DARUL ULUM DEOBAND MOVEMENT:ANTI IMPERIALIST STRUGGLE,CONVENTIONAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND STANCE ON NATIONALISM

Abstract

South Asian Muslims reacted in a variety of ways to the British occupation of India and the resulting socio-cultural and institutional reforms initiated by the government then. The Muslims saw the British attempts to instill modernism in Indian societies as a political and cultural challenge. Unlike Muslim ideologues such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-18), who launched the Aligarh Movement with a progressive and loyalist approach, the exponents of the Deoband Movement demonstrated militant resistance to British imperialism and attempted to reform society along orthodox lines by adhering to their religious dogmas. Nonetheless, they later modernized their educational institutions and appeared to be one of the dominant sets of Islam, making seminary the second leading religious academic institution in the Muslim World. This paper goes into political environment of South Asia which instigated the Muslim theologians launch anti-imperialist struggle against British raj and they formed Deoband Madrasah. It discusses and examines the vision, ideology and philosophy of this school of thought to reform Muslim society facing a severe political decline and economic predicament. It also evaluates the political ideology of Deoband movement as to composite nationalism and its endorsement of the coexistence of various religious communities or that of the Muslim separatism in India. It also sheds light on how it by developing a network and making collaboration with Jamiat Ulama-e Hind and Tablighi Jamaat, appeared to be one of Islam's great strand of Islam. This discourse is constructed using descriptive, analytical, and critical methodologies.