DEOBAND resonates deeply among millions of subcontinental Muslims. Once the centre of rigorous Islamic scholarship, it now stands for a rigid and literal interpretation of the holy texts. It has also inspired a militant movement of adherents known as the Deobandis.

Few of those who today call themselves Deobandis would know that according to the Leiden Encyclopaedia of Islam, the name is a possible corruption of ‘Devi-ban’, or ‘forest of the goddess’. This theory is lent substance by the fact that in one of the ancient groves in the area is an old temple of Devi. Indeed, the whole place “is shrouded in myth and romance”. The oldest recorded reference appears in the Ain-i-Akbari where the Mughal emperor’s chronicler Abul Fazal mentions a fort of baked bricks in Deoband. But again according to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, there are far older monuments and structures found there.

While mosques have been built here since the early Sultanate period, Deoband gained its prominence among Muslims due to Shah Waliullah, the famous 18th century reformer who sought to correct the evils he perceived in Muslim society. This scholar’s followers built a madressah in Deoband that became a centre for strict orthodoxy.

Deoband had a strong tradition of learning, attracting thousands of Muslims from all over the world, and many of them came under the sway of Shah Waliullah’s rigid views. The close proximity of Hindu and Muslim symbols of faith and places of worship underlines the intermingling of traditions, genes, cultures and beliefs in the subcontinent. But it was precisely this evolving synthesis that infuriated Shah Waliullah and his followers. They also assailed what they saw as the creeping Hindu influence on Indian Muslims.

This orthodox mindset brought them into direct confrontation with the Sufi message of universal love and peace. Sufi shrines were popular with both Hindus and Muslims, and were viewed by the Deobandis as heretical gatherings where Sufi divines were accorded the worship that should be directed towards God. For a fuller description of these two approaches, I can do no better than quote William Dalrymple from The Last Mughal, the book I wrote about a couple of weeks ago:

“In orthodox Islam, the object of creation is the worship of God — a relationship of subordination in which God is the master and the devotee is the slave. This relationship is a very straightforward one: if you worship God in the proper way you will be rewarded — and if you do not, you will go to hell. The Sufi-minded poet-princes of the Mughal court and their circle in the Delhi ashraf elite completely rejected this idea. They argued instead that God should be worshipped not because he commanded us to it, but because he was such a loveable being.

“As a result all traditions were tolerated: anyone was capable of expressing his or her love for God. And that ability transcended religious traditions, associations, gender or indeed anyone’s place in the social order. This was one of the reasons why the Sufi Islam practised so enthusiastically in the court was also popular across the city, and also why the court circles were so violently anathematised by the Orthodox ulema.”

It is easy to see why Sufis attracted so many Hindus: this inclusive, relaxed Islam was one non-Muslims could relate to most comfortably. But when the disaster of the 1857 uprising toppled the last vestige of Muslim rule in India after nearly eight centuries, Deobandis were in the position of saying to Muslims: “We told you so!” The triumph of the British Raj was ascribed to a weakening of the faith, and the encroachment of Hindu practices in Muslim society.

Although more Hindu sepoys than Muslims rose against the British in 1857, the full vengeance of the victorious colonists was directed at Muslims who were seen as the prime movers of the uprising. Largely, this was because Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, had leadership of the movement virtually thrust upon him by the mutineers. For weeks, the British hunted down anybody even vaguely connected to the Delhi court. Tens of thousands of innocent people were killed. Princesses were forced to become prostitutes as their husbands, fathers and brothers had been executed or exiled. Finally, large parts of Delhi were levelled.

Even after the Crown took over the administration of the subcontinent from the East India Company, the demonisation and marginalisation of Muslims continued. Dalrymple quotes from an English journal called Moffusilite of June 1860: “...The people are abject because they are starved out, banished and plundered. Thousands of Muslims are wandering houseless; the Hindus, pluming themselves on their assumed loyalty, strut about the streets giving themselves airs...”

Dalrymple traces the gulf between Hindus and Muslims to the cataclysm of 1857 which saw the former community rewarded at the latter’s expense. This trend also gave the fundamentalists, spearheaded by the Deobandis, plenty of ammunition. Ultimately, this distrust resulted in partition. But even worse, the Deobandi school gained in influence until its madressahs produced the Taliban, and greatly radicalised generations of young Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere.

But another response to the horrors of 1857 was provided by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan who sought to modernise the thinking of Muslims so they could compete in a rapidly changing world. His Aligarh University educated thousands of Muslims, and equipped them with the tools of reason and logic.

Thus, two divergent mindsets took root among Indian Muslims, and this battle of ideas continues to this day. In India, the majority of Muslims cling to tradition and ritual. As a result, their contribution to society is negligible, and they have become virtually invisible. In Pakistan, the identity crisis of a state created in the name of religion continues to stifle creativity and progress.

What is at stake here is the fate of millions. Once, Zia called Pakistan ‘the laboratory of Islam’ in which he, presumably, was the mad scientist. As he played with the destiny of a nation, we suffered (and continue to suffer) the results of his failed experiments. But the larger question is whether a country should be guided solely by religion, or do its people have the obligation to use reason and common sense?