This dissertation studies the changing contours of an Islamic revivalist movement, the Tariqah-i Muhammadiyah in nineteenth century United Provinces and Bengal. Focusing on Karamat Ali Jaunpuri (1800-73), nineteenth century Bengal's most influential Sunni Muslim scholar of religion, I explore why it was imperative for some adherents of the Tariqah-i Muhammadiyah movement to abandon anti-colonial militant jihad and evolve into a quietist religious group supporting Britain's empire in India. Such scholars including Karamat Ali declared British India to be a 'domain of Islam' and sought to actualize the normative ideal of Shariah within, and not outside, the religio-political framework that it demarcated. I argue that it was an anxious concern to preserve Sunni Islamic law that prompted this radical reorientation and document how scholars like Karamat Ali legitimized British rule in India through their disciplinary practice of Islamic jurisprudence.;The dissertation consists of four chapters. The first chapter studies how in the aftermath of British occupation of Delhi (1803) the Tariqah-i Muhammadiyah movement radically critiqued the culture of Islamicate kingship that the imperial Mughals had evolved and called for a new 'politics for faith' that privileged the actualization of Shariah over the concerns of institutional politics. The second chapter reconstructs Karamat Ali's life describing his early days in the northern Indian town of Jaunpur and his emergence as Bengal's most influential Sunni Muslim scholar of religion in the sixth decade of the nineteenth century. The third chapter studies the growth of the non- mujahidin faction of the Tariqah-i Muhammadiyah movement in Bengal with a focus on Karamat Ali's reform initiative in the eastern Bengal countryside. The last chapter studies the challenges that the Ahl-i hadis movement, the Faraizi movement, and the wujudiyah Sufis posed to Karamat Ali's initiative. It argues that it was his concern over these sectarian conflicts along with his appreciation of the colonial state's policy of non-interference in religious affairs that converted Karamat Ali to pro-British politics sometime in the 1850s. It also argues that it was the dynamic nature of the movement's 'politics for faith' that enabled him to reorient his religio-juridical position on the political question.
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