A ground-breaking study of the cultural world of the Muslim soldiers of colonial India. Set in Hyderabad in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the book focuses on the soldiers' relationships with the faqir holy men who protected them and the British officers they served. Drawing on Urdu as well as European sources, the book uses the biographies of Muslim holy men and their military followers to recreate the extraordinary encounter between a barracks culture of miracle stories, carnivals, drug-use and madness with a colonial culture of mutiny memoirs, Evangelicalism, magistrates and the asylum. It explores the ways in which the colonial army helped promote this sepoy religion while at the same time attempting to control and suppress certain aspects of it. The book brings to light the existence of a distinct 'barracks Islam' and shows its importance to the cultural no less than the military history of colonial India.
• Ground-breaking study of the relationship between Islam and warfare in South Asia • Based on a range of Urdu and European language sources • Sheds light on the military history of the period as well as the cultural and religious mores of the indigenous society
Contents
Introduction: Islam and the army in colonial India; 1. Traditions of supernatural warfare; 2. The padre and his miraculous services; 3. Allah's naked rebels; Conclusions.
Reviews
‘This fascinating study of religious practice and religious change amongst the Muslim sepoys of the British Indian army confirms Nile Green's position as one of the most gifted young scholars of South Asian History.’ Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of London
'One of the supreme ironies of 'British' rule in India was that so much of the military power of an ostensibly 'Christian' state should have rested upon the shoulders of a 'Muslim' soldiery. Nile Green brilliantly explores this paradox, probing the subjectivity of many who served the Raj and insightfully recreating their cultural and religious traditions. His book represents an outstanding and highly original contribution to South Asian studies. David Washbrook, Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge
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