The Wahhabi Rebellion: Unrecognized Freedom Fighters of Bengal.
Following the Battle of Plassey, the elite Bengali Hindu community welcomed British rule. Under Nawabi governance, having mastered Arabic and Persian, they had secured high-ranking positions in administrative service. Now, they not only embraced British supremacy but also strove relentlessly to acquire complete mastery over English education, culture, and worldview. On the other hand, because the British had usurped their sovereignty, the Muslim community remained disaffected toward the education, culture, and civilization of the adversary.
Meanwhile, the Muslim community of Bengal—lagging in education, economics, and politics—began to mobilize against the British. Although the Wahhabi movement initially began strictly as a religious reform movement, by 1820 CE the Wahhabis launched a bloody struggle against British rule. The Wahhabi resistance stands as one of the earliest and most sustained anti-British insurgencies in India. Indeed, the anti-colonial struggle of the Wahhabis constitutes the most remarkable aspect of nineteenth-century Indian history. Regrettably, however, no historical narrative has accorded this half-century-long heroic struggle its due recognition. The Wahhabis emerged as the primary source of anxiety for the British administration; among the numerous individuals tried for anti-British conspiracies during this era—and subsequently sentenced to death—nearly all belonged to the Wahhabi movement.
In the judgment of the Malda Case (1870), Amiruddin, son of the Wahhabi leader Rafiq Mondal, was sentenced to life transportation to the Andaman Islands, along with the complete forfeiture of his property. Upon hearing the verdict, his octogenarian father, Rafiq Mondal, embraced his son and declared with deep emotion: ‘My son has not strayed from his conviction. So long as he remains steadfast in his ideal, I am prepared to lose him.’
In the Rajmahal Case verdict (1870), the Wahhabi leader Ibrahim Mondal was sentenced to life imprisonment, deported to the Andamans, and stripped of all his property. Ibrahim had been actively involved in organizing the movement and raising funds across Malda, Rajshahi, Bogra, Rangpur, and Dinajpur. Known at the time as an exceptionally honest, upright, and respected figure, the difficulty in proving the allegations against him eventually compelled Lord Lytton to release him in 1878.
In 1869, two hide merchants from Colootola in Calcutta, Amir Khan and Hashmat Khan, were arrested on charges of raising funds for a liberation struggle aimed at ending British rule in India. After being detained for several years, five of the accused were ultimately cast into life imprisonment in the Andamans. Chief Justice Norman of the Calcutta High Court subsequently dismissed their appeals.
Under Regulation III of 1818, the seventy-year-old Amir Khan was detained; however, he did not survive long thereafter. Khan Mubarak Ali also perished as a result of brutal beatings in prison.
Chief Justice Norman of the Calcutta High Court was routinely passing death sentences and sending leaders of the Wahhabi revolution to the gallows. In protest against these actions, on 20 September 1871, as Norman was descending the steps of the Calcutta Town Hall, Mohammad Abdullah attacked and fatally stabbed him. Following Norman’s assassination, posters featuring Abdullah’s photograph were circulated across Calcutta to apprehend him. Yet upon his capture, Abdullah did not attempt to evade punishment to secure his release; instead, he embraced a martyr’s death on the gallows without protest. This event occurred thirty-seven years prior to the martyrdom of Kshudiram Bose (1908), the heroic revolutionary from Midnapore. In the annals of the Indian freedom struggle, this Bengali hero, Mohammad Abdullah, stands as the very first martyr. Regrettably, in the mainstream history of the Indian independence movement written by the elite bhadralok, the name of Mohammad Abdullah—the movement’s first martyr—remains absent.
In 1872, during Lord Mayo’s official inspection of the Port Blair penal settlement in the Andamans, a Wahhabi convict named Sher Ali assassinated him.
In Bengal, the leader of the Wahhabis was Syed Mir Nisar Ali, famously known as Titumir of the Bamboo Fort (Bansher Kella). Establishing control over vast territories across present-day 24 Parganas, Nadia, and Faridpur, Titumir declared independence from British rule. Declaring himself king (Badshah), he appointed a fellow Wahhabi named Mainuddin as prime minister and his nephew, Golam Masum, as commander-in-chief. The private militias of local landlords (zamindars) as well as the forces of the British army suffered several defeats at Titumir’s hands, the Barasat Uprising being a notable instance among them. According to William Hunter, approximately 83,000 peasant-soldiers fought on Titumir’s side during this rebellion.
Finally, on 13 November 1831, British forces encircled them from all sides. On 14 November, under the command of Colonel Harding, British troops launched an assault on Titumir and his followers using heavy weaponry. Armed only with basic swords and light weapons, Titumir and his soldiers were unable to withstand the superior modern armaments of the British army. On 19 November, Titumir along with forty of his companions attained martyrdom. Masum Khan (Golam Masum), the commander-in-chief of his forces, was executed by hanging, and the Bamboo Fort was razed to the ground.
Additionally, the Wahhabis were engaged in direct conflict with the British in Patna and Midnapore. The British deployed armed forces to suppress the Wahhabis, subjecting them to severe atrocities in prison. Hindutva ideologues are reluctant to concede this, yet the Wahhabis of Bengal and Patna were indeed the harbingers of India’s first struggle for independence. The Wahhabis also worked tirelessly to engineer the Revolt of 1857, and wherever the uprising bore fruit, it was largely the product of Wahhabi organizational efforts and initiative.
The number of Wahhabis who fell in battle against the British or were sentenced to death is a matter of pride for any subjugated nation. However, the histories authored by Hindutva historians have denied them due recognition. In fact, the Cellular Jail in the Andamans was constructed specifically to incarcerate Wahhabi rebels, and a substantial proportion of those imprisoned there were affiliated with the Wahhabi movement.
Many Hindutva ideologues refuse to acknowledge the Wahhabi activists as freedom fighters, arguing that they did not fight for Indian independence, but rather for the establishment of an Islamic state.
Were we to accept this argument advanced by Hindutva ideologues, numerous figures from later anti-colonial movements would likewise have to be excised from the history of India’s freedom struggle. Many of these leaders—such as Tilak, Aurobindo, and Bipin Chandra Pal—were explicitly engaged in re-establishing Hindu religious ideals through their anti-British political mobilization.
Furthermore, during this era, revolutionary groups in Bengal bound young recruits with religious oaths inspired by Shakta philosophy. Candidates were required to take these vows in front of deity idols following Hindu rituals. For them, the true goal of organizing nationalist consciousness was the revival and reinforcement of a long-stagnant Hindu nation.
Comrade Muzaffar Ahmad, one of the founders of the Communist Party of India, demonstrated in his book The Communist Party and My Life that written pamphlets of Anushilan Samiti—a principal organization of terrorist revolutionaries—stated that one of the Samiti’s objectives was to keep Muslims suppressed, and its rules explicitly barred any non-Hindu from becoming a member.
In one of Anushilan Samiti’s manifestos, it was openly declared regarding Muslims: ‘From all appearances, it is our firm conviction that within a year or two, the entire Muslim community will be compelled to submit to the Hindus. But if at that juncture the Hindus forfeit their resolve and national pride, degenerating so far as to extend friendship and join hands with the Muslims, it will only embolden the Muslims, bringing harm rather than good.’
If, despite such anti-Muslim rhetoric, we harbor no hesitation in recognizing these revolutionaries as heroic freedom fighters by remembering their contributions to the anti-colonial struggle, the question remains: why should countless Wahhabi revolutionaries, such as Mohammad Abdullah, not be acknowledged as freedom fighters?
বাংলা এবং বাঙালির জন্য লড়াইকে এগিয়ে নিয়ে যেতে আমাদের সাহায্য করুন।
আমরা কোনো কোটিপতি বা বড় কোনো কোম্পানি নই – আমাদের পাঠকরাই আমাদের সমর্থন করেন। আমাদের এই গুরুত্বপূর্ণ এবং সাহসী প্রচেষ্টার জন্য অনুদান দিয়ে আমাদের পাশে থাকুন।
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