Imperial Ideologies, Transnational Activism: Questioning The Place of Religious Freedom From British India

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
H E R E S Y ,
R E L I G I O U S
a n d
F R E E D O M ,
M U S L I M
R E N E W A L
Imperial Ideologies, Transnational Activism

Questioning the Place of Religious Freedom from British India
Sadia Saeed
uring the nineteenth century, British colonial authorities in India repeatedly maintained that
they had an ideological commitment to norms of religious noninterference, neutrality, and
equality.1 This formed an important background to the proliferation of both Christian evangelical missions and various religious reform movements across Indias many religious traditions, enabling
the emergence of competitive religious fields centered on winning adherents and ascertaining religious
truths.2 These religious fields often became sites of public religious conflicts into which colonial state
authorities were ineluctably drawn for adjudication.3 This essay demonstrates that norms about religious
rights also held a distinct relevance for religious movements that originated in British India, sought to expand globally, and subsequently became entangled in religious conflicts in transnational arenas. Specifically, it throws light on how colonial subjects appropriated, contested, and negotiated these norms with
the end of widening the territorial jurisdiction of religious rights beyond the British Empire.
The empirical focus of this essay is a controversial transnational religious movement that emerged
in British India toward the end of the nineteenth century. The Ahmadiyya movement has been variably characterized as [one of] the earliest Muslim groups to realize the utility of print media,4 the
first worldwide Muslim proselytizing organization,5 and the best-documented religious movement in
modern Islam.6 Ostracized by mainstream Muslims, Ahmadis used their position as imperial subjects to
demand that the British government protect their right to religious freedom in political spheres beyond
the British Empire and irrespective of territorial jurisdiction. They made claims to this effect by drawing
on the empires supposed commitment to the principle of religious freedom. British imperial authorities
responded to this transnational activism by considering anew the practical meanings and ramifications
of this principle.
The Ahmadiyya-British encounter had the effect of constituting a practical and discursive trans
national sphere in which the place of religious freedom was contested and negotiated, in terms of both
This essay has greatly benefited from feedback provided by participants at the Comparative Research Workshop at Yale University and the
mini-conference Capitalism, the Politics of Inequality, and Historical
Change at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Thanks also to Marc Gaborieau, Julian Go, and Matthias Koenig for
their comments on earlier versions of this essay.
2. For example, see Green, Bombay Islam; Jones, Socio-Religious Reform

Movements; and Powell, Muslims and Missionaries.
1. Van der Veer, Imperial Encounters.
5. Gaborieau, A Peaceful Jihad?, 468.
3. Ahmed, Specters of Macaulay; Gilmartin, Democracy, Nationalism,

and the Public; and Jalal, Self and Sovereignty.
4. Sevea, The Ahmadiyya Print Jihad, 134.
6. Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous, 11.

Vol. 36, No. 2, 2016 doi 10.1215/1089201x-3603295 2016 by Duke University Press
Published by Duke University Press
229
230
the actual physical place in which British colonial

subjects could enjoy religious freedoms and the
place of Ahmadis with respect to entitlement to
religious freedoms. My analysis brings forth three
features of this colonial encounter. First, it demonstrates how enterprising colonial subjects purposefully and strategically deployed the imperial
context to facilitate their religious goals. Second,
it illuminates how the British imperial ideology of
religious freedom was crucial in shaping the Ahmadiyya movements interactions with the British
Empire. Finally, it shows that in addition to deploying arguments about territorial jurisdiction,
British authorities routinely subverted Ahmadiyya
claims through differentiating between orthodox Muslims and heretic Ahmadis.
Empire, Heresy, and the Politics of Religious Freedom
Studies on modern colonial empires have increasingly decentered empire through drawing attention to the imperial webs, networks, fields,
chains, and connections that both constituted
and transcended metropole-colony relations.7
With respect to the British Empire, this line of inquiry has revealed how, by the beginning of the
twentieth century, the British Empire consisted of
multiple nodes spread across continents, some of
which formed distinct regional and oceanic hubs
organized around flows of capital, labor, pilgrims,
missionaries, convicts, officials, and soldiers.8 This
scholarship has highlighted the mundane yet distinct resources such as communication networks,
diplomatic ties, and access to empire-w ide information that localized colonial states possessed
by virtue of being embedded in a larger imperial
structure.
The Ahmadiyya movements transnational
religious activism sheds light on how enterprising
religious actors from colonial India encountered
this structure.9 The conceptual issue at hand is not
7. Ghosh and Kennedy, Decentering Empire;
Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire; Go,
Chains of Empire; Lester, Imperial Circuits
and Networks; Metcalf, Imperial Connections;
and Steinmetz, The Colonial State as a Social
Field.
8. Anderson, Subaltern Lives; Bose, A Hundred
Horizons; Green, Bombay Islam; Metcalf, Imperial Connections; and Porter, Religion versus
Empire?
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just one of how a transnational religious movement

drew on openings provided by the British Empire
to spread globally. Rather, it is how and with what
outcomes this movement produced novel spaces
of transnational activism centered on normative
ideas about religious freedom that were first encountered in colonial India.
The movements followers engaged in transnational activism through actively drawing on
their status as imperial subjects entitled to religious freedom. In 1858, the UK Parliament passed
a bill approving the transference of control of British India from the British East India Company to
the British Crown. Shortly thereafter followed the
famous Queen Victorias Proclamation that upheld
imperial policies of religious freedom and equality,
which were already in place, more forcefully.10 The
Ahmadiyya movement took shape in this post-1858
milieu in which the proclamations declaration
that none be in anywise favoured, none molested
or disquieted, by reason of their religious faith or
observances, but that all alike shall enjoy the equal
and impartial protection of the law was upheld
as official policy. This policy created the space for
the Ahmadiyya movement to make claims on British imperial authorities by invoking the British
Empires (supposed) commitment to the ideal of
religious freedom.
The Ahmadiyya movements extensive engagements with the British make them strikingly
distinct from other Muslim travelers from British
India. Consider, for example, the Tablighi Jamaat,
or the Preaching Society, another transnational
proselytizing movement in British India that was
even more explicit than the Ahmadiyya movement in its transnational aspirations of reviving
the message of Islam among Muslims.11 However,
it fashioned itself as an apolitical movement and
explicitly eschewed forging contacts with British
authorities.12 Consider also other imperial travel-
9. For the purposes of this article, transnational

religious activism refers to claims centered on
principles of religious freedom and equality
that the Ahmadiyya movement made on British imperial authorities. On the importance of
considering claims making under colonialism,
see Cooper, Colonialism in Question.
10. See Devji, Comments, and van der Veer,

Imperial Encounters.
11. See Masud, Travellers in Faith, and Sikand,
The Origins and Development of the Tablighi
Jamaat.
12. Gaborieau, A Peaceful Jihad?
Sadia Saeed | Imperial Ideologies, Transnational Activism
ers such as Indian Muslim pilgrims headed toward

Mecca.13 For the bulk of these soon-to-be-hajis, imperial networks and a regulatory colonial bureaucracy formed an important but passive background
on the way to the realization of a religious duty of
utmost importance.14 The Ahmadiyya missionaries
are also distinct from cosmopolitan Muslim travelers who sought to forge novel pan-Islamic solidarity and intellectual networks through traversing
imperial and transimperial networks but away
from the regulatory gaze of imperial authorities.15
The reason for Ahmadiyya difference in
this regard is clear: Tablighis and other Muslim
travelers were adherents of mainstream Islam,
which allowed them to bypass colonial authorities
and depend on fellow Muslims. The controversial religious views of the Ahmadiyya movement
(more below), however, routinely aroused the ire
of Muslims outside British India where the central movement leadership sent its missionaries.16
Consequently, orienting itself toward, and forging
alliances with, European colonial powers was especially desirable for the movement. The empire,
in short, was encountered differently by different
Muslim travelers.
Ahmadis are conceptually closer to colonial
subjects who actively appropriated imperial networks and ideologies to facilitate their transnational movements, migrations, and dispersal. For
example, Mamadou Diouf has shown how the Senegalese Murid brotherhood drew on a capitalist
modernity organized around peanut production
to move and disperse across Senegal, in the process constituting a vernacular cosmopolitanism.17
Diouf argues that this cosmopolitanism was forged
through both the geography of globalization (the
world as a space in which people are able to trade)
and the discourses and practices of globalization
(the actual operations to make ends meetthat is,
to accumulate wealth).18 In a similar vein, Ahmadis drew on the discourse of religious freedom to
conceptualize the world as a space in which people
13. Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Travellers.

14. See Bose, A Hundred Horizons, chap. 6. The
occasional civic-minded haji was certainly keen
to point to how the British government could
improve the hajj journey. See Metcalf, The Pilgrimage Remembered, 190. However, this was
are able to proselytize freely. In this imaginary,

British imperial subjects are facilitated in their
endeavors through the geography, discourses, and
practices of an empire wedded to promoting religious freedom even outside the formal jurisdiction
of the empire.
While British responses to Ahmadiyya claims
were historically contingent and often preceded
by extensive debates, a number of patterns are
discernible. As I show below, when claims were
mundane and nonconflictual in nature, British authorities readily lent their resources to Ahmadis.
In such instances, Ahmadis were typically able to
draw on imperial networks and communication
channels for informational gains. However, when
Ahmadiyya demands were made in the wake of
their conflicts with mainstream orthodox Muslims, British authorities tended to support the latter through drawing on specific notions of the Islamic tradition that effectively situate Ahmadis as
religious heretics.
In these geopolitical contexts in which the
jurisdiction of colonial law did not extend and
bureaucratic discretion held sway, British officials informal assumptions and perceptions about
Islam starkly came to the fore. Specifically, British
authorities upheld symbolic boundaries between
Ahmadis and non-A hmadis on the basis of doctrinaire representations of Islam and Islamic history.
These British authorities were thus deeply engaged
in ascertaining and consolidating specific notions
of religious orthodoxy and heterodoxy. This resulted in a hierarchical ordering of different religious groups, with British officials privileging
religious sentiments, and consequently religious
truths, of orthodox Muslims over heretic Ahmadis. Through refusing to adjudicate among Ahmadis and non-A hmadis on grounds of religious
noninterference, British authorities subverted Ahmadiyya claims to religious freedom through normalizing sectarian conflicts.
However, defining Ahmadis as religiously
not typical and certainly did not constitute an

episode of transnational religious activism.
17. Diouf, The Senegalese Murid Trade

Diaspora.
15. See, for example, Alavi, Fugitive Mullahs

and Outlawed Fanatics.
18. Ibid., 680.
16. See Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous, and

Lavan, The Ahmadiyah Movement.
231
2 32
heterodox went against the grain of colonial laws

handling of the issue of Ahmadiyya religious difference in British India. Here, colonial courts
firmly deemed Ahmadis Muslims and upheld a
minimalist definition of a Muslim as anyone who
believes in one God and the prophecy of Mohammad.19 In upholding this definition of a Muslim,
colonial courts were no doubt concerned with distancing themselves from thorny theological issues
that might unwittingly lead them to pronounce on
issues of heresy and apostasy. In contrast, when
British officials got drawn into conflicts between
Ahmadis and non-A hmadis outside the sphere of
formal law and in physical spaces outside British
India, Ahmadis were readily deemed heretics. In
other words, while colonial law in India considered
Ahmadis Muslim, officials on the ground were
guided by a different understanding of Ahmadiyya
religious difference. This suggests the importance
of considering how British authorities attended to
the question of religious freedom differently, depending on the nature and place of the conflict, as
well as the dispositions of the authorities attending
to the conflict.
The reason that essentialist representations
about Islam surfaced so readily in extralegal and
transnational spheres was that British responses
to Ahmadiyya demands were primarily premised
on arguments about territorial jurisdiction. This
crafted a discursive space for perceptions about
Islam to be freely articulated as secondary justifications, since the subversion of Ahmadiyya claims
was not based exclusively or primarily on these
perceptions. It is striking that Ahmadis engaged in
transnational religious activism at the same time
that notions about territorial sovereignty and national self-determination were becoming increasingly entrenched in India.20 At this time, European
imperial powers were also consolidating a national
territorial jurisdiction for liberal rights through
19. The authoritative case in this regard is
Narantakath v. Parakkal, decided by the Madras High Court in 1922. This case, although
indexed as one of bigamy, essentially hinged
on the question of whether Ahmadis were
Muslim or not. It concerned a married Muslim
man who subsequently became an Ahmadi.
According to sharia law, apostasy on the part
of any spouse completely annuls the marriage.
In this instance, the wife considered the hus-
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various national and international instruments

such as the League of Nations.21 An examination
of the Ahmadiyya movements transnational religious activism shows that transnational imaginaries about religious rights coincided with these
powerful historical movements and trends. At the
same time, British responses to Ahmadiyya claims
demonstrate the limits of this activism as both the
realities of territorial sovereignty and assumptions
about Islam came to fore.
We know with hindsight that the British
Empires global interventions with respect to the
issue of religious freedom were deeply contingent
on geopolitical and strategic interests.22 European
powers did intervene in the internal religious affairs of foreign polities on grounds of defending
religious freedom when it served their interests.
However, no direct interventions were made on behalf of the Ahmadiyya community since these did
not dovetail, and indeed often collided, with their
strategic goals. In these instances, British authorities rendered arguments about national territorial
jurisdictions of religious rights as justifications for
their nonintervention, supplementing these with
additional arguments about religious noninterference and the Islamic tradition.
Through examining episodes of the Ahma
diyya movements transnational activism, this essay
considers how the above factors crystallized during the course of concrete historical events. My
aim is to historicize how Ahmadis encountered the
macro realities described above on the ground.
I examine both claims that were geared toward
drawing on existing imperial networks for informational gains and those that centered on the imperial discourse about religious freedom. These
episodes demonstrate the ways in which Ahmadis
sought to deploy the institutional and ideological
infrastructure of the British Empire to facilitate
their transnational endeavors. At the same time,
band to have committed apostasy and subsequently married another man. The plaintiffs
in this case were Ahmadis who accused the
woman of bigamy. The lower court that heard
the case rejected the charge of bigamy on the
grounds that the Indian Muslim community
generally considered Ahmadis apostates. The
Madras High Court, where the case landed on
appeal, reversed the judgment of the lower
court, holding that Ahmadis met the minimal
conditions of being Muslim, which include belief in one God and in the prophecy of Muhammad. See Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan Law,
5960.
20. Goswami, Producing India.
21. See Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and
Moyn, The Last Utopia.
22. Mahmood, Religious Freedom.
they also point to the limits of the Ahmadiyya

movements transnational activism. The analysis
relies on secondary literatures on the Ahmadiyya
movement, as well as on a small number of revealing archival fragments found in the India Office
Records at the British Library.
The Ahmadiyya Movement
The A hmadiy ya movement was founded by

Mirza Ghulam Ahmed (1838 1908) in the city
of Qadian in colonial Punjab. Ghulam Ahmad
successfully requested of colonial authorities
that the Ahmadiyya movement be enumerated
separately on the Census of 1901.23 Through this
self-objectification, he sought to legitimize his
movement as a unique Muslim sect on par with
other mainstream Muslim groups.
In addition to propagating his message
among local Punjabis and participating in cross-
religious competition for religious converts, Ghulam Ahmed also aspired to craft a truly transnational movement. In 1891, he announced that the
movement would hold annual meetings in Qadian
and that one of the objectives of these gatherings
would be to chart plans for missionary activities
overseas.24 As early as 1892, the movement declared its goals: To propagate Islam; to think
our ways and means of promoting the welfare of
new converts to Islam in Europe and America; to
further the cause of righteousness, purity, piety
and moral excellence throughout the world, to
eradicate evil habits and customs; to appreciate
with gratitude the good work of the British government.25 The movement met immense success
in achieving this goal by virtue of both sending
organized missions abroad and through actively
utilizing print media. This propagation of Islam
through peaceful preaching was articulated as a
23. Lavan, The Ahmadiyah Movement, 9394.
25. Cited in Lavan, The Ahmadiyah Movement,
93.
26. Gaborieau, A Peaceful Jihad?
28. The movement split into two groups in 1914,
the Qadian Group and the Lahori Group, and
both formed organizations for missionary activities. The focus of this essay is the Qadian
group.
religious imperative.26 Ghulam Ahmad was concerned with the continuation of his religious movement after his death, and his will maintained that
a council of pious men be formed to accumulate
and administer funds for missionary activities.27
A central committee called the Sadr Anjuman-
e- Ahmadiyya was subsequently formed for these
purposes.28
In both its print and missionary activities,
the Ahmadiyya movement was drawing on and
learning from the experiences of Christian missionaries.29 An elaborate organizational structure
was put into place in Qadian, consisting of key
offices with clearly defined responsibilities and
rules for placement into these offices.30 Various departments were formed to manage financial and
budgetary affairs, missionary activities, community discipline, external and government affairs,
education, publications, and hospitality. In 1934,
a new institutional body called the Tehrik- e -Jadid
(New Movement) was launched that was entrusted
solely with the intensification of missionary activities. Local bodies were formed outside Qadian and
India and their amirs (heads) appointed, who were
to maintain links with Qadian.
Ghulam Ahmad made a series of theological claims, presenting himself as first a divinely inspired reformer and ultimately the Messiah and a
prophet invested with the holy mission of returning
Islam to its pristine purity.31 By proclaiming himself the figure of the (returned) Christ, Ghulam
Ahmad strongly antagonized Christian missionaries. Ghulam Ahmads most controversial claim for
Muslims was his reinterpretation of the issue of the
Finality of Prophethood to make room for his own
claim to prophecy.
At a time when world religions were becoming more internally uniform, the activities of mi-
29. In general, most religious reform and revival movements adopted a number of ideal-
typical organizational traits that were learned
through contact with European organizational
forms. One of the key features of these groups
was thus their organizational conformity along
a number of institutional dimensions such as
formal membership, written rules and internal hierarchies with officers, mission statements, and annual reports. Colonial authorities
granted legal rights to registered groups to own
property and conduct business. A large number of these groups, including the Ahmadiyya,
bought printing presses and published their

own newspapers, journals, and books. Community life was more tightly structured through
annual meetings and religious fairs. See Jones,
Socio-Religious Reform Movements, 215.
30. Lavan, The Ahmadiyah Movement.
31. Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous.
233
234
nority groups such as the Ahmadiyya movement

inevitably led to escalation of sectarian tensions.
Furthermore, as C. A. Bayly has aptly noted, The
conflict between the different sects within Islam
was deepened by the new opportunities for transmitting ideas over long distances and by the pamphlet and newspaper wars that erupted in particular localities. As much the largest entity, Sunni
Islam emerged as a more coherent and organized
religious community at a world level. But so, too,
did the smaller sects, the Shais and Ismailis.32 The
Ahmadiyya movement was another such Islamic
sect that established itself at a world level. In general, Ahmadi missions met with greatest success
in Africa (particularly Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra
Leone33) and faced the greatest difficulties in the
Arab world, Indonesia, and Afghanistan.34
The Ahamdiyya movement claimed to represent true Islam and not a particular interpretation of it, leading to acute hostilities with mainstream Muslim groups. The existing literature on
the movement has tended to emphasize either the
theological dimensions of the movements belief
system or the hostilities directed toward Ahmadis
in colonial India, Pakistan, and elsewhere.35 That
Ahmadis were incredibly savvy religious entrepreneurs who were profoundly aware of the opportunities that the imperial context offered has gone
largely unnoticed in the burgeoning scholarship
on this movement. The Ahmadiyya movements
explicit assertions of political loyalty to the British
were often rendered in this context. This rhetoric
of loyalty created a critical space for the movements leadership to engage in claims making with
the end of advancing their own goals.36 As we will
see next, conferrals of legitimacy functioned as
a resource for forging ties with the British while
imperial networks and ideologies emerged as po-
32. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 338.

33. See Fisher, Ahmadiyyah, on Ahmadiyya missionary activities in West Africa.
35. For example, see Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous; Lavan, The Ahmadiyah Movement;
Gualtieri, Conscience and Coercion; Qasmi, The
Ahmadis and the Politics of Religious Exclusion; and Saeed, Political Fields and Religious
Movements.
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tentially useful resources that could be skillfully

tapped into.
Informational Claims
The British imperial context allowed the Ahmadiyya

movement to forge new transnational networks
that differed from both premodern and emerging ones. As Francis Robinson notes, the connections of British Empire enabled the Ahmadiyya
movement to advance their proselytizing mission
outside British India.37 But what did these connections of British Empire mean in practice for the
movement?
On a very practical level, the empire facilitated access to information. Although a mundane
dimension of the British-A hmadiyya encounter,
it is nonetheless crucial for understanding how
these enterprising colonial subjects, who were neither elites nor subalterns, actively appropriated the British imperial structure. For example,
in 1925, the local Ahmadi representative in the
United Provinces of British India (U.P.) contacted
the governor of U.P. through a letter, requesting
that he communicate with the central Government of India (GOI) to ascertain the whereabouts
and well-being of its two missionaries in Syria. In
so doing, this Ahmadi sought to draw on existing
communication networks of colonial administration for informational gains. The specific claim
made was that Ahmadi missionaries should be
given protection through [the] British Embassy
at Damascus and that they may be kept there
under British Protection if they like, and their welfare communicated.38 A little over a month later,
GOI reported to U.P. that authorities in Damascus
had been contacted and that Ahmadi missionaries
were indeed safe.39
At the same time, Ahmadiyya movement
36. A number of religious reformers adopted

a loyalist position toward British colonial authorities while others joined resistance movements. For example, the stance of loyalty was
adopted by Syed Ahmad Khan (181798), the
founder of the Aligarh educational movement.
Prominent ulema (traditional Muslim scholars),
on the other hand, exhibited widely differing
political orientations and attitudes toward colonial rule, with a large bulk joining various anticolonial causes. See Reetz, Islam in the Public
Sphere, and Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British

India.
37. Robinson, The British Empire and the Muslim World, 418.
38. Maulana M. Zubair, Ahmadiyya Representative in U.P. to Governor, U.P., December 3, 1925.
India Office Records, British Library, London
(hereafter IOR): IOR/L/PS/11/263/4399.
39. GOI to Governor, U.P., January 6, 1926, ibid.
leaders in Qadian contacted the Foreign Office

in London with the same request. British authorities in Damascus also relayed the information to
the Foreign Office in London, noting that they
had responded to a similar query not only to GOI
but also directly to the Ahmadiyya community
representative in London and the Department of
Missionary Work of the Ahmadiyya movement in
Qadian.40 Thus, the Ahmadiyya movement simultaneously drew on numerous crosscutting imperial
communication networks for informational gains.
The organizational form of the Ahmadiyya movement, with central headquarters in Qadian and
local bodies in the provinces and London, was pivotal in the emergence (and eventually consolidation) of Ahmadiyya leaders as coordinated claimants upon multiple British authorities.
These numerous communications with various British authorities suggest that one of the aims
of the Ahmadiyya movement was to forge ties with
multiple layers of colonial and imperial authorities: the governor in U.P., GOI, the Foreign Office
in Britain, and the British consul in Damascus. A
letter sent by the Ahmadiyya movement leadership
to British authorities at the conclusion of this correspondence provides a glimpse of another motivation behind these numerous claims. In this letter,
British authorities were thanked in the following
terms: God Almighty has given British Government the unique privilege of protecting both Christian
and Muslim Missionariesthe latter sent to foreign
lands (French and Dutch territories) from the Ahmadiyya movement[,] the only Muslim organization
in the world only this year.41
The ties forged with colonial authorities during the course of their claims making allowed the
Ahmadiyya community to situate their missionaries on par with Christian missionaries. Through
implicitly invoking the norm of religious equality, the Ahmadiyya movement held that colonial
authorities had the unique privilege of giving
equal protection to both Christian and Muslim
40. Damascus to Foreign Office, London (hereafter FO), December 24, 1926, ibid.
41. Ahmadiyya movement headquarters in Qadian, India to FO, October 28, 1925, ibid. Emphasis mine.
Missionaries. Furthermore, the movement communicated its own supposedly unique position
through referring to itself as the only Muslim organization in the world.42 In other words, claims
making was a means not only for gathering information and facilitating its missionaries abroad but
also for articulating the historical specificity and
uniqueness of the Ahmadiyya movement.
British authorities routinely accommodated
Ahmadi requests to ascertain the whereabouts of
their missionaries outside India. For example, in
1927, an Ahmadi missionary, Mohammad Amin,
was imprisoned in Bukhara by Russian authorities
for not obtaining the proper passport for entry.
Ahmadi leaders demanded that the GOI inquire
into the matter and have Amin repatriated.43 In
response, British officials noted that this was not
the first time that Amin had attempted to illegally enter Central Asia. He had been previously
arrested and expelled by Russian authorities on
more than one occasion. A British official made
the following observation about the situation: He
[Mohammad Amin] deliberately courts arrest by
entering territory admission to which without a
passport is prohibited, and appeals are then addressed by the Qadiani community to His Majestys Diplomatic Representatives at Moscow and
Tehran, the Consul General at Meshed and the
Government of India to ascertain his whereabouts
and effect his release.44 The Ahmadi missionary,
then, appears to have courted arrest. We can see
through the experience of another Ahmadi missionary, Zahur Hussain, that this was a routine
strategy that had in the past met with success. In
1926, Hussain was arrested and imprisoned by Russian authorities. He had been sent to Central Asia
for proselytizing and winning converts. Hussain
had attempted to enter Russia without obtaining
the proper passport at Mashhad, a Persian city
bordering Russia. Ahmadiyya movement leaders
sent a letter to the GOI requesting it to trace Hussains whereabouts and have him brought back to
42. At around the same time as this claim was

being made, the Tablighi Jamaat was beginning
to take shape in British India.
43. Qadian to GOI, April 24, 1927, IOR/L/

PS/11/266/677.
44. Mashhad to GOI, April 30, 1927, ibid.
235
236
India. This request was met by the GOI through

contacting British consul authorities in both Persia and Russia although, in the words of a colonial
official, at considerable expense and after a good
deal of correspondence.45 Ahmadi leaders subsequently sent a letter to the British Consul in Tehran, thanking it and British authorities in India
and Russia for their kind efforts in Hussains repatriation. The letter maintained that this adds
another link to the chain of British Governments
favour on our people. Long Live His Majesty the
King Emperor!46 In 1927, Mohammad Amin was
similarly brought back to India with the help of
British authorities in Russia.
These informational claims demonstrate
one of the ways in which imperial networks were
utilized by Ahmadis to facilitate their missionaries
abroad. However, Ahmadis also made deeply ideological claims based on the imperial discourse of
religious freedom. I turn to these next.
Claiming Religious Freedom in French Syria
In 1927, an Ahmadi missionary named Jalal-ud-

Din Shams was stabbed in Damascus by a Muslim
and subsequently expelled by French authorities.
In response, Ahmadi leaders in India directly approached Sir Austen Chamberlain, the secretary of
the state for India who was the political head of
the India Office seated in Britain. They requested
a formal investigation of the expulsion, claiming,
The Local Government there has done so only
because the Muslim priests there differ from us in
certain religious doctrines such as Jehad etc.47
The claim was formally made on the movements official letterhead and was directed from
the office of Foreign Secretary of Khalifa [literally, successor; official designation of Ahmadiy ya community leader]. A perusal of various
correspondences issued from this office reveals
that foreign refers to those external affairs of
the community that necessitated contact with official authorities. By establishing this office, the
Ahmadiyya movement sought to adopt the institutional structure of the modern bureaucratic state,
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which includes an office devoted exclusively to foreign affairs. By creating a foreign office of sorts,
it also established a legitimate and direct line of
communication with British authorities.
The basis of the claim was that British authorities were under obligation to investigate this incident because of their official commitment to norms
of religious freedom and equality. It was implicitly
held that British authorities ought to defend these
principles outside their imperial borders as well.
The invocation that the Local Government there
has done so [that is, expelled the Ahmadiyya missionary] only because the Muslim priests there differ from us in certain religious doctrines depicts
that for Ahmadis, it was the basis rather than the
mere fact of expulsion that was objectionable and
thus necessitated British intervention.
Chamberlain first directed the political department of the India Office in London to investigate this incident.48 The latter in turn contacted
the British consul at Damascus. It was subsequently
learned from the British consul in Damascus that
the Ahmadi missionary Jalal-ud-Din Shams had
scandalized the highly orthodox Muslim community of Damascus with his heresy, particularly
with his claim that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. This led to local protestations. Shams was subsequently stabbed by a
religious zealot and was asked by French authorities to leave the country.
The British consul officer at Damascus, E. C.
Hole, also noted that Shams was most willing [to
leave], but his hierarchical superiors apparently
preferred that he should remain. Hole maintained that Shams had asked Hole to intervene
on his behalf and write to Qadian to inform his
community that his work exposed him to grave
danger and that he would do well to leave Syria.
Hole maintained that he had in fact written to Qadian himself. He also noted that the presence of
Shams would have created religious disturbances,
potentially leading to the loss of Shamss life. As
far as he was aware, Shams had left Syria on his
own accord.49 This account was also conveyed to
45. British Consul General, Persia (hereafter

Persia) to GOI, April 30, 1927, ibid.
47. Q adian to GO I, April 1, 1928, IOR /L /

PS/11/263/4399.
46. Qadian to Persia, November 22, 1926, ibid.
48. GOI to FO, April 19, 1928, ibid.
49. Damascus to GOI, June 26, 1928, ibid.
GOI50 and, in turn, passed along to the Ahmadiyya

movement in Qadian.51
The facts of the matter are hard to establish
from the colonial archive itself.52 Ahmadis claimed
that the French expelled Shams while the British
held that Shams left Syria on his own accord. This
episode, in particular the correspondence between
Ahmadis and the British authorities, nonetheless
allows an exploration of how the right to religious
freedom was understood differently by Ahamdis
and British imperial authorities. From the Ahmadiyya perspective, the local French authorities had violated the norm of religious freedom,
making it incumbent upon the British to lodge
a protest with French authorities in Syria so that
religious independence could be established for
all religious communities equally: The Local Government there has done so only because the Muslim priests there differ from us in certain religious
doctrines such as Jehad etc. and therefore I request
your favour of communicating with the Foreign Government urging them to give a religious independence to our
missionaries like they have given to the Christian Missionaries and the Missionaries of other denomination.53
The principle of religious freedom was as desirable for Ahmadis as it had been for the British
missionaries who had advocated the separation of
religion and state in India so that they could freely
convert Indians to Christianity.54 The (supposed)
expulsion of Shams provided an opportunity
for Ahmadis to engage in transnational activism
around the issue of religious freedom. It allowed
Ahmadis to convey the significance of their own
proselytizing mission and to negotiate the norm of
religious neutralityif the British gave protection
to their European missionaries outside their home
turfs, they ought to extend a similar privilege to
Muslim missionaries, too. Even more significant,
Ahmadis demanded that British authorities ought
to defend the principle of religious freedom to
French colonial authorities in Syria.55
The latter claim was explicitly rejected by
British authorities who noted that the French de50. Damascus to FO, August 2, 1928, ibid.
51. GOI to Qadian, January 24, 1929, ibid.
52. Also see Khan, From Sufism to Ahmadiyya,
13335.
cision was based on the consideration of public

order. They invoked a distinction between missionaries in Syria who were engaged in providing
for the spiritual welfare of an established community and those like Shams who were engaged
in creating a new one.56 For instance, British authorities informed Qadian that Ahmadi missionaries differed from those of other missionaries in
Damascus in that they were a dissemination of a
new religion rather than a mainstream to adherents of established religions.57 In other words,
British authorities pushed back against the norm
of religious freedom by invoking a distinction between well-established, mainstream religious communities and those like the Ahmadiyya who were
propagating a new religion.
This episode also demonstrates both the
nature and limits of the Ahmadiyya movements
transnational activism. The first relevant issue here
is how the question of territorial jurisdiction was
handled. Essentially, Ahmadis were petitioning
the British to advocate the principle of religious
freedom to a foreign government. This claim is reflective of a transnational imaginary of religious
rights that rests on the notion that territorial sovereignty cannot become a pretext for violation of
(supposedly) universal principles. Incidentally,
this imaginary represents the very same discursive logic through which Western imperial powers
have deployed the trope of religious freedom to
intervene militarily and politically in Middle Eastern countries, essentially violating the territorial
sovereignty of these countries.58 At this moment,
however, British authorities were being requested
by Ahmadis to verbally defend the principle of religious freedom to French authorities, a soft intervention far from intruding on the territorial sovereignty of French Syria. However, British authorities
were unwilling to engage French authorities on behalf of the Ahmadiyya movement. This can be seen
by their use of a public order argument to provide justifications for the actions of local French
authorities and for their own nonintervention.
53 . Q adian to GO I, April 1, 1928, IOR /L /

PS/11/263/4399.
56. Damascus to GOI, June 26, 1928, IOR/L/

PS/11/263/4399.
54. Van der Veer, Imperial Encounters.
57. GOI to Qadian, January 24, 1929, ibid.
55. On French colonial rule in Syria see Thompson, Colonial Citizens.
58. See Mahmood, Religious Freedom.
237
238
The second issue concerns how British authorities defense of the French response was entangled with their normative evaluation of the
religious difference of the Ahmadiyya faith. From
their perspective, Ahmadi missionaries could not
be equated with Christian missionaries, since the
latters activities were not suspect in the eyes of
their coreligionists, while Ahmadiyya claims to
being a Muslim sect engaged in spreading Islam
were deeply resented by mainstream Muslims because of Ahmadiyya heresies. This position contrasts sharply with that of colonial courts in British India, which tended to minimize the religious
differences between Ahmadis and non-A hmadis.59
Drawing on the authority of the Indian Muslim
jurist Syed Ameer Ali (18491928), these courts
tended to define a Muslim as any person who professes the religion of Islam, in other words, accepts
the unity of God and the prophetic character of
Mohammad.60
In deeming Ahmadis heretics, however, British authorities were aligning themselves with another definition of a Muslim that hinges on the
question of khatam- e - nabiyeen, or the seal of prophecy (of Mohammad). Here, the critical point is not
simply belief in the prophecy of Mohammad but
in the absolute and unqualified finality of prophethood with Mohammad. Essentially, British authorities drew on this more restrictive definition of a
Muslim that was increasingly becoming dominant
in South Asian reformist Islam and was advocated
by anti-A hmadi Muslim groups in colonial India
to situate Ahmadis outside the pale of Islam.61 By
authorizing this definition, British authorities essentially normalized the rage that Muslims supposedly feel when confronted with the transgressions
of Ahmadis.62 Consequently, it was Shams, and not
the enraged Muslim who stabbed Shams, who was
deemed responsible for disrupting public order.
British authorities not only upheld a national
territorial jurisdiction for religious rights; they also
advanced an argument about why the French decision to expel Shams was wholly justified. Ahmadis were marked as public nuisances and religious
59. See Goswami, Producing India.

60. Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan Law, 59.
36:2
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deviants whose heresies led to law and order

problems. Consequently, the supposed religious
sensibilities of the orthodox majority, manifest in
the stabbing of an Ahmadi missionary by a Muslim, were privileged over the Ahmadiyya claim to
religious freedom. In this instance, considerations
of public order were folded into specific understandings of the Islamic belief system such that
they served to establish a symbolic boundary between heterodoxy and orthodoxy, Ahmadis and
non-A hmadis.
Resisting Persecution in Afghanistan
As seen above, the heterodoxy of its religious tenets created unique problems for the Ahmadiyya
movement outside India. To take another example:
in July of 1925, over two thousand people gathered
in Victoria Memorial Hall in Singapore to protest
the influx of Ahmadiyya influence through print
media, specifically calling on the government to
ban Ahmadiyya literature.63 It was in neighboring Afghanistan, however, where Ahmadis met
with outright persecution. Through an analysis of
some of these instances of persecution, I present
an eventful narrative that depicts how the British imperial context both enabled the Ahmadiyya
movements transnational activism and placed constraints on this activism.
The limiting condition in this instance arose
from the normative issue of who constituted the legitimate subject of rights. British authorities drew
a distinction between rights of individual British
colonial subjects and the transnational rights of a
religious group, privileging the former to the detriment of Ahmadis. Geopolitical realities defined
by interstate relations between the colonial state
in India and the neighboring Afghan government
were equally important in shaping the British governments policy of religious noninterference. In
the course of these considerations, assumptions
about Islam resurfaced once again to situate Ahmadis as heretics.
In 1919, an Ahmadi named Maulvi Neymatullah Khan, originally an Afghan subject who sub-
62. For an incisive discussion of this dynamic

of normalization in colonial India see Ahmed,
Specters of Macaulay.
61. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty.
sequently moved to India, was sent from Qadian

to Kabul for the religious education of Afghan
Muslims.64 This was done under the reign of King
Amanullah Khan (191929), who was well known
for his modernizing tendencies and accommodation of religious minorities.65 Inspired by the constitutional revolutions in Russia (1905), Iran (1906),
and the Ottoman Empire (1908), King Amanullah
appointed constitutionalists in his government
upon becoming king. He promulgated the countrys first constitution in 1923, which abolished slavery, made torture unlawful, made free primary education compulsory, and guaranteed equal rights
to all Afghan subjects. Some of his other reforms
included translating traditional Islamic jurisprudence into positive law codes and bringing these
under the purview of a state-centered judiciary,
making education accessible to women, and the
removal of the veil.66
It was perceived by Ahmadiyya movement
leaders that their missionaries would enjoy greater
freedoms in carrying out their activities under
King Amanullah than they had in the past, especially in light of the stoning to death of two Ahmadis in 1903 by the Afghan government on charges
of heresy and apostasy. Thus in 1920, when Afghan
Foreign Minister Mahmud Tarzi visited British
India, he was met by an Ahmadiyya delegation.
Members of the delegation explicitly asked Tarzi if
King Amanullahs proclamations regarding tolerance and freedom of faith applied to the Ahmadiyya movement as well.67 Tarzi assured the delegation that Ahmadi missionaries would be safe in
Afghanistan and no Ahmadi would be targeted on
the basis of his religious beliefs. However, Maulvi
Neymatullah Khan was stoned to death under
64. Rafiq, The Afghan Martyrs, 115.
65. Gregorian, The Emergence of Modern
Afghanistan.
66. Arjomand, Constitutional Developments
in Afghanistan, 94667.
67. This account of the meeting with Tarzi has
been compiled through a perusal of various
minute and draft papers circulated among British officials and archived in IOR/ L/PS/11/250, titled Afghanistan: Persecution of Ahmadiyya
Sect.
68. Times (London), September 6, 1924.
69. Morning Post (London), September 18, 1924.
similar charges of apostasy on August 31, 1924. In

February of 1925, two other Ahmadis were tried
on charges of apostasy and also stoned to death in
Afghanistan.
These deaths received wide publicity in India
and Britain and were widely condemned. The
Times termed the former a political execution
and maintained that the killing was undertaken by
the Afghan rulers to placate the reactionaries.68
The Ahmadiyya khalifa, incidentally in London at
that time, vocally condemned the Afghan government for not allowing Maulvi Neymatullah Khans
father to pick up his sons dead body, which still lay
under rocks.69 A resolution was adopted by a number of influential Britons, including H. G. Wells,
Sidney Lee, and Arthur Conan Doyle, through
the efforts of the imam of the Ahmadiyya mosque
in London and sent to the British government
expressing their strong condemnation and disapproval of the Afghan government.70
Prominent British and Indian lawyers, including Walter Walsh, leader of the Free Religious
Movement, and the Ahmadiyya lawyer Zafrullah Khan (who would serve as a Muslim member
in the Viceroys Executive Council between 1935
and 1941), lodged their public protests with the
British government against the Afghan governments actions. The Ahmadia Moslem Society of
Chicago71 and the Ceylon Ahmadiyya Association72 also lodged their protests directly with the
British government in London. In short, events in
Afghanistan led to organized transnational activism that included various Ahmadiyya community
organizations and prominent Britons and Indians,
with London emerging as the central seat of protest activity. On its part, the Ahmadiyya movement
70. Imam of Ahmadiyya Mosque, London to

FO, March 16, 1925, IOR/ L/PS/11/250. In 1912, a
mosque was established in London that later
became the British center of the Lahori group.
In 1924, a mosque run by the Qadian group was
established in London. After World War Two,
Ahmadiyya centers were established in other
European countries like Germany, Holland,
Switzerland, and Denmark. Ahmadiyya missions to the United States began after World
War One. See Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous, 30.
72. Letter appended in FO to GOI, March 24,

1925, IOR/ L/PS/11/250. H. A. Walter, a member
of the Royal Asiatic Society, shows that at the
time of his writing (1918), there were twelve
paid Ahmadiyya missionaries in different parts
of India, Ceylon, Mauritius, and London and
that ambitious plans to send more missionaries to England, Ceylon, Java, Japan, China, the
Philippines, etc. were further afoot (Walter,
The Religious Life of India, 118). Walters study
also indicates tight linkages between Qadian
and the Ceylon Ahmadiyya Association.
71. Maulvi Muhammad Din, Editor of Moslem

Sunrise, Chicago to FO, October 27, 1924, IOR/
L/PS/11/250.
239
240
formally approached the Foreign Office in Britain

and demanded that it press upon the GOI to lodge
a formal complaint with the Afghan government.
In other words, the GOI was bypassed entirely and
claims made directly to the British government in
London.
The Ahmadiyya movement demands were
denied. It was informed that the GOI could not
launch a formal protest since Maulvi Neymatullah Khan was an Afghan and not a British Indian
subject. Zulfiqar Ali Khan, the foreign secretary of
the Ahmadiyya khalifa, in turn reminded the government of his communitys efforts in countering
and quelling incitements for jihad against the British government in Afghanistan during the Third
Anglo-A fghan War (1919).73 He further maintained
that the persecution of Ahmadis in Afghanistan
was a direct result of this policy.74 In addition to reminding British authorities of Ahmadiyya support
during this war, Khan also reminded the government of the assurances given by Tarzi to the Ahmadiyya delegation in 1920 and claimed that King
Amanullah had lent his support to the persecution of Maulvi Neymatullah Khan to refute claims
that he himself was an Ahmadi. In short, Ahmadis advanced their claim in the capacity of a loyal
transnational religious community based in British
India and not on behalf of the (dead) individual
Afghan subject. It was also held that Tarzis assurances to the Ahmadiyya delegation in 1920 were
binding on the Afghan government.
The British government was indeed mindful
of Ahmadiyya support during the Third Anglo-
Afghan War. L. D. Wakely of the Foreign Office
suggested to GOI that Tarzi be approached informally and reminded of his assurances to the
Ahmadiyya delegation. He also suggested that
the GOI apprise Tarzi of the highly unfavorable
impression of Afghans that resulted from this per-
73. Upon its conclusion, the Third Anglo-Afghan

War had restored the authority of the Afghan
government to conduct its own foreign affairs
(ceded to the British through a 1879 treaty) and
also reaffirmed the Durand line as the political boundary between Afghanistan and British
India. Essentially, this war reestablished the
autonomy of Afghans with respect to conducting their own foreign policy in exchange
for the Afghan promise to respect the territo-
36:2
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secution. The GOI should urge Tarzi to do what

he can to prevent the persecution of this sect.75
The GOI, however, did not concur with these
suggestions. The primary reason for their nonintervention was the ongoing Khost Rebellion in
Afghanistan led by the conservative Mangal tribe
against King Amanullah because of the latters
modernizing tendencies. The GOI was keen to distance itself from the bitter political and cultural
conflicts ravaging Afghanistan at that time.76 Taking a stance on the Ahmadi issue would have been
tantamount to taking sides in the civil unrest.
The Khost Rebellion, which lasted some
nine months, ultimately led King Amanullah to
roll back his modernizing reforms. For example,
Article 2 of the constitution that had declared
Islam the official religion was amended to refer to
the sublime Hanafi rite. An article stating that
Hindus and Jews must pay the poll tax and wear
distinctive clothing was added to the constitution, while another prohibiting torture was modified to legalize corporeal punishments sanctioned
by sharia injunctions.77 In this heated atmosphere,
British colonial authorities in India were highly
disinclined to interfere in Afghanistans domestic matters even though British authorities in England were willing to lend their support to such
intervention.
Subsequently, in another meeting with Foreign Office officials, Khan maintained that the
Ahmadiyya movement was going to further publicize the issue, including taking it to the League
of Nations and the British prime minister as well
as broadcasting it in the United States and other
European countries.78 He also noted that Britain
had on previous occasions lodged a protest with
Turkey on behalf of Armenians who were Turkish
and not British subjects and to Soviet Russia on behalf of protesting Russians. Since the Ahmadiyya
rial boundaries of British India (which they routinely penetrated).
77. Arjomand, Constitutional Developments in

Afghanistan, 947.
74. Accounts of Khans various meetings with

British authorities are gleaned from minute papers in IOR/ L/PS/11/250.
78. The Ahmadiyya movement did, in fact, send

a petition to the League of Nations, as indicated by an online search for Ahmadiyya in the
archives of the League of Nations: United Nations Archives Geneva, catalogue search, February 3, 2016, biblio-archive.unog.ch/resultatliste
.aspx.
75. Draft paper by L. D. Wakely, October 16,

1924, ibid.
76. See Nawid, Religious Response to Social
Change in Afghanistan.
movement was headquartered in India, a British

territory, it was looking to the British for protection, holding that any action however informal
would satisfy his community, if it was action by the
British government.
The Ahmadiyya movement was establishing
the specific nature of its own ties with British authorities and claiming that these ties obliged British authorities to defend their religious freedoms
to a foreign government. In so doing, Ahmadis
situated themselves on par with other persecuted
religious minorities such as Armenians in Turkey whose treatment had elicited intervention by
the British. National territorial sovereignty, from
their perspective, could not be deployed to justify
religious persecutions since the place of religious
freedom was universal and boundless. But the
question of place was also posited in another way:
what was the place of Ahmadis vis--v is other imperiled minorities that the British government did
advocate for?
British officials and diplomats in the Foreign
Service conferred among themselves and agreed
that Britain should not intervene with a foreign
government in favour of a non-royal person.79
Furthermore, To make the King protest against
the murder of Niamat Ullah Khan would therefore
be to establish a precedent: which would be to my
mind, particularly undesirable in that the unfortunate man is already dead. It might be possible to
make a new departure if there was a chance of saving a life; but to protest afterwards would be to lay
His Majesty open to an unpleasant rebuff for having taken an action which could lead to no practical results.80 However, as Khan had noted, there
were precedents for the sort of intervention that
Ahmadis desired. Indeed, such interventions were
made when they suited European geopolitical and
strategic interests and were typically undertaken
on behalf of Christian minorities in the Middle
East.81 At this instance, the Foreign Office again
requested the GOI to contact the Afghan authorities. The latter again denied the request, stating
that such a course of action would be dangerous.
79. Minute Paper, October 1, 1924, IOR/L/

PS/11/250.
80. Ibid.
Official correspondence between the GOI

and the British minister stationed in Kabul, Frances Humphrey, reveals that the latter had in fact
discussed the persecution of Ahmadis with both
King Amanullah and Tarzi. According to Humphreys account of these meetings, both expressed
their personal horror toward the stoning, stating
that they were personally in favor of religious tolerance and against religious persecutions. Yet, King
Amanullah felt compelled to take such an action
in the face of increasing resistance to his modernizing programs, which was propelling the Khost
Rebellion. Reports of these conversations were not
conveyed, however, to the Ahmadiyya leadership,
who continued to press upon Britain authorities.
At the same time, the Afghan government
had given a death sentence to an Italian engineer
and a resident of Kabul, Dario Piperno, for killing an Afghan policeman. Talks negotiating the
release of Piperno were under way between the
Italian and Afghan governments. This event too
played a part in the Foreign Offices calculations:
There seems to be a possibility that if Sir F.
Humphrys protests to Tarzi, and Tarzi informs the
Amir [Amanullah] (and he will), the Amir (especially if his conscience is really a little uneasy) may
resent the interference and, in a moment of reaction, recoil from his intended lenience to Piparno
[sic]. Piparnos release is no particular concern of
ours; but it seems to be as much so as the manner in which Afghans deal with Afghan heretics.
Stoning to death is in fact the form of punishment
prescribed by Islamic law for heretics.82
In other words, the Ahmadiyya community was

deemed a lower priority than the release of the
imprisoned Italian.83 Equally important, a further
justification for nonintervention was rendered
through first maintaining Afghan sovereignty over
their internal religious conflicts, then situating
Ahmadis as heretics, and, finally, drawing on an
essentialist conception of Islamic law.
Hanafi law, which is the dominant madhab
in Afghanistan, does hold that the apostate from
Islam is to be executed unless he or she repents,
81. Mahmood, Religious Freedom.

82. Minute Paper, February 14, 1924, IOR/L/
PS/11/250.
83. The Afghan government subsequently executed Piperno. See Elliot, Rome Awards.
2 41
242
in which case no action is to be taken.84 However,

this is ultimately a theoretical position, and actual
practices have varied widely across time and place
in Muslim lands. That British authorities viewed
this position as a timeless imperative sanctioned
by positive law of Islam ultimately reveals more
about British assumptions about sharia than actual
historical practices in Muslim societies. In either
case, British colonial authorities did not include Islamic injunctions on apostasy in the hybrid Anglo-
Mohammedan law put into place in colonial India.
This, as well as other Islamic injunctions such as
those legalizing slavery, were excluded from Anglo-
Mohammedan law on the grounds that they militated against considerations of equity and justice.85
Clearly, the British government felt multiple
contradictory pulls in response to Ahmadiyya
claims: to retain cordial relations with a hostile
neighbor, to respect territorial sovereignty through
nonintervention, to respond to their Indian claimants, to uphold their (supposed) principled commitment to principles of religious freedom and
tolerance, and, finally, to respect the integrity of
Islamic law as they perceived it. In the end, the
Foreign Office conveyed to the GOI both its own
and Humphreys willingness to protest the incident. The GOI again declined to lodge a protest.
Subsequently, the Foreign Office sent a message to
Khan stating that it was not possible for the GOI to
launch a formal complaint.
The differences of opinion among differentially placed British authorities on this matter attest to the autonomy of colonial states from metropolitan authorities.86 The Foreign Office in the
end conveyed to Khan that it would request its
representative in Afghanistan to take informal
action.87 The matter came to an end with Khan
expressing his satisfaction with this outcome and
thanking the Foreign Office, with the hope [that]
the British representative will be able to show to
the Afghan authorities how their inhuman action
has shocked the whole world.88 Khan also concurred that the dead missionary was an Afghan
subject and that the present outcome was all that
84. Griffel, Apostasy.

85. Masud, Apostasy and Judicial Separation
in British India.
36:2
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was desired. The Ahmadiyya movement thus chose

to endorse the British imperial interpretation of
the right to religious freedom as falling within the
national territorial jurisdiction and expressed its
contentment with the informal action taken by the
British representative in Afghanistan on behalf of
their community.
Conclusion
This essay has sought to extend our scholarly

conversations on how colonial subjects drew on
imperial structures and ideologies in the course
of their transnational movements. My analysis
has been motivated by the need to analyze what
the British Empire meant in practice for one of
South Asian Islams most dynamic transnational
movements, the Ahmadiyya movement. I have
analyzed how, why, and with what outcomes
Ahmadis used their position as imperial subjects
to demand that British authorities protect their
(perceived) religious rights outside the British
Empire itself.
Acutely cognizant of the institutional and ideological infrastructure of the British Empire, Ahmadis sought to deploy it as a resource for facilitating
their transnational religious work. For one, claims
could be made to various British authorities
in India, Britain, and those in British consuls outside British territoriesor even all, depending on
the nature of the claim. Different imperial authorities were tied to colonial subjects in distinct ways
with respect to perceived duties and obligations.
Consequently, Ahmadis could vary the nature of
their religious claims depending on the concrete
situation and the British officials being petitioned.
In this sense, the very topography of the British
Empire enabled the Ahmadiyya movement.
The British imperial ideology of religious
freedom also critically shaped the Ahmadiyya
movements transnational religious activism. Ahmadis perceived that they could negotiate the
practical meanings of the British Empires supposed commitment to religious freedom. Their activism was deeply informed by notions of a transna-
86. See, for example, the discussion in Young,

The African Colonial State.
87. IOR/ L/PS/11/250.

88. Khan to FO, October 17, 1924, ibid.
tional sphere of religious rights wherein the British

Empire would advocate for the religious rights of
Ahmadis even outside the territorial jurisdiction
of the British Empire. In response, British authorities deployed arguments about territorial jurisdiction, religious noninterference, and the Islamic
tradition to subvert Ahmadiyya claims.
On the whole, while Ahmadis were often able
to draw on imperial authorities for informational
gains, it was almost impossible for them to negotiate the practical meanings of the imperial ideology
of religious freedom. For one, British authorities
were oftentimes in conflict with each other with
respect to which (if any) course of action ought to
be followed. More often than not, however, British
imperial authorities countered Ahmadiyya claims
through invoking the principle of religious noninterference with respect to the internal religious
affairs of the Muslim community. In transnational
arenas, the result of this detachment was that the
religious sentiments of the orthodox majority
were routinely privileged over those of a deviant
minority.
The Ahmadiyya movements transnational
activism thus draws attention to a foundational
tension between the norm of religious noninterference and that of religious equality. Conceptually, the imperative of religious noninterference
entails that the state turn its gaze away fromand
thereby endorse, however implicitlyconf licts
(and their outcomes) over religious truths in autonomous religious fields. Conversely, the imperative of religious freedom for all, resting as it does
on that of religious equality, entails that the state
take a stance on these contending religious truths
with the end of protecting the rights and freedoms
of the most socially vulnerable religious communities. It is this tension between the norm of religious
noninterference and that of religious equality that
was at play in transnational arenas of activism that
I have discussed above.
In British India, colonial law firmly deemed
Ahmadis Muslim in a context in which mainstream
Muslim religious groups vocally pronounced Ahmadis non-Muslim. By upholding the religious
freedoms of the socially excluded Ahmadiyya
community, British colonial law did take a stance
on, and thus interfere in, an important theological matter. It is only when the British applied reli-
gious noninterference as a considered policy that

the Ahmadiyya claims to religious freedom were
subverted. In spaces and places outside British
India where the jurisdiction of colonial law did
not extend and bureaucratic discretion held sway,
British officials routinely differentiated between
orthodox and heterodox Muslims on the basis of
representations of a rigid Islamic tradition. In such
instances, the norm of religious noninterference
was routinely deployed by the British to justify
their nonintervention in these conflicts. This had
the effect of not only subverting Ahmadiyya claims
to religious freedom but also normalizing the distinction between the orthodox Muslim and the
heretic Ahmadi.
Ultimately, however, British imperial authorities resisted the Ahmadiyya movements transnational activism through arguing that religious
rights fell within the purview of national territorial states. The notion of religious noninterference
thus took on an additional dimension by becoming linked with that of territorial sovereignty. They
could not, British authorities held, interfere in
domestic religious policies of other governments
on behalf of their colonial subjects. Consequently,
when Ahmadis made claims on British authorities
to defend norms of religious freedom outside their
imperial borders, the latter responded by justifying the actions of foreign governments and their
own inaction.
The findings of this essay have implications
not only for understanding the politics of religious
freedom in the British Empire but also for our
scholarly engagements with lived religious lives
under colonialism. Ahmadis were neither cosmopolitan intellectuals participating in transnational
conversations nor at the forefront of the anticolonial and Muslim nationalist movements that were
unfolding in India. They were, however, cosmopolitan religious activists, skillfully moving across and
beyond the British Empire to increase their numbers. Their efforts were solidly underpinned by the
institutional and political context of empire and
were shaped by their lived realities. While largely
unsuccessful, the Ahmadiyya movements religious
activism nonetheless provides a glimpse of how a
transnational sphere of religious rights was imagined by enterprising religious actors under British
colonial rule.
243
244
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