824 Book Reviews / JESHO 55 (2012) 821-868

Nile GREEN, Islam and the Army in Colonial India: Sepoy Religion in the
Service of Empire. Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society. Cam-
bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xviii + 224 pp.
ISBN: 978-0-521-89845-4 (hbk.). $90.00.

Nile Green’s Islam and the Army in Colonial India is one of those rare works
that not only excites unreserved admiration but also provokes envy. It is
a study that cannot fail to impress its readers with its erudition and inno-
vation, particularly when reconciling the seemingly incompatible official
accounts as maintained in the colonial archive with subaltern memories
contained within oral traditions. Green’s purpose is less the creation of an
authentic narrative of what actually transpired, in other words detailing the
definitive causes and effects, but rather by juxtaposing colonial accounts
against the sepoys’ memories of supernatural intervention, he carefully
recovers the kinds of cosmological adjustments occasioned by colonialism
and modernity. Rather than simply seeking to reconcile the incompat-
ibilities that differentiated the official record from sepoy accounts, Green
instead uses them to highlight the dynamic tensions that lay between them.
As he aptly describes it, his interest lies in detailing ‘a historically mutable
Islam [that] helped shape the fortunes of empire while at the same time
being itself reshaped by the military structures of sepoy life’ (x-xi). In map-
ping the contours of what the author aptly terms ‘barrack Islam’, this work
focuses on the relationship between military service and religious faith by
scrutinizing the lives of three faqīrs: Afzal Shāh, Banē Miyān, and Bābā
Jān (the latter a female faqīr), who were active in or associated with sepoy
regiments of the Hyderabad contingent between the mid-nineteenth and
the early twentieth centuries. Deftly weaving together vernacular tracts
and pamphlets, oral testimonies, and the traces that these figures left in
the colonial archives, Green provides a richly nuanced analysis of how the
military culture of the colonial regime was not only shaped by Islam but
how that military culture in turn informed popular religion.
Islam and the Army in Colonial India rejects the widespread assumption
that Islam was incompatible with the aims and operations of the colonial
army, a dangerous and ultimately subversive force that ultimately sapped
the morale and discipline of the armies of the Raj. This stereotype of Islam
as being inimical to military discipline, an Orientalist construct still with
us as attested to by the many newspaper articles and editorials which fol-
lowed the recent murder of U.S. servicemen and women at Fort Hood by
an army psychiatrist of Muslim background. Instead, we are shown how it
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341255
 Book Reviews / JESHO 55 (2012) 821-868 825

was a dynamic cultural force, which was neither inherently hostile to nor
supportive of military discipline. Sepoys are shown as having entered the
army from a ‘rural and vernacular world rooted in a customary Islam of
miracles, intercessors, and saintly shrines’ (12). The sepoys’ links with that
world were never fully severed. Instead, upon entering the cantonments,
they would have to reconcile these with the often ambivalent expectations
and anxieties of the colonial state, a regime which at times sought to pro-
tect and even bolster what it reckoned to be the authentic expressions of
indigenous religiosity, while on other occasions it appeared to champion
the proselytizing efforts of Christian missionaries. ‘Barrack Islam’ appealed
to sepoys for it not only provided a familiar religious cosmology and guid-
ance, but its music and entertainment helped to offset the tedium of bar-
rack life. For their part, sepoys became important and influential religious
patrons, a source of revenue and respect for the faqīrs that was especially
welcome given the declining fortunes and status of many of their tradi-
tional patrons.
The examples selected by the author reveal how sepoys sought out faqīrs
for supernatural intercession to help ward off dangers, further their careers,
as well as provide entertainment and a sense of community. For their part,
many faqīrs were familiar with the military, either through family con-
nections or even because of prior service. Afzal Shāh was one such sepoy
turned faqīr, a change in career that is explained in part by the dearth of
career paths open to ex-soldiers. Initially, Afzal Shāh was valued, albeit with
some reservations, by colonial officials, who were concerned not to tread
too heavily on the faith of their sepoys. But as the nineteenth century wore
on, British efforts to regulate and constrain religious impulses, sharpened
still further by evangelical pressures as well as the widespread attribution of
the revolt of 1857-1858 to Muslim intrigues, marginalized the faqīrs. This
process was accompanied by significant shifts within the moral economy
occasioned by colonialism and modernity, which collectively meant that
the sepoy/saints who had once been tolerated, even celebrated, came to be
threatened on both flanks: Muslim leaders increasingly viewed ‘Barrack
Islam’ as anachronistic, military officials saw its more extreme manifesta-
tions as subverting the colonial order. This can be witnessed through the
life of Banē Miyān, who was not as well-educated as Afzal Shāh, and who
found himself increasingly at odds with the Hyderabad establishment. His
undergoing of a religiously ecstatic experience and public consumption of
opium and hashish led to his incarceration in an asylum. His actions were
deemed madness by colonial officials (exposing a fascinating link between