leader, either selected or elected, as the head.
SHAH WALIULLAH AND ADAM SMITH
The West would also like you to believe that Adam Smith propounded the labour theory of value, which kickstarts the modern era. Here, economics, not the reign of Kings or ecclesiastical history, is seen as the primary force that builds societies. Capitalism emerges as the new system — in short, we would not be living in the present-day world without the labour theory of value.
Adam Smith wrote his ‘Wealth of Nations’ in 1776. Four centuries ago, Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), the first historian of the world, an Arab Muslim, correctly identified labour as the entity that created value, determined prices, profits, production, distribution and consumption. Before Ibn Khaldun, riches were thought to have descended from the heavens. Likewise, the poor were presented with poverty as their destiny.
Now, imagine, how advanced the Muslim world was that it rubbished ‘riches from God’ idea in the 14th-15th century, which the West could only do in the 18th century!
Shah Waliullah identified degradation and denial of just rewards to labour as the basic flaw of past systems. Shah Waliullah’s works show the existence of an advanced level of commodity production, exchange value, commerce and industry in India. Shah Waliullah described the impediments created by the jagirdari or feudal system as standing in the way of progress. Thus, we did not need the British to advance towards modernity. An anti-feudal uprising, which Shah Waliullah describes as revolution (inquilab), would have settled matters here like it did in France or the US.
SHAH WALIULLAH AND HEGEL
In the early 19th century, Hegel’s work on the phenomenology of history revealed how historical stages arrive, how old dies to give way to the new. Hegel describes dialectics — the unity and struggle between matter and spirit, subjective and objective factors — as historical law. Marx gave a materialist interpretation of this very Hegelian idea of dialectics and created the basis for a new epoch.
But, much before Hegel and Marx, Shah Waliullah spoke about dialectics and the laws the unity and struggle between different strata of material wealth, sedentary and non-sedentary sections, as propelling historical change. Here, Shah Waliullah appears as standing closer to Marx, talking, one step ahead of Hegel, of class struggle as the motor of history in the 18th century!
SHAH WALIULLAH AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM
But British intervention robbed India of its anti-feudal revolution. By 1803, the British were in Delhi. All major, post-Mughal monarchies had either been defeated (Mysore), subdued (Nizam and Awadh), obliterated (Arcot) or reduced substantially (Marathas). Understanding the moment, Shah Abdul Aziz, the son of Shah Waliullah, turned the anti-feudal uprising into an anti-colonial one. A unique Fatwa of Jihad was issued by Shah Abdul Aziz in 1803. In this, for the first time, non-Muslims (Hindus) were called upon to wage war against the British, alongside believers (Muslims). Fused with Shah Waliullah’s theory of Inquilab, the concept of Jihad was turned into a struggle of liberation against foreign domination.
In fact, between 1786 and 1803, Marathas ruled Delhi as plenipotentiaries of the Mughals. If Shah Waliullah’s current, or Waliullahism, was anti-Hindu, then a Fatwa of Jihad should have been issued in 1786. But the 1803 Fatwa talks of MUSLIMS OR THEIR DHIMMIS (HINDUS), wielding no authority! Which means that for Waliullahites, rule of non-Muslims or Hindus held no threat! It was only the British, who drained Indian wealth, that was the problem.
WALIULLAHISM AND 1857
The first half of the 18th century saw several, sectional anti-British revolts in several parts of India. New evidence, some of which is included in ‘War of Civilisations: India 1857 AD’, written by this author, points to the Waliullahite ‘hand’ behind these uprisings. Even though Shah Waliullah betrays no influence of Abdul Wahab of Nejd, the British started terming Waliullahites as ‘Wahabis’ — a false abomination that continues till today!
In the pre-1857 period, the movement of Saiyyad Ahmed Shaheed, Vellore ‘mutiny’ of 1806, 1831 Kol uprising, the Ramoshi rebellion in Maharashtra, peasant revolts in Karnataka, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, Bihar, Bengal (the Faraizi movement), Assam, Manipur, the Moplah upsurge in Kerala, the Santhal upheaval of 1856 — all were either inspired by Waliullahite ideals; or were led by Waliullahites. There is evidence of some Sikh and Hindu Waliullahites as well, thus MAKING WALIULLAHISM AN ISLAMIC CREED WHICH GREW BEYOND THE CONFINES OF ONE RELIGION TO BECOME A GENERAL THEORY OF LIBERATION, EMANCIPATION AND EMPOWERMENT IN SOUTH ASIA!
British records speak of ‘followers of Shah Waliullah’ as influencing Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of Punjab. Ghasiyaari Baba, a Sanatani-Hindu saint who ‘conspired’ to spread ‘ideas of revolution’ among ‘Hindoos of Oude (Awadh)’, was identified by the British AS A ‘BRAHMIN FOLLOWER OF SHAH WALIULLAH’! Ghasiyari Baba played a major role in the Awadh uprisings of 1857. Gangu Babu Mehtar, a Valmiki-Dalit by caste, who led the 1857 Kanpur uprising in some areas, followed the ‘ideas of Shah Waliullah’. Incongruously, the British dubbed Gangu Babu, a fervent devotee of Shiva, a ‘Wahabi’!
The Fatwa of Jihad issued in Delhi in 1857 by Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, the great-great-grandfather of Javed Akhtar, was distinctly Waliullahite. Mirza Mughal, Bakht Khan, Bhageerath Misra and Sirdhari Singh, the four leaders of the armed struggle against the British under Bahadur Shah Zafar’s leadership, were all, without exception, influenced by the ideology of Shah Waliullah. The charter of national-democratic revolution, issued under the seal of Bahadur Shah Zafar in August 1857, outlined distinct programs for traders, entrepreneurs and merchants. State aid in heavy industries was promised; peasantry was assured of 5 acres of land as a uniform policy. All these germinated from the basic ideas of Shah Waliullah.
Mangal Pandey, Maulavi Amadullah Shah, Begum Hazrat Mahal, Raja Jai Lal Singh Kurmi, Bhondu Singh Ahir, Raja Kunwar Singh, Nana Saheb, Tanya Tope, Azimullah Khan, Nawab Bahadur of Banda, Maulavi Liaqat Ali of Allahabad, Rungo Bapoji of Satara, Reddy landlords of Andhra Pradesh, Gond Adivasis of Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, Bhils of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Malwa, Jats, Gujars and Lodhs, Lingayat warlords of Karnataka, Chaudhari Hikmatullah of Fatehpur, Paris of Unnao and Lucknow, Dalits of Jaunpur and Azamgarh, invoked Shah Waliullah at some point or the other while fighting the British in 1857.
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