BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 42 of 143

Correct — A, Haji Shariatullah. The Faraizi (Farazi) movement was begun in eastern Bengal by Haji Shariatullah of Shamail in Faridpur district, who sailed for Mecca as a young man, spent close to two decades in the Hejaz absorbing the puritan reformist currents of the Arabian peninsula, and returned to Bengal in about 1818–20 to preach. The movement's name is the key to its programme: 'faraiz' are the obligatory duties enjoined by Islam, and Shariatullah's call was for ordinary Bengali Muslims to strip away accreted local custom and observe those duties exactly. His most consequential ruling was that British-ruled Bengal was dar-al-harb — territory not under Muslim rule — from which he drew the conclusion that the Friday and Id congregational prayers should be suspended, a position that turned a devotional reform into an implicitly political one. Because his following came overwhelmingly from the poor Muslim cultivators and weavers of Faridpur, Dhaka, Bakarganj, Mymensingh and Tippera, the movement carried an agrarian charge from the start, and under his son it acquired an explicitly agrarian programme. That son, Dudu Miyan (Muhsinuddin Ahmad), took charge on his father's death in 1840, built a khalifa-and-panchayat organisation, and directed the Faraizis against Hindu and Muslim zamindars and European indigo planters alike, with the famous doctrine that land belongs to God and no one may levy a tax on it. He is therefore the organiser and radicaliser of the movement, not its founder. Sayyid Ahmad, of Rae Bareli, led an entirely separate movement — the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya, commonly called the Wahhabi movement in Indian textbooks — which was based in north India and the north-west frontier, not Bengal. Since exactly one of the three named men founded the Faraizi movement, option (d) fails its own test.

• (b)Sayyid Ahmad — Sayyid Ahmad of Rae Bareli (1786–1831) founded the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya, the movement Indian textbooks label 'Wahhabi', and died fighting the Sikh state at Balakot in 1831. It is contemporaneous with the Faraizis and shares their puritan reformist inspiration, which is exactly why it is placed here — but it was a north Indian and frontier movement, not a Bengal one.
• (c)Dudhu Mian — The strongest wrong answer, because Dudu Miyan is the Faraizi leader most often named in exam questions. He was Shariatullah's son, succeeded him in 1840, and gave the movement its cell structure, its arbitration panchayats and its confrontation with zamindars and indigo planters. Succeeding a movement and building it out is not founding it.
• (d)More than one of the above — This option is correct only if at least two of the three named men can each be called a founder of this movement, and they cannot. Shariatullah founded it; his son inherited it; Sayyid Ahmad founded something else entirely. A single act of foundation with a single author leaves nothing for an inclusive option to hold.

Early nineteenth-century Bengal produced a cluster of movements in which religious purification and agrarian grievance ran together, and the Faraizi movement is the standard example. The reformist impulse came from the Arabian peninsula, carried home by pilgrims: purge popular Islam of shrine worship, saint veneration and Hindu-influenced village custom, and return to the obligatory duties laid down in scripture. What made that programme explosive in Bengal was the audience. Eastern Bengal's Muslim population was overwhelmingly a class of poor cultivators, weavers and boatmen who paid rent to largely Hindu zamindars and, from the 1830s, were being pressed into indigo cultivation by European planters. A creed telling them that their religious obligations came from God rather than from local custom shaded easily into a claim that their economic obligations to the zamindar were also not sacred. That is the pattern the exam is testing: a socio-religious reform movement whose social base converts it into a peasant movement within a generation. The same logic runs through Titu Mir's following in Barasat and the Pagal Panthis of Mymensingh.

Two discriminations decide this question, and both are worth learning as habits. The first is founder versus successor. Indian history papers repeatedly pair a movement's founder with its most famous later leader and ask for the founder — Faraizi (Shariatullah, then Dudu Miyan) is the classic instance, and the same shape recurs with the Brahmo Samaj (Rammohan Roy, then Debendranath and Keshab Chandra Sen) and the Arya Samaj. Read the stem's verb carefully: 'founder' excludes the man who made the movement famous. The second is Faraizi versus Wahhabi. Both were puritan, both drew on Arabian reformism, both turned political, and both are usually taught in the same paragraph — but the Faraizis were Bengali and agrarian while Sayyid Ahmad's Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya was north Indian and militarised, ending at Balakot in 1831. Anchor each to its geography and the pairing becomes impossible to confuse. As for option (d), the correct method is not to guess how often such an option is keyed but to test it: name two men who each founded this movement. You cannot, so it falls.

• Haji Shariatullah (c. 1781–1840), born at Shamail in Faridpur district of eastern Bengal, spent about twenty years in Mecca and returned around 1818–20 to launch the Faraizi movement
• 'Faraiz' means the obligatory duties of Islam; Shariatullah declared British Bengal to be dar-al-harb and, on that reasoning, suspended the Friday and Id congregational prayers
• Dudu Miyan (Muhsinuddin Ahmad, c. 1819–1862) succeeded his father in 1840, organised the movement through khalifas and village panchayats, and pressed the doctrine that land belongs to God so no zamindar may tax it
• Sayyid Ahmad of Rae Bareli (1786–1831) founded the separate Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya, called the Wahhabi movement in Indian textbooks; he was killed at Balakot in 1831
• The Faraizi base lay in the districts of Faridpur, Dhaka, Bakarganj, Mymensingh and Tippera, where poor Muslim cultivators faced zamindari exactions and, from the 1830s, pressure to grow indigo

• Naming Dudu Miyan because he is the better-known Faraizi leader; the stem asks for the founder, and he is the successor
• Merging the Faraizi and Wahhabi movements into one because both are puritan and both are taught together — one is Bengali and agrarian, the other north Indian and militarised
• Reaching for 'More than one of the above' when two names in the list feel plausible. The option is only correct if you can positively name two founders of this same movement

BPSC keeps this area factual and personal — who founded it, who led it, which district it began in — and often loads the option list with the movement's successor rather than an unrelated name, so the discrimination being tested is founder versus later leader. UPSC almost never asks the bare founder; it prefers to match a movement to its region, to ask what a movement's specific demand was, or to test whether a named leader and organisation are correctly paired.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following statements about Dudu Miyan is correct ?

  • (a)He founded the Faraizi movement after returning from Mecca
  • (b)He succeeded Haji Shariatullah in 1840 and organised the Faraizis against zamindars and indigo planters
  • (c)He led the Wahhabi movement from the frontier base at Sithana
  • (d)He was killed at Balakot in 1831

  Answer(b) He succeeded Haji Shariatullah in 1840 and organised the Faraizis against zamindars and indigo planters — the founder was his father, and Balakot belongs to Sayyid Ahmad of Rae Bareli.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Sayyid Ahmad of Rae Bareli is associated with which one of the following ?

  • (a)The Faraizi movement of eastern Bengal
  • (b)The Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya, known in Indian textbooks as the Wahhabi movement
  • (c)The Pagal Panthi movement of Mymensingh
  • (d)The Tebhaga movement of Bengal

  Answer(b) The Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya, known in Indian textbooks as the Wahhabi movement — a north Indian and frontier movement, distinct from the Bengal-based Faraizis.