In December 1825 the mighty walls of Bharatpore were finally breached by British artillery and the fortress taken with great slaughter. It was a further demonstration of the ascendancy of the Nazarenes. Syed Ahmad now wrote to a friend in Hyderabad about his plans for holy war: ‘During the last few years fate has been so kind to the accursed Christians and the mischievous polytheists that they have started oppressing people. Atheistic and polytheistic practices are being openly practised while the Islamic observances have disappeared. This unhappy state of affairs fills my heart with sorrow and I am anxious to perform hijrat. My heart is filled with shame at this religious degradation and my head contains but one thought, how to organise jihad.’
It had become clear to Amir Syed Ahmad that the time had come to emulate the Prophet, who had begun his conquest in the name of Islam by leaving the domain of enmity of Mecca and migrating to the dar ul-Islam of Medina: it was now incumbent on Syed Ahmad to follow suit, and to leave British territory for a secure base in God-fearing territory from which to wage jihad. There were also good military reasons for making this hijra or withdrawal. What had worked so well in the Arabian deserts, where the Wahhabi movement had expanded from a secure, isolated base at the centre, could not be applied in India. Patna’s destiny would be to serve as his movement’s recruiting base, a clandestine clearing-house through which funds, supplies, men and arms would be despatched to the front line. But the jihad itself had to be waged from secure territory on the periphery. For a while it seemed that the Muslim principality of Tonk in Rajasthan might serve, but a visit to Syed Ahmad’s old patron Nawab Amir Khan quickly put paid to that idea; not only was Tonk surrounded by hostile Hindu rulers who had good reason to remain on friendly terms with the British, but the Nawab was himself under pressure from the British authorities to toe the line or risk losing his ruling privileges. He was prepared to support the movement secretly with funds and volunteers, but no further. The only safe option was the Afghan border area – perhaps the mountain region where Nawab Amir Khan had himself originated: the mountains of Buner. No doubt Syed Ahmad also had at the back of his mind the old belief that the Imam-Mahdi would make his first appearance from the west as the King of the West.
Various qualifications were required of the Imam-Mahdi. He would be an imam and a caliph, bear the name Muhammad, be a descendant of the Prophet through his daughter Fatima, arise in Arabia and be forty years old at the time of his emergence. Syed Ahmad fulfilled the most important of these qualifications: he was a Saiyyed, had been raised as ‘Muhammad’ (of which ‘Ahmad’ was a diminutive), and he became forty in 1826. In January of that year he began his hijra accompanied by a band of some four hundred armed and committed jihadis. These included members of his own family, his two leading disciples and others from the family of the late Shah Abdul Aziz of Delhi, and several members of the three Patna families, among them three of the four sons of Elahi Bux. Their retreat took them first to the Maratha state of Gwalior in central India, where Syed Ahmad hoped to win support for his jihad from its Hindu ruler, Daulat Rao Scindia. ‘It is obvious to your exalted self’, he wrote to the maharaja’s brother, ‘the alien people from distant lands have become the rulers of territories and times… They have destroyed the dominions of the big grandees and the estates of the nobles of illustrious ranks, and their honour and authority have been completely set at nought.’
Scindia of Gwalior had recently been forced to surrender a large slice of hard-won territory to the East India Company. He was now assured that if he joined Syed Ahmad in the forthcoming struggle against the British he would regain his lost lands ‘as soon as the land of Hindustan is cleared of the alien enemies’. This remarkable letter has been cited as evidence that Syed Ahmad was an Indian nationalist at heart, happy to work in alliance with Hindus to throw off the British yoke. But it has to be set against half a dozen other surviving letters from Syed Ahmad, written to Muslim rulers such as the Emir of Bokhara, all making it plain that his ultimate goal was nothing less than the restoration of pure Islam throughout the whole of India. Syed Ahmad was indeed reacting to British and Sikh imperialism, but he was equally and unashamedly bent on Islamic imperialism – as were a number of alleged freedom fighters who came after him. No one can fault Syed Ahmad’s courage, but the freedom he sought was that of a fundamentalist sect from India’s Muslim minority to impose its religious will on the Hindu, Sikh and Jain majority.
In the event, the ruler of Gwalior ignored Syed Ahmad’s overtures and his letter was buried in the state’s archives. The jihadis then moved on to the Muslim state of Tonk, where they were warmly received by the Nawab and his heir apparent, Mohammad Wazir Khan. The latter became an enthusiastic convert to Syed Ahmad’s cause and the two subsequently began a correspondence that continued to the time of Syed Ahmad’s death. ‘My motive in accepting the leadership’, wrote Amir Syed Ahmad in one of the earliest of these letters, ‘is nothing more than that of arraying forces of jihad and maintaining discipline among the army of the Muslims. There are no other ulterior selfish motives… To my mind the value of the crown of Faridoon [a prophet of ancient Persia] and the throne of Alexander [the Great] is tantamount to a grain of barley. The kingdoms of Kasra [a ruler in the Persian epic Shahnamah] and Caesar are immaterial and insignificant to my eyes. I do, however, aspire to promulgate the orders of the Creator of the worlds called the principles of Faith among the entire humanity of the world without any subversion.’ As a first step in this world conquest he would establish himself in a country of Faith west of the Indus. Once he had purged it of ‘the impurities of polytheism and the filth of dissonance’ he would then launch his main jihad: ‘Then I will set out with my followers for India with a view to purifying the country from polytheism and infidelity, because my real motive is to launch an attack over India.’