Haji
Shariatullah was an eminent Islamic reformer and brave freedom fighter
of Bangladesh. The district of Shariatpur is named after him.
He was born in 1781 in a petty Talukdar family at the village Shamail
under the then Madaripur sub-division of greater Faridpur district.
His father was Abdul Jalil Talukdar. He lost his father at the age
of 8 years and was brought-up by his uncle Azimuddin. After his primary
education he went to Calcutta and got admitted to Barashat Alia Madrasa.
He then received education from famous Madrassa of Furfura, Murshidabad.
He emigrated to Makkah in 1799, returned to Bangladesh in 1818 and
started an Islamic revivalist reform movement, akin to the contemporary
Arabian Wahhabism. The movement he started came to be popularly known
as the Faraizi Movement.
His reform movement was basically religious; but it touched upon various
other aspects of the society. He may be characterised as an Islamic
revivalist, a social reformer, a populist peasant leader and a freedom
fighter. These traits were symptomatic of the devastating malaise
which had taken hold of the people of Bengal who were then smarting
under the unhampered misrule, loot and plunder of the English East
India Company.
While going to the holy Makkah in 1799 at the age of 18, he left behind
a demurred, anguished, thrown over, unprotected people bemoaning at
the suppression and repression of the British occupier indigo planters
who lorded over them. The planters had by the side of them an equally
outlandish corporation of Hindu Marwary zaminders who purchased large-scale
zamindari estates under the terms and conditions of the permanent
settlement of 1793. A third group of agents, popularly called gomastas
of the private businesses of the officers of the East India Company,
who were also mainly Marwaris and their Bengali associates, took under
their monopoly control river ports and markets all over the country.
The combined perpetration of violence and extortion turned the people
into serfs and slaves of the type of Medieval Europe; the violent
social change was termed by the contemporary annual report of the
English Police Commissioner as a 'loathsome revolution'.
Shariatullah returned home in 1818, devoutly educated in religious
learning and Arabic literature, schooled under the supervision of
the great Islamic theologians of the time at Makkah with unbroken
scholarships for nearly two decades. His stay at Arabia from 1799
to 1818 coincided with the rise of the Mawahhidun revolution miscalled
Wahhabism of Arabia. He met Abdul Wahhab and was greatly influenced
by his thoughts. The revolutionary religious spirit of Islamic revivalism
that set the Arab's heart boiling, remained throbbing and afresh.
Shariatullah came back with a burning sparkle of the same revivalist
fire, which he tried to introduce in Bangladesh.
In 1818, Haji Shariatullah started his reform movement, which came
to be known as the Faraizi, spread far and wide and became popular
also in the neighbouring areas of greater Dhaka, Barisal and Comilla
districts during the lifetime of the Haji.
He emphasized on holding correct faith in the Tawhid (Unity of Allah)
and on the Prophethood of Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be
on him) as well as on abstaining strictly from associating any false
gods and goddesses with Him (shirk). Secondly, he laid extraordinary
emphasis on performing the compulsory religious duties of Islam, by
which he meant all necessary and mandatory duties, such as five times
daily prayers (salat), payment of poverty alleviation religious taxes
(zakat), fasting in the mouth of Ramadan (saum) and performance of
Hajj, which are Faraiz (compulsory duties) and hence the movement
was known as Faraizi. Besides, he emphasized on the unity and brotherhood
of the Muslims and equality of mankind; he condemned caste discrimination,
which had contaminated the Muslim society. He vehemently condemned
numerous un-Islamic customs, usage and polytheistic accretions that
had crept into the Muslim society by contagion of the practices of
the non-Muslim neighbours.
Following the classical doctrines of the Muslim legal experts as noted
down in Hedaya, he declared British India as a Dar- al- harb (an state
of war) and called the Muslims to fight for freedom against the occupation
power.
In the socio-economic field, following the injunctions of the Quran
to the effect that there is nothing due to man except the fruits of
his own strivings, he declared that zamindars created under the Permanent
Settlement had no right on the agricultural crops produced by the
tillers of the land. He instructed his followers not to participate
in the Puja festivities of the polytheistic Hindu neighbours, but
also not to pay any crop-levy imposed on them by the zamindars, besides
the legal revenues fixed by the rent-roll of the government. This
policy aroused the opposition of the newly created Hindu landlords
against his movement. They shrewdly combined their patronising forces
with the conservative Muslim peasantry and also took into their arms
the forces of the Indigo Planters and their combined forces of opposition
gradually came to a loggerhead about the year 1840, when he died and
was succeeded by his son Dudu Mian.
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