The
essays in this book cover a wide range of topics and provide a
comprehensive summary of the rich diversity and cultural syncretism
which are the hallmarks of the Islamic traditions in India.
India’s Islamic Traditions: 711-1750
Ed. By Richard M. Eaton
Oxford University Press
Pages: 439
Price: Rs 425
Hindus
and Muslims have lived together for centuries and among many questions
that have remained unanswered or partly answered is one which asks: How
did South Asia become home to more Muslims than those living in the
entire Middle East?
Also raised are questions like: How were
religions and state power related to pre-colonial times and how did
Muslims in political authority interact with non-Muslims? And over the
course of more than twelve centuries had Muslims and Islamic Traditions
become indigenised as natural elements of India’s cultural landscape?
These and many other questions have been raised in this wide study and
efforts have been made to answer them howsoever unconvincingly.
All kinds of answers, often
contradictory to each other are given and analysed. Was there forced
conversions? If so, who got converted? Was Brahmanism and the caste
factor good reasons for Hindus of lower castes opting for Islam to
escape from upper caste tyranny? These and allied subjects are answered
by as many as seventeen scholars, each contributing one chapter that
makes this volume all-inclusive.
The invading Muslim leaders like Babar
had contempt for Hindus. Babar wrote to say that Hindustan is a country
that “has few pleasures to recommend it”. According to him the people in
the country “have no genius, no comprehension of mind, no politeness of
manners, no kindness or fellow-feeling… no skill or knowledge!” And
there hasn’t been a more damning indictment of Hindus.
Was that another reason for many Hindus
getting converted? According to the historians of the Delhi Sultanate
Hinduism was “an absolutely worthless and contemptible religion” and a
demand was made that the Sultan must not be content with taking “jizya”
from the Hindu who are “worshippers of idols and of cow dung” but must
“strive with all his courage to overthrow infidelity and to slaughter
its leaders who in India are the Brahmans”.
Then there is the attitude of the
celebrated Naqshbandi Sufi Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624) who had
adopted an attitude diametrically opposed to Dara Shikoh. Accord¬ing to
Sirhindi, absolutely no religious value could be ascribed to the Hindu
tradition which to him was “the embodiment of infidelity”.
As he put it: “Islam and infidelity are
two irreconcilable opposites which could only thrive at the expense of
each other” and the honour of Islma required the humiliation of
infidels. The Hindus must therefore be oppressed, treated…and
mercilessly subjected to “Jizya”. The supremacy of Islam must fearlessly
be demonstrated and “a very effective way to do it is by cow sacrifice
which is one of the most glorious commandments of Islam in India”.
Did fear lead to accepting Islam by a
segment of Hindus? According to Yohann Friedmann, a contributor, “the
development of Sirhindi’s modern image is a clear reflection of the fact
that the uncompromising attitude towards Hindus gained the upper hand,
both politically and culturally”.
Many Hindus (incidentally, it is granted
that the term Hindu was a Muslim invention) who got employment and
learnt certain arts from Muslim migrants from Central Asia took to
Islam. Then again it is said that land-holding families of upper India
declared themselves Muslims in order to escape imprisonment for
non-payment of revenue or to keep ancestral lands in the family. Some
landlords took to Islam out of gratitude for favours granted to them by
Muslim rulers.
Over and over again contributors draw
reference to the ‘suffering’ endured by low caste people suggesting that
Islam was a way to escape the yoke of “Brahmanic oppression”. Others
took to Islam to gain “social equality”.
One of the contributors T.W. Arnold
explains the growth of Islam in India mainly in terms of “preaching by
Muslim missionaries” like Sufi saints who made deep inroads among rural
people in Kashmir. Another contributor, Cynthia Talbot makes the point
that strong reaction to Islam is because of as many as 60,000 Hindu
temples are said to have been torn down by Muslim rulers and mosques
built on temple foundations of some 3,000 of them. But here again the
argument is made that the temple-destruction was not religion-based but
politically motivated. Hindu temples represented power of the Hindu
rulers.
Five chapters deal with how Islam
conquered the hearts and minds of people in Kashmir, East Bengal, West
Punjab, Kerala and Andbra Pradesh, largely away from Islamic clusters,
as in Lucknow where, between 1775 and 1800, population surged from
200,000 to 3,00,000 with over 1,000 mosques available to serve Muslims.
In the case of Kashmir, especially,
credit for change of religion is attributed to the work of devout Sufis
but more especially to the bold protest of Lal Ded, a Saiva mystic of
the 14th century against the supremacy of the Brahman priests and the
social inequalities of her age.
The point is made by one Mohammad Isaq
Khan that “Islam did not make its way into Kashmir by ‘forcible
conquest’ but by ‘gradual conversion for which the influx of foreign
adventurers both from the South and from Central Asia had prepared the
ground”.
Though much has been said of the
approaches of Akbar the Great, Dara Shikoh, Aurangazeb and several
others towards Hindus, there is hardly any word about Tipu Sultan’s
aversion to Hindus and the destruction of temples he indulged in.
The disturbing part of this collection
of essays is that the stress is laid out on the diverse standards of
behaviour in which Islamic rulers functioned and no one theory gets
credit for totality and incontrovertibility. Even in South India it
would seem that Islam and Hinduism in 18th century rather than being in
conflict survived in close accommodation with each other.
The religious environment was syncretic
in nature. But the fact remains that Muslims remain a force to reckon
with today whatever the plusses and minuses of their cultural heritage.
What this book provides is a background to the past in all its
convolutions. Muslims in India today seem rudderless, but under the new
political dispensation they may yet get into the mainstream and become a
force to reckon with.
M.V. KAMATH
