Al-Mashriqi’s Khaksar Movement: Orthodoxy and Contesting Religious Authority

Abstract

This essay argues that Inayatullah Khan al-Mashriqi’s anti-imperialist stance and contestation of religious orthodoxy with a modernist vision of Islam as a “Religion of Science,”challenged the traditional authority of religious ideologues and colonial state. This subsequently evoked a dualistic resistance against Khaksar. The anticleric stance prorogued Khaksar in Punjab’s political landscape which was enriched with the socio-political influence of ulema and sufis. The article discusses the formation of Khaksar, a para military organization in the twentieth century Punjab in a particular context in which religious communities Muslims, as well as Hindus and Sikhs reformulated their respective religious ideologies to make them compatible with some measure of colonial modernity. Majlis-e-Ahrar was one example which espoused unitary nationalism with reformist bent, however Khaksar with an approach of anti-colonial nation-building, stood against the orthodox version of ulema and Sufi’s Islam with a radical notion of reevaluation of Islam and developing an interlinkage with the truth of science. This modernist vision embraced exclusion of reformist ulema and traditional sajjada nashins who were instrumental in articulating religious symbols in the construction of anti-colonial nationalist ideas. Muslim discourse of religion came to be linked to discourse of nation state, as nation continued to be defined in terms of religion than in secular terms.1 Khaksar’s reformulated Islam did not contribute to the larger story of Muslim religio-nationalist discourse and decolonization in India and Pakistan.