Islamic Law and Imperial Space: British India as “domain of Islam” circa 1803–1870

This paper explores the trajectory of a debate, from the East India Company's occupation of Delhi (1803) until about the end of the Wahhabi Trials (1864–1871), on the Islamic-legal status of British India amongst three generations of Hanafi jurisconsults based in northern India and Bengal. The questions at stake were whether the political space that constituted British India was a “domain of Islam” or a “domain of war,” whether Muslims could live on in the Company's dominion and continue to perform rituals such as the Friday and Eid prayers, or whether they were required under the legal tradition to migrate from the territory and organize jihad against the colonial government. I demonstrate how changes in institutional politics, social imaginaries and sectarian conflicts impacted the disciplinary practice of the Islamic law within the disciplic lineage of Shah Waliallah Dihlawi (1703–1762). The paper argues that an exploration of how the British Indian imperial space was imagined in the register of Islamic jurisprudence helps us to understand better the ethical vision of Islamic scholars who sought to actualize the shari‘a within the political framework of colonialism. It highlights both the potency of empire as political form and the vitality of Islamic legal thought in the nineteenth century.