1714 Holi riot

A ‘HOLI RIOT’ OF 1714: VERSIONS FROM AHMEDABAD AND DELHI*

Najaf Haider

This chapter examines a set of evidence on an event in Ahmedabad in AD 1714. The evidence appears to be the earliest description of a conflict involving Muslims, Jains, and Hindus in Ahmedabad or, for that matter, the whole of India. It offers us an insight into the causes, organization, form, and control of group violence in the capital city of a highly commercialized region. A complete and fresh translation of the descriptions of the incident found in two Persian chronicles is presented here, followed by a schematic reading of both versions. I hope that by adding to our empirical knowledge, and by raising questions and inviting criticisms, some contribution may be made to the study of the tensions and challenges of living together separately in pre-colonial India.

1 THE TEXTS AND THEIR AUTHORS

The incident has two versions, one contained in a local history of Gujarat, the Mirat-i Ahmadi, and the other in a general history of the Mughal empire, the Muntakhab ul Lubab. The local version is longer, more detailed, and the lesser known of the two.

• *I am grateful to Professor Irfan Habib for making valuable suggestions while going through the translations of the sources. All errors, whether in translation or the text are, however, mine.
• There is a third version of the Ahmedabad incident in a short entry in the Diary (AD 1718– 27) of a retired Mughal official. See I’timad Ali Khan, Miratu-I Haqaiq, MS. Bodleian, Fraser 124, ff. 170b-171a. I shall refer to this later in the discussion.

128

The Mirat-i Ahmadi is a history of the Mughal province (subah) of Gujarat completed on 10 September 1761 (10 Safar 1175 AH). It begins, after an introduction and a physical and fiscal description of the subah, with an account of the ‘Rajput Rajas’ of Gujarat and ends with the second battle of Panipat in AD 1761. The author, Ali Muhammad Khan, tells us that he reconstructed his history from official chronicles and, for the period ad 1668 to 1708, for which no such work was available to him, from the oral testimony (isgha) of older people (kuhn salan). The account after AD 1708, the year of his arrival in Gujarat as a young boy of 8 years, is based on the author’s personal observations (faham).

This brief statement shows that the local narrative was written independently of the other one which deals with the period for which Ali Muhammad Khan had to rely on oral history. It also places the author close to the event. At the time of the incident he was 14 years old and although he may not have been present at the scene of action, he may have heard about it from people circulating the news locally. He may even have read about it some years later when, as the diwan (finance officer) of Gujarat, he gained access to the archives of the state, which he made liberal use of both in the narrative as well as the gazetteer parts of his work.

The other version appears in the Muntakhab ul Lubab, a history of the Mughal empire from the date of its establishment (AD 1526) to the fourteenth year of Muhammad Shah’s reign (AD 1723). It was written by Khafi Khan, who worked in Gujarat as a news writer (waqa’i’ navis) but moved out to the Deccan as the diwan of the Viceroy, Chin Qulich Khan Nizam ul Mulk, a year before the incident. When his patron was transferred and replaced by one of the Saiyid brothers, Khafi Khan lost his job. A bit of lobbying secured him a relatively lower position but he lost that too when he failed to remit the sum of money urgently required by his new employer. Deprived of his livelihood, he came back to Delhi, sometime after AD 1718 and began to write the book. To the extent that he worked with state papers, personal observations, and memory, Khafi Khan may have found his residence at Delhi useful in recapturing an event that began in the province but reached its climax in the metropolis.

2 Versions

The Version from Ahmedabad

[A description of the Holi disturbance (hangama i holi) between Hindus (hunud) and Muslims (ahl-i islam)]

One of the events (sawanahat) of this year [1126 AH] was the occurrence of a disturbance between Hindus and Muslims over the playing of Holi (holibazi). A brief account of it is that at that time, Madan Gopal sarraf had an agent (gumashta) named Hari Ram. He [Madan Gopal] came to this province as the treasurer of Khan Firoz Jung and built a very grand house in the city. On account of his wealth, and as treasurer of the Governor, he became the leader of the sarrafs. After the death of Firoz Jung, having established a sarraf’s shop in Ahmedabad, which was very profitable, he left for the imperial capital [Delhi].

At the door of his [Madan Gopal’s] house, Hari Ram was indulging himself in enthusiastically playing Holi with a group of sarrafs and companions (hum mushriban), pouring colour, smearing gulal in a bacchanalian manner (badmasti) as is their custom. Perchance, a Muslim happened to pass through that street and fell in with them. Taking hold of him, they showered colour, gulal and dust, and abuses on him (ahanat pardakhtand). He, considering the situation, got away by some means and, in that very condition, took some people and went to intimate to his holiness (haqaiq u marif) Muhammad Ali, the wa‘iz (sermon reader) who was at the head of those who occupied the pulpit for delivering [Friday] sermons, [and] who, by the aid of his speech, used to satiate the thirsty dwellers of the desert of disappointment (tishnakaman i wadi i hiraman) and guide those lost in the wilderness of vices to the path of salvation (nijat). bir The high and low of the Muslim community, being his devotees and his followers, went to him and, reporting the whole incident and story, appealed for justice (tazallum). The regard for the honour of Islam and the cause of the true faith seized him and compelled him to go to the Jami Masjid. He sent a message to Mulla Abdul Aziz, the head (rais) of the Sunni Bohra community, about his own arrival and the incident. He too went to the mosque with the people of his sect.

Most of the Muslims, whether soldiers or artisans, residents of the city or inhabitants of the suburbs, arrived in groups and bands from every nook and corner shouting ‘faith, faith!’ (din, din). A general concourse and assemblage of Muslims took place and, determined to kill and plunder Hindus, marched in a crowd to the house of Qazi Khairullah Khan to urge that since it was a matter of enforcement of (Muslim) law (muqaddama-i shara) and the cause of Islam, he should come out and join them.

His Worship (the Qazi), sensing the situation, closed the doors of his house, and fearing to be a part of the crowd, procrastinated, and so the ignorant among the public, losing hope of getting the door opened, hurled abuses and insults. The unruly fellows among them set fire to His Worship’s house. Soon thereafter, they resorted to riot and lawlessness, and insolently took to murder and plunder. They ransacked and put to fire many shops of the cloth market and of the sarrafs, which were full of money (naqd).

The conflict lighted such flames of fire
That everything got burnt in their heat

They now turned to the house of Madan Gopal, from where the trouble had started, and the residential quarters of the Hindus, of which the greatest is the Jauhari-wara [jewellers’ quarter]. The house of Kapur Chand Bhansali, who was then the leader of the Hindu community (sar-guroh-i firqa-i hunud), whom they call nagarseth, was also [located] at that place. This was either on account of religious prejudice (taassub-i din) or of the professional rivalry (humchashmi) between him [Kapur Chand) and Mulla Abdul Aziz, the seth of the Bohra community, there being since old times an innate and natural animosity between the two. [The other side] trying to repel them for their own protection, took to fighting by throwing stones and bricks from their roofs.

Kapur Chand Bhansali always had access to the courts of the Governor and the diwan of the province. A group of soldiers native to Gujarat (mutawattinan-i gujarat), who were devoted to him, gathered around him out of a desire to please him, and he set them as watch over his house and the gate of the Jauhri-wara. The out-of-job soldiers considered this disturbance to be an opportunity to earn their livelihood (wasila i rozgar), and upon a settling of their daily pay (rozana), they posted themselves at the outlets of the localities of the sarrafs and merchants and became ready to fight for the cause of unbelief, giving up all pretence of defending the faith out of worldly considerations. They sold their faith (din) for the world (duniya). Their musket balls reinforced their the Hindus’] volleys of stones and bricks. Many people from both sides were killed and wounded. The fight continued for two days and nights.

At that time, Daud Khan had gone to Sabar district to collect tribute from the zamindars and deal with the refractory; he had camped at Bagh i Shahi. He dispatched soldiers to intervene between the two sides and separate them, and to disallow anyone to raise his head sin defiance) and cause bloodshed. Meanwhile several notables (ayan), men with foresight and wisdom in the city, offered with temperate tongue salutary words of advice, with arguments based on reason and tradition (dalail-i aqali wa naqali), to hold the two parties back. The fire of sedition (atish-i fitna) was put down and Daud Khan marched [towards Ahmedabad) for purposes of administration ….

When reports of the Holi disturbance and the barricading [of roads] were conveyed by dispatches of the news writers to the imperial court, and the group of Hindu sarrafs and merchants of Gujarat (jama-i hinduan sarrafan wa tijarat peshagan), who had their branch shops in the imperial camp having suspended their business and dealings, collectively approached the Court about the ransacking and burning of their shops, the killings, and the looting of their cash and goods, alleging in this the instigation of Muhammad Ali Waiz and Mulla Abdul Aziz, an order was issued that harsh mace bearers should depart and bring the above-mentioned persons as well as Kapur Chand Bhansali and Hari Ram, in chains and fetters, to the imperial court of Justice. Mulla Abdul Aziz came to know about this before the arrival of the mace bearers from the letters of the Bohras, present at the court, and tipped off Muhammad Ali Waiz. Both of them thought it expedient to proceed to the court on their own and so departed [from Ahmedabad]. Kapur Chand Bhansali and Hari Ram, learning of the circumstances, (also) made their way [to the Court). The mace-bearers turned back midway. The [two] parties, making their journey, reached the capital one after the other.

That foremost preacher, Muhammd Ali, [having arrived) ascended the pulpit of the Jami Masjid [of Delhi] and started delivering sermons. As the Glorious God had given him the power of speech and purity of diction (taqat-i lisan wa uzubat-i biyan), he was very impressive in his sermons and gained immense fame instantly. Group after group of people, high and low, gathered at the foot of the pulpit to listen to his sermons and became his disciples and followers, until his merits were brought to the Emperor’s attention by Fazail Khan. An order was issued granting him audience (mulazamat). He [Fazail Khan] brought His Holiness (u ishan) and Mulla Abdul Aziz, himself in no small measure an embodiment of virtue and excellence, before the Emperor. The truth of the entire matter was now revealed directly to the Emperor.

• 2 For ma’adin in the text, read mu’awin.
• For hunuz in the text, read hunud.

His Majesty, being greatly affected, observed that the Hindus by their falsification (khilaf numai) caused this unique person to take to wandering. An imperial order was issued that Kapur Chand and others be seized to be fettered and imprisoned. An order was also sent to the Governor and diwan of the subah of Gujarat that they should confiscate his house, and this was accordingly done at Ahmedabad. When His Majesty listened to [Muhammad Ali’s] sermons he became more and more attached to that spiritually elevated voice [lit. voice interpreting divine revelations] and showered upon him abundant words of praise. This became very well known and the majority of people became inclined towards him. After some time, Kapur Chand saw that there was no means of redemption except for him to make appeals and solicitations to Muhammad Ali and Mulla Abdul Aziz. He sent a message [to them] that [since] we have come from the same native place and region (yak watan wa dayar), let us overcome our quarrel, and turning our mutual hostility into friendship, we should so act that we leave for our native place in safety and harmony (ba salamat ba ittifaq). Thus when Mulla Abdul Aziz obtained leave to depart from the Court of Imperial Dignity and Government of the World, he also secured leave for departure for him [Kapur Chand] and embarked upon his journey. The people [of Delhi], pleading with Muhammad Ali with much humility made him stay on till he died [lit. found a place in the vicinity of Divine Mercy].

The Version from Delhi

A Description of the Events of the Third Regnal Year of Farrukh Siyar, the Martyr.

Now I turn my pen to the description of an event which took place in Ahmedabad in the third regnal year of Farrukh Siyar (AD 1715); (viz.) the flame of riot and enmity (fasad u inad) which flared up between the communities of Hindus and Muslims, and the end of it saw a conflict between Khwaja Muhammad Jafar Darwesh and Shaikh Abdullah Waiz at the imperial capital.

To give a summary of it, in the first regnal year Daud Khan Panni became Governor of Ahmedabad-Gujarat. In the second year (AD 1714), on the night when the holi of Hindus is set alight, one of the Hindus, opposite whose house lived some Muslims, with a common street (kucha-i mushtarak) between the courtyards of the two houses, wished to set alight the holi in front of his own house. The Muslims objected to it. The Hindu, having support and protection from Daud Khan, who often came to the aid of the Hindus, asserted that he was entitled to do what he wished in his own house. Despite much argument and importunities of all kinds, he set the holi afire.

The next day, a Muslim, who lived opposite the house, desired to give a feast [on the eve) of the death anniversary of the Prophet, the purest of all beings. Arguing in the same manner as the Hindu that this was his house, he brought and slaughtered a cow (gau) there.+++(4)+++ The Hindus of the entire locality assembled and a crowd came to attack the Muslims. The Muslims, not being strong enough to resist, hid themselves in their houses. The Hindus carried their boldness to such extreme that they were said to have dragged away the 14- or 15-year-old son of a cow butcher (gau qassab), and so it is said, one of the Bohras who had fallen into their hands, and slaughtered him.

*Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, 2 vols and Supplement. Ed. Syed Nawab Ali (Baroda, 1927–30), vol. 1, pp. 405-7, 410-12.

Observing this atrocity committed by the Hindus, Muslims collected from all sides, raised the cry of a general onslaught and prepared to do battle with the Hindus.

A few thousand Afghan soldiers, from amongst the servants of Daud [Khan], for the sake of the honour and prestige of Islam, without the pleasure of their master, and the Afghans from the suburbs of Ahmedabad, and the Bohras of the city assembled to form a riotous crowd and arrived at the door of the house of the Qazi. The Qazi, seeing the disturbance and the crowd, and keeping in view the partiality of the Governor, shut the doors of his house in the face of the tumultuous gathering. According to a popular account, as a result of this act of the Qazi, which was due to the favour and partisanship Daud Khan showed to Hindus, the Muslims burnt the doors of the Qazi’s house and set fire to shops on the street of the square and other houses of the Hindus.+++(4)+++ In the riot, many shops of the cloth merchants (bazzazan) and other traders were destroyed. Subsequently, they set out to burn the house of Kapur Chand, the ill-famed jeweller (nam badnam jauhari), who was the source of all the trouble, and a companion of Daud Khan, and an intensely bigoted Hindu.+++(4)+++ Kapur Chand was alerted and, fortifying the gates of his locality with a group of matchlock men (barqandazn), took to fighting and a number of Hindus and Muslims were killed.

The riot reached such a pitch that for three (to) four days [all] business in the market and of the professional class was closed and suspended. Later, many people from both sides decided to make representations to the imperial court. Daud Khan drew up a signed statement (mahzar) to which he put his own as well as the seals of the Qazi and other officials, gave it to Kapur Chand who left (with it) for Shahjahanabad. From the side of the Muslims, Shaikh Abdul Aziz, Shaikh Abdul Wahid, and Shaikh Muhammad Ali Waiz, adorned with the virtues of honesty and probity, with a group of the Bohras and Muslims of other denominations, proceeded to the court.+++(4)+++ Since Raja Ratan Chand, the diwan of Qutub ul Mulk [Abdullah Khan] thought it necessary to take the side of his co-religionists (hum qaum), he got Shaikh Abdul Wahid, Shaikh Muhammad Ali Waiz, and other Muslims arrested and imprisoned on the basis of the document which the Hindus were holding in their hands. Khwaja Muhammad Jafar, who was renowned among hermits and recluses, got the information of the above-mentioned matter [lit. truth] and of the incarceration of the Muslims. He sought the release of this group through the mediation of Khan i Dauran [Khwaja Asim Khan].5

3 Analysis

The Flashpoint

There is usually an incident that precipitates a riot. It is close in time and place to the outbreak of violence and is causally related to subsequent events.

Khafi Khan, Muntakhab ul Lubab, 2 vols. Ed. Maulvi Kabiruddin Ahmad (Bibliotheca Indica: Calcutta, 1874), vol. 2, pp. 755–7. The author of Siyar ul Mutakherin, Ghulam Hussain Tabatabi, has reproduced this version with minor modifications. See the Nawal Kishore edn (n.d.), vol. 2, pp. 398–9.

The precipitant for the Ahmedabad riot was the celebration of Holi, a festival of colour, games, and merrymaking. The versions concur on this but they differ in describing the precise act which triggered the conflict.

The Delhi version, indicating the inevitability of contact between communities living in close proximity, adds a serious note to the precipitant by bringing in cow slaughter and the killing of a Muslim youth, apparently the son of the same butcher who slaughtered the cow, in what was seen as an act of revenge. There is no mention of the two slaughters in the Ahmedabad version and it is difficult to imagine that, if anything of this nature actually happened, the author could have missed it altogether. However, in the account of the subsequent year, he mentions another dispute which took place in Ahmedabad involving a cow, a havaldar (junior military official), and the Bohras on the eve of the Sacrificial Feast or Id al azha.? Except for the feast, the cow, and a mob of Bohras, there is nothing common between the above incident and the one reported in the Delhi version, and it is difficult to ascertain whether the former was the source for the latter.+++(4)+++ The idiom used by the author of the Delhi version (ba qaul) suggests that he found the two incidents—the Holi celebrations and the slaughter already fused in the version circulating in his city from the time when the Muslims appeared to be badly placed in an ongoing court case.

The Mobilization

Mobilization for a riot is done for the purpose of expressing rage, conquering fear, and legitimizing violence, things which individuals find difficult to accomplish on their own. In the Delhi version, mobilization became easier once the atrocious nature of the precipitant was revealed. The people, who witnessed the slaughter, as well as those who lent willing ears to stories of the atrocity, were outraged and felt, at the same time, an impending threat of aggression.

Due to the soft nature of the precipitant, the author of the Ahmedabad version pays more attention to the act of mobilization. At primary level, the person, the ‘victim’ of Holi celebrations, circulated, with physical evidence, the story of his humiliation among those who were known to him to get their support. To broaden participation, however, the agency of those commanding informal or formal authority over people was required.

• See Tabatabi, Siyar ul Mutakherin, p. 398 (“iwaz i gau ba kushtand).
• A havaldar, ‘inspired by his religious beliefs and emboldened by the Governorship of Maharaja Ajit Singh’, seized a sacrificial cow from Kalupur, a predominantly Bohra locality in Ahmedabad. The Qazi reported the matter to the Governor. When no response came from the administration, the Muslims from the city and the suburbs gathered to form a riotous mob. They were pacified only after an assurance was given by the Governor that ’the Muslims have freedom of action in accordance with the tenets of their religion and regulations of the state (muwafiq i din wa a’in)’, and that this freedom can not be taken away from them by anyone. Soon after, the Qazi carried a cow (the cow!) to the mosque and sacrificed it after the Id prayer. Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, vol. 2, pp. 5-6.

Thus the leader of the sermon readers of local mosques was approached for the second, and higher, level of mobilization that took place at the central mosque of the city. The wa‘iz lost no time in getting to the Jami Masjid knowing well that to wait till Friday would strip the matter of urgency and immediacy. He also used his religious and moral authority to persuade the leader of the Sunni Bohra sect, who lived in a different locality, to join him with the members of his jama’at.

Religion provided an important source of strength. It was used both to express rage and induce a sense of legitimacy and invulnerability. Slogans of ‘din din’ were raised to announce the threat posed to the honour of the true faith (din-i mubin) and to signal that the crowd was acting in unison. To extract greater legitimacy, the office of the Qazi was invoked and the demand on him to accompany the mob was made to put the seal of authority on the course of violence.

The role of religion is emphasized in both versions, but more strongly in the one produced at Delhi. It was articulated by words of praise for those who came out to defend the honour of Islam, regardless of risks and dangers (such as the Afghan soldiers of the Governor), and of condemnation for those who were either seen as enemy (such as Kapur Chand) or siding with the enemy (such as the Muslim matchlock men and the Governor). Interestingly enough, the Qazi’s refusal to give in to the demands of the Muslim mob was seen not as an act of prejudice but prudence by the author of the Ahmedabad version. The author employs the rowdiness of the crowd as a trope to direct the audience’s allegiance and sympathy towards the jurist and his burnt house.

The Riot

Violence began with the burning of the house of the Qazi for his refusal to yield to the pressure of the mob. This was the declaration of intent which also made it quite clear what the mob meant by ‘defence of honour and protection of faith’. The targets were selected with precision. They were not difficult to locate and lay within striking distance from the place of congregation of the rioters, the Jami Masjid. Just across the mosque, and leading up to Tin Darwaza and Manek Chowk, the commercial hub of the city, was the principal market street of Ahmedabad arrayed with shops of all kinds but more particularly of the cloth merchants, money changers, and bankers (sarrafs). The rioters hit the high street first, looted cash and goods from one set of shops, and set another on fire. The discriminate acts of plunder and arson indicated not only the urge to gain from violence but also complete hostility. Apparently they met with no resistance as no casualty is reported at this stage.

• Makrand Mehta, ‘Social base of Jain entrepreneurs in the 17th century: Shantidas Zaveri of Ahmedabad’, in his, Indian Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Historical Perspective (Delhi, 1991), pp. 92_4.
• I’timad Ali Khan, Miratu-1 Haqaiq, f. 170b.

The mob moved from the market towards the second target, the reputed Jauhari-wara (Zaverivad) which housed the residential quarters of the commercial elites of Ahmedabad such as Kapur Chand and Madan Gopal. It was here that they met with resistance by Kapur Chand whose house was specifically selected for attack. Kapur Chand fortified the gates of Jauhari-wara by posting matchlock men and supervising the lines of defence. By now the residents of Jauhari-wara were also ready to counter-attack. Bricks and stones flew from both sides but the use of muskets, expensive but effective, gave the defenders a definite edge over the attackers. The fight continued for two days and nights or probably more.+++(4)+++ In the absence of precise figures available to them, the authors favoured approximation and indicated that ‘many people from both sides were killed or wounded. Violence was stopped after the intervention of the state administration and civilian population. The Governor, then camping on the northern borders of the city, sent soldiers to handle the situation without using excessive force, and influential citizens of Ahmedabad came out with custom-made messages meant exclusively for such occasions.

Both versions are remarkably similar in describing the course of the rioting, the nature of the violence, target selection, and resistance. The termination of violence, however, receives treatment only in the Ahmedabad version with an emphasis on the role of the local administration and citizenry. In that sense, the riot episode in the Mirat-i Ahmadi appears to be more complete. The Muntakhab passes up all this although there is a reference to the impact of violence on business which the Mirat-i Ahmadi omits. None of the two versions justifies the act of violence explicitly, although Ali Muhammad Khan uses expressions such as oppression, plunder, and murder to suggest condemnation and reveals his indignation and sorrow in a couplet.

The Participants

The participants in the Ahmedabad episode can be classified into three groups: organizers, supporters, and neutralizers. Among the organizers of the riot and the resistance, the two principal actors, Abdul Aziz and Kapur Chand, were merchants—one a cap merchant (topiwala or kulah farosh), the other a jeweller (jauhari) and leaders of the Sunni Bohra and ‘Hindu’ communities respectively.

In both versions, the term Hindu, and its plural (hunud, hinduan), is used several times. On two occasions in the Ahmedabad version (once in the title of the episode), it is coupled with, and used in opposition to the term Muslim and it’s plural (ahl-i islam, muslamin).

10For Abdul Aziz’s professional status, see I’timad Ali Khan, Miratu-1 Haqaiq, ff. 170b, 453b, Kapur Chand is described as a jeweller in ibid., f. 170b and Khafi Khan, Muntakhab ul Lubab, vol. 2, p. 756.

On both occasions, it is used in the sense of a group of people, particularly when Kapur Chand is identified as the ’leader of the Hindu community’. In a separate section (Khatima or Supplement) of his work, the author of the Ahmedabad version offers a definition of the term ‘Hindu’ under the title ‘A Description of the Inhabitants of the City’.

The description begins with a passing reference to the primary group identity of the population of Ahmedabad as ‘Gujarati’: those who lived in Ahmedabad from the time the city was founded by Sultan Ahmad Shah of Gujarat (AD 1411), and their descendants, as well as those who came and settled from neighbouring localities. The Gujarati population was divided into two main groups, Hindus and Muslims, of which the former are described as follows:

The Hindu community consists of various castes (aqwam) and professions (asnaj), viz. Brahman, Sevra, Khatri, Rajput, Bania or Baqqal, Kait, Kunbi or farmer, Koli, and artisans, such as gold-smith, iron-smith, fuller, oil-presser, carpenter, weaver, tailor, dyer, tanner and sweeper, and other similar people on whom the term Hindu is applied. Some are original inhabitants and some have come from other places and settled in this kingdom. In every caste, with the passage of time, various [sub] castes are born, in branches and divisions, either due to some unworthy action or due to the appearance of a breach in the purity of the father and the mother …. Since an account of all the divisions will lengthen and complicate the discourse, the following treatment is limited to the castes of Brahman, Sevra, [and] Maisri and Sravak Baqqals who are in greater multitude. 12

It can be seen from the above passage that Ali Muhammad Khan is using Hindu as a term of reference for people of all religions, castes, sub-castes, and professions who can be classified as a group different from the Muslims. He reckons the Jain clergy (Shevra) and the laity (Shravak) as Hindus even though he is aware of the difference in the religious persuasions of, as well as the antagonism between, the Jains and the Vaishnavites (Maishris).+++(4)+++ 14

• 11 Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, Supplement, p. 129. 12Ibid., p. 132.
• 13 The author follows a tradition in Persian scholarship of medieval India where all Indians other than Muslims are described as Hindus. Kaikhusrau Asfandyar, the author of a celebrated Indian work on world religions (c. AD 1653), places the belief systems of various schools, sects, and religions of India (including Jainism) under the rubric Hindus. Dabistan-i Mazahib. Ed. Rahim Rezazadeh Malik (Tehran, Solar 1362), vol. 1, pp. 121-212. For other examples, see Heinrich von Stietencorn, ‘Hinduism: On the proper use of a descriptive term’, in Gunther D. Sontheimer and Herman Kulke (eds), Hinduism Reconsidered (Delhi, 1989), p. 12; Carl Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (Albany, 1992), pp. 22-4.
• 14 Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, Supplement, pp. 135–7, 139–40. ‘The Sevra, also called Jati, are a group of mendicants who live in solitude … and practice strict asceticism. They reckon Parasnath as their God and beg their subsistence, water and bread, from the houses of their followers, the Sravak baqqals …. The Maisris, who are the followers of the Brahmans, abhor the Sevras and consider it despicable (mazmul) to associate or even converse with them …. Both (the Maishris and the Shravaks) have their places of worship (ma’bad) in this kingdom but the one does not have faith in the other’. A statement is made in Asfandyar, Dabistan-i Mazahib (vol. 1, pp. 185–6) that the Jains rejected the religious principles of the Hindus (munkir-i shari’at i-hinduan bashand)’ and also made fun of them.

137

A possible reason for the consolidation of two separate religious communities into a single group could be that both the Maishris and the Shravaks were traders by profession and therefore constituted the sub-group of the Vaishya caste known as Bania. Ali Muhammad Khan treats the group as one when he gives a common list for the eighty-four sub-castes of Maishris and Shravaks and calls them all “Banik or Bania or baqqal in Arabic’. 15 The close connection between the two was reinforced by the freedom to move, with the exception of the Brahmans, from one religious group to another. 16 In Ahmedabad, a strong indication of the cohesive nature of the Bania community, as well as the dominance of one group over the exchange economy of the city, was the appointment of Jains, such as Kapur Chand and his putative successor, Khushhal Chand, as nagarseths.”

If the title nagarseth conveyed the leadership of the entire ‘Hindu’ population of Ahmedabad, then the organizational structure would have imparted some internal coherence to it as well. However, there is a possibility that the nagarseth was the head of the business community of Ahmedabad and not simply of the ‘Hindus’. If it was not an aberration, members of the Sunni Bohra community held the post of the nagarseth of Ahmedabad in the 1730s, and the appointment order of Khushhal Chand to the post does not give any indication that his responsibilities were limited to managing the affairs of the ‘Hindus’. 18 However, the virtual monopoly of the leading Jain merchants of the city over the post of the nagarseth and the fact that they were, at the same time, leaders of their own respective guilds (mahajans), gave the title and the leadership a predominantly ‘Hindu’ character which Ali Muhammad Khan took for granted. 19

• 15 Mirat-i Ahmadi, Supplement, pp. 138–9. Cf. Irfan Habib, “Merchant communities in pre-colonial India’, in James D. Tracy (ed.), The Rise of Merchant Empires, Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World 1350–1750 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 380.

• 16Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, Supplement, pp. 137, 163; Banarasidas, Ardhakathanaka. Ed. and trans, Mukund Lath (Jaipur, 1981), Hindi text, p. 224 (verses 8-9).

• 17 Khushhal Chand, who was the grandson (The Mirat-i Ahmadi mistakenly calls him the son) of the famous Jain merchant and jeweller, Santidas, is similarly described as the leader of the Hindus (firqa-i hunud) and the nagarseth. Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, vol. 2, p. 158. Also see Dwijendra Tripathi and M.J. Mehta, ‘The nagarseth of Ahmedabad: The history of an urban institution in a Gujarat city’, in Satish Chandra (ed.), Essays in Medieval Indian Economic History (Delhi, 1987), pp. 267, 268.

• 18 Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, vol. 2, pp. 139, 158, 172.

• 19Gangadas, who remained the nagarseth from 1726 to 1731, was a Jain and the leader of the silk merchants (sar-guroh i abresham faroshan). Similarly, nagarseths Ahmad and Abu Bakr, were the leaders (seth) of the Sunni Bohra group of merchants. Ibid., pp. 92, 139, 172. Although this is not stated in any of the sources available to me, Kapur Chand and Khushhal Chand must have been the leaders of their own guild of jewellers. For the mahajans of Ahmedabad, see Shirin Mehta, ‘The Mahajans and the business communities of Ahmedabad’, in Dwijendra Tripathi (ed.), Business Communities of India (Delhi, 1984), pp. 173–83.

While a common profession, common sub-castes, and freedom of conversion facilitated the conceptualization of Banias as a community and an important component of the Hindu population, specialization of functions and the pursuit of commercial interests also turned them into distinct and separate sub-groups, each with its own identity, rules, and leadership. The Banias specialized in various branches of commerce, such as commodity trade, brokerage, money changing, and banking (sarrafi) and insurance (bima). Madan Gopal, who had no part in the story, except for keeping an agent on his payroll who played Holi with passion, is identified as an influential member of the community of sarrafs. These distinctions are maintained in the account of the Gujarati Banias doing business at the imperial court in Delhi. They are first described as ‘Hindus’ and then as ‘sarrafs’ and ‘merchants’. It is interesting to note that whenever Ali Muhammad Khan speaks of these groups in isolation, he never uses for them the word Hindu (such as in the incident described in the following paragraph). The term is used only when they are seen as a group in relation to the Muslim community, as in the Holi riot.

Ali Muhammad Khan is deeply aware of the underlying tension between two groups of the mercantile community of Ahmedabad, the Bania merchants, and the Bania bankers (sarrafs), which came out in the open and led to an armed conflict in the midst of the Holi episode. The tension was inherent in their business relations and their pursuit of profit. The Banias needed cash for investment in the right seasons of the year and also needed to keep transaction costs to the minimum while circulating their liquid capital. The sarrafs provided both the services by lending money, discounting negotiable bills of exchange (hundis) to maintain cash flow, and by using entries in their ledger to accept deposits on interest and settle obligations through book transfers (giro banking).20 In ordinary circumstances, the system worked to the advantage of both parties. At the turn of the century, however, Ahmedabad suffered from a serious cash crunch and the sarrafs tried to handle it by introducing a system of floating credit in which cash payments against commercial papers and deposits were discouraged by raising the rate of anth (conversion of credit into cash) to a very high level. In medieval market economies, credit was reckoned as a supplementary artifice of money, and not its substitute, since all transactions were structurally tied to settlement in specie. Thus the demand for cash and a rise in transaction costs pitched the merchants against the sarrafs and brought the entire exchange market to a standstill. Negotiations between the two parties, led by Kapur Chand and the representative of the sarrafs, Hari Ram, acting on behalf of Madan Gopal, failed. The two groups organized their defences and prepared for a battle (jang). The war of attrition continued for two days and was stopped from turning violent only by the ‘wise men’ of the city.21

• 20Najaf Haider, “The monetary basis of credit and banking instruments in the Mughal empire’, in Amiya Bagchi (ed.), Money and Credit in Indian History (Delhi, 2002), pp. 58–79.

• 21 Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, vol. 1, pp. 410–11.

This minor episode of a potential riot is perhaps indicative of the strains and stresses afflicting the mercantile economy of Gujarat at the turn of the eighteenth century. A downturn in the hinterland, rising transaction costs due to fear, uncertainty, and lack of safety for goods and money in transit, and Maratha expeditionary raids which began in AD 1703 and reached their high point in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, boded ill for the vigorous conduct of business.22 Stiff competition for the shrunken markets and concern for a greater stake in the city affairs may have lowered the threshold of tolerance that existed between communities with complementary interests.

The principal organizer of violence, Abdul Aziz, was the leader of a sub group of Ahmedabad’s mercantile population, the Sunni Bohras, who were junior partners of the Banias in the trading network of Gujarat. They descended from that section of the mercantile population of Gujarat (probably of the Vohra caste) which converted to Ismailism in the eleventh century and later split to form the Sunni sect in the fifteenth century.23 Rest of the Vohras remained Jains and Hindus. The merchant prince of Surat in the seventeenth century, Virji Vora, was a Jain and his counterpart (umdat ut tujjar) in the eighteenth century, Mulla Abdul Ghafur, was a Sunni Bohra. The Sunni Bohras were in a majority and were wealthier and more powerful than the Ismailis. 24 They had their shops, offices, and correspondents in Ahmedabad, and Surat as well as the imperial camp at Delhi. In all these places, they had Banias as their competitors. How much the crisis of the early eighteenth century was responsible for turning the seth of the Sunni Bohras and Kapur Jauhari, his Bania counterpart, into organizers of violence can only be speculated. The Ahmedabad version indeed imputes motives of professional rivalry, which probably also included claims over the coveted post of the nagarseth, when it clubs the two principal actors together in the run-up to the riot.25

22 Georges Roques, La maniere de negotier dans Les Indes Orientalles dedice a mes Chers amis Et Confreres Les Engages de la Royalle Compagnye de France, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Fonds Francais 14614, ff. 239-40; Ashin Das Gupta, “Trade and politics in eighteenth century’, in D.S. Richards (ed.), Islam and the Trade of Asia (Oxford, 1970), p. 189; Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, vol. 1, pp. 356, 359–69, 377–9. With each pay out to the Marathas (such as the one exacted by Balaji Vishwanath in 1706), Ahmedabad got poorer, lost business, and moved investments towards strengthening the defences of the town.

2 Farhad Daftary, The Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 292–302.

24 Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, vol. 2, p. 139; Supplement, p. 131; I’timad Ali Khan, Miratu-1 Haqaiq, f. 349a.

25 For the bitter rivalry and enmity (adawat) between Seth Khushhal Chand and Seth Ahmad, see Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, vol. 2, pp. 170–2. When Ahmad died, Khushhal Chand was pleased (Khushhal Chand … khushhal-i chand namuda) and ordered the body of his Bohra adversary to be exhumed and vandalized by the Kolis specially hired for this purpose. For the relationship between Khushhal Chand and Abdul Aziz, also marred by mutual rivalry, see I’timad Ali Khan, Miratu-1 Haqaiq, f. 453b.

The supporters of Islam, mostly artisans and unnamed citizens “high and low’, ‘believers and faithful’, ‘rowdy and ignorant’-are identified purely on the ground of their attachment to the cause of religion. Among them, the Afghans receive attention in the Delhi version as soldiers of Daud Khan. They came from the suburbs of Ahmedabad, across the river Sabarmati, where there was a large and ‘ancient settlement of the Afghan community. 26 Although praised for defiance of authority, it is doubtful whether they were in regular employment of the provincial administration or in the personal service of the Afghan Governor. They were unavailable for the Governor’s campaign and the man, although not a very good administrator, was known for exercising strict control over his troops (lashkariyan) during expeditions.27 Chances are that the group was once in the personal contingent of some warrior noble and that at the time of the riot, was probably out of employment.28 Chris Bayly has offered a sociological explanation for the general involvement of the Afghans in conflicts: their ‘undisciplined and ‘mercenary’ character and their isolation ‘in an urban environment’, providing the ‘impetus for communal violence in the early stages of state building’.29 However, more findings on the exact nature of their professional status, command structure, and religious persuasions are needed before their motives can become fully explicable.30

No such doubts could be entertained about the motives of the Gujarati musketeers who were Muslims but threw in their lot with the Banias and practically saved the Jauhari-wara from being overrun by the attackers. They were mercenaries and currently out of job. Ali Muhammad Khan rues the fact that they became embroiled for purely mundane reasons, either immediate gains or future employment. They were paid by Kapur Chand (their wages were fixed in advance) and they also knew that he was close to the administration and that appealing to his good offices was worth the fight against the defenders of the ’true faith’. 31

26Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, Supplement, p. 17; vol. 1, pp. 356, 392–3. 27Ibid., vol. 1, p. 412.

28 Muhammad Beg Khan, ‘a noble and a warrior’, who served the Gujarat administration in various capacities, had in his service, at the time of his death in Ahmedabad in AD 1712, six to seven thousand Afghans, foot soldiers and cavalrymen, for a very long time’. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 392–3, 397.

29C.A. Bayly, ‘The Pre-history of “Communalism”? Religious Conflict in India, 1700–1860’, Modern Asian Studies, 19, 2 (1985), pp. 194–5.

30n the Delhi riot of 1729, the Afghan soldiers of Raushan ud daulah Zafar Khan fought spiritedly in order to defend their employer against the attacks of the Muslim show sellers, Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Shah Wali-Allah and His Times (Canberra, 1980), p. 201.

3.Khushhal Chand, similarly organized the defences of Jauhari-wara with the help of Arab soldiers against a possible attack on his locality and his own establishments from the forces of the deputy governor, Anup Singh Bhandari, a man responsible for the murder of the previous nagarseth, and a fellow Marwari, Kapur Chand Bhansali. Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, vol. 2, p. 170.

The neutralizers were aligned on two axes. The Governor of the subah, Daud Khan, and the Qazi, Khairullah Khan, were part of the higher bureaucracy of Farrukhsiyar’s provincial set-up and their interest lay in maintaining peace in the province. 32 Their job was to uphold the law of the land (a’in) and, at the same time, to watch for anything which appeared violative of the shari’ah.

In the Delhi version, the Governor is portrayed as a person no less vicious than his associate, the ‘bigoted infidel’, Kapur Chand. His reputation as an ‘intimate friend of the Hindus was good enough a reason to establish his complicity in the murder of the butcher’s son, the Qazi’s refusal to act and, above all, in the court case against the Muslims. After all, he sent a report to the court blaming only one party for the violence that landed most Muslim petitioners in jail.

The ‘intimacy’ between the Governor and nagarseth Kapur Chand was perhaps natural owing to the latter’s position as an intermediary between the powerful business community of Ahmedabad and the administration as long as the Mughal institutional structure remained intact. The Qazi too was an important link between the Muslim civilian population and the administration and his choice to under-react betokened religious and official disapproval of the campaign and any potential act of violence. The two officials were convinced that the campaign had no legal basis and that the Muslims were indeed at fault.

The other group comprised the ‘wise men’ of the city, unnamed and unidentified except by their virtues and wisdom, apparently from both communities. The culpability of the heads of the corporate bodies opened up the space for them to negotiate and arbitrate. That the riot was put down by the collective efforts of the military and civilian population does not find a place in the Delhi version.

Reading both accounts together, and rereading the Delhi version, one feels as if Khafi Khan was trying to make a case against the Governor. Daud Khan had a reputation for holding unorthodox opinions, keeping an idol in his house, and ‘favouring’ the Hindus. One can also guess, after reading his history, where Khafi Khan’s sympathies would lie in a dispute such as this.

But there could be another reason for a hostile portrayal of the Afghan noble. Daud’s patron, Hussain Ali Khan, replaced Khafi’s patron in the Deccan and ended the author’s career as a diwan, the highest office of his life. Also at the head of a powerful faction at the Court, Hussain Ali Khan wanted to stay in Delhi and appoint his protégé, Daud, as his deputy. Khafi Khan’s tormented soul may have placed the Deccani Afghan somewhere in the Court politics precipitating these appointments.

32 Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, vol. 1, p. 401.

33 Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court 1707-1740 (4th edn, New Delhi, 2002), p. 149.

The Climax

Just as the two versions differ in their description of the flashpoint, they also differ in their treatment of the climax. The Ahmedabad version spins the narrative entirely around the personality of the preacher, Muhammad Ali, for whom the author, Ali Muhammad, shows enormous respect. When representations were made at the court, the response of the state was to bring all the accused, Abdul Aziz topiwala, Muhammad Ali waiz, Hari Ram gumashta, and Kapur Chand jauhari, to trial. A trial could have gone against all four or, worse still, against the first two. But the preacher descended from the pulpit of the Delhi Jama Masjid, like some dues ex machina, and delivered the Muslims from the peril. The author clears the ground for it by valorizing the eloquence of the preacher. A trial was indeed superfluous and, in what appears as a turnaround, the verdict was ‘pronounced against the guilty’.

Ali Muhammad Khan cares to mention Kapur Chand’s conciliatory gestures which provided the pretext for intercession. References to a common homeland (yak watan wa dayar) formed the basis for reconciliation and for closing the ‘social distance’. Kapur Chand’s claim to the citizenship of Gujarat, and of Ahmedabad, was acceptable to Abdul Aziz who appealed to secure the release of his adversary on the eve of his departure.54 One might perhaps question how a man convicted by the highest court of law in the empire was acquitted purely on the pleading of a co-accused, but the author of the Ahmedabad version seems convinced of the genuineness and efficacy of the rapprochement. Muhammad Ali, meanwhile, showed no disposition to return and by now had enough reasons to stay in the capital where he was well looked after till his death. Before that, however, he indulged in a fierce polemical exchange on behalf of a liberal Sufi, Khwaja Muhammad Jafar Darwesh, against an orthodox theologian from Multan, Shaikh Abdullah, which kicked up a sectarian row in Delhi. 35

A trial did indeed take place if the Delhi version is to be believed, and the ‘Muslim party’ lost the case. Although the court may have had at its disposal the report of the waqa’i’ navis, petitions of the Gujarat merchants and bankers at Delhi, and statements from the accused, the clinching evidence was provided by the Governor’s report (dastawiz) which, rather unusually, Kapur Chand was made to deliver. Khafi Khan is not interested in the merits of the case and attributes the outcome of the trial to the predilective affinity of Raja Ratan Chand, a Bania and a close associate of the Saiyid brothers (being the diwan of one of them, the wazir Qutub ul Mulk Abdullah Khan), for Kapur Chand.

34 Kapur Chand Bhansali originally came from Marwar, had a house in Jodhpur, and maintained contacts with his homeland. In 1707, he sent from Ahmedabad the news of the death of the emperor, Aurangzeb, by a courier (qasid). Ajit Vilas. Ed. Shivdattdan Barhat (Jodhpur, 1984), p. 113. a

35 Khafi Khan, Muntakhab ul Lubab, vol. 2, pp. 757–60; Tabatab], Siyar ul Mutakherin, vol. 2, pp. 399 400

However, it seems more probable that factionalism in Farrukh Siyar’s court provided the real ground for the release of the Muslims when Khan i Dauran Khawja Asim, one of the two leading favourites of the king in his struggle against the Saiyids (the other was Mir Jumla), interceded on their behalf. The basis for the reversal of the verdict remains unknown.36

4 RIOT, HOLI RIOT, COMMUNAL RIOT?

The dictionary definition of riot is ‘a disturbance of the peace by a crowd’ or ‘an occurrence of public disorder’. In this sense, the Ahmedabad ‘disturbance’ qualifies to be called a riot and the terms used for it in our sources—hangama, fasad, fitna—convey the same impression. A crowd (hujum, majma), the size of which is unknown but which was certainly big, indulged in murder, arson, looting, and street fighting, provoked retaliatory measures, and the conflicting parties were disciplined by the agency responsible for maintaining law and order.

The Ahmedabad version formally calls it a ‘Holi disturbance’, and the Delhi version, using stronger expressions, also considers the festival ritual to be the reason behind the slaughter of the animal, and a man, and, ipso facto, the riot. However, the fact that members of one community were not only unwilling to participate but were hostile to the celebrations suggests an underlying tension which made the need for violence seem exigent when an appropriate precipitant occurred. It seems that if there was no Holi riot, there may well have been an Id riot. 37

In modern accounts dealing not specifically with Ahmedabad, the event is referred to as a communal riot or a Hindu-Muslim riot although, as Bayly has argued, they may not always mean the same thing. In the aftermath of the recent Gujarat carnage, the Ahmedabad riot of 1714 was recalled to buttress the position that communal conflicts in the city have a long pedigree and that all incidents of violence involving Hindus and Muslims, past or present, fit into a pattern which is indicative of the precarious nature of their coexistence.39

36 Money was the basis for the dismissal of the case, says the author of the third version when he accuses Kapur Chand of bribing the nobles of the imperial court (ba umara’ zar dada). “The Muslims got killed, their blood was spilled in vain and Kapur Jauhari was treated in Shahjahanabad with dignity and honour until he left for Gujarat …. This case was the most unusual.” I*timad Ali Khan, Miratu-l Haqaiq, ff. 170b-171a.

37 Reflecting on the sorry state of affairs in his province in AD 1732 which affected Hindus and Muslims alike, the author of the Ahmedabad version also considered the ban on cow slaughter and ‘humiliation of Muslims’ during Holi as veritable signs of a decline in the fortune of Islam. Ali Muhammad Khan, Mirat i Ahmadi, vol. 2, pp. 139-40.

38 M.S. Commissariat, A History of Gujarat (Bombay, 1957), vol. 2, pp. 388–9; Rizvi, Shah Wali Allah and His Times, p. 197; Bayly, ‘Pre-history of “Communalism”?’, pp. 178–9, 194.

• 39 In a televised programme (‘The Big Fight’, 7 December 2002), a minister in the Indian government and a member of parliament from Ahmedabad, while answering questions on whether - the recent Gujarat riots were an unusual phenomenon, proclaimed that riots have taken place in his constituency ever since 1713 [sic.]’.

In a sense, then, all such acts of violence could be seen as a natural outcome of a situation in which two communities viewed each other as separate and mutually antagonistic groups living in a lawless environment where disputes could not eventually be settled peacefully. The matter is further complicated by the suggestion that a sharp and self-conscious Hindu (and Muslim) identity was created in pre-colonial India out of rivalry and violent conflicts between Hindus and Muslims. 40

The Ahmedabad riot of 1714 is the only incident of its kind in the recorded history of the city from AD 1411 to 1761. It was confined to a particular locality during the course of the rioting and invited participation from groups drawn from three religious communities. Commercial rivalry appears to have lain at the heart of the conflict and signs of it were manifest also in subordinate cases of dispute cutting across religious lines. The presence of other Muslim groups in the mob indicates that the Bania community, the butt of their attack, was viewed with an obscure sense of mistrust or fear. Cow slaughter and Holi celebrations were two contentious issues which heightened hidden pressures and provided the pretext for open provocations. Even in the midst of volatile situations, communities were not divided completely on religious lines and individuals or groups are found to have taken narrower views of their membership while expressing support for or opposition to a particular act or policy. Finally, except for the lapse on the part of the local administration to maintain order at the outset of the violence, the Mughal state apparatus appears to have been effective in containing and adjudicating the dispute in the province and the metropolis.

• 40 David N. Lorenzen, ‘Who invented Hinduism?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1999, pp. 630–59.