Some 10 years ago a certain Mr. P.N. Mathur from USA emailed to know through the medium of Mathur Association Bombay whether there was anything like “Maulawale Mathurs” and if yes, were they some different type of Mathurs or it was their one among the 84 Mathur Al’s. Recently another Mathur from Delhi asked us the same question, saying that his daughter was being proposed for marriage in a Jaipur Mathur family whose origin was traced to an old U.P. Maulawale Mathur clan and therefore he wanted to ascertain whether the family were ‘pure’ Mathurs or of some mixed descent. I was surprised that this long forgotten, historical and ancient, albeit very much real word, buried under layers and layer of obscurity, not only still existed in remote memory of present generation but was also being sought to be rekindled. So, based on information I had on the subject since long ago from my ancestors, what I replied to them both is now penned in this article for the information of others of the present generation who may find it rather queer but interesting and informative.
The later, fast declining period of the 1526-1857 Mughal era in India (specially after Emperor Aurangzeb’s death in year 1707 and Iranian Emperor Nadir Shah’s brutal attack and ransacking of Delhi in year 1739) is considered by many as a Muslim Renaissance period in India. The Muslim rulers had then started realizing the importance of good relations with Hindus for stability of the empire and society. They gradually started turning their attention from fighting with small Hindu States and empire expansion to public welfare, literally pursuits and development of arts. Classical Music, poetry, Mushairas, sufi qawwalees, literature, philosophy and other fine arts like portrait painting, sculpturing, etc., strictly banned earlier by Aurangzeb, once again started coming out of their cocoon. Talking of renaissance, our biradri buzurgs of yester years used to say that one Bishan Chand, a Chelpuri Delhi Mathur (vaguely understood to be an ancestor way up the clan line of the Late Dr. Tara Chand, acclaimed historian and a Secretary, Education Deptt., Govt. of India in the 1950’s), a disciple of the well known poet Mirza Ghalib and himself an Urdu – Persian poet and writer in his own right was a favorite court poet in the durbar of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor. A Munshi Har Gopal ‘Tafta’ was another noted Urdu Poet of the era under reference.
Attitude and intolerance by Muslims towards Hindus gradually started softening and association between the two communities in Northern India, particularly in and around Delhi and Western U.P., started growing more cordial, sometimes even turning into friendship. Both communities, though still adherents to their respective religious faiths, developed appreciative understanding of each other’s religion. Many Delhi Hindus would attend the annual Urs at the Darghas of Muslim Saints Hazrat Nizamuddin and Bakhtiar Kaki and some would often offer ‘Sadqa’ "Niaz" (some sweets, flowers, chadder, oil lamp etc.) at a nearby Dargah. Offering sherbat during Tazyas procession in Muharram month of the Muslim calendar was a routine with many Hindu households not only in Delhi but also in other cities, particularly in U.P. Delhi Muslims in large number along with two royal princes representing the Mughal Emperor would regularly join the annual ‘Phool walon ki Sair’ procession to Jog Maya temple at Mehrauli. Inevitably, in course of time minute particles of Muslim culture and life style started creeping in the Hindu mind, more so in that of Kayasthas who were already culturally and socially closer to Muslims as compared to other Hindu sects.
Now talking specifically of Mathurs in the above context as also in the light of the topic of this write up, they were no exception to this latest cultural metamorphosis. To come closer to the Muslim rulers and elites, many Mathurs started adopting Muslim life style in their day to day life, dress code, food habits etc., including growing Muslim style beards and moustaches, even same style caps. Muslim Maulvis to teach Urdu and Persian to children (Maktab) were a common sight in most Mathur houses. Chaste Urdu (perhaps due also to its perceived sweetness and flowery latafat in speech) was their spoken and written language even at home. For example, if acontempt was to be expressed, they would invariably say,"Lahaul wala quwwat" or ‘Tobah tobah’ and would say 7 ‘Insha Allah’ for ‘God willing’. Words like Adabarz, ji-janab, tasleem, tashreef rakhye, ‘hukum farmaiye’ etc., were taught to Mathur children from childhood. Elders would often address their boys as ‘Barkhurdaar’ or ‘Mian Sahabzade’. Young girls in Mathur houses would be addressed as ‘Banno’ like ‘Baano’ and the married ones as ‘Bibi” like Muslims. In some houses the children would address their parents as ‘Abboo’ and ‘Amma’. Mathur boys at birth started being named with Urdu words in Muslim style like Shamsher Bahadur, Taj Bahadur, Iqbal Narain, Bhairon Baksh, Gulshan Behari, Shehzad Bahadur, Sartaj Bahadur, Umrao Bahadur, Gulzari Lal, ‘Zoraawar Singh’, Mehtab Chand etc. To cite other noteworthy examples, a certain “Bakhtawar Singh Mathur’ a land lord of Amroha (Moradabad, U.P.) had, in the 1800’s, a Mohalla in the town named after himself as ‘Kucha Bakhtawar Singh’, which is existing with the same name even today. Hyderabad had one Raja Mehboob Karan, a respected noble from the city’s royal, Asafjahi titled and highly acclaimed Mathur clan of the yester years.
It will be noted that though these names or surnames were not Islamic per se, they were definitely hard cored Urdu ones, many of them being in use even today.
Then some Mathurs went further ahead and, in a voluntarily developed show of closer social and cultural integration with their Muslim friends they would say, “Ya Maula’ as a Hindu would utter ‘Hey Bhagwan’. They started having beads Mala (rosary, called "Tasbeeh" in Arabic), in their hands and quietly chanting " Maula, Maula ", as a Hindu would say, "Ram Ram’ or ‘Hari Om’ during ‘mala japping’. The salient difference was that the fingers and beads in a Tasbeeh would move opposite to the Hindu way of ‘mala japping’. So, such Mathur families, (which included mostly well off ones) started being named as "Maula wale". In other words, short of uttering the Quranic Kalma and offering Namaz or Roza or Zakat, or taking beef, they appeared to be generally like Muslims in day to day life and behavior.
It must be emphatically mentioned here that despite their chosen way of life as above, the ‘Maulawales’ and their families still continued to be normal Hindus, following all their Hindu rituals and pujas. The so called ‘labelling’ of ‘Maulawale‘ was not at all looked down upon by other Mathurs with any sort of disrespect, degeneration, or a symbol of separation from the Mathur main stream for social and matrimonial purposes and for any interaction with the Mathur community at large in the country. .
This type of socio-religious copycatting perhaps continued till the near end of Muslim rule in India (1857) after which there were no further adaptation of such Muslim values and practices by others. However, till as late as the early1900’s, members and descendants of these clans (khandans), though no more chanting “Ya Maula” or using the Tasbeeh, still continued to be identified as Maulawale, something like a trade mark label of a recent past history, albeit no more of any significant value, stuck to them.
By the late 1920’s or so, except for some rarely found biradri elders who still happened to remember the Maulawale historical background, all Mathurs, including members of the later generations of the Maulawales themselves, had forgotten if and why at all were they called Maulawale.
Incidentally and in passing, it may be mentioned that till as late as 1940 the author had personally known descendants of two old Maulawale families from UP’s Agra and Moradabad cities respectively.
It must be reiterated that present and future generation descendants of the age old, historical Maulawales , are normal Mathurs in all respects, and no more labelled now as such.
Today’s Mathurs may perhaps, at best, know of this word, ‘Maula’ only as “Maula –o-Maula” from a Qawwali in a 2009 Bollywood film, ‘Delhi-6’.
Krishna Murari (murarikm@hotmail.com)
24-5-2017