Persian Texts Reveal How Colonial India Classified Religion and Power

Martin had commissioned a Brahmin scholar named Delaram to translate two texts on the Jain Digambara tradition from Brajbhasha into Persian. Arzoumanov described the manuscript as highly unusual because it marked the first time he had encountered a Persian text focused on Jainism. The discovery prompted him to investigate further Persian-language works commissioned during colonial rule that documented Indian religious groups, social structures, and regional histories.

According to Arzoumanov, historians of colonial India have rarely relied on Persian-language sources despite the vast amount of material produced for local officers of the East India Company. These texts, he argues, were created to help colonial authorities survey, classify, and govern a territory they considered unfamiliar. He believes colonial officials actively encouraged the development of a new kind of literature designed to identify and control the population under British authority.

The use of Persian for these translations reflected the linguistic and political realities of eighteenth-century India. By that period, Persian had become the dominant language of administration, elite culture, and education across much of the subcontinent. Its prominence originated between the eleventh and twelfth centuries with the arrival of Muslim dynasties in North India, including the Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughal Empire. Closely connected to the Persianate world of West and Central Asia, these rulers institutionalised Persian as the official language for administration, legal records, court chronicles, revenue documents, diplomacy, and literature.

Arzoumanov explained that Persian did not eliminate local languages but instead interacted with them. Anyone employed in administration was required to work through Persian, making it indispensable for the British East India Company as it expanded control over existing political systems. He noted that many translation commissions were awarded to Hindu scholars because colonial authorities believed they possessed deeper knowledge of India’s religious traditions.

By the seventeenth century, Persian had already been embraced by Hindu intellectuals and literary figures in South Asia. Arzoumanov emphasised that Hindu scholars played a major role in shaping Persian literature in the region. In Lucknow, he observed, the growing adoption of Persian among Hindus reflected close engagement with Islam and Sufi traditions. He cited the example of the celebrated poet Qatil, who belonged to the Khatri scribal community and later adopted Shiism.

Arzoumanov also highlighted the participation of Hindu communities in Muharram commemorations, including the composition of Urdu and Persian elegiac poetry mourning the death of Husayn during the Battle of Karbala. From the seventeenth through the eighteenth centuries, Persian increasingly became associated with the Bhakti movement, with devotional writers using the language to produce religious literature. According to Arzoumanov, Persian effectively evolved into a language used by Hindu religious communities as well.

This integration of Persian into Hindu intellectual and religious life expanded significantly by the nineteenth century. Arzoumanov referred to the example of Munshi Naval Kishore, the influential publisher from Lucknow who printed numerous Persian texts on Hinduism. He argued that Persian became one of the principal languages through which readers accessed translations of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

Arzoumanov’s research focuses on several Persian works produced under colonial supervision, including Atmaram’s Dahira al-Fuah, Sital Singh’s Silsila-yi Jungiyan, Mathuranath’s Riyaz-al-Madahib, and James Skinner’s Tasrih al-Aqvam. In an upcoming research paper, he argues that these texts were partly motivated by the colonial administration’s need to identify and regulate highly mobile and influential ascetic communities. Their purpose was to facilitate the identification of sectarian affiliations across India.

These works represented some of the earliest attempts at comprehensive religious surveys based on interviews and direct observation. Unlike earlier Sanskrit sources that concentrated primarily on philosophical ideas, these Persian texts documented people, practices, clothing, symbols, and visible identifiers. Produced within an ethnographic and classificatory framework encouraged by East India Company officials, the manuscripts sought to transform religious diversity into an administrative category.

One of the most innovative features of these texts was the inclusion of paintings depicting various religious communities. Visual markers such as forehead markings, clothing styles, and ritual objects were systematically presented to identify different groups. Arzoumanov noted that some of the sects described in these manuscripts may have been artificially constructed. He cited the example of worshippers of the Sun God, questioning whether they truly constituted a separate religious sect.

The terminology used in these Persian texts also reflected the influence of Islamic intellectual traditions. The term “firqa,” originally associated with divisions within the Muslim community, was used to describe Indian religious groups. Arzoumanov pointed out that the literal meaning of the term corresponds closely to the English word “sect.” Another frequently used word was “mazhab,” which initially referred to a legal school in Arabic before evolving in Persian to mean a religious community. The term “qaum” was also widely employed. While it often referred to caste groups in India, in the Iranian context it signified a people or nation.

By the mid-nineteenth century, Persian had largely been replaced by English and regional Indian languages. Its role as the language of administration and elite culture gradually disappeared outside Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. Yet Arzoumanov’s research reveals that Persian once occupied a central position in India’s political, intellectual, and religious life, while also serving as a key instrument in the colonial project of classification and control.