The Brill Dictionary of Religion describes pilgrimage as 'time-honoured migrations to outlying sacred places … This devotional journeying is underlain by the belief that the local presence of a deity, a hero, or a saint in this specific place makes transcendence in immanence especially effective and available to experience, and thereby especially efficacious for one's own concerns.' From the point of view of cultural history, a pilgrimage is a symbolic move, incorporating both bodily relocation and heightened piety. For Muslims, the Haj, the pilgrimage to the two holy sites in Mecca and Medina, is not merely a farz (duty) but also a spiritual journey – one that can, for the fortunate few, lead to spiritual evolution and salvation. Consumed with a desire to see the two holiest shrines of the Muslim world, the Baitul Muqaddas and the Haram Sharif, pilgrims embark upon a journey of faith that takes them out of their small, protected world, across the seas to another world.
In Islam there is no fixed age by which time the Haj must be undertaken, and consequently most Muslims, till very recently, would postpone it to old age. For centuries this explained why older people afflicted by disease and infirmity, and the poor and indigent, formed the bulk of pilgrim traffic. Year after year, governments across Asia and Africa were forced to incur the expense of repatriating the destitute and penniless, and local authorities had to cope with the burial of those who died of disease, neglect or poverty in the Holy Land. Also, given the phenomenally large numbers of pilgrims who descended upon the holy sites during the annual Haj pilgrimage, several issues came into play – trade, commerce, transportation, sanitation and the logistics of housing, feeding and caring of 'Allah's guests'. The question of pilgrimage thus went beyond the confines of mere religion, spilling over from the personal to the public domain, from the sacred to the secular.
There are historical records of Indian Muslims going on Haj from the medieval period; the earliest text documenting the voyage and the sights is Anisul Hujjaj authored by the tutor of the Mughal princess, Zaibunnisa. While a great many went of their own accord, there are also references to those who were sent on 'compulsory' pilgrimage. Akbar is known to have sent his regent, Bairam Khan, on one such prolonged stay in Mecca when the latter fell out of favour. This is not to say, however, that the great majority of those who went did not do so of their own free will. There have also been instances of alim, or men of learning, who chose to extend their voyage after the Haj by going for long stays at centres of learning, such as the al-Azhar university in Cairo. For some, the Haj offered an opportunity to meet Muslims from all over the world and interact with ulama from different traditions and discourses.
With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Haj traffic from Southasia and Southeast Asia picked up. The British colonial government had a virtual monopoly on the ships that plied the Arabian sea at the time, and the entire Haj passage was rigorously monitored and controlled. The government kept an especially careful eye on the hajis who went from India, not merely because they were Indian subjects, a great many of whom were venturing out into a new world for the first time in their life, but also for reasons of trade and commerce. The British had a monopoly on just about everything that was sold in the markets of Mecca and Medina and, except for local produce, everything that was sold in these shops was manufactured in Britain.