Far from the Caliph's Gaze: Being Ahmadi Muslim in the Holy City of Qadian

240 Pages·2020·4.402 MB·English

by  Nicholas H. A. Evans

FAR FROM THE
CALIPH’S GAZE

FAR FROM
THE CALIPH’S
GAZE
Being Ahmadi Muslim
in the Holy City of Qadian
Nicholas H. A. Evans
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON
All photo graphs are by the author.
Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press,
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at cornellpress . cornell . edu.
First published 2020 by Cornell University Press
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Evans, Nicholas H. A., author.
Title: Far from the caliph’s gaze : being Ahmadi Muslim in the holy city of
Qadian / Nicholas H. A. Evans.
Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2020. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019026545 (print) | LCCN 2019026546 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781501715686 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501715693 (paper) |
ISBN 9781501715709 (epub) | ISBN 9781501715716 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Ahmadiyya members—India—Qādiān. |
Ahmadiyya—India—Qādiān. | Faith (Islam) |
Ethnology—India—Qādiān.
Classification: LCC BP195.A5 E93 2020 (print) | LCC BP195.A5 (ebook) |
DDC 297.8/60954552—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019026545
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019026546
Cover image: Missionaries of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community on their day of
graduation, May 10, 2011. Photo by the author.
Contents
Preface vii
Note on Names and Transliteration xi
Introduction: A Troubled Relationship with Truth 1
1. The History of the Ahmadi- Caliph Relationship 32
2. An Enchanting Bureaucracy 63
3. A Failure to Doubt? Polemics and Sectarianism in Qadian 88
4. Prayer Duels to the Death: The Mubahala 115
5. Televising Islam: The Aesthetics of the Caliphate 141
Conclusion: The Prob lem with Proof 169
Notes 187
Bibliography 207
Index 223

Preface
In the Indian town of Qadian live a group of just over three thousand people who
are absolutely certain that they are Muslims. They know that they are truthful
followers of the Prophet Muhammad, and they are sure that their interpretations
of the Qur’an are indisputable. They form a local branch of a global religious
hierarchy in which disputes are routinely settled by appeal to higher authority.
Moreover, they consider themselves blessed to know exactly where that authority
lies, for they see the system within which they live as divinely ordained and their
leader as God’s lieutenant on earth. For t hese people, knowing how to practice
their faith is straightforward, and truth is joyously self- evident. Moreover, the
modern world does not pre sent them with a challenge, for they see all of moder-
nity’s orga nizational, technological, and scientific accomplishments as a mere
foretaste of what will come to pass with the global ascendency of the true Islam
that they practice. Despite their confidence in being Muslim, however, t hese
people face a very pressing difficulty, for in countries across the world, their
Muslimness is contested and even denied. They call themselves Ahmadi Mus-
lims; others describe them as heretics.
This book is about the challenges that Ahmadi Muslims face in proving their
Muslimness. It is about their strugg le to convince others of a truth about which
they are absolutely certain; it is about the limits and possibilities of demonstrat-
ing what is known. My impetus for writing a book about the strug gles that Ah-
madis face in manifesting their Muslimness arose from the fact that I, like them,
have often strug gled with the challenge of convincing others. Specifically, I have
often striven in vain to persuade my fellow anthropologists about the religious
conviction that was displayed in my field site. Anthropologists, it seems, love to
doubt certainty. Particularly within the anthropology of Islam, a keen attentive-
ness to the ambivalences of religious belief has become a hallmark of good eth-
nographic practice in the last few years, and any claim that p eople might relate to
truth in a linear and straightforward fashion is met with skepticism. T here is a
good reason for this skepticism— after all, it is an attitude that cautions us to at-
tend to the individuality of our interlocutors and thus prevents us from engaging
in Orientalizing ste reo types. But this skepticism doesn’t really help us to under-
stand people like those I studied: members of a new religious movement who
enthusiastically embrace self- essentialization and for whom certain aspects of
their relationship to truth are stable and predictable.
vii
viii PrEfAcE
A fundamental goal of this book is to show that if we want a better under-
standing of the lived religious experience of p eople like the Ahmadis, we have to
broaden our definitions of religious doubt. I will argue that much anthropologi-
cal thought, following a long Western tradition, tends to see doubt only in terms
of one very part ic u lar relationship to truth: belief. Thus, we have tended to see
doubt as the inverse of belief, a product of belief, a hindrance to belief, and, in
some cases, a path to belief. But belief captures only one pos si ble way of relating
to truth. What if belief is not the aspect of p eople’s relationship to truth that they
problematize and worry over? What of situations in which p eople know how to
believe in truth but are unsure of how to prove it, display it, demonstrate it, wit-
ness it, or even touch and experience it? In Qadian, truth is related to through an
idiom of responsibility rather than belief, and this fact has a profound effect
upon the doubts that people feel. Qadian appears to be a place of complete cer-
tainty only because of our poverty of imagination regarding doubt: it is in fact a
place in which people constantly wrestle with their relationship to truth. This
book is, therefore, about the possibilities of doubt beyond belief.
This book was made pos si ble only by the hospitality and kindness of Qadian’s
residents. While many p eople in Qadian helped me with my research, all mistakes,
misunderstandings, and inaccuracies are mine alone. To Arif, Athar, Basharat,
Husam, Habib, Inam, Mahmood, Niaz, Dr. Majeed, Malik, Naeem, Osman,
Shariq, Sohail, Shoaib, Rashid, Tahir, Yasir, Wahiduddin, and others, I owe a
debt that cannot be repaid in words. Bilal deserves special mention for the many
hours he spent teaching me the fundamentals of Urdu. Without the generosity of
Qadian’s se nior officials, chiefly Nazr Talim Sb. and Nazr A‘ala Sb., I could not
have conducted this fieldwork. Mehfuz Sb. and his team at the Langar Khana, in
par tic u lar Shivji, were a constant support. In the United Kingdom, Asim was a
great help, especially in enabling me to arrange a meeting with the caliph. My
research in India was also made pos si ble only by the generous help of members
of the Department of Sociology at Delhi University—in par tic u lar Rita Brara—
where I was an affiliated researcher.
Adeel Hussain read an early version of the w hole manuscript and was a con-
sistently inspiring discussant. He helped me to see what I had overlooked—
including the importance of sacrifice and the esoteric elem ents of Mirza Ghulam
Ahmad’s writings—a nd he motivated me to think on a bigger scale. Joel Robbins
and Matthew Engelke both read sections of the manuscript and provided gener-
ous comments. Patrick McKearney read and commented on a number of parts
of the book and also gave me support in the form of friendship. For three years
at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Christos
PrEfAcE ix
Lynteris, Branwyn Poleykett, and Lukas Engelmann were wonderful compan-
ions, colleagues, and friends; I thank them for the many stimulating ideas that
have directly ended up in this book, as well as for helping me to broaden my in-
tellectual horizons and think beyond my specialism. In London, Nick Long has
been a great support as I have attempted to balance the challenges of teaching
and writing si mul ta neously.
Matt Candea, Jo Cook, and Paolo Heywood have all been inspiring discussants
and friends, and our many conversations have helped to shape the ideas within
this book. Jon Mair has been a wonderful interlocutor over the last few years, and
conversations that we had together about what it means to speak ethically across
borders have helped me to understand the challenges my Ahmadi interlocutors
face as they attempt to speak across traditions to an often hostile world. Both Car-
rie Humphrey and Soumhya Venkatesan read the entirety of the manuscript in an
earlier version, and their comments w ere probing, rigorous, and enlightening.
There are two people without whom this book would not exist. Susan Bayly
has been a wonderful support and a brilliant teacher. James Laidlaw has nur-
tured this proj ect since its inception, and with endless patience he has helped me
to clarify my ideas over many years. His guidance has been invaluable, and the
creativity of his thought has been inspiring.
An e arlier version of chapter 5 appeared as “Beyond Cultural Intimacy: The
Tensions That Make Truth for India’s Ahmadi Muslims” in American Ethnologist
44, no. 3 (2017): 409–502. The fieldwork for this proje ct was supported by the
Economic and Social Research Council, grant number ES/I901957/1. At Cornell
University Press, Jim Lance has been a wonderful editor, without whom this book
would not have reached its full potential. I thank him and the production team for
all their hard work. The three anonymous readers were sources of g reat inspira-
tion and insight, and I thank them for their detailed engagement with my text.
My work has been nourished by the support of my parents and my stepfather,
Ilaina, Charles, and Richard. Fi nally, it is to Claudia, with much love and admi-
ration, that I dedicate this work.