ʿAbd al-Mājid Daryābādī and reforming institutional Sufism in Colonial India

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the reformation of the Sufi tradition in the writings of the Urdu journalist and Qurʾān translator and exegete ʿAbd al-Mājid Daryābādī (1892–1977), especially as articulated in relation to his spiritual connection with the colonial-era Sufi master and Ḥanafī jurist Mawlānā Ashraf ʿAlī Thānavī (1863–1943). Daryābādī’s balanced, pragmatic approach to the meaning and practice of the master–disciple relationship reflected, on the one hand, the South Asian reception of Enlightenment rationalism and epistemic democratization, and, on the other, certain discursive and practical developments internal to Thānavī’s sub-branch of the Chishtī Sufi order. This article contributes to scholarship on religious authority in modern South Asian Islam by underscoring the interplay between affect and reason, arguing that it is not mere feeling that structures Sufi communities but something like rationalized affect, a strategic use of feelings and emotions to construct, transmit, and contest religious authority. Thānavī and Daryābādī re-articulate the master–disciple relationship to affirm both personal freedom and communitarian belonging; in so doing they posit traditionalist Islam as an effective alternative to colonial (and now postcolonial) governmentality.