BOOK REVIEWS 113

The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760

By RICHARD M. EATON. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1993. Pp. xxvii + 359. Price HB £40.00. 0-520-08077-7.

The emergence of the Muslims of South Asia is a development of major

significance. Over the past millennium their numbers have grown from, prob-
ably, no more than a few thousand to over 300 million. They represent roughly
both one third of the peoples of the region and one third of the Muslim peoples
of the world. In recent centuries South Asian Muslims have become increasingly

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important contributors of new energy and new ideas to Islamic civilization as
a whole. Their presence in a region most of whose peoples are non-Muslim,
on the other hand, has helped to shape its politics, its modern states, the geo-
political orientations of these states, as well as fuelling continuing and urgent
debate about the relationship between religion and political identity. Richard
Eaton's life has been devoted to studying the historical processes which led to
the presence of vast numbers of South Asian Muslims. There have been import-
ant studies of Islamization in the Punjab, a major study of Islamization in the
Deccan, and now in his most significant work he explores the process in Bengal,
aiming to show how the region became host to the second largest Muslim
ethnic group after the Arabs.
Eaton divides his study into two parts. The first is concerned to set the scene
for the mass Islamization of Bengal. He surveys the economy, politics, and
culture of the region before the arrival of the Muslim conquerors. He then
shows how its largely Turkic rulers, deploying Perso-Islamic ideas of political
legitimacy, established themselves in the region from the thirteenth through to
the sixteenth century, in the process their symbols of authority being trans-
formed from Islamic ones designed to establish their claims against those of
the sultans of Delhi to indigenous ones which carried weight in Bengali society.
Within this framework of power Sufi sheikhs established followings and reputa-
tions; so great was that of one, Shah Jalal, that in 1245 Ibn BattQta was willing
to make a substantial diversion on his world travels in order to visit him in
Sylhet. Sufis also responded imaginatively to Hindu thought to the extent that
within a few years of the original conquest Arabic translations of the
Amrtakunda (Pool of Nectar), a Sanskrit manual on tantric yoga, had been
made; they were to circulate throughout Bengal and later India. Such was the
success of Sufi activity that by the sixteenth century Islamic piety had become
a force in its own right in the region to set beside the goddess cults and
Vaishnava devotees of its Hindu world. What should be clear, however, is that
at this stage no mass Muslim community had emerged. This was to take place
during the Mughal period in Bengal from the late sixteenth century through to
the mid-eighteenth century.
Part two' of the book explores this social cultural transformation.
Straightaway Eaton presents the reader with a paradox. It was not the policy
of the Mughals to promote the conversion of Bengalis, to Islam— indeed, he
produces some striking examples of Mughal desire to respect the ways of
Bengali Hindus—yet it was under their rule that a mass Muslim society
114 BOOK REVIEWS

emerged. This development stemmed from the attempts of the Mughals both
to exploit the resources of this rich province and to entrench their rule. At the
end of the sixteenth century the eastern areas of the Bengal delta were still
covered by vast forests. The Mughals gave land grants to Hindus, to Christians,
but in large part to Muslim notables, many of them 'ulamay and Sufis, to clear
the forests and bring the land under cultivation. In consequence there developed
a close relationship between the development of settled farming and the estab-
lishment of local Muslim religious leadership; indeed, folklore is full of tales
of the feats of Sufi pirs in taming the beasts of the jungle and bringing forested

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areas under the plough. Thus, as Eaton tells us, 'Islam was introduced as a
civilization-building ideology associated both with settling and populating the
land and with constructing a transcendent reality associated with that process.'
This part concludes by examining the spread of mosques and shrines throughout
the newly cultivated landscape and by charting the rooting of Islam in the
region from the first inclusion of Allah and His Prophet alongside indigenous
deities, such as Chandi and Satyapir, to their subsequent identification with
them, and finally to their complete displacement of them. Ultimately the
prophets of the Semitic tradition came to be recognized as Bengali prophets;
Adam is the first cultivator, Abraham a pioneer who organized the local labour
force to cut down forests. As Eaton concludes, Islam had succeeded both in
appropriating and in being appropriated by Bengali civilization. This is a
convincing and thoroughly well-worked-out argument which is judiciously and
lucidly expounded. It rests on sources in Persian, Arabic, Bengali, Sanskrit, and
European languages, as well as some notably fruitful research in the Persian
records of the Sylhet and Chittagong collectorates. Most of all, however, it
rests on years of thought on the issues involved.
Those with the slightest acquaintance with arguments about the Islamization
of India in general or Bengal in particular will quickly grasp the substantial
contribution that Eaton has made. There is no room here for the conversion
by the sword theories beloved of the British colonial official and missionary,
William Muir. Nor is there room for theories of conversion by means of
political power; in India in general and in Bengal in particular Islam gained
most adherents at places furthest removed from its political centre. For the
same reason there is little to be said for the argument that Indians became
Muslim in order to be better able to receive patronage from their Muslim
rulers. Furthermore, Eaton's work substantially undermines the popular
explanation of mass Muslim conversion in terms of revolt against the oppres-
sion of Brahminical society. In Bengal Eaton shows that those from whom
Muslim converts were largely drawn—Rajbansis, Pods, Chandals, Kuchs, etc.—
were also those least exposed to Brahminic culture. As with his work on the
Deccan, Eaton has examined the mechanics of religio-cultural transformation
in the region as no one has done before. His argument now dominates the field.
Beyond the major argument about the process of Islamization, Eaton's work
offers further conclusions. It brings forward fresh evidence to support the now
widely accepted argument that Muslim India in the eighteenth century, far
from being in a state of decline, although that is how it may have appeared
 BOOK REVIEWS 115

from Delhi, was in fact in a state of vital provincial growth. Key players in
this process, moreover, were local notables, who in Bengal, as elsewhere in the
Muslim world, were responding with much creativity to the challenges of
economic and political change. In addition, Eaton's Bengali example gives
pause for thought for those who associate Islam essentially with urban culture.
In West Asia and North Africa this might be so, but in this region of South
Asia it revealed a remarkable capacity to entrench itself in the rural environment
and to become a profound expression of the identity of the people of the
region. Finally, if we consider Eaton's work in the light of the long-term

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development of Islamic civilization, it tells of a key process in the great shift
in the centre of gravity of that civilization as from the thirteenth century it
begins to establish itself east of the Hindu Kush. Now the majority of Muslims
live east of this line and this is also where the most dynamic events in the
world economy are now taking place.
Francis Robinson
Royal Holloway, University of London

Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan. His Life and Times

By STANLEY WOLPERT. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Pp. xii + 378. Price HB £25.00. 0-19-507661-3.

The Discourse and Politics of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

By ANWAR H. SYED. London: Macmillan, 1992. Pp. xvi + 269. Price
HB £25.00. 0-333-56478-2.

In its brief history Pakistan has witnessed a number of political, constitutional,

and ethnic upheavals. Its political history is characterized by powerful indi-
viduals who have tried to refashion the nascent country in their own vision,
sometimes at the expense of contradicting themselves, or by simply bypassing
constitutional prerogatives. Following the demise of the Quaid-i-Azam M.A.
Jinnah, an unending game of musical chairs began in the corridors of power.
Pakistan had been established through a political struggle fought by constitu-
tional means but was soon subjected to non-representative bureaucratic and
military oligarchies which in their search for legitimacy often co-opted landed
and religious elites. Its disparate regional and pluralist bodies could have been
brought together only through an egalitarian and democratic set-up, but with
the bureaucrats and generals calling the shots it never came about. Government
advanced at the expense of the nation, and this created centrifugal tendencies.
The dilemma facing its rulers has been the result of the manipulation of power
by a thinly based, non-representative elite. However, it would be simplistic to
absolve the politicians of blame. By pursuing a narrow agenda heavily influ-
enced by personal vendetta, they only assisted fragmentation. In such circum-
stances, when Zulfikar Ah Bhutto promised a fresh start, especially after the
separation of the eastern wing, Pakistanis discovered a new enthusiasm for a