It has always been argued that the Indian Wahhabis played only a peripheral role in the Sepoy Mutiny and the several local uprisings that followed; that the Hindustanis in the Fanatic Camp on Mahabun Mountain alone took up arms against the British. But there is convincing evidence, long suppressed and never discovered by the British authorities in India, that a small group of Wahhabis associated with the ‘Delhi-ites’ also took up arms and made a determined bid to replicate the jihad of Syed Ahmad. Not only did they survive, but they went on to set the Wahhabi movement in Hindustan on an entirely new course.
This group of Wahhabis came from the faction led by Sayyid Nazir Husain, leader of the ‘Delhi-ites’ after the death of Shah Waliullah’s grandson Shah Muhammad Ishaq in 1846. As noted earlier, the Sayyid was a noted teacher of the Hadith and had many students, but first among them was his disciple Hajji IMDADULLAH, who had been among those who acompanied Shah Muhammad Ishaq on his long exile in Arabia in the 1830s. Hajji Imdadullah was a declared devotee of the martyred Syed Ahmad, and had written of how he had once beheld him in a vision standing beside the Prophet and holding his hand: ‘I, out of respect, stood afar. And Hazrat Sayyid Sahib [Syed Ahmad] took my hand and put it in his.’
For all his denials, Sayyid Nazir Husain was widely believed to have been one of the Delhi mullahs pressured into putting their seals to the jihad fatwa in mid-July. At that time both sides, British and mutineers, were handicapped by indecisive leadership, but in the weeks that followed it was those camped out on Delhi Ridge who came together, while the much larger force gathered inside Delhi’s walls fell into increasing disarray as its leaders squabbled among themselves. Although the sepoy mutineers and their allies fought with courage, their attacks against the British positions were poorly co-ordinated, and as each was repulsed so the revolutionary fervour that had inspired the sepoys in the first weeks gave way to fatalism. The atmosphere inside the city became increasingly doom-laden as citizens and insurgents alike watched the small British force encamped below their walls grow in both numbers and confidence. No one was in charge, least of all Emperor Bahadur Shah or his sons – and the belief that Delhi was a domain of Faith wherein great things might happen soon evaporated.
It was probably at this low point in early August that Sayyid Nazir Husain’s disciple Imdadullah and three of his students – MUHAMMAD QASIM Nanautawi, RASHID AHMAD Gangohi and RAHMATULLAH Kairanawi – decided to make their own jihad. For reasons that are unclear but were most probably linked to their doubts about Delhi’s religious status as a seat of jihad, these four left the city and with a number of supporters made their way along the river Jumna to the district of Thana Bhawan, about fifty miles due north of Delhi. Here they raised their own green banner and proclaimed holy war. The town of Thana Bhawan and the surrounding area fell to them without a fight, the British civil authorities having abandoned their posts long before.
Hajji Imdadullah and his jihadis now set about transforming the district into a theocracy modelled on that first tried in Peshawar by Syed Ahmad thirty years earlier. Imdadullah acted as the group’s imam, but it was twenty-four-year-old Muhammad Qasim who emerged as the real leader of the group. He appointed himself its military commander, with twenty-eight-year-old Rashid Ahmad serving as his lieutenant and judge, and the slightly older Rahmatullah acting as the link-man between their group and the rebels in Delhi.
This second Wahhabi dar ul-Islam was as short-lived as the first. On 12 September the walls of Delhi were breached and stormed, and the city was taken after a week of vicious house-to-house fighting. The British general directing the assault had ordered that no quarter was to be given, and this order was implemented to the hilt. As the rebel Mainundin Hassan Khan afterwards recorded: ‘The green as well as the dry trees were consumed; the guiltless shared the same fate as the guilty. As innocent Christians fell victims on the 11th of May, so the same evil fate befell the Mahommedans on the 20th September, 1857. The gallows slew those who had escaped the sword.’
Even before Delhi was fully secured, the surrounding country was being purged of rebels. As part of this process a squadron of Afghans and Sikhs of the 1st Punjab Cavalry led by Mr Edwards, Collector and Magistrate of Muzaffurnugur, set out for Thana Bhawan in mid-September. It met with unexpectedly fierce resistance, and was forced to retreat with the loss of one trooper and a camel-load of ammunition. It regrouped and again advanced on the town, only to have its baggage train attacked from the rear. Whether it was Muhammad Qasim or some other, whoever led the rebels showed courage and initiative. Unable to take Thana Bhawan, Mr Edwards moved on to the town of Shamlee, where he left a number of subordinates in charge with a detachment of eleven troopers before moving south to assault a fortress held by a separate group of rebels. He returned to Shamlee to find the officials and soldiers massacred by the insurgents from Thana Bhawan. A last stand had been attempted in the local mosque, whose inner walls Edwards found ‘crimsoned with blood’.
Edwards and his demoralised cavalrymen rode back to Thana Bhawan, which was now occupied by more than a thousand insurgents. A further assault was attempted and driven back with heavy losses, leading Edwards to conclude that his safest course was to return to Muzaffurnugur. But his force now found itself pursued by the insurgents, leading fourteen Muslim troopers to desert. ‘I attribute their defection’, afterwards wrote Edwards’ deputy, Mr Ward, ‘partly to the loss of the detachment murdered at Shamlee, and partly to the hoisting of the green flag at Thana Bhawan.’ Their situation soon became so desperate that Mr Edwards finally ordered his men about and called them to follow him in a cavalry charge. As so often in those desperate times, decisive action saved the day: the charge put the insurgents to flight, leaving a hundred dead. ‘Amongst the slain’, recorded Mr Ward, ‘were several men of importance, who had acted as the leaders of the insurgents.’
However, it seems that the true leaders of the revolt at Thana Bhawan were not among the dead: they were on the run. Imdadullah and Rahmatullah both fled to the coast, from where they eventually made their way to Mecca. The two younger men went into hiding. Two years later Rashid Ahmad was arrested as a suspected rebel, but was released after six months’ detention for lack of evidence. In due course he and the man who may well have commanded the rebels at Thana Bhawan, Muhammad Qasim, went back to Delhi to resume their religious studies under their old teacher Maulana Sayyid Nazir Husain.