DARUL ULUM DEOBAND: PRESERVING RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL INTEGRITY OF SOUTH ASIAN MUSLIMS THROUGH STRUCTURAL AND STRATEGIC INNOVATIONS

The end of Mughal Empire in the wake of War of Independence 1857 left the Muslim community of South Asia political orphans; desperately facing religious and cultural assaults, political as well as economic victimization and marginalization under British Raj. At this time of vulnerability of the Muslim society, it was the educational institutions established by Muslim ideologues which took up the task of strengthening, reforming and revitalizing the Muslim society to cope with the challenges pushing them down to the bottom, they also helped them regain the lost confidence and integrity. These institutions were not merely educational bodies but the movements endeavoring for Muslim renaissance in South Asia. Among them, one was Darul Ulum Deoband which, from its inception to date, played a historic role in confronting the politico-cultural challenges to the South Asian Muslims by adopting dynamic political strategies and accommodating modern structural innovative modifications in the institutions. This, indeed, helped it be a popular movement and achieve its objectives. The present paper goes into some of important historical developments such as: socio-political circumstances which led to the origination of madrasah Deoband, lofty vision and objectives envisaged by its founders, administration of educational-cum-institutional paraphernalia, nationalist stance and struggle for freedom carried out by the Deobandi veterans, strategies and policies it adopted to deal with political challenges faced by the Indian Muslims during British Raj and after partition of India. It explores and discusses the factors which helped this school of thought be popular and become one of the major sects of Islam. Moreover, it also brings in the much debated issue of its stance on jihad, militant struggle and terrorism. By bringing to light the historical developments, vision of its founders, objectives they determined to achieve and strategies they devised to tackle the challenges, the paper argues that the main concern of Darul Ulum Deoband’s activities was and has been to preserve the Muslim culture in South Asia and to restore the confidence of the Muslim community which they lost after the First War of Independence in 1857 and decline of Mughal Empire, and the modernist and innovative strategies it adopted to achieve its objectives, despite the criticism from within and outside, led to it emerging as one of the dominant sects of Islam.