Last week, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath defended the banning of Halal certification in the state, claiming without sources that Halal-certified products fund Islamist terrorism. Countering this, Indian Muslims have argued that Halal is a dietary choice, akin to Sattvic or Jain food.
With debate raging around the term, it’s worth stepping back to understand the history of Halal, and the various ways it has been seen by the people of Asia over time. Once a prescriptive notion for good behaviours, Halal has evolved through the centuries: a marker of identity, a dog-whistle for persecution, a flexible political concept, and finally into a multi-billion dollar global industry.
To put it briefly: contemporary India’s notion of Halal has little to do with how we’ve seen it in the past.
Kublai Khan’s Halal incident
Halal, simply put, refers to behaviours recommended or permitted by the Quran and Islamic jurisprudence. It is the opposite of haram, forbidden behaviours. While ‘Halal meat’ has dominated headlines in contemporary India, the concept applies to all spheres of life, from financial transactions to marriage customs. In court arguments earlier this year, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta expressed surprise that Halal certification could extend to, say, cement or water bottles. But since the term is meant to express what is good for Muslims to follow/purchase/do, this is not really a contradiction.
With all this said, since Halal behaviours can be quite distinct, they serve as a form of Muslim self-identification, and as a way for other communities to demarcate or discriminate against Muslims. In an incident widely written about by medieval observers, including the famous Venetian traveller Marco Polo, an insistence on ‘Halal’ was blown out of all proportion.
In 1280, a group of Muslim merchants arrived in what is now Beijing to present fine eagles and falcons to Kublai Khan (r. 1260–1294). Historian Johan Elverskog analyses this meeting in his book Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road. Kublai was the grandson of the (in)famous conqueror Genghis Khan, and ruled China at the time. While the Khan was pleased with the gifts, the ensuing banquet came to an awkward halt when the Muslim merchants refused the meat dishes, stating that they were not Halal. Kublai was enraged.
Soon after, on 27 January 1280, he issued an edict blaming various Muslim figures for political instability in previous decades. He concluded that this was because Muslims had refused to assimilate completely into Mongol traditions, citing the example of the merchants who had refused non-Halal meat. The Khan then ordered a ban on various Muslim practices in China, including Halal slaughter, circumcision, and cousin marriage.
However, as Elverskog points out, Kublai was a cannier politician than this incident might suggest. Muslims had been an influential class in Mongol-ruled China, working as merchants and tax collectors. Kublai’s predecessors, including Genghis Khan himself, had been extremely tolerant of Muslims. But China’s existing Confucian bureaucracy was suspicious of them, and their popularity was not helped by high-profile corruption scandals involving Muslim ministers, against whom Kublai had taken no action. It would seem that the Khan was seeking to quickly curry favour with his Chinese subjects by turning on the Muslims he’d once patronised. In fact, Elverskog notes, the ‘Muslim’ rebellions in Kublai’s edict had not even happened in the Khan’s territories, but in Central Asia.
Soon, Muslim merchants and bureaucrats were forced to flee China, taking with them their businesses and the enormous tariffs that came with them. Kublai soon back-pedalled, revoking his anti-Halal decrees. However, Elverskog notes drily, “the damage had been done”. Muslims would never again be as influential in China. Kublai’s descendants would instead have to contend with the no less-troublesome Chinese Confucian bureaucracy.
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Indian rulers and merchants on Halal
Meanwhile, in the Indian Ocean world, rather different approaches to Halal were taking shape. In northern India, the Delhi Sultanate had managed to consolidate a Muslim ruling class, with often-reactionary intellectuals and clerics arriving from Mongol-devastated Central Asia. Debates raged among the ulema and the Sultans. As the late Prof Satish Chandra demonstrates in his classic Medieval India: From Sultanat to the Mughals, Muslim rulers in India quickly grasped that pristine notions of Halal and haram, permissible or forbidden, did not hold up to the realities of statecraft.
Indeed, even the clergy were not above ignoring textual injunctions. For example, Jalaluddin Khilji (r. 1290–96) provoked controversy by declaring a policy of religious benevolence and disavowing forceful conversions. (The latter was demanded by some clerics even though it was haram.) On the other hand, his nephew and successor Alauddin (r. 1296–1316) insisted on keeping subjects in line through public brutality — though this, as the Qazi of Delhi argued, was also haram.
On the Malabar Coast a couple of centuries later, the Samuthiri (or Zamorin) of Kozhikode had also arrived at a compromise with the wealthy Muslim merchants of the great port. As noted in an earlier edition of Thinking Medieval, rulers on India’s coast had a long history of benevolence to Muslim communities. In turn, Muslim merchants supplied them not only with goods and taxes, but frequently with political and financial support. And so, accommodations could easily be found. Ma Huan, a Chinese Muslim voyager and translator, had this to say about Kozhikode’s religious policy in the 1430s: “The king and the people all refrain from eating the ox. The great chiefs are Muslim people; [and] they all refrain from eating the flesh of the pig. Formerly there was a king who made a sworn compact with the Muslim people, [saying] ‘You do not eat the ox; I do not eat the pig; we will reciprocally respect the taboo’; [and this compact] has been honoured right down to the present day.” (Edited for brevity).
Textually speaking, beef was very much Halal for Muslims; on the other hand, Hindus had no particular taboo against pork. In fact, medieval court manuals like the Manasallosa provided mouth-watering recipes for barbecued pork ribs. But in India, texts could not be allowed to get in the way of mutually beneficial and respectful relationships.
Indeed, it was very much the same reasoning that drove early modern rulers like Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) to impose restrictions on the slaughter of cows, firstly on specific days and, eventually, nearly completely. According to Prof Chandra, this was aimed directly at integrating his Rajput vassals more firmly into the state apparatus; Akbar may also have been influenced by Jain intellectuals at his court, like Harivijaya Suri. The ulema was outraged. Cow slaughter on Eid-ul-Adha was considered halal, so the clerics Ahmad Sirhindi and Abd al-Qadir Badauni saw such policies as unnecessary concessions to ‘infidels’.
(Another aspect of these restrictions, much more difficult to address, is how oppressed communities like Dalits, who historically relied on cow meat and leather, and who had not been claimed by Hindus in the 17th century, got by). Despite these considerations, the ban remained mostly in place until the reign of Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707), who rolled it back and affirmed the clerics’ right to perform cow sacrifices — but even Aurangzeb still applied occasional restrictions in the interest of public order.
Also read: Halal certification is turning into a scam. It’s creating a Muslim-only economy
Halal in today’s world
As all this goes to show, the concept of Halal has been interpreted in a variety of ways over the centuries. While it certainly applies to food, it also applies to notions of just rule, marriage, and financial relationships, among many others. But the Indian subcontinent has a long and demonstrable tradition of massaging or otherwise modifying notions of Halal and haram to suit the realities of a diverse society (or, at least, to respect the sentiments of specific castes).
What also needs to be said is that the pre–modern scope of Halal is not the same as that of today’s consumerist world. From the 20th century onward, the term found new meaning as Muslims across the world searched for identity in the aftermath of colonialism. And, as the global market economy flourished, prosperous Muslims across the world developed a large appetite for Halal products. While Right-wing Hindu leaders have weaponised the word to discriminate against working-class Muslims, the rest of the world has been much more pragmatic about Halal (which is, ironically, more in line with Indian history). After all, technically speaking, just as a Muslim can consume Sattvic products, a Hindu or a Christian can consume (or even produce and sell) Halal products.
The Global Halal Industry: A Research Companion estimates that the ‘Halal market’ is worth several billion dollars, with the most important sectors being food, travel, fashion, pharmaceuticals/cosmetics, and media/recreation. Muslim-majority countries in the Indian Ocean, especially India’s medieval trading partners—Malaysia and Indonesia—lead many of these sectors. However, non-Muslim-majority countries like Singapore, the Netherlands, and Belgium also have a substantial, and lucrative, presence.
Even while questions of cultural assimilation and integration rage on the European far-Right, many European countries possess Halal certification bodies. Even if, for the sake of argument, one were to set aside constitutional principles of individual liberty, it is historically ironic that Uttar Pradesh, which is more populated than France, Germany, and the UK combined, and has more Muslims than the entire country of Morocco, does not recognise Halal certification. The twisting and misunderstanding of India’s past might serve short-term electoral gains, but it comes at the cost of discrimination, alienation, and endlessly missed opportunities.
Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of ‘Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire’ and the award-winning ‘Lords of the Deccan’. He hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti and is on Instagram @anirbuddha.
This article is a part of the ‘Thinking Medieval‘ series that takes a deep dive into India’s medieval culture, politics, and history.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)