Paper short abstract:

A critical examination of the autobiography of a 19th century North Indian school teacher to uncover the personal, communal, religious, political and social factors that facilitated his conversions from Sunni Islam to the Pranami sect, then to Christianity, and finally to evangelical Protestantism.

Paper long abstract:

At the age of 50, on the 25th anniversary of his baptism, and 2 years after his promotion to the second highest position in the Methodist hierarchy, Zahur-ul-Haqq wrote an autobiography that recounted his religious migration from Sunni Islam to Methodist Christianity. It was, according to him, a path with a number of religious conversions, and he has left us with hints about and explanations for some of the factors that went into the various decisions he made along the way. The fact that he never changed his name, along with certain features of his thought that are evident in his writing, indicate that he also did not see conversion as a total rejection of the past, but rather a gradual and ongoing movement toward what he named as "truth." This paper will first of all locate Haqq's autobiography within the genre of Methodist conversion narratives, and will compare it to standard Methodist narratives, so that the unique characteristics and emphases of Haqq's autobiography can be discerned. Secondly, it will draw on historical material to understand the particular religious traditions, in their North Indian context, with which he was affiliated, to reveal some of the elements of those traditions which made it possible for him to move from one to another without great disruption, and with a measure of continuity. Finally, the paper will draw some conclusions about what Zahur-ul-Haqq's autobiography can tell us regarding the nature of religious conversion in British North India in the 19th century.