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Islam, Sufism and Everyday Politics of
Belonging in South Asia
This book looks at the study of ideas, practices and institutions in South
Asian Islam, commonly identified as ‘Sufism’, and how they relate to politics
in South Asia. While the importance of Sufism for the lives of South Asian
Muslims has been repeatedly asserted, the specific role played by Sufism in
contestations over social and political belonging in South Asia has not yet
been fully analyzed.
Looking at examples from five countries in South Asia (India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan), the book begins with a detailed
introduction to political concerns over ‘belonging’ in relation to questions
concerning Sufism and Islam in South Asia. This is followed by sections on
producing and identifying Sufism; everyday and public forms of belonging;
Sufi belonging, local and national; and intellectual history and narratives of
belonging. Bringing together scholars from diverse disciplines, the book
explores the connection of Islam, Sufism and the politics of belonging in
South Asia. It is an important contribution to South Asian Studies, Islamic
Studies and South Asian Religion.
Deepra Dandekar is an Associate Member of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia

and Europe in a Global Context’ at Heidelberg University, Germany, and
works on gender and religion in Maharashtra.
Torsten Tschacher is Junior Professor of Muslim Culture and Society in

South Asia at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. His research focuses on the
history of Tamil-speaking Muslim societies in South India, Sri Lanka,
Singapore and Malaysia.
Routledge Advances in South Asian Studies
Edited by Subrata K. Mitra, South Asia Institute, University of
Heidelberg, Germany
South Asia, with its burgeoning, ethnically diverse population, soaring

economies, and nuclear weapons, is an increasingly important region in the
global context. The series, which builds on this complex, dynamic and volatile
area, features innovative and original research on the region as a whole or on
the countries. Its scope extends to scholarly works drawing on history, poli-
tics, development studies, sociology and economics of individual countries
from the region as well those that take an interdisciplinary and comparative
approach to the area as a whole or to a comparison of two or more countries
from this region. In terms of theory and method, rather than basing itself on
any one orthodoxy, the series draws broadly on the insights germane to area
studies, as well as the tool kit of the social sciences in general, emphasizing
comparison, the analysis of the structure and processes, and the application of
qualitative and quantitative methods. The series welcomes submissions from
established authors in the field as well as from young authors who have
recently completed their doctoral dissertations.
Suicide Protest in South Asia China–India Relations in the

Consumed by commitment Contemporary World
Simanti Lahiri Dynamics of national identity
and interest
E-Governance in India Yang Lu
Interlocking politics, technology
and culture Islam, Sufism and Everyday Politics
Bidisha Chaudhuri of Belonging in South Asia
Edited by Deepra Dandekar and
Globalisation and Governance Torsten Tschacher
in India
New challenges to institutions India-China Relations
and society Politics of resources, identity and
Harihar Bhattacharyya and authority in a multipolar
Lion König world order
Jagannath P. Panda
Indian Muslims and Citizenship
Spaces for Jihad in everyday life Indigenous Identity in South Asia
Julten Abdelhalim Making claims in the colonial
Chittagong Hill tracts
Tamina M. Chowdhury
Islam, Sufism and Everyday
Politics of Belonging in
South Asia
Edited by
Deepra Dandekar and Torsten Tschacher
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First published 2016
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© 2016 Deepra Dandekar and Torsten Tschacher
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Dandekar, Deepra, editor. | Tschacher, Torsten, editor.
Title: Islam, Sufism and everyday politics of belonging in South Asia /
edited by Deepra Dandekar and Torsten Tschacher.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2016. | Series:
Routledge advances in South Asian studies ; 31 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016009863| ISBN 9781138910683 (hardback) | ISBN
9781315693316 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Sufis–Political activity–South Asia. | Sufism–Political
aspects–South Asia. | Islam and politics–South Asia. | South Asia–Politics
and government.
Classification: LCC BP188.8.S64 I75 2016 | DDC 297.40954–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016009863
ISBN: 978-1-138-91068-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-69331-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman

by Taylor & Francis Books
Contents
List of figures viii

Preface ix
Note on transliteration x
List of contributors xi
Introduction: Framing Sufism in South Asian Muslim politics

of belonging 1
DEEPRA DANDEKAR AND TORSTEN TSCHACHER
PART I
Producing and identifying Sufism 17
1 Sufis, dervishes and Alevi-Bektaşis: Interfaces of heterodox Islam
and nationalist politics from the Balkans, Turkey and India 19
ROBERT M. HAYDEN
2 Who’s the master?: Understanding the religious preceptors on the

margins of modernized religions 40
DUŠAN DEÁK
3 Islamic and Buddhist impacts on the shrine at Daftar Jailani,

Sri Lanka 62
DENNIS B. MCGILVRAY
4 Longing and belonging at a Sufi saint shrine abroad 77

FRANK J. KOROM
PART II
Everyday and public forms of belonging 101
5 The politics of gender in the Sufi imaginary 103
KELLY PEMBERTON
vi Contents
6 The everyday as an enactment of the trauma of being a Muslim
woman in India: A study of two artists 122
SHAHEEN SALMA AHMED
7 Who is in? Who is out?: Social vs political space in the Sufi

shrines of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai and Syed Pir Waris Shah in
Sindh and Punjab, Pakistan 139
UZMA REHMAN
8 The survival of the syncretic cults of Shirdi Sai Baba and Haji Ali
despite Hindu nationalism in Mumbai 156
MARIKA VICZIANY
PART III
Sufi belonging, local and national 175
9 Abdul Kader Mukadam: Political opinions and a genealogy of
Marathi intellectual and Muslim progressivism 177
DEEPRA DANDEKAR
10 From ‘rational’ to ‘Sufi Islam’?: The changing place of Muslims

in Tamil nationalism 196
TORSTEN TSCHACHER
11 ‘Sindhis are Sufi by nature’: Sufism as a marker of identity

in Sindh 212
JULIEN LEVESQUE
12 The politics of Sufism on the ground: The political dimension of

Pakistan’s largest Sufi shrine 228
LINUS STROTHMANN
PART IV
Intellectual history and narratives of belonging 245
13 A garden of mirrors: Retelling the Sufi past and contemporary
Muslim discourse 247
AFSAR MOHAMMAD
14 ‘Islamic renaissance’, Sufism and the nation-state: A debate

in Kerala 262
NANDAGOPAL R. MENON
15 Mullā Vajhī’s Sab Ras 279

CHRISTINA OESTERHELD
Contents vii
16 Sufism in Bengali wa‘z mahfils 294
MAX STILLE
Bibliography 314
Index 344
List of figures
1.1 Billboards in front of the tomb/lodge complex of

Haci Bektaş Veli 21
1.2 Flag offerings to the saint Kanifnāth/Shāh Ramzān Māhī Savār 37
3.1 Sri Lankan Muslim pilgrims approaching the entrance into the
Jailani/Kuragala site 64
3.2 Islamic wall decorations for sale at the Jailani kandoori festival
in 2001 69
4.1 An early photo of Bawa portraying him and his unusually
piercing eyes 79
4.2 The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship cemetery 85
4.3 Bawa’s shrouded grave inside his mazār 86
4.4 The mazār of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen 88
6.1 Rummana Hussain, Is It What You Think? 132
6.2 Rummana Hussain, Is It What You Think? (detail) 133
6.3 Still from Shaheen Ahmed, Refuse/Resist 136
6.4 Still from Shaheen Ahmed, Refuse/Resist 136
8.1 The pathway to the Haji Ali dargāh 161
8.2 The Haji Ali dargāh in relation to the Mahalaxmi temple
in Mumbai 165
9.1 Mr Abdul Kader Mukadam at his residence in Mumbai, 2014 183
12.1 The shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh in 1928 233
12.2 The shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh during ‘urs 234
12.3 Data Darbar and surroundings 234
12.4 Data Darbar offices 236
Preface
The idea of compiling this edited book evolved out of a conference titled Sufi
Islam and the Politics of Belonging in South Asia, which was organized at the
Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’ at Heidelberg
University, Germany, in November 2014. The volume has also been funded
by the Cluster at Heidelberg and the Department of History and Cultural
Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. I want to express my gratitude to
both these institutions for making this volume possible. Many chapters in this
volume are a result of presentations made at this conference, and revolve
around outcomes, questions and discussions that these excellent addresses
raised.
This conference was part of a larger research project titled Sufi Shrines as
Transcultural Communicative Interfaces in Western India, coordinated by
Professor Dr Hans Harder, Head of the Department of Modern Languages
and Literatures at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg, which was funded by
the Cluster between 2012 and 2015. I take the opportunity of thanking many
of my colleagues at the Cluster, at the South Asia Institute, especially Pro-
fessor Harder, for making my research at Heidelberg possible, and of course
Swarali Paranjape for making the conference on Sufism, upon which this
volume is based, successful.
Deepra Dandekar
January 2016
Berlin
Note on transliteration
The chapters in this volume engage with sources in a large variety of lan-
guages and scripts, producing something of an editor’s nightmare. On the one
hand, the possibility to recover primary and secondary sources used in dif-
ferent languages and to recognize widely used terms was considered desirable.
On the other hand, the editors did not want to impose the sometimes
alienating look of transliterated words on the contributors and defeat the
purpose of recognizability by forcing an unfamiliar transliteration on a
familiar spelling. Ultimately, we decided in favor of using a modified system
of transliteration that reproduced vowel length, but skipped other diacritics,
when transliterating, first bibliographical information; second, technical terms
(reflecting Arabic or Persian pronunciations depending on the context of the
paper); and third, personal names and names of Sufi orders from the wider
Muslim world. We have largely avoided, however, transliterating personal
names, place names and names of organizations from South Asia, both
because in many cases an accepted English spelling already exists and because
such transliteration would have forced certain linguistic politics upon us – for
example, is the name of a Muslim saint from Bengal, Telangana or Sri Lanka
to be transliterated as it is written in the Arabic/Persian/Urdu alphabet, or
according to the Bengali, Telugu or Tamil rules of transliteration? The result
may not always be satisfactory, but then, no system of transliterating one
script through the means of another ever can be.
Contributors
Shaheen Salma Ahmed is currently pursuing her PhD in Visual Arts at the
School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,
India. Her dissertation concerned the notion of the fetish in advertisements
in India from 1970 to 1993. Her publications include ‘The Re-mapped
Dialectics of Contemporary Indian Cinema: Kahaani and That Girl in
Yellow Boots’, in Salaam Bollywood: Representations and Interpretations
(eds Vikrant Kishore, Amit Sarwal and Parichay Patra, Routledge, 2016).
She is also an arts practitioner, her media of political expression including
her own body, video, photographs and text.
Deepra Dandekar (PhD) is an Associate Member of the Cluster of Excellence
‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’, University of Heidelberg, Ger-
many. She has researched on religion, gender and politics in South Asia
and has published on women’s reproductive health, childbirth rituals and
deities, and more recently on Sufi shrines and narratives of Muslim
migration and travel in the Indian Ocean. Her book Boundaries and
Motherhood: Ritual and Reproduction in Rural Maharashtra was recently
published by Zubaan Books, New Delhi. Dandekar is currently translating
a nineteenth-century Marathi biography, describing the conversion of an
influential missionary.
Dušan Deák is Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Reli-
gion at Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia. He holds a doctorate in
history from the University of Pune (India) and researches on the social
history of South Asian religious communities, particularly rural Muslims
of the Deccan and its Marathi-speaking areas. He has co-edited the
volume Rethinking Western India: The Changing Contexts of Culture,
Society, and Religion (Orient Blackswan, 2014, with Daniel Japers) and
has published widely in Slovak and English.
Robert M. Hayden is Professor of Anthropology, Law and Public & Interna-
tional Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He has done extensive
research in and on India and also the Balkans. His most recent book, as
Senior Author with six co-authors, is Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive
xii List of contributors
Sharing of Religious Sites and Spaces (Routledge, 2016). His work over
the past two decades has frequently compared South Asian history and
cultural patterns with those in the Balkans and Turkey.
Frank J. Korom is Professor of Religion and Anthropology at Boston Uni-
versity, USA. His geographical area of specialization is South Asia, with
secondary interests in Tibet and the Caribbean. He has written extensively
on each of these regions and has published nine books, most recently The
Anthropology of Performance (2013). He is currently working on a book
titled Guru Bawa and the Making of a Transnational Family.
Julien Levesque is a doctoral student in political science at the Centre for
South Asian Studies (CEIAS), L’École des hautes études en sciences
sociales (EHESS), Paris, France. His work focuses on nationalism and
identity construction in Sindh after Pakistan’s independence, from the
point of both political mobilization and cultural production. He has pre-
viously taught at Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales
and now teaches courses on Asia at EHESS. His latest publications
include a co-authored article on Sindhi cinema, ‘Umar Marvi and the
Representation of Sindh: Cinema and Modernity in the Margins’ in Bioscope:
South Asian Screen Studies 5(2), 2014.
Dennis B. McGilvray is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University
of Colorado, Boulder, USA, and President of the American Institute of Sri
Lankan Studies. His ethnographic research focuses on Tamil-speaking
Hindus and Muslims of Sri Lanka’s eastern region, supplemented with
fieldwork in Tamilnadu and Kerala. His most recent books include Muslim
Perspectives on the Sri Lankan Conflict (with Mirak Raheem, East-West
Center, 2007), Crucible of Conflict: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East
Coast of Sri Lanka (Duke, 2008; Social Scientists’ Association, 2011), and
Tsunami Recovery in Sri Lanka: Ethnic and Regional Dimensions (co-edited
with Michele Gamburd, Routledge, 2010).
Nandagopal R. Menon (PhD) is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for
Modern Indian Studies of the University of Göttingen in Germany. He
holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Utrecht University in the
Netherlands. His research, which focuses on Islamic movements, secular-
ism and religious polemics in South Asia, has appeared in Modern Asian
Studies and Economic and Political Weekly.
Afsar Mohammad (PhD) teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.
He recently published a monograph, The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam
and Shared Devotion in South India (Oxford University Press, USA). Afsar
has several publications focusing on South Asian religions, mostly the
interactions between Islam and Hinduism in South Asia. He is also a
published poet and literary critic in his native language, Telugu. He is
currently working on local Sufi discourses in South India with a focus on
List of contributors xiii
how contemporary Muslim expressions and articulations utilize the poetics
of Sufism to address new identity concerns for Muslims.
Christina Oesterheld (PhD) teaches Urdu at the South Asia Institute, Uni-
versity of Heidelberg, Germany. Her main research interests are the history
of Urdu prose literature with a special focus on fiction from the nineteenth
century, north Indian Muslim reform movements and their literary pro-
duction, and popular Urdu media. Her articles on these topics have been
published in several journals and edited volumes. She has co-edited a
volume on humor in South Asian literatures, German translations of
Indian short stories, and translated an anthology of short stories by
Manto. At present she is working on an Urdu textbook for German
speakers.
Kelly Pemberton is Associate Professor of Religion and Women’s Studies at
The George Washington University in Washington, DC, USA. Her
research focuses on South Asia and the Middle East in four key areas:
Sufism, questions of religious and spiritual authority, civil society, and
Islamic activism, especially as these relate to gender. Her publications
include a monograph, Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India (2010).
Her current research is a global comparative study of Islam and gender
activism. She also consults on projects focusing on gender in the Middle
East and Asia for non-profit organizations, government agencies, law firms
and private businesses.
Uzma Rehman’s PhD research focused on the construction, negotiation and
transcendence of religious identities at two Sufi shrines of eighteenth-
century Sufi saints/poets of Pakistan. She is author of ‘Spiritual Power and
“Threshold” Identities: The Mazars of Syed Pir Waris Shah and Shah
Abdul Latif Bhitai’ in South Asian Sufis: Devotion, Deviation and Destiny
(eds Clinton Bennett and Charles M. Ramsey, Continuum Books). She has
also co-authored an article on social support provision in a Sufi lodge in
Pakistan published in Contemporary South Asia in 2014.
Max Stille is currently associate member of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia
and Europe in a Global Context’ and the South Asia Institute in Heidel-
berg, Germany. With a background in Middle Eastern and South Asian
Studies, he specializes in narrative traditions and religious literatures of
Bengal. He is currently writing a book on Islamic sermons in Bangladesh
which combines fieldwork with rhetorical and literary theory to investigate
the specific configuration of a genre of religious speech between aesthetics,
narrative tradition and modern politics. His interests furthermore include
ritual in modernity, transcultural dynamics of Islam, research on emotion,
and narratology.
Linus Strothmann (PhD) is Lecturer in Social Anthropology and Human
Geography at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He received his PhD
xiv List of contributors
from the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies in 2013.
His doctoral thesis about the management of Pakistan’s largest Sufi shrine
has recently been published by Oxford University Press under the title
Managing Piety: The Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh.
Torsten Tschacher is Junior Professor of Muslim Culture and Society in
South Asia at the Institute of Islamic Studies of the Freie Universität
Berlin, Germany. His research focuses on the history, society and literature
of Muslim communities in south India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malay-
sia. He has published articles in various journals and many edited volumes,
and is writing a monograph on Indian Muslims, Race and Religion in
Singapore. Tschacher is also translating Tamil novels into German.
Marika Vicziany is Professor Emerita and Director of the National Centre for
South Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts at Monash University, Melbourne,
Australia. She has published some 15 books and over 100 academic papers
and journal articles. Her publications have mostly focused on India and
China, and her field of expertise includes mass poverty, minorities, eco-
nomic and political development and how these issues intersect with
regional security. Her main research projects include Dalit and Muslim
minorities in India, the culture of the indigenous Koli of Mumbai and the
cultural heritage of western China.
Introduction
Framing Sufism in South Asian Muslim politics
of belonging
Deepra Dandekar and Torsten Tschacher
It is this spirit of Sufism, the love for their country and the pride in their nation
that define the Muslims in India.
(Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (2016), speaking at the
World Sufi Forum, New Delhi)
Muslim politics of belonging

Belonging – to a social group, a geographical space, a history, a nation-state –
is hardly an unpolitical state of being. It is always connected to discourses
and behaviors expressing and demonstrating that belonging, and often also
comes along contesting the claims of others to belong to the same group or
space. As such, people do not usually ‘belong’ in and of themselves. Rather, I
belonging is the result of politics, and is constantly negotiated and renegotiated
in everyday life. These political negotiations over belonging require people to
engage with a diverse set of questions – in the words of geographer Affrica
Taylor: ‘who belongs where; who decides who belongs where; on what basis is
this belonging determined; who is considered to be in place or out of place;
and who is authorized to represent place and community’ (Taylor 2009: 295)?
For the South Asian region, comprising the contemporary nation-states of
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka,
probably the most controversial and bitter set of controversies in the last
century has surrounded the question of Muslim belonging. Muslims form a
substantial part of the total population of South Asia. They constitute the
majority of the population in Bangladesh, the Maldives and Pakistan, as well
as substantial minorities in all the other countries. Furthermore, a substantial
part of the world’s Muslims live in South Asia. According to data published
by the Pew Research Center in 2011, about 507 million Muslims were
estimated to live in South Asian countries in 2010, forming almost a third of
the world’s Muslim population of 1.6 billion. In this context, Muslims in
India were perhaps in the most peculiar situation worldwide: even though
India is home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world, only
marginally smaller in absolute terms than their co-religionists in neighboring
2 Deepra Dandekar and Torsten Tschacher
Pakistan, Muslims constitute less than a sixth of India’s total population
(figures according to www.pewforum.org/2011/01/27/table-muslim-popula
tion-by-country/, accessed 2 January 2016).
Much has been written about the history and the present of the politics of
belonging as far as Muslims in South Asia are concerned. The bloody parti-
tion of India and Pakistan in 1947, the Bangladesh war of independence in
1971, the rise of radical Hindu nationalism or ‘Hindutva’ in India since the
1990s, the increasing attacks on Muslims in India and Sri Lanka, the con-
comitant attacks on non-Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the
communal riots breaking out with disturbing regularity all over the subcontinent
in the last century are only the most visible and gory manifestations of a
politics that Muslims and non-Muslims in South Asia have to face on an
everyday basis. Political parties have been formed around this politics, arguing
either for Muslim rights to belong or for non-Muslim rights to be the final
arbiter over which kind of Muslim should be allowed to belong in South
Asia. Films, novels, poetry, paintings and other forms of art have explored the
pitfalls and contradictions of everyday belonging for South Asian Muslims.
Academics and laymen have engaged in constructing narratives around
Muslim ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ to the history and the space of South Asia.
Among Muslims, questions of how to be a proper Muslim often draw on
questions of Muslim belonging to the region: should South Asian Muslims
embrace their ‘South Asian-ness’, or rather model their selves on a suppo-
sedly unified Muslim sense of belonging rooted in the Arabian Peninsula of the
seventh century?
The 16 contributions that make up this volume approach the question of
the politics of Muslim belonging to South Asia from one particular angle –
namely, the politics around the label ‘Sufism’ and the supposed contribution
of Sufism for or against Muslim belonging. The chapters explore struggles
over the control of shrines, the relationship of gender and Sufism to questions of
belonging, contestations over the propriety of ‘Sufi’ practice, and the potential
of narratives about Sufism to construct or contest hegemonies of belonging in
the countries of South Asia and in diasporic settings. The focus on Sufism, as
will be discussed further on in this introduction, was chosen especially as Sufi
traditions have on the whole been constructed as somehow ‘less political’ than
anti-Sufi or reformist streams in Muslim history and present. The idea that
neither the accomplished ‘mystic’ nor the rustic worshipper at a tomb-shrine
had much use or need to dabble in politics has its roots in precolonial narra-
tives, but its effects have been felt until recently. It is the contention of this
volume that discourses, practices and institutions labeled as ‘Sufi’ have been
as central to the politics of Muslim belonging in South Asia as have been the
institutionalized politics of political parties or the activities of so-called
‘reformist’ Islam. As any collection of papers on a particular topic, this one
has its own preferences of focus and concomitant blind spots, some of which
will be addressed in the introduction, but let us point out at the outset what
has been of particular importance to the editors of this volume, specialists in
Introduction 3
the Indian states of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, respectively: namely, to
escape the often still rather monolithic narratives of the politics of belonging
in South Asia that focus on a particular stream of Muslim identity politics
exemplified by the Muslim League and a standard set of Muslim ‘reform’
movements, formulated in the medium of Urdu. As important and influential
as these have undoubtedly been, anyone familiar with the history of Islam
outside the supposed ‘core’ regions in northern India and Pakistan knows that
these ‘other’ regions have not simply produced locally inflected versions of the
main narrative, but have at times engaged in substantially different ways with
the politics of Muslim belonging. Therefore, the majority of chapters in this
collection engage with narratives produced in such supposedly ‘marginal’
regions and in languages other than Urdu and Hindi, such as Bengali,
Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Sinhala, Tamil and Telugu. This, we
hope, will allow for a far better appreciation of the range and diversity of
issues involved in the question of Sufism and Muslim belonging in South
Asia.
Sufism: label, concept, name

The politics of belonging, at least for this volume, begins with the very label
‘Sufism’. What precise elements of social reality should be labeled as ‘Sufism’
is a question that has animated Muslims and non-Muslims, academics and
laymen alike, as is the question of whether it should be considered ‘Islamic’ or
not. The latter question is perhaps the more easy to address: whatever the
debates may be about the origins of the Sufi strand in the history of Islamic
thought and practice, or the exact roots of certain practices or institutions,
there can be no doubt that to talk historically of Sufism without any reference to
Islam makes no sense. While Muslims may historically have appropriated
elements from non-Muslims into Sufi discourse and practice, and similarly,
non-Muslims may have engaged in ‘Sufi’ practices without any notion of
‘Sufism’, the fact that the term ‘Sufism’ is only meaningful in relation to an
idea of ‘Islam’ would be difficult to dispute. Far more difficult is the question
of just which aspects of Islamic tradition and Muslim practice should be
labeled ‘Sufism’. The answer to that question can substantially change the inter-
pretation of a given case – just consider two articles concerning the Tablighi
movement published in 2006 by Dietrich Reetz and Marc Gaborieau,
respectively. While Reetz (2006b) claims that in the case of the Tablighi
movement, ‘Sûfi spirituality fires reformist zeal’, Gaborieau (2006) maintains
that there is hardly anything ‘left of Sufism in Tablîghî Jamâ’at’. During the
conference where some of the papers making up this volume were first pre-
sented, one member of the audience contested that what had been presented
in one paper hardly had anything to do with Sufism.
The attempt to determine what ‘Sufism’ means has been beset by many
problems, not least of which is that ‘Sufism’, or rather its Arabic ‘equivalent’,
tasawwuf, has not always been a term central to the discourse of those labeled
by posterity as ‘Sufis’. ‘Sufism’ has been variously associated with a set of
practices of piety and asceticism, the anthropological, theological and cos-
mological theories underpinning these practices, the institutions facilitating
the transmission and engagement with these practices and theories, and the
notions of sanctity and holiness that wider society (and many ‘Sufis’ as well)
attached to practitioners of ‘Sufism’. Every commentator has had her own
predilections towards what encapsulates and defines ‘Sufism’ most perfectly.
However, here, as may be obvious, already lies part of the problem, for in
order to determine what ‘Sufism’ is, we have to define it. Yet such definitions
are by necessity essentializing and reductive, and almost always will veer
toward a definition that best describes those strands that the commentator
wants to highlight. In other words, as with many other terms in contemporary
usage, such as the ubiquitous ‘Wahhabism’ or ‘Salafism’, ‘Sufism’ has become
somewhat of a ‘rhetorical foil’ (Knysh 2004). However, would that not mean
that the term is best avoided, so as not to repeat the circle of essentializing
and counter-essentializing?
Our answer to this would be that while it may not be viable to perceive
‘Sufism’ as a term with a clear definition or even a fixed core of meaning, the
reality is that it is a label commonly used in contemporary discourse by and
about Muslims. To study ‘Sufism’ and everyday politics of belonging in South
Asia means first and foremost to study the politics of the ‘label’ Sufism itself.
For many, ‘Sufism’ has come to encode a certain type of Islam, supposedly
more liberal towards other faiths and non-Muslim cultures, more accom-
modating of difference, and less concerned with strictures and religious
boundaries. As historically reductionist and untenable as that perception
may be, there is little denying its potency and use in the politics of Muslim
belonging. At one level, it allows for the construction of a narrative of ‘good’
(liberal ‘Sufi’) versus bad (intolerant ‘reformist’) Muslim (see Philippon 2015),
through which a certain type of Islam is identified as properly ‘belonging’ to
South Asia, while another is not. However, it also allows for the subversion of
both ‘reformist’ and Hindutva hegemonies over Islam, by contesting both the
reformists’ own claims to represent ‘true’ and ‘proper’ Islam as well as Hindutva
claims that make ‘tolerance’ a hallmark of Hinduism.
The narrative of the tolerant and accommodating Sufi is not the only image
of Sufism that is marshaled in contemporary South Asia. Indeed, Muslim
tomb-shrines, often celebrated as the most tangible symbols of ‘Sufi’
accommodation in the South Asian environment, have in recent years been
marked by Hindu and Buddhist nationalists as symbols of historical Muslim
aggression to a degree that few ‘reformist’ institutions had to face.
In the light of these highly divergent ideas of ‘Sufism’, our approach to
‘Sufism’ in this volume is not so much as a ‘concept’, with a central core of
meaning, but as a ‘name’ in the manner this term has been conceptualized in
the political philosophy of Ernesto Laclau and others (cf. Laclau 2005).
Running the risk of vastly oversimplifying a highly complex idea, ‘naming’
assumes that there is no transcendental, essential signified behind a particular
Introduction 5
signifier. Rather, a name like ‘Sufism’ holds together a chain of heterogeneous
equivalents that are established solely by their name and the antagonism to
things named differently that its application establishes. Indeed, in this view,
the signified is ‘the retroactive effect of naming itself ’ (Žižek 1989: 95, quoted
in Laclau 2005: 103). The act of naming is thus in itself a mechanism of
power as it brings the very things it names into being and excludes others
from the chain of equivalences to serve only as the necessary antagonistic
‘other’ to the identity created through acts of naming.1 Put otherwise: in
naming (or refusing to name) certain actions, processes or discourses as
‘Sufism’, actors contest the power to bring a certain reality (such as claims of
‘belonging’) into being. Therefore, in this volume, negotiations over naming
certain equivalential chains as ‘Sufism’ are precisely what defines a certain set
of politics over Muslim belonging, rather than whether the equivalential
chains so named ‘really’ constitute ‘Sufism’ – indeed, the latter emerges as an
unanswerable question. The chapters in this collection are interested in ques-
tioning: in which context, by whom and to what end, ‘Sufism’ is hermeneuti-
cally named or denied that name, and how ‘belonging’ is argued on the basis
of such naming.
To provide one example of the politics of naming and belonging that has
not been explicitly discussed in this collection but is a common assumption in
studies of Sufism in South Asia, is the discursive association of ‘healing’ with
Sufism (cf. e.g. Bellamy 2011; Ewing 1984, 1997; Flueckiger 2006; Pfleiderer
1988). The common practice of pilgrimage to ‘Sufi’ shrines for the purpose of
alleviating suffering has become one of the hallmarks of constructing ‘Sufism’
as a ‘tolerant’, ‘liberal’ and ‘secular’ tradition through the very act of naming
such practices ‘Sufism’. Muslim shrines (dargāhs) have actually been upheld
as examples of ‘tradition’ providing solutions and ‘healing’ where the Indian
state is said to have failed (e.g. Davar and Lohokare 2009: 66). Problems with
this discourse arise, however, when sections of the Muslim community
patronizing Sufi shrines actually begin to oppose certain ‘healing’ practices
and rituals. Indeed, much of the current-day, politically-based reformist cri-
tique of dargāh practice, however unhistorical it may be, actually articulates a
rejection of the dargāh ‘healing’ discourse, naming it variously as personal
experience for those who want to worship God; as rituals that Sufi saints
never asked their followers to do; as a worship form that the dargāh cannot
and should not take responsibility for; as practices that increase crime and
money-laundering around the dargāh, where the destitute live; and finally
even as shirk or what is un-Islamic. This argument is an expression of ‘Sufi’
alienation with the imposition of the ‘healing’ interpretation on ‘Sufi’ miracles
(karāmāt) that now percolates into the Muslim everyday through the grassroots
‘anti-superstition’ movement (cf. Quack 2012). Many ‘Sufi’ Muslims believe
that the miracle that was once pure has been misused and corrupted by
non-Muslims and so-called secularists as they insist upon interpreting it as
‘healing’, especially since those who misuse it have no interest in Islam, Sufis
or Sufism in any deeper sense. They bemoan indiscriminate sajda
(‘prostration’) to the grave and how the dargāh has become a shop for exotic
cures, where the Muslim is used and disrespected like a shopkeeper, since he is
considered a prince for all foreign, impure and unknown ailments, being
treated as a foreigner himself.2
Indeed, many non-Muslim clans elicit ‘healing’ from dargāhs built in
memory of a Sufi saint without desiring any association with the local
Muslim community, precisely since the power of the Sufi miracle is considered
to have control over the resident evil or illness within them that does not
submit to caste boundaries or remedies, since evil itself is culturally defined by
its caste-less or ‘lower’ nature that requires and necessitates excommunication
and ‘exorcism’. Non-Muslims travel, therefore, especially to Sufi shrines out-
side conceptual physical boundaries, since their location reflects the caste
‘impurity’ of the dargāh and the caste ambivalence of the Sufi. Sufis are
therefore understood to enjoy control and access to the evil outside bound-
aries that actually obstructs miracles in non-Muslim lives. By performing
rituals at dargāhs in order to free themselves of the ‘evil’ the Sufi controls and
represents, non-Muslims therefore foreclose social contact with Muslims at
dargāhs. Sufi miracles are therefore elicited not for the sake of imbibing
Sufism and Islam, but to attract evil away from non-Muslims, so as to facil-
itate the non-Muslim miracle. The imposed and enforced ‘healing’ narrative
on the dargāh is therefore exactly the hospital narrative, where people arrive
to leave their impurities, evil and sickness behind. It also assumes that
those seeking ‘Sufi’ miracles in their lives do not participate within regimens
of modernity as equally as they participate within those provided by tradi-
tional religion and ritual, and that the technology of biomedical healing does
not constitute the ‘miracle’ of justice for them at all. In fact, many among
poorer families, according to Dandekar’s fieldwork, who could not afford
expensive medical care, needed medical treatment badly. Indeed, they would
have resorted to any kind of healing that provided them with symptomatic
relief, but elicited Sufi rituals only because they were poor. They described
their healing experience in Sufi shrines within medicalized and technological
terms such as having received a bashārat (‘vision’) of the saint performing
surgery upon them and removing parts from their body. For many of them,
modern miracles were a matter of affordability, whereas their position at the
dargāh remained defined by poverty and human rights violations.
In many ways, this naming of ‘Sufism’ as associated with ‘healing’ and
religious tolerance by default ignores alternative namings that contest the
religiously ambiguous and rather goal-driven vision of the ‘healing’ discourse,
that includes those who have resisted their role in naming ‘healing’ ‘Sufism’
by declaring dargāh practice as shirk through the religious language of refor-
mism (cf. Reetz 2006b). Alternative naming also include discourses that
attempt to ground dargāh practices firmly in the language of Islam, as such
attempts threaten the equivalence produced between ‘healing’ and religious
tolerance through the name ‘Sufism’ (cf. Tschacher 2009). It is in this context
that what are actually a wide range of reactions to and interpretations of
Introduction 7
‘Sufism’ and dargāh practices are collectively named ‘Wahhabi’. This second
name then serves as the antagonistic, negative closure that is required to
demarcate the name ‘Sufism’ (cf. Laclau 2005: 139–156). What we are aiming
at here is to bring discourses of producing chains of equivalents between
‘healing’ and ‘Sufism’ on the one side, and those Muslims disappointed with
certain dargāh practices on the other to a conversational intersection, as a
condemnation of dargāh practice by so-called Muslim reformists, even if
hegemonic and unhistorical, has to be understood within the political context
of non-Muslim reification of Sufi miracles as ‘healing’ or ‘superstition’.
In these contexts, ‘superstition’ itself also becomes another ‘name’, but for
rather different things. When applied to Hindus, it may still encode positive
narratives of ‘tolerance’, as Hindu participation in ‘healing’ rituals may be labeled
‘superstition’ whether they are performed at a dargāh or a temple, Muslim
‘superstition’, however, is defined by religious parochialism, by limiting the
search for the alleviation of their suffering to dargāhs alone. The definition of
dargāh practice as ‘superstitious’ by both non-Muslim rationalists and
Muslim anti-dargāh discourse therefore coincides and paradoxically opens a
space of rapprochement between the two groups, as is also evidenced in some
of the papers in this collection. Debates on ‘healing’ in modern South Asia
are therefore obviously complicated by their antagonistic label of ‘super-
stition’, as this leads to Sufism being powerfully associated with both the
‘healing’ and ‘superstition’ of Hindus and Muslims in different ways.
While Hindus’ healing rituals at Sufi shrines become perfectly explicable in
this framework, even if condemned when performed (at all varieties of
shrines), Muslims at dargāhs produce an ambivalent social image about being
‘exotic’, ‘folkish’, ‘other’ and ‘foreign’. They are viewed as those who engage
in ‘outsider’ practices, since Sufi practices are not witchcraft-like that elim-
inate evil obstacles and hence sometimes, in contexts of political Hinduism,
these practices, especially if traditional, are viewed as anti-national. It is
hardly surprising that regional contexts where political Hinduism is at its
most powerful are also contexts where anti-shrine response has been the
strongest; this response has also therefore been a reaction to how Muslim
dargāh goers have felt trapped between accusations of anti-nationalism and
the usurpation of dargāhs by Hindu ‘healing’. This insistence on ‘naming’
Sufism ‘healing’ or ‘superstitious’ that aims at producing ‘healers’ as ‘agents’
for South Asian politics is then projected by postcolonial scholars as van-
guards of an anti-colonial struggle (Nandy 1989), while this may not have
been one experienced as historically so by individual Sufis at all.3 However,
the name ‘Sufism’ is also of importance for Muslim belonging and this is
demonstrated by some chapters in this volume, especially when considering
the immediate micro-regional location of the dargāh and the politics of resis-
tance that it brings along. This can be achieved visually through Islamicate
architecture or calligraphy in a space inhabited by non-Muslims and non-
Sufis. It is by inhabiting the dargāh as the ‘other’, as it becomes ‘named’
antagonistically against the (non-Muslim/non-Sufi) norm, that norm
boundaries themselves become defined more sharply and the normative
becomes exposed, less discursive and questioned. Although dargāh spaces
witness dynamic interaction between Muslims, non-Muslims and non-Sufis,
this interface transforms them all to highlight the boundary between them.
Sufism, shrines and the political: a contradiction in terms?

Despite the voluminous literature on Muslim identity politics in con-
temporary South Asia, ‘Sufism’ has not been at the focus of this interest. One
may identify several reasons for this state of affairs, but in many ways, dis-
courses on the essential character and the position of Sufism in history lie at
the root of the relative paucity of studies on the relationship of Sufism to
contemporary politics. Perhaps most important has been the tendency to
describe Sufism in terms of social marginality as either an elite of accom-
plished mystics removed from the ‘dirty business’ of politics,4 or as a form of
deviant popular religion similarly removed from the sources of power (cf.
Green 2012b: introduction). The problematic nature of this formulation has
been well researched as far as the precolonial period in South Asia is concerned
(cf. e.g. Anjum 2011; Auer 2012; Green 2006; Moin 2012), but intriguingly, it
has not yet been challenged to the same degree for the contemporary period.
As far as the present is concerned, the main impetus for Muslim politics of
belonging since the colonial period has been assigned to so-called Islamic
‘reformism’, a set of movements that actually may diverge rather dramatically
in many of their teachings and assumptions, but which are often ascribed with
a skepticism towards Sufism or at least toward many of the practices asso-
ciated with it. Of course, several ‘reformist’ movements do identify as ‘Sufi’ or
at least incorporate elements of Sufi practice, most importantly the ‘counter-
reform’ (Green 2011: 19) Barelwis, as also the Deobandis or the Tablighi
Jama‘at.5 However, there has been a pronounced tendency to equate con-
temporary Muslim politics with these movements, to the degree that ‘Sufi’
politics in contemporary South Asia has mainly been discussed with reference
to the label ‘reformism’ rather than ‘Sufism’.6 Concomitantly, anthropological
work on aspects of so-called ‘popular’ religion that is often connected to
‘Sufism’ has similarly tended to see these practices as ‘unpolitical’ insofar as
questions of identity and belonging are often claimed to be of no consequence
to those who participate in such ‘popular religion’, thereby again placing the
burden of politics on ‘reformist’ and ‘scripturalist’ critics of ‘Sufism’ rather
than on ‘Sufism’ itself (cf. Tschacher 2009: 58).
There have also been some signs of change in recent years, especially with
regard to ‘Muslim-majority’ countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. In
these Muslim-majority nation-states, the importance of articulations of
belonging with reference to ‘Sufism’ has been too visible to be ignored. The
fact that Muslims do not have to justify their belonging to these nation-states
has meant that ‘Sufism’ did not have to play the role in historical narratives
that it often had to play in colonial India: to provide a name for that kind of
Introduction 9
Islam that was accommodative of ‘South Asian culture’ and thus could
belong to the nation, in opposition to ‘foreign’, ‘scripturalist’ Islam that was
contested. Here one may mention Robert Rozehnal’s (2006, 2007) and Alix
Philippon’s (2011a, 2011b, 2012, 2014) research on the politicization of
Sufism in Pakistan, Muedini’s study of the political sponsorship of Sufism in
Pakistan (Muedini 2015: chapter 4), or Sarwar Alam’s (2012b) investigation
of the establishment of political parties by Sufi masters in Bangladesh.
With regard to non-Muslim-majority countries like India, a substantial
number of the studies that have addressed the relationship of Sufism and the
politics of belonging have focused on conflicts between Muslims and non-
Muslims, conflicts that have often turned around the location of and control
over dargāhs (cf. e.g. Hayden 2002; Sikand 2004b, as well as several of the
chapter included in this volume). On the other hand, the role of ‘Sufism’ in
establishing historical narratives of Muslim belonging to a nation or ethnic
group in South Asia will require much more attention in the future, though
some initial work has been done regarding Sindhi identity by Oskar Verkaaik
(2007, 2010) and Ronie Parciack’s (2014) study on the inscription of the
Indian nation-space by images of the Ajmer dargāh. As the statement by India’s
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, quoted at the outset of this introduction,
exemplifies, there is ample scope for such an approach.
A word is in order regarding the relative importance of ‘Sufi shrines’ or
dargāhs for investigating relationships between Sufism and the politics of
belonging in South Asia, which ties in with the comments made above
regarding the relative dearth of studies on Sufism and politics in con-
temporary South Asia in general. The dargāh may appear to some to be a
particularly problematic example for such an endeavor. On the one hand,
tomb-shrines are often seen as an aspect of ‘popular Islam’ whose relation-
ship to Sufism is tenuous at best. Therefore, focusing on the dargāh as a site
of everyday politics of belonging may appear to give too much importance to
a ‘marginal’ aspect of ‘Sufism’. In a similar vein, as has already been mentioned,
the dargāh is often discussed as a space that shows the relative unimportance
of labels such as ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ in everyday life in South Asia. In this
view, those visiting the dargāh are produced less as political actors in them-
selves, and rather as the victims of radical reifications of religious identity
happening outside its space (cf. e.g. Heitmeyer 2011). However, as mentioned,
to define ‘Sufism’ in such a way that excludes the dargāh means in itself to
favor a particular political narrative in which the name ‘Sufism’ does not sig-
nify ‘popular Islam’, a narrative that may be popular with certain forms of
reformed Sufism, but that hardly does justice to the reality of ‘Sufism’ in the
history of Muslim South Asia and the Islamic world at large. The various
debates surrounding the propriety of dargāh worship and the question of
Muslim belonging in South Asian societies at large, make it impossible for
Muslims to be ‘non-political’ in their relationship to the dargāh and in their
expression of identity through it. It is not without importance that in South
Asia, the dargāh has been the site of most debate and struggle over control by
state and non-state actors, whether in the form of the acrimonious debates
about the propriety of saint veneration, the contestations over the religious
identities of sacred sites, or the attempts of the state in both Muslim-majority
and -minority countries to establish administrative control over dargāhs,
whereas other Sufi-institutions, such as the brotherhoods, which have been at
the center of political controversy in other Muslim countries such as Turkey,
have played a rather subdued role in such struggles.
To provide some examples concerning the politics of shrine control, in
many cases in contemporary South Asia, the tarīqa or lineage predecessors
for many Sufis lie separated from them, in countries where their predecessors
and brotherhoods are located, partitioned between South Asia, Central Asian
and Middle Eastern countries, from where Mughal, Sultanate and Sufi saints
were known to have first arrived. Local, separated dargāhs are typically under-
stood as ‘historical’ and protected under the conservation policies of the archae-
ological surveys of different countries, unless there is a tarīqa and community
that is still attached to them, in which case their administration is often taken
over by a waqf board (especially in India). In the absence of any evidence and
tradition of Muslim ownership of dargāhs, Muslim worship at such places
commonly raises non-Muslim ire, because such worship becomes interpreted
as a divisive act of laying claim to common ground. In case Muslim groups
are able to show legal evidence for and claim dargāh buildings and land, these are
looked after by various waqf boards consisting of local Muslim trustees.
Many Sufi saints at dargāhs are indeed unknown, apart from their names; it is
their claiming by the local Muslim community that provides them with social
difference from non-Muslims in the South Asian public domain as tolerant
Muslim secular-nationalists, who are different from ‘Wahhabis’ and ready to
be ritually ‘utilized’ by non-Muslims. Claiming too strong a connection
between Islam and Sufism is considered anti-secular and conservative, just as
disconnecting Islam from Sufism is considered ‘Wahhabi’; this leaves dargāhs
with no real position on religion but a political one that allows its spaces and
paradigms to be appropriated by popular non-Muslim religions. If Sufism and
Islam were to be associated too strongly, then this connection would become
dangerous for non-Muslims utilizing dargāh spaces, since a conflation
between Sufism and Islam would lead to the percolation of ‘Muslim-ness’ into
non-Muslim corporeality through ritual, instead of achieving the desired
result of producing the dargāh as a religiously ambiguous space. A conflation
between Sufism and Islam would then make ‘healing’ tantamount to religious
conversion for non-Muslims, making the ‘misrecognition’ of Muslim safety
and belonging to a non-Muslim majority potentially impossible.
We would specify the role played by shrine carers in producing various
layers of interpretation within dargāh practice and space as a reflection of their
separation from reformist discourse. To foreground the shrine carer (mujāwir,
khādim or sajjāda nashīn), directs attention to how such shrine carers act as
transmitters of barakat independent of Sufi lineage of tarīqas in South Asia.
This is especially so for a category of Sufi saints, who are relatively unknown,
Introduction 11
apart from their names, whose graves among Muslim graveyards are owned
by present-day Muslim communities and are important for their political
identity. Many such dargāhs that have no special lineage or tarīqa attached to
them, since very little historical information is available about them, play the
precise role of projecting a ‘tolerant’ Muslim identity that is anti-‘Wahhabi’
and at the same time politically Sufi. In doing so, dargāhs acquire layers that
become disconnected from Islam, the Sufi saint buried there, the life and teach-
ings of the Sufi in question and his miracles, and even the question of religion, as
it becomes yoked to a nationalistic state as an icon and instrument.
At many dargāhs in India, for example, it is common to perceive an addi-
tional mythological layer to the story of the shrine and the Sufi saint which
no longer necessitates non-Muslims to relate to either Islam or Sufism. These
produce sub-shrines within the dargāh’s structure and ritual frameworks that
separate regimens of administration and already create separate groups of
competing clientele to the shrine that remain ‘syncretic’ only until their
demographic strengths remain synchronized with their political. Once this
synchronicity fails, the process of meaning-multiplicity loses balance and can
lead to entire shrines being converted to the religion of the demographically
and politically stronger group, understood through theoretical paradigms
such as antagonistic tolerance (cf. Hayden 2002).
Examples of dargāhs where mujāwirs, who are said to be descendants not
of the saint himself or his khalīfa but of a subaltern family/household retainer,
act as those transferring barakat, hardly enjoy social acceptance among many
Sufi circles; they may only be employed by waqf arrangements. On the other
hand, mujāwirs are often the modern possessors of information, songs,
legends and lore, especially surrounding obscure Sufi saints and their dargāhs,
which become the subject for multiple, plural and layered storytelling that
caters to a divided crowd of competing religious groups of visitors, accessing
both ‘blessing’ and ‘healing’. While mujāwirs may have the survival of the
dargāh in mind, they are also accused of appropriating land and barakat
among other Sufis. Many mujāwirs counter the accusation of appropriation
by arguing themselves as similar to slave rulers carrying on the Ghūrīd
empire, thereby drawing on a well-established parallel between the wilāyat
(‘dominion, authority’) of the Muslim ruler and the Sufi saint (cf. Digby
1986). In contrast to the medieval slave ruler, they have access to the very
corporeality and through that the knowledge and barakat of the saint. The
mujāwir thereby not only engages in competitive ritual barakat battles, but
often does so by engaging in multiple and alternative stories about the Sufi
and the dargāh, by which he subverts traditional hierarchies between pīr and
murīd and the direct inheritance of barakat through bloodlines. On the other
hand, the mujāwirs’ knowledge about the Sufi saint and the dargāh, is reflec-
ted in their precedence within the production of shrine-related gray literature,
and now, increasingly, audio and video material about the saint and the
dargāh. This gray literature and material often constitutes the only narratives
about many dargāhs.
These oral narratives-cum-gray literature sometimes provide fantastic
descriptions about the saint’s life and the shrine which are interesting in this
discussion because of the second ‘layer’ they postulate for non-Muslim visi-
tors at the dargāh that helps them produce it as an impure boundary that can
exorcise evil impurities from their bodies. Sometimes they provide a second
‘layer’ for poorer Muslims as well, who can have the Hajj or ‘umra experience
by observing many ritualized ‘hotspots’ within South Asia with the same
names and similar stories that associate the saint with the Prophet and his
family at Mecca or Medina, thereby essentializing poverty and suffering to
dargāh narratives. Many poor Hindus and Muslims live in spaces around the
dargāh in what are sometimes enormous slums, and engage in their own
layers of building stories of karāmāt or miracles around the Sufi saint which
are based on visions or dreams that are considered holy (bashārat). Similarly,
different graves inside the dargāh courtyard are interpreted as special ritual
places that either pertain to witches or monsters that the saint is said to have
conquered in his lifetime. These graves or places then become special places
where non-Muslims can perform ‘healing’ rituals, so that the saint can then
perform the Sufi miracle of conquering and battling the demon inside them.
Once the Sufi miracle, through ritual, has battled the impure demon within
them and vanquished it (often expressed in possession trances), the non-
Muslim devotee is free for the actual miracle of ‘purity’ to take place –
‘purity’ that is predicated on the constant maintenance of impurity-absence, a
constant gatekeeping by pure-possession trances of the saint. Some scholars
have suggested that it is the relatively ‘impure’ status of Muslims in the Hindu
imagination that attracts the latter to seek ‘healing’ at Sufi shrines, since
Muslim ‘impurity’ is deemed invested with the capacity to absorb spiritual
afflictions (Bellamy 2011: 183, referring to van der Veer 1992).7
While layered narratives and the non-Muslim layer may temporarily secure
Muslim subaltern and regional/communal positionality as dargāh landowners,
waqf board members and as claimants of Sufi barakat, the mujāwirs must also
try to fit themselves into paradigms outside ‘religion’ very clearly, just as, for
example, many state governments in India issued registered dargāhs with
notices asking them to keep their shrine precincts clear of human rights vio-
lations after the Erwadi dargāh tragedy in August 2001. At the same time,
they also suffer fragmentation from other Sufi-Muslims, who disapprove of
this second layer, constructed for non-Muslims and for the benefit of poor
Muslims. Multiple and plural stories about dargāhs have been discussed
within this volume as well as elsewhere, and while these stories remain
important to produce a dargāh as a rich cosmogonic space that has all-
encompassing mythological possibilities, this multiple discourse is a cause of
concern within right-wing Hindutva contexts of demolishing dargāhs for
shrine conversion, such as in Maharashtra and Karnataka (Dandekar 2015,
forthcoming; Sikand 2004b). To explain, even if the Sufi were considered the
‘healing’ boundary sentinel of ambiguous caste, recruited to battle non-
Muslim internal demons, this role has undergone a shift in the last couple of
Introduction 13
decades. As the Hindu–Muslim rift deepens and as an increasing number of
Muslims resist dargāh practice, dargāhs are commonly sought to be replaced
by shrines of other ambivalent and warrior-like, caste-less saints, originally
also considered ascetics and those who were outside the boundary. They are
now recruited to perform the ‘healing’ task of the boundary sentinel and fight
internal Hindu demonic battles, as these warrior ascetics are realigned as
martial Hindus, despite their casteless-ness. They are now culturally deployed
to eject the Sufi from society in ways that fit dargāh demolitions within nar-
ratives of Muslim invasions, and thereby feed back into mujāwir attempts at
defending themselves against accusations of barakat-laundering by seeking
similarities with Muslim slave rulers of earlier times.
Finally, what about the Muslim voice that uses, subverts and generates its
own labels and naming, while inhabiting languages, discourse, scripts, rituals,
religious networks and sacred spaces? An interesting selection of chapters in
our volume dedicated to exploring Muslim literature, poetry, texts, discourses
and sermons have summed up the discussion on naming by pointing precisely
at the Shakespearean emptiness of naming that is reflected so adroitly by
Laclau. While Muslim sermonizers perform Islamic meanings for their audi-
ence by utilizing Sufi rhetorics, modern Muslims may choose Sufism as a
spiritual choice over the ‘renaissance’ of rationalism. In other cases, lower-
caste devotees may perform and contest marginality through poetry, while
even precolonial court litterateurs through their very writing of Sufism,
deconstruct the language of political Muslim-ness today.
The chapters in this volume

This book is divided into four parts, and delves into four significant dis-
courses exploring the politics of ‘belonging’ for Muslims in South Asia. These
parts examine various themes such as how Sufism may be produced and
identified; how public forms of belonging may be characterized and deli-
neated in the practice of the ‘everyday’; how ‘Sufi belonging’ may overlap
with narratives of ethnic and (sub-)national identities; and finally, how Sufi
narratives are inserted into the intellectual history of Islam.
Part I, ‘Producing and identifying Sufism’, contains chapters written by
Robert M. Hayden, Dušan Deák, Dennis McGilvray and Frank J. Korom
which explore the intersectionality between plural religious identities for
Muslims. The chapters in this segment investigate the many ways in which
various religious and ethnic groups, castes and diasporic agents may share
and co-construct Sufism and Islam, which in turn produce Muslims politically
and regionally in combination with other contested religious identities.
These complex contestations, combinations and intersectionalities with
regional historic inter-community negotiations lead to a public performance
of everyday Islamic practice and Sufism that foregrounds shrines and saints as
important political spaces, where the question of Muslim belonging is
demarcated.
Part II, ‘Everyday and public forms of belonging’, consisting of chapters
written by Kelly Pemberton, Shaheen Ahmed, Uzma Rehman and Marika
Vicziany, examines various topics beginning with what the implication of a
Muslim identity for women in everyday public life entails that is especially
expressed in art, to how Sufi women in South Asia may draw upon concepts
of the Islamic feminine to assert positions of Sufi power. The section further
explores how prominent and historic Sufi shrines in Pakistan and India create
inclusive/exclusive social, religious, communal and nationalized networks that
delineate the definition of being Sufi and Muslim within larger political
arenas of Islamic and Hindu nationalist discourses.
Part III, ‘Sufi belonging, local and national’, seeks to position localized
expressions of Sufism and Islam within vernacular discourses of ethnicity and
(sub-)nationalism. This section contains articles authored by Deepra Dande-
kar, Torsten Tschacher, Julien Levesque and Linus Strothmann, which explore
ways in which ‘Sufism’ is used to argue Muslim belonging within the narra-
tive of a particular ethnic, sub-national or national identity, drawing on
examples from Marathi, Tamil, Sindhi and Pakistani nationalisms. This sec-
tion examines the various intellectual and political contexts within which
Sufism and Sufi shrines become instrumental as communal and nationalistic
mouthpieces on the one hand, or suffer the fate of propagating syncretic dia-
logues of Hindu-Muslim secularism on the other, by which they serve
nationalist discourses yet again.
The last section of the book, Part IV, ‘Intellectual history and narratives of
belonging’, also contains four chapters, written by Afsar Mohammad, Nanda-
gopal R. Menon, Christina Oesterheld and Max Stille. These chapters detail
how theories and descriptions of Sufism are historically described and docu-
mented in various literary, lyrical, pedagogic and sermonic frameworks to
relate Sufism, the local and vernacular region of its production, to a larger
discursive understanding of Islam, Islamic history, culture and its develop-
ment. While all the regions under discussion remain diverse, ranging from the
Deccan and Kerala to Bangladesh, each chapter in this section attempts at
making narrative associations between vernacular description and exploration
pertaining to Sufi and discursive Islam.
Notes
1 A valuable discussion of the theory of naming and its application to the contested
term ‘religion’ has been provided by Michael Bergunder (2011, English transla-
tion 2014). Our understanding of ‘Sufism’ and its political import owes much to
Bergunder’s discussion.
2 Much of the following is based on Deepra Dandekar’s fieldwork in Maharashtra.
3 Cf. Green’s (2006, 2009) investigations of the role of Sufis in precolonial and colonial
armies.
4 A notion strengthened by the discourses produced in various Sufi circles, such as the
Chishtiyya, already in precolonial times, and not absent from discussions outside
the South Asian context either (cf. Heck 2009: 14).
Introduction 15
5 See Reetz (2006a) for the most comprehensive overview over the different Islamic
‘movements’ and groups in the Urdu-language public sphere.
6 A good example for this is provided by a recent edited volume entitled The Islamic
Path: Sufism, Politics and Society in India (Jafri and Reifeld 2006), in which almost
all papers on the colonial and postcolonial periods discuss Sufism in relation to
reform movements and their critiques. Cf. also Reetz 2006b; Werbner 2013.
7 On reading van der Veer (1992), however, we were unable to locate any statements
to that effect.
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Part I
Producing and
identifying Sufism
1 Sufis, dervishes and Alevi-Bektaşis
Interfaces of heterodox Islam and
nationalist politics from the Balkans,
Turkey and India1
Robert M. Hayden
I am grateful to the editors for letting me move rather far past the boundaries
of probably anyone’s definition of ‘South Asia’. Though I have worked on the
changing identities of a Hindu/Muslim saint and his shrine in central India
intermittently since 1992 (Hayden 2002; Hayden and Valenzuela 2014), for
the past 30 years most of my professional work has focused on the Balkans.
As the historian Maria Todorova has argued convincingly (Todorova 1996),
the concept of ‘the Balkans’ itself is a heritage of the centuries of Ottoman
rule in Southeastern Europe, Balkan being Turkish for ‘mountain’, and the
Balkans are certainly that, mountainous. However, various cultural and lin-
guistic connections can be easily seen in the region roughly defined as
between Bosnia in the west, and Bengal in the east, Bijapur in the south, this
last as a surrogate for all of the Muslim kingdoms of the Deccan. These
connections reflect the centuries in which Muslim polities ruled most of this
vast expanse. All of this territory was and is outside the Arabic-speaking
world, and in all of it, Muslims of various definitions have lived intermingled
with non-Muslims: Roman Catholics, eastern Christians (also known as
Orthodox Christians), Hindus of varying communities, Sikhs, Buddhists, to
name only a few. That there was a sense of a common cultural and religious
world among Muslims in this vast region can be seen in the continuities in the
architectural, artistic and literary traditions of the larger area. Of course,
speakers of Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Albanian and Greek who go to South
Asia are struck by the cognates in those languages and in Hindi-Urdu,
derived from Persian, Turkish and Arabic, words from this last often as
mediated by one or both of the other two. Indeed, if one looks at the con-
tinuities in this larger range of Muslim polities from Bengal to Bosnia until
the nineteenth century, the utility of the concepts of ‘South Asia’ on the one
hand, ‘the Balkans’ on the other, becomes suspect, diverting attention from
the cultural similarities by the presumption of inherent difference.
For the purposes of this volume, what is interesting about all of this is that
some of the Sufi traditions of the formerly Ottoman world (though generally
known as dervish, or some variation on that term instead of Sufi),2 have been
the focus both of political pressures as ‘anti-national’ and of other political
and academic imagery as ‘syncretic’ and thereby linking various communities.
20 Robert M. Hayden
Thus looking at the formerly Ottoman region offers another take on the pol-
itics of belonging in what is sometimes a bit unhappily labeled ‘heterodox
Islam’ (unfortunate in seeming to acknowledge Sunni Islam as defining
orthodoxy), but involving quite different players and histories in constructions
of politics and dominance.
Let me start in central Anatolia, in a town called Hacibektaş after the saint
of the same name. Haci Bektaş Veli, the saint, is said to have founded his
order (tarikat) in the thirteenth century, and it became one of the most pow-
erful dervish orders in the Ottoman Empire. The complex contains his tomb
(türbe), the lodge (tekke) housing his followers, the house for the subsequent
leaders, the tombs of leaders and devotees, plus various courtyards, fountains,
storerooms, kitchens and the other structures required for the main complex
of a major religious order. In 2008, when I visited the place, in front of the
complex was a statue of Atatürk – no surprise – and billboards equating a
saying by Haci Bektaş (The road that does not pass through science will lead
you to darkness) with one by Atatürk (Science is the truest path illuminator in
life), which is more surprising, for reasons explained below (Figure 1.1). A
plaque in Turkish and English states that:
the system of his [Haci Bektaş’s] thought is based: [on] tolerance, peace,
love and equality still illuminates the humanity [sic]. His social ideologies
have been applied to everyday’s [sic] life 600 years later by Kemal Ata-
türk the creator of modern Republic of Turkey. His thoughts shared the
same point of view with the universal human rights declaration which is
announced in [sic] December 10 1948.
As for those thoughts, a plaque in the complex states them succinctly, if not
necessarily always quite grammatically, in English:
Search and find.

Educate the women.
Even if you are hurt, don’t hurt.
Sages are pure sometimes purifiers.
First stage of attainment is modesty.
Whatever you look for, search in you.
Don’t forget even your enemy is human.
Control your hand, your word, your lust.
Beauty of human is in the beauty of his words.
Prophets and saints are God’s gift to humanity.
Road that doesn’t go through science is perilous.
Don’t try to find faults neither in nation nor individual.
How nice to ones who put light in the darkness of thought.
Don’t do anything to anyone if you don’t want it to be done to you.
Peace be with you!
(Huu dost!)
Sufis, dervishes and Alevi-Bektaşis 21
Figure 1.1 Billboards in front of the tomb/lodge complex of Haci Bektaş Veli, a thirteenth-
century saint, in the town named after him, Hacibektaş, Turkey, June
2008. The left billboard (in red) has an image of Atatürk, founder of the
modern Turkish state, and his saying that science is the truest path illumi-
nator in life. The right billboard has an image of Haci Bektaş and his saying
that the road that does not pass through science will lead you to darkness.
The twentieth-century politician thus appropriated the thirteenth-century
saint
(Translations by Tuğba Tanyeri-Erdemir. Photo courtesy Robert M. Hayden)
The linkage of Haci Bektaş with Atatürk and the republic seems a clear
indication that Bektaşism is viewed as ‘bringing about national integration,
fostering humanism and syncretism’ as per the aims of this volume, and cer-
tainly the references to educating women, to science and self-control are
congruent with Atatürk’s modernization program. Yet the same Atatürk who
is said to have implemented Haci Bektaş’s social ideologies actually closed
down this complex, among others, banning all of the dervish orders including
the Bektaşis, in 1925, two years after proclaiming the Republic of Turkey out
of part of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, following the empire’s collapse
after World War I. The closure of the dervish orders was part of Atatürk’s
effort to destroy the power of the Ottoman religious establishment – he had,
after all, abolished the Caliphate in 1922 – whose members had opposed him
22 Robert M. Hayden
and his plans to build a new, modern Turkey (Stirling 1958), in part by
imposing secularism.
In fact, the Bektaşi complex in the town of Hacibektaş is not the home of
the Bektaşi order, but rather a museum, opened in 1964 – after 39 years in
which the complex had been closed and inaccessible to the followers of Haci
Bektaş. At present, while the saint’s followers can visit the museum, they have
to pay to do so; the way in which the complex is now structured hinders
Alevi-Bektaşi forms of worship while facilitating Sunni practices (see Har-
manşah et al. 2014), and the main form of Alevi worship, the cem ceremony,
is prohibited entirely in the complex. Other dervish complexes have similarly
been turned into museums, with the Mevlana museum in Konya the greatest
in international prominence due to the popularity in the West of the works of
‘Rumi’, the founder (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, Mevlana), but also
structured now to obstruct the worship practices of Alevis/Mevlevis while
facilitating those of Sunni Islam (ibid.).3
The site closure and ban of the order in 1925, however, was not the first
such challenge to the Bektaşis. The order was also banned by Sultan
Mahmud II in 1826, and its properties given to the Nekşibendis, a Sunni
order. By the early twentieth century, some Bektaşi sites were also being
claimed by Christians (Hasluck 1973 [1929]). If we look at the situation of the
Bektaşis over nearly the past two centuries, it seems that their order has faced
challenges, and its sites have been subject to appropriation by other religious
communities, for the entire period. Neither were the Bektaşis the only dervish
order to face such challenges in the late Ottoman Empire and the post-Ottoman
states. To put the matter succinctly, in parts of the post-Ottoman Balkans and
Anatolia in which Islam is the dominant religion of heritage, if not always of
practice, the Sufi or dervish versions have been under strong pressure, even
repression, even in avowedly secular states. Where Christians have come to
rule, the Sufi/dervish orders have suffered less outright repression (at least
after 1878), yet have also seen their major shrines and other sites become
absorbed into Christian religioscapes, many ultimately losing their identities as
Muslim sites. Sometimes, as explained below, this Christianization of a der-
vish site has had the approval of Sunni authorities, whose hostility to saints
seems to lead them to think it better that a saint be seen as Christian than as
Muslim, even when (or maybe because) it is mainly Muslims who go to pray
at the site.
If we think about the politics of belonging in the post-Ottoman nation-
states, the dervish orders in the Balkans and Anatolia have had mixed recep-
tions depending on whether the polities were predominantly Christian or
predominantly Muslim. In the former case, the presumption has always been
that Muslims, even when citizens, are outside the national corpus, but the
non-Sunni Muslims have not been matters of separate concern to govern-
ments, which has allowed freedom to the dervish orders to continue their
distinctive practices – unless and until Christians decide that a dervish site is
‘really’ Christian and appropriate it. In Sunni-dominated polities, on the other
hand, adherents of the dervish orders were also seen as outside the national
corpus, and their major sites were often subject to appropriation by Sunnis.
Another way to look at the position of the dervish orders is provided by the
model of ‘antagonistic tolerance’ (Hayden 2002; Hayden and Walker 2013),
which assumes that major ethno-religious groups that live intermingled
(though rarely intermarrying) will do so in a condition of competitive sharing
of space, marked by competition over central and/or prominent religious sites.
Such antagonistic tolerance is common in colonial polities, and also in
nation-states in which the majority nation (natio, das Volk, narod), an ethnic
group in American terms, is defined by a primary religious criterion. In such
polities, citizens of another religious heritage may be excluded conceptually
from the sovereign nation, even when the state proclaims itself to be a
democracy (Hayden 1992). The post-Ottoman Balkans and Anatolia provide
good comparison with South Asia because they manifest post-imperial
nation-state formations in which, in each case, one ethno-religious group was
seen as the titular, sovereign nation in the new state, even when the state was
proclaimed to be secular.
This chapter considers indicators of belonging/exclusion by dervish groups
in the post-Ottoman Balkans and Anatolia/Turkey, as well as practices by the
latter that cope with this situation. Various dervishes arrived in the region
with the Ottoman conquests of the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries, but did not
organize into orders until late in the fifteenth century (Clayer 2011). These
orders were closely tied to centers in Istanbul or elsewhere in Ottoman Ana-
tolia, such as Ankara (the Bayrami), Konya (the Mevlevi) and Hacibektaş
(the Bektaşi). These last were not Sunni but rather are increasingly known as
Alevis, probably lumping them together on the basis of their non-Sunni
practices. The Ottoman Empire’s ‘Sunnitification’ is generally seen as having
developed during the sixteenth century (see Terzioğlu 2013), but the non-
Sunni tarikatlar were generally able to function in at least some parts of the
empire until its end in 1922. In any event, the Nekşibendis were very much a
Sunni order, a point of some importance in light of what happened to the
non-Sunni orders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
As for the non-Sunni orders, each had, by definition, its own devotional
practices. Among the non-Sunni orders in the Ottoman imperial space, some
practices were so unorthodox from a Sunni perspective as to seem to Sunnis
to be non-Islamic. The Bektaşis provide a good example: they do not pray in
mosques, or normally even visit them, but rather hold their own communal
cem ceremonies in buildings dedicated to that purpose (cemevi), and consume
wine in the course of some rituals. These customs are not unique to the der-
vish orders, but are found among a larger population in the region known in
Turkish as Alevis (see Sözer 2014: 3–4). While Alevis claim to be a commu-
nity of birth (one must be born an Alevi), the dervish orders are communities
of adherence; however, Alevis and some of the dervish orders, especially the
Bektaşis, share many beliefs and practices. Alevi-Bektaşis do not observe
Ramadan but rather Muharram. Alevi and Bektaşi women do not veil or
24 Robert M. Hayden
cover their heads, and take part in cem ceremonies. It has long been suggested
that some Alevi-Bektaşi beliefs and practices (e.g. belief in a form of trinity
[albeit God, Mohammed and Ali], utilization of wine or other alcohol in
ritual, identification of the 12 imams with the disciples of Christ) are either
derived in part from those of Christianity or at least served as an attractive
alternative belief for Christians (Birge 1965: 215–218), and Hasluck (1973
[1929]: 456 ff.) documented considerable sharing of religious sites between
Bektaşi and Christians in the very late Ottoman Empire. An example of a
tekke/türbe complex (külliye) built on the site of a church or monastery is that
of Battal Gazi, in Seyitgazi, Eskişehir (Yürekli 2012).
What the dervish/Sufi orders of the Ottoman Empire certainly shared with
local forms of Orthodox Christianity was a belief in the efficacy of appealing
to saints for assistance and benefits. These saints could be the founder of an
order, or one of the deceased former heads of a local tekke. For the Chris-
tians, saints could be Biblical, both from the Old and New Testaments, or
more local. The non-Sunni Muslims could also venerate Old Testament fig-
ures, such as St Ilija/Ilya/Ilyas. As discussed below, there are shrines in the
Balkans to this saint that are still visited by both Muslims and Christians, as
there are other shrines in which the saint may have both a Muslim and a
Christian identity. The British archaeologist and ethnologist F.W. Hasluck
noted nearly a century ago that Christians visited the Haci Bektaş tekke and
that some also claimed that the founder’s tomb there was really that of a
Christian saint (Hasluck 1973 [1929]: 109–110). Such stories of the single
saint having ‘really’ been a Muslim on the one hand and a Christian on the
other, so similar to the dual identities of some Sufi saints and Nāth saints in
central India (see e.g., Bouiller and Khan 2009; Deák 2010), is still found
today, as discussed further below.
Comparing imperial withdrawals and their consequences

Despite their many differences, South Asia, Anatolia and the Balkans
share some parallel historical developments. In both cases, Muslim con-
querors took control over large territories starting in the eleventh century. In
both cases, there were conversions from the indigenous religions,4 sparking
similar political discourses in later years about conversion as a tactic of con-
quest. In both cases, a Muslim religioscape came into existence, in some
places displacing the structures of the indigenous religions. In both cases, the
withdrawal of the imperial structures that had enforced stability led to parti-
tions on ethno-religious grounds, along with the processes now called ethnic
cleansing: the Partition of India in 1947 was preceded by the expulsion of
Turks and the Muslims from the newly independent Greece and Serbia in
the nineteenth century, the multiple forced movements of populations with
the partition of Macedonia in 1912–13, the mass killings of Armenians in
Anatolia in 1915, and the compulsory ‘population exchange’ between
Greece and Turkey in 1923 that displaced almost all of the Orthodox
Christians from Turkey and Muslims from Greece (Clark 2006; Gingeras
2009).
The well-known accounts of the violence that took place during the Parti-
tion of Punjab are matched by accounts of similar violence in Macedonia (see
Brown 2013; Yosmaoğlu 2014), among other places. On the other hand,
analyses of the supposedly peaceful, pre-national pasts in both cases are also
common (compare Doumanis 2013; Pandey 2001). There were also, of
course, differences. In South Asia the last empire was a European colonial
one that withdrew, leaving domestic political regimes in charge of new states,
while in almost all of the Balkans, the imperial regime was itself less colonial5
and collapsed, with different outcomes in the Turkish-speaking heartland of
Anatolia and eastern Thrace from in the peripheries. In the European parts of
the empire, everywhere but Bosnia and Cyprus,6 Ottoman rule was succeeded
by domestic political regimes, but in Anatolia and eastern Thrace, Ottoman
rule was succeeded by the republic regime proclaimed by Atatürk in 1923.
Thus in the new Republic of Turkey, a domestic regime was replaced by
another domestic regime.
The nation-states that succeeded the empires were officially secular but each
had a majority of one religious community. In what had been the European
parts of the empire, all of the new states except Albania had majority popu-
lations that were Orthodox Christians, and minority Muslim populations.
Albania, on the other hand, had a majority Muslim population with sizeable
Christian minorities, both Orthodox and Roman Catholic. In the new
Republic of Turkey, what had been sizeable Christian minorities had been
largely eliminated – the Armenians through mass killings and deportations in
1915, the Greeks through the ‘population exchange’ of 1923 that followed the
defeat of the Greek invasion of 1920 and the consequent war of Turkish
independence from 1920–22, plus the expulsion of most of the Greeks of
Istanbul in 1955.
If we compare these post-imperial settings, we see that in South Asia, the
withdrawal of European colonial power left in place domestic political
regimes, in states which each had a majority religious community: Hindu in
India, Muslim in Pakistan (later Pakistan and Bangladesh), Buddhists in Sri
Lanka. Each also had, at least initially, a relatively large religious minority
and other smaller ones: Muslim in India, Hindu in Pakistan (though this
declined rapidly immediately after independence), Hindu in Sri Lanka. In the
Balkans, the domestic political regimes that succeeded imperialism all had
ethno-religious majorities: Orthodox Christian in Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia
(until 1919) and Yugoslavia (after 1919, and incorporating formerly Ottoman
territories in Bosnia, Macedonia and the Sandžak of Novi Pazar); Muslim in
Albania and Turkey. The Christian-majority polities had sizeable Muslim
minorities, the Muslim-majority ones had sizeable Christian minorities. In
all cases each religious population was largely endogamous, and seen as
communities, coded increasingly in Europe as nations.
26 Robert M. Hayden
Dervish orders in Muslim-majority post-Ottoman states in Europe:
Turkey and Albania
As already noted, Ottoman Anatolia was the site of the headquarters of a
number of dervish orders. The one that has attracted most scholarly attention
has been the Bektaşis, perhaps because of their seemingly close parallels to
Orthodox Christianity, on the one hand, and also their conflicted relation-
ships with the Sunni emperors in the early nineteenth century and with Atatürk’s
republic in 1925. The Bektaşis might well qualify as the dervish order that has
displayed the greatest syncretism with other traditions, and also humanism.
In a thorough account of the historical development of Bektaşism, Albert
Doja (2006) has analyzed the order’s rejection of Sunni orthodoxy, and its
essential humanism, inclusion of women and other aspects that are now cited to
show the pre-modern modernity of the Bektaşis. Indeed, this is the image now
utilized by the Turkish state – or at least, it was as of 2008, as described above.
Yet, as noted, those claimed characteristics did not stop Atatürk from sup-
pressing the Bektaşis, along with all other dervish orders in Turkey, in 1925,
and indeed, the non-Sunni-orthodox aspect of the Bektaşis is probably part of
what caused the order to be suppressed by the Ottoman emperor in 1826.
To begin with the Ottoman period, the Bektaşi order became large and
powerful in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries had a mixed relationship with the empire, which became
increasingly Sunni. The Bektaşis had particular power since they were closely
linked to the Janissaries (Yeniçeri), the core of the Ottoman military forces
until the early nineteenth century. In 1826, the sultan broke up the Janissaries
as overly powerful, and also prohibited the Bektaşi order, giving its lands to
the Nekşibendis and building a mosque in the complex containing the main
Bektaşi tekke, and the tomb of Haci Bektaş, in central Anatolia. Even before
this decree there had been a dispute between two families over leadership of
the Bektaşi tarikat, which continued even after the 1826 decree banning the
order. However, after 1826 a member of one of these families was able to gain
the post of türbedar and act effectively as head of the order despite the pre-
sence of the Nekşibendi shayk (Öztürk 2012: 56), which would go a long way
toward explaining how it happened that by the time Hasluck reached the
tekke ca. 1913, it was once again a Bektaşi site. In fact, this mechanism of
maintaining some control by the order after the closing down of dervish
lodges may have been common. Even after the organizational structure of the
lodges was severely disrupted, the türbedars were allowed to keep their occu-
pation. Even in 2014 there were two major families fighting over the rights to
claim to be the keepers of a tekke and türbe; of course, at present this is only
symbolic, as neither the lodge nor the türbe will be under their control. How-
ever, they are not alone; several other groups within the Alevi organizations
also have such claims.7
Hasluck is also helpful in pointing out the extent to which Bektaşi sites in
Anatolia and elsewhere were also being claimed by Christians in 1913. He
interprets this situation as evidence of syncretism in the beliefs of the two
communities, but also as evidence of a Bektaşi aim to ‘absorb Christianity
into Bektashism’ (Hasluck 1973: vol. II, 470). However, Hasluck then imme-
diately notes the importance of the political context in saying that Bektaşi
aims to convert Christians in Albania were supported by the local Ottoman
administrators there. The reverse, however, may also have been true.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the power of the Ottoman state was visi-
bly failing, and so was its capacity to impose a system in which Muslims were
legally dominant over non-Muslims. The Tanzimat’s promises of equality
both empowered Christians and weakened the advantage held by Muslims. I
am reminded of the de facto equalizing effect that British rule had in formerly
Muslim-ruled areas of central India, as seen in the trajectory of increasingly
successful Hindu claims on the shrine at Madhi (see Hayden 2002), and it
may be that Christians throughout the Ottoman Empire, including Anatolia,
were emboldened to make claims, albeit not legal or official ones, on Bektaşi
shrines at a time when that order was in disfavor.
Be that as it may, by the end of Ottoman rule, the Bektaşi order in Turkey
was officially banned but still functioning. It faced competition from the
Sunni Nekşibendis, while there were also informal Christian claims for some
sites.
As noted earlier, all of the dervish orders were banned in the earliest years
of the republic, in 1925, as part of Atatürk’s program of modernization.
Religion was to be removed from public life, and religious authorities either
brought under control of the state, or banned. This form of secularization
effectively favored Sunni Islam, as had the Ottoman Empire. Since the first
electoral victory of the Islamist AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or Justice
and Development Party) in 2002, the Turkish state has become increasingly
openly Sunni in orientation. In the early part of the decade starting in 2000,
Alevi organizations were able to organize and function openly (Walton 2013).
However, the AKP’s increasing electoral success facilitated an open favoring
of Sunni Islam in the country, with noticeable effects in terms of advancing
public adherence to Sunni practices that had been discouraged or even for-
bidden in the secularism set up by Atatürk. Thus the situation of dervish
orders in Sunni-dominated post-Ottoman Turkey, which had improved to
some extent in the early years of the twenty-first century, is still subordinated
in a state that openly favors Sunni orthodoxy.
The only Muslim-majority state in the post-Ottoman Balkans was and is
Albania.8 With the closing of the main tekke and banning of the order in
1826, Albania became the main center of Bektaşism in the nineteenth century.
However, the Albanian state in effect accompanied the recognition of Bektaşism
as one of the official religions of the country with increasing state control over
its institutions.
The arrival of communist rule in 1945 did not help the Bektaşis, whose order
was soon put under Party control. In 1967, the government banned religion
entirely, which led to the destruction of many of the Bektaşi tekkes, along
28 Robert M. Hayden
with other religious institutions and buildings. The order was reinvigorated
after the fall of communism.
Yet the reinvigorated Bektaşism of post-communist Albania is not as strong
politically as it was in the first half of the twentieth century. Albert Doja
(2006: 100–102) sees a movement towards Sunni orthodoxy on the part of the
Albanian Bektaşis, reflecting the increased influence of Sunnis internationally.
Certainly much of the funding for Muslim communities in the Balkans comes
from Saudi and Turkish sources that heavily favor Sunni orthodoxy. On the
other hand, even though the primary link between Bektaşism and Shia Islam
is the adoration of Ali, Iran has been actively supporting Bektaşis and Alevis
(Doja 2006: 103). In this regard, Bektaşism may be seen as increasingly
manifesting syncretism, but whereas the main syncretism noted in the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries was with Christianity, the connection
now is between Sunni and Shia Islam.
This last observation leads to the conclusion that syncretism is dependent
in large part on the presence of the other community with which practices,
beliefs, saints and sites are said to be shared. In the case of the Muslim-
majority states of post-Ottoman Europe, the dervish orders have been in
competitive relations with Sunni state-supported hierarchies. This has not led
to the equality of the dervish groups with Sunni Muslims, but rather to
subordination of Alevis and the dervish orders to Sunni hierarchies.
Dervish orders and Alevis in Christian-majority post-Ottoman states

It may at first glance be surprising that the dervish orders survived better in
some of the Christian-majority post-Ottoman states, especially since those
states were generally not well inclined toward Islam. Greece and Serbia,
which were the first two states to gain independence, are not interesting, at
least in their nineteenth-century incarnations, since both of the new states
drove many Muslims from their territories, and engaged in conscious pro-
cesses of de-Ottomanization in their cities (Koumaridis 2006; Мишкëвић
2011). Both later gained substantial Muslim populations with their territorial
acquisitions at the expense of the Ottoman Empire in 1912–13 and at the end
of World War I, and I will consider the position of dervishes in Yugoslavia,
which succeeded Serbia after World War I.
Bulgaria, however, which gained de facto independence from the Ottoman
Empire in 1878, provides some interesting case studies. While the dervish
orders are generally thought to have been suppressed in Ottoman Bulgaria,
Hande Sözer (2014) has found that Alevi Bulgarian Turks belong to a
number of tarikatlar, primarily the Bektaşi and Babai orders. These are lar-
gely unstudied (but see Gramatikova 2001), because research on Muslims in
Bulgaria has focused overwhelmingly on Sunnis, both Turks and Bulgarian-
speaking Pomaks (see e.g. Ghodsee 2010). Sözer’s fieldwork focuses on rela-
tions between the various Alevi Bulgarian Turk communities to each other
and to the müftülük, the Sunni religious establishment that is recognized by
the Bulgarian government and even financially supported by both Bulgaria
and Turkey. While the Alevi groups distinguish themselves from each other,
they also practice takiye, dissimulation, pretending to be Sunnis by engaging
in what would appear to be Sunni practices, while still acknowledging to each
other that they are only pretending. In Sözer’s highly original analysis, enga-
ging in this self-conscious pretense, affecting to engage in Sunni practices
while not actually accepting Sunni doctrine and beliefs, reinforces their non-
Sunni, Alevi identities, within the Alevi community itself. A striking saying
that she recorded from her informants, in regard to their dealings with Sunnis,
is ‘Pay attention to the Şeriat, hide the tarikat’. What Sözer has identified,
dissimulation, raises serious questions about other studies that see syncretism
in practices such as supposedly non-Sunni groups following Sharia. Instead of
manifesting either assimilation or syncretism, dissimulation actually reinforces
separateness to the minority community, among its own members.
Dissimulation helps the minority Alevi communities avoid conflict with
Sunnis, while passing essentially unnoticed among Bulgarian Christians, and
even among scholars. On the other hand, when Alevis do come into conflict
with the Bulgarian Orthodox Christian majority, they can expect no support
from the Sunni Bulgarian Turks. In July 2008, Sözer and I observed a fasci-
nating set of interactions at the Demir Baba türbe and tekke, near Razgrad,
Bulgaria. The religious symbols and stylistic references within the türbe mark
it unequivocally as an Alevi site. However, on July 20, 2008, a Bulgarian
nationalist group organized a large meeting at the site to mark the founding
of a monastery to St George. The Christians claimed that the tekke had been
built after the Ottoman conquest on the site of an earlier Christian mon-
astery, and that they were reclaiming the site. We were not surprised to see
Bulgarian Orthodox Church clergy in attendance, including the bishop of
Ruse, the largest city in the region. We were surprised, however, to see repre-
sentatives of the müftülük sitting at the bishop’s table. Alevi informants,
however, were not surprised by this, saying that they did not expect support
from the Sunni establishment. In this case, the hostility of the Sunni autho-
rities to Alevism led the former to side with the Christians in a dispute
between them and the Alevis.
At the same time, the Christian assertion of ownership of the Demir Baba
site illustrates another problem faced by the Alevis in Bulgaria. There are in
fact elements of Alevi practice that seem syncretic with those of Orthodox
Christians, including the consumption of alcohol, the relatively equal position
of women, and lighting candles at saints’ shrines. Yet the similarity in practice
has produced cases in which Christians have appropriated, or seemed on the
way to appropriating, shrines the architecture of which marks them as having
been built as türbe. One example is the Ak Yazul Baba türbe and tekke near
Balchik, which is increasingly being referred to as the monastery and tomb of
St Atanas, a Christian saint. In this case, there are stories about the suppo-
sedly close friendship between the Baba and the saint that seem to merge their
identities, and lead to Christians asserting that the türbe is actually that of St
30 Robert M. Hayden
Atanas, masked as that of Ak Yazul Baba in order to fool the Ottoman rulers
at the time when it was built – a kind of story told at some of the Sufi dargāhs
in central India that are said by Hindus really to be the tombs of Hindu
saints (see Hayden 2002).
Still, the elements of religious practice shared by Alevis and Christians may
at times provide some protection to the former from the Sunni orthodox
establishment in Bulgaria. For example, on the outskirts of Sofia is the türbe
of Bali Efendi, a sixteenth-century Bayrami shaykh (Kmetova and Mikov
1998). During the Ottoman period the surrounding village was called Bali
Efendi, and next to the türbe were a tekke and a mosque. After the liberation
of Bulgaria in 1878, the place was renamed Knjazevo, in honor of the new
prince (knjaz), and the tekke and mosque were torn down, the latter replaced
by a church to St Ilya, though the türbe remains, identified as the tomb of
Bali Efendi.
One of the forms of apparent syncretism between Orthodox Christians and
Alevis and other adherents of dervish orders is that all light candles at the
tombs or shrines of saints, a practice otherwise closely associated with Chris-
tianity in the region and very definitely not part of Sunni orthodox practice.
There is one difference, however: Christians usually light beeswax candles,
often obtained in churches, while Alevis and other Muslims generally light
white paraffin candles (or occasionally green ones) that have been bought in
shops. Be that as it may, the Sunni establishment in Bulgaria, the müftülük,
discourages the burning of candles by Muslims, and when I visited the Bali
Efendi türbe in July 2008, a note inside the main window of the türbe said, in
Bulgarian, ‘Do not light candles. Pray to Allah’. Yet candles had very clearly
been lit. In this case, the non-Sunni practice was effectively in defiance of the
Sunni religious authorities, and was performed by Christians as well as
Muslims. This near-commonality of practice did not unite those two com-
munities, however. Since Ilya is an Old Testament prophet, Muslims as well as
Christians venerate him, and the saint’s day is proclaimed on the front of the
church: July 20. Christians go to the church on that day. Muslims, on the
other hand, gather at the place, if not necessarily the church, on August 2,
which is the equivalent of July 20 by the Julian calendar, which was super-
seded in the Bulgarian church in 1968 by the Gregorian calendar. The result
is that the two communities celebrate St Ilya, on the saint’s day, but 13 days
apart.
As mentioned earlier, soon after independence in the nineteenth century,
the Kingdom of Serbia expelled most Muslims and destroyed most structures
associated with Islam: mosques, tekkes, cemeteries. However, after 1919 the
new Yugoslavia found itself with large Muslim populations. Far from trying
to expel these new citizens, the new Yugoslav state maintained Sharia courts
for them, a continuation of the Austro-Hungarian practice after its assump-
tion of control over Bosnia in 1878 (Greble 2014). The dervish orders were
also maintained, but were banned in Communist Yugoslavia, in 1952, and
many of the tekkes were closed, even torn down (Raudvere 2011). As was the
case in Turkey after the dervish orders were banned in 1925, some of the
orders in Bosnia, at least, continued an underground existence. In the early
1980s it was reported that there were nine dervish orders, operating in
Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia (Popović 1985: 245). The dervish orders had
been able to establish a ‘community’ in 1974, which published a bulletin
(Popović 1985: 244). The response was interesting: according to Alexandre
Popović (1985: 244), ‘the religious authorities of the official (Sunni) Muslim
community reacted very violently at first’ to the founding of the dervish com-
munity, but met with the leaders of the dervish group in 1979, leading to
‘complex’ relations as of 1979.
While the Muslim communities of Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia collec-
tively formed a minority in federal Yugoslavia, with the disintegration of the
country the situation changed: Muslims are a majority in Kosovo and min-
ority in Macedonia. Bosnia is more complex: though Muslims form a plur-
ality in a country with no single majority, nobody even pretends to believe
that the country is unified, but rather is divided territorially into the ‘Repub-
lika Srpska’ (almost all Serbs, thus Orthodox Christian heritage) and the
‘Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina’ (almost all Bosniaks, meaning Bos-
nian Muslim heritage, and Croats, of Catholic heritage), although the fed-
eration is itself divided, so that parts are overwhelmingly Muslim, other parts
overwhelmingly Croat (see Hayden 2007). Kosovo remains less than well
studied. In Muslim-majority parts of Bosnia, it seems that the Sunni-oriented
Sufi orders (e.g. Nekşibendi, Kaderi) are most active (Raudvere 2011: 8),
which makes sense considering the heavy political and economic involvement
in Bosnia of the Turkish state under the AKP government – a government
that openly supports Sunni Islam. As for Macedonia, there are excellent cri-
tical analyses of efforts by Orthodox Christians to appropriate what had been
Muslim shrines there, notably tekkes and türbes (Bowman 2010; Koneska and
Jankuloski 2009).
The general experience of the dervish orders in the Christian-majority
states thus seems to be that they have been able to maintain their practices
even in periods under communism when they were officially banned, though
they are able to do this better in smaller towns and villages than in large
cities. However, dervish lodges and türbes have been appropriated by Chris-
tians, in processes that have been documented through the first decade of the
twenty-first century and that certainly are still continuing. In the Muslim-
majority parts of the former Yugoslavia, Sunni dervish orders seem to be
more successful than the heterodox ones, in polities dominated by Sunni
elites.
Syncretism and the inherent instability of liminality

I want to conclude with some thoughts on what the complex historical tra-
jectories of the dervish orders of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman space may
tell us that might be relevant to understanding the current situation of Sufi
32 Robert M. Hayden
orders in South Asia – which is, after all, the subject of this volume. There are
both empirical findings and theoretical conclusions that are relevant.
First, empirically: in Ottoman and post-Ottoman space, efforts by Sunni-
oriented states and followers to suppress the dervishes have occurred since at
least the sixteenth century, and have included outright bans on specific orders
(the Bektaşis in 1826, all of the orders in 1925), as well as pressure on Sufi
orders to follow more closely the tenets of Sharia. The official Ottoman pre-
ference for Sunni Islam was shown in the transfer of Bektaşi assets to the
Sunni Nekşibendis in 1826. Strikingly, even the early, avowedly secular and
modernizing Republic of Turkey established by Atatürk actually favored
Sunni Islam, so that Turkish secularism has in reality been premised on the
presumption that the population was overwhelmingly Sunni. As the AKP
consolidates power after its third major electoral victory, the orthodox Sunni
orientation of the Turkish state is increasingly open. I would anticipate that
the Alevis and followers of specific dervish orders are likely at least to
appear to be more like Sunnis in their practices. However, Hande Sözer’s
analysis of the practice of dissimulation, as takiye, is relevant – some Alevis in
Turkey, like their counterparts in Bulgaria, may well ‘pay attention to the
Şeriat, and hide the tarikat’, though there has been much more openness by
many Alevis since 2000. For our part, researchers studying Sufi orders in South
Asia should consider whether takiye is being practiced there as well, espe-
cially in Muslim-majority polities in which political leaders and governmental
structures favor Sunni Islam.
What is missing in the Muslim-majority post-Ottoman space is what
observers a century ago saw as the most important syncretic aspects of Alevi-
Bektaşi beliefs and practices: their putative connections to Christianity. This
makes sense, because while Christianity was experiencing rising fortunes in
the Ottoman Empire after the Tanzimat of 1839, in the post-Ottoman
Muslim-majority states, Christians comprise minorities, without realistic
access to power. In Turkey now, in the few places where Christians still form
a substantial part of the population (in Hatay province in south-central
Anatolia, bordering Syria), the Christians complain that the local ’Alawī (not
to be confused with the Anatolian Alevis) have appropriated Christian saints’
sites, while the ’Alawī complain that some of their sites have been appro-
priated by Sunnis (Prager 2013). In these contexts, then, the syncretic aspects
of the dervish orders are generally either irrelevant (those shared with Chris-
tianity) or bring unwelcome attention by ruling Sunni establishments. In the
latter case, that Alevi and dervish beliefs and practices differ from current
forms of Sunni orthodoxy causes them to be perceived as deviant, not
syncretic.
On the other hand, in Christian-majority states, the syncretic aspects of
Alevi and dervish beliefs and practices with those of Orthodox Christians
offer no advantages to the former community, since they are perceived as
non-Christian, thus outside the majority’s narratives of national identity. Iro-
nically enough, the practices that Alevis and adherents of dervish orders share
with Christians may actually make it easier for the latter to claim sites, such
as türbes and tekkes, as being ‘really’ or ‘originally’ Christian, and thus
appropriate them. Successful attempts at such appropriation have been
documented in Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia and Serbia, and are continuing
at present in these states, even those in the avowedly secular European
Union (EU).
We can sum up the late- and post-Ottoman experience of the Alevis and
the dervish orders as follows: in the Muslim-majority states, the dervish
orders and Alevis have been repressed, though they have survived, largely
through maintaining their practices out of the public eye, and perhaps as well
through practicing dissimulation, takiye. In the Christian-majority states, there
has been less open repression of the dervish orders (except during commun-
ism), but sites, especially those associated with saints, that are sacred for
Alevis and followers of the various dervish tarikats have not infrequently been
claimed, even appropriated by Christians, who say that the saints in question
were really Christians.
Syncretism actually seems to have been a handicap in both situations,
though for different reasons. In the Muslim-majority states, it is Sunni Islam
that is favored officially, and the very deviances from what has been defined
and redefined as Sunni orthodoxy have been used to disqualify the Alevis and
dervishes as Muslims, or their practices as Islamic. In a recent example, Tur-
key’s Supreme Court of Appeals ruled in 2012 that while Alevis are Muslims,
the cemevi that they use for worship are not legally houses of worship, and
thus entitled to state support, because only mosques qualify as houses of
worship for Muslims. On the other hand, in the Christian-majority states, the
kinds of parallels between Christian practices and those of Alevis and fol-
lowers of dervish orders that Hasluck noted as syncretic, are seen as evidence
that the Alevis are the descendants of converts from Christianity and are thus
‘really’ Christians, while similarities in practice are used to support claims to
Alevi-dervish sacred sites as also being originally Christian.
Moving to the realm of theory, however, we should not be surprised when
syncretism leads to contestation, because that which is syncretic (or hybrid, if
that is preferred) is also thereby liminal, since it shares some aspects of two or
more recognized practices but thereby also differs from the generally accepted
configurations of each of them. As Mary Douglas argued in 1966, that which
is liminal is often seen as impure, dangerous, dirty, and thus as requiring
action to end the liminality by forcing conformance to a supposed standard.
Of course, Douglas realized that social life was actually rarely likely to be as
orderly as either formal models or folk terminology might envision it, and
that social action negotiating the boundaries of what had been said to be
heterodox actually determined through time the boundaries of what was
accepted as orthodox. In this model, the distinction between orthodoxy and
nonconformance remains robust even as the practices or other traits that
supposedly define orthodoxy might themselves change. In the realm of ethnic
groups, Barth (1969) elegantly demonstrated that most of the ‘cultural matter’
34 Robert M. Hayden
that supposedly characterizes a group can change or vary though time with-
out bringing into question the identity of that group as such, to its own
members or to others. Rather than the boundaries of ethnic groups being
determined by a specific cultural content that defines that group, instead it is
the maintenance of the boundaries themselves that continues to distinguish
groups from each other even as they may come to share many of the same
cultural features that should, supposedly, differentiate them (Barth 1969).
Since Barth, much work has gone into showing how the supposedly essen-
tial qualities of cultures, peoples, nations, genders or religions are constructed,
thus not inevitable or ‘natural’, and also inherently fluid and unstable. Yet
such analyses ignore what may be the more important part of Barth’s analy-
sis, which was that even though the cultural content that supposedly defines
groups and distinguishes one from another may be fluid, unstable and
changeable, the boundaries between them are likely to remain, and group
identity not be called into question. Thus while the cultural matter associated
with an identity may well be fluid, this does not mean that the identity itself is
fluid. Quite the contrary is often true: distinctions remain robust through
protracted periods of time even as the people associating themselves with
each group, and thus distinguishing themselves from each other, would be
hard to distinguish through observable cultural features.
In fact, it may be better to see identities as not themselves fluid, but rather
the practices and beliefs that supposedly define them as exhibiting fluidity.
The social boundary should be envisioned as being more like a semiperme-
able membrane than a barrier. Barth in fact used a hydraulic metaphor to
address the problem of the non-fixed nature of cultural materials, saying that
boundaries remain stable not only when the substance that supposedly defines
them changes but also when personnel ‘flow’ across them (Barth 1969: 9). In
this model, it is not the identity constructions that are fluid but rather the
liminal spaces between the categories, the practices, beliefs and other ‘cultural
stuff’ that may be more or less shared by members of both communities.
Thus the distinctions between groups remain, even as the features that
supposedly serve to distinguish them from each other diminish. This model is
very useful for explaining long-term patterns of interaction between peoples
such as those of Bosnia, who remain distinguished from each other, appar-
ently, largely because they distinguish themselves from each other. Lest this
seem far-fetched, consider the black humor circulating in Bosnia as the
population self-partitioned into groups defined by the religious backgrounds
of their ancestors, even after 45 years of official atheism and large-scale lack
of religiosity: ‘We’re fighting because the religion you don’t practice is not the
same one we don’t practice.’
In saying this, I am not adopting an ‘essentialist’ position, that favorite
accusatory disqualification of post-post-structuralist discourse, but rather
noting that, whether we like it or not, and whether we agree with them or not,
a lot of non-academics seem to exhibit pre-post-structuralist mentalities, and
actually believe that their religious identities are determined by specific
practices and beliefs that are different from those of other religions. While
there are scholars who assert that we should not ‘reproduce’ such under-
standings in our work (Borneman 2007; Jansen 2005), it is difficult to see how
social research that carefully avoids consideration of how people define
themselves, how they understand their situations, and thus at least in part
the motivations behind their actions, can be much other than fantasizing – the
analysis of wished-for counterfactuals rather than grappling with undesirable
realities.
In the present case, the distinctions between Muslims and Christians go
back to the earliest days of Islam, and indeed, seem unbridgeable except by
development of a doctrine that would merge the two faiths into one. Gregory
Palamas expressed the logic well, in debating with his Turkish captors in
1354. The Turks kept trying to get him to acknowledge the legitimacy of their
prophet, as Muslims accept Christ as a prophet, which Gregory kept reject-
ing. Finally Gregory ended the discussion by saying: ‘Had we been able to
agree in debate, we might as well have been of one faith’ (Arnakis 1951: 110).9
The basic unbridgeable gap in this case is the divinity of Christ, axiomatic for
Christians after the fourth century and the pronouncement of Arianism to be
heresy, but itself heresy to Muslims. A form of Christianity that renounces the
divinity of Christ is unlikely to gain wide acceptance among other Christians,
while a form of Islam that accepts the divinity of Christ is equally unlikely to
gain wide acceptance among Muslims.
Empirically, observational studies of Christians and Muslims at shrines
frequently attended by members of both groups have been very clear: from
Hasluck in 1913 through very recent studies in Bulgaria nearly a century
later, members of these communities maintain their separate religious iden-
tities, and avoid engaging in some of the characteristic forms of worship of
the other religion. As one recent study put it, at sites in which members of two
or more religious communities interact, ‘[c]ooperation between believers from
different religious traditions should not be mistaken for religious syncretism.
Deep down, this … is a cultural strategy developed by members of both
groups for anti-syncretic purposes, that is to preserve the religious auton-
omy of each group’ (Lubanska 2013: 107). As a leading researcher in the
field summed up the findings of a volume on sharing religious sites in the
Mediterranean, ‘while the hybrid practices are striking, mixing with indivi-
duals of a different religion does not result, so to speak, in any evident
damage to existing religious identities. Indeed, these “transgressions”
usually appear to be associated with the original religious polarization’
(Albera 2012: 243).
To sum up, empirical and historical data indicate that rather than uniting
Christians and Muslims in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman space, the appar-
ently syncretic dervish orders were and are instead liminal to the orthodox
establishments of both communities. Further, the syncretic aspects of these
orders have generally not overcome the communal distinctions between wor-
shippers at shrines, even when the people involved are performing many (but
36 Robert M. Hayden
not all) similar actions. However, this continuity of communal separation
should not surprise us, because it is definitional that liminal phenomena
remain conceptually distinct from the more established forms of which they
share only some attributes. When a religious site or order shares attributes
with two or more larger religious communities, members of each of the latter
may see the syncretic site as really belonging to their own group exclusively,
and when political circumstances permit, take steps to enhance their own
claims to the place. It is just such efforts that, I think, we see evidenced in the
Ottoman and post-Ottoman space: the efforts by the Christians to claim
Bektaşi and other dervish orders’ shrines during the Tanzimat; the Sunni
efforts to close or claim the orders in Sunni-majority post-Ottoman space; the
Christian efforts to appropriate dervish shrines in the Christian-majority
post-Ottoman state; even into the present time in EU member state Bulgaria.
Some South Asian comparisons

While the previous section provides a theoretical conclusion to this chapter, I
want to end it with some consideration of how the experience of the dervish
orders may be relevant to those interested in Sufi Islam in South Asia. First,
the post-Ottoman experience indicates that Sufi Islam is most likely to be
endangered, and Sufi sites destroyed, in Muslim-majority states. Considering
the attacks on and destruction over the past decade of Sufi shrines in Ban-
gladesh, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Pakistan and Syria, to provide an incom-
plete list, this is hardly surprising. We should recall that in Turkey, the major
dervish complexes of Haci Bektaş and Mevlana, which had been the head-
quarters sites of those orders, remain museums, largely Sunnified. On the
other hand, in states where Muslims form a minority, Sufi shrines seem less
likely to be destroyed, but more likely to be appropriated by the majority
community. India would seem to fit this pattern well; I am simply not
sufficiently knowledgeable about Sri Lanka to be able to assess the matter.
It might seem counterintuitive that Sufi sites will be more endangered in
states with Muslim majorities than in states where Muslims constitute mino-
rities. Certainly this conclusion runs contrary to that favorite, hackneyed line
of politicians and publicists, that Islam and Christianity (or Islam and Hin-
duism) are engaged in age-old conflicts. The key is that in Muslim-majority
states, the heterodox or syncretic features of Sufi practice are seen by many
Sunni leaders as heresy, thus threatening to the faith. In states in which Muslims
are a minority, on the other hand, the practices and sites that are syncretic
with the majority community’s practices may lead members of that majority
to claim that the site really belongs to their community, and appropriate it,
and this has certainly happened, and is happening, in India.
We might envision a hypothetical situation in which the Sufi community
itself forms a majority, in which case they could appropriate shared sites, but
this seems impossible actually to envision, because the syncretic identity of
Sufi Islam requires that it exhibit characteristics of other, larger communities.
Even when an order has a great popular following, the model of syncretism
actually requires that the syncretic practice be liminal, defined by sharing
some attributes of other conditions while not actually merging with them. We
may revise Gregory Palamas’s response to the Muslims who tried to con-
vince him that Christians and Muslims could honor each other’s doctrines:
were they to do so, they would no longer be Christians and Muslims.
Finally, a brief case study from Maharashtra compared with the experience
of the Bektaşis to illustrate the social processes involved. I have analyzed the
shrine to the Hindu saint Kanifnāth/Muslim saint Shāh Ramzān Māhī Savār
at Madhi, Maharashtra elsewhere (Hayden 2002), and a film on the trans-
formation of this shrine from about 1885–2013 is now available (Hayden and
Valenzuela 2014). In brief, what began as the dargāh of a Muslim saint
during a period of Muslim rule began to acquire a Hindu presence when the
British ruled the region, and removed the legal and political superiority that
Muslims had previously enjoyed by recognizing rights in the shrine to Hindu
worshippers (Figure 1.2). With the independence of India, the political envir-
onment changed again, so that even in the secular republic, the balance of
political power shifted decisively to Hindu politicians and the voters who
supported them, so that the Muslims steadily lost more and more rights to
the shrine, losing legal control completely in 1952 to a trust, the trustees of
which were all Hindus, a transformation ultimately approved by the courts in
Figure 1.2 Flag offerings to the saint Kanifnāth/Shāh Ramzān Māhī Savār, at Madhi,
Maharashtra, India, March 1992. Note the crescent tops of the flagpoles.
Both green and orange flags are brought, some on the same pole
(Photo courtesy Robert M. Hayden)
38 Robert M. Hayden
1990. In 1992, the shrine was transformed to look primarily like the tomb of
the Hindu saint Kanifnāth, and by 2013 virtually all signs of its original
structure as a dargāh had been eliminated.
While there were occasional outbreaks of incidents of fighting between
Hindus and Muslims throughout this process (indeed, it was such occasions
of fighting that prompted the attention of the British authorities to the shrine
in the first place), the transfer of interest and control from Muslims to Hindus
tracked shifts in the balance of the overall political power between the two
communities. In treating the Muslims and Hindus equally, the British effec-
tively disempowered the former and gave new rights to the latter. I am
reminded of the presumably unintended consequence of the Tanzimat’s pro-
mise of equality to non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire after 1839, which
not only sparked the construction of large numbers of churches in the Bal-
kans and Anatolia for the first time since the fourteenth-century Ottoman
conquest, but also saw Christian claims to Bektaşi and other dervish order
tombs, tekkes and complexes. The majoritarian effects of independence, even
in a secular state, could be seen at Madhi by 1948, when a local Muslim
leader wrote to the authorities of Bombay state, saying that the village
authorities, who were Hindus, were acting against the Muslims, saying that
‘there is now our Rajya’, and expressing confidence in Prime Minister Nehru’s
promise to safeguard the rights of minorities. However, no such safeguarding
was provided and, as noted, the Madhi shrine passed legally into the control
of Hindus five years after independence. We can see such rapid majoritarian
trajectories in the Christian Balkans as well.
At the same time, however, we should note that while the shrine at Madhi
itself has become completely Hinduized in the secular Republic of India,
several other Kanifnāth/Shāh Ramzān shrines in the region have remained
visibly syncretic, showing both Muslim and Hindu design and iconographic
features (Hayden and Valenzuela 2014). The key seems to be that these sites
are peripheral, not the main shrine to the saint, much less well known and much
less visited. In other work on antagonistic tolerance, my colleagues and I have
noted that shrines of subordinated groups may remain large and locally well
known, so long as they are peripheral to centers of social and political life
(Hayden and Walker 2013). While we drew those conclusions mainly from
data from outside South Asia, we think that this general pattern is likely also
to be found there. This is not as satisfying as predicting that syncretistic
belief communities of Sufi/dervish orders can be a source of larger integra-
tion, but I would still predict that these orders will continue to exist, even
thrive in peripheral areas, in Muslim-minority states.
Conclusion: belonging, and not belonging, in religious-majority

nation-states
We might end by returning to the concept of belonging that underlies this
volume, but with a twist. It has long been recognized that the ‘dark side of
democracy’ (Mann 2005) is the tendency towards majoritarian politics, which
exclude minorities from sharing sovereignty in practice. The literature on such
exclusion of religious minorities is vast. By paying attention to minorities
within larger minority communities, such as dervish orders in Sunni-majority
states, we see a bit of an irony: in Sunni-majority states, the dervish orders
face greater state hostility than in states with non-Muslim majorities. The
reason for this difference is that in Sunni-majority states, political actors can
focus on non-Sunnis as disfavored minorities, whereas in states with non-
Muslim majorities, the failure of the larger state to distinguish Sunnis from
non-Sunnis to some extent empowers the latter, since their members can
claim protection as minorities as Muslims from states that do not distinguish
among the varying branches of Islam. The members of the dervish orders are
thus empowered, in non-Muslim majority states, to manage their visibility as
Muslims and as a minority, in regard to both the larger state and the larger,
Sunni minority within it (Sözer 2014). Paying attention to the varieties of
such behaviors in the states ranging from Bosnia to Bengal, from the seventeenth
century until the present, lets us clarify the commonalities of the political
adaptations in what otherwise are often seen as disparate regions.
Notes
1 I am grateful to Tuğba Tanyeri-Erdemir for her comments and translations from
Turkish, and for the comments of Deepra Dandekar and Torsten Tschacher.
2 A note on orthography: in the formerly Ottoman space, the same root word can
take different forms in different languages. In general I follow the Turkish variants
and orthography unless the context requires a South Slavic or Albanian form, or
there is a common English term, like dervish.
3 Museumification was also used by the early republic to handle some of the major
Byzantine churches that had been converted into mosques in the Ottoman period,
another manifestation of the loss of power of the old regime’s religious establishment.
4 I refer to Christianity as indigenous to Anatolia not only because most people were
Christians at the time of the arrival of the Muslim conquerors, but also because even
though the events that gave rise to Christianity occurred in Palestine, the major
early doctrines were largely developed in Asia Minor.
5 As Selim Deringil (2003) has noted, there is a tendency for theorists of post-
colonialism to ignore the Ottoman Empire. Deringil himself views the late Otto-
man rulers as adopting a ‘borrowed colonialism’ in regard to the peripheries of the
empire. Certainly the Christian peoples of the Balkans today regard the earlier
Ottoman rule as having been colonial in character.
6 Ottoman rule in Bosnia was displaced by Austro-Hungarian governance, and in Cyprus
by British rule; both lasted until World War I, when Britain annexed Cyprus in
1914 and Bosnia was absorbed into the new South Slav (Yugoslav) state in 1919.
7 Personal communication from Dr Tuğba Tanyeri-Erdemir, October 13, 2014.
8 Kosovo is another Muslim-majority state, but its independence dates only to 2008,
and as of April 2015, Kosovo was still not recognized by any countries and was not
a member state of the United Nations. Bosnia is not a Muslim-majority territory
though the Federation of Bosnia & Herzegovina that is one of its two component
entities is such, but this situation was still in flux in 2014.
9 Thanks to Milica Bakić-Hayden for alerting me to this reference.
2 Who’s the master?
Understanding the religious preceptors on
the margins of modernized religions
Dušan Deák
Holy people and the contexts of belonging

Although people rarely have problems talking about where they come from,
they do seem to question where they belong. Making people belong to a
wider context than just a local, social setting is perhaps not an entirely new
way of articulating our social presence. Yet modern concepts of evenly con-
stituted bodies like nation, religion or society fundamentally changed how
people once thought of themselves with respect to others. One visible piece of
evidence for this change and its problematic character is a plethora of aca-
demic works dedicated to identity, which conquered debates on people’s
engagement with the social world. One of the many concrete outcomes of this
development is an increased sensitivity to minority politics and ongoing
research that ‘listens to history and cultivates details, accidents or minute
deviations’ (Foucault 1977: 142–144).
Imagined communities, invented traditions, economic or religious impulses
of nation making, processes of identification or ethnicity without groups – all
of these concepts and the insights behind them illustrate how manifold the
ways of addressing belonging may be if thought about deeply and with care.
With respect to South Asia the debate has been further intensified by post-
colonial theorists challenging Western establishments of social science rea-
soning (Chakrabarty 2000: 236–255), or by relocating attention to the ideas
and practices of cross-cultural interconnectedness and ‘rationalizations of
regionality’ (Pollock 2006: 27) that illustrate the conscious and well-designed
agency of South Asians in creating their own world. With respect to South
Asian religious communities and the particular cohesive elements that create
and re-create these communities along with their multiple identities, Gott-
schalk’s (2000) work shows how weak and transparent the boundaries may be
between the groups identifying themselves in modern terms as Hindus and
Muslims, when evaluated against the fieldwork data of village India. South
Asianists are asked to go beyond the established majoritarian categories of
societal divisions and think over processes that enable collective identifica-
tions to make sense as well as to document when sense is lost, hidden or
enforced.
Who’s the master? 41
I intend this chapter to be another small contribution to the debate of
South Asianists on collective belonging. Among the plentitude of centripetal
forces, which bring the people of South Asia together, holy men are certainly
worth consideration. Indeed, there exist many attempts to classify holy men
in terms of belonging to a certain collective body. This body could be nation,
caste, or an ethnic, religious or social group, but certainly something that
enabled those who worshipped and followed them to express connectedness to
such a recognized man or woman.
Generally speaking the holy people of South Asia (see the overview in
Kurin 2003: 531–533), sacralized as they were from below, display an embo-
diment of religiosity that seeks human form for what has been commonly
associated with the Divine. This makes them not only charismatics, helpers,
healers, people of inner wisdom and peculiar behavior, but also teachers,
model figures and preceptors. From another point of view their peculiar
ability to communicate with the Divine enables them to act socially as well,
turning them into social reformers and critics, entrepreneurs, fighters, and
challengers of the established social order and its standards. Also, they came
from all social backgrounds, whether downtrodden or elite. Importantly,
given their characteristics, it is difficult to place holy people on the religious
map of South Asia, because these characteristics apply to all religions found
in the subcontinent. In sum, holy people have been considered to care for the
well-being of both individuals and society, epitomized in the most common
way of calling them bābā or mā (father and mother).
There is still another significant feature worth consideration. Holy people
have been perennially connected to power, whether their own specific power
that could articulate individually in uncommon performances such as mira-
cles, or social power that made them kings in the eyes of their followers
(mahārājas, shāhs). In both these senses they were considered powerful as well
as able to empower people. This power is also a peculiarly localized phe-
nomenon. It is believed to be present in the holy person as well as in a place
associated with such a person. Moreover, such a place can be composed of
objects that also embody this power. It is known to cure, provide children,
offer riches, bestow an important turn in one’s life, and is the phenomenon
that is popularly sought, in my experience, by the general public much more
than what scholars would call the saint’s teaching. It is ‘immanent and
accessible’, to quote Kurin (2003: 532).
Consequently, if there is a place that embodies and provides such attractive
power, there is also a social demand for its control. Control, in turn, relates to
belonging. During the life of a holy person this control takes a form akin to
the then contemporary social competition in getting recognition and, neces-
sarily, funding. After the death of the central figure that shares power and
distributes its benefits, the control comes into the hands of followers and close
associates of the holy person, who are often family members. The place, if
successfully powerful, may become the center of a religious cult. The accu-
mulated social capital may enable the cult to grow, establish different centers,
42 Dušan Deák
or become part of economic structures of greater significance to the locality,
region or even the state. It may resemble religious ‘firms’ (Green 2011) or join
hands with corporations that by far exceed any of the former socio-religious
contexts out of which it grew (cf. Nanda 2009).
Among others, Basso adds another dimension to the understanding of
place, by calling it ‘interanimated’ (Basso 1996: 55), meaning that it com-
prises the people who occupy it as well as its own innate qualities. In the case
of places sacralized by people considered holy, and also by their wide fol-
lowing, it is the perceived power in all its aspects that constitutes the primary
placial quality.1 Interanimation in turn provides the condition for justifying
the social articulation of those who control the place and the reasons for it.
This justification takes several forms, from foundational narratives through
attachment stories up to legal claims.
However, here appears a problem that will partly concern this chapter. I
submit that the religious identity of saints’ followers is formed apart from the
concrete needs that bring people to follow a certain holy person. Hence, if the
holy figures of South Asia are worshipped and followed by the masses obser-
vably2 for their ability (power) to improve and change the lives of their fol-
lowers (through advice, by magic, concrete help and the like), then the
narratives that validate this ability (power) and result in legal actions, neglect
the fact that the power (and the resulting benefits) that brings people to par-
ticipate in the cult of a holy person creates conditions of participation (bhakti)
where several religious bodies can meet. Unless a holy person sets strict rules
that would clearly limit followers according to a certain criterion (e.g. reli-
gion, caste, gender), which is seldom the case, anybody is free to follow the
saint and benefit from her or him. It is therefore rather disturbing if such a
place is proclaimed to belong to just one group and this claim is denied to
others, as happens in South Asia with varying degrees of intensity. The
poignant result of this course of matters is most visible at the so-called syn-
cretic shrines where more than one religious group participates in worship
and the (sometimes heated) disputes that surround claims and counter-claims
to shrines.
Syncretism, sampradāys and modernized religions

That the category of syncretism is a problem in its own terms is not new for
the academics discussing the religious traditions labeled as such. There is no
space here to discuss its complexity, rather negatively constituted content or
fragile substance (see more in Ernst and Stewart 2003: 586–588), but let me
state clearly that I would prefer following those scholars who see it as a pro-
blematic rather than a useful analytical tool.3 That syncretism is a problematic
category does not mean that in South Asia there are no shrines – and parti-
cularly shrines dedicated to holy men or women – where worship is shared by
different social and religious groups and where different narratives of belong-
ing are offered.4 Here, I will concentrate on those where the participation is
divided between Hindu and Muslim followers of a particular holy figure.
Given that Hinduism and Islam form the largest denominations in South
Asia, there are indeed many of these shrines dotting the religious landscape of
this macro-region.5 This leads us to discuss the narratives of belonging and
the notion of religious community in its current modernized form.
First, roughly in the past 200 years, in South Asia as elsewhere, the whole
idea of collectiveness was redesigned. If in pre-modern times the collective
marker was employed to show difference and distinctiveness (e.g. in social and
religious custom, practice, ideology), the modern era brought emphasis on
likeness and unity that were increasingly important, especially in political
terms, of public representation of newly imagined communities.6 The new
development that occurred in the understanding of collective bodies drew
much from the modernist principle of equal qualities (like citizenship and
religion) present in all imagined members of any collective societal body,
which makes a stark contrast to the idea of the collective primarily as a dis-
tinct unit. So even if in pre-modern times we meet with the categories of
Hindu and Muslim (e.g. Lorenzen 1999), their social application was much
more particularistic and socially contextual.
With respect to religious bodies gathering holy people and their followers,
their earlier forms, like sampradāys,7 or varieties of Sufi orders, were centered
on influential figures and formed within differences of locally framed reli-
giosity. In terms of belonging they were also rather loosely organized, as is
documented for instance by multiple Sufi initiations or the fluctuant nature of
sacred figures among the sampradāys. It was mainly during the nineteenth
century when earlier forms of religious organizations were homogenized, in
terms of imagined, evenly carved blocks of Hindus and Muslims (or Sikhs in
the Punjab, or Buddhists in Sri Lanka). Taking patronization as an example,
we may see that whereas in the pre-modern period the support of places
associated with holy people came from the people of various socio-religious
strata – namely because it was the power of a holy being and its place that
was decisive and not the religious identity (see e.g. Chandra 1958; Kulkarnī
1993: 123) – this began to change in the modern period, as the role of patron
was adopted by the seemingly impartial colonial state. Moreover, organized
religious associations themselves gradually began to modify their own under-
standing along these homogenizing lines and adopted a clear-cut community
rhetoric (van der Veer 1994a: 25, 33 and passim). In practical terms it meant
that places dedicated to holy people started to be seen as belonging to one or
the other religious-national community. Similarly, categories that were much
more open and without much emphasis in terms of their communal context,
like bhakta, sant, bābā, fakir or majdhub, were likely to be homogenized as
Hindu or Sufi. Consequently the narratives woven around South Asian holy
figures, especially in their modern printed and written form, also adopted a
homogenizing language.
Second, if the homogenized identity of the saint could be adopted without
any serious hindrance, in cases where the religious identity of a saint was
44 Dušan Deák
dubious, or forgotten, adopted homogenization trends were likely to spark
difficulties and controversies.8 Although we do meet with difficulties and
controversies pertaining to the different claims of involved religious commu-
nities in the pre-modern period (such as Kabīr’s), these, if explained in
modern terms of clear-cut religious bodies of Hindus and Muslims, hardly
disclose concrete historical causes that led to them, and are most often used
either for political or social goals in competitive modern society. Therefore, to
describe and analyze what could be controversies pertaining to South Asian
holy figures makes greater sense if we connect each case to its own socio-
political context, as well as being sensitive to the historical patterns of how
the discourse around controversies have been created and who its agents are.
This would enable us to understand the problems related to dubious holy
figures in categories closer to the reality of their worshippers than the too
general and rather unproductive categories of Hindu and Muslim.9
Third, the difficulties of who the master was, and to whom he/she belon-
ged, received new impetus in the culmination of Indian nationalism. This is
precisely the time when we meet with numerous academic as well as political
efforts to bring together already imagined, politically active and homogeniz-
ing communities. This is also the time when we meet with syncretism as a
symbol of understanding between communities, which it has even today. This
is also the time when narratives of Hindu-Muslim unity are illustrated with
those cultic figures whose identity and belonging were not clear enough for
the outward observer, and who were assumed to belong to all, i.e. to the
imagined collective body of Indian society (sarvajātice sant in my Marathi
materials, literally the ‘saint of all castes’), which in modern and secularized
parlance is an umbrella category for a unified community of citizens.
Homogenization and diversity: who is guru Datta?

This section aims to discuss holy figures of western India whose precise
modern religious identity is dubious and, from the example of their associa-
tion with the Indic god/sage Dattātreya, to show how the modern homo-
genization of Indic religious traditions produces inaccuracies in the popular
and academic treatment of these figures. Dattātreya is a dominantly western
Indian deity revered across sectarian affiliations (Vaishnava, Shaiva, Tān-
trika), later imagined as a representation of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (tri-
murti). He is narrativized as a naked and perfect yogi (digambar yogi-siddha)
of strange behavior (unmatta) or as a Vaishnava ascetic (avadhut). In Marathi
tradition he is often seen through his holy human avatārs that bear seemingly
opposite characteristics – a reviver of Vedic knowledge and a figure of lower
social status (pardhī, māng, candāla), sometimes a Muslim (mleccha, yavana,
avindha), or a Muslim fakir (malang, awliyā’ or Shāh Datta). All in all, Dat-
tātreya is always understood as the one bringing the ultimate religious
knowledge to his followers (for more details, see Joshi 1965; and Rigopoulos
1998). Importantly, he is also worshipped in all major known and historically
significant religious associations active in Maharashtra like Vārkarīs, Nāths
and Mahānubhāvs, as well as across all social strata. Given this, whatever
form of knowledge he brings and however he brings it, out of all of these
different representations that of a religious preceptor dominates.
On the one hand, the noted representation of Dattātreya – as Vishnu, tri-
murti, digambar yogi-siddha and avadhut – has been, at the latest since the
sixteenth century, propagated most visibly by Maharashtrian Brahmans,
among whom to this day plenty are counted his ardent followers. In fact, the
whole cult that has adopted the name of Datta10 sampradāy is dominated by
Brahmans, ranging from the common followers up to the pujaris of the tem-
ples, trustees and administrators of the cult’s main centers at Gangapur,
Narasinha Wadi, Audumbar, Akkalkot or Mahur, to the cult’s popularizers
and even prominent regional researchers.11 This has several reasons. Perhaps
the most common pertains to the age-old self-styled role of Brahmans as the
religious leaders of Indic society. Therefore their association with, and indeed
production of, the sage who according to them revives Vedic knowledge
hardly comes as any surprise. Another reason is that many later recognized
avatārs of Dattātreya in western India (dattāvatārik satpurush) were also
Brahmans, including his most widely worshipped incarnations, Śrīpad Śrī-
vallabha and Narasinha Sarasvatī, of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
respectively.12 The historically well-known propagators of the cult also hail
from this influential social group, starting with the author of the Gurucaritra
(Life of the Guru), the chief scripture of the Datta sampradāy and the first
hagiography of the aforementioned Datta’s avatārs, Sarasvatī Gangādhar
(sixteenth century), through several other authors like Dāsopant (seventeenth
century), and hagiographers including the most famous Marathi hagiographer
Mahipati (eighteenth century) and the proponent of the modern Vedization of
the cult Vasudevānanda Sarasvatī (late nineteenth century).13
On the other hand, Dattātreya is not solely a Brahmanic deity. Consider in
this regard, for instance, the Mahānubhāvas and their depictions of Datta as a
low-caste person (Raeside 1982: 493–495), apart from, of course, honoring
him as one of the primary manifestations of Parameśvara (Feldhaus 1983:
32–35). Nor are the holy people associated with him, or understood as his
avatārs, solely seen as Brahmans, as is documented by several hagiographical
narratives and other texts (Deák 2010). Importantly, however, several Mar-
athi authors debating the character of Datta’s avatārs, who did not see them
solely in Brahmanic terms of the revival of Vedic knowledge, like G.K. Can-
dorkar, M.G. Ranade, M.K. Joshi, A.N. Deśpānde or R.C. Dhere, were
Brahmans themselves. On top of this, given that the sampradāy itself hardly
corresponds to an organized religious body,14 the prevalently Brahmanic
idea of the Datta sampradāy corresponds therefore to a loosely assembled
association of different devotees of Dattātreya across time and space.
Now, if we can document that neither in the past nor the present was there
anything like one single body of devotees of Dattātreya, with just one idea of
who Dattātreya is and what he represents in terms of religious beliefs and
46 Dušan Deák
practices, as well as if there was no one social group submitting to the quali-
tatively singular understanding of this ancient Indic god/sage, how can we
explain the production of the academic interpretations, where we meet with
Dattātreya as the one whose cult brought Hindus and Muslims together
(Dhere 1964: 136; Jośī 1973: 212; Warren 1999: 140; or Rigopoulos 1998:
137)? Why do we also meet with the increasing homogenization of his divine
personality in terms of the Brahmanic revival of Vedic dharma (Joshi 1965;
cf. Lubin 2001), which has open Hindutva leanings (Nanda 2009)? Why do
we meet with the contested sites of his worship, like that of Bābā Budhān
(Sikand 2004b), where the diversity of understanding is forcibly downplayed
in favor of a single Hindu view? Finally, why do the aspects that make Dat-
tātreya a Hindu Brahman, reviver and savior of the Vedas, attach the image
of the guru par excellence even to his known fakir-Muslim representations,
and by doing so homogenize these representations with the increasingly
popularized trimurti sage, yogi and avatār?15 In what follows I will attempt to
show that these questions will not display any contradiction – like that
between the evident diversity of Datta’s characters and at the same time the
evidently popular homogenized understanding supplied also by researchers –
if they are analyzed through the lens of concrete historical developments and
their agents. I will also argue that the modern era created conditions of
increased production and popularity of the homogenous Datta narratives.
Marginalization: who could guru Datta be?

If diverse characteristics that pertain to a certain divine figure change in a
manner that the diversity of its representations is gradually lost, the lost
characteristics are downplayed, neglected and unwanted, i.e. marginalized. In
this way historically documentable homogenization of discourse and practices
related to holy people is accompanied by marginalization. With respect to
Dattātreya and his human avatārs, what has been gradually lost in his
Maharashtrian ‘domain’ in the past several hundred years are his character-
istics which are considered lowly by publicly dominant groups of like-minded
favorers of modern Hindu ideology. The characteristics seen as lowly, or
unwanted, pertain to Dattātreya’s affiliation with Tāntrikas, or with otherwise
socially unpopular figures like lower-caste members, and importantly also to
his affiliation to Muslims via the figure of the fakir. I will concentrate my
discussion of marginalization on the latter.
Although the noted change has pre-modern antecedents, perhaps best seen
in the rise and success of the Datta cult that chose the Gurucaritra (ca. first half
of the sixteenth century) as its main scripture,16 the conditions brought by
modernity can hardly be neglected. Technologies of communication like print,
and later electronic media, reorganization of the public sphere, channels of
accessing colonial power, the ideas and practices of citizenship, public representa-
tion and public bodies of imagined equal-value quality, all of these indubi-
tably strengthened the social position of those who were capable – practically,
socially and economically – of using them. Brahmans, active as they were in
the public sphere of nineteenth-century Maharashtra, certainly used them (cf.
Deshpande 2007). If the narratives about holy people were one of the crucial
points of interface between the possessors of written knowledge and non-
literate members of society, to paraphrase Nile Green (2004: 130), then the
former, who had means for disseminating that knowledge, could choose the
narrative that fitted their gradually formed modern identity and social posi-
tion. They could then disseminate it among the illiterate classes, given that
written knowledge was increasingly considered socially prestigious. In this
sense they were also the direct producers of power relations where a given
narrative was providing substance and ideology to their social, political and
religious claims – as well as providing substance and ideology to the margin-
alization of all those who did not confirm to the disseminated knowledge and
these claims.
Thus the influential representatives of the Brahman interpretation of Dat-
tātreya’s character and cult, like educated proponents of the cult with the
resources to print, utilized the modern conditions and, by making their voice
prominent, marginalized the voices of non-Brahmanic representations of
Dattātreya. This was not perhaps an organized effort or deliberate targeting
of those with a different narrative. Yet, quite within the increasingly popular
nationalistic discourse of the late nineteenth century (recall Dayānanda’s back
to the Vedas) that homogenized the Indic religious diversity to a single Hindu
identity, a legitimate effort at popularizing the Brahman variety of under-
standing of who guru Datta is, and what teaching (accompanied by ritual) he
brings, came to be clothed in the language of Hindu identity politics. This
process also had much wider pan-Indian contexts. Its results could be sum-
marized by saying that what constituted the public, written and later inter-
nationally recognized Hinduism was in many respects the Brahmanic
interpretation of the religious order, practice and belief across South Asia.
The Dattātreya pictured (mainly) as trimurti, accompanied by four dogs,
symbolizing four Vedas, and ‘narrativized’ as a guru rejuvenating Vedic
knowledge and embodied in printed texts, newly built or old temples, and
today on websites, was gradually stripped of all notions that could challenge
the modern (Hindu-Brahmanic) view of matters concerning his identity and
knowledge. However, it is quite evident that the tradition which presented
Dattātreya in fakir’s garb existed at least from the second half of the seven-
teenth century. Datta is claimed to assume a fakir’s appearance and give his
blessings to several respected Deccani figures.17 Prominent among them is the
Vārkarī saint Eknāth (d. 1599), who according to legends became inspired by
Datta in Muslim garb (mainly as Malang18 fakir). In Eknāth’s shadow lie the
much less popular northern Maharashtrian saints Ātmarāmsvāmī Śinda-
khedkar (d. 1731) and Sadānandasvāmī (d. 1760), followers of Malang Datta,
whom they call Shahā Datta Ālamā Prabhu. Ājgāvkar also documented a
local narrative from northern Maharashtra that associates Emperor Aurangzeb
with the same fakir-looking divine figure (Ājgāvkar 1916: 70–72). Given that
48 Dušan Deák
Datta and his avatārs appeared almost ubiquitously in most of the popular
Maharashtrian devotional cults (see above), and reading this fact against the
contemporary social-political conditions of the early modern Deccan,19 it
may be stated that the belief in Fakir-Datta could be explained as a peculiar
accommodation of the Muslim holy figure of fakir within the world of western
Indian religious imagination as we may trace it in then contemporary and
later texts. Due to the fact that most of these texts are of Brahmanic provenance,
I have earlier called this a ‘Sanskritization’ of the fakir (Deák 2010: 516).
However, as these texts speak mainly for the seventeenth–eighteenth cen-
turies, when it was still possible for some Brahmans to imagine a preceptor
looking like a fakir,20 this imagining must have lost its appeal later. There has
been very little research done on the social history of the Dattātreya cult in
general, therefore the lack of direct evidence prevents me from narrating the
full picture of nineteenth- to twentieth-century developments among Datta’s
followers. However, observing today the situation where trimurti Datta is well
known and Datta in fakir’s garb is fairly unknown, even among those of
Datta’s devotees whose ancestors recognized the fakir form of Datta,21 allows
me to state that the loss of appeal is evident. Given that homogenization of
the sampradāys is a mainly nineteenth- to twentieth-century affair, it seems
viable to seek the causes of marginalization of the fakir in this period, which
saw a great development of printing materials that furnished the public sphere
and reconstituted the imagination of its consumers. Obviously these texts
could not appear without any social and economic support.
As much as the western Indian Brahmanic representation of Datta and his
avatārs increases in its (mainly textual) volume, the non-Brahmanic Dattā-
treya, and particularly the fakir, somehow can hardly find his place among
the myriad written materials (manuscripts, printed stories of various lengths
and forms) pertaining to this holy figure. Thus by the late nineteenth century
there exist so many different manuscripts of the Gurucaritra that Ramachan-
dra Kamat produces his, today greatly accepted, common version (Kulkarnī
1993: 79–82), and by the 1960s R.C. Dhere produces his well-known Datta
sampradāyācā itihās (History of the Datta Sampradāy), whereas the devotee
and scholar Hariprasad Shivaprasad Joshi produces a volume that apparently
seeks to provide the western Indian Brahmanic trimurti with historicity (Joshi
1965). These efforts are followed by the widely disseminated publications of
P.N. Jośī (1974) and P. G. Gosvāmī (1977). Out of this incomplete list of texts,
P.N. Jośī’s Śrī Dattātreya Jñyānakoś (Encyclopedia of Dattātreya’s Wisdom)
becomes extremely popular while the Gurucaritra in 1999 (the date of my own
copy) reaches its 23rd reprint! I attempt no count of several simplified Gur-
ucaritras and publications authored by sampradāyik figures (e.g. the Datta-
mahātmya of Vasudevānanda Sarasvatī) or various kinds of storybooks, as
well as websites devoted to Dattātreya and his Brahman avatārs.
In comparison to the extensive printing and publicizing of the materials
about the trimurti-cum-guru of the Veda, Fakir-Datta’s record is rather poor
and virtually invisible. This is obviously the result of the greater popularity of
the Datta as yogi, trimurti or avatār, not just among Brahmans, but also
among Vārkarīs, Mahānubhāvs or Shaivas – all major religious communities
in western India. Acknowledging the sheer number of believers in Datta-
yogi-guru, the devotional attachment to Datta’s fakir clothing is truly mar-
ginal. However, I am talking about a very different kind of marginalization.
In contrast to the plentitude of printed material and edited manuscripts where
Dattātreya is represented in Brahmanic form, any works where Datta is
represented as a fakir, and which are referred to by authors like Dhere or
Deśpānde (e.g. Hamsa Padhatī, Ānandasār, or other writings of Ātmarām and
Sadānanda), are almost impossible to find. It is this that I would call mar-
ginalization, because although the corpus of the texts about Fakir Datta is
known, it hardly reaches public, printed form. Printed texts where Fakir
Datta is mentioned, however rare and small in number, demonstrate that the
idea of the Fakir-clad Datta certainly existed, that it also existed among cer-
tain Brahmans, and that they also wrote about it. Moreover, the history of the
devotional text called the Śahā Datta Kalamā 22 shows that some texts where
the Fakir is recognized were also used for worship (Māndavkar 1980: 39).
What then explains the decline of a once living tradition and why nowadays
are hardly any such texts published, produced or used? Moreover, why is the
connection of Dattātreya to Muslims seen as inappropriate, or as an historical
twist, or as syncretism and sometimes almost an insult to the imagined
original (Vedic, trimurti, guru-avatār) tradition?
When considering only the textual production on Fakir Dattātreya we see
that by the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there still exist
Brahman authors who can recognize the Fakir in terms of Datta’s avatarship.
Neither Candorkar in his Sūcī (1915: 37) nor Bhāve in Mahārāshtra Sārasvat
(1963 [1919]: 191) sees anything unusual in associating one of the most
famous Maharashtrian Brahman saints, Eknāth, with Muslims and particu-
larly a Muslim-clad preceptor – Fakir Datta. Also M.G. Ranade, while
arguing the religious causes for national unity, enthusiastically exclaims in
1910 that ‘[s]alvation was a concern for all, and before God’s throne there was
no difference between high-born or low-born … [the] worshippers of Dattā-
treya or the incarnation of the Hindu Trinity, often clothed their God in the
garb of a Mahomedan fakir’ (Ranade 1974: 22–23). At approximately the
same time Ājgāvkar writes his Maharashtra-kavi-caritra (1916) and brings to
light the whole line of Ānandasampradayiks from Copda in northern
Maharashtra, descendants of the above-mentioned Sadānanda who, then,23
still kept the texts that reveal the existence of the followers of Fakir Dat-
tātreya. However, Ājgāvkar does not really tell us how alive, if at all, the
cult was.
Later on, the intensifying Hindu-Muslim communalism that built up its
ideology on homogenizing the Indic religious identities certainly did not help
the popularity of the idea that the fakir is the holy figure through which
Dattātreya should be recognized.24 During the years that led to the partition
of the Indian subcontinent, as well as during the new era of nation building
50 Dušan Deák
that was heavily influenced by the memory of communal violence, Datta’s
fakir appearance becomes rather an example of Hindu-Muslim amity. This
clearly utilitarian change of Datta’s representation is perhaps best articulated
in Dhere’s use of the concept of samanvay (bringing together; Dhere 1964:
136). Dhere’s point is much more enthusiastically adopted by Deśpānde, one
of the rare authors to speak openly about Fakir Datta (Deśpānde 1977: 6–7,
23–25).
In general, the academic acknowledgement of the fact that some religious
figures cannot be easily accommodated into homogenously imagined groups
of Hindus and Muslims is reflected in the works on Hindu-Muslim syncret-
ism.25 They attempt to show that the divisive forces of South Asian politics
are mainly an outcome of the colonial era of divide et impera and that, in
fact, before it we may find a communal harmony, which is documented pre-
cisely by such traditions where a Hindu religious figure could take the form of
a Muslim, or vice versa. However, it is highly questionable whether such tra-
ditions indeed represented the outcome of the communal harmony of which
we hear mostly in partition times. Moreover, by interpreting them as syncre-
tic – i.e. not here, not there – the authors completely neglected the agency of
those who produced and lived these traditions. Fakir Datta then could be
understood either as not really a Muslim and at the most a strange Hindu.
The question that a Muslim ascetic figure could have appeal among Brah-
mans was simply ruled out, but quite unsubstantiated by the pre-modern
evidence.
The accommodation of Muslims (mleccha, yavana) in the Brahmanic world
with respect to the figure of Dattātreya is documented already in the six-
teenth-century Gurucaritra. Its text culminates with the narrative where the
sultan becomes a devotee of Dattātreya, while Brahmans exclaim: ‘The king-
dom will prosper, the king is worshipping Brahman [i.e. the Brahman avatar
of Dattātreya]’ (Gurucaritra 50: 34). Mahipati, an eighteenth-century author
certainly not particularly in love with anything Muslim, narrates a story of
the young Eknāth who was told by his guru Janārdan that he should recognize
the preceptor in Muslim Malang.26 Ānandasampradāyiks of the eighteenth
century tell us that it is the fakir who is the guru of the times:
Rām, Kr.s.n.a who are they for us? They don’t have any power in the
Kaliyuga! See the god (dev) of the Kaliyuga – the Lord of the World, the
King! See his Empire (ālamā prabhu śāhācī pātśāhī)! … [A]mong the four
yugas, in the Kaliyuga, the one who gives to his devotees the under-
standing of the ultimate reality (parabrahma kaivalyadānī) is Śrī Śahā
Datta Ālamā Prabhu.
(Ājgāvkar 1916: 68, 74–75)
Today, when homogenization has reached the point where being a Muslim is
incompatible with being a preceptor offering the ultimate religious knowledge
fit for a Brahman who represents an ideal Hindu, such accommodation seems
to be a problem. Both well-known, and often-cited famous encyclopedic
works on Datta written by Indian Brahman scholars (Joshi 1965; Jośī 1974)
do not even mention the Fakir Datta tradition, and the only book on the
Ānanda sampradāy, written by Bhīmaśankar Deśpānde (1988), too, does not
make any reference to it, and its author, on the contrary, considers it ima-
gined (see also note 21). Those texts that in modern times point to the idea of
Fakir Datta and its appeal (like those of Dhere, Deśpānde) adopt the rhetoric
of samanvay. The manuscripts of the tradition literally disappeared, or are not
considered worth analyzing, and the sites that document the embodiment of
the idea are neglected or refashioned in a modern Hindu style. This change of
rhetoric, claiming the sites as Hindu and Dattātreya as trimurti, are the
mechanics of marginalization that I am talking about. They clearly relate to
the power and political concerns formed by modernity.
Yet, amity imagined as syncretism was not to stay for long. During the rise
of popular Hindutva in the 1980s and 1990s, Dattātreya becomes a figure of
identity claims. Hindutvavādīs fed on the Brahmanic claims of tradition and
exclusivity27 and, with the help of the seemingly secular state, succeeded in a
possession dispute around one of the most symbolic shrines of the Fakir-
Datta tradition in the Baba Budhan hills (Sikand 2004b), and the earliest
evidence that could suggest that Dattātreya was indeed imagined as a fakir
was ironically played down by a well-recognized Maharashtrian scholar on
devotional cults, Brahmānanda Deśpānde (1982). 28
So today it is possible to observe that Fakir Datta disappeared from the
texts, his image and narratives were homogenized in Brahmanic fashion, and
the sites that embody the once existing tradition of acculturating a Muslim
holy man to the world of local devotion now embody the competition of
modern religious identities. Thus we may meet with Ānandasampradāyiks
who strongly express their distaste for the existence of the Fakir Datta tradi-
tion, with Dattasampradāyiks who do not even consider it worth a thought,
as well as with lay devotees who, while exclaiming on Dattātreya’s Facebook
page ‘Jay guru Datta’, correct those who call the burial place of a holy man,
dattāvatārik satpurush, dargāh, not samādhi. Apparently Datta, it seems,
should belong to the Hindus only!29
Going back to the graves

It is important to state at this point that the devotion to Dattātreya buried in
an Islamic-fashion grave, as well as the narratives that popularize this devo-
tion and participate in the creation of the local memory of a buried saint, are
basically a Hindu affair. There are hardly any Muslims who, though wor-
shipping the same graves, worship Dattātreya there, because they are worship-
ping a Muslim holy man. In fact, all the narratives about Fakir Datta, textual
or oral, that I encountered during my research on this fascinating tradition,
came from Hindus, often Brahmans. Additionally, whatever teaching we note
in Fakir Datta’s tradition, none of it has anything to do with the ideas and
52 Dušan Deák
ideals of scriptural Islam. If there is an Islamic motif it rather reflects the
local imagination of the Islamic. In these narratives Dattātreya gives knowl-
edge clad in popular nirguna bhakti terms built upon advaitic premises of
the identity of the world and its creative principle. However close this
might seem to some strands of South Asian Sufi Islam, what dominates is not
any religious instruction pertaining to scriptural Islam, but an emphasis on
following and recognizing the preceptor of the highest knowledge, which is
the recognition of the divinity of man and the world around. This simple
message is articulated in terms of repeated calls for the recognition of the
preceptor. Hence, although as a religious figure, as preceptor and guru, Dat-
tātreya predominantly belonged to the Hindu tradition represented by a
peculiar kind of Brahman, the message he conveys in fakir’s garb is neither a
Vedic prescription of right conduct, nor Islamic monotheism (because he is
very much the highest principle himself). He empowers his followers, offers
deliverance from the pains of the world and, ultimately, he ‘helps’. The notion
of ‘help’, without much sophisticated teaching, brings us back to the notion
of the divine site, the grave. It is here where the power in the form of ‘help’ is
embodied and which is immanent and accessible. The visitor may indeed be
blessed by the knowledge, but he or she is certainly granted help for his/her
worldly endeavors.
How does the interface between the lived and the narrativized operate in
the case of sites where fakirs were buried and where Dattātreya was imagined
and believed in, too? How does this interface participate in the notion of the
marginalization of Fakir Datta? As mentioned above, the whole Fakir Datta
tradition is minor in itself, therefore the concrete cults around the graves are
defined by their localness, where numerical size is not a decisive point with
respect to the marginalization I am talking about. In fact, the latter may also
be seen as a cover term for at least four documentable states of affairs con-
nected to particular grave sites which show how local beliefs and practices
undergo historically conditioned changes. Some are neglected; some are gra-
dually modified in terms of the arrangement of the site and also in terms of
the religious observances practiced there; some are turned into a full-fledged
cult with no place for the fakir; and yet others display the possibilities of
future development where again the fakir will be replaced by the trimurti, or
another Brahmanic-Hindu symbol of knowledge wrapped in the concrete
demonstration of help. However, the whole process of change that is revealed
at the concrete sites can hardly be understood as the natural course of matter
that may be suggested by the gradual decline of an already minor tradition.
The modern Brahmanic, or generally elitist, narrative of Hinduism and the
homogenous nationalization of diverse religious traditions, the technological
impetus that propelled the public propaganda of this narrative, as well as the
various connections of the agents of the homogenizing agenda to power are
the historical factors that speak for many complex patterns of modern ideo-
logical restructuring of the public image of the Indic religious world and its
agents, but certainly not for any natural course.
It is perhaps symbolic that the site, whose primary characteristic with
respect to the marginalization of the Fakir Datta ideal is neglect, is the very
site from where the imagining of a Muslim holy man representing an ancient
Indic deity originated in western India. The dargāh of Cānd Bodhle, by the
standards of the latter part of the sixteenth century, when it was probably
built, and located near the Nizām Shāhī public baths right opposite the gate
of the Daulatabad fort, was certainly a prominent place. However, the person
of Cānd Bodhle was already controversial during the time of his burial, as
suggested by Keshav some 200 years after the event and retold by Mahipati.30
This controversy was to stay, and later we may meet with mutually related
interpretations, seeing Cānd Bodhle as a person imagined as Dattātreya, who
influenced Eknāth and his guru Janārdan (see note 17), as a Brahman-turned-
Sufi (Tulpule 1979; van Skyhawk 1992), or a Muslim mystic in his own right
(Baig 1991; Chānd 1934),31 as well as the one who has nothing at all to do
with the noted Brahman saints and Dattātreya (Deśpānde 1982).
Today, irrespective of these different understandings, what remains is the
dargāh 32 and its devotees, who still believe in its beneficial powers. On the
one hand, the several hundred-year-old controversy, intensified with the modern
refashioning of religious traditions which certainly influenced the public
marketing of the site, coupled with the withdrawal of an earlier rich donor,
can perhaps be seen as direct causes of its present-day neglect. On the other
hand, the place, despite its dilapidated state, still attracts some locals, who –
and this is important – irrespective of the controversy, see it as a legitimate
place for their devotion. In fact, the respect for Cānd Bodhle and the related
practice seem to be the factors that keep the dargāh alive. Whomever I talked to
over the years at the site or nearby in Daulatabad was not really interested in
the site’s controversial history. During the annual ‘urs Cānd Bodhle is vener-
ated by local Muslims, who see in him Sheikh Cānd Bodhle Qādirī, as well as
by local Hindus, who in turn see in him Cānd Bodhle Mahārāj – a mysterious
person related to the lives of Eknāth and Janārdan. This is the site that, due
to its complex past and later interpretations, almost became marginalized
itself, even before it could be marginalized thoroughly by the vested interests
of the Brahman exegetes of the lives of Eknāth/Janārdan in the homogenization
of the complexity that it offers.33
However, not all the graves where there are fakirs understood as buried
Datta are neglected. The grave of Alam Prabhu (Lord of the World), about a
kilometer outside the old town of Bhum (Osmanabad district, Maharashtra),
is a rather popular local site, attended irrespective of the annual festivities and
well kept according to local means. If, with regard to Cānd Bodhle, there is a
controversial history, here, for most of the local devotees, there is hardly any.
Very few of them would even consider it important, because the daily belief in
power embodied in the grave is not a matter of bygone times. What appears a
fairly Islamic-style grave is nowadays a saffron-colored devasthān (place of
god), dedicated to a Dattāvatarik purush named Alam Prabhu,34 under the
charge of a Bhāratī sannyāsī. When entering, one meets with an image of
54 Dušan Deák
trimurti Datta and the grave, covered by a saffron cādar, contains the pādukā,
the divine feet of the guru – an inseparable trace of the Brahmanic worship of
Dattātreya. The ritual is puja and no animal sacrifice is permitted. This site,
apart from being worshipped, is also considered a place for fear, especially
after dark. Nobody from the town would dare visit it at night and the rumors
run that all those who do, go mad. It is a sarvajāti site, which means that
people from all castes (and religions) come there to show their respect and
pray to Alam Prabhu. An annual festival for him is organized simultaneously
during the time of Dattātreya’s traditionally reckoned birthday (Datta
jayantī). All matters with regard to religious service and keeping of the site,
including its public propagation, are in the hands of a local trust, which is
currently headed by Gulab Mohinuddin Saudagar, a Muslim devotee of Alam
Prabhu.
It would be almost a bucolic setting there in Bhum, an ideal type of what
many would call religious syncretism, given that we may indeed witness
Hindus and Muslims visiting the Islamic-style grave (although the former in a
decisive majority) painted the color of saffron and entombing an historically
unknown fakir (in local parlance awliyā’), an incarnation of Dattātreya. Yet
Bhum, with its Alam Prabhu devasthān, offers important material with regard
to the marginalization of the Fakir Datta tradition. This marginalization, as
indeed most of the documentable traces of the process anywhere else, is not a
purposeful endeavor of any elimination of devotion to Fakir Datta, to be sure.
It rather results from the mutual influences of the lived and the narrativized.
While it is possible to document the imagination of Dattātreya as a trimurti-Vedic
guru in western India over the centuries, its popular spread is clearly the
result of the past 200 years of intensified public communication. The latter
creates such conditions for the replication of this imagining that people accept
it as standard and desirable. This is also seen in Bhum. The lack of history for
the buried fakir, on the one hand, tells us that the locals at some time in the
past accepted the Muslim ascetic. On the other hand, the recent arrangements
of the site that bring in the trimurti-Vedic imagining are clearly not about the
fakir. Thus the powers and knowledge that he represents and embodies are
elevated via the popularly imagined homogenous Brahmanic Dattātreya, and
the fakir, symbolizing a different facet of the holy people’s popularity that
was once part of the site, is marginalized.
Yet, there is at least some history to be mentioned. As already noted above,
Sadānandasvāmī of Copda was a devotee of Śahā Datta Ālamā Prabhu, a
Muslim Malang and Dattāvatarik ascetic. In one of his texts he clearly asso-
ciated Śahā Datta with Bhum (Ājgāvkar 1916: 102–105), but the writings of a
centuries-old saint about 400 kilometers distant from Copda are one thing,
and the beliefs formed by individual experiences, local memory and its
modern homogenizing articulations quite another. Why should Sadānanda’s
testimony matter, after all? Alam Prabhu’s Bhum site lives a life of its own,
and that local imagination takes the popular course does not substantially
change the role of the site in the lives of the locals. Although there are local
people who know about the connection between Ānandasampradāy’s Śahā
Datta and Alam Prabhu from Bhum (Gajendragadkar 2003: 12), it is hardly
significant for most others. This is evident also in the efforts of Alam Prabhu’s
devotees, who helped a popular Maharashtrian poet-bard, Bhaskarbuva
Sakatkar, to collect all the information on Alam Prabhu, and requested him
to write it down and create a book that would embody the local feelings for
the honored holy man (Bhandāre 1985: 7).
Śrīalamprabhu Mahimā Grantha (The Book of Alam Prabhu’s Greatness),
being the only extant devotional text on Alam Prabhu, documents an
increasing need to capture the devotion and folklore around Alam Prabhu in
the form of a book, as well as the conscious decision of its author to present
his artistic vision of Alam Prabhu in terms closest to those of the locals.
Bhaskarbuva Sakatkar is one of the great keepers of the kīrtan tradition of
Maharashtra, and is known not only for devotional singing performances, but
also for being a prolific writer on Maharashtrian Vārkarī saints. Now when
we look at his text on Alam Prabhu, the rhetorical influences of the Marathi
bhakti tradition cannot be overlooked. However, what is much more inter-
esting to note is that the rhetoric, quite within the trends triggered by mod-
ernity, homogenizes the holy figure that it sets out to adore and describe.
Alam Prabhu of the Mahimā is hardly a Muslim fakir. True, he is sometimes
called Malang (sometimes Malang Prabhu), but this Malang is certainly not
the Malang associated with anything Islamic. Instead, he is acting like the
Dattāvatarik purush known from the Datta sampradāyiks, who is narra-
tively connected with Gangapur, the sacred place of Dattātreya.35 What is
marginalized is the man lying in the grave.
There are several other places connected to imagining historical fakir as
Dattātreya where the fakir’s grave serves as a center of local Hindu reli-
giosity.36 From my field visits and readings I can conclude that although the
interface between the history and imagination, between the textualized dis-
course and the beliefs and practices of the people visiting these sites, varies,
the homogenizing-marginalizing pattern is observable at all of them. So if
devotion, help and continuity in belief are what persist and unite, identity
claims change and divide, but these claims cannot be seen as divorced from
people who possess the means to communicate their identity and imagination.
Thus we are reaching a paradox where the help offered and benefitted from
holy people has to be compromised with modern identity claims to them.37
Conclusion
This chapter has sought to observe and discuss peculiar processes where one
set of religious ideas (but also ideals) clearly lost their public appeal. The
modern understanding of guru Dattātreya prevalent in today’s western India
has over centuries crystalized into a Brahmanic ideal of the guru rejuvenating
ancient Vedic knowledge, irrespective of the fact that there were Brahmans in
the history of the cult who had a different understanding of the noted cultic
56 Dušan Deák
figure. I have suggested that such a state of affairs was rather a part of the
modern process of change that I called homogenization of religious tradition,
triggered by access to technological means (like print), nationalism and the
overall political economy of modernizing religious identities. I have proposed
to see this process in terms of marginalization, which appears to be a side
effect of the modernist homogenizing efforts. However, the concept of mar-
ginalization admittedly poses several problems that are yet to be discussed
and researched. Marginalization is difficult to see as a distinctive effort of
suppression, because its agents hardly form a single group with a pre-set
strategy leading to suppression. While discussing people’s preferences of
adopting certain religious ideals, it is problematic to reduce the issue to any
single-handed agency with singular goals. Rather this marginalization appears
to be a combination of legitimate expressions of devotion and historical
choices made by the devotees (including the active proponents of the Brah-
manic Dattātreya cult) vis-à-vis historically conditioned public moods and
preferences in matters of religion. The impact of modern religious national-
ism is also unavoidable in this process. In quite another fashion the process
also appears a result of an ‘interpretative episteme’ adopted by academics in
order to provide contra-arguments to the proponents of collective ideologies
and collective responsibility. The politics of religious synthesis, or syncretism
(cf. van der Veer 1994b), should also be seen as its very part.
Discussing belonging may certainly be one of the ways to address the
complex problems of religious change such as marginalization. To my eyes,
belonging operates in this case on at least two observable levels – one that
relates to the particular sites and their visitors, and another that relates to the
discourse woven around religious identity and meaning of those venerated at
these sites. The former speaks for the devotion to a particular and beneficial
place, largely irrespective of the religious identity and history of its core
person/deity. This level embodies local tradition and consensus but there is
hardly any observable need on the part of locals to justify the site and their
beliefs in terms of belonging unless the local possession of the site is not
challenged (as in the Bābā Budhān case). The latter level, which is much more
complex, corresponds to the different ways of channeling the former level into
the public sphere. It brings in history and tradition, which become instru-
ments for expressing the meaning of devotion. In the case of Dattātreya, it is
the meaning corresponding to the Brahmanic ideal, but since both history
and tradition (however imagined) are hardly divorced from the concerns of
the particular present, at this level the belonging is articulated quite within
the contemporary socio-political contexts (where homogenization of diverse
religious traditions plays an important part).
In fact, imagining Dattātreya and its historical agents offers a rich dis-
cursive space that documents the wider societal concerns in understanding the
role of religion. Dattātreya, then, via his human avatārs, holy people who,
willingly or not, engage with society, became an instrument in historically
conditioned societal concerns. While observing the modern historical
developments leading to the current homogenized religions of South Asia,
the diversity of Dattātreya’s imagined characters was destined to be publicly
debated and contested. Out of this debate emerged two distinct positions.
Followers of the one pertaining to the religion of practice see him as Vedic
guru, and followers of the other pertaining to academic interpretations of the
religion recognize the diversity of his character in terms of syncretism. Both
in their own ways participated in the marginalization of the noted diversity,
but as the Brahmanic ideal was a legitimate effort of propagating a single angle
of understanding Dattātreya, the proponents of syncretism, unwittingly perhaps,
used the diversity of Dattātreya’s known representations as an answer to the
modern division of the Indic world into Hindus and Muslims. This chapter
endeavored to show how it is difficult to connect both of these understandings
to the textual evidence and the particular sites of Dattātreya’s worship.
Whatever their history, places of Fakir Datta are local cults with no
apparent aspiration to publicity and sampradāyik classification. If there is any
publicity, as in the case of the well-known Sāī Bābā, then it certainly does not
concern Fakir Datta. These places hence serve locally the purpose of bene-
ficial interanimation without any particular modern ideology applied there.
They are ostracized from the major public discourse on religious tradition,
they are the places of its production. If they become a part of the discourse at
all, they serve as examples of syncretism, however problematic it is to explain
what is really meant by the term. They are marginal not because they were
deliberately put outside the major religious and public self-articulation. They
were such for centuries. Instead, they were marginalized because the religious
realities they represent and embody do not fit any of the modern interpreta-
tions offered. They are claimed to belong to all (sarvajāti) and take their
popularity from the master whom they represent. However, who the master is,
is much less clear, if we attempt to inquire who exactly is meant by all.
Notes
1 There is a lot of documentation to validate this claim. See e.g. Schwerin (1981), or
recently a different approach to venerated sites by Glushkova (2013).
2 By writing this I do not mean to disregard the fact that the teachings of the South
Asian holy people do indeed play an important part in the popularity of their cults.
However, from my own observation and from the observation of other scholars I
would suggest that the teachings and the concrete social and religious behavior
that they promote concern a minority of the saint’s followers. Instead, the followers
usually accept family, or jāti-dharma, as the leading behavioral model. This, how-
ever, does not contradict their interest in any teachings. Moreover, apart from
social constraints such as caste or gender, the concrete choice of what to follow is
rather arbitrary, given the capabilities of the followers to grasp the teachings as
well as apply them to their lives. In reality, then, what indeed is followed is very
much disputable, whereas the belief in the power of the holy people and in the
benefits that this power provides is very much documentable. Perhaps the emphasis
on teaching which can be perceived in a large part of academic analyses of saints
58 Dušan Deák
stems from the Orientalist and philologist fascination by and intense engagements
with the texts.
3 To call something syncretic, i.e. with qualities that are somehow, by combination,
made of different qualities, needs first substantiation by the fieldwork data. My
own data and experiences hardly confirm this assumption. None of the people
whom I interviewed at the so-called syncretic shrines over the years was con-
sciously combining anything. They rather preferred to call their belief and practice
paramparā (continuance, tradition), and even if, say, ‘Islamic’ or ‘Hindu’ elements
could be recognized in what I could observe, it was me who saw them there and
was cognizant and attentive to whatever ‘Islamic’ or ‘Hindu’ element was present.
So if we do not want to modify the thinking of our respondents to our own, it is
better to recognize that syncretism, as any form of combination (amalgamation,
cultural veneer, etc.), simply does not apply to our subjects.
4 However, ‘the situation of sharing’ does not necessarily need to be seen across
religions only. For instance, Islamic reformists might well take possession of a
dargāh and ‘clean’ it of all undesirable elements according to their vision of Islam,
hence leaving the Muslim community of worshippers without their Islam.
5 In today’s Maharashtra, the region of my research interest, Burman’s (2002)
encyclopedic work lists around 200 such shrines.
6 Nationalization is just one concrete social articulation of the process of change.
See more on this process in van der Veer (1994a), Khan (2004), or Zavos (2002).
7 Note that sampradāys can hardly be considered uniformly organized bodies.
8 One prominent controversy in the Western Indian region is analyzed by Hayden (2002).
9 This does not in any sense mean that the categories of Hindus and Muslims are
not present in current or past discourse, but their usage is clearly politically fash-
ioned, which itself is very much a legitimate use, but does not accurately apply to
the multifarious socio-religious realities to be met with at the disputed sites and
during discussions with and observation of their visitors.
10 Datta is a short form for Dattātreya.
11 Whether R.K. Kamat, editor of the cult’s chief scripture; H.S. Joshi, author of the
first academic compendium on Datta in English; P.G. Gosvāmī, author of an
influential Marathi compendium on Datta; P.N. Jośī, author of an encyclopedic
volume on Datta’s worship and avatārs; M.V. Kulkarnī, author of an influential
Marathi academic study on the chief scripture of the Datta sampradāy; or the
internationally well-known R.C. Dhere, author of a history of the Datta sampra-
dāy, all of them belong to the Brahmans. I am not aware of any influential writing
on Datta coming from the pen of a non-Brahman author, unless it is a Western
author. This, of course, does not mean that such writings do not exist.
12 For others see Joshi (1973).
13 By Vedization I mean the gradual application of Vedic ritual and patterns of
learning in the Maharashtrian Dattātreya’s cult. This can be documented in the
cult of one of Datta’s currently widely popular avatars, Swāmī Samārtha of
Akkalkot. Much more on this topic should come out soon in the PhD dissertation
of Hemant Rajopadhye which he is about to submit at Göttingen University. I
thank Hemant for sharing with me his knowledge of the subject. On the current
popularity of Vedic ritual activism in Maharashtra, see also Lubin (2001).
14 For more on sampradāy, see e.g. Eschmann (2005 [1974]).
15 Rosalind O’Hanlon (2010) shows how Brahmans, in making their livelihood, had
to face challenges from other social groups. Living through these challenges made
Brahmans negotiate their social position vis-à-vis those social groups that challenged
their social position. Following this idea it seems viable to me that Fakir Datta
tradition, as developed by Brahmans, could be seen as a side effect of the major
challenge brought to Brahmans by their inevitable collaboration with the ruling
elites of early modern sultanates of the Deccan (cf. Fischel 2012; Guha 2010).
16 The Gurucaritra may be also justifiably considered a text displaying many con-
servative features pertaining to the role of Brahmans in Indian society. For more
on the Gurucaritra, see Kulkarnī (1993).
17 The evidence for this claim appears first in the hagiographies (Krishnadās, most
probably late seventeenth century, Keshavswāmī, c. 1760, and Mahipati, 1762 and
1774) describing the meeting of Eknāth and his guru, Janārdan (d. 1575), with the
latter’s guru, the fakir, in texts of Śekh Mahammad Shrigondekar (d. 1665) and his
followers like yogi Mukundarāj, and finally in the texts of Ātmarāmsvāmī (d. 1731)
and Sadānandasvāmī (d. 1760), to name the most important. For more on them
see Deák (2010).
18 Malangs are said to belong to the be-shar’ Sufi order (as an offshoot of the Madārīs),
whose members display several similarities with Shaivite yogis. Their behavior is
asocial and they often use drugs prepared from cannabis. Ibbetson and MacLagan
say that Malangs ‘are both Hindu and Muḥammadans by religion’ (Rose 1914: 57).
19 In another narrative setting, that of Gurucaritra, this time as Shaivite ascetic,
Dattātreya comes, helps and instructs the sultan from Bidar (Gurucaritra 50). An
alternative version of the event connects him also to the sultan of Bijapur (Bhak-
talīlāmrita 49). For more on accommodation of the Muslim king into the bhakti
imagination, see in my ‘Bidar in the Marathi World: Saints, Kings, and Powers
across the Centuries’ (2014).
20 Conversely, pictures attached to the map made sometime around 1770 by Colonel
Jean Baptiste Joseph Gentil, published by Susan Gole, show that the imagination
could work vice versa too. Among the different pictures of figures from various Sufi
orders there is a picture of a Madārı- Sufi who looks much like a naked (digambara)
Shaivite ascetic. Apart from the fact that this image of Madārī Shaiva looking
Sufi is confirmed by early British ethnographers (see the note 18 above), it would
be perhaps less surprising that one of the followers of Fakir-Datta, Sadānandasvāmī of
Copda, described the god/sage as Shāh Madār (Ājgāvkar 1916: 105).
21 When I visited the family of Rāmjī Sarade, who was worshipping Dattātreya also
in the form of fakir, his descendants told me that irrespective of what their grand-
father was doing, nowadays they worship only trimurti Datta. The Brahman des-
cendants of Sadānandasvāmī, mentioned in the footnote above, told me that they
know nothing about Sadānanda’s deity Śahā Datta, and that they also worship
trimurti Datta. Finally, Bhīmaśankar Deśpānde, a Brahman scholar on Ānanda
sampradāy, to which Sadānanda belonged, told me that all this Fakir-Datta
tradition is just imagination (kalpanik). All my visits were made between 2006–10.
22 ‘The word/confession of faith of Shahā Datta’ (i.e. Fakīr Datta), or alternatively
the ‘word of confession of faith’. One may also speculate on ‘the word of martyrdom’,
but the text is clear that Shahā Datta is a divine figure.
23 While talking to descendants of Sadānanda it became clear that none had any
interest in documenting Sadānanda’s texts and that already by the beginning of the
twentieth century the Ānanda sampradāy in Copda must have been in decline. They
admitted that the manuscripts written by the saint existed (Ājgāvkar himself men-
tions many of them), but added that they gave them to ‘scholars’, perhaps Ājgāv-
kar himself, or some other enthusiasts who were collecting the manuscripts for
building up the national archive.
24 The idea of the guru testing his disciple’s fidelity by an unexpected outward appear-
ance is well known to Indic traditions, but in the case of Dattātreya, this precisely
relates to Eknath’s fakir/malang/yavana, and the Shāh Datta/malang-fakir of
Ātmarām and Sadānanda. It is a question why the rhetoric of recognition was
employed in the hagiographic texts (Mahipati’s the most prominent among them).
Why is there a need for a Brahman to recognize a guru in the fakir? What does
such apparent instruction seek to tell us? This is certainly a question to follow
and perhaps the answer lies in the inclusion of Brahmans in the sultanate’s courts
60 Dušan Deák
and administration, as many of the recent studies on the scribal classes (among
whom the Brahmans played a significant role) document. Cf. Guha (2010).
25 Perhaps the most well-known publications are Tara Chand’s Influence of Islam on
Indian Culture (1936) and Muhammad Hedayetullah’s Kabir: The Apostle of
Hindu-Muslim Unity (1977). See also Prasad (1946).
26 In a somewhat similar fashion he narrates another story (of Cāngdev), in which
one should recognize the god Vishnu in the sultan of Bidar (cf. Bhaktalīlāmrita 10:
17–21).
27 In this context, let us not forget the role of Maharashtrian Brahmans (Savarkar,
Golvalkar and many others) in the creating and spreading of the Hindutva
ideology.
28 Deśpānde, without considering the textual history of the materials and ideas he
works with, attempts to prove that it is nonsense to see anybody else in Dattātreya,
the paramguru of Eknāth, except the Śrī Datta.
29 While visiting Mahur, an ancient place of Dattātreya worship, I visited a sādhu
custodian of Ānandasampradāy’s ashram located on the way to the main Datta
temple. When I pointed out that in the ashram’s temple there is written ‘Jay
ānanda Śahā Datta’ and asked who Shahā (the Marathi word for Persian shāh)
was, I was told although he admits that Datta may assume a form of fakir, he is
not concerned with it, because that makes Datta associated with Muslims.
30 According to both hagiographers, Eknāth’s and Janārdan while on pilgrimage met
with a mysterious Brahman called Candrabhat. ‘When Candrabhat reached the
state of non-awareness of his own body (videha), they started to call him Cānd
Bodhala. Embracing the attitude of non-difference, he became a siddha. After
being some days in this state, he thought of leaving this world (samādhi) and asked
Janārdan how to do it in a proper manner. Seeing that the kingdom is ruled by
yavanas, the structure of samādhi became a question. Hence they built it in the true
yavana’s fashion. After finishing the samādhi, both Brahmans and yavanas, were
startled. But whatever debate there was (on how it should look), it was over.’
Eknāth Caritra of Keshav, 5:50–57 (Gosavī 1993), cf. Bhaktalīlāmrita of Mahipati,
14: 170–175 (Phadke 1988). The place, both hagiographers report, is the source of
many miracles and, I would add, power.
31 I am grateful to Jon Keune for directing my attention to Shaykh Chānd’s book and
to Rafat Qureshi who translated it for me as well as directing my attention to the
book of Agha Mirza Baig.
32 It is not clear what purpose this structure served earlier. According to Pushkar
Sohoni (personal communication; also Sohoni 2010: 58, 61), it was a Nizām Shāhī
palace. The local custodians of the shrine believe that it was a mosque and only
later the grave installed within its premises turned the mosque into a dargāh. Nei-
ther suggestion contradicts it being a place associated with the Nizām Shāhī aris-
tocracy. Although in a dilapidated state today, some of its parts, like columns, are
clearly older than the structure and it seems that the building was partly assembled
from the materials that earlier must have belonged to a temple. Such structural
character of the building when associated with Brahman Janārdan, its builder as
reported by hagiographers, gives the interactions in pre-modern Deccan yet
another turn.
33 Interestingly and importantly, Cānd Bodhle’s association with Dattātreya has been
marginalized too. The Shrigonda descendants of Shekh Muhammad, a disciple of
Cānd Bodhle, due to the public pressures of identification with one of the clear-cut
modern identities as either Hindu or Muslim, opt for the latter option in terms of
Sufism and do not consider Datta as a relevant character to be associated with
Cānd Bodhle. See more in Deák (2013).
34 This holy figure should not be confused with the famous Lingāyat saint from the
twelfth century, Allama Prabhu.
35 For example, Śrīalamprabhu Mahimā Grantha adhyāy no. 2. It is interesting to see
how any notion of a Muslim fakir is avoided by the employment of the neutraliz-
ing characteristic of a ‘wandering spiritually mad man’ – avaliyā avatār deśodeśī.
Even if the fakir buried in the worshipped grave is avoided and neglected, appar-
ently because his history would tell a different story, he is Sanskritized as a guru,
which is seen in the employment of concepts like guru ādnyā, guru sevā, guru krupā
and the like.
36 The most prominent among them is the grave/samādhi of Sāī Bābā from Shirdi.
Another interesting example of the Hindu worship of a Muslim holy man located
to the precincts of the latter’s grave is the well-known Janglī Mahārāj of Pune,
whose origin has been completely obliterated by the current practices at his,
nowadays certainly, temple.
37 Quite understandably, then, Nurī Mahārāj of Thane, or Tajuddīn Bābā of Nagpur,
other Muslim holy men once imagined by some of their followers as Dattātreya –
plainly because the belief in Datta’s fakir form could meaningfully exist – would
today be publicly seen more in terms of homogenized, however locally shaped,
Islam.
3 Islamic and Buddhist impacts on the
shrine at Daftar Jailani, Sri Lanka
Dennis B. McGilvray
Introduction
In the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s quarter-century of civil war that ended in
2009 between the militant Tamil separatists of the LTTE and the central
government, a strongly Sinhala Buddhist chauvinist sentiment has imbued
national politics. This has been expressed in the growth of several militant
organizations headed by Buddhist monks who seek to reassert the primacy of
Sinhala Buddhist culture and religion over what they consider alien religious
communities, in particular Christians and Muslims (DeVotta and Stone
2008). The most powerful of these is the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS – Buddhist
Strength Force), a group of militant monks who received tacit support from
the government of former President Mahinda Rajapakse (2005–15). Among
the Muslim targets chosen by the BBS is the Sufi hermitage shrine of
Daftar Jailani, also known by the Sinhala name Kuragala, a mountainous
location where Buddhist monastic cave-shelters have been dated to the second
century BCE. Compounded by reformist Muslim criticisms of the Jailani festi-
val as a deviation from true Islam, the BBS campaign to reclaim the site as an
ancient Buddhist monastery has given the Jailani shrine an uncertain future.
Jailani shrine and festival

There are no Sufi dargāhs in Sri Lanka that have enjoyed imperial or aristo-
cratic patronage over the centuries, such as Ajmer Sharif in Rajasthan or
Nagoor in Tamilnadu. Apart from the many local saints’ tombs (Sri Lankan
Tamil, ziyāram) commonly found in mosque premises throughout the island,
there are only four Sufi shrines that attract substantial numbers of Muslim
pilgrims for annual festivals, including the Khidr Mosque located at Katar-
agama, the shrine for Faqir Muhiyadeen at Porvai (Godapitiya) in the deep
south, and the Beach Mosque shrine for the Nagoor saint at Kalmunaikkudy
on the eastern coast (McGilvray 1998, 2013). The fourth and most widely
known shrine is Daftar Jailani, situated on the southern escarpment of the
Kandyan Hills in a dramatically beautiful location 22 kilometers from the town
of Balangoda in Sabaragamuwa Province. The population of the surrounding
Impacts on the shrine at Daftar Jailani, Sri Lanka 63
region is overwhelmingly Sinhala-speaking Buddhist in composition, but the
pilgrims who come annually to Jailani are mainly from Sri Lanka’s Tamil-
speaking Sunni Muslim community, known in English as Moors or in Tamil
as Sonahar (co-nakar), who are widely dispersed across the island (McGilvray
1998, 2008).
The site is named after the illustrious Sufi saint, ‘Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī (d.
1166 CE, buried in Baghdad), founder of the Qādiriyya, a Sufi order that is
widespread in South Asia as well as in Southeast Asia, and is found throughout
the Muslim world (Zarcone et al. 2000). Sri Lankan legend claims that the
saint meditated for 12 years in a rock cave at Daftar Jailani before he took up
public life as a teacher and jurist in Baghdad. This folk narrative places him
in the company of later Muslim travelers such as Ibn Battuta who in the fourteenth
century ascended Adam’s Peak, located only 50 kilometers away, where Adam
is believed to have fallen from Paradise. The shrine itself preserves no physical
trace of the saint; it is instead a hermitage site where his annual kandoori
death anniversary festival (Tamil, kantūri, equivalent of ‘urs) is celebrated,
and where the sixteenth-century CE south Indian saint Shahul Hamid of
Nagoor and the ‘green’ Prophet al-Khidr are believed also to have paid visits.
There is no hereditary line of living descendants at Jailani, but the office of
chief trustee has been passed down within a prominent Muslim family from
Balangoda that helped to establish the shrine in the late nineteenth century.
Physically, the site consists of three granite monoliths guarding a deep
ravine situated at the top of steep rocky cliffs overlooking Sinhalese Buddhist
villages and rice fields on the Kaltota plain spread out below. Saint ‘Abd al-Qādir
is believed to have meditated at the ledge of a deep natural opening in ‘cave
mountain’ (Tamil, curankam malai) facing a dramatic view over the southern
jungles of his day. In the opposite direction is an exposed granite slope known
as ‘djinn mountain’ (Tamil, jin malai), where custodians of the shrine reported
finding a stone with the Arabic inscription yā Allāh hijrī 300 (907 CE), a date
more than two centuries prior to the saint’s lifetime (Aboosally 2002: 60–61).
The main center of festival activities at Daftar Jailani is situated directly
beneath the third and largest monolith, known to local Sinhalese villagers as
Hituwangala (standing rock), but to Tamil-speaking Muslims as ‘ship moun-
tain’ (kappal malai) for its resemblance to the prow of a boat, or ‘hand-print
mountain’ (kaiyati malai) for palm impressions believed to have been made
by saintly visitors such as Shahul Hamid of Nagoor. Under the massive
overhanging rock face there is a roofed, open-air mosque built in 1922 and
the ziyāram of a faqīr named Darvesh Muhiyadeen whose tombstone was
reportedly discovered during the original construction of the building.
According to shrine officials, the inscription on the tombstone bears the date
715 AH (1315 CE), but this has not been independently examined or officially
verified. Until the summer of 2013, there were also a number of pilgrim
shelters, administrative offices, tea shops, and several twentieth-century
ziyāram tombs located along the main path, which conducts visitors a short
distance on foot from the parking lot and bus halt.
64 Dennis B. McGilvray
Figure 3.1 Sri Lankan Muslim pilgrims approaching the entrance into the Jailani/
Kuragala site during the annual kandoori festival in 2014
(Photo courtesy Dennis B. McGilvray)
The opening day of the annual festival, which begins at sunset on the first
day of the month of Rabi‘ al-Ākhir, features an exciting flag-raising (Tamil,
kotiye-rram) ceremony, followed by devotional rātibs and ecstatic self-mortifying
zikr by Bawa faqīrs of the Rifā‘ī order that I have described elsewhere
(McGilvray 2004; see also Spittel 1933: 312–321). The key event is the bles-
sing of a newly donated embroidered green flag by a group of male religious
leaders and mosque officials, who dip their hands into sandalwood paste and
place palm prints on the flag in commemoration of ‘Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī,
Shahul Hamid of Nagoor, and various other saintly figures who are believed
to have visited the site centuries ago. The Nagoor saint is said to have con-
ducted his own personal retreat (chilla) in the very same location where the
flag is consecrated, a shallow cave in a crevice above the mosque that has also
been identified by the Sri Lankan Archaeology Department as an ancient
shelter for Buddhist monks. There are two such monastic cells in close proxi-
mity to the mosque, each with a chiseled stone drip-edge to prevent rainwater
from trickling inside the cave area, and both of them accompanied by Brahmi
stone inscriptions from the second century BCE. Both of these rock shelters
were enclosed by masonry walls presumably constructed (or perhaps recon-
structed) during the twentieth century as part of the development of Daftar
Jailani as a Muslim religious center, the second shelter becoming a devotional
site for honoring the Prophet al-Khidr, who is associated in Sri Lanka with
wild and pristine natural environments such as one finds at Jailani.
Historical summary
The only available history of the Daftar Jailani shrine is a self-published book
written by the late chief trustee, the Hon. M.L.M. Aboosally, who had served
as a long-standing United National Party member of parliament and Cabinet
minister representing the Balangoda constituency from 1977–94, and whose
father and grandfather led the first efforts to establish Jailani as a saintly
shrine (Aboosally 2002). According to Aboosally’s account, it was a south
Indian Muslim sayyid (descendant of the Prophet) from the Lakshadweep
archipelago bearing the title of maulānā, or tankal, who visited Balangoda in
1857 and first discovered the precise location of Jailani, known previously
only by legend. In 1875 his nephew arrived from India, enlisted the aid of
local Muslims to clear the jungle site, and eventually married and settled in
Balangoda. By the late nineteenth century, the existence of a Muslim shrine at
Daftar Jailani had been noted by colonial government agents in Ratnapura,
and in 1922 the current mosque was erected by C.L.M. Marikar Hajiyar of
Balangoda, the father of Mr Aboosally MP. Further construction on the site
after that date seems to have been incremental and undocumented, apart
from a substantial pilgrim shelter erected by a wealthy patron in 1965, who
also arranged to be buried in a private ziyāram next door.
The Bawa faqīrs who perform their annual Rifā‘ī zikr at Jailani built a
small lodge or clubhouse (pakkīr makkām) facing their performance space,
adjacent to the tomb of an Indian holy man named Mastan Sahib Abdul
Gafoor who had unilaterally taken up residence in the ‘chilla room’ cave until
his death in 1965. There have been a number of such uninvited guests who
prolonged their stay at Jailani, including ‘one delightful gentleman from
Lahore’ whom the British archaeologist C.H. Collins says prayed in the
depths of ‘Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī’s meditation cave for three months at a time
(Collins 1932: 168). Another was a stubborn faqīr squatter named ‘Trinco
Bawa’, who was eventually taken to court by the government Archaeology
Department and acquitted (Aboosally 2002: 84–85). A number of commercial
tea stalls, restaurants and souvenir shops were in place when I first visited
Jailani in the early 1990s. By late in the same decade, several modern bunga-
low-style accommodations had been erected by private Muslim donors on
leasehold land closer to the parking lot, and an ornamental Islamic gateway
with chiseled stone steps had been constructed at the entrance to the shrine
property by a Muslim patron from Chilaw.
Previously, back in the 1930s, the colonial exploration of Sri Lanka’s
archaeological heritage had finally reached the lesser-known parts of the
island, including the Ratnapura District where Jailani – officially known as
Kuragala – is situated. The major archaeological report on Kuragala, and
adjacent sites situated below the Balangoda plateau, was published by C.H.
Collins in 1932. He documented two cave shelters and two accompanying
second-century BCE Brahmi inscriptions located near the present-day Jailani
mosque that are included in Paranavitana’s comprehensive inventory of such
inscriptions throughout the island (Paranavitana 1970). However, the more
significant archaeological site, according to Collins, was Budugala, located at
the foot of the Kuragala escarpment but within eyesight of Jailani/Kuragala,
where handsomely carved stone lintels, stairways and platforms indicated the
former existence of a Buddhist temple (Collins 1932: 161–165). Since Collins’s
day, the most exciting archaeological discoveries in the region have been the
excavation of mesolithic stone tools and skeletal remains of ‘Balangoda Man’
(Homo sapiens balangodensis, ca. 38,000 years BP) from other sites in the
region (Deraniyagala 1996), and the discovery of sophisticated wind-powered
technology for smelting steel dating to the ninth century CE located near the
new Samanalawewa hydroelectric project (Juleff 1998).
Collins noted in passing that ‘Kuragala is a great place of Muslim pil-
grimage, though other religionists also claim it’ (Collins 1932: 168). These
claims were heatedly asserted in a confrontation staged in the early 1970s by a
group of Buddhist monks supported by the incumbent Sinhalese MP for
Balangoda, Mrs Mallika Ratwatte, who was a staunch political rival of the
chief trustee, Mr Aboosally. In his own account of the incident, violence was
averted by skilled diplomacy, but the ensuing political compromise acknowl-
edged the government’s authority over Kuragala, which was designated a
second-century BCE Buddhist monastic site under the administration of the
Archaeology Department in 1972. A moratorium on further construction and
a ban on additional ziyarām tombs were also agreed to. However, as a gesture
of reassurance, the archaeological commissioner wrote in a trilingual mem-
orandum that ‘[t]he Muslims who have been using Kuragala as a place of
worship will not be affected by this conservation work’ (Aboosally 2002: 109).
The Brahmi inscriptions at Kuragala, like many of similar antiquity around
the island, are fragmentary and seemingly incomplete. For example, one
simply says ‘[t]he cave of lord Punaśaguta, son of the chief Sona’ (Para-
navitana 1970: inscription no. 776), without any explicit designation of the
cave as a gift to the Buddhist monkhood. Mr Aboosally’s reading of the epi-
graphical evidence led him to argue that these inscriptions were ambiguous,
and that – in contrast to caves elsewhere that had been explicitly donated to
the monkhood – the caves at Kuragala were not necessarily intended for
Buddhist religious use (Aboosally 2002: 61–63). However, research by Sri
Lankan archaeologists and epigraphers establishes that such inscribed cave-
shelters were intended by their donors as religious gifts to support the
monkhood in Sri Lanka, providing shelter during the annual rainy season
(vassa) retreat as prescribed in Theravada Buddhist tradition (Paranavitana
1970; Dias 2001: 14–18). Thus, the two Brahmi-inscribed caves at Kuragala –
like more than 1,200 others scattered across the island – were evidently Bud-
dhist merit-earning gifts from locally powerful chiefs, constructed in the hope
that some pious monks might occupy them for three monsoon months every
year. However, to call these two isolated cave-shelters a ‘monastery’ might
strike some visitors as an exaggeration. They are in no way unique or his-
torically significant as Buddhist antiquities, except that they pre-date Muslim
occupation of Jailani.
Buddhist pressure on Jailani

Although the recent history of Sri Lanka has been dominated by the quarter-
century of civil war between Tamil Tiger (LTTE) separatists and the Sinhala-
led central government that ended in 2009, there has also been a history of
twentieth-century friction between the Sinhala Buddhist majority and the
Tamil-speaking Muslim minority. The most devastating outbreak was in
1915, when thousands of Muslim shops and homes throughout the Sinhala
districts were attacked, and British troops were called to their rescue (Ameer
Ali 1981; Peebles 2006). Although Muslim political leaders since then have
shunned alliances with Tamil nationalists and have preferred pragmatic coa-
lition politics with Sinhala-majority parties, there has been intermittent and
scattered local-level Sinhala-Muslim violence, usually sparked by neighbor-
hood grievances or personal animosities, and quite possibly economic
inequalities (Scott 1989). The same could be said for Tamil-Muslim tensions
in the northern and eastern regions of the island, a situation aggravated by
the harsh LTTE campaign of ethnic cleansing of Muslims from the north in
1990 (Hasbullah 2004; Thiranagama 2011).
More recently, however, an upsurge of anti-Muslim sentiment in the Sinhala
Buddhist community has been fomented by a cluster of new organizations
that seek to reclaim and reassert Sinhala Buddhist political and cultural
hegemony over what they consider foreign, non-indigenous religious commu-
nities, including Christians, but especially Muslims (McGilvray 2016). The
most prominent of such anti-Muslim groups is the BBS, led by a pugnacious
Buddhist monk named Galagoda Atte Gnanasara, who broke away from
membership in the bhikku-centered Jathika Hela Uramaya (JHU – National
Heritage Party) because they were too moderate. Two other militant bhikku-
led organizations, Sinhala Ravaya (Sinhala Outcry) and Ravana Balaya
(Ravana Power), pursue similar anti-Muslim agendas. Since 2011, when the
BBS first appeared on the scene, they have conducted a series of high-profile
public relations campaigns and have led public demonstrations against a
variety of Muslim targets, including the commercial certification of halal
foods and products, the slaughter of livestock to celebrate ‘ı-d al-Adha (the
sacrifice of Abraham), the wearing of hijab and the full face covering (niqāb)
by Muslim women, the allegedly corrupt practices of certain leading Muslim
clothing chains, and the purported encroachment of Muslim mosques and
shrines into historic ‘sacred zones’ surrounding Buddhist da-gobas (stupas) and
viha-ras (temples). The BBS also alleges that the Sri Lankan Muslim commu-
nity harbors clandestine jihadi terrorist cells and warns that their high birth-
rate will allow the Muslims (9.7% of the population in 2012) to control the
island within a few decades. The most surprising BBS claim is that Muslim
restaurant cooks are required by Islamic law to spit three times into food
before it is served to non-Muslims.
It is the militant Buddhist opposition to Muslim mosques and sacred sites
of all kinds that places the Sufi shrine at Daftar Jailani in renewed jeopardy.
The BBS-inspired demolition of a local saint’s tomb in Anuradhapura in 2011
first caught the headlines, an event recorded on video showing a robed monk
directing lay workers wielding sledgehammers while a platoon of uniformed
policemen watched passively from the sidelines. Then, in 2012, a mob of
2,000 led by a prominent monk ransacked a mosque near the ancient Rangiri
Vihara in Dambulla that was alleged to have been erected without permission
60 years ago (Heslop 2014; Amarasuriya et al. 2015b). Since then, there have
been numerous acts of vandalism against mosques and madrasas across the
island (Center for Policy Alternatives 2013), as well as an alarming outbreak
of large-scale anti-Muslim rioting in Aluthgama in June 2014 (Haniffa et al.
2015). The 100th anniversary of the 1915 riots passed without incident in
2015, much to the relief of the Muslim community.
According to administrators of the shrine, things were relatively peaceful at
Daftar Jailani after the resolution of the archaeology crisis of the early 1970s.
An official sign was erected, notifying visitors they were entering a Buddhist
archaeological reserve containing the ‘remains of a Buddhist monastery circa
2nd century BC’, but construction of a bogus brick da-goba at the top of ‘cave
mountain’ was terminated through the intervention of Mr Aboosally. Apart
from bureaucratic red tape, Archaeology Department staff interfered very
little with Muslim religious activities at the site for four decades, until the
BBS and their allies started to stir communal tensions again in 2012–13
(Amarasuriya et al. 2015a). On several occasions, groups of Buddhist monks
from the JHU, the BBS and the Sinhala Ravaya organizations have attempted
to occupy the Jailani/Kuragala site. An assault in January 2013 was thwarted
by a tropical downpour that local Muslims viewed as divine intervention. By
that time, however, the Sinhala nationalist monks had acquired the support of
the minister of defense, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, the brother of the Sri Lankan
president. After summoning the current chief trustee of the Jailani shrine, Mrs
Roshan Aboosally, to the Defense Ministry for several rounds of questioning,
the minister and his entourage made a helicopter trip to Jailani/Kuragala in
April 2013. The outcome was an order from the Defense Ministry that all
structures had to be removed from the four-acre archaeological reserve,
except for the mosque (left untouched) and the exposed Muslim tombs (minus
their roofs and walls). This included dismantling Muslim flagpoles atop the
three granite monoliths surrounding the Jailani shrine, as well as demolishing all
administrative offices, storerooms, pilgrim shelters, tea shops and commercial
structures located inside the boundary of the archaeological zone.
The only archaeologically significant change was the removal of the
twentieth-century masonry walls and doorways that had been erected to
enclose the two ancient Buddhist cave-shelters, labeled by Muslims as the
Figure 3.2 Islamic wall decorations for sale at the Jailani kandoori festival in 2001,
displayed beside a trilingual Sri Lankan Archaeology Department signboard
identifying Kuragala as a second-century Buddhist monastery
(Photo courtesy Dennis B. McGilvray)
Nagoor saint’s ‘chilla room’ and the ‘Khidr room’. Even this conservation
work by the Archaeology Department may be questionable, since it was
common practice in the second century BCE to enclose such cave-shelters with
walls, doors and windows (Dias 2001: 2–12). The demolition work was car-
ried out in the summer of 2013 by members of the Civil Defense Corps under
the direction of the Defense Ministry. When I visited Jailani in January 2014,
the remaining area had been nicely tidied up, leaving a series of earthen ter-
races with stonework retaining walls resembling a parade ground. The defense
minister is reported to have left strict instructions to make the site clean and
appealing for the many foreign tourists whom he predicted would be coming
to see the two isolated cave-shelters constituting this second-century BCE
Buddhist site.
Media skirmish
A decade ago I published a chapter entitled ‘Jailani: A Sufi Shrine in Sri
Lanka’ (McGilvray 2004), in which I offered an anthropological account of
the history and popular meaning of Daftar Jailani for Sri Lankan Muslims,
focusing on a description of the annual kandoori festival. I also discussed the
long-term pressure by the Buddhist clergy to reclaim control over Jailani/
Kuragala and to eliminate Muslim occupation of the site. From the 1960s to
the 1980s, the central Muslim figure in this ongoing tussle had been Mr
Aboosally, the chief trustee of the Jailani shrine and an adroit politician at the
national level, who defused threats from militant bhikkus as well as rival
politicians on several occasions. I pointed out the geographical vulnerability
of Jailani, a tiny Muslim outpost surrounded by Sinhala populations on all
sides, a predicament that could easily lead to complete Buddhist hegemony
over the site. I did not, however, directly assess the archaeology and epigraphy
of Kuragala, choosing instead to cite Mr Aboosally’s own interpretation of
the cave inscriptions in a brief two-sentence comment (ibid.: 287, footnote 20)
that reads as follows:
There are Brahmi inscriptions at Jailani dating to the second century B.C.E.,
but they appear to assert territorial claims by local political chieftains.
According to Aboosally (2002: 62–63) there is no evidence that the site
was ever dedicated to the Buddhist Sangha.
The readership I had in mind at the time was an academic audience of

anthropologists and scholars of comparative religion. My chapter was pri-
marily about ethnography and popular religion, not archaeology, and I
deliberately avoided rendering judgment on matters of Sri Lankan epigraphy
about which I knew practically nothing at the time. However, my chapter
emerged in 2013 as the focus of a debate in the Sri Lankan press and digital
media over the efforts to expel Muslims from Buddhist ‘sacred zones’ around
the island, and from Jailani/Kuragala in particular. By then, Mr Aboosally
had passed away, and the office of chief trustee at Daftar Jailani was in the
hands of his eldest daughter, Mrs Roshan Aboosally, a Colombo lawyer by
profession.
In April 2013 a journalist for the online newspaper The Colombo Telegraph
wrote a detailed account of the high-level intervention by the minister of
defense, supported by various militant Buddhist groups, in ordering the
removal of the Muslim structures at Jailani (Bastians 2013). A month later, in
the same publication, a Colombo Muslim political commentator lamented the
prospect of celebrating Buddhist Vesak at Jailani (Farook 2013). These two
digital articles quickly provoked a volley of cyber-rebuttals defending the
importance and authenticity of the Buddhist caves at Kuragala, and their
criticism focused on my 2004 chapter, or to be more precise on my fateful
footnote 20, which was taken as proof that I had been a naive – perhaps even
mercenary – mouthpiece for the Jailani shrine management. The fact that my
article had been posted on a website maintained by the Daftar Jailani shrine
management (www.jailani.org) was taken as a further sign of my partisan
scholarship. Ignoring my ethnographic reportage, the media critics emphasized,
first, my uncritical acceptance of Muslim shrine pseudo-history, and second,
my incompetence as a scholar for neglecting the only important question that
needed to be settled: who occupied Kuragala first. Many of these online rants
were sophomoric and tendentious, but they quickly served to point me toward
the archaeological and epigraphic literature on Buddhist cave inscriptions,
with which I have now become quite conversant. The lesson from this
skirmish is one familiar to scholars of other South Asian ethnic and religious
conflicts: the past inevitably becomes a battleground for the present.
Jailani flag-raising 2014

In the course of discussions in 2013 between the chief trustee and the defense
minister, the written pledge made in 1972 that Muslims would be permitted to
continue using Kuragala as a place of worship was reaffirmed by the director
of archaeology, and government authorities have so far permitted the annual
festival to proceed in customary fashion. The kandoori celebration in 2014 –
on the 125th anniversary of the Jailani shrine itself – was the first to be con-
ducted after the razing of Muslim structures within the archaeological reserve.
To observe the practical impacts of the Buddhist demolition campaign, I attended
the flag-raising celebrations on the opening day of the festival, January 31, 2014.
Because of the official publicity about Kuragala as an archaeological site,
the road to Jailani/Kuragala – now marked by a new Buddha statue at the
main junction – has been greatly improved for automobile and bus access.
Inside the four-acre archaeological zone, the demolition and removal of
existing structures has been thorough, leaving only the 1922 mosque and
several exposed ziyāram tombs still standing. Near the top of the hillock
where pilgrims enter the site, the modern Islamic-style gateway arch and
carved stone steps remain untouched. It is on this peripheral property,
allocated to the Jailani shrine on a long-term lease, that all of the commercial
business and food preparation activities took place in 2014. As a money-
saving strategy, and as a gesture of respect for monastic Buddhist values, the
shrine prepared only vegetarian meals for pilgrims this year.
Apart from these changes, however, the Jailani pilgrims in 2014 occupied
and utilized space in the archaeological reserve exactly as they had done in
the past: camping in family groups near the mosque, roaming around the granite
monoliths on foot, and conducting the flag-raising ritual itself inside one of the
ancient Buddhist cave-shelters recently stripped of its twentieth-century masonry
walls (the so-called ‘chilla room’ where the Nagoor saint is believed to have
meditated). The second of the second-century BCE Buddhist cave-shelters
(formerly the site of devotion to the Prophet Khidr) was fully occupied during
the 2014 flag-raising by a Sufi shaykh and a group of Muslim laymen and
women in his entourage. Regular prayer and individual (largely female) vow
making was conducted at the mosque, and night-time performances of
ecstatic zikr by Bawa faqīrs of the Rifā‘ī order took place in their customary
space near a temporarily erected flagpole. A Sri Lankan Police post was
manned by Sinhalese constables who seemed relaxed and rather bored, and a
new Archaeology Department office was staffed by a cordial Sinhalese
woman who offered us tea when the chief trustee and I paid a courtesy visit.
The size of the crowd on the opening day appeared roughly comparable to
what I had observed in previous years, with a strong contingent from the
eastern Ampara and Batticaloa Districts where Sufi shaykhs have recently
been gaining new followers (McGilvray 2011, 2014). A large banner was seen
at the entrance to the archaeological preserve expressing support from the
Eastern Ahlus Sunna Foundation, a new organization headed by several
young maulavis in the Kalmunai area. In the current Sri Lankan context,
‘Ahlus Sunna’ identified this group as defenders of customary forms of Sufism
and saint veneration, aligning them with an older Colombo Muslim associa-
tion, Hubbul Avuliya (Love of the Saints), who also support Jailani. The
blessing and raising of the saint’s flag at sunset, a ceremony highly charged
with Muslim spiritual energy (barakat), was conducted with the same excite-
ment and sacred tension I had seen before, only this time there were many
smartphones, and at least one iPad, deployed to record personal videos for
posterity. I had feared there might be disruption of the festival by militant
BBS monks or by government security forces, but nothing of that sort hap-
pened. Not a single Buddhist monk was to be seen, although there were
Sinhala shopkeepers vending snacks and souvenirs to the Muslim pilgrims,
and nearby Sinhala property owners were busily collecting parking fees from
private Muslim vehicles.
The future of Jailani

According to Mrs Aboosally, there were harrowing last-minute delays before
she received formal permission from the Archaeology Department to conduct
the 2014 festival. However, she also admitted that having all of the commer-
cial activity relocated outside the shrine itself might prove to be a long-term
blessing in disguise because it could serve to elevate the spiritual tone of the
festival. Her dream is to build a new year-round Sufi meditation center and
library on the leased property outside the archaeological reserve, a project for
which she has already commissioned some preliminary survey work and
architectural sketches. The clientele for such a Sufi meditation center would
presumably be affluent, well-educated, middle-class Muslims (and some non-
Muslims, too) eager to enjoy Jailani’s solitude and natural beauty, but the
funding and business model for such a center remains to be developed.
Meanwhile, Jailani’s current devotees are drawn to the festival for more
emotional and practical reasons: to obtain the personal protection and inter-
cession of ‘Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī and his spiritual companions. It is this core
following of devotees and vow makers that sustains the shrine and attends its
annual festival, including a number of affluent urban Moors and Memons
who help to underwrite the celebration each year.
It is impossible to tell whether the steps taken by the government to remove
most, but not all, of the Muslim structures will permanently placate the
monks of the BBS and its allies. At the flag-raising ceremony in January 2014,
the Muslim pilgrims and celebrants fully occupied the two ancient Buddhist
cave-shelters, utilizing them for Sufi ceremonies and domestic purposes
exactly as they had done in previous festival seasons, while a TV camera crew
from Colombo shot video footage, and national newspapers carried articles
describing the event. In early 2015, however, militant Buddhist groups staged
several more protests at Jailani/Kuragala (Amarasuriya et al. 2015a: 44–46).
Meanwhile, the Buddhist site of Budugala, described by Collins in his 1932
archaeological survey, clearly visible below the cliff-top parapets of Jailani,
has been growing in popularity as a Sinhala Buddhist pilgrimage center.
Situated amidst granite boulders adjacent to the Budugala archaeological site,
the Budugala Raja Maha Vihara (established in 1925) has completed con-
struction of a gleaming white da-goba (2001), a facsimile shrine of the Buddha’s
footprint atop Adam’s Peak (2010), and a reduced replica of the fifth-century CE
Avukana Buddha statue (2011), all funded by popular subscription. The
official temple booklet claims that Budugala played an historic role in safe-
guarding the Buddha’s tooth relic, now enshrined in Kandy, as well as situ-
ating an early medieval temple for Kataragama, the most popular of the four
guardian deities of the island (Somaratana n.d.). Although no Buddhist reli-
gious activity seems to occur at Jailani/Kuragala, the nearby Budugala temple
is clearly attracting Sinhala Buddhist pilgrims from outside the local area. It
remains to be seen whether this expanding Buddhist center will generate fur-
ther pressure to reclaim Jailani as part of a larger Budugala Buddhist
complex.
For the time being, it is the Archaeology Department that must demon-
strate its genuine commitment to impartial conservation, scientific excavation
and epigraphic research. For 40 years following the designation of Kuragala
as an archaeological reserve in 1972, they seem to have given the site little
attention. Most notably, the Arabic inscriptions to which Jailani officials have
pointed have not been examined or verified by Archaeology Department epi-
graphers. I was told that an early (300 AH) Arabic inscription on ‘Djinn
Mountain’ had been completely effaced in the course of demolition work
conducted by the Civil Defense Corps in 2013. As the late Mr Aboosally
ruefully noted, ‘[t]he Archaeological Department appears to be only interested
in Sinhala and Buddhist archaeology’ (Aboosally 2002: 85).
A more long-term question concerns the leadership of the Daftar Jailani
shrine, which has been held by Mrs Aboosally since the death of her father in
2005. The Aboosally family supported and led the development of Jailani
throughout the twentieth century, and her succession as the chief trustee
appears to have encountered no local opposition. However, when the
defense minister made his flying visit to Kuragala with an entourage of Bud-
dhist monks and Archaeology Department officials in 2013, he brought along
a Muslim cleric from Colombo who was unknown in the Balangoda area.
According to first-hand accounts, he admonished the Jailani authorities for
allowing a woman to administer the shrine, only to be vociferously corrected
by one of Mrs Aboosally’s sisters, who later received accolades from the
Muslim women who witnessed the encounter. The Aboosally family has a
reputation for its forthright and progressive women, and Roshan has weath-
ered the BBS assault on Jailani with grace and aplomb, seeking to preserve
her father’s vision of the shrine as a space of religious tolerance and indivi-
dual spiritual fulfillment. It can be assumed, however, that having a woman in
charge of the Jailani shrine and mosque will continue to provoke objections
from conservative anti-Sufi Muslim elements such as the Tablighi and
Towheed Jamaats.
The larger picture

The monks of the BBS and their allies have no apparent understanding of –
or interest in – Sufism. This was reflected in a fatuous comment by the Ven.
Gnanasara, head of the BBS, alleging that Muslims at Kuragala venerated a
local ‘Sufi prophet’ who smoked ganja and provided wild meat for a Sinhalese
landed estate nearby (Colombo Telegraph, March 14, 2014). The BBS cam-
paign has been directed against Islam in general, and the Sri Lankan Muslim
community in particular, with no concern for the diversity of the religion or
its adherents. The affinities and connections between the BBS and the anti-
Muslim 969 Movement in Myanmar, led by the Burmese monk Ashin Wir-
athu, have also become clear, as seen in a conclave of BBS monks in
Colombo on September 28, 2014, at which Wirathu was the invited speaker.
It has also been noted that the BBS shares many characteristics with militant
Hindutva organizations in India – such as the Shiv Sena, the RSS (Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh) and the VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) – exuding deep
hostility to Islam as a religion alien to South Asia’s dharmic traditions.
While Sri Lankan Muslims of all persuasions are alarmed by the breadth
and vigor of the BBS campaign – ranging from condemnation of halal certi-
fication to accusations of harboring jihadi terrorist squads – there has been
conspicuously little outrage on the part of Muslim fundamentalist and refor-
mist groups such as the Sri Lanka Towheed Jamaat (www.sltj.lk) in response
to the Buddhist assault upon Sufi shrines and saintly ziyārams, a goal toward
which they are theologically sympathetic. In this singular respect – but for
utterly different reasons – the BBS and the Muslim fundamentalist/reformist
groups tacitly share a common viewpoint. One fears that the Khidr Mosque
near the famed multicultural Kataragama temple in southern Sri Lanka, with
its numerous entombed saints and faqīrs, could be next.
Ironically enough, the type of Muslim piety seen at Daftar Jailani is the
most easily comprehensible form of Islam from a Sri Lankan pan-cultural
point of view. The commemoration of a Sufi saint and the quest to obtain his
spiritual protection bear obvious similarities to the supplication of Hindu
deities, the offering of prayers to Catholic saints and the dedication of vows
to Sinhala Buddhist guardian gods such as Sumana Saman at Adam’s Peak.
The nightly performance of ecstatic Rifā‘ī zikr, featuring the ‘cutting and
stabbing work’ (Tamil, vettukkuttu ve-lai) of the Bawa faqīrs, is definitely on a
par with the kavadi hook dancing (Tamil, mullu kāvati) one sees among Sin-
halese and Tamil vow makers at Kataragama. Also, judging from their attire
and their patterns of public sociability, the Muslim pilgrims who attend the
annual festival at Daftar Jailani appear to be relatively less reformist or fun-
damentalist in outlook. Families mingle in mixed-gender crowds, and women
in dazzlingly colorful saris far outnumber those in all-black Saudi-style hijab.
At the flag-raising in 2014 I saw only one woman wearing a niqāb. If the
practice of serving only vegetarian meals to Jailani pilgrims is permanently
adopted by the shrine management, the BBS criticism of Muslim animal
slaughter will have been forestalled. All in all, compared with Wahhabi-
inspired expressions of public religiosity and Islamic dress, the festival at
Daftar Jailani appears to be strongly indigenous and Sri Lankan.
Conclusion
Despite the Archaeology Department’s official declaration that Kuragala is a
second-century BCE Buddhist monastery, no BBS monk has yet expressed a
desire to spend his annual three-month monsoon season vassa retreat in the
Kuragala caves. The struggle for control of Jailani/Kuragala is not about
competitive worship on shared sacred ground (Hayden 2002), nor does it
involve the kind of universally magnetic sacrality that has been described for
certain Sri Lankan temples and churches (Bastin 2012). It is a contest
between the living participants of one religious tradition – the Sufi Muslim
devotees of ‘Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī – who wish to continue to celebrate their
saint’s annual festival, versus an ethno-nationalistically motivated religious
party – the Buddhist monks of the BBS and their allies – who simply wish to
banish Muslims from ‘their’ archaeological turf. The fact that the Jailani fes-
tival celebrates the legends of a saintly hermitage, a site of Sufi self-isolation
and retreat from the world, would seem to honor Buddhist monastic tradi-
tions of asceticism and meditation. However, the BBS fixation on securing
and sealing the ‘sacred zones’ surrounding all Buddhist religious sites, whe-
ther modern or ancient, instead seeks to make Kuragala into a symbol of
exclusive Sinhala Buddhist nationalist identity. One can only hope that the
new government of President Maithripala Sirisena, democratically elected in
2015, will pursue a policy of renewed tolerance and reconciliation toward all
of Sri Lanka’s ethnic and religious minorities, including the Muslim pilgrims
to the sanctified caves at Daftar Jailani.
4 Longing and belonging at a Sufi saint
shrine abroad1
Frank J. Korom
Introduction
Sufism has often been characterized as a force for bringing Islam to new
nations under the processes of Islamicization due to colonial expansionism
from the medieval to the early modern period. This is true of South Asia, for
example (Eaton 1993), but what has not been addressed thoroughly is how
South Asian Sufism has been a vehicle for another wave of expansionism that
has brought Sufism to the so-called West (Genn 2007). It was primarily
during the decolonization that occurred in the modern period that Sufism
began its dissemination into the former colonizing nations. This chapter
explores one specific case study of that dissemination, for I am interested in
the role of Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (ral.), a Tamil Sufi
from Sri Lanka, who moved to the United States in 1971. This case is inter-
esting in and of itself because he was a virtually unknown holy man who
managed to establish a headquarters in the United States despite his virtual
anonymity. Indeed, it was his charisma (Korom 2011) that allowed him to
sway people’s hearts upon arrival in Philadelphia. Bawa, as he is better
known to his admirers and the world at large, died in Philadelphia in 1986,
and is buried on the outskirts of a small, now-distressed former mining town
in rural Pennsylvania near the city where he first arrived from his homeland
in South Asia. His is the first Sufi shrine (mazār) in North America, and it
figures prominently in the propagation and dissemination of his peculiar
brand of Sufism in North America and beyond today.
In addition to providing the historical background of his mission, I would
like to raise important issues relating to the emotions of longing and belong-
ing as well as the pivotal role that the mazār of Bawa play in his posthumous
community of followers, both in North America and South Asia. The issue at
stake, really, is his community’s health and survival after his death. In other
words, how does longing for the departed master contribute to forging a
continued sense of belonging to a like-minded community of co-religionists
decades after the death of the charismatic founder?2 I wish to argue that the
mazār itself provides a landmark presence that allows people throughout the
world to experience the founder’s absent presence on a routine basis,
78 Frank J. Korom
especially on the occasion of his death anniversary (‘urs), during which large
gatherings take place at the site for prayer, reflection and commensality, all of
which taken together constitute a sense of both longing for the departed
master as well as belonging to a devoted community of his admirers. Here, it
is the local that shapes the global, for the flow of people is mostly to Penn-
sylvania, not Sri Lanka, the place from whence he came.3 To explore the
issues raised above, I will focus on a small religious community based in
North America but with roots in Sri Lanka, known as Ceylon until 1972
when Sirimavo Bandaranaike changed the name of the country after the
Marxist insurrections that erupted there in 1971. The place was thus called
Ceylon when the figure at the center of my discussion here first achieved public
prominence. For consistency’s sake, however, I shall use the contemporary
term throughout my discussion.
The group with which I am concerned here goes by the name of the Bawa
Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship (BMF). It is based on the teachings of the afore-
mentioned saint informally called Guru Bawa, Sheikh Bawa, or simply Bawa
(pāvā) in Tamil, a common term in many Indian vernaculars for ‘father’ (i.e.
bābā) in both the kin and spiritual sense.4 Before proceeding with my theo-
retical discussion, I need to provide some background on the group’s estab-
lishment to provide the necessary context for situating the complex theoretical
issues involved in properly appreciating Bawa’s unusual life and legacy.
In the beginning
As I have noted elsewhere (Korom 2011), it is important to indicate that very
little historical evidence exists for Bawa’s early years, since virtually no doc-
umentation of his birth and early life exists prior to his active ministry in
northern Sri Lanka.5 Therefore, oral sources serve as the primary data for the
reconstruction of his early days provided here. The year 1940 roughly marks
the date when we begin to receive accounts of a holy man living in the
jungles of southeastern Sri Lanka, near the shared pilgrimage site of Katar-
agama. As the legend goes, Bawa spent several decades meditating in various
secluded locations throughout the island.6 He was a non-literate Tamil-
speaking sage whose religious affiliation was rather vague.7 In fact, all we
really know about him before his ‘discovery’ is what he himself chose to tell
us (which is not very much) in short vignettes interspersed here and there
within the massive oral corpus of his formal and informal discourses, which
were all faithfully recorded and archived by his American admirers after his
arrival in the United States.8 We must thus rely heavily on oral hagiography in
reconstructing his formative years.
The standard master narrative circulating within the Fellowship, or simply
the Ship, as it is colloquially called by members, is that on the invitation of
two Tamil Hindu brothers from Jaffna who met him in the jungle on several
occasions while performing the annual walking pilgrimage (pāta yāttirai) to
Kataragama, he eventually settled in Jaffna, the predominantly Tamil-speaking
Longing and belonging at a Sufi saint shrine 79
north, circa 1942. During that phase of his career, he ministered to the masses
from the homes of the two brothers.9 His clientele were by and large
Hindu peasants and fisher folk who were drawn to him purportedly because
of his powerful gaze, which was said to be able to destroy or financially ruin a
person when the saint was angered.10 He was thus supposed to be feared and
revered simultaneously. As one ex-member of the Ship told me during a
phone conversation in 2010, ‘from the first time Bawa looked at me, I knew
that he knew everything about me past, present, and future’ (see Figure 4.1).
In addition to his penetrating vision, he also demonstrated other Sufi
saintly practices such as mastery of bilocation, levitation, abstention from
food, emanation of floral scent, etc. Miraculous feats such as the ones just
mentioned attracted people to him even more than just his eyes. In about
1952, according to some sources, he had acquired a former Dutch warehouse
on the Jaffna beachfront dating from the colonial period, where he opened a
spiritual commune (āśram), at which he daily litigated local land disputes much
in the manner of a judge, healed the sick using herbal medicines and his
own saliva, violently exorcized demonic forces from possessed individuals with a
staff, and taught perennial truths to the philosophically inclined. One of
Bawa’s other powers was, of course, telepathy, which allowed him to com-
municate with other people and even lower animals without ever uttering a
word. In fact, a sign in his commune at the time stated that anyone entering
Figure 4.1 An early photo of Bawa portraying him and his unusually piercing eyes
roughly the way his earliest American admirers would have seen him when
they first met at Philadelphia International Airport in 1971
(Photo courtesy of the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship)
80 Frank J. Korom
should sit silently. When the time was right, Bawa would intuit the person’s
reason for seeking his council.
The tasks to which he was divinely assigned often tired him, as he would
later say, so he would fall into mystical trances in the evening when he would
travel in an astral fashion to continue ‘God’s work’, as he called it, through-
out the many universes in his cosmology.11 When others at his ashram were
sleeping, he was purportedly traveling throughout time and space in order to
minister to people past, present and future. People residing at the commune
would often record Bawa’s mutterings when he was in these seemingly cata-
tonic states, which are currently played in the evenings when residents and
guests are sleeping to remind them constantly of what I call Bawa’s absent
presence (Korom 2012a).
Shortly after founding his commune, the sage acquired land south of Jaffna
in the nearby region of Puliyankulam, which he cleared and farmed to feed
the multitude of people who sought him out regularly.12 Advocating vegetar-
ianism, he grew rice, coconuts and vegetables, but also kept two pet deer
named after the Hindu deity Murukan’s wives, and a dog named Tiger (puli)
at the commune and farm, respectively. By that time, he was already being
called reverentially Guru Bawa or Swami Bawa, the former referring to him
in the role of teacher, the latter in his capacity as spiritual father and lord
among his growing number of followers.13 The father figure image of him was
further equated with a lack of ego, mind and creed, what his Muslim admirers
would later refer to as the perfect man (insān kāmil), a technical term refer-
ring to a primordial consciousness inherent in all human beings, but mani-
festly embodied in the Prophet of Islam.14 In Bawa’s case, however, it was one
of a number of associations used to connect him to the Muslim ‘saint of
Baghdad’ ‘Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī, the ascribed founder of the Qādirī order, with
whom he had symbolic ties. Despite very vague lineal connections to the
Qādiriyya, Bawa’s praxis was more in line with the Chishtī order based in
Ajmer, India.15
It is not unusual for a Sufi to be initiated into more than one Sufi order, but
in Bawa’s case his lack of concrete affiliation lent to his expanding aura of
mystique that allowed people to perceive him as an otherworldly being not
bound by time or space.16 In fact, one humorous anecdote that I have heard
several times at the Ship is that when Bawa was pressed to identify his gen-
ealogical order, he turned to an American admirer with some knowledge of
the history of Sufism and asked ‘which one is the easiest?’, to which the
budding scholar responded ‘Qādiriyya’. From then onward, the Bawa
Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship would be known as being a part of the Qādirī
order, which has literally been engraved in stone on the main lintel of their
mosque in Philadelphia, which states in Arabic that the structure belongs to
this particular order.
Bawa’s miraculous fame spread quickly beyond the Tamil-speaking north,
gradually making its way to the urban centers of the Sinhala-speaking heart-
land. When urban Muslim intellectuals and theosophists in Colombo learned
of his doings, they also sought him out to request his presence in the capital.
At first, he purportedly refused, stating that he was a tree upon which too
many people would perch (Le Pichon 2010: 9), but as pressure mounted he
eventually gave in and moved to the city part time, where he lived in the home
of a wealthy patron. It was there that the Serendib Sufi Study Circle (SSSC)
was founded in 1962. The SSSC, although using the Islamic term ‘Sufism’ in
a generic way to refer to mysticism more broadly construed, was originally a
non-sectarian spiritual organization officially incorporated by the parliament
of Sri Lanka in November of 1974, by which time Bawa was already
ensconced in a rented row home in a collegiate neighborhood of west Phila-
delphia.17 To understand how this great leap across oceans and continents
took place, we must travel to the City of Brotherly Love, as it was in the trans-
formative era of the late 1960s, when a large number of young people were
experimenting with alternative lifestyles. The experiment in which these
young people were engaged, many of whom self-identified as hippies, involved
not only the use of mind-altering drugs but also a significant eastward turn to
search for forms of spirituality radically different from the Judeo-Christian
ones adhered to by their parents.18 It only seems appropriate that Bawa
should make his appearance on the international stage in Philadelphia, a city
that was founded on religious tolerance and pluralism.
Taking root in America

Bawa left the island known as Serendib to the seafaring Arab traders who
brought Islam to the Buddhist country to achieve fame in a new world that
was experiencing a spiritual reawakening in the midst of war, turmoil and
social revolution. As it so happened, an American female with a father ser-
ving in Vietnam who some years earlier had an uncontrollable mystical
experience, met a Sri Lankan Muslim man in 1968 who was a student at a
university in Philadelphia. His wondrous tales about a holy man named Bawa
enticed her, so she began a long period of written correspondence with the
sage which would ultimately end with his entourage’s arrival in Philadelphia
during December 1971.19
During the lengthy period of back-and-forth correspondence, the heroine of
this story desired to join Bawa at his commune in Jaffna but realized that she
had motherly responsibilities to care for her child at home.20 Instead of con-
tinuing the pursuit to depart for Bawa’s home, she made preparations to bring
him to her in Philadelphia. Gradually gathering other spiritual seekers around
her who could assist with the costs involved, she and her fellow Shipmates
made final preparations to bring this virtually unknown spiritual teacher to
Philadelphia. She and the small core of his earliest admirers consisting of men
and women, Christians and Jews, Caucasian- and African-Americans, war
veterans and dissenters, informally founded the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellow-
ship on October 11, 1971, shortly before his arrival.21 The humble guru or
swami who spoke no English nor wrote or read any language thus came to
82 Frank J. Korom
the United States as Guru Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, the founder of a newly
formed ‘fellowship’ named in his honor.22
The 21 people who met Bawa and his party of three Sri Lankan translators
at the airport moved into a row home together located at 254 South 46th
Street in west Philadelphia. Once settled in, Bawa began giving daily sermons
to anyone who wished to listen. The sermons were always followed by vege-
tarian meals that Bawa cooked himself while singing devotional songs in his
native Tamil. Bawa’s style of ministry clearly took a turn when he settled in
Philadelphia, for he no longer beat his listeners with sticks to exorcize
demons, nor did he adjudicate legal matters. Instead, Bawa taught the motley
crew of seekers to abandon the counterculture movement and become pro-
ductive members of society. He told them, for example, to cut their hair, shave
their beards, bathe, wear clean clothes and seek employment suitable for
members of mainstream American society. He also demanded complete sub-
mission and dedication only to him, which meant giving up the spiritual
shopping that so many of his listeners practiced before becoming permanent
residents at his growing community home.
In giving oneself up completely to Bawa, he taught that the difficult task of
achieving union with God could be undertaken, but with no guarantee of
success. Physical salvation was thus necessary before one could embark on the
rigorous journey of spiritual salvation. Many people therefore radically
altered their lives to abandon yoga, college and family simply to be in Bawa’s
‘loving presence’ constantly, for fear that they might miss a profound bit of
wisdom while they were away from his side. By the fall of 1972 the group had
gathered enough momentum to draw up a final charter for the organization,
in which Bawa appointed three presidents, three secretaries and three treas-
urers. These individuals, with the exception of those who have passed, are still
among the 16 members of the executive committee that assumed control of
the Fellowship after the death of the founder.
Known for his regular participation in interfaith dialogues, his infectious
charisma drew in more and more people until the row home could no longer
accommodate the entire group. In the stories told by his admirers about these
dialogues, Bawa always wins the debates with proponents of other faiths,
which, interestingly, is quite a common narrative motif in South Asian Sufism
(Green 2004). The Fellowship grew large and prosperous enough to purchase
a former Jewish community center on the outskirts of the city in 1973 with
the financial support of an affluent parent of a board member who lived in
the vicinity of the large, multi-storeyed structure. Under Bawa’s instructions
and watchful eye, the building was converted into the Fellowship house
where Bawa’s ‘funny family’ could reside comfortably with his Sri Lankan
entourage.
The first floor of the newly formed commune housed the kitchen and
served as the main meeting room for sermons, while the second and third floors
were organized as residences for the live-in members. Unwed men and women
were segregated into gendered dormitories, but married couples received their
own rooms, as did the Sri Lankan translators. Now that the Fellowship was
officially registered as a not-for-profit organization, a significant stage of the
movement’s institutionalization had been achieved: it was now on the path to
becoming a sectarian community that needed to define itself vis-à-vis other
denominations. Two earlier stages of development in Jaffna and Colombo
thus culminated in the establishment of a truly transnational movement that
loosely linked the northern commune and farm in Jaffna, the SSSC in
Colombo, and the Fellowship in Philadelphia.23
During these early years of his American ministry, there was not a strong
emphasis on any one particular religious tradition. Some early visitors men-
tioned to me repeatedly that Bawa never even used the word Islam. Instead,
as one member of Bawa’s ‘inner circle’ told me in Colombo during a con-
versation in August 2010, he taught Hinduism to Hindus, Christianity to
Christians, Buddhism to Buddhists, and Judaism to Jews. Virtually no one
who attended regularly in the early 1970s recalls an exclusively Islamic mes-
sage in his teachings. Gradually, Bawa taught them the recitation of Sufi dhikr
(remembrance) as a technique to achieve gnosis. The evolution of his teaching
thus moved from universalistic generalizations that suggested organized reli-
gion to be the greatest obstacle to achieving a mystical state of awareness, to
a more specific Islamic path grounded firmly in Sufi mysticism. This sig-
nificant turn became evident a few years later when Bawa and his American
‘children’ began building a mosque on the Ship’s grounds that was completed
and dedicated in May 1984. Although not everyone at the Ship wanted a
formal mosque, it gradually came to serve as a multiethnic center of prayer
and worship for immigrant Muslims as well as Bawa’s American convert
family, but left some liberally minded members feeling alienated.24
From the time he arrived in Philadelphia until his death on December 8,
1986, Guru Bawa, who later became Sheikh Bawa, then finally qutb (pillar),
led a transnational existence, moving back and forth between his homeland in
South Asia and his newly constructed community of admirers in Philadelphia,
which resulted in the transnational linkage of the two communities financially
and ideologically, despite the fact that thousands of miles separated them.
What is more remarkable is that the link between Philadelphia (BMF) and
Colombo (SSSC) was never broken during the three decades of the civil war
fought between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers of Eelam.
This fact in and of itself is often cited by members of the BMF and the SSSC
as proof of Bawa’s miraculous abilities. In fact, some say that he foresaw the
impending conflict and left for the US just as the hostilities were beginning,
but prophesied how Jaffna would one day become the shining jewel of the
island.
While the next 15 years saw the growth of the organization in North
America, Bawa did return intermittently to Sri Lanka for a total of four visits,
always taking with him a retinue of his American ‘family’ members.25 Eye-
witnesses say that people lined the road between Colombo and Jaffna to offer
flowers to Bawa, as his train of cars full of his foreign admirers passed. It was
84 Frank J. Korom
during the second trip back that he and 41 of his American children built a
non-denominational structure in Muslim architectural style at Mankumban,
located on the coast of a tiny island connected to the mainland by a causeway
within walking distance of the Jaffna commune. Bawa named it God House,
and it was formally dedicated on February 17, 1975.26
Bawa’s last trip was decisive, in that he fell into a coma. His entire entou-
rage, American and Sri Lankan, felt that his chances of surviving and
returning to the United States were slim, so as preparations for his last rites
were being made, according to an American eyewitness, he suddenly woke up
and proclaimed that the angel of death had come to take him away, but he
pleaded for more time to complete his mission on earth. Bawa’s wish was
apparently granted, so his party immediately returned to Philadelphia for the
last time.27 Bawa would spend the remainder of his days in his private quar-
ters preparing for his ultimate departure. During those last four years, Bawa’s
health was in constant decline, and he rarely left his bedroom, where he was
hooked up to a respirator to help him breathe, which was necessary after
many decades of heavy smoking.28
Bawa ‘left his body’, as Shipmates put it, on December 8, 1986, surrounded
by his ‘funny family’ at the home in Philadelphia where he and his American
admirers built up a worship community in a relatively short period of time.
His corpse was ritually cleansed and prepared for burial in Philadelphia, then
transported in a hearse to East Fallowfield, a rural agricultural area in Che-
ster County, Pennsylvania, located approximately 40 miles outside Philadel-
phia, where the executive committee had earlier purchased 58 acres of land
in September 1980 on their teacher’s command to serve as both a Muslim
cemetery and communal farm (see Figure 4.2 and Figure 4.3).29
Those men who were responsible for preparing Bawa’s body for burial
claim that there were no blemishes on his body, nor was there any sign of
decay. Instead, a perfumed scent emanated from his corpse, as an Afghan
attendant told me in June 2006. The saint now rests inside the shrine built for
him by his followers, which was dedicated on November 28, 1987.30 Conse-
quently, a number of his inner circle, mostly married couples starting families
of their own, settled in a cluster around the site, within walking distance of
their beloved spiritual father.31 Since Bawa’s entombment, the location has
become an international pilgrimage site and place of contemplation for visitors
from North America, Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. Annual remem-
brances are held for the saint on the death anniversary of ‘Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī,
the 25th of which was marked in March 2011.
Rough estimates provided by the Fellowship suggest that Bawa has
approximately 10,000 children worldwide today, with many more non-paying
sympathizers. Most of the Americans are now convert Muslims, although
virtually all in Jaffna remain Hindu, with some Tamil Christian admirers as
well. Buddhists are fewer in number, but not unheard of. The weekly and
monthly gatherings in Colombo, Matale and Wattala, on the other hand, are
predominantly Muslim, except for one artist originally from the hill country
Figure 4.2 The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship cemetery showing members’ graves
marked by simple wooden grave posts
(Photo courtesy of Frank J. Korom)
around Kandy, who told me that he attends Christian, Muslim, Hindu and
Buddhist services regularly, since all benefit him spiritually. He is one of the
few perennialists remaining who frequents the Sufi recitations sponsored
monthly by the SSSC.32
The account above suggests that there is a trend both in Colombo and in
Philadelphia to de-emphasize the multi-denominational quality of the meet-
ings, while in Jaffna and Matale, the Muslim character of the group and its
rites are more eclectic, thereby also problematic for the leadership.33 Given
this background of evolving strategies and practices, let us turn, now, to the
vexing issues associated with the direction that Bawa’s children have taken
since his death to secure the movement’s ongoing existence, first by an ima-
gined emphasis on continuity, then by stressing growth and vitality through
the dissemination of Bawa’s teachings. Such stability and growth, however,
seemed like an unfathomable goal immediately after Bawa’s death, for his
small group initially sank into a period of grand ennui.
Longing for Bawa

By all accounts, life at the Ship was radically altered by Bawa’s death, since
their entire social lives were centered on life with Bawa at the Ship. In essence,
86 Frank J. Korom
Figure 4.3 Bawa’s shrouded grave inside his mazār, located a short distance from his
mosque in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
the ship had lost its moorings. According to many accounts that I have
recorded, Bawa’s followers were first in a state of denial, which then gave way
to stupor, then resignation and finally recovery, which allowed them to return
to the mundane world with a newly formed sense of purpose. As a college
student whose father lived at the Ship at the time of Bawa’s death told me in
February 2009, they were like ‘confused children’ moving about aimlessly
without any sense of direction in their longing for Bawa, but as they gradually
awoke out of their stupor, they began to address the pragmatic questions with
which they were confronted. One of the first was whether or not to construct
a shrine over Bawa’s gravesite. There was dispute over this, with some arguing
that Bawa did not want to attract attention to himself, being the ‘ant man’ he
playfully said to be. Others argued that because he was so unique and special
he deserved a shrine in his honor. The decision to build a simple and plain
white structure for which they would use the term mazār was thus taken by
the executive committee of the Ship.
The work, carried out by voluntary members of the community, took less
than a year, but ran into some problems during the final stages, when the
compressor they rented to spray the gunite onto the central dome of the
structure stalled as a result of running out of gas. Like earlier miracles asso-
ciated with the construction of sacred sites undertaken by the Ship, such as
the one in Mankumban, where angels are believed to have descended during
the evenings to fix the mistakes made by Sri Lankan workers during the day
(Le Pichon 2010: 52), Shipmates claim that the mazār would not have been
completed on time for its scheduled dedication, had not Bawa intervened on
their behalf. Miraculously, according to Naim Robinson, one of the volunteers,
the compressor started up again, so that they could complete the job. This
event supposedly happened on November 20, 1987, eight days before the
shrine was consecrated (Le Pichon 2010: 208–209).
Once the shrine was opened to the public, it served not only as the resting
place of the Ship’s designated qutb, but also as a place of gathering for anyone
who wished to be in Bawa’s absent presence. As I was told many times, if one
were earnestly to spend an entire evening within the shrine, Bawa might
gracefully appear to the person in dreams. Dream visitations by Bawa were
common before his death, according to many people with whom I spoke both
in Sri Lanka and North America, and they continued after his death.34 Mir-
aculous stories associated with the mazār continue to be heard regularly
among Shipmates, and they are told with enthusiasm to outsiders as well to
demonstrate the power that their departed master has, even though he no
longer resides with them physically. The function of shrine stories, I believe, is
that they have a transformative role to play, which is to say that they have the
capacity to transform longing into belonging. By sharing such narratives,
either by hearing or telling, one engages in mutual longing, thereby keeping
the community stitched together with a heightened sense of belonging.
Although Bawa’s admirers are not zealous proselytizers, such stories do
sometimes function to bring people into the fold. I have recorded numerous
stories of people who went to the shrine as skeptics and left as believers. This
often happens with young people who spend idyllic summer days in this forest-
laden country environment then fall in love with someone who is already a
member and literally marry into the community. Membership growth, how-
ever, has not been significant, since original members of the inner circle are
dying, while yet others leave, never to return. Regardless of size, which Bawa
always stressed should not be an issue because the ‘true path’ is difficult and
perilous, the community seems to be prospering, due to a number of ventures
undertaken collectively by the group, such as the establishment of a printing
press and bindery early on for the dissemination of Bawa’s oral teachings in
written form, and a gift shop where various paraphernalia, including pictures
of Bawa that seem ubiquitous in members’ homes (Korom 2012a), can be
purchased.
Now, as the second generation is preparing to move into a leadership role
within the Ship, the emphasis on more modern forms of technology using the
Internet and other forms of social media is coming into prominence to sup-
plement traditional means of support, so that if one now wants to donate to
the group, one can simply click on a link provided by their website to make
direct cash gifts. More land has also been purchased adjacent to the Farm
and cemetery which the executive committee wishes to develop into
88 Frank J. Korom
affordable condominiums and apartments for senior members of the com-
munity, but not without some local resistance from their predominantly
Christian neighbors who do not wish to see this rural area developed by
housing schemes.35
Since Bawa ‘left his body’, the mazār has become a site of primary impor-
tance, along with the mosque of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen in Philadelphia. One
could even argue that it has become the most important site, overshadowing
the mosque, since the founder reposes here. It is also a space revered by all
members, even those who do not use the mosque for conventional prayer. In
being a neutral space, the shrine functions to ease the tension caused by fac-
tionalism resulting from differing and competing views within the worship-
ping community. Moreover, as the community has expanded to other places
in North America and Europe, the shrine offers members and sympathizers a
common place to come and experience Bawa’s powerful presence. In recent
years, the shrine has also become a destination for South Asians. Members of
the SSSC in Sri Lanka, for example, visit regularly with financial assistance
from the BMF, especially when special calendric rituals occur. Most recently,
a Pakistani film crew was in attendance at the 25th ‘urs in honor of Bawa,
Figure 4.4 The mazār of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, which is built on the highest point of
the Muslim graveyard he founded for his community of admirers, has
entrances on all four sides, indicating that all are welcome, irrespective of
denominational affiliation
during which they filmed the proceedings to air on television. Use of new
media, as implied above, is helping greatly in disseminating Bawa’s teachings,
which then leads to more and more people making pilgrimages to the site. Many
of these pilgrims make donations to the Fellowship, thereby strengthening its
material base and guaranteeing its longevity.
Throughout this period of growth, however, there were painful lessons to be
learned and schisms to be overcome, for not everyone was in agreement on
the future direction that the Ship should take, which leads to my final section.
In it, I explore the way in which belonging has been crafted to allow everyone
to feel as if they were a part of a worship community, even though they might
not be actively engaged in critical decision making. In some cases, this tension
between longing to be near Bawa and struggling to belong to a sociological
entity has proven tricky to manage, with some people abandoning Ship,
while others remain aloof from the politics associated with the inevitable
institutionalization of the movement that was absolutely essential for its
survival.
Split personalities
Mohamad Mauroof (1976), who has written the only ethnographic account of
Bawa’s Fellowship at the time of its inception, provides us with a well-
documented study based on participant observation. He had already noticed
then that there was a good deal of argument and bickering within the move-
ment itself, but over a different set of issues, some of which might seem
superficial to the reader now, but mattered significantly to those living with
Bawa at the time. Among his other useful observations is the distinction he
makes between what might be called the ‘liturgical Bawa’ and the ‘historical
Bawa’. The former refers to his rūh, the transcendental figure that links the
latter in an initiating chain to all of the preceding prophets and saints going
back to the beginning of time to the attributes of the initial creation (sifāt).
The latter refers to his nafs, or physical manifestation in the world of
appearances (dunyā). Although members of the Ship insist that Bawa was
timeless and unchanging, it is my contention that we must separate the litur-
gical Bawa from the historical one, without losing sight of their intimate
connection on the level of religious ideology. Hagiography is, after all, as
much fact as fiction for those who truly believe in Bawa’s vocation.
The stories that people tell one another within the Ship circulate repeatedly
to create what Clifford Geertz (1977) would refer to as an ‘aura of factuality’.
In this sense, the two aspects of Bawa have to be seen in a dialectical fashion
oscillating between what is factually known about the historical Bawa, and
the mythic dimensions of his human career in the past, present and future.
The dilemma of reconciling the two images of Bawa has led to what Max
Weber referred to as rationalization, an attempt to explain the mystical or the
enchanted in empirical ways suitable for mass consumption by other groups
and individuals with whom the Fellowship is in constant contact, such as
90 Frank J. Korom
their Christian neighbors, and from whom it seeks validation as a legitimate
denomination.36 After all, the goal of all marginal religious communities is to
seek and secure validation within a larger society in which authenticity is
ascertained through public appeal and consensus. Once receiving the
acknowledgement and approval of society at large, the marginal group may
make their rightful claim to a seat at the table of religions.
I want to suggest in closing that the desire for legitimation in the new
American context required a strategy of assimilation that would allow this
humble but charismatic Sufi preacher from Sri Lanka to make a conscious
transition from the generic guru to the distinctive shaykh. The move was neces-
sary to separate Bawa from the so-called ‘guru invasion’ that took place in the
United States during the latter 1960s and early 1970s. According to the cur-
rent imam of the Philadelphia mosque, Bawa dropped the title in 1973 after
witnessing Guru Maharaj Ji being paraded around the Houston Astrodome
as part of his Millennium 73 extravaganza on television, during which he
declared himself Lord of the World (jagannāth).37
In his attempt to establish himself as a legitimate Muslim wise man, dis-
tinct from the variegated Hindu and Buddhist teachers who stormed the
United States, Bawa gradually abandoned the eclectic theosophical system of
thought that he utilized in Sri Lanka and adopted one based more along the
lines of Islamic sharī‘a (orthodoxy) and Sufi dhikr (recitation) within it, which
ultimately would lead his followers to mystical gnosis, but only if they were to
follow the basic rules of normative Islam, like any other Muslim. At the same
time, however, he continued to preach in a universal idiom that transcended
religious boundaries and reflected a perennial attitude that suggested there is
only one God, regardless of what He is called. This strategy of accommoda-
tion allowed him to appease the so-called ‘loosey-goosey’ Sufis who only
wished to perform dhikr without adhering to a rigorous five-times-per-day
prayer schedule. There were those who wished to conform to Islamic law
by rationalizing the tradition, and those who only wanted to practice mystical
techniques to ‘re-enchant’ the world (Berman 1981), thereby creating a crea-
tive tension between longing for Bawa and belonging to a sociological entity
of like-minded religionists. In the end, though, it is apparent that Bawa
Muhaiyaddeen was operating within a very distinctive pattern of Sufi prose-
lytism, a time-honored one that eschewed syncretism in favor of traditionally
self-perceived axioms that reinforced the superior nature of Islam.38
From this perspective, we have to situate the three staged ‘comings’ of the
historical Bawa during his earthly career in an historical and intellectual context,
which correspond rather exactingly with the stages of institutionalization adum-
brated above. The first is his northern Sri Lankan phase, where he presented
himself, and was perceived by others, as a typical Hindu guru or Sufi zinda pīr
(living saint), characterized primarily by pragmatism (i.e. farming, healing,
settling disputes, etc.). The second phase sets in when he begins to minister to
the elite of Colombo. This phase is more philosophical, tapping into the
theosophical movement that was well established in Sri Lanka by the 1970s.39
The third phase coincides with his arrival in the United States. Here he is
first understood as the typical perennial mystic, so popular in the emerging
New Age movement, which perpetuates freedom of thought, universalism and
anti-dogmatism.40 It is during this phase that Bawa had to Americanize the
movement, which involved democratization and the creation of a distinctive
identity within a mosaic of new religious movements. This entailed weeding
out eclecticism by weaning away spiritual shoppers from other mystical paths,
such as Hindu yoga, Buddhist meditation and Taoist tai chi, all of which were
abundant in the American marketplace of religion, in order to pledge allegiance
solely to him and to Islam.
Bawa thus comes to emphasize, ultimately, a distinct Islamic message that
focuses on a fourfold spiritual developmental pattern firmly grounded in Muslim
orthodoxy. The progression moves from sharī‘a (revealed law), which involves
discerning right from wrong and permissible behavior, to phase two, known
as tarīqa (path), the strengthening of determination, to haqīqa (truth), the
beginning of communication and union with God, leading finally to ma‘rifa
(gnosis), a more perfected state of union with God that results in sūfiyya, a
state of constant remembrance (dhikr) and contemplation (fikr) that transcends
the ‘four religions’, which Bawa defined in ascending order as Hinduism, Zor-
oastrianism, Christianity, Islam.41 Islam is now conspicuously placed at the zenith
of the vertical hierarchy visualized as a cosmic being in this scheme, in which
there is no trace whatsoever of the perennial cliché of all religions being one and
the same. They are, rather, lower forms of knowledge, road markers along the
path to the true teachings of Islam, which corresponds to the head (i.e. center
of wisdom) of the cosmic being. From this perspective, it is only through
Islam that one can gain the gnostic vision that Bawa taught so fervently.
In making the strategic move described above, Bawa successfully sowed the
seeds of Islam within the community of seekers under discussion, which then
took root and sprouted in the current phase of development. Bawa’s mission
is now in the fourth stage of institutionalization, during which the ‘routiniza-
tion of charisma’ occurs. It is precisely after Bawa’s death that what Weber
terms the ‘charisma of office’ is established, when members of Bawa’s hand-
picked committee now become figures of authority responsible for maintain-
ing and employing the saint’s charisma through his Amt (office).42 Utilizing
the privileges of the founder’s office involves the creation of a hierarchical
bureaucracy that is responsible for the economic and ideological maintenance
of the group, which requires, among other things, creating stricter rules of
belief and behavior, strengthening institutional infrastructure, and expanding
membership by disseminating the founder’s teachings through various forms
of media, such as an aggressive publications program and the launching of an
official website.43 In the process, the Fellowship has become more Islamic in
the fourth phase than it ever was in the past, which is not seen as a positive
development by all members of the laity.44
Even though not everyone is pleased with the developments that have taken
place since the death of the charismatic founder, one could argue, as do
92 Frank J. Korom
members of the Ship’s ruling body, that what we might want to call Arabici-
zation is absolutely necessary for the survival and continued growth of the
group, for it allows so-called ‘ethnic’ Muslims who are more interested in
communal prayer and teaching their children Arabic than they are in Bawa’s
teachings to participate in the mosque’s weekly activities.
Thus far, I have avoided the use of a taxonomy of terms to analyze the
establishment of the religious community under study, but one has to see the
emergence of the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship as what many analysts
would call a new religious movement (Richardson 1979; Wallace 1985). In
positing this, one must carefully move away from the insider’s point of view to
analyze objectively how a marginal ‘cult’ evolves into a ‘sect’, then ultimately
into a ‘denomination’ as it temporally ages and doctrinally matures. As I
argued in an earlier paper (Korom 2012b), what I see happening within the
Fellowship at our current moment in time is an inevitable developmental
process that requires rationalization on the one hand and reification of an
unchanging tradition skillfully taught by Bawa to his children on the other.
In so doing, we honor the beliefs and practices of the community in question
while also learning better how to understand the community’s larger rele-
vance within the broader fields of Islamic Studies and the anthropology of
religion.
I can now conclude by stating that it was the construction of the Philadel-
phia mosque in 1984 that provided public legitimacy to the Ship, in that it
allowed for public recognition as a form of official Islam that drew ethnic
Muslim immigrants to it. Bawa’s rural resting place, on the other hand, does
not attract these same urban Muslims, who care very little for Bawa and his
teachings. Instead, the mazār serves as an anchor for the Ship, to which both
orthodox and liberal members belong. In other words, it is the beacon of light
that shines for all, not just for one faction or another.
Lastly, it should be clear that in this case study it was the local that ulti-
mately shaped the global to create a glocalized form of Islam that some of
Bawa’s children call ‘Dravidian Sufism’, which displays elements drawn from
a variety of sources in South Asia and the Middle East, but also from North
America.45 It is a process that is still in flux, so only time will tell in which
direction the Ship sails in the future.
Finally, to end where I began, let me return to an issue raised at the outset
of this chapter. As stated there, the internal dynamics of the community since
Bawa’s passing have emphasized a notable oscillation between two states of
mind: longing and belonging. Longing involves making the absent present
(Korom 2012a) through a variety of material and psychological means, while
belonging entails the sociological dimension of the community’s ongoing
existence, maintenance and growth. Naturally, longing and belonging are
conceived differently in Sri Lanka and North America, a topic that is much
more complicated than can be dealt with here. Instead, I would suggest that
what makes the two cases similar from a comparative perspective is the role
that Bawa’s charismatic image plays on both sides of the ocean.
Both groups emphasize the desire to make Bawa’s absence present, which is
an anchoring concept that is ritually enacted in both Sri Lanka and North
America through communal acts such as reciting dhikr or gathering together
to listen to recordings of Bawa’s sermons. Such performances function to
remember the founder, but they also fulfill the inherent need to feel socially
included in something larger than the self. To ‘be’ a member of the Ship, one
has now to ‘long’ for the founder constantly, to remember him at every
waking moment and envision him in dreams during sleep. By merging the
psychological and ontological sense of being an individual, through acts of
memory with the pragmatic desire to ‘belong’ to a group of like-minded
individuals, results in nothing less than a fusion of the states referred to as ‘to
be’ and ‘to long’. In other words, to be and to long equal ‘belonging’, the
desired state that merges the individual with his or her community, which
allows for both personal and social transformation to occur gradually over
time. The quest to merge the personal with the transpersonal is an ongoing
project for members of the Ship, since, as members tell me repeatedly, it is
only after the earthly journey ends that one can merge fully with the teacher
and ultimately with God. This is the journey that Bawa called the ‘true Hajj’
(Muhaiyaddeen 1998), a return to the essence of our creation.
Notes
1 The research upon which this chapter is based was conducted with the generous
support of a grant from the American Institute of Sri Lankan Studies in 2010–11.
2 I have discussed some of the issues dealt with here in some of my earlier publica-
tions, especially Korom 2011, 2012a, 2012b. I draw liberally from these sources,
which are collectively based on data acquired during ongoing fieldwork in both
North America and Sri Lanka. All of these cursory reflections will coalesce in my
forthcoming book for De Gruyter, tentatively titled Guru Bawa and the Making of
a Transnational Sufi Family, which is scheduled to appear in 2018.
3 People do, of course, make pilgrimages to and within Sri Lanka to visit the holy
places he established there, especially now that the protracted civil war there has
ended. However, the shrine of this chapter’s subject has far superseded all others in
importance. To be sure, it has become the fabled axis mundi for his global
community of admirers, as will be suggested below.
4 The Tamil term pāvā is used for holy father-like figures in general, especially
among Sufis of the Rifa-’ı- order. It is also a surname among Muslims in Sri Lanka
and Sikhs in the Punjab of India. See Mahroof (1967, 1991) for classifications of
Muslim holy men on the island. In the United States and Canada, guru was offi-
cially dropped from his title in 1978 due to the so-called ‘guru invasion’ of the late
1960s. In the editor’s note to one publication printed by the organization Bawa
founded, we read that he ‘became disturbed by the behavior of some of these
individuals and by the money-making organizations they had built, and he did not
wish to be associated with them. So in 1978 Bawa Muhaiyaddeen had the title
guru officially removed from his name and from the Fellowships that had grown
around him’ (Muhaiyaddeen 1974: 10). Despite this decision, the term continues to
be used in northern Sri Lanka among his Tamil Hindu followers. Before coming to
the US, Bawa seemed to be indifferent to what he was called (Korom 2012a),
which raises the question about whose decision it was to drop the title of guru.
94 Frank J. Korom
Some of the senior Sri Lankans living at the Fellowship house in Philadelphia are
of the opinion that it was the ‘inner circle’ of his American admirers who decided
to make the change, not Bawa himself. Bawa did, however, mention false swamis
and gurus many years prior to his arrival in the United States. See, for example,
Muhaiyaddeen (2000: 121–122), where he says that there are millions of false tea-
chers who will suffer 35 million rebirths for their treachery, while the true one is
‘kicked and chased away’.
5 One hagiographical account spoken by Bawa himself that appears in his auto-
biography relates how he appeared miraculously as a baby on the steps of the
famous Murukan temple on the outskirts of Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka. Initially,
he was adopted by a local king’s driver, but later taken over by the king himself.
See Muhaiyaddeen (2003: 31–33) and Xavier (2013: 52). In a later radio broadcast
with the multi-religionist Lex Hixon (1941–95) on July 19, 1980, which aired on
WBAI in New York, Bawa relates how he was then kidnapped and later rescued
by a Sufi shaykh who became his teacher for 12 years. More will be said about this
below.
6 According to his own reckoning, he lived in solitude on the island for 45.5 years
prior to the start of his public ministry. On Kataragama’s role as a multi-religious
pilgrimage site, see Obeyesekere (1977, 1978).
7 See again Korom (2011, 2012b) for a partial attempt to unravel the historical
Bawa.
8 Indeed, a quest for the historical person behind the transcendental figure later
motivated Fellowship members to compile an esoteric autobiography culled from
hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of Bawa’s taped sermons, titled The Tree that
Fell to the West (2003), but it reads more like a self-fashioned hagiography
unhindered by time and space than an historical account of his life. Nonetheless,
pilgrims traveling from the US to Sri Lanka often use it as a guide for visiting
places Bawa used to frequent. In July 2011, for example, 33 pilgrims from the
Toronto branch visited Sri Lanka to tour the sites mentioned in the book.
9 Bawa claimed that he needed to go north anyway to rid Jaffna of sorcerers who
were using black magic to corrupt and ruin the region. Hence, the coincidental
meetings in the jungle with the two brothers were not by chance but rather by
destiny, a catalyst for his departure to do battle with evil forces in the north. The motif
of a Sufi arriving in an area to rid it of some sort of pestilence is a common one
throughout the Muslim world, but especially in South Asia. See Islam (2002: 11).
10 Many people therefore avoided looking directly at him. According to numerous
oral sources, Bawa himself joked that he had to learn to control his anger over the
years, so as not to unjustifiably take the life of another. However, according to an
octogenarian follower of his in Colombo, Bawa’s wrath was, at times, used against
his enemies, those who wished to do him harm. Bawa therefore had to learn to
control his anger, as he himself relates in a story told in chapters 35 and 39 of his
first transcribed book of teachings, in which Bawa acts with impatience and
annoyance, at which a bridge keeper who denies him crossing says that he has to
develop sabr (patience). At one point in the story, he pulls out a kris (curved
dagger) and sword, then threatens to kill the husband of one of the girls he used to
care for. The moral of the story is that even pāvās can sometimes lose their
composure. See Muhaiyaddeen (2000).
11 One source indicates that the year of his arrival in Jaffna was 1944, after which he
lived in the village of Kokuvil for seven years, followed by seven more years in
Kondavil before founding his āśram in Jaffna town. This would have made it 1958 (Le
Pichon 2010: 4). However, as one historian has pointed out, Sufis are notoriously
cavalier when it comes to chronology (Islam 2002: 31). This is why the dates of
Bawa’s career up until his period in Colombo must remain tentative. For parallels
of Sufi saints as curers and healers elsewhere in South Asia, see Ewing (1984).
12 The farm was occupied by Tamil rebels during the civil war, but has recently been
reclaimed and refurbished after the end of hostilities between the Tamil Eelam and
the government of Sri Lanka. However, it is not yet at the level of production
where it can produce food in any significant quantity. Current residents say that
they will soon be in a position to produce a surplus of goods that could then be
redistributed for charitable purposes.
13 It is important to note here that Bawa was not identified as a Sufi at this early
stage in his career, a point that he himself made repeatedly, even though he did
teach an esoteric understanding of Islam and the Quran, albeit by drawing exten-
sively on the vocabulary of Hinduism to do so, especially terms used regularly in
tantra (Korom 2012b).
14 Ibn ‘Arabı- (1165–1240), arguably the foremost Sufi thinker throughout the cen-
turies, was the first to expound the concept fully. See Little (1987). On Bawa’s own
conception of the perfect man, see Xavier (2013).
15 Jīlānī (1088–1166), whose foot legendarily rested ‘upon the neck of every saint’
(Islam 2002: 40), was appointed ‘chief of saints’ by God, and was al-ghawth al-
ā‘zam (the succor to the world), also shared with Bawa the title muhyī al-dīn
(reviver of religion) and enjoyed the lofty status of qutb (spiritual axis), the latter of
which only appears singularly in each generation. These and other associations
link the two. This is why Bawa spent a significant number of years meditating in a
cave in central Sri Lanka known as Dafthar Jailani, the office of Jīlānī. For a
description of the site, see McGilvray (2004). For other places where he resided
prior to his public career, see Korom (2011, 2012b).
16 Bawa would eventually link the two orders by declaring Jīlānī as well as Mu‘īn
al-Dīn Chishtī (b. 1141) to be qutbs, cosmic axes, a term that his own followers
would come to apply to him in 2007, 11 years after his death. See Muhaiyaddeen
(2007). The aforementioned Chishtī, also known as Gharīb Nawāz (helper of the
poor), is the first of the six recognized awliyā’ (friends of God) of the order who
brought it to India. Aspects of his teachings that pertain to Bawa are obedience
to the shaykh, renunciation of the material world, distance from worldly powers,
supporting the poor, service to humanity, respect for other devotional traditions,
dependence on the Creator, not the created, and disapproval of showing off mir-
aculous deeds. Because of their respect for other devotional traditions, the
Chishtiyya do not demand formal conversion to Islam. In addition, they also
recognized Jīlānī as a Chishtī shaykh, which made linking the two orders unpro-
blematic for Bawa. The logic here is that just as one could belong to two Sufi
orders, one could also, by extension, belong to two religions, even if not formally
abandoning one to embrace the other.
17 The incorporation document (Law No. 41 of 1974) is most telling. In it, Bawa is
now being referred to as shaykh, a noticeably Muslim title derived from the Arabic
word for ‘old man’, now used generally to refer to a leader of an organization or
community, whether it be religious or secular. The document identifies his com-
plete name and title as His Holiness Sheikh Muhammad Muhaiyaddeen Guru
Bawa and states its purpose, among other things, as being ‘the promotion and the
study and understanding of Sufism (mysticism) among all persons seeking
knowledge …’ (emphasis added). We notice a shift here toward Islam, while still leav-
ing open the possibility of perennialism. Indeed, one of the prominent founding mem-
bers of the SSSC was the well-known journalist and social activist Theja Gunawardena,
who was inspired by the second president of the Theosophical Society Annie
Besant. After reading Besant’s 1912 book, she authored her own called Theosophy
and Islam (1983), in which the universal tenets of spirituality are expounded within
the framework of comparative religion. More shall be said about this below.
18 The famous phrase ‘turning East’ is borrowed from Cox (1978). Although the
majority of those on alternative quests searched within Hinduism, Buddhism and,
96 Frank J. Korom
to a lesser extent, Taoism, Sufism quietly made strides into the Western spiritual
marketplace as well. See El-Zein (2000); Genn (2007); Hermansen (1998, 2000,
2004).
19 Alternatively, he is referred to with the honorific form of Bawangal, consisting of
the term pāvā (father) plus the Tamil plural suffix, making it honorific – that is,
‘revered father’. For a more in-depth examination of the years immediately
preceding Bawa’s arrival, see Korom (2015).
20 For more on these correspondences, generously supplied to me by their owner, see
Korom (2015).
21 The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of State Corporation Bureau
approved non-profit corporation status to the ‘Guru Bawa Fellowship of Philadel-
phia’ on June 19, 1972, but allowed the document to be amended on March 5,
1977 to change the name to the ‘Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship of Philadelphia’,
thereby dropping the title guru officially from the organization’s name. The mission
statement in the original 1972 document states that its purpose is to pursue
wisdom regarding the reason for the creation of the human species and its future
destiny.
22 The term used commonly then would have been ‘cult’, yet it is virtually impossible
to use the term neutrally today, which is why I avoid it. For a useful attempt to
create a model for defining cults within their historical and cultural context, see
Eisner (1972). Marty (1960) views them as positively oriented around a charismatic
leader, while Richardson (1979) focuses on the transition from ‘cult’ to ‘sect’,
which is relevant to understanding how the Fellowship eventually becomes an
established denomination, as discussed below. Before that, however, the organiza-
tion was referred to as a cult by outsiders, especially the largely Baptist population
that lived in the area surrounding the rural farm that would be founded by Bawa
and his followers during his American ministry.
23 Other semi-autonomous branches would emerge primarily in North America, most
significantly in Toronto, with smaller ones throughout the United States (see
Nguyen 2007). There are two others in Sri Lanka as well, dominated by Malay
Muslims, one located in Matale, the other in Wattala.
24 The mosque also contains a madrasa, where immigrant children study Arabic side
by side with Euro-American children on Sunday mornings, much in the manner of
Christian Sunday school, while the parents attend the Sunday morning meetings
held in the Fellowship house’s meeting room where Bawa used to give discourses.
Nowadays, they listen to taped sermons previously given by Bawa, which are then
discussed. Similar Sunday sessions are held weekly in Colombo as well.
25 These return trips occurred on the following dates: May 1972–February 1973; Feb-
ruary 1974–July 1975; November 1976–August 1978; and December 1980–November
1982, comprising roughly one-third of his ministry from the time of his arrival in
the United States until his death. Discussions with a variety of American and Sri
Lankan disciples about these visits suggest that there were often ambiguous ten-
sions between the two ethnic groups concerning different expectations, which
apparently annoyed Bawa. By 1976 the Fellowship had already established ten national
and international centers and had 7,000 members, according to Fellowship
officials.
26 The site is dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus, whom Bawa said came to
southern India with St Thomas after Jesus’ ascension into heaven. She died and
was buried on the Indian coastline near the straights that separate India and Sri
Lanka, according to Bawa. The original shrine was inundated, so he promised
Mary that he would build her a new one on dry land. After seeing the site in a
vision during the 1940s, he actively began searching for it and identified the place
150 meters from the beachhead at Mankumban (heap of sand). He began work on
it in 1954, but lacked the funds to continue after the foundation was laid. Despite
offers from Sri Lankan patrons to cover the cost of completion, Bawa refused until
he came back in October of 1974 with his American children to complete the job
the following year (Le Pichon 2010: 50). Services followed by a communal meal
are held there on Fridays, mostly attended by local Tamil Hindus. A Singaporean
Muslim follower of Bawa told me after one such Friday service in 2010 how sur-
prised she was that the rites were so ‘Hindu’ in nature. Interestingly, she did not
fully participate in the rites on that day, but observed from the sidelines.
27 Back in Philadelphia, Bawa later told his children that during the period of his
coma he was helping four people go through the pain of death, which physically
exhausted him, and from which he never completely recovered (Le Pichon 2010:
204). Bawa had earlier claimed in his initial correspondences with the founder of
the Ship that he had the power to absorb into himself the illnesses and pains of
others, which often left him weak and fragile as a result. Some very pious indivi-
duals even say that it was not his incessant chain smoking that gave him pulmon-
ary problems but rather his compassion for suffering beings, which led one
Buddhist admirer to tell me that Bawa was a bodhisattva. See Korom (2012b,
2015).
28 Bawa used the smoke from his pipes and cigars to blow smoke on people, which
was a sort of blessing, something very common in South Asian Sufism. One female
of the inner circle stated that when he was dying he asked her in confidence if she
really wanted him to remain on earth in his present condition. Sadly, she had to
respond no.
29 The Unionville Branch, also known simply as The Farm, has now expanded to 100
acres. The land was initially purchased to serve as a cemetery for Bawa’s admirers.
The logic for this was Bawa’s disgust at the high funerary costs in the United
States. Appalled by the monetary waste and ecologically questionable practices
associated with death and burial in America, he therefore decided to have his own
funerary manual written that followed Islamic law and custom, which would save
his admirers large sums of money. A group of mostly married members of the Ship
gradually clustered around the site and eventually became responsible for its
upkeep, although one member is officially designated as the groundskeeper whose
responsibilities include grave digging, lawn mowing and general maintenance of
the entire site.
30 One female attendant at the burial recalled with a smile that Bawa, who was a
master trickster adept at using humor as a teaching tool, pulled a final joke on his
Fellowship family. She reminisced that when the hearse was taking Bawa’s corpse
to the cemetery, the driver had to stop for gas, which she found funny, since Bawa
used to say that one should always prepare ahead for a journey. See Le Pichon
(2010: 206).
31 This is true of the Fellowship house as well, since most members live within
walking distance or a short drive from the site, which they visit frequently and at
odd hours to pray and perform dhikr.
32 Numbers are difficult to ascertain because it is virtually impossible to know who is
a member and who is a sympathizer, or who simply attends for the free food dis-
tributed in abundance on a regular basis. In all likelihood, the number quoted
above seems slightly exaggerated, but it does appear to be the case that the number
of active participants in the Fellowship has not dwindled. Indeed, it seems as if the
younger generation that grew up only vaguely remembering Bawa or born after his
death are taking the Ship in new directions by drawing on their media savvy,
something the inner circle generation had not been able to exploit fully. On the
youth of the movement, see Snyder (2003). The webmaster of the SSSC’s Internet
site based in Colombo, for example, told me that they receive hundreds of thou-
sands of hits from all over the world, the most coming from the United States, but
others also from unexpected locations, such as Saudi Arabia.
98 Frank J. Korom
33 One prominent member of the Jaffna group told me emphatically that Bawa taught
everyone not to convert; hence, most remain Hindus. In Matale, there is another
problem. The late founder of that branch was also dedicated to Satya Sai Baba, the
non-denominational holy man from south India who attracted a worldwide fol-
lowing before his death in 2011. There is some evidence that reformist Muslims are
pressuring such groups to cleanse their practices and beliefs or be considered
transgressors. On this tension between reformist Muslims and Sufis in Sri Lanka,
see de Munck (2005). For an interesting study of Sai Baba, which implies parallels
and begs for comparison with Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, see Swallow (1982).
34 Dream visitations are common occurrences in South Asian religious traditions
generally, but they have a particular religious significance in Islam, according to
Green (2003a).
35 Zoning laws have been an issue hindering growth and expansion in Philadelphia as
well. See Weinberg (2011: 13–14).
36 For a discussion see Weber (1946, 1947). For Weber, rationalization leads to dis-
enchantment, which some in the movement cite as the reason why they feel alie-
nated from the administration of the Fellowship. Disenchantment results from the
imposition of intermediaries who divert direct experience and re-channel it through
figures of authority on the executive committee that are responsible for the
bureaucratic dimension of the group’s infrastructure. In other words, it is the
priests and scribes who create the barrier between the student and the teacher, a
point reiterated below.
37 This is a few years earlier than the dates mentioned above, which suggests to me
that the process was not one that happened instantaneously but was discussed over
a period of time that eventually led to the dropping of the title once and for all.
38 This position has been argued most cogently by Eaton (1993), who makes the
convincing case that Sufis in deltaic Bengal only used preexisting idioms, such as
poetry, symbolic imagery, religious titles, etc., to rhetorically persuade people that
Islam is the true religion, superior to all others, in his particular case, Hinduism.
Ansari (1992) makes a similar argument applied to Sind, where Islam first appeared
in the Indian subcontinent. See also Eaton (1974), where he first formulated his
ideas about conversion in the context of the medieval Deccan. Expanding on
Eaton’s ideas, Stewart (2001) viably develops a strategy of ‘equivalence’.
39 See, for example, Bond (2003). This partly explains the appeal that he had for
people such as the aforementioned Theja Gunawardena, who, although a Buddhist
by birth, was drawn to the universalism that Bawa preached at the outset of his
mission, ultimately leading her to write a small book on Islam and theosophical
teachings, much in the same vein as Annie Besant’s widely circulated essay earlier
published by the Theosophical Society of India.
40 For a succinct statement on the particulars of New Age thinking, see Hanegraaf
(1999). On Sufism and the New Age specifically, see Wilson (1997).
41 In this scheme, Buddhism is understood as an aspect of Hinduism, and Judaism as
one of Islam. See Webb (1994). Bawa also used rites of passage as a way of
describing the four stages of spiritual development: sharī‘a is like kindergarten, the
next stage is like adolescence, the third is like marriage, the state of yoga or union
with one’s spouse, last is jñāna, the wisdom of the God within, which is the state of
ma‘rifa. See Muhaiyaddeen (2000: 51–54).
42 See Weber (1946, 1947), in which he lays out the logic of the charismatic leader
and his or her aftermath in great detail.
43 See www.bmfstore.com/Scripts/default.asp, where one can find a variety of books,
CDs and DVDs distilled and edited from Bawa’s oral teachings by the Fellowship
Press, from where they are produced, published and disseminated.
44 A number of the members feel that ‘Islamicizing’ the Fellowship goes against
Bawa’s original teachings, and some ex-members go so far as to say that building
the mosque was a mistake. There is therefore a division in the movement today
between those who wish to be five-times-a-day pray-ers and those referred to as
‘loosey-goosey’ Sufis, who do not think of themselves as Muslims and only want to
perform dhikr, the Sufi practice of recitation advocated by Bawa. One could argue
that the latter adhere to the perennial notion of Sufism as something unattached
from Islam, such as one finds in early Orientalist writings as well as in those of pop
Sufi figures who author bestselling books. Idries Shah (1924–96), for example, an
Indian-born Afghan who was educated in England, where he spent the bulk of his
adult life, is the most widely read Sufi in the world. His books, despite academic
condemnation, continue selling in huge quantities around the world, espousing a
universal philosophy that pre-dates Islam. For an overview of the Orientalist
‘discovery of Sufism’, see Ernst (1997: 8–18).
45 Dravidian or Tamil Sufism has a very distinct history, which runs parallel to the
development of vernacular Sufi traditions in other parts of South Asia. One
example should suffice for my purposes here. Although Bawa was non-literate and
preached in a style using parables and storytelling that his admirers understand to
be distinctive, his language is by no means unique, for he is tapping into an old
tradition in south India of using formulaic phrases and epithets in poetic and prose
narrative, both of which are found in abundance in the meyññānam genre, which
Bawa sang frequently. See, for example, the work of Uwise (1976) and his student
Sahabdeen (1986) for the peculiarities of Tamil Sufi lyricism.
Part II
Everyday and public forms
of belonging
5 The politics of gender in the
Sufi imaginary
Kelly Pemberton
Gender and meaning making

In a quote reported in the British national daily newspaper The Guardian,
Abida Parveen reportedly confesses to being in a state of be-khudī while in
the midst of a performance:
The concept of being a man or a woman doesn’t cross my mind. I’m

neither on stage, I’m a vehicle on stage for passion.
‘Queen of Sufi Music’ is the title currently held by this internationally

renowned Pakistani singer of Qawwali, Sufiana Kalam, and multiple other
forms of devotional music associated with the Sufis of South Asia. Yet most
of the men and women of Sufi orders in India and Pakistan – the pīrs who
direct the orders, their families, and disciples – will tell you that Abida Parveen
is not really a Sufi, but merely a singer of Sufi music. Such differences over
nomenclature belie a question that has followed Sufism for most of its existence –
‘Who is a Sufi?’ – and hint at the intricate web of significances attached to the
idioms of Sufism.
The question, ‘Who is a Sufi?’ is one that has been under-explored in studies
of Sufism today, one that underscores competing visions of the sacred in Islam.
In Sufi circles, the idioms of belonging – or outsideness – that are articulated
by Sufis themselves have worked to reshape collective understandings of what
might be called the ‘spiritual work’ in which Sufi men and women engage. While
the late twentieth century saw more women becoming involved in public ritual
events sponsored by the Sufi orders, the language of gender inclusiveness has
also influenced many of these orders, just as it has had an impact on the dis-
courses of other Muslim social actors. Discordant visions of belonging or out-
sideness within Sufi circles, with respect to gender, are more than just a question
of terminology, however. When considered in light of the changes that have
taken place in the orders within recent decades, they can reveal the some of
the meaning-making processes inherent in the politics of Sufism today.
Through idioms, we can understand the devolution of meanings and
manipulations of that which is made to stand for the entirety of mystical
104 Kelly Pemberton
Islam – at its essence, it is the search for a direct experience of God, stripped
of selfishness, devoid of ego and merging, in its highest possible manifesta-
tions, with the Divine will. This, at least, is the classical formulation of Sufism
that drove so many studies of it until, roughly, the late 1970s, when historians,
anthropologists, sociologists and even political scientists began to offer con-
trarian analyses of Sufis (‘authentic’, ‘charlatan’ and all in between), as social
actors engaged, just as much as anyone else, in processes of meaning making.
For studies of Sufism, this has meant that we have stepped a little further
away from romantic Orientalist notions of Sufis as antinomian, free-spirited
elements of Islam, reconsidered their characterization by European colonial
regimes as potentially dangerous, rogue elements, and begun to understand
the fuller picture in all its complexities and contradictions. Today we are able
to add many more pieces to that picture of Sufism, a picture that acknowl-
edges its humanistic, universal and integrative elements, that seeks to account
for the various strands of meaning making for which Sufism has been drafted
by others, and not least of all, that also seeks to understand some of the ways
in which Sufis themselves have engaged in reshaping the idioms of mystical
Islam for their own discursive and practical ends. For both sets of meaning
makers, gender has functioned as a sort of sang-i mehek, or touchstone, for
reconfigurations of the economies of meaning that have attached to the Sufi
imaginary.
In Sufism, gender is both material and immaterial, a shaper of identity, an
obstacle on the path to purifying the soul and bringing it in proximity to the
Ultimate Divine, and finally, a marker of ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ status within
ritual spaces. The classical Sufi tradition configures gender as a correlative of
spiritual journeying. In sum, masculine and feminine refer to qualities of the
soul, possessed in varying proportions by each human being with respect to
the state of his or her soul on its ascent towards Divine Reality, or descent
away from it. Sachiko Murata’s seminal study on gender, The Tao of Islam: A
Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought, explains these quali-
ties as being reflections of the inward dimension of the human being, parti-
cularly from the perspective of those who understand the human being to
correspond to the microcosm in which all aspects of the macrocosmic (i.e.
God) are reflected, in varying proportions:
For most authors of the intellectual tradition, the various names applied
to the inward dimension of the human being do not refer to distinct and
autonomous entities, but to different qualities or degrees of a single rea-
lity … Note the basic correspondences that Ghazali draws.1 These are
normative for the whole tradition. The human being is compounded of a
large number of qualities, and the nature of these qualities can be under-
stood by finding in the macrocosm the realities that make them manifest.
These qualities display the three ‘directions’ of existence: ascending
(angelic), descending (demonic), and dispersive (animal).
(Murata 1992: 230)
The politics of gender in the Sufi imaginary 105
Further, she explains that:
In the ‘normal’, forgetful state, the soul is passive or ‘feminine’ toward

appetite and anger, while it is active or ‘masculine’ toward God and the
intellect. Here both yin and yang are inappropriate and therefore blame-
worthy. In both cases the normative order of heaven and earth has been
upset by the qualities that dominate over the microcosm. This is the state
of the soul that commands to evil.
In contrast, if the soul ascends through the various stages of the
blaming soul and attains to the soul at peace, which is none other than
the yin side of the intellect, then it manifests praiseworthy yin and yang.
Its receptivity and yielding are its complete surrender to the light of God.
(Murata 1992: 316)
In Islamic metaphysical-spiritual traditions, gender as a mutable ‘quality’ of

the soul (nafs) is a means for human beings to achieve spiritual perfection,
and ultimately union with the Divine (manifesting its qualities in perfect
proportion to the needs of the individual). Here it is important to flag the
importance of perspective for perception and relationality: from the general
point of view of the Sharia, God’s qualities are masculine in relation to his
creation, which is feminine (or yang in relationship to yin, in Murata’s
reconfiguration). With respect to the general point of view of Islamic spiri-
tuality (e.g. metaphysical traditions, including but not limited to Sufism), the
stress is on God’s feminine aspects, as they exist within a greater (default)
masculinity conceived as all-encompassing in relation to the cosmos. Looking
further, from the perspective of God’s control over and identification with his
creation, the Creator is revealed as both feminine and masculine, simulta-
neously (Murata 1992: 77). Neither perception nor the qualities inherent in
Creator or (human) creation are static or fixed; rather, they fluctuate in
response to the relationship between the two, and in proportion to the stage
of ascent or descent of the adept as s/he progresses toward cultivating a con-
sciousness that has completely surrendered itself to Absolute Reality, thus
ultimately returning to its Divine origin.
The material plane, ‘ālam-i nāsūt, or the outer manifestations of existence,
also reflects this tendency of human beings to (selfishly?) place themselves at
the center of Divine Reality, albeit differently. Here, Islamic masculinity and
femininity are predominantly conceived in static and homogeneous terms: the
man is breadwinner and supreme authority figure in a household managed by
a wife, whose primary devotion is to husband, home and children. In this
model, the man is routinely depicted as the ‘spiritual warrior’, while the
woman is understood to be deficient in both intellect and spiritual capacity,
despite the presence of (presumably rare) examples of female adepts who
defied this stereotype. It is a vision predicated on an ideal of sex segregation,
male dominance, and clearly delineated gender roles and relationships. Sufi
literature and poetry is rife with examples of ‘ignorant’ women who manifest
106 Kelly Pemberton
the characteristics of the blameworthy soul that commands to evil (nafs al-ammāra
bi’s-sū’).2 The biological and emotional conditions of the female gender, too,
were understood by many male and female Sufis to be an impediment on the
path to perfection of the soul and union with the Divine (fanā’). Yet Sufis
have also been known to challenge received knowledge about such ‘norma-
tive’ models of gender. Several studies have exposed the ways in which the
materiality of gender is challenged by the Sufi adept in the process of com-
municating ‘spiritual lessons’ about the importance of community, the per-
fection of faith and ultimately the purification of the spiritual seeker’s soul.
Two examples from ethnographic studies involving Sufi actors illustrate this
point.
In the seventh chapter of Deepak Mehta’s study of a community of Ansari
weavers in Barabanki district, UP, India, the relationship between Sufi Baba,
a local mystic, and his fellow Ansaris illustrates how gender reversals that
underscore social relationships blur the lines not only between masculine and
feminine, but between spiritual and material exchanges in everyday interac-
tions and in ritual contexts. Sufi Baba describes himself as both male and
female and is seen by others as embodying both genders in one body. He
enacts and cements this gender ambiguity through an affective relationship
with his audience that encompasses his multiple roles in the community:
healer of women in his everyday medical practice, go-between for prostitutes
and their customers, and cross-dressing clown during the annual Chahullam
festival. Far from being perceived as an affront to gender sensibilities, in these
multiple contexts Sufi Baba once stood at the crossroads of belonging and
alienation, a part of the Ansari community yet ritually humiliated and ridic-
uled by it because of his outrageous, gender-bending antics, a father and
husband but also perpetual outsider, a master of teaching weaving techniques
to others, but a failure at mastering them himself. Through these multiple
sites of self-configuring, he defies and challenges the Ansari community’s
perceptions of gender roles and relationships (Mehta 1997).3
In the case of ‘Khala’, a disciple (murīd) of Nawāb Sāhib, the third pīr of
the Gudrī Shāh Chistī order, whose story I chronicled in my book, Women
Mystics and Sufi Shrines of India, gender-bending activities are both instru-
mental and inherent to the spiritual station that the mystic has achieved.
Khala’s adoption of male clothing, and her willingness to breach protocol to
sit not only inside an all-male mahfil-i samā‘, but next to Nawāb Sāhib, who
presided over the event, was interpreted by some of the disciples present to be
an affront to the hierarchy of the order and to the gender norms that pro-
hibited women from attending these assemblies, with rare exceptions. Yet
Nawāb Sāhib interpreted her act as a sign of spiritual greatness: for him it
signaled Khala’s willingness to risk all for the sake of being near her master
(the mark of a true devotee), and served as a testimony to her spiritual power.
His warning to the young disciple who physically assaulted and ejected her from
the assembly proved ominously accurate: the atmosphere of the assembly
changed abruptly and ‘miraculously’ after this incident, the young man is said
to have died from unknown causes shortly after this affront to a woman
described by her shaykh as ‘a very big saint’, and Nawāb Sāhib abandoned
that mahfil khāna, claiming that it had been ‘ruined’ and could never be used
for Sufi mahfils again. This episode, a part of the oral history of the Gudrī
Shah order, underscores how the normal ‘rules’ of gender should not be
applied to certain extraordinary women who have transcended its limitations.
Far from being an anomaly in Sufi circles, it is a trope that is commonly
found in the stories of gender-bending Sufis everywhere.
Such gender inversions and defiance of the social rules that mandate separa-
tion of the genders into homosocial worlds, have also become part and parcel
of the criticism of Sufis from within the Muslim community as ‘un-Islamic’ or
operating ‘outside’ the pale of Islam. Sufis of yesteryear, as today, have been
criticized as ‘immoral’ for welcoming women into their circles as disciples and
‘spiritual warriors’ on a rank equal to men. The close relations many Sufi
men and women have enjoyed within the space of communal dhikrs, or
mahāfil-i samā‘, or during celebrations of the ‘urs, have signaled the ‘moral
decline’ of contemporary Sufi practice in the minds of many of its detractors.
Yet Sufis have always been known to challenge such ready assumptions about
morality and gender, whether through the scrambling of material notions of
masculinity and femininity, extolling the spiritual virtues of males as ‘brides
of God’ and females as ‘men in the shape of women’, or in praxis, with the
admittedly uneasy and still-contested acceptance of female pīrs and khalīfas, a
few of whose names have come down to us through the tabaqāt, tazkirāt and
malfūzāt literature, through nasab nāmas, or spiritual genealogies, through
other forms of Sufi literary production, and more recently, through historical
and ethnographic research (e.g. Flueckiger 2006; Pemberton 2010).
Structural and symbolic changes in the Sufi orders and beyond

Recent studies of Sufism in the South Asian subcontinent have highlighted the
roles that Sufis play as social actors seeking to ‘craft’ public meaning and in
so doing, to assert their place in societies undergoing major transformations.
For example, Sufis have drawn upon their collective spiritual heritage (as
members of a tarı-qa, or ‘brotherhood’) to defy negative depictions of their
‘corporate identity’ by intolerant or extremist Islamic movements, to respond
to collective experiences, and to assert their continued relevance in the world
today (Rozehnal 2007). In the early twentieth century and during the height
of the Hindu śuddhi (purification) movement that targeted recently con-
verted Muslims for reconversion to Hinduism, Sufis like Hasan Nizami posi-
tioned themselves as defenders of both Islam and Hinduism in ways that
highlighted the ‘bridge-making’ roles some Sufi orders have played in the
Indian subcontinent, and the encasement of Sufism within Sharia-compliant
Islam, all while asserting an openly political face to their social activism
(Hermansen 2008). More recently, Sufi musicians have engaged in the same
kind of self-positioning in response to the growth of Hindutva in India and
108 Kelly Pemberton
the waves of Hindu-Muslim communal violence that have erupted periodi-
cally since the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992. In turn, their musical
performances are often publicized by the media and the State to emphasize
the country’s essentially ‘composite culture’ (Manuel 2008). In the Middle
East, some Sufi shaykhs have embarked upon public careers as scholars and
champions of scripturalist, Sharia-focused ideas of reform, even developing
relationships with the leadership of Islamist-Salafist networks to promote
spiritual education within a framework of ‘Sufism without tasawwuf ’, or
Sufism divested of its conventional terminology and modes of organization
(Weismann 2007). In Bangladesh and Afghanistan, Sufi shaykhs have mar-
shaled their spiritual credentials as well as their networks of followers and
associates in the service of their own political campaigns for office (van
Bruinessen 2007; Alam 2012b). These forms of social activism among Sufis
continue to surprise many scholars of Islam, who have by and large failed to
account for Sufis in their studies of social movements in the Muslim world.
Social activism among Sufis has translated in an increasing number of ways
since the mid-twentieth century. Like other Islamic actors, Sufis have learned
to marshal the power of modern technologies and media such as demotic lit-
erature, cassettes and CDs, the internet, social networking sites, blogs and
discussion forums. They use these tools to communicate the essential mes-
sages of their orders; to market themselves in order to attract new adherents
and associates, particularly among South Asian expatriates and Westerners
(Ernst and Lawrence 2002: 139–40); to promote messages of ‘universal
humanistic’ import over sectarian worldviews through relationships of sacred
exchange (Pemberton 2010: 175); and to promulgate transnational messages of
community in contrast to narrow visions of national identity (Rozehnal 2007:
228). This activism has had mixed results for Sufis’ messages about gender,
particularly with regard to the expanded role of women in the Sufi orders.
The processes of meaning making in which Sufis engage are shaped by the
structural changes that have transformed notions of authority, both within the
Sufi orders and within a general public seeking affiliation with the symbols or
institutions of Sufism. I highlight three changes in particular here. First, while
Sufi orders still remain hierarchical, headed by a shaykh who mediates the
power and authority of the Sufi masters of his lineage, the ways in which
hierarchy and authority are perceived have changed considerably, with a dif-
fusion of both elements within the day-to-day workings of the order. Second,
new modes and means of mobilization have enabled Sufis to recast themselves
in response to changing circumstances and an evolving constituency of fol-
lowers and associates, while still drawing upon foundational symbols of Isla-
mic authenticity, such as the sunna of the Prophet Muhammad and his family
(ahl-i bayt). Third, the expansion of the orders has brought in more female
followers – some from Western nations – which has also opened the doors for
South Asian Sufi women to become more visible, with less potential harm to
their reputations. The increased involvement of women in the public life of
the Sufi orders (particularly in ritual life) has encouraged some orders to
mobilize the cultural capital of gender equity discourses, thus enhancing
perceptions of their dynamism and relevance on the global stage.
These structural changes have been influenced by the development of new
technologies and concurrent transformations in communication (in terms of
the methods and strategies used by the Sufi orders to spread their messages
and extend their reach beyond national borders); the growth of opportunities
for women to become public figures and even representatives of the orders;
and a global turn toward discourses of gender equality as a measure of pro-
gress, particularly in the realms of development and politics, and in the wake
of the resolutions adopted by the Fourth International United Nations Con-
ference on Women which took place in Beijing, China, in 1995. All of these
changes have had a noticeable effect on the Sufi orders, as they have for
Muslims more generally. What has been the outcome for the women and men
of these orders, and how do these changes underscore ways in which Sufis
have mobilized the new realities and changing symbolic capital of Sufism to
strategically reassert their relevance as important social actors seeking to
shape public attitudes about Islam locally, nationally and globally?
The impact of new technologies and modes of communication on changing
concepts (and workings) of hierarchy and authority within the Sufi orders has
been considerable. Since the late nineteenth century, the landscape of this
authority has evolved in some unexpected ways and has exposed the fallacy of
the picture painted by the distinguished British historian Francis Robinson
over a decade ago. Robinson observed that print undermined the traditional,
hierarchical sources of authority whereby knowledge was handed down from
master to pupil in carefully prescribed ways.4 While it is true that print, as a
technology of communication, widened the field for crafting and disseminat-
ing new (and repackaged) meanings of the sacred in general, and of religious
authority in particular, it did not uniformly undermine the authority of all
Sufi masters: in fact, for some, print enhanced their authority, as it served as a
tangible access point to the shaykh and his guidance, even in his physical
absence. It also enabled the messages of pīrs and their descendants to reach
much wider audiences than before.
At the same time, some of these descendants – both blood and ‘spiritual’
relations of the founding pīr of an order – were able to bypass the years of
‘training’ that typically preceded the bestowal of an ijāzat, in this case a
document (or verbal agreement) that gave its recipient the right to succeed
this spiritual master as head of the order, or to disseminate his own spiritual
teaching to others (as pīr or as khalīfa), or to spread the spiritual teachings of
his master to others. Thus, the effects of print on the perceived authority of
Sufi masters were complex. Print, followed by cassette recordings and radio
broadcasts – and more recently, social media and internet-based means of
communication – as they have been shaped within a system of education that
is more accessible to a broader range of citizens, have also helped to envision
and mobilize new sources of authority among Sufis.
110 Kelly Pemberton
The work of Gary Bunt illustrates how the use of internet-based technolo-
gies has enabled Muslim religious organizations to frame their messages in
ways that are responsive to new social situations and technological develop-
ments. While the internet is used by Muslim religious leaders (including Sufis)
to facilitate spiritual instruction in a cyber environment (prayers, teachings
and spiritual exercises are communicated by shaykhs to their followers
online), it also gives the students of these shaykhs some leeway in crafting
their messages (Bunt 2009: 31).5 Most Sufi orders and/or their shaykhs
maintain websites and one or more social media accounts (particularly Face-
book), but it is often the students of these shaykhs who perform the regular
maintenance on these sites. They also have a role in the ‘branding’ of a Sufi
lineage and/or its shaykh(s). However, they still tend to remain within accep-
ted limits of ‘representation’ in the course of this ‘branding’. As the examples
drawn from Sufi circles in India and Bangladesh will demonstrate, such
branding draws upon familiar authoritative symbols of Islamic authenticity
and authority, including the sunna of the Prophet Muhammad and the moral
examples of his close family members, particularly his wives and daughters.
To use a concept drawn from social movement theory, the ‘opportunity
spaces’ created by the growth and increased availability of internet-based
technologies, particularly in the subcontinent, have enabled some freedom
from the strictures of traditional knowledge-sharing patterns within a given
order, and have offered alternative venues for crafting and marketing ideas
and practices.6 These technologies have even enabled some of the ‘marginal’
shaykhs and their orders to expand their reach regionally and even globally
(Bunt 2009: 119), appealing not only to traditional sources of patronage, but
increasingly to Western European, North American and Australian audiences,
many of whom have become disciples of South Asia-based Sufi masters.
Women – both the women who are the female relatives of Sufi shaykhs, and
the women who have become their followers and disciples (murīds), have been
instrumental figures in this expansion.
Increased opportunities for women in the Sufi orders also reflect the chan-
ging symbolic capital of Sufism, in terms of how the Sufi past is being mobi-
lized in the service of the present. Among the symbolic changes, one must
take note of the ways in which gender – more specifically, the notion of
gender inclusiveness – can serve as the mark of a Sufi order’s progressive
mindedness and willingness to work with ‘outsiders’ to bring about social
change. There are several socio-historical factors that have contributed to this
development. First, as Arthur Buehler’s 1998 study illustrated, beginning in
the late nineteenth century some Sufi masters, whom he dubs ‘traveling med-
iating shaikhs’, began to travel outside their immediate areas to promulgate
Sufism and expand their spheres of influence by visiting disciples, attending events
(particularly those sponsored by shaykhs at other Sufi shrines), and embarking
upon extended ‘spiritual travel’ tours (Buehler 1998: 90–96). Second, around
this same time, as men became more educated in secular institutions of
learning, having an educated wife – and educated daughters – became
increasingly valued as a sign of upward mobility and progress. In the case of
some Sufi families, daughters were increasingly expected to have both a secu-
lar and spiritual education at least through the secondary level, particularly if
the men in their families were highly educated. Third, the increasing visibility
of women in ritual life since the 1980s, with increasing numbers of Western
followers of Sufi shaykhs and the growth of the Bollywood industry, the
industry’s promotion of ‘Sufi-themed’ music (often, Sufi poetry set to a com-
mercialized version of Qawwali music), and concomitant popularity of female
Bollywood singers, signaled a much wider recognition of the interest (and
involvement) of women in Sufi devotional activities. Fourth, Sufi orders have
justified the inclusion of women by drawing upon the oral (and sometimes
written) histories of their orders to show that female adepts have always been
a part of Sufi tradition. This has enabled them to deflect at least some criti-
cism from their detractors, who see the visibility of women in public ritual life
as a sign of degeneration and moral decline.
The association between gender inclusiveness and progressive mindedness is
especially salient in the case of the established Sufi orders whose lineages are
well known, who are regarded by states and social actors alike as the chief
representatives of Sufi traditions, and who are in a position to wield sig-
nificant social and political currency as a result. While one can concede that
the influence of the Sufi orders in the South Asian subcontinent – their influ-
ence as a social and/or political force, that is – has ebbed and flowed in recent
decades, and that perceptions of Sufis (as a collective) vary from country to
country within the subcontinent, Sufis have remained salient as representa-
tives of a moral-ethical ideal, modeled after the example provided by the
Prophet Muhammad. This has been especially true since the late nineteenth
century and the growth of a more scripturalist orientation among many of the
Sufi orders, dubbed ‘neo-Sufism’ by the Pakistani political philosopher Fazlur
Rahman (Rahman 1979: 206).
While considering the landscape of religious authority in which Sufis today
must operate, one must not underestimate the symbolic capital that gender
activism has acquired. As the example of Morocco’s most efficient Islamic
social movement, Al Adl wa’l Ihssane, demonstrates, Sufis, like Islamic actors
of all ideological persuasions, have been influenced by the language of gender
equality. Founded by the deceased father of its current official spokesperson,
Nadia Yassine, Al Adl wa’l Ihssane began as a Sufi movement and has
transformed into a major mobilizing force in the country. Nadia Yassine’s
adoption of the language of feminism, Islamism and militarism targets both
gender exclusion and the patriarchy of the ‘despotic’ Moroccan monarchy and
the Islamists who run its parliament (Yassine 2009: 308). While information
on the South Asian counterparts to Sufi movements like Al Adl wa’l Ihssane
are lacking, anecdotal information suggests that some Sufi orders in South
Asia are making similar linkages between the language of Islam (or Islamism)
and feminism in order to appeal to wider audiences. More to the point, the
Sufi orders that have been the most successful in expanding their spheres of
112 Kelly Pemberton
influence are those that know how to mobilize the language of gender inclu-
siveness, gender parity, women’s empowerment and interfaith activism for
peace as social directives subsumed in the category of service that is part and
parcel of the Sufi Path to God. Often these are the orders that welcome
women and non-Muslims not only as disciples, but as full participants in
the spiritual and ritual life of the order. They are the silsilas that mobilize the
female relatives of the presiding shaykh in ways that underscore not only their
importance, but, significantly, their increasing visibility in public settings. It is
to one such order that I now turn: the Gudrī Shāh Chishtī silsila of Ajmer,
India.
Sufis, interfaith activism and gender equality discourses: the Chishtīs of

Ajmer, India
Among Chishtī Sufis and some other Sufi orders in the subcontinent there has
been a noticeable shift towards interfaith activism since the 1990s, and along
with this shift, an emphasis on universalizing narratives that incorporate
opportunities to demonstrate gender equity. In the case of the Chishtīs, these
narratives, drawing liberally upon elements of the lives of Mu‘īn al-Dīn
Chishtī and the Prophet Muhammad, de-emphasize the particulars of Islamic
authenticity7 in favor of discourses and social actions that promote the vision
of a community of shared faith in the divine. These twin modalities, religious
activism and discursive production, underscore the ways in which narratives
of the past are being mobilized in service of the aims of the present.
Specifically, I suggest that some of the orders in the subcontinent have,
since at least the 1990s, begun recasting gender in ways that suggest Sufi
‘niswa/niswān’, the women practitioners of the feminine equivalent to Sufi
‘chivalry’ or futuwwa (the meaning here is drawn from Rkia Cornell’s expla-
nation of al-Sulami’s work on Sufi women. Niswān is the feminine counterpart
to fityān, the men who practice spiritual chivalry) (Cornell 1999: 66). This
recasting posits the women of the Sufi orders as ‘active agents’, fully involved
in the social mission of the order, which in turn functions as a kind of
symbolic capital that can engender transformative social action.
Elsewhere I have written about how the Gudrī Shāh Chishtīs and Syed-
zadgan Chishtīs of Ajmer, through print and web-based technologies, includ-
ing the publication of popular literature that espouses social activism as a
means of fighting intolerance, through the promotion of messages of peace
and anti-communalism on their websites, and through targeted mailing, have
recast hagiographies and oral traditions8 about the travels of the twelfth-
century Chishtī Sufi, Mu‘īn al-Dīn Chishtī, to the subcontinent, to craft a
narrative that addresses present-day concerns about communal strife in India
(Pemberton 2012). What I wish to highlight here, in particular, is the way in
which the Gudrī Shāh Chishtīs have turned this narrative of intercommunal
harmony into the defining mission of their school, the Sufi Saint School,
founded by the current pīr o murshid of the Gudrī Shāh order, Hazrat Inam
Hasan, and how such discourses of harmony intersect with narratives of
gender equality and social activism as marks of progress in both the spiritual
and material planes.
The school is a nursery through tenth standard-accredited institution over-
looking the Anasagar lake, situated on a plot of land which houses the chilla
sharīf of the twelfth-century Chishtī master, Mu‘īn al-Dīn Chishtī. Aside from
offering education to poor families and families of modest means, the school’s
foundational and essential message heralds a clarion call that has long been
the flip side of the Gudrī Shāh order’s emphasis on the pursuit of knowledge
and its dissemination among the faithful. Spiritual, moral and secular educa-
tion are taught in this school, which courts local children from all religious
backgrounds in seeking to relay a message of communal harmony and uni-
versal peace. The school prayer, penned by founder Hazrat Inam Hasan
(Gudrī Shāh Bābā V), encapsulates this message:
Honor, respect and dignity may remain forever.

From these thorns, this poor one may be saved forever.
Every moment may be passed in Your remembrance.
In [Y]our remembrance, this heart may be engaged forever.
This is a desire, a request, a longing and a wish:
In the hearts, the lamp of knowledge may be illumined forever.
Poverty will go away from this world, everywhere there will be peace all
around.
Conductor! Every house from the happiness may be filled forever.
Every race and sect will live together in this world.
Of fruits and flowers gardens will be loaded forever.
The Jew, Sikh, Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Zoroaster,
Together under the blue canopy will live forever.
Let this universe may [sic] not be scattered.
Lord! This house of glass may be saved forever.
All will live ‘Inam’ together with love and affection.
In the heart no one will be blamed nor will complain forever.
(translated from Urdu by Hazrat Inam Hasan)9
The school’s message of peace extends to an emphasis, subtly applied, on

gender equality. Citing a saying of Mu‘īn al-Dīn Chishtī in the advice section
of his website, Inam Hasan writes:
No community can prosper till such time that the womenfolk of that
community can walk shoulder to shoulder with the men on the path of
progress.10
Instrumental in the spiritual and social mission of the Sufi Saint School of
Ajmer are the sisters and wife of the current pīr. 11 Always vocal about the
direction of the school, increasingly mobilized to implement the pīr’s vision of
114 Kelly Pemberton
communal harmony, social uplift, and spiritual and moral development
among the local children who are its current and former students, and lately,
more visible in the public face of this institution, these women – Meher Noor,
Bahar Noor and Amina Hasan – have been the backbone of the school and a
key force behind its success, its high regard in the local community and its
consistent growth over the past 24 years. In some ways, their model of service
reflects the ideal expressed by Sufis to follow the example of the Prophet
Muhammad and his closest female family members (ahl-i bayt). Indeed, in
informal conversations and interviews I have held with the sisters of the pīr
since 1996, they often recalled the examples of these women to link their work
at the school with Islamically correct behavior.
Since its inception, the school has been managed by the women of the
family: first by the pīr’s sisters, one of whom served as school principal until
her marriage and subsequent emigration to Canada. Now, it is the pīr’s wife
Amina Hasan, herself from an educated background (though not from a Sufi
or a Sayyid family, as are her husband and in-laws), who serves as the
school’s principal and primary point of contact for people wishing to find out
more information about the school or donate money to it. The pīr’s sisters
still refrain from exposing themselves too publicly as key players in the man-
agement of the school. Here I should qualify this comment, because any
visitor to the school or the chilla sharīf – or for that matter, to the ‘urs of the
former Gudrī Shah pīr or the fātiha ceremony held each year for his wife (the
mother of the current pīr) – will easily encounter the pīr’s sisters. In the school,
situated as it is on holy ground, their integrity can remain intact, and no one
questions their presence ‘in public’ under those circumstances. The sisters of
the pīr will also engage in a series of avoidance behaviors – such as sitting
separately from other guests – at events held at the school, observing the
ceremonies from afar.12 These behaviors underscore their observance of
parda, a term that once referred to full-body veiling and strict seclusion of the
sexes but nowadays may simply refer to the wearing of some kind of head
covering, modesty in dress and comportment, separation of the sexes in
public spaces and/or a series of avoidance behaviors that signal a ‘symbolic’
separation.
The explanations that the pīr’s sisters offered for their seemingly public
participation in day-to-day activities at the Sufi Saint School linked their
work to Islamic tradition with reference to the women of the Prophet’s family.
For example, the sisters often cited the example of the Prophet’s young wife
‘Ā’isha as purveyor of hadīth and as an example of an educated women who
took on the role of teacher to others in the community. They also frequently
discussed the involvement of the Prophet’s other wives in advising Muslims
about the particulars of Islamic belief and practice. The pīr’s sisters almost
always juxtaposed the involvement of these women in the affairs of the first
generation of Muslims with explanations of their own activities directing the
school activities, advising teachers and parents, or disciplining young chil-
dren. These discussions were also usually linked with discourses of modesty
that referenced the pious behavior of the Prophet’s wives and daughters. Such
linkages also served to underscore the propriety of the visibility of the pīr’s
female relatives in an apparently ‘public’ space, Islamically speaking. The
modesty discourses that they engaged thus served as symbolic capital that
underscored the value of their social status as Sayyid Muslims descended
from the Prophet Muhammad’s lineage, and the importance of their spiritual
status as pious women engaged in the work of education in the service of a
higher order.
The pīr’s wife appeared to be less concerned with such justifications, which
makes sense considering her background and experience. Not only is she not
from a saintly lineage or a Sayyid family, but she had already spent much of
her adult life as a public professional, working in a school in UP before her
marriage to the pīr. Notably, the pīr’s wife has not been as shy as her sisters-
in-law about appearing in photos and videos about the school and the order,
or about participating in events at the school. She is, in fact, the primary
point of contact for people wishing to arrange a visit, donate to, or find out
more information about the school. Outside the realm of the spiritual, she is
her husband’s equal. He acknowledges her as such and frequently praises the
way in which she has selflessly served the children and helped him to realize his
dream of making this school a positive force for social change in the com-
munity. Although she is not from a Sufi family, the pīr’s wife has come to
embody, to her husband, to the local community and to the visitors to the
school, the Sufi ideal of selfless service. Nonetheless, this embodiment takes
place in ways that are not dependent on her ability to demonstrate her con-
formity to an Islamic ideal drawn from the examples of Prophetic sunna or
ahl-i bayt women.
If service to others has been a hallmark of Chishtī Sufi piety and a key tool
for the spiritual development of the Sufi seeker for centuries (service to others
is understood within many Sufi orders as both a tool for purification of the
soul and a way of serving Allah), it is also one that is recognized by the Gudrī
Shah women as the particular calling of their order, one that is incumbent on
both the women and the men of the family. Among the Gudrī Shah Chishtīs,
with a lineage of pīrs who prized education in all forms – zāhirī and bātinī,
religious and secular – educating the women of the family, and sending them
out into the world to educate and uplift others has become an unmistakable
part of the brand that this order has established for itself. The pīr’s marriage
to an educated, professional and highly capable woman has both exemplified
and increased the Gudrī Shah’s trend of positioning women – in highly visible
ways – as important social actors whose work not only embodies the Sufi
ideal of service to others, but also signals to the world that the women of the
order have a key role to play in shaping public opinion and attitudes about
Islam and Sufis. The messages of service and communal harmony that are a
hallmark of the Gudrī Shah ‘brand’ also resonate with discourses of gender
equality in the actions of the pīr’s wife as head of the Sufi Saint School and
implementer of his mission of fostering intercommunal harmony. These twin
116 Kelly Pemberton
messages, it may be said, are not unique to this particular Sufi order but index
a broader trend towards the increasingly visible involvement of women of Sufi
lineages in ways that are globally recognized as bearing the hallmarks of
social justice.
Sufism, social activism and competing masculinities

In a second example of the intersection of Sufism and social activism, I turn
to the case of the Maizbhandari silsila of Bangladesh, founded in the nine-
teenth century by Maulana Sayyid Ahmadullah (1829–1906). With this order,
it is gender and, more specifically, the use of a type of ‘feminized masculinity’
that is put to use in the service of two interrelated aims: one, providing a
counter-example to a rising tide of discourses of hyper-masculinity predicated
on the linkages between power, hegemonic authority and public demonstra-
tions of physical force; and two, offering a model of social reform that rein-
forces the importance of Qur’anic guidance and the Prophet Muhammad’s
example as guideposts for action. These ideas are articulated within the
notion of a Maizbhandari darśan or ‘philosophy’, which Hans Harder
understands to point to a series of narratives of a theological nature, rather
than a specific theological vision that is self-articulated as such (Harder 2011:
66). Nonetheless, the hagiographic narratives of several shaykhs of this order
link the language of inclusiveness with spiritual development according to the
shaykh’s inherent nature and aptitude. The Maizbhandari website says of Zia
ul Haq:
Hazrat Syed Ziaul Huq Maizbhandari (R) was a perfect model of

‘Rabubiyat’ both in action and spirit. He was a philanthropist. He loved
all people irrespective of sex, caste, creed and religion.
(my emphasis)13
The mission of the order, reflected in the directive of the Prophet Muham-
mad, evokes similar linkages between inclusiveness, spiritual development and
Islamic foundations:
The main feature of the prophethood of the Global Prophet Hazrat

Muhammed Mustafa (SAW) is to express the unity or oneness of God.
The main purpose of the creations is to unite with the oneness of Allah
(SWT). Prophet Muhammad (SAW) discovered the path of union with
Almighty Allah by dint of his Ahmadi Belayeti power (power of divine
love) and showed the ways and means to attain such path. The path to
unite with the oneness of Allah (SWT) is the path of unchained divine
love. The theory of unchained divine love is the backbone and the inher-
ent objective of the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah. The Kalema-e-Taiyaba
and the Ahmadi Belayet involve mystery of God which are universal and
everlasting. The previous saints before the advent of Hazrat Gausul
Azam Maizbhandari (K) though were partially able to explore this mys-
tery of God amid religious restrictions, they were, however, not able to
explore the door of unchained divine love comprehensively avoiding reli-
gious dispute irrespective of caste, creed and religion. Hazrat Gausul
Azam Moulana Shah Sufi Syed Ahmed Ullah Maizbhandari (K) was the
first to open the door of unchained divine love which attaches utmost
importance to Adal-e-Mutlak (judicial equality) and Tawhid-e-Adyan
(religious equality) for all people of the world irrespective of caste, creed
and religion and hence he may termed as the finisher of religious
compulsions.14
The Maizbhandari silsila thus incorporates into its core mission and philoso-
phy the social uplift of humankind, irrespective of sex, creed or social posi-
tion. Its website states among the aims of the affiliated Maizbhandari
Academy:
To make an attempt to render total welfare to the followers of Maizb-

handari philosophy and to encourage the people to establish a true,
decent and healthy society.
To establish peace, unity and cordial relations among the people of all
categories like social workers, teachers and students, doctors, intelligen-
tsia, lawyers, businessmen, laborers, etc., irrespective of caste, creed, sex
and religion.
Other organizations affiliated with or founded by Maizbhandar Sufis15

make the mission to women even clearer. Among its specific objectives in
achieving the goals of creating employment opportunities for the underprivileged,
advocating for their universal human rights and thereby establishing a model
society, is the second in a list of seven ‘aims and objectives’:
To establish women[’s] empowerment by involving them in income

generating activities.16
They have carried out this part of their mission by establishing credit coop-
erative programs for the underprivileged, including and especially rural poor
women.
My interest here is not in whether the Maizbhandaris have actually incor-
porated women into the public face, or the decision-making processes of their
social activism – their website certainly does not suggest this is the case – but
rather, in how the order has mobilized the symbolic capital of gender and
service to craft an image of itself as socially active and internationally rele-
vant. In short, I consider the ways in which the Maizbhandari order is enga-
ging in processes of meaning making that marshal evidence from its own
sacred past as well as classic discourses of gender – which I understand to
signal a type of ‘feminized masculinity – to fashion a particular image of its
118 Kelly Pemberton
mission, one that is ostensibly ‘progressive minded’ and that, as in the case of
the other examples I have provided here, has social and economic implications
for forging alliances with other, non-Muslim groups globally.
The kind of ‘feminized masculinity’ I refer to here is worlds apart from the
stereotype – which gained currency in British colonial times – of the effete
Bengali male; rather, my use of the phrase is one that is founded upon, and
draws heavily from, the model of Prophetic sunna, by which the Prophet
Muhammad is understood to embody ideal masculine and feminine char-
acteristics in his leadership of the community, total submission to the will of
God and fulfillment of the Prophetic imperative to deliver a message of sal-
vation achieved not just through acts of piety, but through attention to the
needs of the most vulnerable members of society – a mission that evokes the
Divine quality of rahīm, mercy. It draws also from the idealized feminine in
Sufism, which points toward the ideal of ego destruction, or loss of self to
which the Sufi seeker aspires in his search for a direct experience of the Divine
and annihilation within it (fanā’).
The hagiographic narratives surrounding the life of the fourth pīr of the
Maizbhandari Sufi order, Zia ul Haq, which have been discussed in some detail
by Sarwar Alam (2012a), suggest a man who embodied some of these classi-
cal characteristics of spiritual seeking and loss of selfhood. His biographers
paint him as a man who embarked upon his spiritual career with signs of be-
khudī: after acquiring both a madrasa education and a secular one, enrolling
at Kanungo Para Sir Ashutosh College to pursue a BA degree after passing
his Intermediate Arts examination in Chittagong Government College in
1951, he suddenly and inexplicably abandoned his secular schooling. Soon
afterward, he formally took bay‘at with one of the close associates of his
father, Sayyid Delawar Hosein (third pīr of the Maizbhandari order), and
thereafter underwent a profound transformation. He would spend long peri-
ods of time alone in his room or at the tomb of his grandfather, Sayyid
Ahmadullah. He sat staring for long periods of time at the sun, and at other
times would immerse himself in a local pond up to his neck and sit there for
hours or even days. He would disappear for days at a time, and fast, not
taking food or drink for days at a time. He developed the habit of burning
everything – blankets, books, pillows. Marriage did not change these beha-
viors. In short, he displayed all the classic symptoms of spiritual intoxication.
This only changed after his grandfather Sayyid Ahmadullah instructed his
father, Sayyid Delawar Hosein, to bestow the mantle of pīrī on his son (Alam
2012a: 126–127; Harder 2011: 152–153). Although it would seem that Zia ul
Haq became the spiritual successor of Ahmadullah by this act, in truth, his
successorship remained in dispute (particularly as the order split into several
collateral branches), and his father Delawar Hosein formally declared his
younger son as sajjāda nishīn while Zia ul Haq continued to retain the spiri-
tual inheritance (wilāya) of his grandfather (Harder 2011: 153). After the act
of spiritual transference, however, Zia ul Haq’s behavior changed and he was
later credited with the performance of a number of miracles and full
engagement with the social issues of the day (Alam 2012a: 127–128), includ-
ing, according to the website of the Maizbhandari order, the socio-economic
empowerment of women. His son, Sayyid Mohammad Hasan, succeeded to
the head of Haq Manzil, one of the collateral branches of the order, after Zia
ul Haq’s death (Harder 2011: 29), and today works to promote the ‘philoso-
phy’ through an academy that combines intellectual endeavor (one must hold
a BA degree to become a member of the academy) with social service. These
twin emphases draw upon the past example of the pīrs of the order, and the
model of the Prophet Muhammad to promote an ideal of social uplift and
ecumenism which, I believe, exemplify the kind of ‘feminized masculinity’ to
which I referred previously.
The philosophy of the Maizbhandari order was developed by Hazrat
Gausul Azam Mowlana Shah Sufi Syed Ahmad Ullah Maizbhandari; its
stated objectives are ‘the emancipation of global mankind and the attainment
of nearness to God’. Drawing upon classical Sufi notions of the Path to God
and its ultimate aim, the order self-consciously promotes an image of itself
that is in stark opposition to the hyper-masculine discourses of power and
authority that are articulated by groups such as the Bangladesh Nationalist
Party-Jama‘at-i Islami coalition, and the Pir Charmonai. Both of these
groups – politically prominent and inclined to marshal the symbolic capital of
Sufism as social activism for their own ends – rely on public demonstrations
of physical strength, dominance and the rejection of symbols that oppose
their singular narratives of Islamic authenticity. The Jama‘at and the Pir
Charmonai and his followers, in particular, have been accused of abetting the
Pakistan army during the war of liberation in 1971. Several within their ranks
have been indicted and sentenced to death for their role in aiding the massive
destruction, including mass rapes and murders of women, that took place
during that dark period. Recently, the Jama‘at has been banned from oper-
ating in Bangladesh, thanks in part to the Tarikat Foundation, founded in
2005 by a Maizbhandari adherent.
Perhaps not surprisingly, both the Jama‘at and the Pir Charmonai have
come out against the proliferation of women’s development programs in the
country, and this is one of the areas in which the Maizbhandaris have been
vocal in their support of such development programs and opposition to those
who denounce them. What I suggest is that within the Maizbhandari silsila’s
articulation of itself and its mission, there are a series of deliberate contrasts
that draw upon gendered imagery to promote the ideal of spiritual seeking
and social activism in ways that evoke both the Sufi imaginary of gender and
Prophetic sunna to offer a kind of ‘feminized masculinity’ to which the
Maizbhandari adept should aspire. It can be seen in the telling of the story of
Pir Zia ul Haq, whose spiritual strength is juxtaposed with his bodily weak-
ness (from fasting and other ascetic actions), whose subordinate stance is
revealed not only in his submission to God but in the narratives of his
selfless service to his fellow humans, and in his ecumenism, open attitude toward
others, and efforts to promote gender parity through the socio-economic
120 Kelly Pemberton
uplift of women. The images evoked by the Maizbhandaris stand in stark
contrast to the self-described ‘Islamic NGOs [non-governmental organiza-
tions]’ discussed in the work of Elora Shehabuddin (2008). In her view, most
‘Islamic NGOs’ have been formed not only as an alternative to secular
NGOs, but also as a means to undercut the imperatives of women’s empow-
erment, discredit discourses of gender equality as Western inventions, and
posit an ‘Islamically correct’ model of women’s development that reinforces a
social ideal of women’s domesticity and submission to male authority.
Sufis in the imaginary of the state: competing visions

I have given an admittedly cursory view of some of the discourses surround-
ing the politics of gender as it relates to Sufism in practice in South Asia
today. In the imaginary of the state and social actors alike, Sufis are still sig-
nificant as a force for social change, and they have political significance,
generally speaking, that is less about their political organizing skills and more
about the moral force they embody, which is largely connected to their status as
social and spiritual elites. As they have been historically, they are now asso-
ciated with service to the people, and in recent years, gender activism. While
in some cases this has engendered a recasting of the role of the Muslim male
as socially ‘enlightened’ – more sensitive and responsive to the social ills that
have kept women on the socio-economic margins – in other cases, Islamic
masculinities are projected in the social and political arenas in ways that have
less to do with the vision of Islam as a moral and spiritual force for the public
good, and more to do with the pursuit of patriarchal power in the name of
Islam through the militarization of the state, engagement of ideologically rigid
representatives of the faith (particularly the state ‘ulamā’), and use of violence
to suppress ‘feminized’ expressions of Islam – as Durre Ahmed (2006: 21–22)
has argued in the case of Pakistan today.
Notes
1 Abū Hamīd Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazālī, the twelfth-century theologian.
2 See Murata’s discussion of the different levels of the soul: the nafs al-ammāra
bi’s-sū’ is the lowest stage of the soul, which commands the individual to commit
evil acts (Murata 1992: 254).
3 See Chapter 7 of this work for more details.
4 For more details, see Robinson 2004.
5 This leeway should not be taken to mean empowerment, as the outcomes of such
opportunities have been uneven: some disciples with coding and web-designing
skills have been able to gain greater access to the shaykh’s ‘inner circle’ of fol-
lowers, while others were already a part of this. It also varies from case to case
whether a social media manager would be able to include his (or her) own input
without final approval from the shaykh or his designated representative.
6 On this point in a different cultural context, see Yavuz 2004: 270.
7 This sense of ‘authenticity’ often references Islamic Sharia as a ‘normative’ stan-
dard for the belief and practice of Muslims. Sharia itself is a slippery term that is
used in parlance to refer to one or more of the following: fiqh (Islamic substantive
law), Islamic jurisprudence, or a set of moral-ethical injunctions enshrined in the
foundational texts of the tradition, particularly the Qur’an and the Prophet
Muhammad’s sunna.
8 Here I refer to oral traditions preserved within the families of the khadīms, which
are passed down among them and shared with their ‘clients’. These sometime
contradict the narratives found in hagiographic accounts of the saint, but more
often they ‘fill in’ details of the saint’s life and work that have not been recorded in
writing (at least not to historians’ current knowledge).
9 See the school’s website at sufi-mystic.net/text3.htm (accessed May 22, 2015).
10 sufi-mystic.net/text12.htm (accessed May 19, 2015).
11 I first met the sisters and mother of the current pīr in 1996, shortly after the death
of Zahur al-Hasan Sharib, the fourth shaykh of the order. Although I was not able
to attend the marriage of the current pīr and his wife in 2001, I met Amina Hasan
not long afterwards and remain in touch.
12 I have discussed these socially segregating behaviors in my book, Pemberton 2010:
127.
13 www.sufimaizbhandari.org/shahenshah_hazrat_shah_sufi_syed_ziaul_huq_maizbhan
dari.html.
14 www.sufimaizbhandari.org/maizbhandari_philosophy_and_world_peace.html.
15 As Hans Harder points out in his study of the Maijbhandaris, the order has a
‘multi-angular’ and ‘polycentric’ structure rather than a centralized authority
around which disciples and affiliates gravitate. For further explanation, see Harder
2011: 46–8.
16 ‘Mainia Foundation (MF): Aims and Objectives’ www.maizbhandarmainia.org/ma
inia_foundation.php (accessed December 9, 2015).
6 The everyday as an enactment of the
trauma of being a Muslim woman
in India
A study of two artists
Shaheen Salma Ahmed
In May 2015, two new items about subject matters that one would consider
the most basic and yet banal – housing and employment – hit the reading and
watching public of India. What these two news stories had in common, apart
from the fact that housing and employment are two basic fundamental rights
of all citizens, was that both the cases involved Muslim youth from the largest
cosmopolis in the country – Mumbai. Zeeshan Khan, an MBA graduate, was
denied a job flat within less than an hour of his application by a firm because
of his religion.1 A few days later another incident from Mumbai again hit the
headlines – this time about a young Muslim girl, Misbah, being thrown out of
her house just because she is a Muslim.2 These two incidents are not isolated
incidents or mere ‘accidents’ in the Indian national landscape. Such dis-
crimination is more or less de rigueur in contemporary times. However, what
makes these two incidents stand out is that they somehow managed to cap-
ture the imagination of the national and social media and were catapulted
into subject matter for major discussion in the days that followed.
I start my chapter with these references because this is what I propose to
trace – the idea and the lived experience of being a Muslim in India in con-
temporary times, whereby this experience comes to be a haunting one on an
everyday basis. There is every bit of a ‘cultural trauma’ now attached to this
lived experience, which seems to have amplified with neo-liberalist views. Of
course, there have been those cataclysmic events in India such as Partition in
1947, the Babri Masjid demolition of 1992, the Gujarat riots of 2002,
Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 and so on, whereby Hindu-Muslim relations
have come to be redefined and the after-effects have lingered on to change the
idea of belonging and that of being a citizen-subject. The chapter will attempt
to engage with these ideas of belonging, citizenship, trauma and the everyday,
and being the ‘other’ simultaneously, through the artworks of Rummana
Hussain and through my own short video art piece, Refuse/Resist, since this
has the potential to introduce the everyday lived realities of a Muslim woman
in India through video and installation.
An analysis of this trauma also becomes the crux to examine how and what
a Muslim woman in contemporary India is. Of the many levels of identity, the
one that has become the dominant identity is this pre-supposed notion not
The trauma of being a Muslim woman in India 123
just by the hegemony but among Muslims themselves, of who a Muslim
woman should be. In my artwork and in the artworks of Rummana Hussain,
one can discern the need that we make to reclaim our identities as being
Muslim. This was because of the mediatized and the everyday violence in a
hegemonic and patriarchal society toward how we ought to be ‘treated’ since
we have this one identity amongst various others. Thus, the way I or Hussain
re-enact the everydayness of this identity demands a closer inspection about
whether it is a reinforcement of an identity that one did not really identify
with, or the identification with some nuance of modern-day Islam, that makes
one live out the Muslimness of one’s self. These are pertinent questions that
redefine how one struggles to reclaim this identity and yet at the same time
fight the mediatized and assumed identity within a patriarchal family and
society. This is a trauma that is being performed as resistance to the notion of
minority as well as the deep levels of oppression within contemporary Islam
itself.
Everyday violence, the Muslim and the citizen-subject

The rise of the everyday in contemporary art is usually understood in terms of
a desire to bring these uneventful and overlooked aspects of lived experience
into visibility.
(Johnstone 2008: 12)
The above quote by Johnstone consists of certain key words that are in the
scope of this chapter: the everyday, contemporary art, uneventful, lived
experience and visibility. Herein lies the clue to how one should proceed in
delineating arguments crucial to the understanding of what is it about the
everyday that concerns two Muslim women artists and their art. Veena Das in
her book Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, makes
a crucial distinction between the ‘event’ and the ‘ordinary’. Her construction
of the event is an ‘historical construct that constitutes a rupture’ (Das 2007:
223), and the idea of the event becomes more complex and intricate as ‘its
relation to language and to everyday life begins to unfold’ (ibid.). This event,
according to Das, becomes critical when it is unable to be enmeshed in
existing contemporaneous thought and action. Looking deeper into the
effects of the event, Das posits that ‘the event attaches itself with its tentacles
into everyday life and folds itself onto the recesses of the ordinary’ (ibid.: 1).
This entanglement of the everyday with the event as we now understand
forms the crux around which one must understand the art of Rummana
Hussain which is under consideration in this chapter, and my own artwork
Refuse/Resist, as these have come to be shaped by the trauma that the artists
have experienced in their identities of being the Muslim woman ‘other’ in the
nation-state.
Of the larger repertoire of artworks by Hussain, this chapter will examine
only two: Home/Nation (1996) and Is It What You Think? (1998), which were
124 Shaheen Salma Ahmed
distinctly marked by conterminous relationships that the artist felt with the
nation-state as a citizen after the cataclysmic moment of the Babri Masjid
demolition by militant Hindu nationalists in 1992 which altered the political,
social and cultural landscape of India for posterity. Ten years later, in 2002,
Gujarat erupted in one of the worst pogroms that the independent nation had
ever witnessed. Muslims in the state were targeted in a systematic violence
that officially lasted for three days and unofficially spilled over for two
months. In New York Times coverage of the riots, the report states that ‘over
a 1000 Muslims were killed, some 20,000 Muslim homes and businesses and
360 places of worship were destroyed, and roughly 150,000 people were dis-
placed’.3 This pogrom was perhaps the country’s first telegenic riot, with
endless news programs, live telecasts and print space dedicated to covering
them in ‘real time’. Rummana had already passed away by that time, suc-
cumbing to her long struggle with breast cancer in 1999. However, the tele-
vised spectre of gruesome violence against Muslims had already created a
rupture in my then teenaged impressionable mind, of the idea of being an
Indian. To say that it altered my perspective of being a Muslim and an Indian
for good would be an understatement. My dialectical engagement with this epi-
sode and, later, the banning of the burqa in parts of Europe finally culminated
in my 2011 video artwork, Refuse/Resist.
It is indeed difficult as the creator of an artwork to include a discussion of
that art in an authorial piece vis-à-vis another artist’s dealing with almost the
same kind of cultural trauma, but I take recourse to Benjamin Zachariah’s
argument for the inclusion of the intellectual and historical autobiography of
the historian (author, in this case) in order to ‘enable a reader to situate the
arguments provided [in this essay] within a context, and decide how to sift
the merely subjective from the intersubjective’ (Zachariah 2011: xviii).
Because, as we shall see, there is not just a striking similarity between the
works that this chapter shall discuss, but also in the subject position of both
the artists in question.
What now becomes crucial to locate is this idea of identity and citizenship –
the two tropes that along with trauma mark the artworks under con-
sideration. Geeta Kapur in a talk delivered at the artists-activist collective
Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT), in 2009, titled ‘Rummana’s
Question: Is It What You Think?’, spoke on the complicated notion of citi-
zenship that Hussain developed in the post-Babri Masjid demolition period of
1992. Kapur locates Hussain’s social designation as ‘privileged/progressive/
Muslim/woman/artist’, which is how I also visualize my identity, and which is
reflected in Refuse/Resist. Kapur’s dialogic engagement with Hussain’s
dilemma as a citizen-subject is best provided in this statement where she the-
orizes that ‘Rummana held on to a paradoxical claim: constitutionally, as an
Indian citizen, she would not consent to be the “other”, but at a moment in
history, she would test the limits of political belonging by embodying the
destabilized subject in what is deemed to be the constitutionally secure
sovereign state of India’ (Kapur 2009). What I propose here is that this
destabilization of the subject is not just limited to an historical event; I shall
go back to Veena Das’s argument and trace the spread of that event into
everyday life. In her understanding of the impact of Partition violence in
India, Das argues that ‘there is a mutual absorption of the violent and the
ordinary … so that the event as always attached to the ordinary as if there
were tentacles that reach out from the everyday and anchor the event to it in
some specific ways’ (Das 2007: 7).
It is this very ordinary that affects the nature of identity and, thereby, citi-
zenship in an individual. This in turn is formed by the nature of violence that
one encounters in the everyday. Saitya Brata Das, in his Introduction to the
book Weight of Violence: Religion, Language, Politics, raises some pertinent
questions about the nature and immanence of violence itself. He argues that
one ought not to just look into violence as only ‘religious’ or ‘linguistic’, etc.,
but raise questions on the immanence of violence and try to locate the source
of the originary violence. Thus, in order to critique violence, Das argues that:
… a possible critique of violence can only be an infinite interrogation of

the historical world at any given moment where violence is seen not as
one particular question amongst others but in a more fundamental and in
a more originary manner, an interrogation which seeks to disclose the
grounds of its appeal to legitimacy and ultimately to its justification.
(Das 2015: xiii)
Thus, this critique of violence is almost rendered to the periphery in the

world’s largest democracy, when impunity has been granted to the perpe-
trators of violence against Muslims by those belonging to hegemonic Hindu
identity.4 Psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar explains the nature of communal vio-
lence in India and states that the nature of this violence is very different from
any other kind of riot pertaining to other aspects of identity such as caste,
language, etc., in that communal riots are the ‘most violent and difficult to
control’ (Kakar 1995: 51). He provides an explanation for religious (commu-
nal) riots being the most virulent form of riots because ‘the particular conflict,
generally a blend of religious, political and economic aims, becomes imbued
with religious ultimacy. In other words, the issues at stake become life and death
issues through an arsenal of ideational and ritual symbols’ (ibid.: emphasis
mine). This nature of violence then raises questions about the ontological
premise of religion itself and its relation to violence. Can violence be delinked
from religion?
Saitya Brata Das provides an insight into this ontology and moves back
into the etymological genesis of religion to propose that ‘from the very ety-
mological meanings of religion, we refer to at once its blinding and commu-
nal de-linking and fractural characteristics, a generosity of being and a
violence of existing’ (Das 2015: xiv). This violence demands closer inspection
with the construct of the modern nation-state and its intricacies with the neo-
liberal economy, which forms its foundational base. David Graeber, in his
influential book Debt: The First 5000 Years, brings forth the relationship with
the market economy and the nation-state. He argues that ‘the genealogy of
the modern redistributive state – with its notorious tendency to foster identity
politics – can be traced back not to any sort of primitive communism, but
ultimately to violence and war’ (Graeber 2011: 113). Taking off from Grae-
ber’s argument now brings us to the contentious issue of identity politics and
citizenship in this modern, or rather postmodern, nation-state.
Sudhir Kakar while writing about the basis of a ‘national’ (and thereby a
Hindu) identity formation in India posits that the defining principle in the
idea of national identity is territory. Kakar explains further that for the secu-
larist (or liberal) Hindu as well as the nationalist Hindu, the territoriality of
the nation is what makes and defines India and the identity of an Indian:
In the secular imagination, the territorial notion of India, emphasized for

twenty-five hundred years since the times of the Mahabharata, is of a
land stretching from the Himalayas in the north to Kanyakumari in the
south, from the Arabian Sea in the west to the Bay of Bengal in the
east … and these boundaries are conterminous with the ‘sacred geo-
graphy’ of the Hindu nationalist whose hallowed pilgrimage sites mark
off essentially the same boundaries of the country, although the Hindu
nationalist would go back further into mythic history than two and a half
millennia to date the origin of the sites.
(Kakar 1995: 49)
I speak about the territoriality of identity formation in the Indian context

because this becomes a defining agenda in how the Muslim is seen as the
political as well as the cultural ‘other’ in the Indian landscape, as we shall see
further in the chapter.
Charu Gupta writes on identity formation as ‘the very process by which the
multiplicity, contradiction and instability of the subjectivity is signified as
having coherence, continuity, stability; as having a core – a continually chan-
ging core but the sense of a core nonetheless’ (Gupta 2001: 323). I argue that
this core is the focus through which the citizenship of the individual is then
decided or located. In this context, Toby Miller’s demarcation of the different
types of citizenship comes in handy. Miller writes that:
the last two hundred years of modernity have produced three zones of
citizenship with partially overlapping but also distinct historicities … and
these are
a the political (conferring the right to reside and vote)

b the economic (the right to work and prosper)
c the cultural (the right to know and speak)
(Miller 2011: 57)
I intend to examine the formation of the Muslim citizen-subject through
the prism of the ‘cultural citizen’, since this provides an apt lens to look into
the political subjectivity of the Muslim in India today and the building up of
not just an individual but also an identity of the community (or group as put
forth by Kakar). Zoe Anderson in her essay ‘The Border is Everywhere:
Excursions in the Politics of Identity’, discusses the dialectics of cultural
identity formation and the nation-state. While locating ‘the nation as an
increasingly ambiguous model for understanding the movement of people’,
she argues that ‘the desire for an authentic identity in an otherwise frag-
mented world has become more apparent. A search for authenticity and a
reaffirmation of cohesive identification, has come to redefine cultural belonging’
(Anderson 2012).
Thus, the popular Hindu nationalist refrain against Muslims during a
communal riot is Bābar kī santān, jāo Pākistān (Children of Babar, go to
Pakistan), or even in recent times, the many exhortations by politicians of the
ruling Hindu nationalist party in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
asking beef eaters (or implicitly and not so implicitly, Muslims) to leave the
country and go to Pakistan.5 This is an explication of the militant Hindu
ideology of Muslims being the foreigner other in India, the progeny of foreign
invaders, destroyers of the Somnath temple, who to date have maintained
their status quo of being Muslims and not Indians.
From this perspective, the individual subjectivity of a Muslim is subsumed
by the rather overarching stereotype of their religious identity as propounded
by the hegemonic Hindu populace. In this regard it is important to under-
stand the idea of what is or forms group identity. On identity, Sudhir Kakar
argues ‘the notion of the group aspect of identity which is constituted of a
person’s feelings and attitudes towards the self as a member of an ethnic/
religious/cultural/collectivity’ (Kakar 1995: viii). Kakar further adds that this
group identity can be viewed as an extended part of the individual self-
experience and ‘it can range from feelings of nominal affiliation with the
group to a deep identification or even feelings of fusion, where any perceived
harm to the group’s interests or threats to its honour are reacted to as strongly
as damage to one’s own self ’ (ibid.: ix). This is important to keep in mind
since during conflict or tension, the group identities of individuals, either
Hindu or Muslim, increase. To go back to the territorial definition of the
Hindus’ national identity, Kakar locates this perceived threat to the Hindus in
the ‘issue of the country’s territorial integrity, which the Muslim seems to
threaten either through a demonstrative identification with pan-Islamic causes
or in the demand for a separate cultural identity’ (ibid.: 52).
What needs to be added to this argument is the engendered citizen-subject
searching for her cultural identity in this fragmented geo-political landscape.
Gupta, while tracing the formation of the Hindu nationalist identity in colo-
nial India in the late nineteenth century in Uttar Pradesh, emphasizes the way
the woman’s body was used in a patriarchal society increasingly to demarcate
the ‘us and them’, which is the Hindu and the Muslim ‘other’. This argument
links us back to the ties between religion, violence and the modern nation-
state. Gupta suggests that ‘there is a fundamentalist conviction that the family
is the natural home of religion, and that self-sacrificing wives and mothers are
its exalted, pivoted guardians and crisis and transition may bring about an
exaggerated reliance on their role as a refuge of the assaulted community
identity’ (Gupta 2001: 8). She further argues that women are viewed essen-
tially as the bearers and guardians of the ethnic race and ‘this aids the con-
striction of the other catering to a hysterical protective anxiety about
numbers, where the men and women of the other are imagined as being more
sexually charged and more fertile’ (ibid.). What this argument proves at this
juncture is how the ‘other’ is created through symbols and representations, as
Shahid Amin says that this ‘sense of belonging to the present nation
involves the creation and replication of a sense of “them” and “us” through
icons, stories and narratives’ (Amin 2005: 2). This representation of a per-
ceived reality is of utmost importance since ‘representation implies what
should be rather than what actually is, a mapping of ideology rather than
reality, the process of becoming rather than being’ (Gupta 2001: 11).
To put this in the perspective of the structuring of the group identity of the
Muslim, or the ‘primitive other’ (as Gupta puts it succinctly), the Muslim is
‘demonized as the rapist who is supposedly attacking “our” women’ (Gupta
2001: 9), and this ultimately justifies a violent confrontation with the Muslims
by the Hindus.
As we have read earlier on the justification of violence by the nation-state,
what needs to be added here is that this stereotyping of the ‘other’ is exactly
what leads to a rupture in the notion of citizenship in India because ‘this
stereotyping of the enemy group involves a progressive devaluation which can
extend to the point of dehumanization … making the enemy nonhuman is to
avoid feeling guilty about destroying “it” in the riot that is imminent’ (Kakar
1995: 55). Thus, the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 by
militant Hindu nationalists, described by Ashish Rajadhyaksha (1994) as a
‘holocaust’, can be seen as a symbolic obliteration of the Muslim identity in
the country. This destruction was widely protested against all over India,
which only led to a ‘further consolidation and demonstration of a militant
Hindu identity’ (Kakar 1995: 52) that led to the highly polarized situation
between Muslims and Hindus and to the deadly Bombay riots of 1992–93.
This is the trauma that was inflicted in the consciousness of the Muslim citi-
zens of the country in 1992 and which was again reinforced more violently in
2002, and the critical markers of the art of Rummana Hussain and the video
artwork by the author, Refuse/Resist.
This trauma of the violence inflicted by the hegemony on the Muslims must
not only be read in terms of violence by the Hindus on the Muslims’ psyche.
Sameera Khan’s essay ‘Negotiating the Mohalla: Exclusion, Identity and
Muslim Women in Mumbai’ lists in painstaking detail how the riots affected the
cultural and political identities of Muslims in Mumbai after 1992–93, and
how Muslim women had to adhere to rigid patriarchal and religious codes in
the name of safety. Just as Charu Gupta points out about the idea of the
woman’s body as a marker of that created revivalist Hindu nationalist identity
in the colonial period, Khan writes about how the safety of Muslim women
post-riots became a marker of the community’s ‘honour and safety’, as
‘restrictions imposed on Muslim women by their own community are closely
linked to the exclusion of the Muslim community as a whole’ (Khan 2007:
1527). Just as I have argued earlier on the nature of communal violence and
how it has affected the barbaric Muslim ‘other’, Sameera Khan writes speci-
fically about the status of the Muslim community in Mumbai after the 1993
riots, where she says that ‘the riots in connection with the bomb blasts that
followed in March 1993, have communalized relations between Muslims and
other communities to such an extent that the Mumbai Muslim is now a
pariah, increasingly marginalized from the mainstream, displaced and exclu-
ded from many of the city’s heterogeneous spaces’ (Khan 2007: 1528). The
very first references that I started this chapter with, reinforce even in 2016
what she had written almost a decade ago. As a consequence of the violence
that engulfed the community, Khan posits that due to an increasing other-
ization of Muslims, the community is almost always looked down upon with
hostility and it habitually fears violence as well as having led to an emergence
of neo-fundamentalist Muslim forces which are entrenching their rigid ideol-
ogies in the community’s ghettos. Thus, ‘Muslim women not only have less of
a chance to venture out of community boundaries but also that their move-
ments and behavior are more closely policed by their families and commu-
nity’ (ibid.: 1529). The activities of the Tablighi Jamaat which was founded in
India by M. Ilyas in 1926 to purify Islam of Hindu and Christian influences
and the impact of the ultra-orthodox Saudi Arabian Wahabism have ‘fostered
a new religiosity that threatens to make the community inward looking, thus
isolating it further from the mainstream’ (ibid.: 1530). Hence, there has been
a palpable resurgence of enforced hijāb and burqa amongst Muslim women of
the community6 in Mumbai as conservatism has increased manifold in the
post-riots period, which Khan argues has led to the diminishing of women’s
agency in terms of their ability to negotiate domestic violence.
In the everyday, then, Muslim women ‘negotiate the risks of violence –
public and private – interwoven with questions of identity’ (Khan 2007:
1531). Thus, this cultural trauma becomes ‘encrypted in the everyday life and
it links the traumatic experiences to a subjective individual existence’ (Rajen-
dran 2013: 17). This is the entry point through which one ought to engage
with Rummana Hussain’s works Home/Nation and Is It What you Think?, as
she transgresses the boundaries of identity formation imposed by the nation-
state or by the religion into which she was born. According to Geeta Kapur,
Hussain’s discourse drew on the ‘female body which is the first object-sign to
come under scrutiny when historical events overtake routine norms of social
existence’ (Kapur 2009: 1). Amelia Jones argues that there is a complexity of
identity vis-à-vis the body, for instance ‘being the category “woman” which is
as dispersed through racial, ethnic, class and other differences as it is
coherent’ (Jones 1998: 215). Here in Indian polity, the woman’s body is
clearly marked out as either the Hindu image of the Mother Goddess or
Mother India (Bharat Maata), or that of the Muslim ‘other’. Identity, then, as
I argued earlier:
… is perceptible only through a relation to an other – which is to say, it is

a form of both resisting and claiming the other, declaring the boundary
where the self diverges from and merges with the other. In that declara-
tion of identity and identification, there is always loss, the loss of not-
being the other and yet remaining dependent on that other for self-seeing,
self-being.
(Phelan 1993: 13)
I argue that self-seeing of identity as proposed by Phelan should be put into

the context of the image and its representation of trauma by the artists under
discussion. Anushka Rajendran argues that cultural trauma needs to be
represented, because the ‘construction of the traumatic event becomes instru-
mental in the way it is processed by the community’ (Rajendran 2013: 49).
However, Clayton Crockett in his essay ‘Capital Violence’ insists that we exist
in a hyper-visual culture and are under a constant barrage of images, as Paul
Virilio cites in his book The Art of the Motor, that the technical creation of
images screens us from reality, and screens us from ourselves, and this is
both an aesthetic and a military project. Crockett then questions: ‘are we
reeling under the blows of these images and what are the possibilities for
either making sense or for fighting back (the impact of the images)?’
(Crockett 2015: 141).
So how do we sift images necessary to construct the trauma of the com-
munity and the individual, and how would the new image that is created be
distinctive from the previous category? Saitya Brata Das states that language is
powerless to describe traumatic events. However, this does not lead to the
abandonment of language. ‘Rather it is the self-transcendence of language
that resonates in the creative works of art and literature which can have cath-
artic effect, a new mode of cognition that offers redemptive possibilities for
us’ (Das 2015: xx). Thus, one can make a distinction between images of trauma
and those images that redeem the trauma of our collective consciousness
through its very marker of being a piece of art.
However, to problematize this position of an artistic image further, Jeffery
Alexander’s identification of the Weberian notion of ‘carrier groups’ to denote
the collective agents who carry out the process of trauma construction in
accordance with their ‘ideal and material’ interests, ‘as they are situated in
particular places in the social structure, and they have … [the agency] … to
do so in the public sphere’ (Alexander 2004:11), is helpful. Some of these
carrier groups that he identifies are religious, aesthetics, mass media, state
bureaucracy, etc. Though the ‘aesthetic’ and the ‘mass media’ are then placed
parallel to each other, the ‘aesthetic’ aids in trauma construction by
subverting what popular media posit and can be understood through Bruno
Latour’s concept of the iconoclash.
For this, one first has to understand the relationship that religion shares
with the mass media, and especially in the visual landscape of India, where
religion has become fundamental in this ‘sovereign, secular Republic’ to
identify its citizens. Boris Groys makes an important observation about reli-
gion in the modern age, that ‘the modern age has not been the age in which
the sacred has been abolished but rather the age of its dissemination in pro-
fane space, its democratization, its globalization’ (Groys 2011: 23). Thus,
Saitya Brata Das’s argument about epistemological violence inherent in reli-
gion is further fine-tuned by Groys’s observation, making clear the incestuous
relationship shared between mass media and religion, which further illus-
trates how violence in the name of religion is percolated every day through
images. Media and religion are enjoined like a pair of Siamese twins, and the
observation that Groys and Weibel make in their essay ‘Religion as Medium’
that ‘right from the start, through the demand for repeatability embodied by
the ritual, religion was not only bound to media, but was itself a medium:
religion as medium complements media as religion’ (Groys and Weibel 2011: 9),
drives home the point.
Rummana Hussain’s artworks and Refuse/Resist work through the idea
of the iconoclash by subverting mass media-generated images to construct the
trauma the artists have experienced as Muslim women citizen-subjects
through the trauma of the ‘everyday’, after the Babri Masjid demolition, the
2002 riots and now in 2016 with a Hindu nationalist government ruling the
country. These everyday traumas may be neither grand nor spectacular; they
are, however, the daily traumas that Muslim women have especially lived with
through these two cataclysmic events on a daily basis and the articulation of
which allows the artist the possibility to negotiate the everyday fissures and
fragmentation of being a Muslim and a woman. The iconoclash refers to the
‘struggle around images in which those that seek to destroy images inevitably
unleash the forces that will create more of them’ (Pinney 2015). As we proceed
with a critical dissemination of the artworks, we shall see how this iconoclash
has assisted in the representation of cultural trauma.
Anushka Rajendran reads Hussain’s Home/Nation as a literal title for the
installation where ‘the artist views spectacular violence that has written itself
into the consciousness of the nation from a personal, subjective vantage point,
denoted by home’ (Rajendran 2013: 60). As Geeta Kapur further explains this
installation, ‘there was on offer bits of a fictional subject called the Muslim
woman, her life configured by predictable tokens of longing, preening and
voyeuristic aspirations towards the real-remote world, adding up to a delicate
(and classically repressed) eroticism’ (Kapur 2009: 2). Rajendran further
describes the installation as a response to the events of 1992 where Hussain
read ‘the event as a Muslim woman, treating the violation of the national civil
sphere as the violation of her own body, juxtaposing images of both in the
installation’ (Rajendran 2013: 60). The installation drew upon a range of
Figure 6.1 Rummana Hussain, Is It What You Think?, black and white photographs,
text on paper (in five parts)
(Photo courtesy of Talwar Gallery, New York, New Delhi © Estate of Rummana
Hussain)
materials, diverse and dialectically problematizing her relationship with the

nation – which included newspaper reports of the destroyed dome of the
Babri Masjid, images of the grave of a forgotten Sufi saint, Urdu poetry, and
images of her maid Indu who died of AIDS.
Ashish Rajadhyaksha draws an intriguing parallel between the body of the
artist and the symbolic dome of the Babri Masjid, the demolition of which by
the Hindu nationalists was reprinted and replayed endlessly by the media. He
proposes that ‘the body is the icon, the icon the dome – and this cross
between the personal and the perverted nature of Hindutva neo-nationalism,
in the way it also constructs a female identity – is one of the dark areas that
Rummana explores’ (Rajadhyaksha 1994).
Hussain navigates the banal everyday and the quotidian in this installation
by also employing materials such as cheap trinkets, feminine items like tinsel,
a hair pin, surmā-dānī, sewing kit, etc., and personal memorabilia like a lock
of hair, among other paraphernalia. The installation was fragmented and not
a coherent gesture, as Kapur explains: ‘Home/Nation worked through a set of
Figure 6.2 Rummana Hussain, Is It What You Think? (detail)

(Photo courtesy of Talwar Gallery, New York, New Delhi © Estate of Rummana
Hussain)
displacements where nothing added up, not certainly a citizen-subject in the
proper sense’ (Kapur 2009: 4). This fragmented being of Home/Nation brings
to mind Veena Das’s idea of the fragment where she argues that ‘fragments
allude to a particular way of inhabiting the world, say, in a gesture of
mourning’ (Das 2007: 5). Rummana Hussain’s interspersal of the quotidian
and the familiar everyday objects into a site of extreme communal and per-
sonal trauma brings to light the interface between the public and the private
spheres of the artist which is also noticeable in her other artwork and in my
own work. This is almost like a ritualist gesture of mourning; mourning for
the death and loss of the Muslim woman citizen-subject in a communally
divided India.
Rummana’s video performance art work Is It What You Think? (1998)
functioned on the premise of her being a self-proclaimed atheist Muslim
woman in an already ruptured nation-state divided into the binary opposi-
tions of Muslim and Hindu. She was already losing her long battle with
breast cancer and even though she had had a mastectomy, she did not live
long (she died in 1999). She uses this maimed, mutilated, cancer-ridden body
as her personal traumatic experience, juxtaposing it with the wounds that
were inflicted on her in her encounter with the nation-state. She sits on a chair
in this piece, dressed in black lace undergarments with a prosthetic inside her
bodice, a golden parandā 7 attached to her false long plait, and reading from
a self-written text that is wrapped in a fashion to give it the appearance of the
holy Qur’an. However, the text consisted of questions that she perhaps asked
herself as a Muslim woman in India who finds her agency increasingly diffi-
cult to negotiate – whether with the Islamic neo-fundamentalists or with the
communal Indian nation-state. The questions that she asks in the performance,
which she reads out in a matter-of-fact voice, are:
Where does she belong? Is she behind a veil? Have you defined her? Does
she go into her shell? Have you pushed her? What does the press say? Do
social conditions alter her behavior? Does she wash herself ? Is it a pre-
requisite? Where does she wash? Does she have breasts? Or has she had a
mastectomy? Does she have kinky sex? Does she cover her body and wear
transparent clothes? Have you defined her? Has she fought battles? Have
they been forgotten? Has she joined a revolution? Which movement has
she joined? Has she fought for her rights? How do you interpret that? Do
you think that she believes in the jihad? Did you read it in today’s news-
paper? Is this a love song? Did she fight the colonisers? Did she die for it?
Or does she sit behind her veil? Is she educated? Or did you deprive her of
that description? Did her father permit her? Does she live behind closed
doors? Does she clean, sweep and cook for her family? Does that sound
familiar? Is she like you? Can you imagine that? Have you slotted her? Is
she the other? Does she follow the preachers? Have you defined her? Does
she have any options? Are her beliefs an escape? Or a security? Or a
habit? Or a choice? Do you find her mysterious? Do you want to focus on
her? Do you want to crack the secret? Could she be you? Do sounds have
any association? Do you connect them with her? Does she read the red
book? Is she me? Are your associations a fantasy? What language does
she speak? Does she listen to you? Has she heard your descriptions of
her? Has it made her insecure? Is she you? Would you accept that? Have
you forced her into a corner? Is that why she opposes you? Or has she
retreated into her shell? Have you defined her, slotted her? Where can
she go? Does she resort to her faith? What are her options? Does she
chant her prayers? Have you identified her? Has she a lover? Do his fin-
gers touch her body? Does she force them up? Is she ecstatic? Do you
believe her? Does she believe you? Does she have soft breasts? Or has she
had a mastectomy? Has she been mutilated? Can she bear the pain?
Are your words like scissors? Does she carry a knife? Does she chop
vegetables? Does she laugh? Does she feel threatened? Is she afraid of
ethnic cleansing? Does she threaten you? Does her privacy offend you?
Are you confused between resistance and war? Do you think that she has
radical views? Do you think she can articulate them? Do you think her
voice has been stifled? Is that fact or fiction? Have you defined her? Is she
the other? Do you pity her? Is that your construct? Is it a predicament?
(Kapur 2009: 8)
In this blasphemous invocation of her plight as the citizen-subject, Hussain

subverts the mediatized image of a religious Muslim woman and thereby
brings forth the idea of the iconoclash.
Refuse/Resist also undertakes this position of the iconoclash. This one
minute 19 seconds video has me first framed by the camera in the way crim-
inals are framed for their mug shots by the police. I then shave my head and
wear a burqa on screen (Figure 6.3 and Figure 6.4). This is followed by three
shots of me holding a slate on which I write consequently – Muslim, Burqa,
Not a Terrorist. I am next shot in stills where I am smoking a cigarette while
wearing the burqa. As I mentioned earlier, the 2002 riots earlier and most
recently the global Islamophobia which saw the banning of the burqa in many
European countries in 2010 and 2011, found its articulation of the cultural
trauma in this work. I personally have never worn the hijāb, veil or burqa, but
in response to the ‘communitarian violence’ against Muslims, my articulation
formed in appropriating for myself the image of the burqa as a piece of
resistance as opposed to the West’s and the Hindu right’s articulation of the
garment being associated with terrorism or backwardness. I sought to express
a powerful articulation of my resistance to such xenophobic perceptions of
the burqa and Muslims in my artwork.
Thus, Rummana’s artworks and Refuse/Resist also put into place an ico-
noclash that reverts the gaze into the subjectivity of the artist. Though they
are definitely not popular or mass media-generated images, Home/Nation, Is
It What You Think? and Refuse/Resist ‘resists every item comprising the cult
of the image’ (Latour 2002: 11). This is also, I propose, what makes art so
Figure 6.3 Still from Shaheen Ahmed, Refuse/Resist

(Photo courtesy Shaheen Ahmed)
Figure 6.4 Still from Shaheen Ahmed, Refuse/Resist

(Photo courtesy Shaheen Ahmed)
cathartic and the aesthetic to be an alternative sphere to the mainstream in

articulating cultural trauma. Contemporary art, according to Latour, has
worked so consistently on demystifying the image that there is nothing reli-
gious or sacred anymore, ‘everyone and every detail of what art is and an
icon is, an idol, a sight, a gaze, has been thrown into the pot to be cooked and
burnt up’ (Latour 2002: 11). Through the installation or the video art of both
artists, the symbolic is no longer meant to be just a means of otherization by
the hegemony. It becomes their tool for resistance and articulating the trauma
of the collective and the individual.
Conclusion
This chapter dealt extensively with the very idea of being a Muslim citizen-
subject in contemporary India and the implications that it entails. The argu-
ments provided showed how stereotyping of the Muslim ‘other’ has led to
many consequences in which invariably the Muslim woman has to face vio-
lence on an everyday basis, within her communitarian Muslim society, and
the consequences of how the nation-state treats its Muslim citizen subjects. Of
course, utopias do not exist and one cannot wish away religion from the
contemporary nation-state. This is articulated by Crockett when he argues
that ‘in a postmodern and a post-colonial world, we cannot completely
divorce the religious and the secular, or the public realm of civil and political
law from the private sphere of religious belief, so we cannot simply shore up
the public realm by pushing religion back to the private where it belongs’
(Crockett 2015: 149). Moreover, to add emphasis, although the Constitution
of the country provides for India being a secular republic, religion has been
an intricate concept intertwined with the entire idea of Indian-ness. In such a
situation, the violence cannot be contained, especially so in a neo-liberal
market economy.
The violence against the barbaric Muslim ‘other’, the children of Babar,
will continue to proliferate. However, as we have seen, the aesthetic provides
for an articulation of the trauma that the collective as well as the individual
experiences, and this articulation is indeed cathartic and offers the subject as
well as the viewer a redemptive quality. In Rummana Hussain, I locate this
redemptive quality in the way she positioned her mutilated female body,
implicated in its personal and collective trauma, in her artworks. Rajadhyak-
sha (1994) proclaims that ‘for Rummana, the female body was fundamentally
implicated in the communal violence (of 1992–93)’. According to Sasha Altaf,
Rummana ‘sought to develop a new aesthetic language, one that could
express the tensions and contradictions she saw as being in opposition to the
prevailing concepts of history and identity: the equivocal relationship of an
individual to a physical and cultural space’ (Altaf 2012: 35). What I find
redemptive in all the artworks that this chapter discussed is the way the artists
produced sites where ‘particularities are both contested and affirmed’ (Jones
1998: 202).
Amelia Jones discusses the work of Native American artist James Luna,
but I believe her understanding of Luna’s works provides us with an insight
into how Hussain’s performance and installations created the iconoclash and
dislodged that stereotype of the Muslim woman from becoming an archetype.
Hussain’s ‘ironic approach to stereotypes refuses prescriptive notions expres-
sed within her community of how Muslim women must be articulated or
defined … the stereotypical Muslim woman is shown to be both a phantasm
and a politically strategic subject position’ (Jones 1998: 202). With the incor-
poration of the banal of the everyday life, the artworks discussed here have
allowed for the Muslim woman citizen-subject artist to navigate the personal
through the public eye, the everyday traumas of the artists’ identities of being
a Muslim woman in India, as they create their own powerful expositions of
violence, suppression and communalization. Thereby, it offers the community
an opportunity for ‘mourning’ that it requires to absorb ‘traumatic collective
violence that creates boundaries between nations and between ethnic and
religious groups’ (Das 2007: 16).
Notes
1 www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-32840862 (accessed May 23, 2015).
2 www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai/muslim-woman-alleges-being-thrown-out-of-mumba
i-flat-because-of-her-religion/article1-1351720.aspx (accessed May 28, 2015).
3 www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/06/world/asia/modi-gujarat-riots-timeline.htm
l?_r=0#/#time287_8192 (accessed May 24, 2015).
4 See news reports of bail being granted to perpetrators of the Gujarat massacres of
2002 like Babu Bajrangi this year, a consequence, many believe, of the Hindu
nationalist party BJP ruling at the centre (www.firstpost.com/india/naroda-patiya-ca
se-convict-babu-bajrangi-gets-3-month-bail-2209728.html; accessed May 14, 2015).
5 BJP Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s comments on ‘beef eaters should go to
Pakistan from India’, for example (www.firstpost.com/politics/cant-survive-withou
t-eating-beef-go-to-pakistan-says-union-minister-mukhtar-abbas-naqvi-2256928.html;
accessed May 23, 2015).
6 These repercussions, according to Khan, affected Muslim women in Mumbai
cutting across classes.
7 A colourful hanging that women in northern India, especially Punjab, tie at the
ends of their plaits.
7 Who is in? Who is out?
Social vs political space in the Sufi shrines
of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai and Syed Pir
Waris Shah in Sindh and Punjab, Pakistan
Uzma Rehman
Introduction
The social and symbolic space of Sufi shrines in South Asia is multivalent.
Not only does it accommodate multifarious social and ritual activities, but it
also incorporates a wide variety of meanings and interpretations related to
devotional and religious beliefs as well as political interests attached to the
role of Sufi shrines. Sufism in general is considered an ‘emotive, multivalent
and contested’ tradition (Rozehnal 2004: 116; Rozehnal 2006). The Sufi
shrine culture in Pakistan is in particular imbued with various con-
troversies (Ewing 1983: 251), given the fact that debates on Muslim identity
have been playing a crucial role in the establishment and maintenance of
religious institutions where governments have been involved, both directly and
indirectly.
For the past several decades, Sufi shrines all over the world have attracted
much scholarly attention. Sociological, anthropological and psycho-analytical
studies have been focused on Sufi shrines in South Asia (Ewing 1983, 1997;
Rozehnal 2007; Troll 1989; Werbner 2003; Werbner and Basu 1998). Most
studies of Sufi shrines focus on their ritual and social roles which have a sig-
nificant impact on their surroundings and those who visit. However, some stu-
dies have also focused on the political factors related to the shrine culture in
play (Philippon 2012, 2014; Rozehnal 2007). A few studies have also partially
explored the controversial aspects of the shrine culture in terms of the conflict
over distribution of power and control of the shrines between the government
and the hereditary successors of Sufi saints (Eaton 1978, 1984; Malik 1990).
Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of social space and social field described
as ‘a multi-dimensional space of positions such that every actual position can
be defined in terms of a multi-dimensional system of co-ordinates whose
values correspond to the values of the different pertinent variables’ (Bourdieu
1985: 724), this chapter explores how the multivalent social space of the
shrines of two Sufi saints who lived in the eighteenth century accommodated
controversies related to the nationalization of the shrines. In addition, the
article also explores how the fact that both Sufi saints are considered to be the
most popular Sufi poets interplays with the idea behind nationalization and
140 Uzma Rehman
administration of shrines by the government Auqaf Department. The chapter also
examines how identities of Muslim and non-Muslim devotees and visitors are
expressed and accommodated within the shared social space of the shrines.
The ethnographic research for this study is to a large extent based on
interviews and participant observation at the Sufi shrines (mazārs) of Waris
Shah in the village of Jandiala Sher Khan (dist. Sheikhupura, Punjab), and of
Shah Latif in the town called Bhit Shah (dist. Hyderabad, Sindh), Pakistan
during 2005–06. This study is a part of my PhD research, in which I explored
how identities (specifically, religious identities) are constructed in the Sufi
mazārs of Waris Shah and Shah Latif, the two eighteenth-century Sufi poets.
My PhD thesis also attempted to demonstrate how identities of pilgrims and
devotees are expressed and accommodated through multiple forms of
expression – namely, social, sacred, ritual and literary – at the shrines of
Waris Shah and Shah Latif (Rehman 2011). This chapter explores the ways in
which social and political space is created in the mazārs and how Muslim and
non-Muslim identities are played out and negotiated within these spaces.
While other studies have focused on the longstanding controversy sur-
rounding the Sufi tradition (Philippon 2011b, 2014), this article will focus on
the politics of nationalization as well as multivalent social space within these
mazārs that allow access to visitors to partake in saints’ blessings and empow-
erment through recognition of their diverse social and religious backgrounds
as well as variety of motives for visiting.
This article rests on the following arguments:
The mazārs of Waris Shah and Shah Latif have been functioning under the
control of the government through its Auqaf Department since the nationali-
zation policy of earlier governments in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Earlier,
like hundreds of other shrines in Pakistan, these two mazārs were exclusively
managed by the custodians, both hereditary and non-hereditary. This transfer
of power and control from the successors of the buried saint-poets to the
government has strained relations between the two. The tensions surrounding
the issue of control of the mazārs’ economy and their management have
created a political dimension to the question of belonging.
Both Syed Pir Waris Shah and Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai have composed
poetry that occupies a central position in the literary and folk traditions of
Punjab and Sindh, respectively. The Punjabi and Sindhi folk and literary tra-
ditions are closely tied with the Sufi kalām, poetry and music. For centuries,
these Sufi poets have been celebrated as most important representatives of the
Sufi and folk poetry, as both have used popular folk stories of Hir Ranjha,
Sassi Punnu, Umar Marvi and several others. Not only do Waris Shah
and Shah Latif command respect among diverse social circles for having
written most popular poetry, but they are also considered pioneers of their
respective languages, i.e. Punjabi and Sindhi. In this article I explore whether
the government’s involvement in the management of shrines is fueled by the
linguistic significance and cultural popularity of the saints and hence their
mazārs.
Who is in? Who is out? Social vs political space 141
The mazārs of Waris Shah and Shah Latif are visited by people with
diverse social and religious backgrounds for a variety of reasons such as
obtaining the saints’ blessings due to their sayyid background and personal
merit as well as due to miracles associated with the saints, performance of
rituals at their mazārs, etc. This chapter will also explore the ways in which
Muslim and non-Muslim devotees and visitors legitimize each other’s pre-
sence at the shrines due to the notion of baraka (spiritual blessings) associated
with the Sufi shrine culture and how they perceive the interreligious appeal of
the mazārs.
First, the chapter will review the political processes that led to the natio-
nalization of the religious institutions including major Sufi shrines in Paki-
stan. Second, it will provide brief biographical accounts of Waris Shah and
Shah Latif and a brief introduction to the local significance and popularity of
Jandiala Sher Khan and Bhit Shah, the respective locations of the mazārs.
Third, I will discuss how the mazārs are organized and administered, and the
various controversies between the government-run administration and the
hereditary successors of the saints regarding the control of the mazārs’ econ-
omy. Finally, this chapter will provide an overview of the different categories
of visitors and devotees at the shrines, their social and religious backgrounds,
their motives for attending the mazārs, and insight about how devotees and
visitors of Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds perceive and legitimize each
other’s presence at the mazārs.
References to the legendary history

Shah Latif (1689–1752) was born in a sayyid family in Hala Haveli about 80
miles from Bhit Shah (Hyderabad district, Sindh). His great grandfather Shah
‘Abdul Karim Bulri is thought to be a great Sindhi saint and poet. His father,
Shah Habib, claimed much respect among the people of the area and is
thought to have received education in spiritual matters. His poetry, known as
Shāh-jo-Risālo (the book of Shah), is most popular among the Sindhis – both
educated and illiterate. According to popular narratives, Shah Latif spent a
few years of his youth traveling in the company of Hindu yogis. Compelled by
his spiritual ordeals, he came to a solitary place covered in sand and settled
on a bhit (literally, sand dune) – a place where he spent the remaining days
of his life and where he is thought to have composed his poetry. The dargāh of
Shah Latif is situated in Bhit Shah (Hala Taluka) about six kilometers east of
Hala, northeast of Hyderabad, Sindh.
Waris Shah (1722–98) is said to have been born in a sayyid family that also
followed the tradition of pīrī-murīdī. 1 Waris Shah is said never to have mar-
ried nor did he have any children. As a young man, Waris Shah is thought to
have traveled to southern Punjab, settling for some time in a town called
Malka Hans. There he wrote his famous Hīr, based on the fifteenth-century2
legendary story of Hir-Ranjha, in a mosque in 1766. The mazār of Waris
Shah is situated in Jandiala Sher Khan, a small village on Hafiz Abad Road,
142 Uzma Rehman
and is located 15 kilometers from Sheikhupura in central Punjab. The present
structure of the Waris Shah Memorial Complex was built and completed in
1983, almost 200 years after the saint’s death.
‘Politicized space’: nationalization of Sufi shrines

Bourdieu’s (1989) concept of a ‘social field’ is also explained in terms of an
associated system of ‘symbolic power’ which results from a kind of political
struggle between multiple agents that represent the social world and/or con-
tribute to ‘constructing the view of the social world’. In his study of ‘Waqf in
Pakistan’, Jamal Malik (1990: 64) explains the reasons behind the policy of
nationalization of religious endowments in Pakistan in terms of:
a) protection of political interests since these endowments in the form of

religious schools, estates and shrines become meeting points for large
groups of people (esp. in the case of shrines) and centres for production
of religious as well as political leaders; b) state’s interests in financial
resources from shrines and schools, and c) bureaucratization of shrine
culture and endowments.
Controversies and ‘politicized’ debates surrounding the shrine culture in

Pakistan may be explained on two major accounts:
Disagreements between those following the Sufi path, shrine visitation

and saint veneration, and the puritanical Muslim groups as well as the
modern educated Pakistanis who may eulogize the saints as Sufi poets but
not as saints.
Tussle between saints’ descendants and sajjāda-nishīns and the government
Auqaf Department.
Since the establishment of Pakistan, the relationship between its Islamic

ideology and state identity has remained unresolved. This uncertainty opened
the way for the religious elites to play a political role; they had otherwise
isolated themselves from the fight for the establishment of Pakistan, arguing
that the independence movement was led by Western-educated secular-
minded political activists (Alavi 1988; Jawed 1999). Since the establishment of
Pakistan, the relationship between the state and the religious leaders has been
marked by ambivalence (Haqqani 2005: 3). In addition, the early death of the
first leader of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, left a vacuum in the coun-
try’s leadership. Simultaneously, the quest for political power led Pakistani
governments to align themselves with and claim authority over traditional
religious institutions. Several scholars have written about the involvement of
the political regimes in Pakistan in the religious affairs of society in pursuit of
political power (Ewing 1997; Shah 1996; Wink 1991). Some studies have also
explored links between the state, represented by civil and military regimes,
and religion in Pakistan and its impact on internal dynamics as well as on
Pakistan’s relations with the larger world (Abbas 2005; Haqqani 2005).
Inspired by Javed Iqbal’s book Ideology of Pakistan, where he had pro-
posed ‘abolition of shrines and the curbing of the influence of the Pirs and
‘ulema’ on behalf of modernist views’ (Jaffrelot 2012), Ayub Khan’s govern-
ment (1958–69) established the Ministry of Auqaf3 which was to take control
of Muslim endowments and institutions including mosques and shrines of
Sufi saints. The ministry’s functions included custodianship of the shrines
and mosques, regulation of their incomes, appointment of staff and super-
vision of rituals.4 Through its control of shrines, the Ministry of Auqaf aimed
to re-educate the rural illiterate masses on the personalities and roles of the
Sufi saints (Gilmartin 1984; Ewing 1997), whose graves were converted into
dargāhs and mazārs (places of visits and pilgrimage), while the authority of
the shrines’ custodians was reduced to a large extent (Ewing 1997). Whereas
the original ideas surrounding the government control of the shrines were
intended ‘to undercut the economic relationship between the pīrs and their
followers’ (Ewing 1997: 70), it was not an easy task given that to most people,
sajjāda-nishīns were not only the custodians of shrines, but were ‘seen to
possess blessing in their own right and thus to wield spiritual power over their
followers’ (ibid.).
Malik (1990: 67) also points out that the political power of hereditary pīrs
was used before and during the Pakistan movement by the British imperial
government as well as the Muslim League, the largest political party repre-
senting the Muslim minority in the Indian subcontinent. The ‘West Pakistan
Waqf Properties Rules’ of 1960 was established in order to curb the power of
saints and their hereditary successors – i.e. sajjāda-nishīns, mujāwars and ‘ulamā’,
and to pass authority to the hands of the government-run Auqaf Department.
This move was in contradiction to the Mussalman Wakf Validating Act,
1913, section 3 of which stated:
‘Waqf property’ means property of any kind permanently dedicated by a

person professing Islam for any purpose recognized by Islam as religious,
pious and charitable, but does not include property of any Waqf such as
is described under section 3 of the Mussalman Waqf for the time being
claimable for himself by the person by whom the Waqf was created or by
any member of his family or descendants.
(reproduced in Malik 1990: 74)
By introducing its control of shrines through the Auqaf Department, the

government attempted physically to occupy the space of shrines. More,
through its various initiatives such as publication of pamphlets, arranging
seminars, etc., it attempted to portray Sufi shrines as institutions of social
welfare and make a clear distinction between the Sufi saints and the sajjāda-
nishīns, mainly idealizing Sufi saints as spiritual and moral persons and
creating a negative image of hereditary pīrs due to their alleged corruption
144 Uzma Rehman
and embezzlement of the income from the mazārs. In addition, by taking over
the shrines, the state could also use them to ‘propagate their own interpreta-
tion of Sufism’ (Nasr 2001, cited in Rozehnal 2007: 24). However, the gov-
ernment itself could not evade criticism due to its interference in the shrines.
For example, it was criticized on the basis of running various projects with
the income generated through the donations made by devotees and pilgrims
as it did not reach the poor who had originally been helped through these
donations (Malik 1990: 74).
Despite its jurisdiction over the activities of the shrines, the Auqaf Depart-
ment has not been able to completely do away with the role of the sajjāda-
nishīns, who still claim popular support and allegiance. The state imposed
itself on the shrine structures although it was well aware that any harm to
shrines would bring public wrath on their heads. They therefore limited their
policies to the shrines’ leadership alone (Ewing 1983: 261).
The relationship between the Pakistani state and the mazārs did not com-
mence with the establishment of the Auqaf Department. It can be traced back
to the early Muslim rule in the Indian subcontinent. The early sultans and
Mughal rulers patronized khānqāhs and Sufi saints’ shrines (Eaton 1978).
Similarly, the British Raj also attempted to manipulate the Sufi tradition for
its political gains (Rozehnal 2007: 23). There were various factors that rein-
forced the relationship between the state and the mazārs. Some rulers showed
personal interest in the upkeep of the mazārs and venerated saints (ibid.: 99;
Titus 1990: 165). Others saw the saints’ hospices and shrines as a way of
gaining popular support since large numbers of the masses venerated saints
and resorted to their shrines (Nizami 1961: 323). Other rulers sought legiti-
macy for their rule in return for providing financial support to the mazārs.
However, with the establishment of a government department that runs the
management of the mazārs, the relationship between the state and the mazārs’
hereditary leadership (sajjāda-nishīns and mutawallīs) has been marked by
conflict. Some scholars have also concluded that the state’s relationship with
the Sufi tradition has been marked by ambiguity as the colonial and post-
colonial state’s policies ‘in fact, never fully erased a deep-seated ambivalence
toward contemporary Sufi masters and the continuity of Sufi ritual practices’
(Rozehnal 2007: 24).
The justification for the early Pakistani governments’ (the military regime
of Ayub Khan, 1959–69) steps towards nationalization of the mazārs was that
previously hereditary descendants of saints fought over the income of the
mazārs and plundered the offerings and donations made by the pilgrims (in
the form of money, chādars and animals) (Chaudhry 2002). According to the
administration of both the mazārs under consideration in this chapter, such
conflicts were also observed at the time when the Auqaf Department took
over the management of the mazārs. However, these views are not shared by
the saints’ descendants. As Ewing (1997: 83) pointed out, that conflict over
shrines’ takeover by the government depends on whether the descendants
depended entirely on shrines’ income.
Hereditary descendants and the shrine administration
After the nationalization of the mazārs in the late 1950s, the roles of the saj-
jāda-nishīns of Waris Shah’s and Shah Latif ’s mazārs related to the adminis-
tration and economy of the mazārs are substantially reduced leaving the
control of the mazārs’ administration in the hands of the government Auqaf
Department. However, they continue performing certain rituals and com-
mand general respect among devotees and pilgrims. The sajjāda-nishīn of
Shah Latif ’s dargāh, 12th in line and a middle-aged man, a descendant of
Saiyid Jamal Shah, thought to be the saint’s cousin or nephew, performs some
routine rituals. For example, he supervises/leads the rituals performed during
the night of the first Monday of each lunar month and on the third day of
the annual ‘urs. The sajjāda-nishīn of Waris Shah’s mazār does not seem to
participate actively in the mazār’s rituals.
The administration of Shah Latif ’s dargāh was taken over by the Auqaf
Department in the early 1960s when major steps were taken for the renovation
of the dargāh and the construction of attached buildings – i.e. a Bhit Shah Cul-
tural Center, an auditorium and a library were initiated (Baloch 1961),5 while
Waris Shah’s mazār was brought under the control of the Auqaf Department
in the early 1970s when the Waris Shah Memorial Committee was established for
the construction of the present Waris Shah Memorial Complex (Maalik n.d.).
There is minimum interaction between pilgrims, visitors and the mazārs’
administration. Similarly, the Auqaf Department does not maintain a record
of the daily visitors or pilgrims to the mazārs. The absence of a system of
registration allows pilgrims and visitors not to reveal their social or religious
identities, if they so prefer. Although the staff of the administration some-
times directs pilgrims in terms of rituals, its aim does not seem to be to
exercise authority over them. This means that pilgrims and visitors can freely
move in and out of the mazārs. Despite little interaction between the mazārs’
administration and the pilgrims or devotees, there is a necessary link between
them which is mostly related to the management of the mazārs. The role of
the administration in running the economy of the mazārs would be futile
without visitors. Similarly, a functioning administrative body provides the mazārs
with an institutional structure set up to cater for the needs of the visitors.
The ‘urs celebrations at the two mazārs are regularly attended by govern-
ment officials. Usually, a provincial chief minister, governor or minister
announces the inauguration and closing of the annual ‘urs celebrations at the
mazārs.6 At the mazār of Waris Shah, contests of Hīr recitation are arranged
by the Punjabi Language Board in association with college and university
professors from Lahore and Sheikhupura, while during the annual ‘urs cele-
brations at Shah Latif ’s dargāh, literary and musical events are arranged by
the Sindhi Language Authority in association with the Shah ‘Abdu’l Latif
Bhitai Chair of Karachi University. The provincial governments of Sindh and
Punjab may also declare a public holiday on the first day of the ‘urs at both
the mazārs.
146 Uzma Rehman
It is commonly observed in Sufi mazārs all over Pakistan that hereditary
(or spiritual) descendants of original saints occupy the position of sajjāda-
nishīnī (also called gaddī-nishīni) – i.e. successors of a Sufi saint and custodian
of their mazārs. Saints that do not have direct descendants are succeeded by
the descendants of their siblings, cousins, nephews, nieces or any other distant
family relations. However, some saints are succeeded by the descendants of
their close disciples.
At the time of my fieldwork in 2005–06, I interviewed the previous sajjāda-
nishīn of Shah Latif ’s dargāh,7 who explained that his father, the preceding
sajjāda-nishīn, was not in favor of their participation in politics or even asking
the government to be given more control in the matters of administration.
The sajjāda-nishīn also explained that though they had friendly relations with
the local government and its representatives, he considered the government’s
control of the mazār’s administration to be based on unjust policies. He
explained that in principle the government was to take over shrines that had
no direct descendants. However, since the mazār of Shah Latif and many
other Sufi saints had been under the care of their descendants for centuries,
the government was not justified in having imposed its control. Despite this
opinion, the sajjāda-nishīn claimed to have no conflict with the mazār’s admin-
istration. When asked, the majority of devotees and visitors at the shrines
explained that they had little interaction with the administration of the
mazār since their main purpose of visit was to pay greetings to the saint and
occasionally contact the sajjāda-nishīn (women contacting the mother of the
sajjāda-nishīn) to receive his blessings.
While expressing his ideas about the government’s involvement in the admin-
istration of the mazār, one of the close family members of the sajjāda-nishīn
said:
Our seat at the dargāh is averse to politics. Hence, the government may
have taken these steps [of managing the dargāh] for political aims or for
the country’s benefits or its personal interests, we do not react to either of
these. Why? Because we have nothing to do with politics. Hence we do not
consider it necessary to react to any of government’s interventions. Our job
is mainly to educate people about the message of Shah Latif. Our forefathers
also chose to remain neutral and not interfere with the government.8
The respondent also explained that though the government’s taking over the
dargāh was unjustifiable since the dargāh had been managed for centuries by
its direct descendants, their forefathers had handed over the dargāh, its economy
and all the property including 200–250 goats, 40–45 buffalos and 15–16 bul-
locks and cows that were owned by the sajjāda-nishīn, to the government. He
also expressed his surprise that the then sajjāda-nishīn handed over the entire
property owned by the dargāh to the government without resistance.
As opposed to the sajjāda-nishīn of Shah Latif ’s dargāh, the sajjāda-nishīn
of Waris Shah’s mazār, a descendant of Saiyid Qasim Shah, Waris Shah’s
brother, plays a limited role in the ritual activities held at the shrine. However,
he sometimes participates in the weekly and monthly Hīr-recitation gather-
ings. After the new complex of the mazār was built and administered by the
government, the saint’s descendants lost control of the mazār’s administration
and were totally excluded from its economic affairs. However, the successors
of Waris Shah’s brother still live in their ancestral home located around 200
meters to the eastern end of the mazār. Unlike the sajjāda-nishīn at Waris
Shah’s mazār, the sajjāda-nishīn of Shah Latif ’s dargāh appears to be in a
stronger position. Whereas the latter is well educated and economically well
off, the former lacks formal education and financially depends on the
donations and gifts from his murīds (disciples).
During my interview with the sajjāda-nishīn of Waris Shah’s mazār, I
sensed his antagonistic feelings towards the government since he and his
family no longer had control of the mazār and its income. It may not be for
economic reasons alone. Being custodians of shrines also brings prestige and
honor among devotees and visitors.
The relationship between the administration staff at the mazār of Waris
Shah and the sajjāda-nishīn of Waris Shah’s mazār did not seem any different.
My conversations with both parties – i.e. the manager of the Auqaf Depart-
ment at the mazār and the sajjāda-nishīn – revealed a kind of hidden rivalry
or at least a kind of grudge on behalf of both. The manager9 of the mazār
told me that there had been no direct connection between the sajjāda-nishīn
and the Waris Shah complex. He also said that the current sajjāda-nishīn did
not have spiritual credentials equal to his parents.
However, the sajjāda-nishīn at Waris Shah’s mazār himself did not hesitate to
state his own spiritual credentials. He also told me that his own murshid (spiritual
guide) had put him through various ordeals so he could gain spiritual benefits.
Not only that, but some of his murīds who were present during the interview
also confirmed his spiritual powers by dint of which he was able to contact
his disciples spiritually, no matter where they physically might be. The saj-
jāda-nishīn and his disciples frequently quoted verses from Waris Shah’s epic
poem, Hīr, in order to elaborate on their views about how life should be lived.
The manager also said that donations and gifts from his disciples were the
main source of income for the sajjāda-nishīn and that the family of the saj-
jāda-nishīn had no share in the income of the mazār. Neither did they have
any share in the income and donations deposited in the green cash box placed
by the government in the tomb chamber. The money from the cash box is
taken by the government and used for the maintenance of the Waris Shah
complex, salaries of the staff, public arrangements made in connection with
the annual ‘urs celebrations, etc.
The manager was also of the opinion that the sajjāda-nishīn and his family
were not entitled to receive any stipend from the government merely on the
basis of genealogical connection with the saint, and that ‘ethically’ they must
earn their own income and not depend on either the mazār’s income or the
government. While explaining his point of view, he cited examples from the
148 Uzma Rehman
life of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who advised the poor to work hard and
earn their own living rather than begging or depending on others’ income.
The views expressed by both sajjāda-nishīn and the manager of the mazār’s
administration reveal a kind of moralistic dilemma regarding the share of saints’
descendants in the economy of the mazār as well as how far the government
could get involved in the mazārs’ affairs.
The views of the manager of the mazār were shared by a few well-known
local intellectuals,10 academics and journalists from Lahore, who thought that
the current sajjāda-nishīn did not share the spiritual merits of Waris Shah or
his forefathers. Hence, they justified the government’s policy of taking over
the mazār and managing it without the help of the sajjāda-nishīn.
The critique of the current sajjāda-nishīn’s credentials, however, does not
overrule their importance particularly in the eyes of devotees and visitors who
consider them spiritual and hereditary successors of the saints to whom they
could resort for spiritual guidance. Interestingly, some devotees do not seem
to require sajjāda-nishīn’s help in order to convey their supplications to the
saints, who could in turn intercede with God on their behalf. During my visits
to both the mazārs, many devotees claimed that they considered Waris Shah
and Shah Latif to be their real spiritual guides, even though they sometimes
requested the sajjāda-nishīns for particular prayer formulas to heal their
physical or psychological illnesses.
The staff employed by the Auqaf Department at both the dargāhs seemed
to have great reverence for the saints. They claimed to have read about the
lives and the poetry of the saints and regularly participated in the public rendi-
tions of the poetry by devotees. Similarly, they also seemed to have opinions
about how the saints should be revered in a ‘proper’ manner.
Pakistani newspapers have also adopted an ambivalent approach to the
taking over of the shrines by the Auqaf Department. According to a news-
paper column, the Auqaf Department issued a letter to all commissioners and
deputy commissioners to keep a check on the ‘non-Sharia’ conformed activities
at the shrines with the help of the police, as the main purpose of the Auqaf
Department was to contain anti-Sharia activities at the shrines of saints.11
One of the journalists (identity not disclosed) from the Jang group of news-
papers present at the annual ‘urs at Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai said in a com-
plaining tone that the distribution of clothes to the poor during the first day
of ‘urs was a fraud and the chief minister of Sindh distributed the money and
the clothes to the same few women each year and the clothes were often made
out of the chādars laid on the tomb. He also said: ‘The Auqaf Department
and the government are busy in serving their own interests’ (March 11, 2006).
Linguistic and literary significance of mazārs

In his study, Malik (1990: 75) points out that, ‘as a rule the government of
Pakistan nationalized only profitable endowments’. In other words, only
popular and lucrative Sufi shrines were brought under the jurisdiction of the
Auqaf Department. Similarly, the government attempted to portray Sufi
saints as poets, social reformers and scholars. The government was particu-
larly interested in promoting saints and mazārs for their linguistic and literary
significance.
In this context, both mazārs of Waris Shah and Shah Latif occupy a central
position in the literary heritage of Punjab and Sindh, respectively. On the one
hand, both Sufi poets are venerated as saints by the masses. On the other
hand, the government has been promoting their message of peace, love and
piety that they put down in their poetry. However, among modern and edu-
cated Muslims who also have a common affinity with the local linguistic and
folk traditions of Punjab and Sindh, both Waris Shah and Shah Latif are
considered great poets and masters of their respective languages. Some
modern educated Pakistanis do not seem to relate to the sanctity of the Sufi
poets as saints. However, the literary caliber of the Sufi poets seems to draw
the masses to their mazārs.
There are various ways in which devotees and other urban intellectual
Pakistanis relate to the saints’ poetry. One lecturer at the University of Punjab
openly remarked in an interview that it was a mistake to consider Waris Shah
a saint or even a Sufi. However, one of his colleagues not only confirmed that
Waris Shah was a Sufi, but remarked that Sufi saints such as Waris Shah love
humanity just like God loves His creatures. Though there are a variety of
opinions about Sufi poets among modern educated Pakistanis, these should
not be compared with the devotional beliefs of the masses. The majority of
devotees seem to consider the literary tradition of the saints as an added cre-
dential for their sainthood. One male devotee expressed his views about Shah
Latif: ‘People of all religions believe in Saeen Latif and his Risālo leads to the
path of Allah and Allah belongs to everyone, in fact the whole universe.
Similarly, Shah Latif is global/universal saint.’ Whereas the urban intellec-
tuals mainly refer to the linguistic qualities of the poetry as well as the literary
and folkloric aspects of their poetry as poetry of the highest order, devotees
with little or no literary taste or expertise admire the saints for their high
caliber, for having written such inspirational poetry which addresses a diver-
sity of audiences guiding them in their everyday individual, social, public and
professional lives, which they also consider sacred.
Social space at the mazārs: mingled religious identities
Diverse religious and social backgrounds

Structures and buildings that serve as social spaces are marked by diverse
forms of activity and accommodate people who share multiple identity fea-
tures such as professional likeness, sectarian affiliation, religious denomina-
tion, social or economic background, or personal traits. Pilgrims visiting the
mazārs during the annual ‘urs celebrations may be placed in separate cate-
gories. Those who attend the annual ‘urs celebrations include visitors from
150 Uzma Rehman
different parts of Sindh, Punjab and other provinces. A small number of pil-
grims include those who visit from India as well as other parts of the world.12
Among these are a substantial number of Pakistani or Indian expatriates of
mainly Punjabi or Sindhi background settled in European countries or the USA.
In line with Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘social field’ the idea of ‘nationalizing
the sacred’ propounded by Glenn Bowman (1993: 432) also seems to suggest
that social and sacred space is often subject to a variety of interpretations. In
his study on the nationalization of the sacred sites, Bowman cites Hertz’s
(1983) analysis of single religious sites and multiple meanings by ‘discrete
communities engaging there in commemorative festivities’. Hertz also sug-
gests (as interpreted by Bowman 1993: 432) that ‘the holy place speaks for
and of a community, and that therefore the meaning of such a site has to be
analysed in terms not of the place itself, but in terms of the social practices of
the communities which revere it and the identities generated by those
activities’.
Devotees and pilgrims attending the two mazārs have varied social back-
grounds. Farmers, shopkeepers, landowners, rich businessmen, beggars,
middle-class government employees, men, women, children, elderly people,
even transvestites, drug addicts, prostitutes and other social outcasts,13 are
among the regular visitors of the mazārs. Religious mendicants and ascetics
called malangs and majzūbs are also seen in the mazārs as well as those who
forsake their homes, families, as well as personal belongings and settle in the
mazārs. Regular pilgrims and devotees of Shah Latif ’s dargāh include Mus-
lims and Hindus,14 the latter belonging to lower castes such as Menghwari,
Koli, Bhil and Bagri. The mazārs serve as sanctuaries for those without shel-
ter and the socially marginalized. Women without shelter, abandoned children
and the destitute are often found in these mazārs.
According to the administration staff at both the mazārs, it was not possi-
ble to keep a record of pilgrims visiting the mazārs and no reliable figures for
the number of pilgrims were available. Similar stories are told about other
major shrines in the country (Jillani 2001). However, according to a rough
assessment of the administration of Shah Latif ’s dargāh, thousands of people
visit the dargāh every day.15 The number of daily visitors to Waris Shah’s
mazār is smaller. Some residents of Jandiala Sher Khan claim never to have
visited the mazār, though they live a few hundred meters away from the shrine
complex.16 A large number of first-time visitors, including tourists, scholars and
pilgrims, are always present in the mazārs. However, the majority include
those who visit regularly.
Pilgrims and visitors visit the mazārs of Waris Shah and Shah Latif for a
variety of motives. Whereas some devotees and pilgrims make requests and
prayers to saints for healing and other matters, others wish to receive the
saints’ guidance on spiritual matters. Some local residents or those living in
surrounding villages or cities visit the mazārs in order to earn their liveli-
hoods. Yet others may visit for purposes of recreation.17 Others still may visit
out of love for the saints and to receive their blessings.
Whereas some pilgrims attend rituals performed at the mazārs, others do
not participate in any ritual activity. Although Sunni Muslims form a large
majority of the Sindhi population, the dargāh of Shah Latif is visited by
people of both Shi’a and Sunni backgrounds, among whom are those of
Barelvi, Deobandi, as well as Ahl-e Hadith or Wahhabi backgrounds. Visitors
with Ahl-e Hadith, Deobandi and Wahhabi background do not necessarily
attend rituals such as circumambulation of and prostration before the tomb,
dhammāl or any of the rituals performed during the annual ‘urs, instead only
performing fātiha prayer, a common practice among pilgrims belonging to
diverse Muslim backgrounds. Some visitors of Muslim or non-Muslim back-
grounds visit the mazārs but do not participate in any of the rituals performed
there. Some local devotees may visit the mazārs almost daily but only occa-
sionally perform rituals. Given their voluntary character, the entrance to the
mazārs is not conditioned by the performance of these rituals.
It is not only people from the downtrodden or rural sections of society who
visit the mazārs, but also Sindhi Muslim, Sikh and Hindu families from cities
in socially and economically privileged positions – politicians, government
representatives, scholars, historians, male and female, young and old visit the
mazārs for individual reasons.
While the pilgrims and devotees of Waris Shah’s mazār have diverse social
and sectarian backgrounds, the number of non-Muslim pilgrims and devotees
visiting Waris Shah’s mazār is rather limited. One reason for this may be that
the only non-Muslim community living in Jandiala Sher Khan and sur-
rounding villages are Christians of Presbyterian sectarian affiliation who
claim not to revere saints.18 The majority of Christian residents of Jandiala
Sher Khan visit the mazār only during the annual ‘urs, mostly for recrea-
tion.19 Other local Christians visit a nearby shrine associated with Virgin
Mary at its annual fair. Children of local Muslim and Christian families are
often seen in the mazār, especially after school, as well as on weekly holidays.
Sikh and Hindu pilgrims of Punjabi background both in Pakistan and those
visiting from India or abroad revere Waris Shah both as a saint as well as a
Punjabi Sufi poet of high caliber.20
A MALE DEVOTEE: It is a general practice that we may not accept Hindus

[outside the shrine], esp. those belonging to Mengwari, Koli 21 castes. We
may not eat with them but once they distribute sweets in Sarkār’s [the
saint’s] dargāh, we accept them. May Lord bless Jews, kāfirs (infidels),
and Muslims as well.22
The social space inside the mazārs may be characterized as open and
inclusive. Devotees’ vivid consciousness about the spiritual presence of the
saints imbues the social scene of the mazārs with blessings that embrace all
who are present there. Often Muslim and non-Muslim devotees and visitors
at the mazārs mutually participate in ritual celebrations such as Muharram, ‘īds,
etc., as well as life-cycle rituals such as marriage, engagement, the birth of a
152 Uzma Rehman
child, the start of a new business, etc. Shared experiences of visitors with
diverse social and religious backgrounds also point to such an inclusive
environment which is often ascribed to the saints’ egalitarian and universal
teachings. More, the Sindhi culture is also characterized by religious tolerance
as well as amiable interaction between Muslim majority and Hindu minority
(Ramey 2007).
The mazārs provide an open space that is shared by men and women. The
annual ‘urs at both the mazārs are attended by a large number of female pil-
grims and devotees. Most female devotees visit in order to pay respects to the
saints but some also visit in search of livelihoods. Women’s active participa-
tion in Sufi mazārs goes back to earlier centuries when Sufi khānqāhs func-
tioned as centers of learning, social intercourse and refuge for the
marginalized sections of society. Later women formed the major part of the
following of the tombs of the deceased saints (Abbas 2002: xvii). This open
space that the mazār provides for both men and women is an alternative to
the general practice of parda (reclusion), which is observed among many
sections of Pakistani society.
Conclusion
Keeping in view the background of the nationalization of religious endow-
ments in Pakistan, several governments have had a peculiar relationship with
major Sufi shrines that have historical, linguistic or cultural significance. The
explanation of why Pakistani governments took over the control of some
shrines and not others rests on the premise that various governments have been
especially interested in shrines that had large incomes as well as popularity.
The nationalization of Sufi shrines created a sort of political space as it gen-
erated conflicts between the government and the hereditary descendants who
had to let go of the administrative and financial authority that they had held
for generations. This chapter has demonstrated that the case of the two
mazārs under study is no different.
Pilgrims and visitors to the Sufi shrines with a diversity of social, ethnic,
religious and sectarian backgrounds and a variety of motives represented tes-
tify to the open and multivalent social environment in these institutions.
Within this open social space multiple interpretations of the roles of the
mazārs are expressed. Not only do Muslim as well as non-Muslim visitors
and pilgrims accept and legitimize each other’s presence, but they also con-
tribute to promoting the interreligious appeal of the mazārs. The social space
of the Sufi shrines is characterized by the rituals performed by a wide variety
of visitors apart from the shrines’ historical and routine rituals where gov-
ernment also takes part regularly. The social space of the mazārs also com-
prises cultural and folkloric activities that form a necessary part of the daily
life at the shrines. In addition, the shrines perform an important financial role
for the regular visitors and people living in the surrounding areas. Within this
dynamic and open social space, women who are otherwise marginalized from
religious authority structures and other minority groups such as religious
minorities and social outcasts are also accepted and accommodated within
the mazārs’ social space.
To sum up, the main argument of this chapter is as follows: the multivalent
and multidimensional nature of the Sufi shrines has allowed a ‘politicized’
space marked by controversies due to government involvement in the admin-
istration and control of the shrines as well as the threat it has posed to the
traditional authority of the hereditary saints. The multivalent social space of
the mazārs raises the question of belonging. To whom do shrines actually
belong? Though the government Auqaf Department has since the 1960s
occupied a position of authority and administration in the mazārs which
deprived the saints’ descendants of their administrative roles, the latter con-
tinue to reserve privileged positions as saints’ spiritual and hereditary repre-
sentatives. As the saints’ poetry forms an important part of the literary and
cultural heritage of Punjab and Sindh, the shrines have often been used as
platforms by the Punjabi and Sindhi Language Boards for promoting their
cause. Last, but not least, hundreds and thousands of devotees and visitors
who visit the mazārs asking for the saints’ intercession and blessings have
equal, if not stronger, claims of belonging. In terms of future research, one
may ask whether it could be argued that all these belongings are layered and
simultaneously ruptured by the state pushing for hegemonic or dominant
discourses on religion. One may also explore whether despite multiple claims
of ‘belonging’ over the shrines, the social space of the mazārs remains
multivalent, with multiple references of belonging.
Notes
1 Master-disciple relationship. For a detailed discussion on pīrī-murīdī tradition in
the dargāh of the thirteenth-century saint Nizamuddin Auliya in New Delhi, see
Pinto 1995.
2 The exact era when the story took place is unknown. However, some authors agree
that it was approximately around the fifteenth century (Sheeraz 2013: 171).
3 Originally based on The Mussalman Wakf Validating Act of 1913, although dif-
ferent or rather contrasting in functions (see Malik 1990). For a detailed account
on Muslim endowments in the South Asian context, see Kozlowski 1985. The
Auqaf Department, created in 1959 under West Pakistan Properties Ordinance and
enforced through West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance, was run under the
federal government until the late 1970s when due to the flawed administration of
the department under the federal government, its control was shifted to the provincial
government. Information regarding the Auqaf Department can be found online
at: www.punjab.gov.pk/auqaf_and_religious_affairs (accessed December 8, 2015).
4 Despite the government’s efforts to control all important shrines, it only adminis-
ters a limited number of these institutes. Some shrines continue being run by the saints’
descendants. However, this has usually resulted from intense struggle and confronta-
tion between the government and the descendants. For example, see the discussion
on the shrine of Pir Mehr of Golra Sharif (Rawalpindi) in Chaudhry 1990.
5 On several occasions the local Sindhi governments have donated large amounts of
money for the beautification and maintenance of the dargāh as well as elaboration
154 Uzma Rehman
and construction of affiliated structures including a library, a cultural center, an
auditorium and a guest house, the latter being mainly reserved for political digni-
taries, scholars and foreign guests. The combined project of the renovation and
beautification of the shrine changed the outlook of the tomb and attracted larger
numbers of people. See Baloch 1961.
6 Sometimes, the annual ‘urs at prominent Sufi mazārs is inaugurated by the pre-
sident or the prime minister of Pakistan. The 2007 ‘urs celebrations were inaugu-
rated by the prime minister of Pakistan, Shaukat Aziz. ‘Annual ‘Urs of Shah
Abdul Latif Bhitai (RA) Begins’, Sindh Bureau, Pakistan Times, March 5, 2007.
7 Syed Nisar Hussain Shah, sajjāda-nishīn of Shah Latif ’s dargāh whom I inter-
viewed in 2005–06 passed away due to a heart attack in December 2014. His son,
Syed Waqar Ali Shah, became his successor as sajjāda-nishīn.
8 Interview conducted on April 13, 2005
9 Interview conducted on March 17, 2005.
10 Interview conducted in Lahore, March 16, 2005.
11 Jang group of newspapers, December 12, 1985.
12 Management of the mazār and the devotees residing in Jandiala Sher Khan
reported that pilgrims from countries such as the UK, USA, Korea, India, etc.,
had visited the mazār during the annual ‘urs. During the annual ‘urs at Shah
Latif ’s dargāh, several pilgrims and visitors of non-Pakistani origin visited the
mazār.
13 This particular phenomenon of diversity of pilgrims’ religious and social backgrounds
seems to be present in most major mazārs of South Asia. See the introduction to
Suvorova 2004: 2.
14 According to one conservative statement by a young male rāgī faqīr and a Shi’a
Muslim living in Bhit Shah, one can meet 15–20 Hindu pilgrims on a daily basis at
the dargāh. My observation is different, however. The number of Hindu pilgrims
visiting daily may be much higher than merely 20. During my stay at Bhit Shah
twice for a period of 8–10 days, I happened to run across several Hindu pilgrims
visiting from outside Bhit Shah, either from nearby towns or other parts of Sindh.
I also happened to meet some members of Hindu families living in Bhit Shah with
whom I had previously interacted outside the dargāh.
15 According to my estimate, the number of pilgrims visiting every day may be
between 5,000 and 10,000.
16 These include Muslims as well as non-Muslims. During my fieldwork conducted in
Jandiala Sher Khan in 2005 and 2006, I discovered by talking to women in ran-
domly selected households that some of them, belonging to both Muslim and
Christian families, had either never visited the mazār or did so a long time ago,
though sometimes men and children in these families visited the mazār for recrea-
tion or for making petitions. Women belonging to either religion claim to know
Waris Shah and his famous Hīr and listen to it when it is sung at the mazār with
loudspeakers at least once a month as well as on annual ‘urs. Others (mainly
Christians) denied that Waris Shah’s mazār or his poetry has anything to do with
religion. Thus, an elderly Christian woman considered the importance of Waris
Shah’s mazār or his poetry a thing of the past. She rather preferred to talk about
present conflicts in Jandiala Sher Khan which in her opinion are caused by land,
money and women.
17 Interview with women at the residence of a Pathan family in Jandiala Sher Khan,
March 18, 2005. The Christian residents of Jandiala Sher Khan, including the
priest, claim to visit the mazār of Waris Shah for recreation alone either during the
annual ‘urs or any other occasion. Some visitors and devotees to the mazār of
Waris Shah emphasized the pleasant atmosphere of the mazār complex with green
lawns and tall palm trees, and claimed that they often visited with families during
holidays for picnics. Others admitted that they mainly visit the mazārs for
recreation. However, due to the intimate relationship that some devotees claim to
have with the saints and their mazārs, it would be wrong to assume that visitors
who have such motives do not revere the saints.
18 Presbyterianism is a branch of Christianity that belongs to the Reformed tradition
within the Protestant reformism of the sixteenth century. The two Christian main
streams, namely the Lutheran and the Reformed, ‘claimed to return to the source
of Christianity in the Bible, and to reject the accumulated theological and ritualist
tradition which, they argued, overlay Biblical simplicity’. Presbyterians lay impor-
tance on the scriptural texts and do not believe in the sanctity of persons or
intercession of saints (see Brooke 1987: 2).
19 However, a local resident of Presbyterian background is employed at the mazār as
sweeper and claims to be a devotee of the saint and occasionally makes vows at the
mazār.
20 ‘Indians Consider Waris Shah a Punjabi Literature Shakespeare’, The Nation, July
24, 2005.
21 Low-caste Hindus settled all over Sindh.
22 A Muslim male devotee, resident of Bhit Shah, April 11, 2005.
8 The survival of the syncretic cults of
Shirdi Sai Baba and Haji Ali despite
Hindu nationalism in Mumbai
Marika Vicziany1
In this chapter I consider one of Mumbai’s most popular cults, that of Shirdi
Sai Baba (1838–1918). The original Muslim shrine in Shirdi, some 300 kilo-
metres from Mumbai, has become thoroughly Hinduized or Brahmanized in
appearance and rituals, and the management trust consists only of Hindus. At
the other end of the spectrum, we have the equally famous Muslim shrine
(dargāh) of Pir Haji Ali Shah Bukhari on the Worli foreshore in Mumbai. In
contrast to the cult of Sai Baba, the Muslim trust that looks after it has
ensured that the Islamic character of the Haji Ali dargāh remains undiluted.
Yet many visitors and worshippers are not Muslims. Why do they come to the
shrine? In the final section of this chapter I consider the persistence of these
syncretic religious practices in the context of the results of the Mahar-
ashtrian State Assembly elections of 2014 and municipal elections in 2009–15.
What role has Hindu nationalism played in these, given the long history of
communal (or religious) politics in western India? Will the popular cults of
Shirdi Sai Baba and Pir Haji Ali Shah Bukhari survive the increasing role
of religious identity as a factor in the politics of Mumbai and Maharashtra?
The cult of Shirdi Sai Baba in Mumbai2

I first began to understand the importance of Shirdi Sai Baba during our
study of the indigenous Koli tribal people of Mumbai city. While interviewing
27 Mumbai pilgrims visiting the Ekveera Devi temple high in the western
Ghats of Maharashtra, near Lonavala (Vicziany et al. 2016), we discovered
that 35 per cent named Sai Baba as one of the deities or gurus that they
worshipped or followed.3 According to one of our respondents (No. 11, a
Hindu worshipper and retired government servant from Virar), each day at
5:00 am he bathed his image of Sai Baba along with those of the other gods
and goddesses and then read the ‘Sainam Charitra’, a popular story about Sai
Baba’s life. Sai Baba’s name was mentioned by our Koli respondents along
with the supreme goddess of the Kolis, the clan deity Ekveera Devi (Vicziany
et al. 2016). In another paper about contemporary Koli culture, we docu-
mented the existence of two Sufi dargāhs in two of the Koli villages of
Mumbai, and argued that Koli protection of these shrines during the
The syncretic cults of Shirdi Sai Baba and Haji Ali 157
communal riots in Mumbai (1992–93) reflected the syncretic nature of Koli
religious beliefs (Vicziany et al. 2013).
The cult of Shirdi Sai Baba has been adopted by many other communities
in western India, in India and throughout the world. Some scholars even
speak of a ‘Sai Baba Movement’, a reference to the veneration not only of Sai
Baba but also of his disciples (Rigopoulos 1993; www.kevinrdshepherd.info/
shirdi_sai_baba_and_sai_baba_movement.html, accessed December 14, 2015).
Sai Baba was a Muslim Sufi faqīr, teacher and healer who spent much of
his life living in a dilapidated mosque in a village that has become the town of
Shirdi (Warren 1999: 36–44). He spoke both Urdu and Marathi, although
only 10 per cent of local residents were Muslims and the others mainly Hindu
(Srinivas 1999: 247). His humanist teachings attracted followers from all reli-
gious communities and were complemented by healing the sick and perform-
ing acts of miraculous recovery. The tradition of medical miracles amongst
the Sufis of India has deep historical, pre-colonial roots in contrast to the
miracles performed by Hindu saints (Hardiman 2015: 362). With the rise of
Indian nationalism, the medical miracles wrought by both Muslim and Hindu
holy men became more pronounced, partly in response to the deficiencies of
the colonial health system (Hardiman 2015: 379). Dargāhs too have powerful
associations with spiritual healing as a way of handling psychological dis-
orders, in particular spirit possession and witchcraft (Davar and Lohokare
2008). The saints commemorated in the shrines were powerful individuals
during their lifetimes, so praying to them for relief from pain, depression and
material difficulties provides a powerful medium of communication between
worshippers and God.
Today the Sai Baba shrine at Shirdi has become an elaborate Hindu
temple, administered by high-caste Brahmins and controlled by a trust in
which no Muslims are represented. There is no traditional class or caste
responsible for the shrine; rather, the trust is run by ‘local Hindu politicos’
(Shinde and Pinkney 2013: 569). The humble village of 200 houses and 1,000
people in the 1910s has grown to 30,000 residents with some 8 million visitors
a year, a reflection of the extraordinary growth of the international Shirdi Sai
Baba movement (Shinde and Pinkney 2013: 554–555, 563, n4). The growth of
Shirdi town has coincided with a declining Muslim presence (Shinde and
Pinkney 2013: 569), while the notebooks kept by his faithful disciple Abdul
Baba were ignored for a long time, causing Sai Baba’s Muslim teachings to be
forgotten or overtaken by Hindu interpretations. Shinde and Pinkney confirm
earlier observations by scholars that Shirdi Sai Baba has over time evolved
into a Hindu saint rather than the Muslim Sufi he began as.
My own view is that this focus on the ‘Hinduization’ of Sai Baba and what
is Muslim and what is Hindu is both counterproductive to communal har-
mony and also misleading. I am inclined to follow the analysis of McLain
who stresses the many interpretations that different communities have arrived
at about Sai Baba’s historical identity. Moreover, as more and more people
have come to venerate Shirdi Sai Baba, what happens at the Shirdi shrine no
158 Marika Vicziany
longer determines what the worship of Sai Baba means. Crucially, what all
interpretations share is a belief in the humanism of Sai Baba’s teachings, the
undiluted relevance of his ideas of tolerance to daily life in India and his
accessibility as a source of comfort for people of diverse religious back-
grounds. Using various representations of Sai Baba, including popular posters
of him, McLain points out that his basic image has remained almost the same
even though small touches have been added to make him more relevant to
particular audiences; so for Muslims, he is shown wearing the traditional
white garment of a Muslim faqīr (McLain 2011: figure 4, 34–35) while for
Hindus he is often shown dressed in a saffron version of the same (McLain
2011: figure 3, 33–34). A third type of poster shows him surrounded by mul-
tiple religious symbols referring to Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Zoroas-
trianism and Christianity, depending on what the artist had in mind and the
kind of poster the consumer wants to display at home (McLain 2011: figure 1,
25). A fourth kind of representation depicts Sai Baba without any religious
symbols, ‘suggesting he has transcended religious boundaries altogether’
(McLain 2011: figure 6, 36–37). Finally, there is a genre of posters showing
multiple images of Sai Baba which appear to transcend Hinduism and
Islam and proclaim him to be a universal essence (McLain 2011: figure 7,
37–38).
McLain’s conclusion is compelling: arguments about whether Sai Baba was
a Hindu or a Muslim or anything else are not important for a growing
majority of his followers who reject religious sectarianism and are searching
for ‘a composite vision of spiritual unity in diversity’ (McLain 2011: 43).
The importance of this syncretic interpretation of Sai Baba was demon-
strated during the post-electoral successes of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
in the Indian national elections of 2014. The Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena
political party had invited the new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to
visit the Sai Baba shrine in Shirdi.4 Modi is the leader of the BJP, which
shares the ideology of Hindu nationalism with the Maharashtra-based Shiv
Sena (see below). However, the visit stalled after an eminent leader of the
Hindu community in Gujarat, Swami Shree Swaroopanand Saraswati (the
Shankaracharya of the Dwaraka Peeth), ‘asked Modi to cancel his visit to
Shirdi else he may lose the protection given to him by celestial gods’ (Khanna
2014). He also pointed to Modi’s previous refusal to be personally associated
with Indian Muslims by not wearing a Muslim cap:
He also said that he has no issues with Modi adding Sai to his name, but
also raised apprehensions that how can a man who refused to wear a
skull cap pray at a grave.
(Khanna 2014)
Here the word ‘grave’ acts as a metaphor for the religious difference between
Hindus and Muslims, for the former burn their dead while the latter bury
them. In another interview Swaroopanand Saraswati stated:
We have nothing against Muslims praying in their own way and following
their religion. Muslims have a different way of praying, they have their
rituals. The two cannot be the same. They eat meat. Let them do it their
way; we should follow our way.
(Pinglay-Plumber 2014)
He also called on Hindus to stick together and shun Sai Baba because he was
a Muslim:
We are not dividing the Hindus. People of the Hindu society who con-
sider themselves part of the Sanatan Dharm were drifting. They were
worshipping a man who was, by birth and deeds, a Muslim.
(Chawla 2014)
Swami Shree Swaroopanand Saraswati’s outspokenness against the cult of

Sai Baba appears to have had some effect, because the visit was delayed
and no further announcements have been made despite Sanjay Raut, the
Shiv Sena MP, visiting the Sai Baba shrine on August 17, 2014. The
‘delayed visit’ by Modi is an odd decision given that he had visited the Shirdi
shrine in June 2008, saying it was ‘an international pilgrimage center’ (forum.
spiritualindia.org/sai-baba-spiritual-discussion-room/video%27sphoto%27s-~-
celebs-seek-sai-babas-blessings-at-shirdi/210/, accessed December 14, 2015).
Perhaps his current position reflects the power of Swami Shree Swar-
oopanand Saraswati in Gujarat, Modi’s home base. The incident certainly
demonstrates the ongoing tension between the syncretic cultures of India
that draw together people of diverse religious persuasions and the demands
of more orthodox religious leaders that religious communities remain
separated.
While some religious leaders reject the evidence suggesting that Shirdi Sai
Baba represents a fusion of Hindu and Muslim beliefs, the eclectic nature of
this cult is affirmed in other ways. There is, for example, a replica of the
Shirdi shrine in Shirgaon, on the road from Mumbai to Pune. In 2002, Sai
Baba appeared in the dreams of a local politician and asked him to build a
copy of the original Shirdi shrine. Today, the Shirgaon temple priests wear
Hindu clothing and the sacred Brahmanical thread, although by community
origins they are Muslims who were formerly untouchables (Elison 2014:
187). In other words, nothing excludes Muslims (or anyone else) from parti-
cipating in the veneration of Sai Baba. In Greater Mumbai (and other
Indian cities too) there are hundreds of shrines, large and small, to Sai Baba.
Many have encroached on roads as their popularity has grown. These shrines
and the popularity of the poster art discussed by McLain, suggest that many
communities are involved in venerating Sai Baba. Fixed religious identity,
usually understood as belonging to inflexible communities of Hindus, Mus-
lims, Sikhs, Parsi, Christians or Jains, appears to be increasingly challenged
by a counter-narrative of shared spiritual worship.
160 Marika Vicziany
The cult of the Haji Ali dargāh (shrine)
The Haji Ali shrine in Mumbai city was built to honour the itinerant Muslim
saint Pir Haji Ali Shah Bukhari, who came from Iran5 and settled in western
India to preach and convert people to Islam (www.hajialidargah.in/hajiali_
history1.html, accessed December 14, 2015). He may also have been a tra-
velling merchant, for many Sufi teachers were also traders, warriors or
princes. The early life and travels of Haji Ali are as vague as those of Shirdi
Sai Baba. Furthermore, as there are no historical documents about Haji Ali,
in contrast to the case of Sai Baba, the statements in this chapter about his
life and work are based on the ‘official’ version given by the Haji Ali Trust.
The site of the Haji Ali dargāh today was selected by the local people fol-
lowing the pīr’s instructions that on his death he was not to be buried as a
normal Muslim in a graveyard but that they:
should drop his shroud (‘kafan’) in the ocean such that it should be
buried by the people where it is found. His wish was obeyed by his fol-
lowers. That is why the Dargah Sharief is built at the very site where his
shroud came to rest in the middle of the sea where it was perched on a
small mound of rocks rising above the sea.
(www.hajialidargah.in/hajiali_history1.html,
accessed December 14, 2015)
Kafan is the Arabic word for the white cloth that is used to wrap the dead
according to Muslim traditions.6 The use of the word kafan in the above statement
rather than the Arabic word for corpse, junatul al-mayat, creates ambiguity:
does the dargāh of Haji Ali contain his body or only his shroud? It is not unusual
in Sufism for graves to be built to honour saints even if there are no bodies buried
there.7 This vagueness about the establishment of the Haji Ali dargāh might
make it easier for non-Muslims to worship here, for the dargāh is not necessarily
a burial site (see below). However, it is too early in our research to say what
exactly the trustees, visitors or worshippers know about the Haji Ali dargāh.
Each day, more than 10,000 visitors come to the Haji Ali dargāh, and on
Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays the numbers double or triple (www.hajia
lidargah.in/index.html, accessed December 14, 2015). People come to pray for
better health, overcoming childlessness, more children, financial security, per-
sonal happiness, good jobs, good exam grades and so on. The power of Haji
Ali rests on his reputation as a performer of many miracles dating back to his
time in Iran. According to the Haji Ali Trust management, all who come to
venerate the saint today ‘have their wishes granted at all times’ (www.hajia
lidargah.in/index.html, accessed December 14, 2015); the saint also protects
the shrine from destruction. The Trust lists two recent miracles performed by
Pir Haji Ali since his alleged death almost 600 years ago in 1431:8 the survi-
val of the shrine during the monsoon storms of 1949 and 2005. The miracle
of 1949 is described as follows:
There were waves of the size of mountains (like Tsunami) and most of the
people who were inside the Dargah Complex were scared that they would
drown. The waves then bowed down at the wall of the Dargah as if in
submission to the Saint and faded back into the ocean. At the time,
Earthen Lamps (Chiraags) were seen floating on the crest of the waves
which was witnessed by hundreds of people. The people then returned
home safely, unhurt & unharmed and without any damage to their
property.
(www.hajialidargah.in/hajiali_miracles2.html,
accessed December 14, 2015)
Figure 8.1 is a photograph of the path leading to the Haji Ali shrine from the
foreshore, some 500 metres. This pathway was finally constructed in 1944
after an old man reported to the manager of the Trust that the saint had
appeared in a dream and asked him why he was no longer visiting the dargāh.
He told Pir Haji Ali that the path to the dargāh was too dangerous for an old
man. The saint replied that a new path had now been constructed and he
could resume his visits. At that stage, work on the new pathway had not yet
been started but the Trust manager saw the old man’s dream as the saint’s
wish that the work be completed quickly.
Figure 8.1 The pathway to the Haji Ali dargāh

(Photo courtesy Torsten Tschacher)
162 Marika Vicziany
Miracles performed by Haji Ali continue to be reported and have been
given a boost by the Bollywood film industry – not only is the shrine a
favourite film location but praying there is also regarded as good luck
amongst some Bollywood stars such as Emraan Hashmi. One of the most
commercially successful Bollywood movies of the 1980s, Coolie (starring the
Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan), brought the shrine to prominence
when Bachchan met with a life-threatening accident and his wife allegedly
prayed at the dargāh for his recovery.9 Bachchan eventually recovered and
he diversified his career into Indian politics. Coolie’s climax is filmed at the
shrine and rumours say that the Bachchan family continues to pay for the
electricity used to light it up. Given this background, it is not surprising that
in 2010 the Haji Ali dargāh was voted as one of the seven ‘wonders of
Mumbai city’. The Mumbai Mirror conducted the survey over a period of
three weeks and solicited ‘thousands of text messages and lakhs of votes’
based on a total of 16 sites selected by the editorial team (Mumbai Mirror,
cited in www.hajialidargah.in/hajiali_7Wonders20.html, accessed December
14, 2015).
The popularity of the Haji Ali dargāh stems from its appeal to people from
across the religious spectrum. The opening sentence of the Haji Ali Trust
website shows that it takes great pride in this cross-community appeal:
Haji Ali Dargah is one of the most popular religious places in Mumbai,
visited by people of all religions alike.
(www.hajialidargah.in/index.html, accessed December 14, 2015)
This welcoming attitude has persisted despite the growing conservatism of the
Trust, which in 2011–12 declared that women would no longer be allowed to
pray inside the inner sanctuary, next to the tomb.10 Women petitioned the
courts, complaining that the ban was the result of pressure from religious
purists of the Salafi school. For the petitioners, it was not only about equal
rights for women but also keeping the dargāh open to non-Muslims. Despite
this alarmist tone, there is no sign of any attempt by the Trust to exclude
non-Muslims from the shrine. Indeed, the above quotation shows the very
opposite, with the Trust extolling the cross-community appeal of the dargāh.
Many non-Muslims in Mumbai also extol the virtues of this dargāh and the
worship of Haji Ali. This was confirmed in a recent pilot project that I
undertook in May 2015. Some 17 non-Muslim Bombay University students
responded to our emails:11 of these all but two (a Jain and a Christian
respondent) had visited the shrine (i.e. some 88 per cent). Of the 15 who had
been to the Haji Ali dargāh, four were Jains and 11 were Hindus. Seven of the
15 (or 47 per cent) had been more than once. Most interesting of all, ten of
these 15 students (67 per cent) said that they had prayed at the shine. Two
respondents did not want to say what they had prayed for (a Jain and a
Hindu), but three said that they prayed for the well-being and betterment of
their family and friends, while another Hindu prayed for peace, a fifth Hindu
said that their father visited the shrine frequently to pray, and a further three
Hindus said that they and their families believed in and trusted Haji Ali.
All of the 15 students who had visited the dargāh said it was an important
part of Mumbai, and eight (53 per cent) of them said it was an important
part of the religious life of different peoples. One Hindu respondent commented
in greater detail: ‘Haji Ali is important to the whole family because it,
Mahalaxmi [and] Mumbadevi are all prominent places and the saviors of
Mumbai. Mumbai is blessed by these places.’ Another comment from a
Hindu student who did not pray at the shrine but had visited four to five
times said that many people visited because they ‘have faith and think that
their wishes come true’.
What is interesting about these results, and justifies the more detailed study
that we are about to undertake, is that the spiritual attraction of the Haji Ali
dargāh is as strong as this amongst non-Muslim university students: 73 per
cent of the respondents who had visited Haji Ali were Hindus. Moreover,
most of them were involved in some kind of business studies (80 per cent), and
these undergraduates visited the Haji Ali shrine despite their ‘secular’, ‘non-
religious’ education and largely because of the influence of their families and
relatives. Many of the respondents to our survey were young women, sug-
gesting the need for a more in-depth study of the special relationship between
women and dargāhs.12
The geographic location of the Haji Ali dargāh also makes it appealing to
people in Mumbai for it sits on a sacred site of importance to many religious
traditions (see below) despite its outwardly Islamic appearance and the cus-
toms and rituals that surround it. The Muslim buildings that form part of the
whole complex include, in addition to the dargāh or ‘grave’ of the saint: the
large main gate, a sanatorium, the qawwāl khānā for religious singing to
praise the saint, and the Masjid, minaret and chatrī (umbrella) (www.hajia
lidargah.in/hajiali_complex3.html, accessed December 14, 2015).
On the other hand, the legends surrounding Haji Ali are less obviously
Muslim than those, for instance, of Makhdum Ali Mahimi, a saint whose
dargāh is located at Mahim in Mumbai. Makhdum Ali Mahimi, like Haji
Ali, came from a migrant background, having been born to parents whose
original home was in Baghdad and Basra (Currim and Michell 2004: 96), but
Makhdum Ali Mahimi was not only a Sufi saint but also a major scholar of
the Koran and composer of commentaries on Arabic texts. He left a ‘legacy
of religious and literary works’ which belonged to the seminary that he
established, including a considerable library that has now been dispersed
(Currim and Michell 2004: 97). In this way, Makhdum Ali Mahimi repre-
sented a much stronger personal connection to the Islamic heartlands and
Arabic teachings, in contrast to Haji Ali whose obscure history and origins
have perhaps helped to ‘indigenize’ him more effectively than other Sufi
saints. Green has argued that if the history and legends of a Sufi saint do not
depend on foreign points of reference, his or her appeal to non-Muslims is
much stronger (Green 2004: 225–226). Thus, Haji Ali is very much ‘anchored
164 Marika Vicziany
in the local landscape’, an important consideration that also emerged in our
study of two dargāhs in the Koli villages of Mumbai (Vicziany et al. 2013:
201, 211, 213, 215, 218).
Another factor that creates ambiguity about the life of Haji Ali are the many
conflicting legends about the shrine itself. At the start of this section, we cited
the Haji Ali Trust’s explanation for the location of the dargāh. In a different
story, Haji Ali was a local wealthy merchant who built the dargāh himself and
then on a pilgrimage to Mecca drowned; his casket floated back to the dargāh
site where his body was then buried (personal communication from Clinton
Gray, December 13, 2015; www.mumbai.org.uk/haji-ali-shrine.html, accessed
December 14, 2015). A simpler legend is that the saint simply drowned at the
site of the shrine (www.mumbai.org.uk/haji-ali-shrine.html, accessed Decem-
ber 14, 2015). According to an Urdu-language VCD about Haji Ali, the saint
instructed his followers to dispose of his body on death as follows:
put the kafan on me and leave my body at the mercy of the ocean’s waves,
wherever it stops, that should be my place of burial.
(Al-Madina Enterprises, VCD, 2007, translated by
Monimalika Sengupta)
The only common point in these versions of the origins of the dargāh is its
location on a low islet that juts out some 500 metres from the mainland at
Worli. Surrounded by water it appears, especially at high tide, to float above
the water level, adding to its mystical charm. The main shrine is said to date
from the time of the saint, with the other parts of the complex added later by
various Muslim communities (Agencies 2008). In 2008 renovations began
using white Makrana marble from Rajasthan (Agencies 2008). The new white
shimmering colour adds to the compelling mystical appearance of the Haji
Ali shrine, best captured by photographs taken in the early morning or late
evening. Directly opposite the Haji Ali dargāh, separated by a stretch of
water, stands one of the most important Hindu temples in Mumbai, the
Mahalaxmi. The location of these two religious sites at this particular point is
not accidental: the juncture constitutes a sacred geographical space in which
the Muslim and Hindu elements share an enclosed watery space that points
back to India (see Figure 8.2). This special quality was captured by non-
Muslim respondents to our pilot survey who said that ‘this location is serene
and peaceful and gives good vibes’, while another said she had visited it ‘to
feel its religious aura’ (the first respondent was a Hindu and the second a
Jain). A third interviewee (a Hindu) said ‘its calmness resonates’.
Comments of this kind also appear on the internet in response to videos
about the Haji Ali dargāh. One Sandeep Patil wrote, using words typical of
pilgrims visiting Hindu shrines: ‘I also visit and take darśan of [the] Haji Ali
dargāh, please fulfil my wish soon’ (www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8NIBNtcb_c,
accessed December 14, 2015). Darśan is a Sanskrit word that means ‘seeing’
or ‘vision’, but unlike the English words which are passive, the Sanskrit word is
iiiiuiüiFia
Haji Ali
Dargah
Mahalaxshfni
Temple
Figure 8.2 The Haji Ali dargāh in relation to the Mahalaxmi temple in Mumbai
(Google satellite image developed by Dr Uri Gilad)
an active ‘exchange of powerful gazes between god and worshipper, or king

and subject’ (Doniger 2009: 698).
Politics in contemporary Mumbai and the syncretic cults of Sai Baba

and Haji Ali13
How do the syncretic cults of Sai Baba and Haji Ali fit into the political
landscape of Mumbai? Will the inter-communal character of these cults sur-
vive the growing influence of the Hindu right and the Muslim right in western
India? On the face of it, it would appear that the Sufi cults of Sai Baba and
Haji Ali discussed in this chapter garner no support from either extremity of
the religious divide: the Hindu right remains opposed to all expressions of
166 Marika Vicziany
Islam, while the Muslim right does not tolerate praying at dargāhs because in
their worldview, the tombs constitute icons and as such are symbols of
heresy.14 In this final section I look at the state elections of 2014 and the
municipal elections in Maharashtra in 2009–15 to see whether the evolving
political situation favours the rise of right-wing forces that might threaten the
syncretic traditions that I have been speaking about.
The mere fact of cultural syncretism is no guarantee that the syncretic
shrines of Mumbai and Maharashtra will not be attacked, partly because
such attacks are not always motivated by religious considerations. Dargāhs,
mosques and madrassahs are also centres of wealth thanks to donations by
members and pilgrims. Such wealth can inspire jealousies or be seen as oppor-
tunities for grabbing new sources of income (Burman 2002: 320). Second,
where religious considerations do figure, there is the ever-present risk that
Hindu nationalists will claim that the Sufi shrines are syncretic precisely
because they were built over pre-existing Hindu temples. In 1986, for exam-
ple, the Shiv Sena leader Anand Dighe started a campaign demanding that
the Haji Malang dargāh in Kalyan15 be renamed the Shri Malang, saying that
the shrine was built over a much older Machindranath temple during the
Mughal conquest of India (Saif 1996: 2131; Shyam 2008: 163, 240–241). The
Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), has also
been campaigning at this and related shrines and paying young men to turn
up at important ceremonies to shout Hindu slogans (Shyam 2008: 171–176,
198–199). The official guardian of the dargāh is a Brahmin who ensures that
Muslim rituals such as the annual ‘urs are undertaken. The guardian’s family
deity is Jogeshwari Devi, whom he worships each day together with Haji
Malang and other gods and goddesses (Shyam 2008: 191). Muslims, Hindus,
Kolis, eunuchs and other communities play different roles during the cere-
monies which involve a fusion of Hindu and Muslim traditions (Saif 1996:
2132; Shyam 2008: 211).16
There are also risks that the Sufi shrines will be attacked by the Muslim
right. In the previous section we mentioned the concerns of some female
Muslim worshippers at the Haji Ali dargāh 17 who feared the growing influ-
ence of Salafi purists amongst Mumbai’s Muslim communities, evidence of
which can be seen in the streets each day with the growing popularity of
Saudi dress codes. Third, we need to note that in Maharashtra the Shiv Sena
has constructed an alternative history of western India in which Shivaji
(1630–80), the great Maharashtrian hero, is said to have built a Hindu state
based on Brahmanical authority. This ideal state is held up as a desirable model
for the future, even though the historical record diverges from the Hindu
nationalism promoted by the Shiv Sena.18
If cultural syncretism has no guaranteed future in Mumbai, is it under
immediate threat? Fortunately, the politics of Mumbai and Maharashtra is
defined not only by competition between parties representing Hindu and
Muslim interests but also by competition between the two parties of the
Hindu right, namely the BJP and the Shiv Sena. This competition serves to
distract them from making more political capital out of the Hindu nationalist
agenda that they share. Today, the BJP is stronger than the Shiv Sena in the
Maharashtra State Assembly, while the Shiv Sena is stronger in the Bombay
Municipal Corporation that controls the city of Mumbai, the heart of the
Indian business world. These two parties have had electoral alliances off and
on for many years (Vicziany 2002), and yet they have tried to assert their
separate political and cultural supremacy. They have even competed in claim-
ing that they have a stronger commitment to Hindu nationalism than the
other. In recent years, a new political force has arrived in Maharashtra in the
form of the AIMIM (All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen), specifically
targeting Muslim voters but also seeking electoral support from other dis-
advantaged minorities. A closer analysis of the election results reveals the
uncertainties created by this three-way political competition. It is these
uncertainties that have created a political climate which ignores the syncretic
cults of western India and this in turn has prevented them from being
harnessed to political causes.
The state assembly elections held on October 15, 2014 gave the largest
number of seats to the BJP (122) and a much smaller number to the Shiv
Sena (63). That election broke the pattern of the previous five decades when
the BJP and Shiv Sena were jostling with each other with neither having a
clear lead. In October 2014, the BJP emerged as the largest party in the State
Assembly and the Shiv Sena number two. A coalition government between
them was formed because despite its success, the BJP still failed to gain an
absolute majority of the 288 seats. In other words, the two parties of the
Hindu right needed each other to form a government. However, this did not
mean that the coalition was stable – soon the Shiv Sena was accusing the BJP
of appointing its own people to the most important portfolios.
Despite having twice the number of members of the Legislative Assembly
(MLAs) than the Shiv Sena, the BJP cannot be complacent. First, the Shiv
Sena remains strong in Mumbai city: some 22 per cent of its 63 MLAs are
from Mumbai. Second, the Shiv Sena no longer need worry about the com-
peting Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), an offshoot of the original Shiv
Sena party, whose seats fell drastically from 13 to one. As a result the Shiv
Sena today is stronger than it has been for many years. Third, the BJP won
only one more seat in the Greater Mumbai elections than the Shiv Sena: 15
relative to 14 (timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Mumbai-was-and-will-conti
nue-to-belong-to-Shiv-Sena-Saamana-edit/articleshow/46633220.cms, accessed
December 14, 2015). Fourth, the Shiv Sena is a powerful force in the local
governments or municipalities of Maharashtra, especially in Greater (Brihan)
Mumbai: in the municipal elections of 2012 it won 75 out of 227 council seats
and the BJP only 31. Again, a marriage of convenience was arranged at the
level of the Bombay Municipal Corporation or Council: the dominant Shiv
Sena in Mumbai joined forces with the BJP, independents and smaller parties
to take control of one of India’s most powerful municipal councils (De Wit
2014).
168 Marika Vicziany
The significance of the Shiv Sena’s influence in Greater Mumbai cannot be
underrated. Many commentators have long noted the important role played
by the Shiv Sena’s extortion rackets in Mumbai, with construction projects
and the trade unions being a special focus for collecting dues, payments for
licences and other documents. The mayor, currently a Shiv Sena leader, is in a
privileged position to build up party resources.19 Second, at the level of party
workers the Shiv Sena identifies its ideal municipal candidates on the basis of
the strength of their links with rural Maharashtra. The more municipal
councillors that the Shiv Sena has in Mumbai, the greater its power base
throughout Maharashtra. Finally, each municipal councillor receives Rs.35
lakhs per annum to spend on the development of their constituency as they
see fit (De Wit 2014: note v), allowing them to further their patronage
networks and expand personal and party resources.
Underlying these political factors is the social role of the Shiv Sena. It has
established branches or śākhās in every conceivable location in Mumbai,
recruiting the smallest person of the ‘smallest lane’ or gallī to their member-
ship. Often poor, marginalized people feel empowered for the first time in
their lives and willingly collect funds for the party, turn out on important
occasions to support the Shiv Sena, and help and support each other in
dealing with day-to-day personal problems.
The tussle between these two parties of the Hindu right in western India,
the BJP and Shiv Sena, suggests that regional politics will increasingly be driven
by pragmatic considerations. There is no evidence to suggest that the agenda
of Hindu nationalism, which they share, can help them to differentiate them-
selves amongst the voters. In March 2015 the first budget by the new chief
minister of Maharashtra focused on the limited options facing the BJP-
controlled state government in handling the largest debt of any Indian state –
in excess of 3 lakh crores (Marpakwar 2015). The Shiv Sena immediately
attacked the BJP because the allocation to Mumbai city had been cut, a move
seen by them as an attempt by the BJP to undermine the Shiv Sena powerbase
in Mumbai (timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Mumbai-was-and-will-conti
nue-to-belong-to-Shiv-Sena-Saamana-edit/articleshow/46633220.cms, accessed
December 14, 2015). The fight then shifted to an argument about the future of
the Marathi language, a sensitive issue given the Shiv Sena’s long-established
claim to represent the rights of the ‘Marathi-speaking people’.
The main factor behind these spats is the determination of each to increase
their seats in the 2017 Mumbai municipal elections. The BJP, like the Shiv
Sena, sees the Mumbai Municipal Corporation as a big prize; more generally
it regards control of municipalities as an aid for governing Maharashtra
(Gangan 2015). However, in the recent municipal elections of April 2015 the
Shiv Sena emerged stronger than the BJP in all four constituencies where
elections were held.
Political competition, the state budget and the language issue are some of
the things that divide the two parties of the Hindu right in Maharashtra. By
contrast they agree on the need to defeat the so-called secular parties, the
Indian National Congress (INC) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
In this objective, they have been aided by the emergence of a new factor in the
politics of Maharashtra – the presence of the AIMIM, a Muslim party which
has its home base in Hyderabad, Telangana State.20 The AIMIM has denounced
both the INC and the NCP as parties that have used Muslim vote banks
without delivering any promises to improve the socio-economic situation of
Indian Muslims. The AIMIM won two seats in the Maharashtra State Assem-
bly elections of October 2014,21 a modest victory but the first time a Muslim
party had won a single seat in Maharashtra since 1990.22 It then won 25 seats
in the Aurangabad municipal elections of April 2015, compared with 50 by the
BJP-Shiv Sena coalition. This turned the AIMIM into the second-strongest
party in that constituency after the Shiv Sena with 28 seats.
The contest for the East Bandra State Assembly by-election of April 2015
demonstrated the emotionally charged atmosphere of the new politics of Mahar-
ashtra. The BJP and Shiv Sena were determined to ensure that the INC candidate
Naryan Rane did not win, in part because of the bitter history of personal
enmity between Rane and the Shiv Sena, of which he was a member before
joining the enemy INC in 2005 (www.financialexpress.com/article/india-news/form
er-cm-narayan-rane-trails-in-bandra-east-ncp-leading-in-tasgaon/63833/, accessed
December 14, 2015). Rane’s defeat was a great victory for the Shiv Sena. The
AIMIM also contested this by-election and was again accused by the INC
and NCP of working for the benefit of the parties of the Hindu right
(Ashar 2015). In 2014, the NCP had already claimed that the success of the
AIMIM in the State Assembly elections of October 2014 was due to the
support of the Hindu right (Banerjee 2014). Clearly the old ‘secular’ parties
of India, the INC and NCP, are very worried about their traditional ground
being undercut by the AIMIM which, despite a political history of some 100
years,23 has crossed, at last, state boundaries beyond its home base in
Hyderabad.24
The current political strategies by parties of the Hindu right in Maharash-
tra and Mumbai appear to be acting as a constraint on their traditional
Hindu militancy. Both the Shiv Sena and the BJP need the AIMIM to win
the Muslim voters away from the INC and NCP. Another consideration, at
least for the BJP, is that the world is watching and assessing India under
Modi. The European Union, for example, has already voiced concerns about
the BJP’s historical association with Hindu militancy (Roche 2014). Despite
these factors, the current configuration of state politics does not mean that a
more tolerant polity is emerging. For one thing, memories of communal
conflict in western India remain vivid: the damage caused by the Bhiwandi
riots of 1984, the Bombay riots of 1992–93 and retaliatory bombings such as
those of Black Friday, March 12, 1993 (Vicziany 2007, 2016a) prevent us
from discounting the re-emergence of violent Hindu fundamentalism. Second,
using the AIMIM as a tool against the INC and NCP has not prevented either
the BJP or the Shiv Sena from demanding that the AIMIM be banned for
stirring up religious hatred and demoralizing the police (archives.deccanchro
170 Marika Vicziany
nicle.com/130325/news-current-affairs/article/shiv-sena-demands-ban-mim-ma
harashtra; www.siasat.com/?by_user=87.77.163.250&ref_url=/news/bjp-leader
s-meet-cm-demands-ban-mim-party; both accessed December 14, 2015). The
Shiv Sena repeated this demand in late 2014 when it accused the AIMIM
of ‘spreading fundamentalist ideas’ and ‘poison[ing] the minds of Muslims in the
country’ (www.dnaindia.com/india/report-shiv-sena-attacks-aimim-says-owa
isis-poisoned-minds-of-muslims-2034079, accessed December 14, 2015). A
symbol of BJP and Shiv Sena anxiety about the AIMIM was the request that
the AIMIM be banned from holding a public meeting in Nagpur in late
February 2015; their concern was that the alliances being built by the
AIMIM with Dalits and other caste groups would improve the AIMIM’s chan-
ces in the 2017 Nagpur municipal elections (www.hindustantimes.com/india/
bjp-sena-oppose-aimim-chief-owaisi-s-rally-in-nagpur-on-feb-28/story-sdxgLZ
8HEXj71zbxJxxERK.html, accessed December 14, 2015).
Conclusion
The first two parts of this chapter focused on the popular religio-spiritual
cults of Shirdi Sai Baba and Pir Haji Ali Shah Bukhari in Mumbai and
Maharashtra. The participation of both Muslims and Hindus in these cults
demonstrates how Sufism in western India brings together people from dis-
parate backgrounds in shared traditions of acknowledging the power of Sufi
healers and teachers through prayer, pilgrimage and respect. In particular, my
survey of non-Muslim visitors to the Haji Ali dargāh demonstrated that
Hindus and Jains believe in the power of Pir Haji Ali to heal them and
address their woes, while those visitors who are not believers still felt a pow-
erful human and spiritual attraction to the shrine and its sacred location in
the Mumbai landscape. These everyday, mundane interactions between the
people of Mumbai foster traditions of tolerance and harmony that limit the
capacity of politically motivated parties and governments to fan hatred, con-
flict and riots based on artificially defined boundaries between the religions of
India.
In the final section of this chapter I have suggested that there is no
immediate political threat to these syncretic cults from either the Hindu right
or the Muslim right. Hindu militancy is currently at a low point partly
because of the ongoing political struggle between the two parties of the
Hindu right, the BJP and the Shiva Sena, at the levels of the Maharashtra
State Assembly and the municipalities of Maharashtra. This struggle is sap-
ping the energy of these parties, a jostling complicated by rising political
consciousness amongst the Muslim voters in western India who are aban-
doning the old, so-called secular parties (the INC and NCP) and voting for
the Hyderabad-based AIMIM. In this scenario, the agenda of Hindu nation-
alism is being kept in relatively low profile. The immediate political scenario
in Mumbai is one where pragmatic concerns about the state’s massive budget
deficit dominate over other issues. Despite this situation, the long-term and
fundamental commitment of both the BJP and the Shiv Sena to an extreme
Hindu nationalist agenda, puts the syncretic shrines of Mumbai and western
India at ongoing risk, as the fight about the Haji Malang shrine demonstrates.
While there is no room for complacency about the communal politics of
Mumbai, we also need to acknowledge the deeper cultural forces that bring
people together and give them a shared sense of belonging. The Hindu right
often disparages Indian Muslims by calling them ‘foreigners’ and Pakistanis.
This is designed to undermine the legitimate claim of Muslims to Indian
citizenship. The Haji Ali and Sai Baba dargāhs, however, have given birth to
domestic Indian cults with minimal reference points to external, non-Indian
influences. Their ‘Indian-ness’ is so prominent that in the case of Sai Baba the
cult surrounding the original shrine in Shirdi has become ‘Hinduized’. The
shrine of Shirdi Sai Baba is run by a Hindu temple committee while the Haji
Ali dargāh is in the hands of a Muslim trust, but neither shrine excludes pil-
grims from any religious or cultural background. More importantly, the
veneration of these saints has spilled over the confines of these precincts into
many other domestic and public spaces dedicated to these two saints. The
first line of the fifth stanza of a popular song about Haji Ali celebrates the
syncretic spirit that these two cults represent:
Yahaan Hindu Muslim Sikh Isaayi Faiz Paate Hain (x2)

Over here (On your doorstep) Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians,
all achieve glory/victory.
(text and translation available at www.bollynook.com/en/lyrics
/14832/piya-haji-ali/, accessed December 10, 2015)
This song, arranged by A.R. Rahman, featured prominently in Fiza, Khalid

Mohamed’s debut film about the destructive impact on family life of the 1993
Bombay riots and how ‘Muslim youth [became] trapped in a dead end by
communal violence’ (Bhaskar and Allen 2009: 318). It is this spirit of syn-
cretism that continues to irritate puritans of the Hindu right and the Muslim
right, but for the moment the cults of Shirdi Sai Baba and Pir Haji Ali Shah
Bukhari have avoided entrapment in the evolving identity politics of western
India. Instead, the vibrancy of these two cults requires us to reassess the
so-called communal divide in Mumbai and focus on those aspects of the life
of the city that bring people together in shared traditions of history and
spiritual consciousness.
Notes
1 I am grateful for the support and advice of the following people: Iftikar Ahmad
Rashid, Dr Hashim Abdulhamid, Aakash Mehta, Abhishek Choudhary, Dr Nar-
salay Madhavi, Anusha Gavankar, Dr Uri Gilad, Daulat Desai, Monimalika
Sengupta, Vivien Seyler, Professor Sanjay Ranade and the editors of this volume.
2 Shirdi Sai Baba is not to be confused with Sathya Bai Baba (or Sathya Narayena
Raju) who claimed to be Shirdi’s incarnation.
172 Marika Vicziany
3 The interviews were undertaken by Dr Sanjay Ranade from the University of
Bombay in February 2011, as part of Monash University’s Koli research project.
4 My attention was drawn to this incident by Dr Narasalay Madhavi, University of
Bombay.
5 Many Sufi saints in South Asia were migrants from the Middle East and Iran. So
compelling is this link that many locally born Indian Sufis had hagiographies
constructed to create histories of their birth and migration outside India (see
Green’s discussion of the life and shrine of Shah Nur Hammami (d. Aurangabad
1692) in Green 2003b: 500–501).
6 According to Dr Hashim Abdulhamid (Research Adjunct, Arts Faculty, Monash
University and author of a forthcoming Arabic–Malay dictionary) the Arabic
word for the human body is Jisam, Jasad or Badan, while the word for corpse is
Junatul al-mayat. The kafan is the plain white shroud used to wrap the dead for
burial.
7 During our work on the Kolis of Mumbai, we found a dargāh in Worli that is also
‘empty’ (Vicziany et al. 2013: 205–206). In Kashgaria, western China, I came
across a village site with seven shrines built to the spirits of the dead saints, but
they too were empty.
8 As noted earlier, historical or archaeological evidence about the shrine and the
exact details of Haji Ali’s life is lacking, so I am citing the trustees on this point.
9 Thousands of fans prayed for Bachchan including Rajiv Gandhi, the prime min-
ister’s son. The Bachchan and Gandhi families have a long connection which
prompted Rajiv Gandhi to suggest that Bachchan contest the 1984 Lok Sabha seat
for Allahabad in the Indian election (IANS 2014).
10 According to the Trust, the chastity of women was at stake: ‘In Shariat, men and
women are not allowed together. There is disturbance on men mentally and women
are also disturbed physically. It is not right for a man and a woman to enter toge-
ther. We hold the chastity of women in high esteem. Suppose in a rush something
happens? We take utmost care as management’ (Sequeria 2014).
11 The one-page survey was emailed out by two Indian postgraduates to their friends.
The pilot study sought to ascertain whether it might be worth undertaking a more
detailed study of what non-Muslim university students (aged between 19 and 29)
thought of the Haji Ali dargāh.
12 The dargāhs of western China (Vicziany 2016b, forthcoming) and Mumbai (Vic-
ziany et al. 2013) attract many women who perform fertility rites when praying to
the saints. Burman also discusses these in the case of the Maharashtrian dargāhs
(Burman 2002: 325, and illustration 4a of the dargāh of Mirawali Baba, Ahmadnagar).
13 The state and municipal election data referred to in this section are based on a
detailed analysis of election results which, given the limitations of space, cannot be
reported at length in this chapter. The two main sources of information are www.
elections.in/maharashtra/assembly-constituencies/ (accessed December 14, 2015),
and the State Electoral Commission, Mumbai, May 29, 2015, supplemented by
Paranjpe 2012.
14 One YouTube video about the Haji Ali dargāh, has negative comments by two
Muslim viewers saying that built up graves are heresies and should be levelled and
not mistaken for mosques (www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8NIBNtcb_c; accessed
December 14, 2015).
15 About an hour’s drive north of Mumbai’s international airport.
16 Kalyan’s first cable car will soon give pilgrims ready access to the shrine at the top
of the hill. About 5,000 visitors already pray at the dargāh, but this will now
increase, making the Shiv Sena’s strategy even more controversial.
17 Their petition now sits before the High Court of Mumbai in a public interest liti-
gation brought by Noorjehan Niaz and Zakia Soman of the Bharatiya Muslim
Mahila Andolan.
18 Shivaji employed Muslim judges, army recruits, commanders and naval officers
(Gordon 1993: 66, 81), while his coronation as a kshatriya king was compelled by
his need to control the local Brahmin elite and large landlord families (Gordon
1993: 87).
19 Since the 1985 Bombay Municipal Corporation elections, the Shiv Sena has learnt
the value of controlling the ‘vast resources’ of the BMC (Hansen 2001: 80); during
the first seven years Shiv Sena Mayor Chagan Bhujbal became the party’s financial
powerhouse by developing an ‘economic base deeply into the lucrative real estate
and construction business in greater Bombay’ (Hansen 2001: 84).
20 The AIMIM had been very active in eastern Maharashtra for a long time and
in October 2012 it won 11 of 81 seats in the Nanded municipality (Jore 2015;
Paranjpe 2012).
21 The seat of Aurangabad Central and southern Byculla.
22 The AIMIM is also positioning itself for a political presence in Uttar Pradesh
(UP), although in March 2015 various local administrations refused them permis-
sion to hold rallies in that state (www.ummid.com/news/2015/March/22.03.2015/oa
waisi-agra-rally-permission-cancelled.html, accessed December 14, 2015). The
AIMIM has a long way to go to reverse the decline of Muslim political repre-
sentation in the national parliament: in the May 2014 elections Muslim candidates
won the lowest percentage of seats ever in the Lok Sabha, some 4.2 per cent or a
mere 22 out of 543 seats (Parussini 2014). About 14 per cent of Indians are Mus-
lims, so if there were reserved seats for them proportionate to population, they
would have won 76 seats.
23 It was formed in Hyderabad during the 1920s under the name Majlis Ittehad ul
Muslimeen and was revived in 1958 under the new name All India Majlis Ittehad
ul Muslimeen (www.aimim.in/about-the-party/history/, accessed December 10,
2015).
24 Unlike many other Muslim regional parties that have not moved beyond their
home base (Jagannathan 2014).
Part III
Sufi belonging, local
and national
9 Abdul Kader Mukadam
Political opinions and a genealogy
of Marathi intellectual and
Muslim progressivism
Deepra Dandekar
I decided to write about Abdul Kader Mukadam’s political opinions in early

2014, to explore the genealogical and intellectual context of Muslim progressive
activism and its link with the rationalist movement in post-independence
Maharashtra that had resulted in 1970 in the establishment of the ‘Muslim
Satyashodhak Mandal’ (or the ‘Muslim Truth-Seeking Society’) under the
searing leadership of Hamid Dalwai. Mukadam began his own journalistic
writing career as a fire-brand ideologue under Dalwai in 1971 and had con-
tinued to investigate subjects pertaining to Muslim progressivism during his
political trajectory as an intellectual writer and activist. However, he main-
tained important political differences from Dalwai that had less to do with
their shared progressive ideals (i.e. the struggle against Muslim orthodoxy)
but was more concerned with Muslim political identity and belonging in
modern India and Maharashtra. Whereas Dalwai lamented orthodoxy, Paki-
stan-centered cultural belonging, the baggage of Mughal-cultural heritage
and the backward gaze of traditional Indian Muslims (Dalwai 1968), Muka-
dam wrote about the intercultural Sufi tradition of India and the ever-ready
preparedness of Sufis to mix with Hindu culture and religion in shared
exchange that enriched both Hindu and Islamic cultures and religions.
Although Mukadam obviously ascribes to the tenets of progressivism and
continues to write prolifically and robustly in ways that are synchronized with
his activist origins that criticize Muslim orthodoxy, he shifts his target from
Muslims and Islam to the hegemonic control wielded by the ‘ulamā’ (Muslim
clergy) and their various centralized schools of thought and opinion control
that lead to organized Muslim minority politics. His primary passions also lie
in writing about relationships of ‘belonging’ for Muslim minorities in the
context of a strong Hindu political reaction against ‘ulamā’ hegemony, which
he feels atomizes ordinary Muslims and Islam’s tolerance in its crossfire. He
therefore attempts to iron-out fraught communal differences between Hindus
and Muslims by asserting how cultural identity for Muslims can be defined as
being primarily regional – Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati, etc. – rather than
Islamic, exemplifying this further by writing about Muslim religious issues
in a regional vernacular himself: in Marathi. Mukadam therefore seeks to
open a space for intellectual discussion on religious difference but common
178 Deepra Dandekar
cultural belonging between Hindu and Muslim orthodoxy within the imagi-
naire of a commonly shared and unified regional idea of Maharashtra that
fits into the federalist structure of Indian nationalism.
He attempts to underline how religious difference between Marathi Hindus
and Muslims is private, intellectual or emotional that cannot be allowed to
spill-over into the public domain of Marathi cultural life in ways that disturb
its unified regional ‘ethos’. He believes this cultural Marathi public domain to
form an integrated, secular, modern, rational or progressive federal main-
stream of the nation, of which Muslims form a healthy part. His writings
make concerted attempts at educating his Hindu-Marathi readers about the
true and composite nature of what an uplifting and indeed secular side of
original Islam is meant to be, when revealed to the Prophet in the form of the
Qur’an. Pure and secular Islam, according to him, soon became debased and
corrupted by the formalist strictures imposed upon it by the Deobandi
‘ulamā’, the Dar-ul-Uloom, the Ulema-e Hind, the Tablighi Jamaat and other
such organizations intent upon producing a more globalist or universalist
structure of Islamic reformism. He denounces their recently arrived at and
hegemonically centralized variety of orthodoxy and orthopraxy as anti-
humanistic and medievalistic, and this brings him back a full circle not just to
Dalwai but to the general direction of Islamic progressive ideas that con-
tribute to the Muslim intellectual genealogy that once produced the Muslim
Satyashodhak Mandal in 1970.
Mukadam’s criticism of conservative, present-day and modern Islam
upholds, indeed underlines and necessitates the establishment of ‘another’
modern present-day Islam that he both embodies and envisions: a liberal
image of a regional and composite Islam that has to be cleansed of its own
right-wing orthodoxy, by which he silently justifies Dalwai’s tacit rationaliza-
tion of Hindu attacks on Islam’s debased and conservative aspects that hark
to Mughal times as lost glory. Although this view, propagated by Dalwai,
remains problematic in its insinuation of how Islam in India being medieval
and culturally ‘other’ (leading to Pakistan) is therefore righteously attacked
by Hindu nationalists, Dalwai also remains sadly naive in requesting Hindu
nationalists to give up their own hyper-Hindu practices as well, while exhort-
ing Islamists to become more secular in order to create a more modern and
secular forward-looking society. The aim in this tortuous logic is to envisage a
society that could be somehow rid of religion, so that an important impedi-
ment to modern India’s growth that once produced a painful partition based
on religious difference would never repeat itself (Dalwai 1968: 36–39).1
Mukadam operates from the next level in Dalwai’s idea by which he also
strongly deconstructs Dalwai. Mukadam assumes that Dalwai’s dream of
Muslim integration into Indian secularism had already taken place through
the medium of early Sufis traveling to India and interacting with Sadhus. On
the other hand, he also claims that syncretism took place through new
Muslim converts, who were already regionally integrated via their vernacular
practices and continuation of pre-conversion traditions that formed an
Abdul Kader Mukadam 179
incipient center-state proto-federal secularism: the Sufis from the Middle East
mixing with the Sadhus at the center and the new Muslim converts continuing
their regional, vernacular, pre-conversion and syncretic practices. Mukadam
therefore establishes a proto-nationalist model for present-day center-state
federal relationships, while also subtly subverting its Hindu nature by tracing
its roots to local Islamic and Sufi traditions and its syncretic nature that
shared its religiosity with Hindu religion and culture from its very inception.
He traces how early Muslims and traveling Sufis enjoyed cultural, mystical
and humanistic unison with Hindus, how new Muslims retained their Indian
surnames and how religious difference with Hindus was negligible in com-
parison to sharing a huge pre-conversion cultural framework for generations.
His lament therefore centers on the communal violence Muslims faced,
despite their cultural togetherness in India’s and Maharashtra’s mainstream;
he complains that these cultural differences were wrought by both Hindu and
Muslim bigots. He views his task as defined towards struggling against this
violence through the three-pronged modus operandi of writing against com-
munal attacks aimed at Muslims by Hindutva agents, while stressing the
right-wing nature of Muslim bigots when creating Muslims as culturally dif-
ferent from Hindus, and educating society about Sufism and the tolerance
and sharing nature of Islam.
Mukadam is therefore in a gray zone on his positionality on universal
Islam and its rigorous practices and following that is taught by the Deobandi
School or the Tablighi Jamaat. He is against the hierarchy dictated by the
‘ulamā’ and deviates radically from those groups, who when they make alle-
gations about corruption in Islam, mean to attack individual or regional
Muslim practices that cannot find codification or reference within Islamic
texts. Mukadam means its very opposite when he accuses centralized Islamic
schools of thought, law and opinion-forming bodies such as the Dar-ul
Uloom and the Deobandis of having corrupt medievalistic practices. He is
extolling regional Muslims, their spiritual practices and individualistic Sufi
saints, who lived in cultural and political environments of idealistic together-
ness with Hindus, speaking and writing in the vernacular of spiritual unity
with God (wahdat al-wujūd), propagating and being understood as part of a
utopian notion of composite culture and shared identities, because he believes
that the Qur’an itself is a flexible and interpretative text. Mukadam does not
believe in the ‘outlawing’ of Sufi practices because these are unable to fit rigid
Islamic textual codification. He believes that religious freedom and modernity
lies in revisionist readings of religious texts to suit every modern day and age.2
Every adherent Muslim community fighting for justice with keeping to their
Islamic identity has the right, according to Mukadam, to interpret religious
texts freely, pointing out how even the Holy Prophet had decreed modern
religious interpretation to suit every problematic case by allowing ijtihād (or
‘independent reasoning’).
Mukadam’s eminence as a ‘Muslim intellectual’, however, has created
divisions between religious liberal reformism and rationalist leftist groups
180 Deepra Dandekar
such as the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (a grassroots
organization established by the late Dr Narendra Dabholkar, working for the
eradication of ‘superstition’), which believes religion to be an impediment to
development (cf. Quack 2012: 201–202). This division primarily concerns
Mukadam’s projected identity as religious, to assert which Mukadam has to
embody his very own lens as Muslim. In order to emphasize the Muslim
position he is proposing within his liberal secular ideological writing, so that
those educated in Maharashtra can sympathize with the predicaments of
violence and minoritization that Muslims face, Mukadam has to publicly
project a liberal, secular Muslim image himself, an image of one who has
researched Islamic texts and written educative essays about such issues pri-
marily in Marathi, so that a Hindu Marathi public finding his arguments
convincing may condemn attacks on Muslims such as himself. This, along
with writings that denounce Islamic orthodoxy and Hindutva, historical
research and evidence of Muslim shared practices with Hinduism over various
regions, and denouncements of communal clashes that are already based on
assumptions that Hindus and Muslims share pre-conversion cultural prac-
tices, clinch Mukadam’s arguments by not only fusing his identity with the
Marathi public and Muslims simultaneously, but by erasing the Hindu–
Muslim cultural difference that Dalwai had once lamented and helped to
create. His political stand as an anti-communalist (both anti-Hindutva-
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and anti-Muslim orthodoxy) and as a liberal
Muslim makes Mukadam politically inclusive and suitable for a Congress and
centrist kind of position in Maharashtra and Mumbai in comparison to
Dalwai’s leftist, anti-religion and hyper-rationalist stand.
However, ‘syncretism’ is also exactly where Mukadam’s blind spot lies, as
he identifies and conflates the cultural Hindu mainstream and participating
within it for Marathi Muslims with secularism and patriotism (Muslims
adopting Marathi surnames, using Marathi and Konkani language in con-
trast to Urdu, wearing Saris like the Hindu Marathis, eating similar food and
so on). Mukadam considers liberal Muslim normativity necessarily to
encompass everyday Hindu cultural practices and festivals, while prescribing
and separating a small intellectual and private pocket for Islam among Mus-
lims, wherein religious expression is fitted into an understanding of constitu-
tional religious freedom. What he calls secularism or syncretism is therefore a
participative format through which Muslims within Maharashtra can perform
nationalism and the cultural mainstream and yet remain non-violated in the
religious sphere and even hope to celebrate their status of being a religious
minority that can claim to have historically enriched Hindus. It is a theorem
through which Muslims can be tolerated by integrating themselves within the
Hindu cultural mainstream but by buying space for maintaining private reli-
gious difference with disclaimers of remaining intellectual, philosophically
emotional and non-violent in return: a buy-off. Muslims will pay the price of
giving away their Mughal kind of cultural ‘otherness’ to become the Hindu
kind of nationalist Indians in order to acquire a private and non-threatening
variety of religious freedom that is moreover enshrined constitutionally as the
religious freedom of every nationalist. The world of private Muslim religion
and its conscious and careful practice would have to, in Mukadam’s imagi-
nation of it, remain separate from the public display of Hindu culture. This
nationalist and public form of an integrative mainstream would by default be
defined as cultural Hinduism and would moreover be named ‘secular’ and
lauded as ‘syncretic’.
Meeting Mukadam and the paradox of Muslim political visuality

That Mukadam himself embodies the lens of a liberal and intellectual
Muslim was obvious to me from the very start. He does not physically ascribe
to the visuality of being politically Muslim. Quite in contrast to this image, he
rejects what is considered a defiant stance of being both religiously and cul-
turally ‘other’ in the Muslim ghettoized body located ambivalently in the
Hindu cultural and political mainstream. None of this politically underlined
cultural ‘otherness’, usually expressed by donning recognizably Muslim
external insignia that seem almost global and beyond regional specificity in
current-day Mumbai can be identified with Mukadam. He seems in fact to be
repelled by these recognizable and external aspects that are contingent, in
popular opinion, upon following a ‘Jamāti’ (Tablighi) framework, which
enjoins the wearing of non-Hindu and religiously prescribed dress for both
men and women, the growing of beards for men and the dying of hair
with henna, and the extensive use of henna and collorium for aesthetic
purposes for both men and women.
I first encountered the concept of Muslim visuality and the ghettoized
‘Jamāti’ body during my fieldwork among Muslim women in Pune and
Mumbai. These women belonged to families adhering to Sufi shrines (and I
interviewed them since my research concerned Sufism), who looked down on
‘Jamātis’ as a retaliation against Jamāti strictures that constantly tried to
lecture them on the nature of ‘true’ Islam. This lecturing always assumed that
all traditional practices that were non-Jamāti were misled, shirk and harām.
These women recounted interesting details about Jamātis in my interviews
with them. They made clear from the outset that their families would never
intermarry with Jamātis because the latter were considered anti-national
(some women called them arabī (‘Arabic’), some ‘Taliban’ and some ‘Pakis-
tani’, while yet others just waved their hands to indicate an ‘other’ direction).
It was said that if a girl belonging to a ‘normal’, Sufi shrine-visiting Sunni3
family married into a ‘Jamāti’ family, even by mistake, it was supposed that
she would face the hell of an Islamic claustrophobia as she would have to
follow extremely rigid rules and laws that no Muslim in India follows and no
Indian law permits. According to my respondents, the ‘Jamātis’ were known
for an inexplicable reason by a code name/number called caubīs nambar
(‘number twenty-four’) in Mumbai, and their appearance was also indis-
tinguishable from their ghetto mentality. They would never allow women any
182 Deepra Dandekar
physical, emotional, educational, relational, professional, faith-based or
intellectual freedom, and disallow women ‘Indian culture’ (wearing Saris or
engaging in any Indian festivities, celebrations, reading newspapers, maga-
zines, watching TV, gossiping with each other, going out shopping with
friends from other Islamic backgrounds, other religions, etc.), and so on. I
had no way of testing the exact nature of these as either exaggerations or fears
but women went on to tell me how visiting favorite shrines was of course out
of question once a girl married into a ‘Jamāti’ family. Even visiting one’s
mother family without a male marital relative to spy on the conversation
became impossible (and this was shocking for many Marathi Muslim girls
from Pune and Mumbai, who were riding two-wheelers and wearing fash-
ionable burqas). Complete and ugly-looking burqas, they said, were often
enforced on women, even as men wore Islamic dress, even to work, that
always included a skull cap and trousers tied well above the ankles to display
ardent wuzū’ practices.
The ‘Jamātis’ were therefore known to be conservative in all matters of
religious and secular life, where the Shariat would play a decisive role within
the everyday lives of women. Women further told me in interviews that
‘Jamāti’ men were keen to display their religiosity and superiority among
other Muslim men and were known to regularly ‘prayer-mark’ their foreheads
to publicly demonstrate their special prayerfulness (to indicate how their
repeated praying had led to a forehead callus) in contrast to common Mus-
lims, who were denigrated as superstitious and Sufi-shrine adherents and not
prayerful enough. ‘Jamātis’ were laughed at for taking religious life too ser-
iously, as political hardliners, and their women were pitied. They were viewed
as provocative, too political about their cultural difference and religiously
orthodox. Other aspects about them were said to include strictures about
home aesthetics that only allowed decorations constituting Islamic text-
inscriptions and holy colors. Pictures depicting popular Islamic shrines or
pilgrimage, even in the form of clocks, were forbidden.
Mukadam, on the other hand, is so starkly different from this Muslim
‘Jamāti’ visuality that he seemed to me to be not only already aware of its
politics but also insistently careful about rejecting it. Instead, he projected a
strong Marathi and culturally Hindu image, where his Muslim religious
belonging was intellectual, liberal and progressive, but equally powerful and
focused in that limited sphere of expression that his own opinions assign to it.
It was by meeting Mukadam that I encountered the empowered figure of a
conscious Muslim minority in Maharashtra that proposes an alternate model
to the cringing, victimized Muslim body, as well as the reactionary, ghet-
toized, defensive and political Muslim body, which are mutual and visual
extensions within contexts of communal riots. Mukadam is proposing an
alternative model of a powerfully conscious and intellectual body that is (I
felt) nevertheless fragmented: living on the boundary between Hindu cul-
tural nationalism and Muslim private religious belief and religious/political
inquiry.
Figure 9.1 Mr Abdul Kader Mukadam at his residence in Mumbai, 2014

(Photo courtesy Deepra Dandekar)
It is his concurrent ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ as a Marathi Muslim that

connected and simultaneously separated Mukadam from Marathi Hindus
during his formative years as well. He recounted the way in which the Rash-
triya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) śakhas (‘branches’) excluded Muslims from
its inception in 1942 but never sang the national anthem in their meetings
(which Mukadam considered inclusive). This was a way of not just excluding
Muslims but of also excluding plural and secular meanings of the nation
apart from those that dictated their own communal agenda. Mukadam
recounted how his desire to find expression as a Marathi Muslim found
satisfaction by joining the Rashtra Seva Dal that was founded on the fair
principles of social justice. Reading and writing became Mukadam’s life pas-
sions, even as he learned to reject the ‘gospel truth’ of religious texts as a
progressive intellectual in order to reject its hegemonic authority over the
everyday life of Muslims. He believes that treating Islamic texts as the ‘final
reality’ would actually shut doors to its ultimate truth and hinder growth,
since the Qur’an needed to be treated more as a revolutionary book that had
interpretive possibilities in various subsequent ages and readerships than as a
literal document, wherein every word has to be deterministically and literally
followed.
According to Mukadam, the Prophet was an historical and religiously tol-
erant figure rather than a divine one, who never enforced religious conversion
on others (such as even his own uncle Abu Talib), and even supported gender
justice by accepting his first wife Khadija as his guru. In turn, she never hurt
his masculine ego, even though she was a successful businesswoman and
184 Deepra Dandekar
initially his employer, as their relationship could almost form a paradigm for
a modern Muslim couple and their equitable marital relationship. Also
another of the Prophet’s wives, Aisha, was accepted as one of the most scho-
larly hadith givers among Islamic scholars of her time, and therefore women
did play an enormously important role in formulating Muslim knowledge in
the Arab world, in contrast to what the Taliban dictated. It was criminal to
Mukadam that the same texts were being used deliberately by the ‘ulamā’
among Muslim nations to oppress women. Neither did Mukadam believe the
Qur’an or Shariat to be immutable and rigid. He stated these to be exemplary
and directive texts of their time, being flexible towards an interpretative mode
and aimed towards a visionary future to bring about social integration and
communal harmony.
Mukadam remonstrated about various cases where rationality and human
rights had been overturned to impose violent pre-Islamic Arabic codes of
conduct upon Indian women as part of Islamic customary practice by various
centralized fatwa-issuing bodies such as the Tablighi Jamaat, the Dar-ul-
Uloom, the Deobandi School, the Jamaati Islami and the Ulema-e Hind. He
spoke at length of how human welfare had always been at the center for the
Prophet in contrast to impositions by the ‘ulamā’, where an overtly determi-
nistic interpretation of the written word made Muslim society regressive, anti-
human and anti-modern. Praising other progressive voices of Islam and what
they advocated for modern Qur’anic interpretation to suit every day and age,
Mukadam strongly supported the political stand taken by the late Asghar Ali
Engineer, especially in relation to ‘gender-just’ reforms, especially since
‘gender-just’ directives demanded a reinterpretation of Shariat to allow
women’s emancipation. According to Mukadam, Engineer was right in stat-
ing that Islamic texts and their reinterpretation could actually bring about
social revolution.4
Mukadam believes Sufism to constitute the actual mystical and inter-
cultural resource for Islam in India. In contrast to the Anti-superstition
Movement, he did not consider Sufism as anti-science, since Sufism being an
integral part of Islam could not be unscientific, as Islam itself was a scientific
and open religion, when interpreted flexibly. He claimed his differences with
Hamid Dalwai had lain in their different targets of attack; while Dalwai
attacked Islam, Mukadam said that he attacked the ‘ulamā’, just as Engineer
did. However, he made clear that in believing Islam to be scientific, he was
not glorifying Islamic texts as literal, hegemonic and unshakable in their
truth, just as he was not supporting Sufi miracle claims to have any reality. Even
though he thought that stories of miracles were myths, he believed that what
people wanted to communicate through their retelling of such stories con-
cerned experiences of psychological relief at having encountered a humanistic
touch. For Mukadam, the humanism of Islam is itself the miracle.
Mukadam felt that love/humanism must have constituted an extremely
important factor for Sufism to succeed in medieval Indian society, which
was indeed a time when Sufism proliferated. He asserts how Sufis had to
synthesize their spiritual dynamism with prevalent socio-political dynamism,
within a medieval milieu where Islamic religious difference and resultant
communal tension had no space, as Sufis had to reach out to people within
the political atmosphere of their time. Sufi activity, in short, could have been
imagined in a way that Hindus never believed anything to be really out of
place during medieval times.
However, Mukadam’s opinions about Sufism have some contradictions.
That medieval Indian society (the alleged milieu within which Sufism spread)
was indeed recognizably Hindu from the point of view of current political
perspectives is questionable. His view is based on the colonial production of a
category of ‘religious difference’ that is timeless and changeless and eternally
engaged in violent strife with those considered ‘outsiders’ to it in the same
way as current Hindutva discourse imagines when considering Muslims as
invaders. The second point that somewhat contradicts the first, and even
produces justification for Hindutva-based suspicions that Sufis converted
Hindus, is provided by viewing Sufis as almost passive-aggressive strategists
born out of their minority position in a largely and recognizably Hindu
medieval society, as they laid low and projected Islam as ‘humanism’. The
Sufi is almost imagined as someone who could not afford to be ‘Islamic’ in
the Hindu medieval milieu as this would be construed as violence, since he
dealt with human content and context and moreover was a political minority
immersed in a sea of ‘otherness’. Interestingly, though, according to this
theory, both medieval Hindus and Muslims already operated on a colonial
paradigm of recognizable ‘religious difference’ that categorized community to
an extent that they performed proto-secularism almost silently and so secretly
that the ‘violence’ of their religious differences went unnoticed and was
repressed. The Sufi, therefore, almost infiltrated Hindu society and culture by
adopting it and the Hindu allowed this infiltration by the Muslim to utilize
his Sufi humanist, psychological healing for those lower in Hinduism suffering
from its maladies and oppression. Even as the Sufi insidiously converted suf-
fering Hindus to a gray variety of Islam that could be named medieval Sufism
and modern humanism, all the while carefully disconnecting Sufism from
legalistic Islam, because the Sufi was communally self-conscious of his religious-
minority status, he nevertheless introduced those whom he healed and who
inhabited his khānqāh (‘lodge’) to Islamic cultural forms and rituals, while
they remained Hindu and he remained Muslim and shared their culture.
Mukadam’s perspective about Sufism is extraordinarily reflective of a cur-
rent-day political scenario, as his point of view refers to dargāh practice
popular among Hindus within present-day contexts, wherein the saint is no
longer present but only represented by a venerated grave. Mukadam’s indica-
tion of those suffering from ‘medieval Hinduism’ (for whom Sufis provided
relief) also seems to be more of a critical comment in the direction of
certain painful and violent ‘medievalistic’ practices such as caste and gender
discrimination that fall under the present-day rubric of cultural and poli-
tical Hinduism. When Sufism ‘heals’ these socially generated maladies
186 Deepra Dandekar
psychologically, it does so by viewing humans from a different social and
religious spectrum than that from within which these maladies originate.
Finally, Mukadam is also indicating that free and public Muslim/Sufi reli-
gious expression are acts possible within environments of Westernized mod-
ernity, possible only in the post-medieval period, when Sufis no longer need to
work incognito and go unnoticed but could struggle to be more openly and
expressively Muslim; they could make use of the values of freedom, liberalism,
law and order.
Paradoxically, these were the very arguments that formed the context for
suspicions against Sufis expressed by supporters of Hindutva, goading the
former into tearing down Sufi establishments that they feel are functioning
under the pretext of Hindu inclusivity but are actually Islamist hideouts sup-
porting religious conversion and terrorism. These are also the same reasons
for Hindutva organizations to believe that many Sufi shrines and Islamic
monuments are actually built on top of the sites of demolished Hindu temples
(see Oak 2001; cf. also Hayden 2002). The support from Marathi Hindus to
Sufi shrines then proves ineffectual, consisting of a worship that simply con-
stitutes reworked frameworks of Westernized mysticism marketed moreover
by Bollywood or sometimes part of caste-based clan ritual consisting of an
individualized affliction narrative. Hindus are also more concerned with
beliefs about how Muslim shrines represent impurity-attracting phenomena
that can only heal the impure and afflicted because Muslims themselves
function even more powerfully as impure boundary markers with Hindu
caste-society.
According to Mukadam, however, it is the shared feature between Hindu-
ism and Islam that produces the true and vibrant nature of an individualist
kind of Sufism in India, and there remains a great difference between the
‘ulamā’-centric propagation of Islam that proposes a dualism between the
divine and the common. He pointed to the double or simultaneous phenom-
enon of how adherents still believe in Sufism, even if an increasing number of
Muslims are now dominated into following the ‘ulamā’, indicating that how-
ever anti-shrine the Tablighi Jamaat is, they cannot quell the attraction that
adherents feel toward the humanistic power of an individualistic Sufi saint.
The most poignant aspect of our interview concerned the manner in which
Mukadam felt sidelined by the rationalist movement that had once celebrated
Dalwai’s leftism and the Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal that had helped
launch his career. His harsh treatment by Narendra Dabholkar (he jokingly
called it the treatment by Pune intellectuals) had first made Mukadam angry
and then gradually left him feeling confused and flummoxed. When I asked
whether it was because he, Mukadam, had expressed an increasingly Muslim
political presence, albeit a staunchly liberal and secular one, Mukadam pro-
ceeded to deny my reading so sharply that I almost felt I had made an alle-
gation. It was in his hot denial that I co-experienced the extent of his feelings
of betrayal. He did not or could not believe that left-wing rationalists in
Maharashtra could be as hardline as to not allow him to express his religious
identity, opinions and experiences. He could not believe that they did not
appreciate his deconstruction of Islamic textual hegemony, his support for
gender justice, his struggle against communalism and the repeated challenge
to the ‘ulamā’.
Dichotomizing the ‘ulamā’ and Sufism

In addition to a staggering number of essays, written mostly in Marathi (and
also in English) to combat communalism (both Muslim orthodoxy and Hin-
dutva), Mukadam has made two compilations of his most prominent intel-
lectual writings in Marathi titled: Dastān Bhāratīya Musalmānānci (2005)
[‘The Story of Indian Muslims’] and Candrakorīcyā Chāyet (2010) [‘In the
Shadow of the Crescent Moon’]. Although most of his essays tackle various
issues attempting to educate the Marathi public, encouraging them to desist
from taking a totalizing and denigrating view of Islam and Islamic countries,5
while also desisting from extolling and lauding the ‘West’, he writes power-
fully about the composite and shared nature of Islam, Sufi mysticism and
Hindu transcendental philosophy in India. He demonstrates how Islamic
mysticism and Sufism are historically syncretic and can constitute a resource for
modern Indian secularism. I will for the most part take up his concentration
on Sufism in this section of the chapter.
Differentiating between the ‘ulamā’ and the Sufis (a tradition derived from
the word tasawwuf), Mukadam describes Sufis as persons wearing woolen
garments, being clean at heart (since wearing wool is considered a sign of
innocence) and having endless love for God (‘ishq and muhabbat). Even as he
critiques the ‘ulamā’, Mukadam mentions the knowledge of the Shariat or the
basics of Islamic law to constitute one of the foundations of the four different
stages through which all Sufi novices need to pass before they achieve the
ultimate realization of God. Shariat was therefore as important for the Sufis
as it was for the ‘ulamā’. He then describes the actual details of the four-fold
important Sufi stages as: shariat, following Islamic rules and regulations
related to daily practices and prayers codified in the Qur’an and hadith; tar-
īqat, the Sufi way or path consisting of both the material (jismānī) and spiri-
tual (rūhānī) or spiritual; ma‘rifat, a stage where Mukadam believed that Sufis
removed all superstition and absence of knowledge from their religious journeys;
before achieving the last and final stage of confronting God’s omnipresence
and omnipotence and universal reality, or haqīqat.
Mukadam describes the importance of knowing the four important body
parts during the undergoing of these transformative spiritual processes as nafs
(six emotional obstacles to achieving universal reality, similar to the Hindu
shadripu of lust, greed, anger, arrogance, attachment and jealousy), the rūh
(soul), qalb (heart) and ‘aql (brain), and the three-year stages for achieving
Sufi knowledge that become actualized for Sufi novices – namely, the first
year spent in serving others, the second year spent in praying and the third
year spent in searching for the self (Mukadam 2010: 26–28). Mukadam also
188 Deepra Dandekar
mentions the importance and preponderance of various silsilas or brother-
hoods in India that have had a tradition of introducing worthy students to
their teachers, dedicated to the following of the Sufi path by learning methods
of attaining spirituality, the ‘way’ or the tarīqat of prayer, meditation and self-
actualization through ritual initiation. Only a person already proficient in the
above qualifications, who has gained complete knowledge already could become a
guru or shaykh, even if he exerted control over his disciples, as he gained
the khilāfat or a leadership position in his silsila to carry on the teachings of
his brotherhood and initiate new novices in the regions where he traveled.
However, as if abruptly laying aside all these minute details of Sufism, its
layered, structured spiritual many-folded alchemical/semi-biological path,
linked to Islamic law, brotherhood traditions and hierarchical Sufi teachers,
Mukadam immediately turns to how an individualistic experience of God
among Sufis, ultimate knowledge and realization of divine omnipotence can
never be religiously divisive and communal. He attempts to demonstrate how
Sufis have necessarily been historically proto-secular in India by providing
what he believes to be various examples of Hindu-Muslim ‘syncretism’. He
celebrates the close association between the hathyoga-practicing Nātha yogis
and the traveling Sufi saints of the Rifā‘ī silsila from Turkey, Syria and Egypt.
He also describes the references of Gorakshanāth’s (Gorakhnāth) philosophy
that occurs in combination with Sufi concepts such as that of wahdat al-wujūd
(God is one) and the mention of words ‘Gorakshanāth’, ‘Śrī Gorakshanāth’
and ‘O Nāth’ in the Rushdnāmā, written by Shaykh ‘Abd al-Quddūs Gangohī.
He writes of the close associations between Sufis such as Chirāgh-i Dehlavī
and the siddha saints, and the contribution of Sufi saints such as Bābā Farīd
to the production of Sikh religious texts. Providing details about the manner
in which al-Bīrūnī brilliantly combined a confluence of Islamic/Sufi learning
with the Hindu (writing in detail about philosophies such as sānkhya, the
yogasūtra, the Bhagavadgītā and other such texts) by combining a perusal of
all kinds of religious texts in Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit, Mukadam espe-
cially refers to him quoting Patanjali, attempting to demonstrate how Sufism
can be positively compared to Hindu transcendental thought when debating
on the nature of knowledge, superstition and the ultimate presence of God
(Mukadam 2005: 46–47; Mukadam 2010: 29, 32).
Further, Mukadam asserts how Sufis were never against musical traditions
and how samā‘ or musical soirees were always a regular feature at their
khānqāhs. He provides detailed clarifications about how a dargāh is different
from a mosque, and about how both Hindus and Muslims were always wel-
come for samā‘. Mukadam writes of how the Sufis spoke and wrote in local
languages such as Hindavi and how many among those new converts
(Indians) to Islam kept their original surnames, connection with local lan-
guages and native regions, many of them being talented Sufis, musicians and
sometimes members of local courtly cultures, where they continued to thrive,
composing and writing on Sufi-Hindu ‘syncretic’ topics. He specially men-
tions the famous musician Shaykh Ahmad Naharwālā from Gujarat, who was
a disciple of Imām Faqīr Madhu from the Jāma Masjid of Ajmer, who
despite their conversion to Islam, never changed their surnames (Mukadam
2010: 31).
Mukadam provides various other examples such as that of the fourteenth-
century Kashmiri royal couple Richana and Kotadevī, who as Buddhists were
not accepted into Hinduism when they wanted to convert, which was the
majority religion of their subjects in Kashmir at the time. They were rejected
by Hindu religious leaders because their caste allocation could not be
clarified and so they accepted a conversion to Islam instead, which was a
second highest majority religion of their kingdom, at the hands of the famous
saint of Kashmir, Sufi Bulbul Shāh (Sayyid Sharaf al-Dīn), who was a pro-
minent khalīfa from the Suhrawardī tarīqat in Turkey and a disciple of
Shaykh Shihab al-Dīn. Bulbul Shāh was said to have had many important
Sufi disciples such as Mullā Ahmad, and who was given the title of Shaykh
al-Islām as one of Kashmir’s prominent Sufis. Richana in any case took the
name Sadr al-Dīn and was known to build the first mosque of Kashmir at
Srinagar, known initially as Bodro Masjid but today as Bulbul Langar.
Mukadam provides many more examples of Kashmiri Shaiva-Sufis such as
Lāl Dīdī and her proto-feminism, which are compiled in her vernacular say-
ings, the Lallā Vākka, wherein she expresses her search for the divine that
according to Mukadam’s reading of her lies beyond both the stone within
shrine and the teaching of the path provided by a hegemonic shaykh. Truth,
according to Lāl Dīdī, resided instead in love and universal brotherhood that
lay in breaking religious difference and following a life of simple living, making
her in Mukadam’s eyes a true Sadhu and Sufi (Mukadam 2010: 33–36).
Mukadam cites further examples of how Shāh Turāb Chishtī (1722 AD)
from Karnataka, being both an ardent Sufi and a humanist, was also a dis-
ciple of Svāmi Samārtha Rāmdās from Tanjore, who was so drawn to Hindu
mysticism that he became a great scholar of the Marathi language. So deep
was Shāh Turāb’s attraction to Rāmdās Svāmi’s teachings and philosophy,
that he made a beautiful translation of the latter’s Manāce Ślok into the
Dakkhani Urdu Man Samjhāvan without changing either the meter or
meaning of the original text (Mukadam 2005: 48–52).
Mukadam then goes on to describe the syncretism of Darah Shukoh, who,
even though he was born in the royal family, according to Mukadam enjoyed
a deep thirst for knowledge fostered by teachers such as ‘Abd al-Latīf Sahār-
anpūrī, and came subsequently in contact with various Sufi and Hindu saints
during his youth, becoming the disciple of Hazrat Miyān Mīr from the Qādirī
silsila later, who was also known to have laid the first brick for and inaugurated
the golden temple at Amritsar (Mukadam 2005: 52–55).
Though Mukadam’s discussion on Sufism is carried out in great detail and
beauty, its tone rings familiar. Very few of those cited by him as tolerant and
inter-religious towards ‘other’ religions are Hindus; most or all of them are
Muslims. Moreover, if those described by him are Hindus (by default), their
inter-religiosity and tolerance is so unmarked that it goes unmentioned. It is
190 Deepra Dandekar
as if Hindu gurus were taking in Muslim disciples as a matter of course in an
expression of proto-secular religiosity and only Muslims needed to be men-
tioned for their tolerance, since it was only Muslims or Muslim converts
whose intolerance and perceived violence it was interesting for Mukadam to
erase. On the other hand, only Hindu transcendentalists during the medieval
period were considered syncretic by Mukadam; other Hindu ritualists or
Hindu society in the medieval period were considered as rigid as either the
‘ulamā’ or the Hindutva society that the Sufi had to penetrate, as nearly an
invisible agent.
In other words, Mukadam’s description of Islamic mysticism or Sufism
remains somewhat defensive as he tries to build a tolerant image for liberal
Muslims by purging Islam of the evils of Muslim orthodoxy, achieved by
separating the ‘ulamā’ from it. It is a dualism that is equally modernist, since
medieval Sufism indeed included a practice of orthodox Islamic law within it,
even according to Mukadam’s own descriptions of Sufism. Also a complete
scholarly knowledge of Islamic texts and Sunna is an absolute prerequisite of
what is allowed as ijtihād within Islam. Therefore, in effect this political
dualism is specifically produced by Mukadam to mitigate Hindutva-based
communal discrimination against Muslims that would help Muslims belong
better to the Marathi cultural mainstream by creating an artificial liberalist
critique of Muslim clergy, who in actuality are adherents of Sufism as well.
His artificial position of separating the ‘ulamā’ from Sufis, and essentializ-
ing both, turns a blind eye to how some of the most influential Sufis in India
include among their ranks renowned ‘ulamā’ of the Deobandi and Barelwi
schools of thought.6 Although this dichotomy between the ‘ulamā’ and the
Sufi is aimed at demonstrating the transcultural nature of Sufi teachings,
namely wahdat al-wujūd, and critiquing what is perceived as the anti-Sufi
teachings of the Tablighi Jamāt, Mukadam has unconsciously also perpe-
tuated an orientalist bias of Sufis as ‘soft’, transcultural, humanistic, mystical
and tolerant towards other religions, especially while contrasting them to the
anti-Sufis, when producing the latter as hardliners and radicals. He has given
in to the same bias that he struggles against elsewhere, when he exhorts his
readers to desist taking a totalizing view of Muslims. He takes a totalizing
view of Muslim reformists himself, almost demonizing the political Muslim in
order to make space for the everyday Muslim and his everyday religious
shrine and spaces of ownership as ‘places’ of entitlement, non-suspicion
and respectable ownership in the eyes of the everyday Hindu, who after all
co-shares these ‘places’, where riots and demolitions are also performed.
Mukadam also takes a non-uniform perspective on the hegemony of the
‘ulamā’ and what is allowed them, when they claim the freedom of interpret-
ing Islamic religious texts, according to Arabic customary practice, while
imposing Islamic law on Muslim populations. He applauds the same hege-
mony claimed by Sufi saints as freedom, ijtihād and ‘syncretism’, when they
interpret Islamic religious texts according to Hindu customary practice, when
imposing Islamic law on Muslims. Moreover, many among ‘individualistic’
syncretic Sufis Mukadam quotes are either men of eminence as healers or
advisors with their own khānqāh with a following, who possessed certain
social agency as scholars of Islamic and Hindu religious texts, or as Sufis,
who are eminent leaders, khalīfas or associates within important and powerful
Sufi silsila, and who more often than not, even in history, enjoyed political
alliances with powerful Mughal, Sultanate, Maratha and Rajput chieftains.
The ‘ulamā’s ijtihād of being culturally Arabic therefore cannot be denigrated
while lauding the Sufi ijtihād of being culturally Hindu, unless Mukadam is
tacitly identifying Hinduism as the national culture of India and criticizing
the ‘ulamā’ for being culturally ‘foreign’ and for foisting an anti-national
culture on Indian Muslims, especially on Indian Muslim women, who are
considered their special victims under the pretext of Islamic law.
Rewriting fragmented political identity

Mukadam has written bitingly against modern Islamic orthodoxy and its
proponents such as televangelist Zakir Naik, operating out of Mumbai,
debating whether Naik’s contention of Islamic superiority to Hinduism is
indeed scientific (based on proof within Islamic religious texts). Finding
Naik’s ideas irrational and wanting in terms of contextual analysis, he uses
the same arguments to battle against rabid RSS ideologues such as P.N. Oak,
whose contention that the Taj Mahal was built on the destroyed and vandalized
remains of a Hindu Shiva temple Tejo Mahal has also been already disproved
because of its lack of any scientific evidence or historical veracity. Reading
Mukadam extensively, as he disproves one theory after another, refuting each
and every totalizing notion about Islam, notions of Muslim history, Islamic
nations or modern Muslim community, one senses a sprightly, scholastic,
vibrant and activist mind dedicated to combatting communalism and enthu-
siastic about enriching society and readership with a polite intellectual quest
about modern notions of secularism.
On the other hand, Mukadam is equally a product of the politics of his
time in Maharashtra, which is marked overwhelmingly by the rise of the Shiv
Sena through the four decades of the 1960s to the 1990s and its alliance with
the struggle for a Marathi region for Marathi-language speakers in the
Sanyukta Maharashtra Andolan during the early 1960s. Mukadam writes of
having participated in the pro-Marathi movement as a student under many
influential leaders of the time (a movement that was to see Bal Thackeray’s
emergence as a political leader), and reports his patriotic pride and joy about
his mother tongue, notwithstanding his religious identity, even as he officially
shifts to a Congress Party affiliation in the face of the Shiv Sena shifting to a
stronger anti-Muslim and Hindutva position by the time it joined the BJP
government coalition at the center. It is noteworthy, however, that despite the
Sena’s BJP alliance, Thackeray himself remained deeply impressed by Indira
Gandhi, and some of his illustrations and obituaries expressing grief at her
assassination bear testimony to their mutual admiration (Purandare 2012).
192 Deepra Dandekar
These gray zones between the Congress and BJP at the center and the Sena in
the Maharashtra State Legislative Assembly hint at various alliances and
political overlaps between state-center federal relationships and their exten-
sion to political opinions surrounding the belonging of important minorities
such as Marathi Muslims.
The Sena for instance remained deeply ambivalent about Marathi and
Konkani Muslims (Purandare 2012; Suhrawardy 2011). It is therefore not
hard to understand where and how Mukadam fits into an admiration, a feel-
ing of linguistic nationalism and belonging to the Sena’s ‘nativist’ Marathi
ideology, even if he cannot politically support the Sena for its problematic
and violent Hindutva ideology. Suhrawardy (2011) discusses with puzzlement
how Thackeray refers to Marathi and Konkani Muslims as ‘our’ Muslims in
his party mouthpiece Saamna. While Thackeray has no objections whatsoever
about these Muslims belonging and flourishing in Maharashtra, since they
have, according to him, been living there for generations, he asks his readers
on the other hand to catch, lynch and kick out those extremist Muslims who
have infiltrated Maharashtra from ‘outside’ and have tried to spoil and incite
the Konkani Muslims. Purandare (2012) discusses how Thackeray once asked
a rally whether his then-appointed Chief Minister Abdul Rehman Antulay
could be differentiated from a Konkani Brahmin in his external appearance, if
his first name were not to be mentioned at all, since Antulay was a Marathi
name and nearly all Konkani Muslims had a history of retaining Marathi
surnames even after Muslim conversion!
It is simple to deduce that Mukadam views himself and writes about new
Muslim converts fitting themselves into their original regional frameworks
and keeping their surnames, as part of the Marathi cultural mainstream
imagined by Shiv Sena, as they viewed Konkani-Marathi Muslims as auto-
chthons: Thackeray’s ‘own’ Muslims. Konkani-Marathi Muslims have been
accorded a higher political position by the Sena than the migrant ‘outsider’
Muslims, who are viewed as infiltrators, and those engaging in Arabic ‘out-
sider’ cultures and ‘ulamā’-driven, ‘Jamaati’, north Indian, Urdu-speaking
frameworks that enforce Arabic customary law from outside, who would
resist Marathi cultural integration and instead incite communal hatred
‘within’ on the ‘insider Muslim’. At the same time, Mukadam is definitely not
right-wing or opposed to Muslim migration to Mumbai from outside; even
though he remains ambivalent to Muslim politics of non-integration and
cultural difference that allies them to non-Indian and Arabic origins and
customs, while seeking cultural integration within the Indian mainstream.
For the cosmopolitan and transcultural Muslim society of Mumbai that
was part of both the Konkan and the hinterland, due to the intensive waves
of Muslim migration to it, especially to and from Pakistan and the Gulf
countries, where Muslims had been migrating for work and for purposes of
living within a unified Muslim community (umma) instead of within a dual
framework of being both Marathi and Muslim, there existed many political
and intellectual formats for everyday Islam. Green (2011) has already
delineated how the different kinds of Islamic presence in the Bombay of the
nineteenth century could be conceptualized as ‘religious firms’ that had their
own backgrounds, frameworks of operation, following/clientele, market, geo-
graphy and modes of interaction, all encompassed within the one booming
cosmopolitan range, while these firms simultaneously inhabited the category
of ‘religion’. Colonial politics, on the other hand, made strong efforts to
separate this category of ‘religion’ and its different associated groups from
administration and political life, even as these went on to produce Bombay’s
commercial and cosmopolitan framework.
The rise of religion as politics and the emergence of a party like the Sena in
the post-independence period in Maharashtra, however, itself created the
politics of religious belonging for Muslims to Marathi commerce and culture,
and a consequent hierarchy between all those who belonged ‘better’ to a
Marathi flavor of patriotic Hinduism, among those who were non-Hindus,
especially in Mumbai and the Konkan (Bene-Israel, Muslims, Parsis). Among
the various extremely competitive firm-like political Islams operative in
Mumbai today that clamor for clientele, three are very prominent: the Ahl-e
Hadith framework represented by Zakir Naik, suggestive of a Gulf-like Salafi
origin; and the Tablighi framework led by the north Indian ‘ulamā’ schools,
suggestive, according to the Shiv Sena, of a Pakistani or Bangladesh affilia-
tion, who organize big conventions or ijtimā‘. The Konkani Sufi position
(often symbolized by the Sufi saint Makhdoom Ali Mahimi) represented by
dargāhs is the third, and one receiving maximum value and political accep-
tance by the Sena and the everyday Marathi-Sena adherent because it is
considered syncretic and politically pliant.
The Konkani Muslims are therefore viewed as half-Hindus already due to
their Marathi surnames, culturally affiliated with being completely Marathi
and primarily disconnected from north India, due to their rejection of all
other identities but a Konkani one. Their conversion to Islam is relegated to a
small intellectual pocket by Konkani Muslim ideologues such as Mukadam
and Sena politicians, as this conversion was said to have taken place as a
result of Sufi saints traveling to Konkan across the Arabian Sea from the Gulf
so far back in history that they only left an intellectual impact on the converts,
which in turn only bred religious difference and had no cultural impact what-
soever. It is therefore not difficult to understand how Konkani Muslims take
up an intellectual position as Konkani ‘Brahminical’ autochthons of Mahar-
ashtra (since they also share their Konkani origins with the Chitpavan Brah-
mins) to exemplify Hindu-Muslim cultural integration. Yet, they suffer the
discrimination of being ‘caste-less’, and hence impure, due to their Muslim
identity, remaining excluded from Hindu ritualized expressions of patriotism.
Research method
Lastly, I want to state my own struggle through this research on Muslim
intellectual and modern ideologies in Maharashtra that are socially inhabited
194 Deepra Dandekar
by elite stalwarts in the Konkani-Marathi Muslim intellectual movement and
specifically by Abdul Kader Mukadam as one of its leaders. When I wrote
above that I perceived Mukadam’s minoritized Marathi Muslim identity as
fragmented, I was obviously grappling with reconciling his Marathi identity
with that of a Muslim one in a state like Maharashtra, as a Marathi Hindu
myself, with all the biases of my own identity held intact. However, evidently
for Mukadam, being Marathi ‘and’ Muslim were not fragmented in the least
but additional and exclusive identities of being ‘both’, even if both these
claims were mutually associated due to their piquant history of linkage
because of the Sena having connected it as so in Maharashtra.
Mukadam’s Muslim-ness was enriched by his intellectual quest for Islam’s
secularism and his position as an embodied part of the Marathi cultural
mainstream. It was this enrichment that he exhorted his audience to imbibe,
even if they disagreed with him, had different political opinions about it, and
had suffered different and more debilitating social locations and experiences
than the Konkani identity afforded. It was this intellectual enrichment that
Mukadam deeply enjoyed, but which also disallowed him from understanding
Dabholkar’s discrimination of him. On the other hand, it was only his mes-
sage of Muslim identity and belonging that Dabholkar perceived became the
deciding factor for the latter’s discrimination against all religion-based
politics, despite Mukadam’s progressive intellectualism.
Harboring the same bias myself, it becomes a question of research method
for me: while studying Muslim belonging within politically and culturally
Hindu contexts (e.g. India) as liberal Hindu intellectuals ourselves, how do we
confront Muslim intellectuals writing on Muslim and Islamic issues? Do we
view Muslims as cultural Hindus? Intellectuals? Or religious Muslims?
Political Muslims?
Dabholkar applauded Dalwai as a rationalist only because the latter
denounced the Muslim pandering of Islam. I, as a liberal Hindu, was study-
ing Mukadam because he was a liberal Muslim reformist and our liberalism
formed a link between us. However, both Dabholkar and I were reflections of
the same anti-minority trajectory: reducing activists and scholars to their
religion, especially a minority religion, simply because they claimed a reli-
gious and cultural identity as part of their own activist lens. At the same time,
I kept myself unmarked and above Hindu categories foregrounding my liber-
alism, even if my Hindu lens was the only one I possessed, while analyzing
Mukadam’s life-work on Muslims and Islam. Hindu liberals were therefore
also politically disallowing minorities from living an unmarked existence
because they needed the minority to essentialize a marked Muslim position-
ality; their efforts at unmarking themselves to as yet continue to write about
their minority identity became a claim to Hindu majoritarian privilege. Being
Muslim and being Marathi were therefore mutually exclusive and enriching
claims, just like my Hindu and liberal identities were: these were configured
on different registers and did not fragment either Mukadam or me. Our
vision of these categories was more fragmented.
Notes
1 Dalwai’s novel Indhan demonstrated how haunted he was by the partition and the
Hindu–Muslim riots (Dalwai 2002).
2 A position he shares with Asghar Ali Engineer (cf. Sikand 2004a: Chapter 2).
Engineer, himself a Muslim liberal reformist, came to prominence in discussions
about modern Islamic reform during and subsequent to the Shah Bano case in
1985.
3 The point about being Sunni was often mentioned, when describing how a Sufi
identity was in contradiction with a ‘Jamaati’ identity. It made me understand the
extent to which Sufi families ‘othered’ ‘Jamaatis’, to the extent of not considering
them Sunnis.
4 For more on Engineer’s thought and a critique, see Sikand (2004a: Chapter 2).
5 He does mention, for example, that before we hastily decide that all Middle Eastern
countries are Islamicist and intolerant, Marathi Hindus should take heed that gov-
ernments of countries such as Yemen have a good many temples, where regular
Hindu worship takes place openly and freely.
6 Sikand has demonstrated the hardline positions that a Deobandi scholar and Sufi
such as the renowned Ashraf ‘Alī Thānvī could take on marriage and other issues
connected to women (Sikand 2011).
10 From ‘rational’ to ‘Sufi Islam’?
The changing place of Muslims in
Tamil nationalism
Torsten Tschacher
Introduction
While studying for my MA, I spent a year at the Department of Anthro-
pology at Pondicherry University. Among other tasks, my local guide had
given me the assignment to study a particular Muslim shrine in a pre-
dominantly Muslim town some 50 kilometers south of Pondicherry. Before
leaving India, I had to visit the registration office to inform local officials that
my exchange had come to an end and I would be returning to my home
country soon. I was treated to tea and some snacks as I was politely ques-
tioned about the activities I had engaged in during my exchange by the same
official who had registered my arrival 12 months earlier. I mentioned the
assignment at the dargāh, and was innocuously asked what I had learned
from this assignment. Seeing where this was going, I told of the astonishing
harmony between Hindus, Muslims and Christians visiting the shrine and the
shared culture of worship I supposedly encountered. The face of the official
registered friendly satisfaction with my answer, a satisfaction that I believe
derived as much from my glorification of Indian ‘unity in diversity’ as from
the fact that I had understood what the politically correct answer had been
that I was supposed to give.
The idea of Muslim, or ‘Sufi’, shrines being among the prime institutions of
a ‘composite culture’ tying Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and other religions to a
common identity as ‘Indians’ is of course hardly new or surprising. I am
concerned here neither with the actual historical and sociological fallacies of
this discourse nor with the fact that it has seen challenges from various
political quarters, as many of the essays in this volume attest, but that it is
central to a certain kind of political imaginaire that seeks to anchor Muslim
belonging in India through a particular historical narrative of ‘composite
culture’ that is expressed, among other things, through ‘Sufi’ shrines. Such
narratives provide frames through which the presence of Muslims within
South Asian contexts is conceptualized and legitimized by certain actors,
thereby producing Muslims as ‘belonging’ to these particular contexts and
enabling certain kinds of everyday interactions between Muslims and non-
Muslims. However, the multitude of politicized identity discourses in South
From ‘rational’ to ‘Sufi Islam’? 197
Asia greatly complicates what kinds of narratives can be and are employed in
a specific context. While the ‘composite culture’ narrative may be congenial
to a certain kind of secular pan-Indian nationalism, its application within
other regional and linguistic contexts is more circumscribed by local under-
standings of history. After all, the secular narrative propounded by the Nehru-
vian Indian state and its successors was from the beginning contested by a
wide variety of (sub-)nationalisms that sought to anchor national or regional
belonging in certain linguistic, religious or caste identities. The narratives
produced by these discourses often directly contested the claims of the sup-
posed center of Indian politics, and thus also had to come to their own terms
with the reality of religious plurality of the nation. The ways these issues were
resolved differ greatly. If one focuses on linguistic nationalist discourses alone,
the differences in resolving these questions are readily apparent. Some welded
linguistic identity to a particular religious identity, as in the case of the iden-
tification of Marathi with Hindu identity by the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra or
that of Sinhala identity with Buddhism in Sri Lanka. In other cases, the
political upheavals surrounding the end of the colonial era in South Asia pro-
duced partitioned linguistic nationalisms, as in the case of Muslim-Panjabi in
Pakistan versus Sikh-Panjabi in India, or Hindu-Bengali in India versus Muslim-
Bengali in Bangladesh.
Tamil linguistic nationalism is of particular interest in that it represents, at
least in its dominant contemporary incarnations, a rare instance of linguistic
nationalism in South Asia that eschewed privileging a specific religious iden-
tity, barring a few strands.1 This is particularly the case with that strand of
Tamil nationalism known as ‘Dravidianism’. Influenced significantly by
rationalist and atheist discourses in the late colonial era, the supposed har-
mony of the Tamil nation united under the common identifier of the Tamil
language seemed to compare favorably to the model of Indian nationalism
propounded by the Congress that was being challenged and, in the partition
of British India, torn apart by ‘communal’ (i.e. religious) forms of identification.
The political history of the so-called Dravidian Movement and Tamil
nationalism in India has been well studied (see Hardgrave 1965; Irschick
1969, 1986), and increasingly, scholars have turned to study the imaginaires
and rhetoric of Tamil nationalist movements and discourses (cf. e.g. Bate
2009; Pandian 2007; Ramaswamy 1997, 2004). Yet despite the substantial
amount of research that has engaged with Tamil nationalism as a whole, the
question of how Tamil nationalist discourses produce notions of ‘belonging’
in what is after all a highly disparate society has been addressed only in a very
partial manner, mainly focusing on the discursive production of the main
‘Other’ of Tamil society, the ‘Brahmin’ (Pandian 2007).
Despite the importance of the ‘Muslim’ as ‘Other’ in many Indian nation-
alist discourses that mirrors the role of the Brahmin in Tamil nationalism,
however, the imagination of Muslim belonging in Tamil nationalism has until
now hardly been noticed at all. Rather, the participation of Muslims in
Tamil nationalist movements and discourses in India has often been discussed
198 Torsten Tschacher
as ‘natural’. In contrast to Brahmins, it is implied, local Muslims had sup-
posedly been identifying as ‘Tamils’ for centuries, or had been so substantially
conditioned by and assimilated to local society that their participation in
Tamil nationalist discourses and politics requires little explanation at all (cf.
Anwar 2011: 204; Fakhri 2008: 30–34, 67–81; McPherson 2010: 3). Not only
does this approach tacitly read into the past the claims of modern Tamil
nationalists that the Tamil language forms the common base of identity for
all its speakers, but it also ignores the developments in neighboring Sri
Lanka, where many Tamil-speaking Muslims resisted integration into very
similar Tamil nationalist discourses from the beginning. While a number of
excellent studies have been published in recent years regarding the participa-
tion of Tamil Muslims in local politics in the period leading up to and
immediately following Indian independence (e.g. Anwar 2011; Fakhri 2008;
McPherson 2010; More 1997), their approach has largely been an issue-based
and institutional one, focusing on the development of Muslim political orga-
nizations and the cooperation between Muslim parties and the Dravidian
Movement on matters of common concern. However, the tropes and narratives
that have been employed to enable this cooperation, and the way they have been
contested, have received only fleeting attention, mostly limited to the views of
Islam held by important leaders of the Dravidian Movement and the Muslim
reaction to some of their pronouncements (cf. Aloysius 2004; Anwar 2011:
204–211; Hellmann-Rajanayagam 1984: 105–106; More 2004: Chapter 8),
and a single study of the narrative constructed by literary historiography of
Muslim participation in Tamil literature (Tschacher 2010).
This chapter aims to offer a preliminary investigation of those elements in
Tamil nationalist discourses on Muslim belonging that in some way invoke
the idea of ‘Sufism’. Before starting this investigation, however, a disclaimer is
in order. As mentioned in the introduction, ‘Sufism’ is a neologism that refers
to a wide range of discourses, ideas, practices and institutions, not all of
which are accepted by everyone to belong legitimately to the concept of
‘Sufism’. It is also often difficult to separate specifically ‘Sufi’ elements from
‘non-Sufi’ elements. ‘Sufism’ as a term is a rather recent entrant into Tamil
discourse, much more recent than in, for example, English or Urdu. When I
talk about ‘Sufism’ in this chapter, it needs to be understood that the term is
not really of central importance as such in the discourses that I will be
discussing – i.e. ‘Sufism’ as a category seems to play a very small role in Tamil
nationalist discourses. Nevertheless, the two aspects of Muslim religious
practice that I will be referring to most commonly are perhaps those aspects
that are most commonly connected with the term ‘Sufism’ by contemporary
Muslims in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. These consist of a kind of poetry
often dubbed ‘Sufi poetry’ by Muslims (cf. Ajmalkān and Uvais 1997;
Sahabdeen 1986), and the veneration of holy men and women and their
tombs, a practice that is often understood to be the central defining feature
separating ‘Sufis’ from so-called ‘Wahhabis’ in popular discourse.2
The main argument of the chapter is that over the course of the twentieth
century, discourses concerning the belonging of Muslims to the Tamil nation
underwent a major change, especially as far as aspects of ‘Sufism’ are con-
cerned – a change that mirrors transformations in the Dravidian Movement
itself. In the late colonial period, leaders of the Dravidian Movement stressed
in particular the supposedly ‘rational’ nature of Islam and criticized those
aspects of Islam that seemed too similar to Hinduism, such as the veneration
of saints, pilgrimages to shrines, and the existence of a class of religious
scholars that was seen to monopolize religious knowledge in a manner com-
parable to the position of Brahmins in Hinduism. Consequently, the Dravi-
dian Movement built close alliances with Muslim reformers who were
targeting the very same practices. The only ‘Sufi’ aspect that was actually
evaluated as a positive sign of Muslim belonging to the Tamil nation was a
certain type of poetry that so closely resembled Shaiva ‘Siddhar’ poetry that it
was actually often found in the same manuscripts and circulated in Shaiva
contexts. Like ‘Siddhar’ poetry, this poetry was supposed to be critical of the
religious establishment and ritualism, a perception that completely ignored
that this Muslim ‘Sufi’ poetry originated precisely in those contexts – saint
shrines and the ‘ulama-’ – that were criticized as ‘irrational’ and ‘un-Islamic’
by Dravidian nationalists and Muslim reformers alike.
Yet with the slow erosion of the atheist-rationalist tradition within much of
the Dravidian Movement in the postcolonial era and the emergence of a
greater stress on ‘tradition’ in Tamil nationalist discourses, the evaluation of
Muslim religious traditions has similarly changed. Increasingly, as in certain
strands of pan-Indian nationalism, saint shrines and other Sufi institutions
have received a more positive evaluation. This is particularly true for a set of
shrines across Tamil Nadu that claim to be connected to pre-Islamic figures
and prophets such as Adam, Abel, David and Solomon. Yet this change is
not simply a wholesale transformation of earlier Dravidianist discourses, but
paradoxically emerges directly from them. Ultimately, however, whether in
the form of rejecting ‘irrational’ Islamic narratives and practices in the earlier
strands of Dravidianist Tamil nationalism or in embracing some of these same
‘irrational’ narratives and practices in postcolonial times, ‘Sufism’ as a relevant
category remained and remains absent from Tamil nationalist discourse.
Muslim politics, Tamil nationalism, and Ramasamy’s ‘rational’ religion

Scholarly accounts of the political history of the Madras presidency tend to
identify the first decades of the twentieth century as representing a watershed
in the development of Muslim politics in the presidency. Prior to this time,
Muslim communities were supposedly separated by language and quasi-caste-like
differences, and generally isolated from discourses and political developments
outside their immediate communities. The early twentieth century saw the
development of a sort of common Muslim identity politics that emerged
among the elite of Urdu-speaking Muslims resident in Madras and other
urban centers. Not only has this ‘community’ appeared as being more con-
nected to political developments beyond the confines of the presidency, but it
also was presumably less integrated into local (especially rural) society than
Tamil-speaking Muslims, who have been noted to have been ‘active in local
politics’ (McPherson 2010: 25), but due to their ‘parochial outlook’
(McPherson 2010: 102) supposedly took no interest in any political move-
ments that connected them beyond their locality. Ideologies such as pan-
Islam, these narratives suggest, were the preserve of Urdu-speaking Muslims
(Fakhri 2008: 36–37; McPherson 2010: 75; More 1997: 46). Only from the
1920s onward, so this narrative goes, did Tamil-speaking Muslims become more
involved in formal politics and politicization of Muslim identity in Madras.
On the other hand, the same period also saw the rise of the ‘Dravidian’
brand of Tamil nationalism, first in the form of the non-Brahmin movement
and the Justice Party, and then, from the late 1920s onwards, through ‘Peri-
yar’ E.V. Ramasamy’s (1879–1973) Self-Respect Movement and Dravidar
Kazhagam (DK – Association of Dravidians). Especially the politics of the
latter two organizations provided Tamil-speaking Muslims with ample oppor-
tunities to pursue common goals (see Anwar 2011; Fakhri 2008; More 1997;
and especially More 1993). Despite Ramasamy’s avowed atheism, he did
often commend Islam as an infinitely more ‘rational’ religion in comparison
to Brahminical Hinduism.3 The positive image of Islam propounded by
Ramasamy has often been commented upon, and it is probably safe to say
that we know more of his ideas concerning the ‘belonging’ of Muslims to the
‘Dravidian nation’ than of any other individual or group in pre-independence
Madras. The main element Ramasamy found commendable in Islam was
the principle of unity, of ‘one God and one caste, that is, one family and one
divinity’ (cited and translated in Aloysius 2004: 18), and therefore, its poten-
tial to eliminate caste discrimination. The Islam Ramasamy referred to was
hardly the Islam practiced in Madras in the early twentieth century. Rather, it
was Ramasamy’s own idealized vision of Islam’s ‘original’ message and its
possible relevance for his own society.
In many ways, it becomes clear that Ramasamy was hardly concerned with
Islam or with the position of Muslims in the Tamil country, but rather that
Islam was a convenient foil through which to advance his own agenda vice
versa his political opponents. Contrasting ‘egalitarian’ Islam with ‘hier-
archical’ Hinduism was hardly new in Ramasamy’s times, having been
advanced as an explanation for Hindu conversion to Islam since the second
half of the nineteenth century (Hardy 1979: 81–82). Consequently, the pro-
spect of members of lower castes undermining Brahmin and upper-caste
power by leaving en masse for Islam was as feared by caste Hindus as it was
cherished by Ramasamy and his followers. In some cases, Ramasamy almost
gleefully seems to confirm common stereotypes of Muslims for shock value,
as in the case of a speech given at Erode in 1929 in support of lower-caste
conversion to Islam:
Some have written to me objecting that the Mohammedan religion
engenders violent nature. I am of the opinion, that if this is true, then that
itself is a good reason for recommending Islam to the Untouchables in
order to abolish their untouchability. If it is true that Islam gives birth to
violent tendencies, won’t it be that those who joined it, at least hereinafter
not behave so slavishly? And again, won’t it be that others considering
their violent nature would, out of fear, likely to be respectful towards
them?
(quoted and translated in Aloysius 2004: 13)
If Ramasamy advocated what he considered to be original Islam, he was as

critical of what he perceived to be ‘superstitious’ practices and institutions
amongst his Muslim contemporaries. Many of these practices and institu-
tions were precisely those that formed the cultural field we might nowadays
call ‘Sufism’. The traditionalist ‘ulama-’, many of whom were involved with
Sufi orders such as the Qādiriyya or Shādhiliyya, were denounced as the
Muslim equivalents of Brahmin priests. Ramasamy himself counseled Mus-
lims that they would become the object of ridicule if they were to criticize
Hindu practices of pilgrimage, but then themselves embark on pilgrimage ‘to
Nagore, Muthupettai, and Mecca’ (quoted and translated in More 1993: 91),
mentioning two of the most important saint shrines of Tamil Nadu (both of
which we shall encounter again later in the chapter), together with Mecca.
Not unsurprisingly, Ramasamy’s views offered scope for a rapprochement
between the Self-Respect Movement and Muslim reformists, who were cri-
tiquing the same practices and institutions, like the controversial publisher
P. Daud Shah (1885–1969).4 Perhaps more surprisingly, though, more con-
servative circles among Muslims were not averse to cooperate with Ramasamy
and to echo his ideas, even if this was done with rather different aims.
Ramasamy’s advocacy for lower-caste conversion to Islam was readily pro-
pounded by conservative Muslim authors as well, but without the criticism of
their own practices of social and gender hierarchies that had been the
hallmark of Daud Shah (cf. Fakhri 2008: 54–67).
Language, literature and the absence of the Sufi

The scholarly fixation with Ramasamy, however, obscures that his ideas,
besides the charisma and popularity that he obviously enjoyed, where in
many ways unusual in Tamil nationalist discourses. Despite Ramasamy’s
objection to the Indian nation-state, his demands for a separate ‘Dravida
Nadu’, and his role in creating the organization from which the multiple
Tamil-nationalist political parties of the present would develop, Ramasamy
gave only a ‘qualified approval’ of the Tamil nation. He claimed that, in
comparison to Hindu north India, the ancient Tamil country had possessed
more equal institutions and customs, but, much as in the case of Islam noted
above, he used this qualified approval ‘primarily as a heuristic device to deny
legitimacy to the Hindu north India to exercise hegemony over other regions
and people who had a better record on matters relating to equality’ (Pandian
1993: 2284). Ramasamy’s ‘nation’ was a project of the future, not the past,
and he was therefore mainly concerned with the potentialities of different
ideologies to provide for a more equal and equitable future. However, this
project of ‘denationalizing the past’ (Pandian 1993) was hardly shared with
the majority of Tamil nationalists, for whom ‘belonging’ to the Tamil nation
was determined by different aspects.
How Muslims fitted into these discourses is far from clear at present, partly
because those discourses themselves were hardly unified in their approach to
defining inclusion in the Tamil nation (cf. Ramaswamy 1997: Chapter 2). Lan-
guage obviously was the most basic criterion according to which inclusion into
the Tamil nation was to be measured, but here already, Tamil-language nation-
alists faced some serious problems. Most importantly, for many speakers of
Tamil, it was far from logical that their shared language should form the basis
of a shared political identity and ethnicity. Brahmins have long been identified
in various brands of Tamil-nationalist discourses as being particularly guilty
of refusing to identify as Tamils while actually speaking the language at home,
but Muslims were actually not more convinced that speaking Tamil at home
automatically made them ‘Tamils’. As late as 1941, the Singaporean publisher
and Dravidian activist G. Sarangapany noted with a hint of despair that ‘it is
the common opinion of Tamil Muslims that the name “Tamils” does not denote
themselves’ (Tamil Muracu, February 5, 1941: 2; regarding Sarangapany, cf.
Iliyās 1997; Sathisan 2008: 9–10, 46–53). The reason for this state of affairs is
that well into the nineteenth century, the term ‘Tamil’ had not designated any
speaker of the language, but rather members of a certain caste or a section of
the caste hierarchy, referring to the members of non-Brahmin, non-untouchable
castes in general and the Vellalars in particular (Hellmann-Rajanayagam
2007: 122; Viswanath 2014: 31; cf. also Pandian 2007: 81).
In contrast to Brahmins, however, whose attitude towards Tamil was gen-
erally painted by Tamil nationalists as one of condescension (cf. Pandian 2007:
77–84), Muslims were praised for their contribution to Tamil from an early
date onwards (cf. e.g. Casie Chitty 1853; Intu Ne-can, February 20, 1888: 35).
In fact, some authors seem to deliberately construct Muslims as a counter-
image to Brahmins: whereas the latter had come as foreigners and either
perverted or looked down on the Tamil language, Muslims had proven
themselves devotees of ‘Mother Tamil’, despite their similarly suspect origins
(cf. e.g. Purnalingam Pillai 1929: 268, 323–324). This image of Muslims as
ready to integrate into Tamil society, whether as foreigners or converts, had
several advantages. Not only did it make it possible to construct a counter-
image of ‘proper’ integration to the Brahmins, but it also helped Tamil-
speaking Muslims to claim belonging to the Tamil nation without necessarily
having to give up claims to foreign, mostly Arab, origins. The contemporary
developments in Ceylon, where Muslims had from the late nineteenth
century onward distanced themselves from Tamils by claiming Arab origins,
despite speaking Tamil at home, must have been a warning to Tamil nationalists
not to take Muslim support for granted.
Marking Muslim belonging to the Tamil nation by praising their con-
tribution to Tamil literature came at a price, however. In order to be accepted
as true devotees of ‘Mother Tamil’, Muslim literature had to appear as
familiar as possible. Little mention was to be made of the peculiar char-
acteristics of a text beyond the fact that an author was Muslim and that she
or he may have been treating a ‘Muslim’ subject. Both academic treatises as
well as popular accounts in newspapers stressed not the ‘Muslim’, but the
‘Tamil’ aspects of this literature, the similarity of Muslim works to certain
Hindu texts, or claims that a given Muslim author had been the student of a
non-Muslim one (cf. e.g. Mukammatali Jamāli 1940: 5; Purnalingam Pillai
1929: 323–326). Scholars like the ‘re-discoverer’ of Old Tamil literature, U.V.
Swaminatha Aiyar, expressed their respect for Muslims because of their
esteem for non-Muslim Tamil literature (Swaminatha Aiyar 2004: 115), but
hardly had anything to say on Muslim literature. Not surprisingly, therefore,
in contrast to northern India, where ‘Sufis’ came to be hailed as among the
main Muslim representatives of a ‘composite culture’ unifying Hindus and
Muslims (e.g. Chandra 2007: 171–72), in the Tamil south, the categories that
were applied to understand Muslim participation in Tamil history were
derived wholesale from non-Muslim sources.
Therefore, ‘Sufism’ did not come to form a category through which Muslim
belonging to the Tamil nation could be historically understood. This is particu-
larly visible with regard to Kunangudi Mastān Sāhib, one of the most cele-
brated Tamil Muslim poets. Hardly anyone writing about Muslim contributions
to Tamil literature in the early twentieth century failed to mention Mastān
Sāhib (cf. e.g. Mukammatali Jamāli 1940: 5; Purnalingam Pillai 1929: 325; Swa-
minatha Aiyar 2004: 115), but he was practically never mentioned as a ‘Sufi’
poet, a heading under which he is nowadays commonly listed (cf. e.g. Uwise
1990: 184–189). This is hardly surprising, since the type of poetry Mastān Sāhib
composed belonged to a class of Muslim poetry known as ‘songs of gnosis’
(meyññānappātal) that in vocabulary and imagery closely resembles a class of
Shaiva poems known as Siddhar poetry. Indeed, Mastān Sāhib was very
popular among Hindus – so much so that nowadays, most publications of his
songs are edited by Hindus, and some scholars have even speculated that
Mastān Sāhib was a Hindu convert (e.g. More 2004: 57). In fact, however, the
constant comparison of Mastān Sāhib to Siddhar poets such as Tāyumānavar
effectively serves two purposes. First, given that Siddhar poetry is considered
to be highly critical of ritualism and religious ‘orthodoxy’, poems by Mastān
Sāhib and similar Muslim poets could be included among those poets who sup-
posedly prefigured the social critique of the Dravidian Movement. Second, and
simultaneously, this narrative effectively atomized Muslim literary culture, separ-
ating different strands of genres and themes. This enabled scholars to separate
‘unwanted’ Muslim texts, especially religious prose written in Arabic script
and a highly Arabicized idiom known as ‘Arabic-Tamil’ (araputtamil), from
elevated poetry and the ‘songs of gnosis’, both of which were highly appreciated
by Tamil nationalists (see Tschacher 2010: 71–77; Tschacher 2014: 203–206).
Yet not only were all these textual genres closely interconnected in Muslim
literary culture, but they originated in precisely that social class that Dravi-
dian nationalists and Muslim reformers of the 1920s and 1930s had come to
attack, namely, the traditionalist ‘ulama-’, who frequently also performed the
role of preceptors in the Qādiriyya and Shādhiliyya Sufi orders. Thus,
Kunangudi Mastān Sāhib was closely connected both to the most important
Muslim Tamil poet of the early nineteenth century, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qādir
‘Pulavar Nāyakam’ (‘the Lord of Poets’, c. 1790–1852; Mukamatali 1999),
and to the most important representative of the Arabic-Tamil tradition in the
nineteenth century, ‘Māppillai Leppai’ Sayyid Muhammad of Kilakkarai
(1816–98), who quoted poems by Mastān Sāhib in his manuals on religious
duties (Sayyid Muhammad AH 1291: part 1, 46), as all of them shared the
same Qādirī preceptor, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qādir ‘Taykkā Sāhib’ of Kilakkarai
(1778–1850). Yet in the estimation of early twentieth-century nationalist
Tamil discourse, such connections were a liability rather than an advantage.
‘Sufism’ as a category therefore had little space in narratives of Muslim
belonging in the Tamil south.
From the rational to the irrational?

The post-independence period saw a gradual but marked change in the way
the role of ‘religion’ was imagined in relation to the past, present and future
of the ‘Tamil nation’. Maybe instead of talking about change, it would be
better to talk about a reemergence of strands that had formed a part of cer-
tain imaginaires of the Tamil nation already in the pre-independence period,
but that have been eclipsed by the extraordinary power of Ramasamy’s vision.
With Ramasamy’s influence in politics rapidly dwindling after Indian inde-
pendence, and the requirement of respecting the views of a largely religious
population that was placed by democracy on any political movement hoping
to succeed in elections, the rhetoric even of stalwarts of the Dravidian
Movement like C.N. Annadurai (1909–69) became more accommodating
toward forms of religious life that had earlier been considered anathema.
Thus, the movement increasingly began to glorify Hindu temples as tangi-
ble symbols of the ‘Tamil’ empires of the medieval past (cf. Hellmann-
Rajanayagam 1984: 99–104). Increasingly, the aggressive pitting of different
forms of religious life against each other on the basis of whether one or the
other was to be considered more or less rational was given up for celebrations
of harmonious coexistence of various religious traditions under the common
unifier of the Tamil nation. While this has certainly reduced the scope of cel-
ebrating Islam in Tamil nationalism as a somehow better form of religiosity
in contrast to that of the Hindu majority, it has at the same time opened the
possibility for Muslims to participate in a different manner in the formation
of nationalist discourses about the past.
As is the case with regard to the colonial period, however, there is as yet
little analysis of the role of Muslims in Tamil politics beyond a focus on
political parties and processes of issue-based politics (e.g. Fakhri 2008; Rafīk
Ahamatu 2014). In contrast to northern India, there are no studies of the
depiction of Muslims in popular culture or various branches of historio-
graphy, and even less of the way Muslims themselves have contributed to or
contested these images. What I will present here, therefore, is a very pre-
liminary investigation of some examples that can hardly claim to be in any
way representative. However that may be, it is my contention that while
‘Sufism’ as a category has played a highly negligible role in narrating Muslim
belonging to the Tamil nation, institutions connected with Sufi practice have
gained far greater visibility in these narratives after independence.
In many ways, highlighting ‘Sufi’ institutions as instantiations of ‘proper’
Muslim practice in accordance with the wider Tamil nation, follows patterns
that seem familiar in other parts of India. Thus, dargāhs and other shrines
have come to serve as symbols of a localized Islam that integrated into local
society. Easily the best example for this process is the public visibility of the
Nagore Dargah, a shrine housing the remains of a sixteenth-century saint, his
son, and daughter-in-law in the small town of Nagore located just north of
Nagappattinam. The Nagore Dargah is commonly extolled as a ‘symbol of
communal harmony’ (Subramanian 2008) and an institution fostering peace-
ful communal relations, due to a variety of factors. Like many other Muslim
shrines throughout South Asia, the Nagore Dargah attracts large numbers of
Hindu devotees, who also play an important role in the annual festival of the
shrine (Narayanan 2006; Saheb 1998). The shrine is thus recognizable
across religious boundaries as a site that is simultaneously local, open, and
unambiguously Muslim. Especially since the tsunami of 2004, in the after-
math of which it played an important role in relief activities in the region
(Ganesan 2005), the Nagore Dargah has increasingly become a symbol for
Muslim participation and belonging in the Tamil nation. It is thus hardly
surprising that it appears as the ‘Muslim representative’ beside the Meenakshi
Temple at Madurai, the Basilica of Our Lady of Ransom at Kanyakumari,
and the Sri Ranganathar Swamy Temple at Srirangam, in a music video
celebrating the Tamil language that was arranged by Academy Award winner
A.R. Rahman on the occasion of the World Classical Tamil Conference in
Coimbatore in 2010 (www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRITPjraXgA, accessed
December 6, 2015).
However, elevation not only of the Nagore Dargah but also of other, simi-
lar institutions as emblematic of a religiously tolerant and harmonious Tamil
nation required more than just a change in the attitudes of the Dravidian
Movement toward religion. An important catalyst for a greater association of
tomb-shrines and associated practices with the Tamil nationalist imagination
has been provided by an event completely outside the ambit of the Tamil
nation – namely, the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December
1992. This event was followed by bomb attacks and communal violence in
some parts of Tamil Nadu during the 1990s. Simultaneously, the success of
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the center led both the Dravida Munne-
tra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
(AIADMK), the main political parties representing Dravidian nationalism
that had commonly received support from Muslims and local Muslim poli-
tical parties, to seek alliances with the BJP. These events disillusioned many
Muslims and led to the rise of several new Muslim political parties in Tamil
Nadu, especially the Tamilnadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK –
Tamilnadu Muslim Progress Association). These parties were not only critical
of the established Muslim parties and their Dravidian allies, but also repre-
sented strands in Muslim religious thought that were opposed to tomb-shrines
and similar practices. It is therefore not surprising that those opposed to the rise
of these parties, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, should connect the less cul-
turally nationalist and more ‘separatist’ politics of the TMMK with develop-
ments outside the Tamil nation, and construct them in contrast to a more
nationally ‘acceptable’ culture that was supportive of shrines.
Thus, the well-known writer Kalanthai Peer Mohamed claimed in an
interview in The Hindu that the rise of the TMMK needs to be seen not only in
relation to the pan-Indian shift towards Hindutva politics, but also to the
ideologies of ‘Wahhabi Islam’ imbibed by Muslims who had migrated to the
Gulf states in the 1970s and 1980s and who ‘began to disdain Tamil syncretic
Muslim practices’ such as ‘Dargah worship, the adulation of saints and their
tombs’ (Venkatachalapathy 2013). What is interesting in Peer Mohamed’s
depiction is not so much the well-worn invocation of the ‘Wahhabi’ foil
against ‘syncretic’ practices (though the label ‘Sufism’ is missing here). The
striking part of this narrative, rather, is the complete erasure that in the colonial
period, the Dravidian Movement had actually been highly supportive of such
‘Wahhabism’, and personalities such as P. Daud Shah, who is still highly
regarded in Tamil nationalist circles, had held similarly critical ideas about
‘syncretic Muslim practices’, thereby obscuring the almost paradoxical
turnaround in the Tamil nationalist imagination of Muslim belonging.
Nevertheless, this shift in the evaluation of religious institutions and prac-
tices has not really led to a greater visibility of the label ‘Sufism’ in Tamil
nationalist discourse. While it is more common nowadays to refer to the
Muslim tradition of ‘songs of gnosis’ mentioned above as ‘Sufi poetry’ (cf.
Ajmalkān and Uvais 1997; Kailasapathy 1987: 406–407; Sahabdeen 1986;
Sulaiman 1977; Uwise 1990), this seems to be more common in academic or
in Muslim discourse rather than in discourses aimed at a more general audi-
ence. In any case, while the invocation of ‘Sufism’ in this context does
obviously take clues from the common South Asian narratives about ‘Sufis’
being more open to ‘Indian culture’ and therefore representing the more
authentically Indian or South Asian Muslims, their role in the context of the
historiography of Islam in Tamil Nadu is rather different. Whereas in north-
ern India, Sufis are often credited for making the message of Islam available
to South Asians and thereby enabling the growth of a truly ‘Indian Muslim’
community as well as a ‘composite culture’ of Muslims and Hindus based on
mutual respect, in Tamil Nadu, Sufis are generally presented as a symptom of
the successful integration of Muslims rather than its cause. The reason for this,
I would suggest, lies in the simple fact that Tamil nationalism is essentially a
linguistic nationalism predicated on a single feature – that is, allegiance to the
Tamil language and its users. In contrast, northern Indian nationalist dis-
courses have vacillated between far less clearly defined identities based on
civilizational belonging, religious nationalisms or simple citizenship. Since
language has precisely not been a factor for demonstrating national belong-
ing, and the discursive separation of Hindi and Urdu in any case makes
claims for linguistic unity difficult in such contexts, the category of ‘Sufism’
has served as a convenient (if historically highly unsatisfactory) explanation
of why certain Muslims were apparently ready to identify with ‘Indian civili-
zation’, while others rejected it in favor of a more narrowly defined Muslim
nationalism. In contrast, in the imagination of Tamil nationalism, ‘Tamil
Muslims’ indeed fundamentally are ‘Tamils’ precisely because they speak and
use the Tamil language. At worst, they may be led astray to think that their
allegiances lie elsewhere, but this, in the Tamil nationalist imagination, is a
false consciousness, not a sign of Muslims being essentially non-Tamil.
Therefore, Tamil nationalism does not require a category like ‘Sufism’ to
explain Muslim belonging – Muslims belong because they speak Tamil, not
because they follow one or the other school of religious thought.
Islamizing the Dravidian past

In conclusion of this admittedly brief overview, let me discuss one particularly
striking narrative that has gained some prominence in Tamil Muslim claims
to belonging to the Tamil nation in recent years. This narrative, like most of
the other examples discussed in this chapter is not in any way explicitly about
‘Sufism’, but much like other current narratives, is centrally predicated on the
shrines and holy sites that in local understanding are closely connected to Sufi
practice. In order to understand this narrative, we will briefly have to digress
to introduce a particular strand of Tamil nationalist discourse on religion –
that is, the idea of an original, pre-Hindu Dravidian religion that was cor-
rupted by Hinduism, but could still be glimpsed from several literary works of
the Tamil tradition, most importantly the Tirukkural of Tiruvalluvar, a collec-
tion of pithy moral aphorisms dating perhaps to the mid-first millennium CE.
Being the only work of early Tamil literature that received praise even from
E.V. Ramasamy, otherwise a caustic critic of ‘classical’ Tamil poetry, the
Tirukkural has in the Dravidianist imagination practically been elevated to
the status of a holy book or scripture (Hellmann-Rajanayagam 1984: 71–72;
Ramaswamy 1997: 70–74). In the eyes of this imagination, Islam was ulti-
mately not much more than the Arab version of ancient Dravidian religion.
As Ramasamy himself put it in 1947:
Do not think that Islam means the religion of Mohammed Nabi … The
religion of the Dravidians is anterior to that of Mohammed Nabi …
Islam is the Arabic term for peace, humility and dedication. Islam means
brotherhood, and that is all […] If we in Dravida Nadu become Islamic,
then that Islam would be what we determine it to be and not according
to the sweet will of some Sayabu or Mulla.
(quoted and translated in Aloysius 2004: 14–15)
Unsurprisingly, such pronouncements were not too enthusiastically received

on the Muslim side, and Muslims have repeatedly tried to refute them, espe-
cially claims that ultimately, the Tirukkural was morally superior to the
Qur’an (More 2004: 169–174).5 Yet more recently, some Muslims have begun
turning this Dravidianist narrative on its head by claiming that rather than
Islam being the Arab instantiation of an anterior Dravidian religion, Islam
actually is the original Dravidian religion, i.e. that Dravidian religion and the
Tirukkural have to be measured against Islam rather than Islam against
Dravidian religion.
This at first seemingly improbable inversion is achieved precisely by refer-
ence to certain traditional Muslim beliefs, some of which can be traced back
for centuries. Central among them is the claim that Adam stepped down to
earth from paradise on the mountain known as Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka.
This mountain, where an indenture in a rock is venerated by Muslims as the
footprint of Adam, has attracted Muslim pilgrims from the Middle East
since about the tenth century (Azeez 1986: 21). Several other sites in the
region are connected to the legend of Adam, most importantly the shoals
between India and Sri Lanka known as Adam’s Bridge, and a tomb-shrine at
Rameswaram containing the graves of Cain and Abel (Aptul Rakumān
2006b: 36–37; Raja 2010). From accepting the authenticity of these shrines, it
is only a small step to claim that, much as Arabic was the language of God’s
final revelation to Muhammad, Tamil must have been the language in which
God first revealed himself to Adam and to mankind. Put otherwise, much
as Arabic stands at the completion of the revelation of Islam, Tamil stands at
its beginning (and, incidentally, at the beginning of mankind; cf. Shu’ayb
1993: 775).
The holy sites associated with Adam, however, are not the only ‘pre-Islamic’
Muslim sites in the Tamil country. A place close to Chidambaram was asso-
ciated in the nineteenth century with the throne of Solomon (Bayly 1989:
107–108), while a particularly interesting case is that of the dargāh at Muthu-
pettai in Tiruvarur district, mentioned above in connection with Ramasamy’s
critique of Muslim pilgrimages. The grave of Shaykh Dawood that forms the
focus of veneration in the dargāh is supposed to have been discovered by a
shepherd some centuries back, yet the miraculously large dimensions of the
grave have led to many speculations that the grave is actually far older, pre-
ceding the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. One respondent from Singa-
pore told me that Shaykh Dawood was a contemporary of Moses, while at
least one account has been published according to which Shaykh Dawood is
actually identical to David, biblical king and Muslim prophet (Haitar Alī
Yakīnullāsā 2009). According to this account, David went on pilgrimage to
India to see the sacred sites connected to the first prophet Adam and the site
where Noah built the Ark, identified as Sirkazhi in Nagapattinam district
(ibid.: 42).6
Based on the existence of such sites, some authors have suggested that
ancient Tamil Nadu was also the locus of the early history of mankind and
thus of the earliest revelations of God, thereby making ancient ‘Dravidian’
religion identical to Islam, or at least, its legitimate predecessor. These nar-
ratives do play into the inflated claims of Dravidianists regarding the glories
of early Dravidian cultures, and are actively connected through the Muslim
flood myth and the figure of the Prophet Noah with the ‘fabulous geo-
graphies’ (Ramaswamy 2004; cf. Aptul Rakumān 2006a, 2006c) concerning
the submerged continent of Lemuria that some Dravidian nationalists are
claiming to have once existed in the Indian Ocean, based on medieval Tamil
legends and nineteenth-century scientific speculation. At the same time, they
lay claim to the very tradition against which Muslims have had to define
themselves in order to be accepted as proper Tamils. While such narratives
largely represent fringe views – the claims of identity between Shaykh
Dawood and King David were originally triggered by dreams of the author
(Haitar Alī Yakīnullāsā 2009: 4) – they have found some reception among
influential and politically well-connected circles. Thus, beginning in December
2005, a multi-part article titled ‘Islam in Tamil Nadu’ was published in an
established Muslim journal that basically presented the narrative outlined
above.7 The author was none other than the noted writer ‘Kaviko’ S. Abdul
Rahman (born 1937), who served between 2009 and 2012 under DMK rule
as the chairman of the Tamil Nadu Wakf Board.
Another version of this narrative, though shorn of its origins in the legends
surrounding Muslim sites of pilgrimage, has also been endorsed by K.M.
Kader Mohideen (born 1940), general secretary of the Indian Union Muslim
League (IUML, the most established Muslim party of south India) and
member of the Lok Sabha for Vellore constituency from 2004–09. In 2011,
the IUML’s English newsletter, The Times of League, reported that Kader
Mohideen ‘asserted that the civilization first arose in South India and was
associated probably with the primitive Dravidians. Then it was taken to
Arabia to become the source of Arabian culture which forms the basis of
modern civilization’ (Kader Mohideen 2011: 4). Incidentally, these remarks
were made on the occasion of signing an electoral accord with the DMK.
While this narrative is ascribed to only by a small minority, it nevertheless
has become much more salient in Tamil political discourse in recent years,
forming yet another way of imagining Muslim belonging to the Tamil nation.
Conclusions
This survey of the way Muslim belonging in Tamil Nadu has been imagined
has shown two things. On the one hand, as a category, ‘Sufism’ has played
only a very small role in imagining the Tamil nation, neither as a factor det-
rimental to Muslim belonging nor, more surprisingly, as a factor facilitating
Muslim participation in narratives of the Tamil nation. This is despite the fact
that among Muslims, ‘Sufism’ actually does serve as a rhetorical foil in
opposition to a similarly reified ‘Wahhabism’. One may surmise that this
absence is the result of the clear dominance of language as a marker of iden-
tity and belonging in Tamil Nadu. In the absence of an alternative linguistic
and political order, Muslim belonging to the Tamil nation is something that
does not have to be explained as a kind of assimilation of a fundamentally
foreign identity, but simply can be ‘discovered’ by noticing Muslims’ use of
the Tamil language. In the process, Muslim discourses matter only insofar as
they actively contest Tamil nationalist claims of Muslim belonging, and since
such contestations are rare and mostly of twentieth-century origin, there is
little need for an analytical category that would explain why historically some
Muslims were apparently more ready to belong than others.
The fact that Muslims may not have contested Tamil nationalism prior to
the twentieth century simply because there was no concept of a Tamil nation
that could be contested is obviously unthinkable in nationalist discourse. The
absence of ‘Sufism’ in narratives of Muslim belonging in Tamil Nadu is thus
the result of the relative weakness of Muslim discourse in the state. Muslim
categories of identity simply play no role in Tamil nationalist thought, and
there is little reason for nationalist narratives to engage with Muslim percep-
tions. Similar tendencies are evident in the inclusion of Islamic texts in Tamil
literary historiography, where the actual contents of Islamic works are largely
ignored in favor of discussions about the way they fit into wider Tamil literary
culture (see Tschacher 2010: 81).
However, this is only half the story. While ‘Sufism’ does not serve as a label
in Tamil nationalist discourse for a social reality that would explain Muslim
belonging (or non-belonging) to the Tamil nation, certain discourses and
institutions that could be (and sometimes are) labeled as ‘Sufi’ have played a
role in the nationalist imaginaire, such as certain types of poetry, various
religious practices, or institutions such as tomb-shrines. More curious than
the absence of the label ‘Sufism’ with regard to these discourses, practices and
institutions is the fact that their evaluation by Tamil nationalism, and espe-
cially by the ‘Dravidian’ variety, has undergone an almost complete transforma-
tion over the last century. What were considered in the 1920s a sign of superstition,
sectarianism and obscurantism, such as traditions of discipleship, practices of
pilgrimage or the visitation of tombs, are nowadays often quoted as examples
of a shared Tamil ethos and identity, and even an indication of the antiquity
of Islam in Tamil Nadu.
Yet this also reveals that ultimately, the positive tale of inclusion that Tamil
nationalism seems to present in comparison to other nationalist narratives in
India, such as the case of Maharashtra or northern India, has a downside –
namely, that Muslims are lacking any capacity to shape the narratives to
which they have to relate. Whether a certain aspect of Muslim life will be
considered a token of belonging or a sign of sectarian separatism depends on
the needs and changes within wider Tamil nationalism. In this sense, Muslims
in Tamil Nadu are marginal to their own story, whether self-identified ‘Sufis’
or not.
Notes
1 These include the linking of Tamil and Saiva identity in the discourses of Mar-
aimalai Adigal (1876–1950), or of Tamil, Buddhist and low-caste identities by Iyo-
thee Thass (1845–1914) and his movement (for the former, cf. Vaithees 2015; for the
latter, cf. Aloysius 2015; Ayyathurai 2011).
2 The two terms, ‘Sufi’ and ‘Wahhabi’, as in many other contexts in the Muslim
world, have developed into rhetorical foils (cf. Knysh 2004) that serve to produce
highly simplistic accounts of Muslim attitudes towards religion, which are, however,
despite their over-simplifying nature, often enough invoked in Tamil Nadu by
Muslim actors of both ‘camps’ themselves.
3 By the 1970s, Ramasamy had, however, developed a far more critical assessment of
Islam (cf. Hellmann-Rajanayagam 1984: 99).
4 Regarding Daud Shah, cf. Ayyūp 2007; Vadlamudi 2010.
5 An example of such a refutation is provided by Matanī 1974.
6 It also posits a meeting between Shaykh Dawood alias King David and Rama as
the latter was searching for Lanka (Haitar Alī Yakīnullāsā 2009: 46).
7 While writing this chapter, I had access only to the first five parts of this series,
which brought the narrative up to Noah and the deluge.
11 ‘Sindhis are Sufi by nature’
Sufism as a marker of identity in Sindh
Julien Levesque
When ‘the land of Shah Latif bleeds again’, ‘can Sufism save Sindh?’ Thus
asked an opinion article following a recent attack on a Shia imāmbārgāh in
the northern Sindhi town of Shikarpur which left more than 60 people dead.
For this commentator as for many in Pakistan, Sindh had so far been rela-
tively spared by communal and sectarian violence thanks to its ‘Sufi ethos
[which] has long been cherished as the panacea for burgeoning extremism in
Pakistan’ (Akhtar 2015). Except for a few cases of communal violence in
the years leading up to Partition, and a few cases of sectarian violence such
the massacre of 116 Shias during a Muharram procession in Therhi in June
1963,1 Sindh is generally thought of as a province where various religious
communities coexist peacefully. However, the omissions in this overly simple
portrayal – such as the ethnic and sectarian violence in Sindh’s urban centers –
in fact reveal the extent to which a certain reified conception of Sindh’s cul-
ture – rural, peaceful and traditional – is associated with a certain form of
Muslim religiosity or Sufism, understood as a quietist search for divine union.
The depiction of Sindh as a ‘land of Sufis’ has become a cliché repeated ad
nauseam by Sindhis themselves as well as by non-Sindhis, including Karachi’s
Muhajirs. Political leaders and activists have no scruples referring to it, whe-
ther it is common nationalist workers who, during my fieldwork, wanted to
impress upon me that they, Sindhis, are ‘Sufi by nature’, or the former Sindh
culture minister, Sassui Palijo, when she declared in January 2011 that ‘Sindh
has remained relatively calm and peaceful for decades because of the over-
whelming influence of Sufi teachings spread by great Sufi saints and poets’.2
With such statements, people reiterate a long discursive tradition that can be
traced to colonial writings on Sindh around the time of its conquest by the
British in 1843.
Anthropologist Oskar Verkaaik has coined a term, ‘the ethnicization of
Islam’, to describe the articulation, in Pakistan, of ethnic identities with cer-
tain approaches or practices of Islam. He argues that ‘Islam has become [over
time] the main language with which ethnicity is produced [in Pakistan]. Islam
is now the single-most important boundary-marker between various ethnic
categories’ (Verkaaik 2007: 87). One aspect of Verkaaik’s argument is that
since identity affiliations in Pakistan all revolve around Islam in one way or
‘Sindhis are Sufi by nature’ 213
another, Pakistan’s nation-building process has been successful in placing
Islam at the center of political debates on ethnicity. Another aspect of his
argument highlights the association of certain approaches to Islam with cer-
tain ethnic groups, as the title of his article suggests by mentioning ‘Sindhi
Sufis’, ‘Muhajir modernists’ and ‘tribal Islamists’. When it comes to Sindh,
Verkaaik writes that ‘a separate Sindhi tradition of Islam was formulated and
defended on the basis of refashioned, local, mystical traditions’ (Verkaaik
2007: 91). This ‘ethnicization of Sufism’ consists of the conscious reference to
Sufism as a characteristic or as an essential trait of Sindhi identity, as illu-
strated by Sassui Palijo’s public statement, the previously quoted opinion
article or the assertion made to me by nationalist activists. Claiming one’s
religiosity of being Sufi has become a way, in certain social contexts, of
asserting one’s Sindhi identity. Hence, the discourse of ‘ethnicized Sufism’ in
Sindh has played, like any identity discourse, a performative role in reshaping
social boundaries.3
However, far from happening without contestation, this process in fact
places Sufism at the heart of the ‘struggle over representations’ (Bourdieu
1991: 221), in which various social groups, each with its own particular posi-
tion in the relations of power within a given social field, vie for imposing their
own ‘di-vision of the social world’ (Bourdieu 1991: 190). The Sindhi identity
discourse on Sufism, shaped in large part by the nationalist leader G.M.
Sayed,4 is itself pinned against Pakistan’s official nationalism, which initially
sought to promote the Urdu language and Islam as unifiers so as to transform
Pakistan’s social, cultural and religious diversity into a single nation made of
abstract citizens (Ayres 2009; Devji 2013). Yet the fluctuations in the posi-
tioning of the state toward cultural and religious diversity – from Ayub
Khan’s nationalization of shrines to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s accommodation of
religious diversity to Zia ul-Haq’s Islamization policy – also structured the
definition of Sindhi identity by determining what is subversive (‘anti-Pakistan’)
and what is acceptable. The idea of Sindh’s identity being grounded in Sufism,
in spite of the common usage it has gained, is also hotly contested by some
representatives of Sufism in Sindh.
This chapter thus questions the place of Sufism in Sindhi identity con-
struction in independent Pakistan. The first section examines the construction
and diffusion of the now-dominant Sindhi identity discourse in which being
Sufi is presented as an essential trait of being Sindhi, from its colonial roots to
its formalization by G.M. Sayed. The second part of the chapter turns to the
‘contested nature of Sufism’ (Shaikh 2012: 188), or Sufism at the heart of the
‘struggle over representations’ in Sindh.
Sindh as a ‘land of Sufis’: the diffusion of a common identity marker

Sindh has long been termed a ‘land of Sufis’. This discursive tradition can be
traced back, at least, to colonial writings of the second half of the nineteenth
century. In 1851, Richard Burton observed: ‘There is nothing more remarkable
214 Julien Levesque
in Sindh than the number of holy men which it has produced, and the extent
to which that modification of Pantheism, called tasawwuf throughout the
world of Islam, is spread among the body of the people’ (Burton 1851: 198).
In the following decades, the Sufi poetry of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai5 served
as learning material for Sindhi for British officials to be posted in Sindh,
while the figure of Shah Latif increasingly came to symbolize the religious
specificities of Sindh (Boivin 2015).
In the first half of the twentieth century, Sindhi Hindu scholars, often
influenced by the Theosophical Society – such as Jethmal Parsram, author of
a 1924 book named Sind and its Sufis – also stressed what they saw as Sindh’s
peculiar blend of the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, or non-duality, and the
Islamic conception of wahdat al-wujūd, inspired by the Andalusian philoso-
pher Ibn ’Arabī. As ‘the land of Sufis and of Saints’ that ‘bears a holy flower
[which] will give its fragrance freely to all who seek’ (Gulrajani 1979: 3),
Sindh, to these authors, is characterized by an inclusive and tolerant reli-
giosity expressed in the poetry of its Sufi poets, from Qazi Qazan and Abdul
Karim Bulri to Sachal Sarmast and, most prominent of all, Shah Abdul Latif
Bhitai. This conception allowed for the formulation of an essentialized con-
ception of Sindh’s cultural uniqueness at a time when a new Sindhi Muslim
elite was struggling for the constitution of Sindh as a separate province.6
The idea of Sindh as a place marked by outstanding religious tolerance
found its way into the political realm and Sindhi nationalist discourses after
Pakistan’s independence. The major thinker behind Sindhi nationalism, G.M.
Sayed, whose work gave theoretical grounding to a vision of Sindh as a
‘repository’ of mysticism, in fact first expressed this idea in the 1940s, when
the movement in favor of the creation of Pakistan took shape in Sindh. In his
draft inauguration speech at the Annual Session of the Muslim League held
in Karachi in 1943, G.M. Sayed described Sindh as a ‘centre of spiritual
knowledge’, thanks to which, in the ‘New World Order’ that would follow
World War II, ‘Sind [would] have its own place and a part to play by giving a
special message to the world based on the unassailable and ineradicable
teachings of Islam which took firmer root here through Savants and Saints of
Islam in Sind’ (Sayed 1943).
Hence, by 1943, G.M. Sayed had already formulated what would later
become central to his thought – namely, that Sindh’s past as ‘repository’ of
mysticism now endows it with a mission to spread peace throughout the
world. The next major step in the crystallization of this idea was the pub-
lication in 1952 of a nationalist reinterpretation of Shah Latif ’s poetry, which,
to him, contains both a description of the essential characteristics of the
Sindhi people and an exhortation to collective mobilization (Sayed 1996).7
However, the idea really comes through in one of his later works, G.M.
Sayed’s most controversial book, Jīan Ditho Āhe Mūn (literally: how I saw),
published in 1967 after a decade of intensive political and cultural self-
questioning by Sindhi intellectuals (Sayed 2012).8 The previous year, G.M.
Sayed had established an organization called Bazm-e Sufia-e Sindh (Society
of the Sufis of Sindh), which organized conferences and cultural events and
also provided a platform to reflect on Sindh’s identity and politics. An out-
come of these conferences, the reflections found in Jīan Ditho Āhe Mūn
expose G.M. Sayed’s peculiar conception of Sufism. Stating that ‘it is a fact
that the Valley of Sindh has always been an island of tolerance for conflicting
faiths and cultures’ (ibid.: 4) and that Sindh has ‘a truly generous respect for
mankind’, the Sindhi leader then writes that Sindh possesses a ‘message of
love’ (ibid.: 6). This book attracted much condemnation for its religious views
on Islam but more importantly because asserting, in the context of Pakistan,
a Sindhi identity whose essence is found in the Sufi spirit of brotherhood and
love for humanity stood against Pakistan’s founding principles, in which the
right to a separate state rests on the adherence to Islam.
G.M. Sayed’s thought relies on an equation of Sufism with mysticism which
implies three elements. The first is that all religions are considered equal.
None has a superior claim to truth. Stressing the unity of spiritual yearning
beyond exoteric and ritualistic differences, G.M. Sayed writes ‘that all religions,
philosophies, ideas and branches of learning are parts of that Omniscient
Being called God’ (Sayed 2012: 6).
The second and most striking feature of G.M. Sayed’s religious thought is
his evolutionary approach. In spite of his lack of formal education, G.M.
Sayed’s thinking reveals a firm belief in basic tenets of modernity, among
which is the positivist idea of the linear progress of history according to a ‘law
of evolution’. Religion, like humanity, thus evolved from primitiveness to
higher stages, from polytheism to trinity to monotheism (Sayed 2012: 14). It
ensues that Prophet Muhammad’s revelation is not the final prophecy but that
Islam is nothing but a step on this evolutionary progression (ibid.: 6).
The third aspect of G.M. Sayed’s conception of Sufism is his rejection of
the rituals of popular piety, such as shrine and saint worship or the use of
amulets, as mere superstition. He strips Sufism of its popular practices and
manifestations and restricts it to a highly individualized quest for the ‘con-
tented self ’ (or nafs al-mutma’inna), to be pursued through strict morals and
restraint of desires so as to subdue the baser self (nafs). His condemnation of
institutionalized religion and its rules does not amount to a total rejection of
moral values, but to an ethics in which self-control replaces the master-
disciple relationship. The rejection of religious authorities (he attacks ‘reli-
gious imperialism’) and the stress on the necessary individual examination of
moral rules are features shared with Islamic reformism, as Oskar Verkaaik
has pointed out, terming G.M. Sayed’s thinking ‘reformed Sufism’ (Verkaaik
2004b, 2010). The Sindhi leader also positions himself against established
custodians of Sufi shrines (sajjāda nashīns), described as degenerate power
holders who exploit their followers and have gone into moral decline (Sayed
1996: 100).
If G.M. Sayed believes that individual and popular practices have to be
reformed, he also believes in the capacity of Sufism or mysticism to enact
collective reform toward upliftment, awakening and liberation. It is here that
216 Julien Levesque
spiritual guides – not sajjāda nashīns, but Sufis, that is, mystics on the path of
divine union – have a role to play, in showing the way to collective liberation.
In one of his books, G.M. Sayed plainly states that the ‘salvation of Sindh lies
in following the teachings of mystics’, among other ideals, namely secularism,
socialism and nationalism (Sayed 1991: 187).
Some uses and reformulations of Sufism in the context of Sindh’s politics
have attracted scholarly attention (Verkaaik 2004b, 2007, 2010; Boivin 2011;
Boivin and Delage 2010). These works have mostly highlighted G.M. Sayed’s
appropriation of Sufism and Shah Abdul Latif into a nationalist rhetoric
which Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his Pakistan People’s Party countered with
their own ‘political spirituality’ (Boivin and Delage 2010: 192). To portray
himself as part of Sindhi cultural traditions, Bhutto paid allegiance to another
saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, whose shrine is located in the town of Sehwan
Sharif.
Oskar Verkaaik opposes G.M. Sayed’s internalized, ascetic mysticism to the
effusive, intoxicated faqīr of Sehwan Sharif (Verkaaik 2004a: 20–55). We
should also mention here Sarah Ansari’s research on Pir Pagaro and the two
Hur insurrections (Ansari 1992). These works have tended to focus on ‘ver-
nacularized Sufism’ in order to displace the Orientalist conception of Sufism
that centered on the Arab and Persian tradition (Boivin 2015: 58). As a result,
they sometimes overlooked the dominant or orthodox groups so as to throw
light on practices and forms of Sufi religiosity that stood outside the norms of
‘classical’ Sufism. Hence, they seem to convey the idea that Sufism in Sindh is
essentially a mystical tradition that rejects or accords little importance to the
sharia, while allowing for transgressive behaviors, such as the use of drugs
and music to attain states of trance.9 By leaving out the dominant and
orthodox and stressing the vernacular and marginal, they feed into a narra-
tive of Sindh that highlights the specificity of its ‘Sufi essence’, a shared reli-
giosity that brings Sindhis together beyond their identification as Hindu or
Muslim. However, it should be noted that Sufism in Sindh has also been
impacted by reformist movements, and that most Qādirī and Naqshbandī
shrines in Sindh observe strict rules on their premises: Naqshbandīs do not, for
instance, practice samā‘, or meditative musical session. Besides, mausoleums
of Sufi saints appear through these works as the main loci of Sufi practice,
whereas khānqāhs, where pīrs teach their murīds, play a role as important,
though not as visible. If the shrines of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and Shah
Abdul Latif Bhitai host the largest pilgrimages and are therefore often taken
as representative of Sufism in Sindh, many find their practices highly hetero-
dox – which is why some find it more appropriate to speak of ‘shrine culture’.
The portrayal of Sindh as a ‘land of Sufis’ is thus inscribed in a long dis-
cursive tradition to which colonial officials, Sindhi Hindu writers, Sindhi
Muslim politicians and foreign scholars all contributed. It tends to highlight
the central role of mausoleums in the religious practice of both Hindu and
Muslim Sindhis, while lauding the peaceful, tolerant and ‘syncretic’ character
of Sufi religiosity in Sindh. In order not to fall prey to the Sindhi identity
discourse on Sufism, I attempt in the next section to put Sufism in the context
of some of the debates – or, to use Bourdieu’s terms, the ‘struggle over
representations’ – that surround it in Sindh.
Sufism and the ‘struggle over representations’ in Sindh

The diffusion of Sufism as a marker of Sindhi identity does not go unchal-
lenged. If images of shrine culture have spread in mainstream Pakistani media
as symbols of ‘traditional’ Sindh, the conception according to which ‘Sindhis
are Sufi by nature’ still seems mainly located within a certain educated middle
class, particularly sensitive to the Sindhi nationalist imaginary.
G.M. Sayed’s writings gave a formal and explicit shape to the association of
Sufism with Sindhi identity. They inscribed Sufism in a nationalist historical
narrative that highlighted the continuous occupation of the lower Indus
Valley by one people, the Sindhis, and the constancy of their culture from the
days of the Harappan civilization. However, if G.M. Sayed is seen as the rahbar,
or ‘founder’, by Sindhi nationalists, it could be argued that his books in fact
synthesized and condensed the work of a whole generation of Sindhis engaged
in a broader process of identity construction during the 1950s, 1960s and
1970s, which drew on popular culture to craft a set of identity markers. While
elected representatives saw their power increasingly curtailed (Tahir 2010:
141–314; Talbot 1998: 125–147), a new generation of Sindhi Muslim men
educated in Sindh, notably at the University of Sindh founded in 1947, came
of age and aspired to non-manual jobs and an urban lifestyle.10 When the
One Unit scheme, which merged all administrative units of west Pakistan into
a single province, was implemented in 1955, the political elite and this new
Sindhi-speaking middle class increasingly felt threatened for the future of
their culture and language. Writers and students, who not only feared for the
sake of their culture but also for their own career, opposed resistance to the
One Unit and to Ayub Khan’s regime. One of the major voices of Sindhi
writers and students against One Unit was Rūh Rihān, a literary journal
banned twice because of its political stance.11 As its editor Hamid Sindhi
(1939–2012) told me in an interview:
[The struggle against One Unit] was also a struggle for the liberation
from the inside […] You can call it ‘sufiana’, whatever it is … In those
days, we all also used to follow these ideas: a Sufism sort of life, as Latif.
We loved Latif, why? Because he preached Sufism […]
We were not complete Sufis, but definitely concerned about our future.
The youngsters in our movement were concerned about future because
they don’t have the jobs or they don’t have any shelter or cover, so they
joined so that we should have a share.12
In an interesting twist, Hamid Sindhi conflates his literary and political engage-
ment against One Unit with emancipation, both spiritual and collective, but
218 Julien Levesque
what appears clearly in these few sentences is that this struggle was also about
securing one’s future job. Young Sindhis’ opposition was thus sparked by the
perception that Ayub Khan’s modernist economic program did not accord
much space for Sindhis. In many ways, Hamid Sindhi’s social trajectory
reveals the anguish and frustration felt by a generation of young Sindhi stu-
dents who gained access to higher education but found difficulty in materi-
alizing the career they had been promised. Born Abdul Hamid Memon in
1939, he studied law but was mostly active as the editor of Rūh Rihān, a
magazine that constituted a bridge between the two groups at the forefront of
the mobilization against Ayub Khan’s rule in Sindh: writers and students. He
joined public service in 1970 and like many Sindhis who had voiced their
opposition to One Unit, led a successful career as a government employee
when a Sindhi, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was at the helm of affairs.
Hamid Sindhi’s Rūh Rihān brought together all the symbols and refer-
ences used by students and writers, both in their writings and in their mobi-
lization. These tended to depict Sindh as a rural, mystical and peaceful
society, characterized by its holy men and heir to the Indus civilization, yet
presently at the mercy of its landed elite, urban capitalists and the Pakistani
military. This imaginaire of Sindh as a rural, mystical and peaceful society
was also nourished by the activity of cultural institutions established after
independence: the Sindhi Adabi Board (or Sindhi Literary Board) in 1951,13
and the Sindhi Academy at the University of Sindh in 1962, which would
later become the Institute of Sindhology. These institutions produced exten-
sive documentation on the literature and traditions of Sindh, inspired by
colonial ethnography (the name ‘Sindhology’ directly refers to Egyptology or
Indology).
Drawing on the ‘popular’ as the reservoir of Sindhi culture (Chatterjee
1995: 73), they produced typified categories of people, each with their own
myth of origin, dress and traditions, as displayed, for instance, in recreated
village scenes at the Sindh Museum in Hyderabad or in the Lok Virsa
Museum in Islamabad. This scholarly, institutional study of Sindh ‘folklor-
ized’ Sindhi culture in that it enshrined traditions, practices and items in a
distant rural past, embracing their disappearance at the hands of a more
‘modern’ lifestyle while transcribing oral traditions on paper. The process of
folklorization, ‘in which a social group fixes a part of itself in a timeless
manner as an anchor for its own distinctiveness’ (Rogers 1998: 58), essentia-
lized the identity of Sindhis, entitling them to a sense of property over specific
cultural expressions which then could act as identity markers. Among the
identity markers that came to represent Sindh, the reference to Sufi spiri-
tuality occupied a prominent place. This appears clearly in an exalted poem
by Hyder Bux Jatoi, peasant leader and nationalist, published in 1954 and
entitled Salām Sindh (Jatoi 1988: 147–51). Jatoi mentions three prominent
Sindhi poets, Shah Abdul Latif, Sachal Sarmast (1739–1829), and the Hindu
follower of Advaita Vedanta, Sami (1743–1850), whose words, to many,
exemplify Sindh’s ‘Sufi culture’ (Joyo 2009):
Hī sūfian jo des ā, latīf jī zamīn hı-;
This is the country of Sufis, the land of Latif;
Hī sāmī wāro āstān, makān-i ārifian‘ hı-;
This is Sami’s place, the abode of mystics;
Sachal jo hit darāz āh, sāz āh dīn hī:
Here is Sachal’s dargah, this religion is music:
Hite ā dīn ‘ishq o uns, ā balad amīn hī!
Here, religion is love and affection, the land of peace!
Hit ā bashar birādarī, hite na zāt pāt ā!
Here mankind is our brotherhood, there is no caste system here!
Ae sindh tū mathān sadā salām ā salāt ā!
O Sindh, may prayers and peace always be upon you!14
Thus, by the time G.M. Sayed wrote his books and spoke of Sindh’s ‘mes-
sage of love’, there had been two decades of literary effort, research and
political mobilization that highlighted Sindh’s glorious past and created a
reified picture of Sindhi society based on typified categories rather than on
observation. However, this collective imaginary in which Sufism was one of
the main markers of Sindhi identity was also located in a certain layer of
society, among the generation who gained access to higher studies thanks to
educational reforms initiated from the 1940s onward. This new Sindhi middle
class aspired to an urban, modern lifestyle and felt the need to sacralize
through its poetry, short stories and articles a fantasized traditional rural way
of life from which it was gradually severing its links.
The following generation, conversely, experienced growing ethnic and sec-
tarian conflicts. During the 1970s, Bhutto gave the Sindhi middle class what it
most wanted – opportunities in the public service – but the period of Zia ul-Haq’s
rule curtailed these openings once more. With the development of colleges
and universities in Sindh, a greater number of young people, mostly men,
found their way into higher education. That is where, for many, they were
introduced to G.M. Sayed’s writings, as campuses constituted the bastions of
nationalist groups.
The political socialization of this generation of Sindhi students was made
through the experience of violence on campuses and on the streets: whereas
the previous generation had worked on constructing a reinvented collective
imaginary, this new generation was more militant. The leaders that emerged
stood out more because of their capacity to rally activists than because of
their thoughts and reflections. Often born and raised in villages, these men,
like their predecessors, feared for their future – not only their professional
future, but also their physical existence, as martial law allowed for strict
repression of ethnic movements while ethnic riots and killings exerted a strong
polarizing tension in Sindh. Not willing to abandon the freedom gained with
higher education, these men often settled in towns after their studies but kept
a strong connection with their village, where they married and left their wife
and children. Their expenditures in the city were often borne in part by
220 Julien Levesque
village relatives or by rent coming from land produce.15 This generation had
to face the discrepancy between the idealized Sindhi society – rural, mystical,
peaceful – and the actual Sindh of the 1980s, marked by violent conflict
blamed on Muhajir invasion and Punjabi domination. It is mostly by people
of this generation, whose members are today at the head of Sindhi nationalist
parties, that I was told repeatedly that ‘Sindhis are Sufi by nature’. G.M.
Sayed’s heritage was more than apparent in their intellectual development:
when I asked them to elaborate, they systematically equated Sufism with
secularism and universalism, echoing G.M. Sayed’s conception of mysticism.
The growth of sectarian violence from the 1980s16 fueled the perception
that Sindh’s ‘Sufi culture’ was threatened by extremist understandings of
Islam. Sindhi nationalists like to praise how perceptive G.M. Sayed was when,
in a speech made at the Congress of the People for Peace in Vienna in 1952,
he advised world powers not to support existing regimes in Muslim countries
and warned them of the danger of religious fanaticism.17 For Sindhi nation-
alists, the spread of sectarianism and communalism in Sindh is seen as a
deliberate strategy by the Pakistani establishment, orchestrated to subdue the
province. The various compromises (or outright support) made by the Pakis-
tani state to the demands of religious groups – such as the exclusion of
Ahmadis from the status of Muslim in 1974 or Zia ul-Haq’s Islamization
policies – are taken as confirmation of G.M. Sayed’s warning. Fighting
against religious extremism thus stands as one of the priorities of Sindhi
nationalist groups. On the occasion of the ‘Freedom March’ organized in
March 2012 by Sindh’s major nationalist party, Jiye Sindh Qaumi Mahaz, its
leader, Bashir Khan Qureshi (1959–2012), pinned the responsibility for the
spread of sectarianism and extremism on Punjab and Pakistan. However, he
first placed himself in the lineage of the Sufi tradition of wahdat al-wujūd by a
direct reference to the tenth-century Persian mystic Mansūr Hallāj, hanged
for his beliefs:18
Arso thio āhe ta mansūr jo āwāz purāno thī vio āhe

For years, Mansur’s voice has seemed distant
Hik bhero warī naīn sar-i dār o rasan khe sīngāran ghurān tho
Once more, let me adorn the scaffold and the rope.19
After dramatically declaring himself ready for martyrdom, Bashir Qureshi

then stated:
Pakistan came into existence as a result of hatred and hypocrisy born out
of a wrong conception of religion. This is why its existence has not only
been the cause of hatred and destruction for the whole world but has also
allowed Punjab to take over the economic, domestic and foreign policy of
the country. Thus extremism [intahā pasandī] and a terrorist mentality
[dahshatgardī wārī soch] have been fanned here, whose victims are not
only the whole world and humanity but also Sindh, which, in spite of
hosting different religions for centuries, has preserved its tradition of
tolerance [ravādārī wāro ravāyyo].20
Bashir Qureshi thus denounces the sectarianism and extremism that threatens
Sindh, the ‘land of Sufis’, which so far has kept its ‘tradition of tolerance’
intact. To illustrate his point, he mentions the forced marriages of young
Sindhi Hindu women with Muslim men and takes the example of Rinkle
Kumari, whose case was then widely debated in the Pakistani media. After
disappearing from her home in Mirpur Mathelo, in northern Sindh, in Feb-
ruary 2012, Rinkle Kumari converted to Islam and married a Muslim man in
the nearby shrine of Bharchundi Sharif, whose head sajjāda nashīn, popularly
known as Mian Mitho, happened to be the local elected member of the
National Assembly, sitting in the ranks of the Pakistan People’s Party
majority. Rinkle Kumari’s family maintained that she had been abducted and
forcefully married. The case gathered wide media coverage as the Supreme
Court of Pakistan stepped in, but Rinkle Kumari’s family, supported by
Hindu community organizations and human rights organizations, reproached
the Supreme Court for not having investigated whether the conversion was
forced or not (Sirmed 2012). Sindhi nationalist parties were among the few
political groups that openly supported Rinkle Kumari and the Hindu com-
munity. They organized rallies outside the press club of Hyderabad and in
Mirpur Mathelo to demand effective protection of religious minorities and
request the return of Rinkle Kumari to her family. The case of Rinkle Kumari
drew attention to the difficulties of minorities in Pakistan and is symptomatic
of what Sindhi nationalists denounce, namely a climate of heightened sectar-
ian and communal division which has led a number of Hindu families from
Sindh to leave for India (some speak of the largest wave of Hindu emigration
from Sindh since 1948).
A year later, another case of communal conflict brought Sindhi parties to
mobilize in support of the Hindu minority. On October 8, 2013, in the
southern Sindhi town of Pangrio, the body of Bhuro Bhil, a Hindu man of 28
years who had died in a car accident, was exhumed by a crowd of several
hundred Muslim people.21 Arguing that burying Muslims and Hindus in the
same cemetery was contrary to sharia, several people had first warned Bhuro
Bhil’s family against laying him to rest in the Haji Faqir graveyard, and
finally took it upon themselves to unearth the body after the family had gone
ahead with the funeral with the support of a local landowner. This event
brings together various social dynamics pertaining to caste conflicts – some
lower-caste Muslims, too, are not allowed to be buried in certain cemeteries –
and to land ownership: according to the Herald, 22 those who initially opposed
Bhuro Bhil’s burial were part of a group of land grabbers that illegally occupy
a part of the graveyard (as regularly happens in Pakistan).
Yet most of the media coverage of the event highlighted the communal
dimension of the affair, which is also what prompted Sindhi nationalist par-
ties, as well as non-governmental and advocacy organizations, publicly to take
222 Julien Levesque
position on the issue by condemning extremism and calling for the unity of all
Sindhis, whether Hindu or Muslim. This is what the picture that circulated a
few days after the desecration on social media was meant to tell. The picture
of Bhuro Bhil’s new tomb on which Jiye Sindh’s flag had been put up, carried
the following comment: ‘Bhuro Bheel be hik Sindhi …!’ (Bhuro Bhil is also a
Sindhi).
Sindhi nationalist parties also took part in the ‘Long March’ that was
organized over three days from Mirpur Khas to Hyderabad. One of the
cadres of Jiye Sindh Qaumi Mahaz, Dr Niaz Kalani, joined the meeting at
the start of the march and spoke to various TV reporters. Several dozen acti-
vists had come along with him and carried flags of Jiye Sindh, which now
stood among the slogans of the event’s organizers like the Bheel Intellectual
Forum: ‘mulk men intahā pasandī khe khatam kayo vanjī’ (stop extremism in
the country).
As in the case of Rinkle Kumari, Bhuro Bhil’s exhumation was taken by
many as a symptom of the erosion of Sindh’s ‘Sufi culture’ at the hands of the
growing sectarian and communal polarization. On November 23, 2013, on
the occasion of the 40th day of mourning (chahlam), a Sindhi nationalist
group convened a ‘Sindh Inter Faith Conference’ for the unity (yakjatī) of
Sindhis. It took place in Hyderabad in the suitably named Besant Hall, dedi-
cated to Annie Besant, the president of the Theosophical Society from 1891
to 1933, which so significantly influenced thinkers such as Jethmal Parsram
and G.M. Sayed. The party leader, Riaz Chandio, denounced a state ‘con-
spiracy against Sindh’s Sufi way [mat]’ and praised the Sindhi loyalists
(‘halālīon’) who realize that ‘Bhuro Bhil is a true son and heir of this soil’.23
Sindhi nationalist parties thus see themselves as defenders of Sindh’s ‘Sufi
culture’ against a rising extremist and sectarian Islam that, according to
them, is diffused with the support of the Pakistani state. However, the two
events that we related – Rinkle Kumari’s conversion and Bhuro Bhil’s exhu-
mation – in fact paint a more complex picture. In both cases, those Muslims
engaged in communal conflicts are led by religious figures who draw their
spiritual authority from the Sufi tradition. In the case of Rinkle Kumari,
Mian Mitho and the pīrs of Bharchundi Sharif, an important Qādirī shrine24
in the northern district of Ghotki, play the central role. The implication of the
pīrs and disciples of Bharchundi in various movements for the defense and
promotion of Islam is nothing new – and Mian Mitho proudly projects the
dargāh of Bharchundi as a center where people come to convert to Islam.
Behind the crowd that exhumed Bhuro Bhil’s body also figures a local cleric
who belongs to a Sufi order. Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi, a naqshbandī mujaddidī 25
pīr and a member of the Barelvi movement Ahl-e Sunnat wa’l Jamaat, was
one of the religious leaders who stirred up local tensions. His name
appears in various cases of conversions in the 2000s in the Thar region. In
April 2008, for instance, he converted in one go 270 Bhil men and women (www.
dawn.com/news/300339/mirpurkhas-more-than-270-embrace-islam, accessed
December 16, 2015). He generally boasts of having converted more than
10,000 people to Islam in the course of his life. He is also mentioned in
accounts of forced conversions, with a modus operandi very similar to that
employed for Rinkle Kumari (Dharejo 2009). Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi is bit-
terly opposed to Sindhi nationalists, whom he accuses of being ‘Indian
agents’. He denounces G.M. Sayed’s thought as a threat for Sindh, as in this
speech pronounced at the ‘urs of Pir Sayed Mahbub Ali Shah in Havelian
(Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa):
In Sindh, there are two ideologies. The first is that of G.M. Sayed, an
ideology full of violence [mār-dhār], hatred, atheism [ilhād], associatism
[shirk], innovation [bid‘at]. The second is that of the Naqshbandi tariqa
[khwāja-i khwājagān], the everlasting Saint Shah Muhammad alias
Ibrahim Jan Faruqi Sarhandi.26
The contrast between the Sindhi nationalist discourse and the statements of
Barelvi pīrs like that of Ayub Jan Sarhandi bring to light the ‘contested
nature of Sufism’ and the ‘struggle over representations’ that takes place
between differing visions of Sufism and Sindhis. On the one hand, nationalists
invoke a Sufism stripped of its Islamic character and its ritual practices in
order to promote the idea of a cultural essence of Sindh that allows for the
peaceful communion of various religious groups within the single entity that
is the Sindhi nation. Let us not naively deduce that Sindhi nationalists are
free from all forms of prejudice when it comes to religious minorities. They
are, in fact, very much the product of their society. Their lack of knowledge
and interaction with Hindus is often plainly visible, and many activists and
sympathizers seem content with repeating that ‘no one may distinguish
Hindus from Muslims in Sufi shrines in Sindh’ (which is debatable). One must
then take the Sindhi nationalist discourse on Sufism for what it is: a perfor-
mative discourse, which asserts the unity of Sindhis regardless of their religion
in order to bring about this unity. This discourse also plays a role of identifi-
cation between ‘loyal Sindhis’ who share the same vision. On the other hand,
Barelvi pīrs involved in the events we mentioned build their spiritual and
temporal authority upon a Sufism that posits itself within the ambit of Islam
and that is inscribed in a long tradition of political engagement, a tradition
much transformed with the rise of sectarian violence in the past decades, as
documented by Philippon (2011a).
The most elaborate development of this position against G.M. Sayed’s
thought and his ‘ethnicized Sufism’ was made by an important conservative
intellectual, Maulana Muhammad Musa Bhutto. At the time of its release in
1967, G.M. Sayed’s book Jīan Ditho Āhe Mūn caused a stir in Pakistan.
Fatāwā and aggressive reactions targeted G.M. Sayed as he not only attacked
the political foundations of Pakistan but ignored one of the most crucial
tenets of Islamic dogma: the belief in the finality of Muhammad’s prophecy.
Maulana Musa Bhutto, a Naqshbandī Mujaddidī ‘ālim associated with the
Jamaat-e Islami, wrote several books to counter G.M. Sayed’s influence
224 Julien Levesque
directly. Although his main concern is to set straight the misconceptions
(ghalatfahmiyan) about Islam that have spread among the Sindhi youth
because of G.M. Sayed, he sometimes leaves the ground of theology to
respond to G.M. Sayed’s political vision of Sindh and attempts to analyze the
Sindhi leader’s personality.
In 1990, Musa Bhutto published a direct response to G.M. Sayed entitled
Islām par I‘tirāzāt kā ‘Ilmī Jā’iza (‘A learned examination of objections on
Islam’), in which, after summing up Sayed’s ideas, he looks at several philo-
sophers and personalities (such as Toynbee, Gandhi or M.N. Roy), and
examines the concept of wahdat al-wujūd and the life of major Sufis, like
Bāyazīd Bistāmī and Junayd Baghdādī (Bhutto 2002).
When I interviewed him in Hyderabad, Musa Bhutto expressed a strict
criticism of G.M. Sayed’s conception of Sufism. According to him, G.M.
Sayed argues that God has no reality but is a human creation, and that pro-
phets, far from carrying a divine, revealed message, were nothing but wise
men of their time.27 Prophets’ teachings are therefore neither eternal nor
complete, but human experiences, as a result of which new religions can be
founded on the basis of today’s experiences. Maulana Musa Bhutto accuses
G.M. Sayed of instrumentalizing the message of Sufi saints to establish a new
religion in which man is worshipped.
Whereas G.M. Sayed indeed asserts that ‘a Sufi should not necessarily be
the follower of any particular theology’ (Sayed 2012: 4), Musa Bhutto
reclaims Sufism as an Islamic tradition. He therefore justifies the rituals that
G.M. Sayed rejects: the ban on eating pork cannot be ignored on the pretext
that it is a pre-Islamic tradition. A similar line of argument can be applied to
the circumambulation around the Kaaba in Mecca. Referring to Shaikh
Ahmad Sirhindi, the reformer of the Naqshbandī tarīqa, he insists on the
necessity for Sufism to remain within the bounds of sharia. Arguing that any
form of mysticism that pulls one away from the sharia and the prescriptions
of Islam is non-Islamic, Musa Bhutto refutes any resemblance between the
conception of wahdat al-wujūd and the philosophy of Vedanta which, he claims,
allows anything to be the object of veneration and leads to polytheism. Musa
Bhutto believes that the concept of wahdat al-wujūd has been misused to
justify the veneration of new idols in the name of Islam.
Musa Bhutto shows respect and admiration for G.M. Sayed, acknowl-
edging the quality of his books on Sindh’s past, but expresses puzzlement at
Sayed’s unorthodox views on Islam. He writes: ‘In the matter of explaining
religion, G. M. Sayed is either really completely [a] victim of misconceptions
or he intends to strike a blow on Islam with wrong interpretations’ (Bhutto
2002: 58). In a letter addressed to G.M. Sayed in 1989 (Bhutto n.d.: 26–28),
Musa Bhutto wonders what the causes for Sayed’s persistent opinions can be,
and suggests a few reasons. He first considers G.M. Sayed’s emotional per-
sonality, which made him unable to control his feelings, unlike other seasoned
politicians. He also blames G.M. Sayed’s association with the Theosophical
Society, which influenced his thinking into considering all religions equal.
Although Musa Bhutto embraces Sufism as an Islamic mystical tradition, his
writings illustrate the fact that not all Sindhis consider Sufism to be one of the
foundations of Sindhi identity.
Conclusion
The place of Sufism in Sindhi identity construction after 1947 is far from
being univocal. The wide diffusion of Sufism as a symbol of Sindh in the
public arena may first mislead the observer into thinking that a consensus
exists, but a finer analysis reveals that the reference to Sufism can work as an
identity marker only so long as it acts as an ‘empty signifier’ (Laclau 1996:
36–46), potentially all-inclusive for Sindhis. The success of Sufism as a symbol
of Sindh indeed relies in many ways on a non-polemic, consensual definition
of Sufism as a quietist search for divine union that condemns the accumula-
tion of wealth by the living representatives of saints. However, while nobody
seems to reject Sufism as such, there are debates over its concrete meaning
and its relation to Sindhi society.
The proponents of the idea of Sufism as a characteristic of Sindh and
Sindhi identity believe that Sindh possesses a specific ‘Sufi culture’ which has
ensured the peaceful coexistence of various religions throughout time. They
often share similar social trajectories, being members of the educated middle
class and having made their political socialization in the same environment,
the campuses of the universities and colleges of Sindh. Formulated by G.M.
Sayed, this conception is borne by Sindhi nationalist and autonomist groups,
who see themselves as the protectors of Sindh’s ‘Sufi culture’ and promote an
identity discourse that stands in opposition to Pakistan’s unitary nationalism
by putting forward an alternative understanding of Islam. This conception meets
strong contestation from some representatives of Sufism in Sindh, and notably
from members of the naqshbandiyya mujaddidiyya such as Muhammad Musa
Bhutto or Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi.
Not simply an opposition of discourses, these two conceptions translate on
the ground into competition between groups that seek to impose their ‘prin-
ciples of di-vision of the social world’, as can be seen in the examples of
Rinkle Kumari and Bhuro Bhil. Nationalists identify the ‘loyal (halālī) Sind-
his’, the true sons of the soil who may be Hindu or Muslim, in opposition to
those who have come under the influence of the extremism that they see as
promoted by the state or, worse, who have become actors for the state. Mian
Mitho and Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi posit themselves are flag bearers of Islam
and dismiss the nationalists as ‘Indian agents’ – that is, not entirely true
Muslims. Thus, the ‘struggle over representations’ around Sufism and Sindhi
identity brings out two competing performative discourses, each rooted in
certain social groups. Nevertheless, Sufism is now widely used as a symbol of
Sindh in various public arenas and in the media – much beyond nationalist
circles. What now needs to be better understood is the plurality of meanings
and understandings of Sufism that have permitted this diffusion – a process
226 Julien Levesque
through which the idea of Sindh as a land of Sufis lost much of its subversive
dimension.
Notes
1 Little known because poorly documented, this event is still commemorated by
some Shia organizations. See for instance worldshiaforum.wordpress.com/2012/
12/26/therhikhaipur-massacre-49th-anniversary-of-the-first-large-scale-sectarian-att
ack-in-pakistan, accessed December 16, 2015.
2 www.dawn.com/news/600047/sufism-keeps-sindh-away-from-extremism-sassui (acces-
sed December 16, 2015).
3 French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has defined identity discourses as performative
in the sense that they ‘claim to bring about what they state’ (Bourdieu 1982: 140).
4 Born on January 17, 1904, Sayed Ghulam Murtaza Shah (1904–95), more commonly
known as G.M. Sayed, was one of Sindh’s most prominent and controversial politicians,
whose career spanned from the early 1920s to his death on April 25, 1995. Heir to
the spiritual lineage of Sayed Haider Shah Sanai Kazmi, G.M. Sayed played a
significant role in Sindhi elite politics and at the forefront of the Pakistan move-
ment in Sindh, but he left (and was expelled from) the Muslim League in 1946.
From then on, he remained critical of the central authorities of Pakistan, which
cost him years in prison and house arrest. In 1973, G.M. Sayed called for Sindh’s
independence and founded the Jiye Sindh Mahaz (Long Live Sindh Front), fore-
bear of about a dozen Sindhi nationalist parties that exist today. On G.M. Sayed’s
life, see for instance, Korejo 2000.
5 Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai (1689–1752), a sayed, Sufi and poet, is now eulogized as
‘Sindh’s national poet’. The compilation of poetry Shāh jo Risālo is considered by
many to be the highest expression of ‘classical’ Sindhi poetry. On Shah Latif ’s life
and poetry, see Sorley 1940.
6 Sindh was made a part of the Bombay presidency in 1847 and became a province
in 1936. This came about as the result of more than two decades of mobilization
by Sindhis (Hindus at first, then Muslims), a ‘struggle’ in which an idealized vision
of Sindh’s cultural uniqueness was first put forward (Khuhro 1982b, 1982a).
7 G.M. Sayed first published his book Paighām-i Latīf in Sindhi in 1952, brought out
by a cultural institution, the Sindhi Adabi Board. An English translation, Shah Latif
and his Message, was later published and is now available online at www.gmsyed.
org/latif/Shah%20Latif%20and%20his%20message%20-%20G%20M%20Syed.pdf
(accessed May 24, 2015).
8 The original Sindhi book came out in 1967. Its English translation was first pub-
lished in 1986, and later republished in 2012 by Fiction House in Lahore under the
title Religion and Reality. Page numbers cited here refer to a PDF version available
online at www.gmsyed.org/religion/Religion%20and%20reality.pdf (accessed May
24, 2015).
9 The rituals observed in Sehwan Sharif have come to embody the mystical tradi-
tions of Sufism in Sindh in the media (tribune.com.pk/story/610616/steeped-in-a
ncient-mysticism-passion-of-pakistani-sufis-infuriates-taliban/, accessed December
16, 2015), and in some academic writings (Frembgen 2012).
10 I would be tempted to use Hamza Alavi’s term ‘salariat’, coined to describe the
anti-colonial elite in British India, if it were not for its connotations of salary
(Alavi 1988: 68). The social strata I point to not only includes government officials
but also independent professionals (such as lawyers and doctors) who do not
necessarily receive a monthly salary. This also fits in with the emphasis laid by most
scholars of nationalism on the role of the intelligentsia in national movements
(Kedourie 1961; Dieckhoff and Jaffrelot 2006).
11 Rūh Rihān notably published the poetry of Sindh’s most renowned contemporary
poet, Shaikh Ayaz (1923–97).
12 Personal interview with Hamid Sindhi, Hyderabad, March 2011.
13 On the Sindhi Adabi Board, see Schimmel 1961.
14 Author’s translation.
15 Muhammad A. Qadeer correctly describes one of the particularities of Pakistan’s
middle class: the maintenance of its connection to the village and the possession of
land (Qadeer 2006: 127–130).
16 See for instance: Abou Zahab 1999.
17 This speech, made by G.M. Sayed at the Congress of the People for Peace, in
Vienna on December 12–19, 1952, was reprinted by the Sindh United Party in
April 2015.
18 Mansūr Hallāj (c. 857–922) was hanged for having declared ‘anā’l haqq’, ‘I am the
Truth’, to express his experience of divine union. He was relying on a theme com-
monly used by Sufis, namely the idea that the outcome of the spiritual quest leads
the mystic to find in him/herself, in his/her heart, what s/he was looking for. On
Hallāj, see Massignon 2010. On Hallāj in Sindhi poetry, see Schimmel 1962.
19 Bashir Qureshi quotes a Sindhi translation of a couplet by the Persian poet Hakim
Saeed Kashani Mansur Sani (or ‘Mansur the second’), assassinated in 1071.
20 Speech in Sindhi and Urdu by Bashir Khan Qureshi, late leader of Jiye Sindh
Qaumi Mahaz, Karachi, March 23, 2012.
21 In contradiction to the Brahmanic norm followed by higher Hindu castes, lower
castes in Sindh bury their dead, generally in the same burial ground as Muslims.
The cemetery is often built around the shrine of a local Sufi saint, worshipped by
both Muslims and Hindus. Here, the graveyard is named after the local saint Haji
Faqeer: ‘Haji Faqeer Auliya Qabristan.’
22 This article by the Herald has the merit of replacing the communal event into
larger structural dynamics, but it pays scant attention to the communal dimension,
although it was amply covered by Sindhi newspapers, which directly named the
clerics and groups responsible for kindling local agitation (Ahmed 2014).
23 Speech in Urdu by Riaz Chandio, leader of the nationalist group Jiye Sindh
Mahaz, on the occasion of the ‘Sindh Inter Faith Conference & Chehlum of Amar
Bhooro Bheel’, November 23, 2013, Besant Hall, Hyderabad.
24 Bharchundi Sharif is in fact affiliated with the qādiriyya rashdiyya, a Sindhi branch
of the Qādirī tarīqa headed by Pir Pagaro.
25 The naqshbandiyya is one of the four prominent Sufi orders found in South Asia. It
was reformed in the seventeenth century by Shaikh Ahmad Sarhandi, who was
described as mujaddid because of his efforts to renew the faith. Pir Ayub Jan
Sarhandi thus belongs to the naqshbandiyya mujaddidiyya.
26 Speech in Urdu by Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi, on the occasion of the ‘urs of Pir Sayed
Mahbub Ali Shah, Havelian (Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa), June 2012. The speech is
available online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv-hBsfNtvw (accessed May 24,
2015).
27 Personal interview with Musa Bhutto, Hyderabad, November 2011.
12 The politics of Sufism on the ground
The political dimension of Pakistan’s largest
Sufi shrine
Linus Strothmann
Introduction
Since 1960 numerous Pakistani Sufi shrines have been nationalized and thus
came under state control. For many of those who since administer these
shrines, the topic of this volume, Islam, Sufism and Everyday Politics of
Belonging in South Asia, is an everyday encounter in the true sense, a nego-
tiation between the state’s and a political elite’s interests and the interests of
those visiting the shrines. What remains interesting is that despite Pakistani
Sufi shrines being a well-studied subject, few academics so far have looked at
how exactly shrines are administered and managed by the state. Simple
questions come to mind: Why are shrines under state control? How far does
this control go? Who is ‘the state’ in this case? For what purpose are shrines used
by political elites? What do ‘the people’ think about shrines being nationa-
lized? Most importantly, who takes decisions about rituals and practices at
the shrines?
This chapter has two aims. First, to give an account of Pakistan’s largest
state-run shrine and to show the important political dimension of a Sufi
shrine, and second, to showcase how a specific class of bureaucrats, rather
than politicians, negotiate policies and politics ‘on the ground’. This strongly
counters the sociological understanding of bureaucrats as a class of people
that execute the rules and obligations dictated to them by another class, a
notion found in its purest form in Max Weber’s Economy and Society (Weber
1978: 217–220). I would argue that an understanding colored by this notion
has largely made us blind to how politics is negotiated at the ground level,
especially in the religious field and even more so when it comes to South
Asian Sufism. This chapter aims to redirect our thoughts about the relation-
ship between politics and Sufism away from political parties, official rules and
regulations, and toward the not-so-little office of a Sufi shrine’s manager.
The case study I use to make my argument is Pakistan’s largest Sufi shrine,
the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh. situated in Lahore. The basis of this article
is my PhD thesis on the shrine, based on extensive fieldwork comprising
mostly participant observation and unstructured interviews. My initial
approach to the shrine was to use it as a field in which to study how different
The politics of Sufism on the ground 229
groups acted together and thus ‘made’ space. Shortly after arriving in the
field, I realized that this was an odd way to approach this shrine in particular,
because the relationship between different groups was structured to such a
large extent on the control enforced at the shrine by its administration. Thus
the questions stated above became more central and my focus was shifted
away from visitors toward the administration and management of the shrine.
One could argue that the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh is unusual in the sense
that no other shrine in the subcontinent is as strictly controlled by state agen-
cies. While this is true, the development of this shrine has paved the way for
similar developments at many other Pakistani shrines. What the case study
can show is a direction that many shrines are developing toward, a professiona-
lization of administration and management, and their growing political impor-
tance as centers of social welfare, civil society, and as discourse-producing
centers on Sufism and Islam in the country.
Before introducing the shrine further and then examining the central
topic of this paper, surrounding the administration of the shrine and its
political impact, it is necessary to understand why shrines where nationa-
lized in Pakistan. This nationalization can be viewed as a process that had its
roots already in the colonial attitudes towards Sufi shrines and their
caretakers.
The nationalization of Pakistani Sufi shrines

When Pakistan as a country was established in 1947 as part of the two-
nations solution to India’s strive for independence, the political elite that had
grown in the process of this solution was one that was largely educated either
in the West or in Western-oriented educational institutions within the sub-
continent. While the reason behind the two-nations ‘solution’ was a religious
demarcation of two distinct categories of people and subsequently geographic
areas, religion played a much smaller role in the political ideology concerning
the states that were to form the two countries. Pakistan was in inception
essentially a secular state, despite the fact that its territory and people where
defined by religious belonging, or rather ascription. Both Muhammad Ali
Jinnah and the leading politician of the 1950s and 1960s, Ayyub Khan, were
very critical of ‘folk’ Islam and especially of the role different religious groups
could potentially play in separatist movements. Religious belonging in
Western-educated eyes was largely viewed as a threat to the national project,
to national unity. Not only was this ‘folk Islam’ seen as a hindrance in the
development of the country as part of a modernistic approach, but the dif-
ferent branches of Sufism and more importantly the regional dominances of
some of these and their connections to local politics made them seem like a
threat to national unity and a possible breeding ground for separatist move-
ments. An essential dimension of this so called ‘folk Islam’ was the veneration
of saints at Sufi shrines, and some of the most powerful local actors were the
caretakers of these shrines.
230 Linus Strothmann
The common view among the British rulers and their immediate suc-
cessors was that these shrines were places of moral deterioration and
financial exploitation of the poor. As Katherine Ewing (1997) has pointed
out, the colonizers ‘split’ the Sufis into two categories: the Sufis of the ‘golden
age’, true pilgrims who traveled the world with a message of peace, and with
similarities to the Christian saints, while contrary to this, the modern-day
Sufis were seen simply as exploiters of the poor. The nationalization was thus
justified by stopping exploitation by the second group while honoring the
first.
Shrines were nationalized under the Auqaf Ordinance of 1960, which was
inspired by the book, Ideology of Pakistan, written by Javid Iqbal, the son of
Muhammed Iqbal, the father of the two-nations theory and considered Paki-
stan’s national poet. Speaking with the authority of his father, Javid Iqbal
wrote Ideology of Pakistan in response to a questionnaire send to the country’s
intellectuals by Ayyub Khan in 1958. One very concrete measure suggested
by Javid Iqbal was:
The Ministry of Religious Affairs, Ideological Orientation or Awqaf

should take into possession all the Muslim religious endowments (awqaf)
in Pakistan and appoint administrators to manage them […] There is no
denying the fact that the mystical orders produced saints of a very high
quality in the world of Islam. At one time these monasteries (Khanqahs,
etc.) were the centres of attraction for the Learned. But now their condi-
tion is very deplorable indeed. They have been transformed into centres
of moral and religious corruption. […] Thus it is high time that the
Mutawallis, Mujawars, Sahibzadas, Gaddi-Nishins, Sajjada- Nishins, Pirs
etc., connected with the monasteries or the tombs of the saints, and in
many cases thrive on feudalism (jagirdari), should either be reformed or
removed from their self-created spiritual offices.
The establishment of such a Ministry on the lines suggested above is
the only remedy for the paralyzing influence of the Mullah and the Pir
over the rural masses of Islam. Unless and until the Mullah and the Pir
are excluded from our religious life, there is no likelihood of the success-
ful dissemination of enlightenment, liberalism and a meaningful and vital
faith among the people of Pakistan.
(Iqbal 2005: 47–48)
Iqbal’s words closely resemble the distinction mentioned before, made during
colonial times. Also evident is the tone of modernization. Words like ‘the dis-
semination of enlightenment’ reveal the Western perspective within the intel-
lectual elite of the newly established country. Ayyub Khan praised the book
and even wrote a foreword to it (Iqbal 2005), and the passing of the Auqaf
Ordinance of 1960 shortly after the release date suggests that the nationaliza-
tion was a step the political elite had merely postponed until solid justification
was at hand.
Besides this official justification, to stop the exploitation and misuse of the
shrines by its caretakers, nationalization also served political purposes, most
importantly to weaken the traditional class of caretakers, pirs and managers
of the shrines by depriving them of their source of income and taking away
the shrines as an arena for them to participate in political and religious
discourses (cf. Malik 1996: 55; Ewing 1997: 70).
During the first years of nationalization the aim of the government was
foremost in demonstrating that shrines under state control now served the people
better than before. This was done by investing in the material structure of the
shrines, for example making repairs, building extensions or, as was the case at
the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh, making the shrine more comfortable by adding
shelter from rain and sun. Another measure was to add medical dispensaries
to the shrines. This had two purposes: on the one hand to show government
responsibility and care, and on the other, further to weaken and dismiss customary
practices that former caretakers engaged in, such as the selling of amulets and
similar items for providing relief from health problems (Malik 1996: 61).
Overall, the nationalization started out largely as a vehicle by a secular
state to weaken religious authorities. However, from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s
time onwards, the state-run shrines began to fulfill further purposes. For
Bhutto’s ‘Islamic Socialism’, the saints’ biographies were rewritten to establish
them as the forerunners in a long line of national heroes at the end of which
stood Bhutto himself: ‘He [Data Ganj Bukhsh] preached egalitarianism and
visualized a classless society based on the concept of Musawat-i-Muhammadi
which Allama Iqbal and Qaid-i-Azam later termed as “Islamic Socialism”’
(Shibli 1974, quoted in Ewing 1997: 72). Bhutto also made the mostly regional
‘urs festivals national holidays and those saints with a suitable biography and
image were promoted and their shrines enlarged while others were neglected.
Data Darbar, as the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh is commonly referred to,
is a good example: the shrine is the resting place of the eleventh-century saint
‘Alī Hujwīrī. Hujwīrī is best known outside Lahore for his sole surviving
book, a treatise about Sufism called Kashf al-Mahjūb (‘Revealing the Veil’)
(Hujwīrī 1997). The book delves into many subjects, and in almost all cases,
Hujwīrī has a moderate view, one that tries to encompass different sects and
overall is in line with what today is called reformist Islam, critical of many of
the practices associated with South Asian Sufism, like the use of drugs or
extensive dancing. Hujwīrī also clearly states that being a saint does not free
oneself from religious obligations. The saint is therefore respected not only by
those Pakistanis with a strong belief in saints as mediators between themselves
and God, but also by the growing class of Pakistani Muslims that are gen-
erally very critical of Sufism and its practices. It is therefore understandable
that Bhutto chose to identify with this shrine.
During Zia ul-Haq’s time, it was not necessary to show a close connection
to the shrines in order to counter criticism that the government was not ‘Islamic
enough’, as was the case with Bhutto. Nonetheless, the shrines still fulfilled
important functions. Thus, as part of the Islamization policies, the shrines now
became public spaces in which the definition of what was proper Islamic behavior
was translated into rules and regulations concerning rituals and practices. What-
ever was considered un-Islamic by the state could now be banned at the shrines.
I have mentioned the functions of the state-run shrines so far, loosely tied
to the three important figures in the 1950s–80s, Ayyub Khan, Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto and Zia ul-Haq: a place to show that the government was concerned
with the common people, a place to show personal connections with saints
and thus strengthen one’s own image as a Muslim leader, and lastly as a place
in which to define proper Islamic behavior as viewed by the political elite. I
would argue that those political figures who followed Ayyub Khan, Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto and Zia ul-Haq lacked the political interest and imagination to
add further functions. While examining developments at the shrine of Data
Ganj Bakhsh, one can observe how the political importance of Sufi shrines in
Pakistan remains a constant feature today.
The shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh

The shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh, or Data Darbar for short, was established
at the end of the eleventh century, and was then outside present-day Lahore.
What started out as a simple grave next to the mosque that the saint had
established on that spot, became a little shrine with a roof in Mughal times,
and in the mid-nineteenth century the shrine and mosque were rebuilt with
brick. The biggest change to the shrine came under Zia ul-Haq, when from
1981–99 the shrine was turned into the largest such complex in South Asia,
including today the third largest mosque in Pakistan, several basements with
offices for the administration, government services, a police station, a
madrassa, a library and research center, a micro-finance non-governmental
organization (NGO), designated spaces for musical concerts (samā‘), provi-
sion of donated food distribution (langar), and even a car park for up to 200
cars. Additionally, a hospital financed by the Auqaf Department was estab-
lished on nearby land once given to the shrine as donation. The shrine is
today the largest source of income among the more than 400 shrines in the
Punjab that are run under the Auqaf Department, contributing nearly a third
of the overall annual income. About 200 state employees work at the shrine,
not including the outsourced shoe keeping or the police stationed at the
shrine. On average, around 30,000 to 60,000 visitors come to the shrine daily.
On public holidays, Islamic holidays, Thursday evenings and Friday for the
jum‘a prayer, the numbers can easily be twice as high. During the three-day
‘urs festival held in remembrance of the saint’s death, approximately 1 million
people visit the shrine (see Figure 12.1 and Figure 12.2).
From being a mainly religious site in 1948, the shrine and its surroundings
have become a political, economic and a social center of the city. Large markets
have emerged outside the shrine, which offer formal and informal employment
to a large number of people. The provision of food, water, sanitation and
other services have made it an outstanding center for deprived sections of society,
Figure 12.1 The shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh in 1928

(Subhan 1960)
and this has further attracted civil society actors like NGOs that strive to
better the poor people’s lives and find in the shrine the one place in the city where
extremely poor and extremely rich share a public space (see Figure 12.3).
From this information one can already assume that managing a shrine like
this is a complex task. In the next section I will provide an overview of
how the shrine works administratively and introduce the key actors, before inves-
tigating details of how decisions at the shrine are made, how these are influ-
enced by politics, and how the shrine functions as an arena for the state to
participate within discourses of Sufism and Islam in the country.
Figure 12.2 The shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh during ’urs

(Photo courtesy of Linum Strothmann)
Direction ofQibla
Zaildar Road
I
Wofnen's Entrance
4$
Golden Gate (men only)
J
i
ñ
Data Darbar Park
Gate 5 I
Data Darbar and Surroundings
Entrance to shrine Type and Number ofShops
Entrence to langar kana (com. kitchen) Langar(61) Toys (14) Sanitary Parts (3)
Entrance to car parking basement Religious Items: Caps, Roses, etc. (43) Poster, Pictures and Paintings (7) Tea or Food (langar excluded)
Pólice blocking/ barricade | Bangles (15) Cds, Dvds, Casettes (4) Vehicle Spare Parts, Workshops
Figure 12.3 Data Darbar and surroundings

(Image courtesy of Linus Strothmann)
Managing piety
Officially, all shrines that are under state control, are administered by the
‘administrator auqaf ’, the head of the Auqaf Department, a position just
below the ministerial level. The administrator auqaf is appointed by the chief
minister of the Punjab, since the Auqaf Department is a provincial depart-
ment. Over the last four decades the administrator auqaf has changed on
average once a year. It is a post mostly given to highest-ranked civil servants
who have made a name for themselves shortly before retirement or in between
jobs. As the employees of the department joked, by the time the administrator
has been around to make the initial visits to the more important shrines in the
province, it is almost time for him to leave office again.
Below the administrator auqaf are seven directors, each heading one sub-
division of the department. In order of importance these are: religious affairs
and auqaf; administration; estate; finances; health services; ‘ulamā’ academy;
and a director for projects. The director of administration is assisted by 11
zone administrators. All of the shrines in the Punjab that are run under the
department are divided into 11 zones, each of which typically comprises up to
50 shrines. Under each zone administrator work several managers, who act as
the custodians of the shrines and further staff that visit the smaller shrines
regularly or work at the larger shrines permanently. Some mosques are also
included in the zones and the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore is its own zone
because of its importance. The shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh is the only other
zone by itself and has a zone administrator with an office at the shrine. The zone
administrator at Data Darbar is the custodian of the shrine and, together
with the khatīb Imam, is the highest authority at the shrine.
The khatīb Imam is in charge of the religious wing of the shrine’s admin-
istration, the zone administrator of all other parts of the administration. One
would expect the religious wing at a site like this to be the main part of the staff,
but the khatīb Imam only has about ten employees under him, while the
administrator has around 100. The khatīb Imam’s power lies in the speech
held at the jum‘a prayer, often attended by several tens of thousands of
visitors.
The zone administrator’s power is very dependent on his position within
the Auqaf Department. A few administrators have held the title over a couple
of years and given the shrine their distinctive ‘stamp’, taking part in the long-
term decisions that are otherwise taken in the head department of the Auqaf
Department or in a board called the Religious Purpose Committee that con-
sists mainly of high-ranked politicians from the ruling party of the Punjab. In
many cases, the administrator’s power is much more limited, mainly due to
the fact that the complexity of the work makes the administrator extremely
dependent on his employees, most of whom have worked at the shrine over
many years, if not decades. Thus if we want to understand the greatest influ-
ence at the shrine, we need to look more closely at who manages the shrine
on a daily basis.
Within the complex of Data Darbar, there is one courtyard around which
most offices of the administration are based. Here we find the manager’s
office, the chief executive officer’s office, an office for the accountants and
clerks, an office for security personnel, as well as a number of offices of other
institutions (see Figure 12.4). Many tasks are simple and repetitive, like col-
lecting rent money from adjacent shops, preparing the langar (ritual food),
overseeing the technical aspects of the shrine and many more. The more
challenging work tasks are those that involve interaction with the visitors to
the shrine, and to some extent with the subcontractors like those for shoe
keeping and car and bike parking spots. Most of this interaction takes place
in the manager’s office or on the premises of the shrine. Around 80–100
security officers employed by the Auqaf Department walk the shrine daily in
12-hour shifts. These guards are normally the ones who report an issue or are
Figure 12.4 Data Darbar offices

(Image courtesy fo Linus Strothmann)
approached by the visitors. They are also the ones who enforce the rules given
to them by the administration, for example waking up sleeping visitors at the
time of prayer, or stopping people from performing rituals considered un-
Islamic by the administration, such as dancing or the use of drugs. Another
important group of people that fulfill similar tasks are the volunteers who
help at the shrine out of devotion to the saint. There are more than 1,000
devotees, organized in three charity organizations, who regularly help with
tasks such as lining people up on crowded days, body searching visitors at the
entrances and so on. Whether a guard or a volunteer, both report any cases to
the manager of the shrine if they need further assistance.
There are three managers at Data Darbar, working eight-hour shifts. One
manager is always present at the shrine. This is the person who ‘runs’ the
shrine on a daily basis, making sure everything is working smoothly, walking
the premises regularly, settling disputes between visitors, or between visitors
and staff, and reporting directly to the zone administrator. The manager is
advised by the chief executive officer, as well as a number of people who
officially work in an entirely different area but occupy the offices around the
manager’s office and thus often chat with each other. If the manager faces
problems, he will often share these with the people around him.
The manager typically has to decide matters in which a visitor asks for
exemptions to certain rules. A typical example is the following: one night,
when I was sitting with a couple of employees in the manager’s office, a young
boy came in together with a security guard. The boy was rather shy and when
asked by the manager why he had come, spoke very politely about his wish to
sleep on the premises with his group, that they had traveled from far away
and that for them it was a great honor to stay the night at the shrine. It is very
common for several hundred people to stay overnight at the shrine, yet
sleeping visitors would be woken up by the guards. The manager spoke a little
to the boy and after he was convinced that he was not just a beggar or
homeless person, he wrote a small note for the boy that gave him permission
to sleep at the shrine that night.
The situation might sound arbitrary, but it shows the very core of the work
of the management. Like the boy, most visitors have certain expectations
about their visit to the shrine which have root in centuries-old traditions, in
this case the institution of the hostel that typically was attached to many
shrines. Unlike at the nearby Harmandir Sāhib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar,
the Auqaf Department does not have the space to offer accommodation to
pilgrims, and it is also not one of their priorities to make long visits comfor-
table. For the Auqaf Department, other visitors are more important – primarily
the short-term visits by the upper-class Pakistanis who donate large sums to the
shrine upon their visits. For these, one finds a VIP entrance, an air-conditioned
mosque, a basement car park and numerous langar shops where they can buy
devotional food for distribution, which the poorer visitors would bring from
home. The manager faces these conflicting interests daily and has to find ways
to keep both sides happy. On the one side is the zone administrator, closely
tied to the political elite one finds, for example, in the Religious Purpose
Committee, but also connected to the Auqaf Department because they
choose the key figures here. On the other side we find the visitors to the
shrine, who, apart from the very rich, are not a major concern for the
political elite. The visitors can still be powerful stakeholders, they are orga-
nized to some extent in the volunteer organizations and in groups that, for
example, organize langar regularly. For a manager to disappoint the zone
administrator and neglect the political elite’s interests results in the like-
lihood of him losing his job. Disappointing visitors at a broader level means to
fight long battles that make his daily work unbearable. Here we thus have a
culmination of conflicting interest in one and the same position, which on
paper simply means that a bureaucrat fulfills his orders.
There are many more examples, where certain persons within the shrine’s
administration and management have to negotiate this conflict. This happens
at the weekly samā‘ concerts, where devotional music is played, which for
some are closely connected to drugs and dancing, two aspects of Sufism
harshly criticized by many Muslims as well as parts of the political elite,
especially those with close ties to the Arab world. Thus, when the music starts
and a few people get up to dance, the convener of the concert has to watch
closely when the line to ecstatic dancing is crossed. It also happens when
some devotees want to perform rituals at the shrine that are officially for-
bidden, like the burning of candles associated with Hindu traditions. The
space for performing these rituals was for many years located at a central spot
on the shrine premises but over the years has been moved to more secluded
areas of the shrine. Thus visitors can still practice these traditions, but they
are forced to do so where it is largely invisible to other visitors.
What I conclude from these and many more examples of negotiation, is the
delicate task often accomplished by those whom I would call second-row
bureaucrats. These are the civil servants who are too unimportant to be
changed by the political elite after a new provincial government has come into
place, as is the case with the administrator auqaf or sometimes also the zone
administrator. The second-row bureaucrats, like the managers of the shrine,
the research assistant of the research center at the shrine, or the many others
who have responsibility for certain domains of management, stay in their jobs
much longer, many for most of their career. Most of these bureaucrats also
have a personal relationship with the shrine and many have denied other jobs
with better pay in order to stay at the shrine. This continuity means that they
have close ties to visitors at the shrine, the civil society actors around it, the
organized groups of volunteers and other employees both inside the adminis-
tration as well as in the other institutions that have offices at the shrine, like
the police station or the NGOs. With this continuity comes authority and to
some extent this group is more powerful than the zone administrator, who is
officially in charge. This power has its limits, of course, but at least they have
enough leverage to successfully negotiate rules and regulations with respect to
visitors.
To name at least one example showing the limits of this influence, one
should mention the gender segregation that has changed drastically in the last
decade. The shrine is divided into a women’s side and a men’s side. Until
2008, women could enter the men’s side together with their husbands. Due to
a new rule by the Religious Purpose Committee this was changed, so that
now women can only enter the women’s side. It gives them access to the
shrine, but not to the mosque and some of the other parts of the complex.
Here the managers have no leverage to negotiate.
Politics and Sufism

One could ask why all of this is of importance, as in the end, it only seems to
affect a small part of society. I will try to demonstrate why this is not the case,
and that decisions taken at the shrine actually have far-reaching con-
sequences. For this, I have divided this section into four parts, each dealing
with one aspect of the shrine that makes it important beyond its own scope.
The shrine as public space

Ahmed A. Zayed has dealt with shrines as public places in Egypt in her
article ‘Saints (awliya’), Public Places and Modernity in Egypt’. She points
out one quality of public space important for this shrine: ‘[the] salient feature
of a public place is that it is a place owned by all people, a place in which
individuals learn how to behave together’ (Zayed 2008: 104). One could argue
that a shrine is hardly owned by all people despite it being state-run, since
decisions made at the shrine can hardly be called democratic. On the other
hand, this accounts for almost all public space that often is controlled by
distinct actors. However, most visitors would certainly agree that the shrine is
open to everyone and Lahories would with pride mention that the shrine is
visited not only by Muslims, but by Hindus, Christians and Sikhs as well.
More important is the educational ‘value’ Zayed ascribes to the public
space. If we look at the function the shrine has been given, especially since
Zia ul-Haq’s time, namely to regulate religious ritual and practices, this is to a
high degree a way for the state to show people how to ‘behave together’.
Waking up visitors for prayer, preventing them from ecstatic dancing and
many other ways in which the state influences behavior at the shrine are direct
ways of propagating ‘proper’ Islamic behavior. Interestingly, this is seen by
many visitors as a totally legitimate way for the state to influence its citizens,
as the following statement from an interview exemplifies:
Whenever there is a religion that is widely spread, there must be a center.

The center of Islam is the house of God, the Kaaba in Mecca. And in
Saudi Arabia, if there is a speech for jum‘a prayer, it goes to the govern-
ment and there it is checked. They want to control the center. And like-
wise Data Sahib is the center of all the shrines of Pakistan. So the jum‘a
prayer should be delivered according to the Government, because it is
like a center. In other shrines, such as Mian Mir and Baba Bulleh Shah,
your speech can be different. But here speeches should be according to
the Government. There should be at least one place where we can all sit
together. This is the only shrine where we can sit together.
(emphasis added)
The necessary steps for a Sufi shrine to be such a place are first a concentra-
tion on Islam, rather than Sufism. This happened at the shrine when it was
enlarged in the 1970s–90s, when the shrine itself became a much smaller
structure as compared to the mosque. My argument is that this shift became
necessary if one were to make a movement away from an institution as a
largely spiritual place in which the personal address to the saint was once at
its center, and moved focus toward forming a religious place wherein the
entire community acted together. Aside from architecture, we find this shift
also in other areas, for example during ‘urs. During ‘urs, the traditional qaw-
wālī sessions take place in the basement and can only be heard there, while at
the same time ‘ulamā’ give speeches inside the mosque that are broadcast to
the whole complex. When looking at the shrine as a public space, one has to
recognize that much of the character of a South Asian Sufi shrine has been
changed, and that this change has a very distinct direction toward homo-
genizing ritual and concentrating on a universally acknowledged tradition of
Islam, rather than its local or regional diversity.
The shrine as a vanguard for other shrines

I have pointed out that the shrine of Data Darbar is financially the most
important shrine for the Auqaf Department in the Punjab. Its development
from a popular shrine to one that serves as a social center, a public stage for
politicians and the primary source of income for the state department, has
had an influence on how other shrines are administered as well. In general,
two aspects of the shrine’s development are important in this regard. One
aspect is its scale in the economy and the professionalization of its adminis-
tration, and the other is its concentration on a few rich visitors rather than
the broad mass of largely poor visitors.
The first reason becomes apparent when one looks at the ratio between
income and expenditure for different zones in the Punjab. In most cases the
ratio is just above one, meaning the income is a little bit higher than the
expenditure. For Data Darbar, however, the income is more than four
times as high as the expenditure. While around 200 employees at the
shrine seems a large amount, it is relatively few compared to its overall visi-
tors, if one were to compare this with smaller shrines. At the same time, the
administration and management have over the years become very professio-
nalized, a fact that can be perceived in the way in which the shrine is
organized.
The second aspect, the concentration on richer visitors, is more complex.
To understand why it has become so important for the administration to cater
to the needs of the rich, one needs to acknowledge the immense economic
divide that runs through Pakistani society. For the average visitor, donating
100 rupees at the shrine amounts to approximately half his daily income. The
most common donation is a 10 rupee note, and even this is a significant
amount for many Pakistanis. For the richest among visitors, donating 10,000
rupees is nothing unusual, and there are large-scale donors who regularly
donate much more. These donations are often in the form of direct invest-
ments in the shrine and can easily amount to what general visitors numbering
30,000 to 60,000 donate in a day.
Despite Data Darbar being exceptional in the magnitude of its develop-
ment, the Auqaf Department today clearly concentrates its efforts on other
large shrines. Investments are made, visiting is made more comfortable for the
richer sections of society, and the shrine is ‘cleaned’ of those marginalized
groups that are objected to by the rich, like prostitutes, drug addicts and
beggars. One of the largest investments in recent years has been made at the
shrine of Barri Imam in Islamabad, but other large shrines have also seen
changes in this direction.
The shrine as a discursive arena

As I have already mentioned, political elites participate in producing the
shrine both architecturally as well as in controlling practices allowed and
carried out at the shrine. Additionally, the shrine also serves as an arena for
them to participate directly in important discourses on Sufism and Islam in
the country. This happens mainly through four channels:
the speeches held at the Friday jum‘a prayers;

the speeches held during ‘urs;
a quarterly journal on Sufism; and
the madrassa
The first two channels have already been explained. The speeches held on
important occasions are generally held by the khatīb Imam or someone chosen
by him. The khatīb Imam is appointed by the Religious Purpose Committee,
the administrator auqaf and the chief minister, and generally the speeches
provide very concrete advice about life decisions and what is right or wrong.
The speeches held during ’urs, on the other hand, are held by ‘ulamā’ from all
over Pakistan and sometimes beyond, so one would expect a variety of posi-
tions on Islamic topics. This is not the case, however, because the ‘ulamā’ and
their respective topics are chosen by the research assistant working in the
shrine research center. In both cases, it is made sure that the content of the
speeches is in accordance with the government stance on any relevant topics.
As for the outreach of this channel, the mosque is the third largest mosque in
Pakistan and many of the speeches, such as during ‘urs, are broadcast not
only on the whole complex which can have more than a million visitors on
the days of the festival, but also on radio and television.
The third channel, a quarterly journal on Sufism, is edited by the research
assistant as well, although it has far less outreach. However, it is an important
channel to reach academic discussions among ‘ulamā’ in the country.
The fourth channel is the madrassa at the shrine. The madrassa was estab-
lished in 2002 and is attended by just under 200 students from all over Paki-
stan. All the teachers are employed by the Auqaf Department, and while the
principal remarked that the Auqaf Department does not interfere with the
school, it is also certain that the curriculum is in accordance with state inter-
ests. While the speeches held in the mosque address the ‘common people’ and
the journal on Sufism the class of ‘ulamā’, the madrassa reaches out to a very
interesting part of society. Most students come from rural areas, many hailing
from parts of the country where ‘folk’ Islam and the veneration of the saints
is very much alive, along with various traditions and great disparities in
rituals and practices when compared to the urban and more ‘orthodox’-
inclined Islam of the growing middle class. During their education at the
madrassa, they are confronted with these different notions of Islam and carry
these home when they return to hold important religious posts in their
home communities within different regions. Thus, these students serve as the
multipliers of state ideology for most rural areas.
Apart from these examples, there are other institutions with an influence on
the discourse on Islam, for example the Punjab censorship board with an
office at the shrine. What also becomes evident from all this is the large
variety of information about shrines and its institutions that flows out to
audiences through the media.
The shrine as a national monument

The final aspect I would like to mention before drawing my conclusions for
this chapter is how a religious site develops into a national monument. Sacred
sites are used by governments all over the world to shape national identities.
At the same time Sufi shrines do not qualify for this so well in Pakistan,
mainly because most shrines are associated with a specific town, region, lan-
guage of the saint’s poetry, or with a number of practices that are regarded by
a growing part of the population as un-Islamic, like the use of drugs, ecstatic
dancing, mixing of genders and so forth. The reason Data Darbar has
become a national monument lies therefore in the fact that he is the only saint
who is also respected by orthodox Muslims in the country. This in turn is
largely due to his writings. Another factor is that most other saints are asso-
ciated with a particular Sufi order. ‘Alī Hujwīrī lived in the eleventh century
when Sufi orders had yet to develop. Besides these two aspects, a third reason
is that ‘Alī Hujwīrī is closely associated with the arrival of Islam in the region
and is for some even considered to be the person to have spread Islam in the
subcontinent. When I once asked a very orthodox Muslim why he visited
Data Darbar he said that the saint was ‘the reason I was born a Muslim’.
One could thus hardly find a better person to serve as a national identification
figure. This explains to some extent why what happens at Data Darbar is so
important for what happens around it. The place and the saint are said to be
imbued with so much spiritual and political power that students from its
madrassa are also said to carry some of this authority with them.
Likewise, one recognizes its importance as a stage for politicians. When
Benazir Bhutto and Navaz Sharif came back to the political stage in Pakistan
after years of exile, both went to the same place first. From the airport they
went straight to Data Darbar and each held speeches there. When doing so
they reproduced a narrative very common in Pakistan: each Sufi who had
entered the subcontinent had first traveled to Data Darbar, asking the saint
for permission to carry on eastwards in their task of spreading Islam. With
this act they not only paid their respects, but also imbued themselves with the
power of the saint. At the same time the repeated visits by high-ranking
politicians to the shrine further strengthened the position of the saint and
shrine as one of the most important in the country.
Today one finds stamps with the picture of the saint, countless products,
hotels, schools and a part of Lahore named after the saint. The ‘urs celebra-
tion is attended by chief ministers and governors and is broadcast all over the
country.
Conclusion
It is now obvious that the shrine of Data Darbar has a far-reaching political
dimension and can be regarded as a field where politics and religion come
together. What remains an open question is how far lessons learned and
observations made at the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh can be applied to the
larger discussion of Sufism and politics in South Asia, and if so, how far there
would be something South Asian about this case.
South Asia has a number of very large Sufi shrines, yet only at Data
Darbar is there political involvement to such an extent. The reason is the
specific relationship between Islam, Sufism and national identity in Pakistan,
a situation that is not directly comparable to other countries in South Asia.
Instead we may find similar developments in other parts of the world.
What connects this case to the other cases in this volume is thus not its
specific magnitude or the political dimension of the shrine, but rather the way
in which politics is involved. Here, I would argue, lies the value of this case
for the study of South Asian Sufism and its relation to politics. What happens
at Data Darbar is that specific aspects of religious belonging are strengthened
and used for political purposes, while on the other hand political influence is
enacted via religious institutions based at the shrine. All of this happens much
less through specific regulations or political acts, and rather through an
enactment of power at the site itself. This enactment of power is at the same
time a negotiation process between often conflicting interests by the state and
its political elite on the one side, and the visitors to the shrine, or common
people, on the other side. What I have tried to show is that this process hap-
pens at a particular level of bureaucracy, what I have called the second-row
bureaucrats.
The obvious question that remains is how far the fundamental changes to
the shrine have affected the way visitors to the shrine feel about it. Or in other
words, who does the shrine belong to and which parts of society feel that they
belong to it? I would argue that the reason the shrine ‘works’ as a national
monument is that the group of people who have a connection to the shrine
has been enlarged. While those with a strong spiritual attachment do not give
up this attachment because of architectural changes or even if some of their
rituals are banned, these changes have on the other hand made it possible for
new parts of society to now connect to the space. While the poor, lower-class
Muslim following a ‘folk’ Islam will continue to come to the shrine and
associate with the saint regardless of any changes, the middleclass, more
orthodox Muslim will now also visit the shrine due to its changed character-
istics. No matter who I spoke to, whether upper-class politician, poor beggar,
visitor to the shrine or employee there, they all felt that this was ‘their place’.
Thus the statement cited earlier sums up very well what the shrine of Data
Ganj Bakhsh is to the country in terms of religious belonging: ‘There should
be at least one place where we can all sit together. This is the only shrine where
we can all sit together.’
Part IV
Intellectual history and
narratives of belonging
13 A garden of mirrors
Retelling the Sufi past and contemporary
Muslim discourse
Afsar Mohammad
when it’s drizzling colorfully and the moon was raining,

the bull-cart moved on,
picking up the devotees of all ages, the kids and the old.
opening up their hearts, they chat with each other,
and move on.
as the bells, beautifully laced around the bulls’ necks,
make melodious music, they listen to the stories
of the adventures made by a prince,
who was martyred long ago,
they move on!
while their inner eye cherishes
the blooming smiles over the lips of his princess
they move on.
(Mohammad 2006: 21–22)1
Published in a South Indian language, namely Telugu, in 2006, this poem tells
the story of a medieval Sufi martyr, Yakub Shah Wali of Annaram shrine in
Telangana, India. The poem narrates the devotional setting of a pilgrim’s
journey to the shrine. On their way to the shrine, the pilgrims share stories
about the Sufi saint and recollect their memory of previous visitations and the
anecdotes they have heard from their ancestors. Most of these stories hinge
on various events from local history and its connectivity with the saint’s
hagiography.
However, when it comes to contemporary uses of the same narrative within
modern poems, it is not the same story or the history of this saint as docu-
mented in previous oral narratives or a few written sources popular in local
traditions. The entire life story of Yakub Shah is now reimagined and appro-
priated to address a local-specific Muslim minority discourse with an emphasis
on present crises of Muslim identity formation and the increasingly growing
representational discourse of the Telugu-speaking Muslim community.
In this chapter, I intend to explore how this dialogue now extends further
into new narratives of various social groups and sub-castes, as the histories of
248 Afsar Mohammad
local Sufi saints are now transformed into identity markers for these social
groups. I use four poetic narratives as a primary source to delineate the new
cultural practice of Muslim discourse now widely in circulation among var-
ious Muslim activist groups both among the Telugu-speaking Muslims and
South Asia in general.
As I argue in this chapter, this modern mode of historicizing medieval Sufi
aspects functions as a device for the production of an alternate discourse for
the post-1990s Muslim resistance politics in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
While narrating identity formations of Muslims, Dalits and lower-caste
women, these poems simultaneously construct an oppositional argument to
hegemonic mainstream literary history in the contemporary Telugu public
sphere.2 Most such poems from contemporary Telugu enact this discourse by
reclaiming often under-theorized Sufi dimensions of history at various layers
including place histories, caste narratives and political histories of Islam and
Sufism. Within the Telugu literature, this mode of writing challenges hege-
monic groups in the mainstream literary culture. This specific mode of Sufi
writing mainly has four internally connected and overlapping narrative
dimensions: 1 imagining histories and oral hagiographies by retrieving local
Sufi martyr narratives from local modes such as oral poems, folk-tales and
anecdotes; 2 repositioning Sufi stories and symbols as the tools of resistance
by inserting them into a contemporary minoritarian discourse with an
emphasis on new Muslim concerns; 3 a consistent and deliberate effort to
construct a modern Sufi public by a group of progressive Muslims and non-
Muslims as a resistance to Hindu nationalism; and 4 feminizing narrative
spaces as one of the most intriguing features that represents Muslim women’s
consciousness informed by recent feminist discourse.
This chapter will investigate these four aspects using several Telugu poems
written and circulated after the 2000s, and discuss the recently evolving phe-
nomenon of the revival and revitalization of the Sufi histories and their
interventions in political discourse. Undoubtedly, these histories are now
being retold with an emphasis on the present dilemma of Muslim identity and
the shifting dynamics of Hindu-Muslim interactions in the public religious
sphere. As we recognize from various observations, these four aspects have
numerous historicized layers involving caste, devotionalism, place myths and
holy figures which allow us to see multi-dimensional Sufisms. Just as these aspects
are overlapping and mutually inclusive of each other, their narrative texture,
too, is multi-layered with each layer displaying a specific distinctive feature of
local Sufi narrativity.
Speaking on behalf of an ordinary Muslim or a non-Muslim influenced by
local Sufi devotionalism, who unambiguously participates in a shared realm
of Hindu-Muslim mixed practices, these poems mainly use Sufism as a stra-
tegic device to narrate local histories. In turn, these poems also counter a
recent upsurge of Islamic and Hindu revivalist propaganda that tries to erase
public devotional memory of Sufism and its popular practices that includes
shrine visits and public narrative performances. In a way, these poems clearly
A garden of mirrors 249
locate themselves in an intricately connected triangle of Islamic revivalism,
communal majoritarianism (in this context, Hindu nationalism in India) and
popular Sufism – the three crucial aspects of the new Muslim identity dis-
course in the Telugu public sphere and South Asia in general. The term ‘new
Muslim identity discourse’ refers to a new political climate that emerged
against the recent formulation of Hindu nationalism in South Asia. This dis-
course raised key ideas of belonging and pride in local manifestations of
Islam and Sufism that openly privilege the role of living Islamic and Sufi
practices rather than a textual or global dependability of Islam.
Along similar lines, particularly after the 1990s, amidst turbulent Hindu
nationalist times of communal violence, a new wave of Muslim writing in
South Asia became an effective medium for articulating alternative voices of
resistance by appropriating more literary spaces including prose and poetry.
Muslim writings began seeking greater attention and nuanced readings, as
Mushirul Hasan observed: most of these writings ‘illustrate that, there has not
been, despite the rhetoric of theologians and publicists, a single, inalienable
Muslim identity, and that identities are inclusive and often rooted in local
cultures, languages, oral traditions, influenced by complex historical pro-
cesses’ (Hasan 1998: 168).3 Furthering a similar approach, it would be intri-
guing to understand the various uses of Sufism and its local history being
renewed into a tool of Muslim resistance – opening a debate on Muslim
identity and then culminating in constructing a public sphere grounded
exclusively in Sufi histories embedded in a pluralized devotional culture.
The usage of the terms ‘local Sufism’ and ‘Sufi histories’ have multiple
implications, including ‘high’ Sufism, according to which poets refer to clas-
sical sources from Rumi and Hafez, contrasted to popularly known regional
Sufism that relies on local martyr-saint narratives, like the public and private
devotional practices surrounding the life stories of popular Sufi saints such as
Yakub Shah Wali, as narrated in the poem at the beginning of this chapter.
Read from the lens of a contemporary identity discourse, this regional mode
of Sufism is concerned more with how global and local Sufi histories manifest
in public spaces. Contemporary Muslim writing focuses more on these pub-
licly articulated or interpreted Sufi historical narrative spaces with an
emphasis on blended Hindu-Muslim practices. Undoubtedly, this entire realm
of local Sufism is further complicated as most of these poems use ‘Sufi his-
tory’ (sūphī tarīkhu/sūphī caritra) as a marker of new Muslim identity and
resistance discourse.
While the question of Muslim identity itself is entangled within implica-
tions of global and local orthodoxy and orthopraxis, interactions between
various dimensions of Sufi histories and their literary expressions in relation
to cultural discourses on Muslim poetry published mainly after 2000 offer
fresh insight into the making of Muslim belonging. When reading recent
Muslim writing, we clearly recognize that these Sufi historical narrativizations
engage critically with new political forms and an aesthetics of resistance and
representation, while circulating ethical and political communication within
250 Afsar Mohammad
local and religious community. According to this discourse, Sufi martyr-
saint narratives open a strategically fluid space, and provide a lens to gauge
multi-dimensional Muslim histories in contemporary South Asia, revealing
diverse layers of history and historiography that function as narrative devices
in repositioning the entire Muslim discourse.
At first, it is imperative to understand that these poems construct an alter-
native model of literary aesthetics borrowing extensively from several devotional
and literary practices of Hindu devotionalism (bhakti) and Sufism, although
they are now transposed onto the present crisis of religious conflict and reso-
lution. Nevertheless, most poets use Sufi imagery and symbolism that are already
well placed and grounded in local popular imagination including folkloric
narratives, particularly martyr-saint stories. As in many places, where legends
have a commonly shared trope of Sufi martyrdom and sainthood traditions, they
unhesitatingly find their way into local histories and cultural practices. Fol-
lowing the similar mode of folk expressions, the poem mentioned above
actually has its creative base in local history and devotion of a Sufi saint.
At the secondary layer of this devotional culture, Sufi writings make fresh
connections with the history of local religions such as Saivism and Vaishna-
vism by unfolding a wide array of flexible and fluid devotional dimensions
including verbal and non-verbal expressions. Many modern poems produced
and circulated in this context highlight the fluidity of Sufism and its flexibility
in accommodating non-Muslim practices, thus allowing more space specifi-
cally for lower-caste and Dalit devotees. In the recent upsurge of both Hindu
and Islamic ‘orthodoxies’, this usage of Sufism as an alternate history devel-
ops into a discursive mode for a secular discourse within literary spheres. At
this level, poetry turns into a tool of historiography, facilitating dialogue
between the past and present of Muslims and Hindus. Finally, as mentioned
earlier, most of these Sufi stories and their metaphorization are repositioned
as tools of resistance to address an immediate and contemporary minority
identity concern that remains suppressed by an upsurge of the hegemonic
‘Hindu’ majoritarianism.
To emphasize the value of the new Sufi poetry, and as a strategy for developing
an alternative discourse, Telugu Muslim poets have also made an effort to
re-evaluate the history of Muslims and Sufis with particular reference to lit-
erature. Particularly, they started unearthing the archives of folklore and medie-
val Islamic cultural history to demonstrate the impact of Sufism on everyday
life and the gradual integration of Sufi concepts into the local social fabric. In
addition, these poems endeavor to address the emerging audiences that could
be characterized as a ‘new Sufi public’. This aspect of a new Sufi public is a
modernist construct with a long story of the early days of Sufism in Telugu.
Imagined histories and hagiographies

Like the poem mentioned above, the retrieval of the local Sufi martyr narra-
tives and oral histories have become a strategic device in several literary texts
produced in Telugu after the 1990s, when the question of Muslim identity
took off as a result of an increasing fear of the Hindu nationalism in South
Asia. As explained previously, the use of Sufi martyr histories and the con-
testing ways in which such histories are being narrated become the key ele-
ment in the understanding of contemporary Sufi poems. Evidently, such
martyr narratives take us back to early sources about cultural performances
that included oral and folk narratives in the Telugu-Urdu-speaking Andhra
region. In the context of a shared devotional culture and public Muharram
rituals in South India, it is not unusual that devotees blend Shii public nar-
ratives of the Battle of Karbala with local Sufi saints and narrate their
martyrdom connecting and recontextualizing to local place histories.
As I have discussed in my recent work, The Festival of Pirs, the theme of
the Karbala martyrdom takes on an entirely local color in its narration with a
new set of tropes embedded in regional devotionalism (bhakti). In that way,
the idea of Sufi martyr narratives develops into an extended realm of Karbala
martyrdom. Moreover, these narratives, very often long oral poems, construct
a public sphere where different caste groups of devotees share a blended
repertoire of Karbala and Sufi symbolism. Contemporary Telugu poets
retrieve these stories and symbolism in their new poems, written particularly
after the 1990s. More than mere stories and anecdotes, these oral narratives
function as metaphors in poetry while narrative data rewrite the present crises
of identity and community formation with a clear reference to ‘history’, to
contest the claims made by the Hindu nationalist groups, particularly about
the identities of Muslims and their role in the history of South Asia.
During this process, most Telugu poets draw on two major sources of Isla-
mic history: 1 the history of the battle of Karbala; and 2 global and local Sufi
hagiographies. Sufi Telugu poems revisit the idea of Karbala martyrdom only
to reframe it in a new social and political order markedly contesting fixed
religious and caste hierarchies. Whereas in a spiritual context, ‘martyrdom
signifies the death of the “ego” self and its resurrection in eternity’ (Hyder
2006: 10), most Telugu poems visualize or versify this Sufi transformation
into everyday practical reality that invokes spiritual and cultural needs of the
lower class and caste groups. By addressing the immediate practical purpose
of Sufi worship in everyday life, this symbol shapes into a trans-communal
and trans-regional element. For instance, according to this segment from a
long poem:
The Story of a Sufi Moon

Sufi moon: it all started at Karbala
And then traveled all the way to my home
to touch our bodies warmly.
The little lanterns that were blinking
now turn into a fireplace,
and then they made each amber a beautiful flower.
252 Afsar Mohammad
You know,
now we do not even know what hate looks like!
oh, the people, you who endlessly hate each other
just look at those high pillars of my Sufi’s shrine;
the towers make the moon look more beautiful,
and now the moon
is just a reflection that turns the world
into a beautiful home.
(Mamood 2006: 34)
This poem describes a local Sufi shrine in the poet Mamood’s hometown of
Kadapa in Andhra region. The poet goes all the way to a memory of the
Battle of Karbala to retrieve a story of the local saint and presents this story
from a lens of present politicized religious conflict. The poet draws on the
imagery and symbolism of martyrdom to relocate trans-local Islamic history
in the post-1990s politics of hate, referring particularly to Hindu nationalist
hate campaigns against Muslims and their presence in public devotional
spaces. Quite contrary to the hate campaign that homogenizes religious
identities and its parochial approach, this poem upholds the value of plural-
ism and solidarity being articulated and diffused in the teachings of the local
Sufi saint who gathers his lessons from the Battle of Karbala.
Most oral hagiographies of the Sufi martyrs, deeply grounded in place his-
tories, tell the story of a composite culture of Hindu-Muslim devotionalism as
manifested in regional traditions. These oral narratives take us back to the
history of the Bhakti movement of medieval times and the later influences of
Persian Sufism, too. Predominantly, the rule of the Qutb Shāhīs while pro-
moting Persian Sufism had indeed opened what we call a ‘secular’ space for
both Hindus and Muslims in the Deccan. As Narayana Rao observed:
Contrary to the depiction of modern-day Hindu nationalists, Islam did

not seek to destroy Hinduism. On the contrary, the presence of Islam
opened up a new space in which people of different beliefs, religions, and
languages could interact. Poetry, music, arts, philosophy, and the sciences
developed in this space – a truly ‘secular’ space, even if it did not carry
this name.
(Narayana Rao 2009: 165, 311)
On the other hand, Sufi narratives have also impacted local languages as they
were greatly instrumental in inducing everyday speech as an idiom for devo-
tional narrative. As observed by Muzaffar Alam, ‘[t]hey shunned ritual and
ceremony, they spoke the language of the common people, and they gave an
impetus to linguistic and cultural assimilation’ (Alam 2004: 82). Both these
aspects of fluid devotional culture and the making of a shared idiom closer to
common people have become integral parts of vernacular Sufi aesthetics. In
an essay on Tamil Muslim literature, Torsten Tschacher has persuasively
argued the significance of paying greater attention to the making of a verna-
cular idiom, particularly in the writings of Muslims.4 In the case of Telugu
Muslim writing, the construction of an alternative devotional idiom, the
translation of Sufi concepts into Telugu and the making of vernacular Sufi
aesthetics are mutually connected to one another.
Furthering this new devotional base, Telugu Muslim poets effectively
unravel multiple layers of this composite culture by referring explicitly to dif-
ferent caste groups and their diversified devotional narrative patterns in their
poems. In the first layer, they acknowledge multiple caste and religious iden-
tities that own this locally produced Sufi tradition with its specific repertoire
of pluralist practices and narratives. For many non-Muslim devotees, most
Sufi shrines are as important as any Hindu temple as both temple vocabulary
and idiom permeate into these narrations. Being conscious of Islamic origins,
devotees tend to privilege their reception and perception of this entire Sufi
tradition. Most importantly, the various local Muslim martyrs, as mentioned
in the narrative poem quoted below, play a key role in these stories and
practices.
Here is a poem written by Hasen that describes a Sufi shrine of two martyr-
saints, namely Saida and Jani. Each year, 700,000 devotees visit the shrine of
Jan Pahad Saida in the district of Nalgonda. A local place legend (sthala
purāna) narrates that about four centuries ago, these two Sufi saints called
Saida and Jani, with their disciples, were martyred at this site. These two
names are prominent in the local culture as many devotees give their names
to their children as a marker of returning the vow. The poet mentions their
names in this poem as Janayya and Saidamma – Muslim names Telugized by
adding the honorific suffixes ayya (father or god) and amma (mother or
goddess):
In the Garden of Mirrors

A Sufi shrine, a temple on a grave.
It’s a long history living right now.
Everyone is busy with kandūru,
the food ritual under a neem tree
In the womb of all those green branches of the neem tree
Abruptly a huge leaf blossoms.
While all Janis and Saidas
with a pride that they got their names from the saint,
gather around the shrine, joyously.
A goat about to be sacrificed to Saida
Just untied itself racing wild into the crowd.
Don’t know if the oven is going to be lit or not.
Fried rice and beef curry served on the huge leaves
The flavor of the kandūri food has no barriers.
Amidst all glowing red turbans
254 Afsar Mohammad
and glittering outfits designed in tiny glass pieces
the god Saida is now happily settled
in a garden of the mirrors.
(Hasen 2006: 68)
This poem focuses on public ritual – the kandūri food event in the memory
of the saint – as a marker of composite culture, and the entire imagery from
this poem is borrowed from the oral hagiography of these two martyr-saints.
Most importantly, this poem highlights everyday devotional life including
rituals and ideas rather than high Sufi spirituality disseminated by these two
saints. For a Telugu poet, poetry often turns into a device of rewriting new
histories with an enormous collection of narrative knowledge from below.
However, this aspect of history privileges culture as a central category, to use
Jan Assmann’s words, ‘mnemo-history’ and the history of cultural memory
(Assmann 1997: 14–15). In this instance, a Telugu poet takes on the respon-
sibility of a cultural historian by digging deeper into the roots of history of
diverse caste groups within a local community, particularly a local tribe of
banjaras and their primitive devotionalism:
‘Oh, boy! It’s the ghost whispering and howling there!’

When someone just uttered these words,
the kids peed in their shorts.
‘No ghost nothing! Stay cool!’ yelled the elders.
By then, we saw a horse with a rider on its back, moving towards us.
The white doves, singing and flying high
as we’re all engulfed in a sweet magical fragrance.
The stars came down shining on the waters of the river.
The moon quietly landed on the tower of the shrine.
‘Hey, all! Are you good?’ asked an invisible voice –
yes, it’s the voice of the Sufi Yakub Sha!
He made a bed of the leaves of the banyan, and sang a lullaby
While a breeze passed over us.
In a while, we’re in the lap of a pleasant sleep,
And then the Sufi god waved hands
and vanished under the bridge.
(Mohammad 2006: 21–22)
Visibly, the poet borrows this story from a conversation from the devotees
traveling on a cart towards the shrine of Yakub Shah, the most popular Sufi
saint who made this region his home. For many Muslims and non-Muslims in
this region of Telangana, Yakub Shah Wali is one of the most famous Sufis,
who spread the message of Sufism throughout this region. This poem
attempts to rewrite an everyday sort of conversation with its real life symbo-
lism kept intact, while continuously using conversational narrative as a poetic
device.
Nevertheless discussion about these resisting poetic devices is incomplete
without comprehending various strategies on different layers to utilize Sufi
poems as a tool of resistance. In the next section, I will explain how these
poems function as a source of generating a new minority discourse and pro-
ducing a Sufi public that emphasizes the dialogue between Muslims and
Hindus at various levels.
Sufi poems as a tool of resistance and representation

The entire process of constructing fluid devotionalism and a vernacular Sufi
idiom come to a peak when poets make Sufism a tool of resistance and
forming a Muslim representational discourse. In a study on the metaphoriza-
tion of Karbala in several modern Urdu literary works, Akbar Hyder dis-
cusses how the battle of Karbala ‘supplies us with discourses of resistance’
(Hyder 2006: 10). In vernacular devotion, specifically in South Indian tradi-
tions including Telugu, the battle of Karbala and the stories of Sufi saints
have deeply interconnected histories and share similar aesthetics in local
Islam. For many Telugu poets, Sufism is not merely a source of the mystical
dimension of Islam; for a new generation of Muslim poets, their social acti-
vism breaks the boundaries between traditional Sufi poetry and its mystical
attributes to visualize a new picture of Muslim identity that has an emphasis
on two key terms: representation and resistance.
Although, the appropriation of Sufi poetics is not an unfamiliar pattern,
the way in which a new Sufi poem operates in public culture is quite a capti-
vating phenomenon, because as it makes a consistent journey towards using
Sufism as a device to voice a discourse for a diverse alliance of minorities –
inclusive of Muslims, Dalits, tribals and lower castes. Structurally, these
poems deviate from the standard reservoir of predictable Sufi imagery. Also,
rather than projecting a passive and deep spiritual introversion, these poems
emphasize active resistance and form an in-built dynamism.
In this section, I will discuss key aspects of Muslim representation and
resistance in three contemporary poems: the first poem contests con-
temporary historiography that imposes an authoritative religious agenda; the
second poem projects the agency of a marginalized sub-caste group of Mus-
lims; and the third poem presents a female voice upholding sub-caste identity
and its rigorous polemical agenda of self-respect as an identity-making
strategy.
Invoking the past is a major element in the discourse on representation and
resistance, and poets retrieve the historical memory of the medieval Qutb
Shāhī dynasty repeatedly to present their argument against Hindu-centric
historiography. Poets return to this idea of sixteenth-century composite cul-
ture and offer glimpses of the Qutb Shāhīs’ political and devotional life
(Naqvi 2006: 140). Poets also take note of various aspects of essentialization
or homogenization within historiographical efforts that portray the entire
Muslim rule as anti-Hindu.
256 Afsar Mohammad
Lamenting the elimination of shared and composite devotionalism, the new
Sufi poetry mainly invokes the history of the Qutb Shāhīs and revisits their
Sufi contributions to medieval history. Reading history from a contemporary
political lens, these poets interpret and offer critical insights. For instance, in
this poem ‘Let’s return to the sixteenth century!’:
For many centuries, I’ve led this life of lies

And, now I can’t stand it anymore.
For sure, I’m the child of the sixteenth century
And I would just go back there!
No doubt, I would never offer you any easy explanations,
Instead, I’ll let you know the truth, however.
Oh, man! You’d just arrived here transported
by an unknown whirlwind,
You never know the heartbeats of these lanes of my city and its people.
I’m the one who wandered over the sky of
these mosques’ towers
And earned my freedom at the cost of all sacrifices,
Now I never fall into your trap of money.
You’re the one who joyously made festivities preying on my blood
With the same deceptive smile on your face.
You’re the one who poured poison
Into my blood and words.
Oh, man! Just remember
I’m never going to make my heart a ‘free zone!’
Neither an explanation
Nor softening words.
Goodbye to all these lies now,
I just want to return to my sixteenth century!
(Mohammad 2010)
While openly paying tribute to the shared and composite culture of the
sixteenth century, this poem calls for a metaphorical return to the sixteenth
century. As we have observed in the first section of this chapter, the dialogical
dynamics between the Sufi past and contemporary Muslim discourse is the
foremost concern of constructing a new secular Muslim consciousness. This
poem takes on the role of interpreting and mediating certain key aspects – in
this case, multiple layers of a composite culture- being extremely appreciative
of the cosmopolitanism motivated by the Qutb Shāhī dynasty and Sufi his-
tory. Poets who chose to talk about this particular historical period mostly
select aspects where Hindus and Muslims enjoyed mutual harmonious
relationships at different levels, including the literary sphere.
As described in the above poem, these historiographical strategies are often
viewed as ‘lies’. To counter fabricated historiography, the poem calls for an
increasingly assertive take on writing history from the lens of Muslim
consciousness and for the historical and critical reconstruction of medieval
Islam, citing various sources of shared cultures, mostly Sufi. Nevertheless, this
poem portrays the recent debate on the separatist Telangana movement, while
responding to questions raised by the non-Telangana investors about their
business claims in the capital city of Hyderabad. Accordingly, there was also
a proposition to declare the city of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra, as an
economic ‘free zone’. In many ways, this poem uncovers several layers of new
Muslim discourse as it passes through highly contentious polemical issues
including cultural, economic and social histories pertaining to Telangana.
Reclaiming medieval Sufi spaces has also led to the articulation of the
concerns of diverse sub-caste groups among local Muslims – most impor-
tantly, the caste of cotton-carders, dūde-kula. For thousands of this sub-caste
group of Muslims, Sufi shrines become the most common meeting place to
demonstrate identity with a repertoire of cultural performances and devo-
tional practices, what we can also call ‘counter-publics’ since they reconstruct
an alternative or parallel public that counters dominant Muslim and ‘Hindu’
categories. Indeed, this caste group is dominant in various public Muslim
festivals including the public ritual of Muharram and the ‘urs, or the birth
and death anniversaries of local Sufi saints. Most reformist Muslims consider
dūde-kula Muslims as ‘intermediaries’, with practices oscillating between
Hindu and Muslim conformity, which they therefore consider ‘un-Islamic’. As
observed elsewhere, ‘thanks to the localization process underway, there has
been an effort lately to bring them back to the ‘Islamic’ fold, where they are
given the high-status label of nūr bāshā’, the term, meaning the delight of the
Prophet, now being used for the sub-caste Muslims (Mohammad 2013: 68).
Poets belonging to this group now struggle to claim their agency and
representation not only in the political sphere, but more prominently in the
literary sphere. Since several local Sufi shrines usually have dūde-kula custo-
dians and most of the devotees who visit these shrines primarily belong to this
caste group, Telugu Muslim poets use the imagery and symbols related to this
caste’s narrative performances in their new poems. Most Sufi shrines have a
tradition of playing a musical instrument, namely nādasvaram, during the
early morning worship and public rituals, and here is a poem that uses this
music-related imagery and symbolism. However, as can be observed, this
poem talks about the musician who devotes his entire life to the nādasvaram,
more than the saint. Rather than spiritual or religious aspects that are usually
attributed to this instrument, the poet centers his poem on the everyday life of
the musician who lives in utter poverty:
Look at me,
I look like a thin black cobra
that sways as an ornament
from the neck of some evil god.
I forever drool music like a musical note of a bloody waterfall
from a life that has no music at all.
258 Afsar Mohammad
without me and my dirty feet entering into your pure spaces
without this smelling body
that takes ‘just Friday’ baths typical of a dūde-kula
without my music
none of these gods wake up!
They need me and my defiled windpipe
to be awakened from their deep slumber.
(Khājā 2006: 77–78)
Focusing on a marginalized dūde-kula life, this poem is an early repre-

sentation of a specific life story of this sub-caste group struggling between
several dualities – Islam and Hinduism, spiritualism and materialism, passion
for music and the mundane struggle for everyday life. Rather than providing a
thick description of life of the dūde-kula community, these poems actually
construct an oppositional identity discourse, blending socio-political and
historical aspects as relevant to their present social status.
To use the words of Barbara Harlow, the oppositional identity discourse of
textuality provides:
access to history for those who have been historically denied an active
role in the arena of world politics, the problem of contested terrain,
whether cultural, geographical, or political; and the social and political
transformation from a genealogy of filiation based on ties of kinship,
ethnicity, race or religion to an affiliative secular order.
(Harlow 1987: 22)
In the case of recent Telugu Muslim cultural discourse, writing a poem is an

act of resistance, and the poem is transformed into a secular discourse with
an emphasis on caste identity. Such poems written by this particular sub-caste
of Muslims narrate three layers of history: first, the hagiographies of Sufi
saints as they intervene in local caste hierarchies; second, the caste history
that frames its story within the history of local Sufism; and third, retelling the
story from a gendered lens.
Undoubtedly, for a contemporary Telugu poet, Sufi hagiography is a major
source of imagery that connects him/her instantly to the immediate commu-
nity. These poems provide agency to the locally marginalized and suppressed
communities such as the dūde-kulas, by privileging their version of Sufi
hagiographies as counter to hegemonic upper-class Muslim narratives that
endeavor to focus on normative Islam. Such counter-narratives highlight the
role of sub-castes and use narrative tropes and imagery from their everyday
and devotional life. As the caste histories are rewritten in the light of new
discourses of alternative identity, most poems construct a new repertoire of
poetic devices using sources from oral and folk stories and hagiographical
conversations. In the above two poems, we see two distinctive dimensions of
Sufi histories such as repositioning the entire historical narrative in a
contemporary setting, where retelling the story enables a de-hierarchization
that also resonates with contemporary social activism.
Feminizing narrative spaces is another strategic aspect of these new poems
as Muslim women poets as well as male poets frequently retell hagiographies
and caste histories from a gendered lens. Questioning the mainstream Muslim
narrative, these poems portray tensions between global Islamic and local
Muslim identities. As narrated in the poem below, a new gendered narrative is
retold gathering details from various sub-caste histories:
Did you say

I’m lucky to be born into a Muslim family?!
Oh, it sounds as if I just grabbed a rare fortune unavailable to anyone.
Then that very moment
you declared that I’m a true Muslim
And, went on teaching me everything
that makes me a good Muslim woman.
Indeed, I barely know anything about all these things you call ‘Islamic’
neither your verses nor any of those faithful practices.
I’m a dūde-kula to the core,
And I’ve nothing to do with what you say about your ‘Islam’
throughout my life
I’ve just learned to make quilts and mattresses.
And now why should I worry about your Urdu and Arabic?
I now burst myself and scream with full throat
‘I’m just a dūde-kula!’
(Shahjahana 2006: 72–73)
This poem has a twin purpose of asserting dūde-kula identity and an often-
neglected dimension of a Muslim women’s doubly oppressed caste and gender
status. Assertively declaring marginalized identity usually functions as a
marker of self-respect and caste dignity, a key term that is invoked in Dalit
and minority discourses. In addition, this poem also reclaims the professional
identity of this particular community by using work-related imagery – quilts
and mattresses – that are not merely material objects, but objects of privilege
that mark their identity as those who produce these items for the privileged,
but are nevertheless denied the consumption of these for their own comfort.
Conclusion
In his well-articulated argument about the dynamics between modernity and
the vernacular in the context of modern Indian literature, Amit Chaudhuri
notes:
The vernaculars – which were, in truth, paradigms of a new consciousness –

emerged from a feudal-religious world into a secular one; this emergence
260 Afsar Mohammad
was connected to the cross-fertilization that took place during coloniza-
tion, largely due to the receptivity and the intelligence of the local popu-
lation and the local intelligentsia, and of which the colonizers, whose
concerns (after the initial efflorescence of Orientalist scholarship) seem
constricted and provincial in comparison, were almost completely
unaware.
(Chaudhuri 2004: xxi)
Similarly, most vernacular Sufi poems written in Telugu since the 1900s
represent a paradigm of new consciousness embedded in a secular space. As
evident from the early history of modern Telugu literature, beginnings of Sufi
poetry in the modern Telugu have been deeply embedded in public culture,
particularly since the 1900s. Although poets such as Umar Ali Shah between
1900 and 1940 focused more on esoteric aspects of Sufism, they were engaged
in an intense dialogue with contemporary social reforms and a debate on
modernity in the Telugu sphere. In a way, this impacted in constructing a new
Sufi public, which concentrated itself, however, more towards spiritual aspects
of Sufism. Nevertheless, various Sufi texts produced and circulated by these
poets formed what Ronit Ricci observed in the case of Malay Muslim texts in
another context:
a common repository of images, memories, and meanings that in turn

fostered a consciousness of belonging to a translocal community. The
two-way connections many literary works had – both to a larger Islamic
world and to very local communities – made them dynamic sites for
interaction, contestation, and the negotiation of boundaries. Competing
agendas (for example, between creative and standardizing impulses) often
played out between their pages.
(Ricci 2011: 3–4)
Umar Ali Shah, who wrote more than 50 books from 1902 to 1940, focused
more on introducing translocal Sufi concepts and integrating them within
local devotional and literary culture. In the process, he was indeed construct-
ing ‘a common repository of images, memories and meanings’ that connected
both Hindu and Islamic mysticism. However, more than being literary texts,
his works began to perform social and cultural roles, and his literary work
became popular among devotional groups of both Muslims and Hindus,
particularly a newly emerging middle class with a taste for secular ideas in a
modern public sphere.
Nevertheless, this entire dialogue of Sufism between Muslims and Hindus
took a different turn in the new writings of Muslim poets after the 1990s
when new Muslim writing began to focus on the idea of belongingness. In
these poems, the presence of Sufi imagery and contexts invokes a new Muslim
consciousness that invites the reader to participate in a political discourse
rather than a spiritual discourse. Most poems appropriate Sufi devotional
expressions to broaden new identity politics and each poem transforms into
an explicit statement on contemporary crises with charged symbols and
metaphors with built-in dynamism.
Notes
1 All translations in this paper are mine unless noted otherwise.
2 For more on these identity formations, see Satyanarayana and Tharu 2013: 1–54.
3 For more discussion on Muslim writing in India, see Hasan and Asaduddin 2000.
4 For a detailed analysis of this key aspect, see Tschacher 2014.
14 ‘Islamic renaissance’, Sufism and the
nation-state
A debate in Kerala
Nandagopal R. Menon
Introduction
A plethora of categories is used in mainstream discourse to distinguish
between various types of Muslims and Islam – good, bad, liberal, funda-
mentalist and so on (Mamdani 2002). In modern India, given its complex
history of religious conflict, colonial intervention and the Partition, Muslims
are often classified as nationalist or anti-nationalist, patriotic or unpatriotic,
trustworthy or untrustworthy (Pandey 1999), and it is within these terms of
representation that various Islamic sectarian tendencies have themselves
become ‘types’ (Hacking 1999). The appellation ‘Wahhabi’ is often tanta-
mount to at best reactionary, or at worst terrorist, while ‘Sufi’ signifies peace,
heterodoxy and rootedness in the nation (Menon 2015). Most of these cate-
gories are, however, polemical and are bereft of any doctrinal or theological
content. These terms usually serve the purpose of articulating aversion to or
distaste for ‘others’ who do not abide by ‘our’ values of secular, liberal mod-
ernity (Mahmood 2006; Menon 2014). Differently put, these words tell us
more about the subjects who invoke them, than their designated objects.
In this chapter, I turn to the politics of comparable terminology. I focus,
however, not on mainstream secular-liberal perspectives on Islam, but on a
discourse internal to Islam. I will consider an intra-Islamic critique of Islamic
renaissance (navo-tthānam) in the southwest Indian state of Kerala. This con-
ventional narrative has linked an Islamic renaissance among Malayalam-
speaking Muslims (Mappilas) in Kerala to the activities of certain ‘ulamā’
(Islamic religious scholars) and organizations that were established in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that campaigned for education (both
secular and religious) and criticized alleged deviations from Islamic traditions
(mostly related to what is understood as Sufism today). The self-proclaimed
descendants of these ‘ulamā’ are mainly understood to have become part of
the Kerala Nadwatul Mujahideen (Mujahids) and the Jamaat-e-Islami today.1
The critique I deal with in this chapter, which appeared mainly in the
books and journals published by traditionalist Sunnis from the state (Ahlu
Sunnat Wal Jamaat, comparable to the Barelwis in north India), revises the
dates for the renaissance to be the fifteenth century, attacking reformers as
‘Islamic renaissance’, Sufism and the nation-state 263
being influenced by values of modernity rather than by Islamic values. My
focus here illustrates three key points in the revisionist interpretation: What is
the Islamic renaissance? How does the revisionist understanding differ from
the conventional narrative? What kind of subjects does it create? Moreover,
instead of restricting myself to analyzing what the terminology does, I try to
think about the conditions of its production. What sociopolitical contexts
facilitate or necessitate the invocation and definition of such categories? I
argue that such hermeneutical exercises should be ultimately situated in the
context of the modern nation-state’s power and its incessant quest to clarify
the place of religion in modern society. However, I also identify certain geo-
graphical imaginaries, animated by religious thought and millennia-old
Indian Ocean trade routes, in the discourses that inevitably slip through the
nation-state’s hermetic boundaries. Thought is thus both incarcerated in and
automatically exceeds spaces to which it is sought to be confined (Menon
2015).
The conventional narrative

Mainstream histories of the renaissance in India and Kerala have noted how
‘the entwined attempt at reform and revitalization in the nineteenth century
tried to refashion the traditionally validated social and cultural practice in
order to tide over internal decay as well as to meet the external challenge’
(Panikkar 2007: 133). Such narratives are based on a clear dichotomy
between modernity and tradition, progressive and reactionary, and so on. An
array of thinkers, activists and movements are classified as part of the Indian
renaissance. In Kerala, principal among these was the Sree Narayana
Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP), established in 1903 by Sree Narayana
Guru (1854–1928), who belonged to an ‘untouchable’ caste called the Ezhavas.
Unlike the more radical Dalit critique of Hinduism made by B.R. Ambedkar,
Sree Narayana Guru’s reformism remained within the broad Hindu fold,
but ‘minoritized’ (nyūnapakshavalkaranam) diverse traditions ranging from
śaiva siddhānta to the yoga sūtras (Rājīvan 2014: 249–253; Kumar 1997).
Outside Kerala, the renaissance is usually associated with the works of
nineteenth-century Bengali intellectuals and activists such as Rammohun
Roy (1774–1833) and Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–91), who campaigned
against practices like satī and for the spread of modern education (Das-
gupta 2007). So when the work of certain ‘ulamā’ and their organizations
in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Kerala are classified as sig-
nifying the Islamic renaissance, one thing it does is to align the Islamic
movement to this larger discourse. The use of renaissance to describe them
puts them in the same league as these socio-religious reformers. The term
‘renaissance’ makes the work of the ‘ulamā’ comparable and readily identifi-
able as belonging to a familiar genre and the historicity and internal value of
their reformist activities becomes dependent on this clearly marked
periodization.
264 Nandagopal R. Menon
Who exactly are these reformist ‘ulamā’ and what did they do? The prove-
nance of an Islamic renaissance in Kerala is usually traced to the efforts of
some ‘ulamā’ and groups established by them in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Important ‘ulamā’ such as Sayyid Sanaullah
Makthi Thangal (1847–1912), Vakkom Abdul Khader Moulavi (1873–1932)
and K.M. Moulavi (1886–1964), and organizations such as the Muslim Aikya
Sangham (1922–34) and the Kerala Jamiatul Ulama (established 1924) are
identified as the pioneers of this Islamic renaissance (Ahmadkutti 1997). The
early twentieth-century reformist agenda placed much emphasis on education
(especially a mixture of secular, including English and Malayalam, and clas-
sical Islamic disciplines), and on a critique of practices that presumably
diverged from the injunctions of the scriptures (particularly that related to
tomb-shrines of Muslim saints and martyrs).
Now there are at least three Arabic words regularly invoked in the Islamic
context to denote such processes of revitalization – namely, reform (islāh),
renewal (tajdīd) and revival (ihyā’). Haj (2009: 7) notes that ‘these concepts
are understood within the tradition as imperative for safeguarding and
ensuring the continuity of a moral community’. The precise difference
between these terms is not easy to identify, though all three imply a return to
the scriptures (Qur’ān and hadīth, or Prophetic traditions) as the exemplary
and normative sources for becoming a Muslim. They have a strong corrective,
ethical orientation that aspires to evaluate and, if need be, (re)align current
practices with an authoritative corpus of the past. These projects do not
demand a mere reassertion of tradition, but its discernment by challenging
current understandings and advancing novel interpretations, though without
deviating from tradition. In the critique studied in this chapter, in the responses
to it and even in common parlance in Kerala, notably, all three Arabic terms
(islāh, tajdīd and ihyā’) are captured under the term ‘renaissance’.
It is worth exploring the terms the Kerala ‘ulamā’ used to describe their
work in the early twentieth century, especially since ‘renaissance’ is not
encountered in their writings. Vakkom Moulavi uses religious reformation
(mata navīkaranam, literally translated, ‘to make religion new’) in one of his
famous essays to explain succinctly the tasks to be undertaken by reformers
like him:
A machine can be said to be reformed [navīkariccu] if its original struc-

ture and form has been amended and changed in a new way. Similarly, a
machine can be said to be reformed also if no change is made to its ori-
ginal structure or form, but its wear and tear is rectified, and the dust and
dirt accumulated on it is removed. The word reformation [navīkaranam]
in Islamic reformation is used in the second sense here.
(Vakkom Moulavi n.d.: 95)
The understanding here is this – a reform, revival or renewal that abides by

the scriptural sources of Islam is meant to correct and remove deviations
from the tradition. There is no effort radically to redefine or change the object
of reform, Islam. This reformation is necessary because, Vakkom Moulavi
says, of the ‘pathetic situation’ of the community, the ‘primary reason’ for
which is the ‘lack of education’ (Vakkom Moulavi n.d.: 2). ‘Pathetic situation’
is defined as the ‘low position’ that Muslims occupy in the world vis-à-vis
other communities, despite the fact that Islam is the ‘noblest religion’ that
‘presented to the world the ancient deposits of Greek and Roman knowledge
and helped [Arabs] attain the title of gurus of knowledge by provoking the
thirst for knowledge among them’ (ibid.: 2–3). The solution, according to
him, was an education which, while giving importance to the religious
dimension, also met the demands of the ‘contemporary’ conditions of life
(ibid.: 5). That Muslims could not gain such education was blamed on a ‘group
[traditionalist ‘ulamā’] that proclaimed that English education [a catch-all
term for modern, secular education] was harām [forbidden]’ (ibid.: 35).
Vakkom Moulavi identifies a certain ‘misunderstanding’ that has crept into
the core Islamic concept of taqwā. Usually translated as Allah-consciousness
or fear of Allah so that it ‘allows man to correctly examine himself and to see
the right from the wrong’ (Rahman 1983: 173), Moulavi gives broader inter-
pretation to the term as an embodied disposition that instills ‘mental cour-
age’, ‘the desire to work hard’, ‘think great thoughts’ and ‘achieve success in
every field’ (Vakkom Moulavi n.d.: 20–21). He writes that though a ‘mis-
understanding’ of the meaning of taqwā has led to the classification of people
into two categories, ‘this-worldly’ and ‘other-worldly’, a retrieval of the con-
cept’s correct sense would mean that Muslims require an education that
enables ‘spiritual, moral and worldly progress’ (ibid.: 21, 24).2 However,
‘English education’ alone would be harmful because it has been found to
convert Muslims into ‘lazy people [alasanmār]’ (ibid.: 34). So he advocated
proper Islamic training as well. For this, a more modern method of teaching
Islam was necessary.
Moulavi wrote that the dars system that existed in Kerala at that time was
in a ‘lifeless state [nirjīva sthithi]’ that did the community no good, but only
served as ‘a means to find an income for their mudarris [teacher]’ (Vakkom
Moulavi n.d.: 37). Vakkom Moulavi’s criticism focused on two levels of tra-
ditionalist Islamic knowledge transmission, both of which centered around
the mosque. The basic level, called o-ttupalli or o-ttupura, which provided basic
instruction to Muslim children about the faith and its practices, is comparable
to the north Indian maktab. Advanced training in classical Islamic sciences
was provided by dars and madrasas. The most famous among the dars in
Kerala was the one based in Ponnani, which received students from all over
India and also parts of Southeast Asia in the early twentieth century (Pasha
1995: 134–136).
K. Umar Maulavi (1917–2000), a prominent Mujahid ‘ālim, writes that his
earliest memory about Islam, when growing up in the Ponnani taluk of Brit-
ish Malabar, related to a makhām (tomb-shrine, or maqbara/dargāh) where
Thangals (descendants of the Prophet) were interred. The Mujahid scholar is
certain that the veneration of such a place has no place in Islam as found in
the Qur’an and hadīth. Instead the ‘Sunnis embraced such superstitions that
originated with the Shi‘a’ (Umar Maulavi 2002: 22). He recalls:
I remember that when I was a child the dome of the makhām was in
disrepair. Whenever something went wrong in my village – deficiency in
rainfall, floods caused by excessive rainfall, destruction of crops, trees
uprooted by strong winds, spread of epidemics such as smallpox or cho-
lera, squabbles between Muslims, or even when a mad dog threatened the
villagers – people used to turn towards the makhām and say with a sigh:
‘Why should such tragedies and disasters occur? Did we repair the dome
of the makhām?’
(Umar Maulavi 2002: 24)
Umar Maulavi remarks that later, when he grew up and read the scriptures,
he concluded that ‘to be saved in this world and the next such makhāms and
decorations on tombs should be razed to the ground. I was convinced that the
community’s beliefs were in total disarray’ (Umar Maulavi 2002: 24). This
critique and interpretation of traditional Islam in Kerala and its means of
knowledge production was to be propagated by ‘making public speeches,
publishing essays in newspapers and magazines, distributing pamphlets, pub-
lishing books, relying on the Qur’an and hadīth alone for education in
madrasas and to understand [these scriptures] turn to the works of indepen-
dent scholars who did not align themselves with any particular madhhab [one
of the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence]’ (Vakkom Moulavi n.d.: 106–107).
To this we can add the establishment of organizations, the most prominent of
which in the early twentieth century were the Muslim Aikya Sangham,
Kerala Jamiatul Ulama, Lajnathul Muhammadiya, and Travancore Muslim
Mahajanasabha. Vakkom Moulavi (n.d.: 107) mentions the model of the
Ahl-e-Hadith in north India as one worth emulating, though I have not come
across evidence for connections between the former and Kerala groups in
the early twentieth century. Only from the middle of the twentieth century,
after the Mujahids were established (following the disbanding of the Muslim
Aikya Sangham), do we find channels of regular communication opening up.
This means that the origins of the reformist movement in Kerala owes more
to links to the Arab world, particularly the work of Egyptian scholars
Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashīd Ridā, than to north Indian centers and their
Persianate culture. Miller writes about the Mappilas that ‘the direct relation
of Mappilas with Arabian Islam is as significant as their relative isolation
from Indo-Persian Islam. Not only the political hegemony and traditions of
the latter, but also its emotional tenor, theological developments, and cultural
heritage passed Mappilas by’ (Miller 1992, cited in Abraham 2014: 4). This is
not unusual if we consider the entire history of the religion on the Malabar Coast
that was and is deeply related to Arab scholars, traders and Arab-speaking
parts of the world (Dale 1990).
The historical period in which the Islamic renaissance movement developed
is politically significant. The anti-colonial nationalist struggle was fast
becoming a mass movement and its first momentous event was the merger of
the Indian National Congress’ (INC) non-cooperation and Khilāfat agitations
demanding the reinstatement of the Islamic Caliphate in Turkey. The anti-British
struggle took a markedly violent turn in certain parts of south Malabar dis-
trict in the Madras presidency. The so-called Mappila revolt or Malabar
rebellion of 1921 occurred against the background of the Khilāfat agitation,
and traditionalist ‘ulamā’ like Ali Musaliyar were also leaders of the Khilāfat
movement. The links between the emerging reformist movements and the
anti-British movement among the Mappilas are quite complex. While the
reformist E. Moidu Moulavi (1885–1995) became a Gandhian and active in
the INC, others like K.M. Moulavi migrated to the princely state of Cochin
at the height of the rebellion, though he initially was part of the Kerala
Majilisul Ulama which led the Khilāfat agitation and functioned as the
Kerala wing of the Deoband-linked Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind (Abdul Karīm
1985: 87–89; Ottappilakkool 2007: 189).
In the princely state of Travancore, Vakkom Moulavi was the publisher of
the Malayalam newspaper Svadeśābhimāni (Patriot), which was banned and
his press was confiscated for publishing news that criticized royal rule. Later,
when the Muslim League was established in Kerala in 1936, several reformist
‘ulamā’ (K.M. Moulavi, K.M. Seethi Sahib) became part of the leadership. In
fact, a contemporary Mujahid scholar has written that the Muslim League in
Malabar was ‘the political descendant of the Aikya Sangham’ (Tanvīr 2012:
35), the latter being the first organizational form that reformist Islam took in
Kerala. After independence, when the Muslim League was rechristened the
Indian Union Muslim League in 1948 in Madras (now Chennai), its leaders
included reformist ‘ulamā’ (Abdul Karīm 1985: 167–191). The point here is
that for the reformist ‘ulamā’, nationalism remained the dominant paradigm
of engagement with politics, something that is repeatedly stressed in con-
temporary Mujahid literature (Tanvīr 2012: 34–42). As I will demonstrate
presently, the nationalist question forms a target for the revisionist critique.
The counter-narrative
Before going on to sketch the broad contours of a critique of the conventional
narrative, a few contextual details about the critique have to be noted. Critical
articles primarily appeared in journals (for instance, the weekly Risāla) and
books published by traditionalist, Sufi-oriented Sunnis. What began with a
few articles in such publications met with sharp responses from publications
such as Śabāb and Prabo-dhanam, affiliated to the Mujahids and the Jamaat-e-
Islami, respectively. Importantly, not all the people who started the debate
were officially linked to the faction of Sunnis that owned the publication
houses – the All India Jamiatul Ulama led by the renowned ‘ālim Kantha-
puram Aboobacker Musaliyar. That is, they cannot be treated as a ‘school’ or
members of Kanthapuram’s ‘ulamā’ organization or its student or youth
wings. One writer was an Ayurvedic doctor, another part of the tarīqa Silsila
Nooriya based in Hyderabad, yet another a journalist, to mention a few.
They all shared some commitment to the traditionalist Islam that was con-
sidered by these writers as the form of Islam that flourished in Kerala until
reformers targeted it.
Held in periodicals and books read primarily by Muslims or those linked to
these sectarian organizations in some way, this debate was not just an aca-
demic exercise, nor was it a secular endeavor. It was a debate held on the
periphery of the largely secular, left-liberal public sphere of Kerala, far away
from the attention of the mass media. It would also be incorrect to suggest
that these writers unanimously agreed on or espoused a singular argument or
approach. Their output ranges from critical engagement with reformist ideas
to elaborate conspiracy theories involving Western powers (Abūbakkar et al.
2007). Hence, rather than advance any ‘general’ perspective shared by this
array of writers, I focus mainly on the output of one writer.
A concept of Islamic renaissance, as outlined in the previous section, with
special stress on reforming the education system and criticism of traditionalist
religious practices, was the dominant paradigm in the mainstream historio-
graphy of Kerala Islam for close to a century. It was only in the late twentieth
century that this was challenged. The critique of what Vakkom Moulavi
called ‘religious reformation’ primarily tries to disentangle the assumptions
that underlie it.
What are the conditions that made possible the equation of islāh, tajdīd
and ihyā’ with what was termed ‘religious reformation’ or renaissance in
Kerala? The critics’ answer is unambiguous – the so-called Islamic renais-
sance in Kerala originated in the context of an encounter and compromise
with values of colonial, Western modernity. Mannalamkunnu writes that the
‘main point of criticism advanced in this debate is that the social changes that
occurred among Muslims in the modern period drew their energy from
modern rather than Islamic sources’ (Mannalamkunnu 2010a: 34). Manna-
lamkunnu interprets the history of modernity as one in which ‘rational’ and
‘materialist’ ‘epistemic regimes’ have been absorbed by ‘Christian civilization’
to spread its global hegemony (Mannalamkunnu 2007b: 39–40). It is a ‘conver-
sion’ to these ‘values’ and ‘consciousness’ that has been termed ‘modern
renaissance’ (ibid.: 40). Elsewhere, the same author notes that the historical
contextualization of modernity should not ignore that it is a ‘new and pow-
erful form of kufr [ingratitude/disbelief] and arrogance [ahankāram]’ that
seeks to draw ‘humans [manushyan] away from the natural order [dīn], or
from every prophetic mission [niyo-gam]’ (Mannalamkunnu 2007c: 17).
As a consequence, the reformers’ efforts ‘rejected tradition and severed
roots’, and equated reform with ‘English education and affinity to values of
modernity’ (Mannalamkunnu 2007b: 38, 45). The questioning of tradition
was part of the project of modernity that was ‘suspicious of everything old
and embraced everything new as authoritative’ (Mannalamkunnu 2007f: 66).
Hence ‘the modern rational consciousness cannot assess the Islamic value of
dhikr majlis and Burda recitation, which were spurned as bid‘a [forbidden
innovation] practices’ (ibid.: 66).3 This attack on Islamic ‘tradition’ was
often ‘misunderstood’ as Islamic renaissance (Mannalamkunnu 2009: 16). Main-
stream secular discourses celebrated Muslim personalities who ‘sympathized
with Western values in some way or identified themselves with their [Western]
progressive norms’ (Mannalamkunnu 2009: 17) as pioneers of the Islamic
renaissance.
Importantly, Mannalamkunnu is careful not to identify the contemporary
organizational forms of Islamic sectarianism in Kerala as representing a ‘tra-
ditionalist’ (Sunni) versus ‘modernist’ (Mujahid) dichotomy (Manna-
lamkunnu 2012: 132–133). On the contrary, he holds that even those with
sectarian tendencies who claim the ‘traditionalist’ label for themselves (that is,
including those who published the revisionist critique) and attack Vakkom
Moulavi and the movements he inspired as ‘modernist’ are equally guilty of
‘internalizing the ideology [āśaya mandalam] of modern renaissance’
(Mannalamkunnu 2010a: 35).
It was the affinity to Western modernity that made the Islamic renaissance
critical of traditional Islamic education and practices. While Vakkom Mou-
lavi blamed the traditional model of education, Mannalamkunnu identified
‘modernization and secularization of education and epistemic regimes [jñāna
vyavasthā]’ as the root causes of ‘the moral and cultural decline of the
Muslim community’ (Mannalamkunnu 2007b: 77). Not only the content, but
also the very mode of knowledge transmission was radically changed. K.
Abūbakkar (2010b) writes: ‘They [the reformists] removed the teacher, the
living example of knowledge, from the paramount position in the knowledge
transmission process. They replaced him with the book, one of the media of
instruction for the perfect guru’.4 The most prominent among the madrasas
started by the reformists was the Darul Uloom of Vazhakkad, founded in the
1870s in the current Malappuram district (erstwhile British Malabar). The
mode of instruction was revised with an introduction, inter alia, of modern
sciences and Malayalam as subjects. Further, students (including reformist
veterans like K.M. Moulavi) were divided into various divisions according to
their level of training and separate syllabuses were developed for each subject.
Blackboards, desks, benches, classrooms and special textbooks made Darul
Uloom a totally new experiment in the transmission of Islamic knowledge
(Muhammadukkannu 1982: 86–88).5 Such initiatives went together with
efforts of scholars like Vakkom Moulavi to get the British colonizers or the
local royal rulers in Travancore to introduce Arabic education and appoint
Muslim teachers in public and private schools, which also started receiving
grants-in-aid from authorities (Lakshmi 2012: 107–131).
Mannalamkunnu writes that modernity’s influence on the Islamic renais-
sance meant that it advanced ‘conceptual frames that were bereft of internal
essence and exaggerated external achievements’ (Mannalamkunnu 2007c: 54).
‘The promises of liberation’ that the Islamic renaissance offered were shaped
by ‘materialistic realities’ (ibid.: 55). He writes:
We have to recognize what fundamentally strengthens a community is not

the means for its external existence [bāhyamāya nilanilpu]. Especially in
an Islamic society, such exterior embellishments [bāhyāvaranangal] alone
are insignificant. A community that has lost its inner spirit [āntarika
vīryam] cannot gain any sense of security from outer adornments.
(Mannalamkunnu 2007c: 57)
Modernity fetishized the surface, the ephemeral dimension of life. It lost sense
of the deeper, the fundamental and the internal.6 The stress on the external
necessitated the reformation of the traditional mode of education as it was
disconnected from the demands of modern life, the revisionist critique argues.
Scholars like Vakkom Moulavi failed to recognize the ‘fundamental truth’
that modernity transmitted a ‘Eurocentric worldview [lo-kabo-dham]’ (Manna-
lamkunnu 2012: 131). The embrace of modernity’s means of knowledge pro-
duction, its regimes of truth and its penchant for everything new also had its
impact on the reformists’ perceptions of tasawwuf. Reform (navo-tthānam)
‘revolted’ against the ‘spiritual [ātmiya, signifying Sufism or tasawwuf]’ core
of Islam. ‘Reformist thought created a religion free of spirituality. In effect, it
spawned rationalist movements that believe in God’ (Abūbakkar 2010a: 80).
Where Umar Maulavi saw only superstition and Shi’a influence in the
makhām, the revisionist critics saw a tradition whose roots went back to the
earliest days of Islam. Mannalamkunnu writes that tarīqas and tasawwuf
arose in Islam after the first four rightly guided caliphs who succeeded the
Prophet were replaced by Sultans who were fond of ‘luxury’ and focused on
‘materialistic, urban growth’ (Mannalamkunnu 2007c: 55). In such situations
‘pious scholars’ such as Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī (Muhyī al-Dīn Shaykh,
as he is popularly known among Malayalee Muslims), Shihāb al-Dīn Suhra-
wardī and Imam Ghazālī became the ‘real caliphs and Imams’ of the Muslim
community and guided them to the path of piety (Mannalamkunnu 2007c:
56). He adds that it was probably why in such societies there was ‘strong
resistance to crusader invasions’, unlike ‘Muslim Spain which stood at the
pinnacle of civilizational development’ (Mannalamkunnu 2007c: 57).
Coming to Kerala, Mannalamkunnu points out: ‘The ‘ulamā’ who guided
projects of self-cultivation [ātma samskaranam] led the wars of resistance.
That is why Zayn al-Dīn Makhdūm [b. 1467], who wrote the spiritually sig-
nificant poetic work Adhkiyā’, also wrote the Tahrīd that called for a jihād
against the Portuguese (2007c: 58).’7 The ‘wars of resistance’ referred to in
this passage need some explanation. From the late fifteenth century, since the
arrival of Vasco da Gama, the Malabar Coast (today’s Kerala) witnessed
several acts of counter-violence against Western assaults. Although tempo-
rally separated, one can trace a broad ideological continuity in the nature of
these incidents, including wars organized and led by Muslim chieftains like
the Kunjali Marakkars with the patronage of the local Hindu ruler, which
subsided after the withdrawal of the Portuguese but reappeared with the
advent of the British in the late eighteenth century (Dale 1980). This series of
armed struggles concluded with the Malabar rebellion of 1921, which was
ruthlessly suppressed by the British, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of
Muslim fighters and the deportation of hundreds more. These episodes of
resistance were encouraged by and immortalized in several genres of Islamic
literature beginning in the sixteenth century – fatwas (legal opinion), poetry
and historical tracts (Suhail 2007). ’Ulamā’ such as Shaykh Zayn al-Dīn
Makhdūm I and II, who lived during the period of Portuguese incursion, and
those who followed them, mobilized Muslim masses through such media.
Mannalamkunnu (2007c) argued that these ‘ulamā’ were also renowned Sufis
who did not differentiate between inner projects of self-fashioning and exter-
nal projects of the struggle against Western occupation. They treated both as
pertinent and interconnected tasks. Hence:
Islamic renaissance projects are necessary when the Islamic community

becomes victims of alien culture [anya samskāram] and un-Islamic ways
of life [jīvata śīlangal]. It can develop in situations of political and mili-
tary dominance, and also during times of cultural imperialism. If we
study the history of Islamic renaissance in Kerala we find that renaissance
efforts developed in opposition to both those forms of hegemony.
(Mannalamkunnu 2007b: 40)
Thinking about the nation-state and Islam

The critique of the conventional narrative thus redefines the dating of the
origins of Islamic renaissance, as the above quote implies. It is no longer the
early twentieth century or even the mid- to late nineteenth century. Instead,
Islamic renaissance is read as a religious task that cannot be pigeonholed into
a particular historical period. If writers like Mannalamkunnu trace it to the
late fifteenth century, around the time of the arrival of the Portuguese on the
Kerala coast, some others consider even the very first arrival of Arab Mus-
lims to the Kerala coast as guided by the efforts of renaissance (Rantattāni
2010: 141–165). ‘Islamic renaissance’ thus becomes distinct from its conven-
tional understanding. It is also detached from its Hindu and secular counter-
parts, by no longer being an element of a common genre defined as
renaissance, whose origins lie in European developments.
This also troubles some common equations of the thought and works of
certain thinkers (Ibn Taymiyya, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb, Jamāl al-
Dīn Afghānī, ‘Abduh and Ridā) with reform and revival. Incidentally, in
common parlance in Kerala the Mujahids alone claim or use the term islāh.
That word is almost synonymous with their work and their forbearers begin-
ning with Makthi Thangal. However, their critique problematizes such equa-
tions and perhaps for the first time disentangles the concept itself from its
concrete manifestations as described in mainstream historiography. This revi-
sionist reading also highlights the work done by ‘ulamā’ before the twentieth
century to correct and change religious practices that diverged from main-
stream Sunni interpretation. Mannalamkunnu (2007e: 45–46), for instance,
points out the Ponnani-based ‘ulamā’s critique of and debates with a tariqa in
Kondotty that followed Shi‘a practices like prostrating (sujūd) before the
shaykh. Hence, Mannalamkunnu argues that it would be inaccurate to credit
twentieth-century reformers alone for having fought against deviations from
the Islamic norm. Significantly, this helps complicate the dichotomy of normative/
orthodox (or the Salafi version) and non-normative/heterodox (Sufi) versions
of Islam. While the latter is often perceived as a move away from the nor-
mative perspective embodied in Islamic tradition, the Salafi interpretation is
said to be closer to that tradition. Yet even scholars who attacked Sufi
practices as part of their project of reform or renewal, have not necessarily
rejected them in toto. A renowned Sufi Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī could claim
the title of a mujaddid (one who brings about tajdīd) (Friedmann 1971). On
the other hand, a Salafi trail-blazer like Muhammad ‘Abduh was himself
affiliated to a Sufi tarīqa (Scharbrodt 2007).
Further, the critique ties up the work of piety with resistance to forces that
came from outside (Portuguese, Dutch and the British). The Makhdūms and
later ‘ulamā’ did not confine themselves to ‘religious’ work; instead they wrote
tracts, campaigned and roused the Muslim masses to fight against the invad-
ing Westerners. What has to be mentioned here is that resistance to Western
colonizers has been retrospectively appropriated as part of the nationalist
anti-colonial struggle. They become the precursors to what happened in the
early twentieth century under M.K. Gandhi and other nationalist leaders.
The critique explicitly disagrees with this portrayal of ‘ulamā’ such as the
Makhdūms as ‘patriots’ in a nationalist sense (Mannalamkunnu 2010b: 33).
There are at least two reasons to reject the nationalist reading. For one,
Mannalamkunnu (2006: 24) detects a ‘crusader mentality’ in the activities of
the Portuguese who first came to the Malabar coast. What they found upon
arrival was a thriving port with trade involving merchants and traders from
various parts of the world, with Arabs and local Muslims dominating the
field. However, the Portuguese who came with memories of the European
crusades against Islam did not have ‘commercial interests’ alone. This was
evident in the atrocities committed against Muslims by the Portuguese,
including mass murder of Hajj pilgrims and disruption of their means of
livelihood. Mannalamkunnu (2006) writes that as a result of such acts Mus-
lims in Kerala ‘recognized the Islamophobic fervor and rage of the Portu-
guese. They realized that they had a religious obligation to organize
themselves against the Portuguese’ (ibid.: 45). This resistance embodies
patriotism in a specific sense, as something that is an Islamic moral virtue
internalized ‘in and through the way of life of [one’s] community’
(MacIntyre 1984: 8). The where and from whom one learns patriotism are
crucial here. For the nationalist it is the defense of the idea of nation as a
clearly demarcated geopolitical entity, but for the pre-modern Mappilas and
their leaders, the Western assault was not only targeting their land but was
aimed at destroying Islam and Muslims. The interpretation of the nature of
the attack and the response to it were embedded in and shaped by Islamic
tradition and sense of belonging to a Muslim ummat (community).
The second reason why the ‘ulamā’-led struggles cannot be categorized as
nationalist relates to the nature of nationalism. There is an irony in national-
ist historiographies of Muslim resistance to Western imperialists in Kerala,
Mannalamkunnu (2009) suggests. One strand brands such efforts as the work
of ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘rebels’ (ibid.: 17; see Ansari 2005). Another, the
leftist variety, tries to see these struggles through the prism of ‘class struggle’
and highlight their ‘progressive’ nature (Mannalamkunnu 2009: 37; Manna-
lamkunnu 2010b: 36; see Kuruppu and Po-kkar 2006). Both historiographies
dismiss or ignore the Islamic dimensions and name such instances of resis-
tance as nationalist or fanatical. ‘This is so not only because conventional
histories reflecting the nationalist perspective relied on colonial sources.
Instead this is so because colonial values shaped nationalism itself ’ (Manna-
lamkunnu 2009: 17). This approach to nationalism is perhaps the reason why,
even as the revisionists describe the anti-Western struggles of ‘ulamā’ like the
Makhdūms in glowing terms, little attention is paid to the anti-colonial
activities of reformist ‘ulamā’. As I described above, they were part of the strug-
gle against British colonizers. Still the relative silence about their activities
from the revisionist writers is conspicuous.8 They are not considered, while the
pre-modern ‘ulamā’ are, because much of the work of the reformist ‘ulamā’ is
perceived as embedded in the nationalist framework. Their response to Wes-
tern oppression was based on models of activism and ideologies derived from
the oppressor, the revisionists suggest. This is something that is not evident
in the work of the Makhdūms or the Mamburam Thangals. Their religion
and politics were squarely rooted in and inspired by Islamic values, the revisio-
nists argue. The important point here is that the dīn or the community (ummat)
they defended against the Westerners was a ‘theologically defined space enabling
Muslims to practice the disciplines of dīn in the world’ (Asad 2003: 197). It
could not be confined to a territorial nation-state with clearly defined
boundaries and eventually it should encompass the entire humanity.
What kind of subjects are produced by the revisionist reading of Islamic
renaissance in Kerala? Mannalamkunnu (2007c: 53) writes that ‘only by
separating from the mainstream … can an Islamic subjectivity [vykatitvam] be
cultivated. When we acknowledge this we can realize the absurdity of trying
to tie up Islam with the values of modernity’. It is not by compromising with
modernity, or for that matter any non-Islamic power, that one becomes a
Muslim. Being a Muslim requires one to develop sensibilities and dispositions
that run against established norms of mainstream society, Mannalamkunnu
(2007c) claims. For example, it might mean to observe abstinence in a group
of alcoholics or to cover oneself completely in a society where nudity is a non-
issue (Mannalamkunnu 2007c: 53). Thus Islam not only becomes a distinct
tradition, but it also problematizes the hegemonic system of values. Cultiva-
tion of an Islamic subjectivity requires one to counter not only cultural
norms. It also demands the positioning of oneself against the nation-state, one
of the most potent realities of the contemporary world. By problematizing the
nation-state in theory and practice, one crafts an Islamic subjectivity that
imagines the dīn as spreading diachronically from the past (the time of the
Prophet) to the present and synchronically from Kerala to Egypt and beyond.
This idea of an Islamic subject, however, should be read together with Man-
nalamkunnu’s (2010a, 2010b) reservations about the contemporary avatars of
Islamic sectarianism in Kerala. As all present forms have compromised with
modernity, none can be expected to craft this Islamic counter-subject. Hence
the latter, in an important sense, will be antithetical to those cultivated by the
sectarian formations as well. Mannalamkunnu (2010a, 2010b) is postulating a
dīn and subjectivity that is closer to its pre-modern version embodied by
‘ulamā’ like the Makhdūms. I will return to this point in the next section.
Beyond the nation-state or within?

In this section, I make two main points. One notes the condition under which
the revisionist critique and its target, the Islamic renaissance of Vakkom
Moulavi and others, converge. I argue that the same context of the modern
nation-state’s power necessitates these projects and makes them comprehen-
sible. Two, I delineate the geographical imaginaries in which the thought of
the revisionists, the modern and pre-modern ‘ulamā’ are located. I identify
religious ideas and ancient Indian Ocean trade routes that indicate ways in
which thought inevitably breaches national frontiers.
What is particularly noteworthy about the revisionist interpretation is that
it takes issue with a transformation in traditional religious reasoning in the
context of the expanding power of the modern nation-state and the emergence
of a public sphere.9 The insight that ‘the process of formation of virtuous
Muslim selves, originally finalized to salvation, increasingly ingrained into
issues of collective welfare, social governance, economic development, and
public morality’ (Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003: 55) is especially rele-
vant here. Hence taqwā, according to Vakkom Moulavi, becomes not only a
disposition of pious fear or Allah-consciousness, the cultivation of which is
aimed at personal spiritual development and guided by eschatological ques-
tions. It also facilitates the fashioning of modern individuals who strive to
succeed in material terms. This process can be better understood with what
Starrett (1998: 9) calls ‘functionalization’, or ‘processes of translation in
which intellectual objects from one discourse come to serve the strategic or
utilitarian ends of another discourse. This translation not only places intel-
lectual objects in new fields of significance, but radically shifts the meaning of
their initial context’. Taqwā has been removed from its original semantic field
in the Islamic tradition and strategically deployed into civilizing processes. It
comes to serve purposes that it was not originally meant to do.
As I will show presently, this translation is not unproblematic. The ‘func-
tionalization’ of Islamic ideas, contrary to a central tenet of the narrative of
the secularization thesis, did not carve out a separate space for religion. It did
not result in the differentiation of religious from secular spheres. Instead, the
renaissance ‘ulamā’s work showed that the boundaries separating the secular
and religious are porous. Rather than dividing these realms, the Islamic
renaissance of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contributed to
deepen their mutual implication. Viewed from this perspective, the revisionist
quarrel with the Islamic renaissance is not about the replacement of Islamic
with modern categories or the influence exercised by the latter on the former.
It is rather their deeply entangled nature. Islamic renaissance becomes
embedded in what Caeiro calls the ‘logics of differentiated systems: it simul-
taneously transforms and is transformed by these systems’ (Caeiro 2013: 22).
How can we make sense of the subjects predicated by the revisionist cri-
tique? Are they separated from the secular? Mannalamkunnu (2007c) explains
that Islamic subjects are crafted by developing dispositions counter to those
of secular modernity. What is striking in this definition is how it works by
defining and demarcating religion from non-religion. It specifies the space
that religion should occupy and the role that it should play in modern society.
This task does not end with this delimitation. Such questions are repeatedly
raised and answered in the search for clarity, in the effort to differentiate
between the religious and the secular. My argument is that we should com-
prehend this project to identify and draw lines between the religious and the
secular as stemming from and bearing an affinity to the ambitions of the
nation-state and its particular modes of reconfiguring religion (Asad 2003:
201). The revisionist critique presents the pre-modern ‘ulamā’s understanding
of renaissance as occupying an epistemological and ontological domain that
is fundamentally different from that of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century
‘ulamā’s conceptualization of renaissance.
Islāh or tajdīd, the Arabic words that are translated as renaissance or
navo-tthānam, in the classical Islamic literature is both a condition that is vir-
tuous, just and good, and the activity necessary to maintain or reestablish this
condition as such. Its opposite is fasād, or decay and degeneration, which is
the result of a breakdown in the virtues and practices of Islam (Haj 2009: 35).
Islāh/tajdīd are thus concepts that carry a strong theological-moral valence
and aim at constituting a pious community. The interweaving of islāh with
civilizing processes (as in the case of taqwā), however, does not dismiss this
crucial ethical dimension but makes it just another element in a project that
has several objectives. The core characteristic of this Islamic task is recon-
ceived to meet the exigencies of modern life. In other words, islāh/tajdīd (and
taqwā) are no longer theological-moral problems alone, but are transformed
into and become entangled in political-ideological concerns. On the other
hand, the necessity to distinguish ‘Islamic’ from ‘Hindu’ or ‘Western’ renais-
sance is embedded in the modern condition that is driven by the state’s need
for clarity. This rigorous differentiation does not make much sense in the
context of an islāh, which is a theological project to prevent or rectify a
situation of moral decay and degeneration. Thus, both the revisionists and
their object of critique operate in a context where ‘modern politics and the
forms of power it deploys have become a condition for the practice of many
personal activities’ (Hirschkind 1997). Such interpretative moves are necessi-
tated primarily by the modern state, which is also a ‘modernizing state’ (Asad
1997: 190, emphasis in the original).
The thought of the revisionists and their targets of critique, the modern
renaissance ‘ulamā’, are shaped by the power of the modern nation-state,
which circumscribes the kind of questions that could be posed and the range
of possible answers. However, thought is also an entity that exceeds the terri-
tory physical bodies occupy. It does not respect boundaries, even those drawn
by nation-states.
Given this ‘necessarily transnational space of intellection’ (Menon 2015:
64), I will now try to briefly think about the geographical imaginaries of the
discourses studied in this chapter. The revisionist critique tries to transcend
the limits of the nation-state in which, they allege, the modern renaissance
‘ulamā’ are incarcerated. The critics imagine the global Muslim community
(ummat) and also bring forth memories of Islamic Spain. The former is a
familiar Islamic imaginary, but the latter requires further examination. Man-
nalamkunnu’s (2007c: 57) invocation of ‘Muslim Spain’ is used to claim that
being at the ‘pinnacle of civilizational development’ did not prevent its
decline. The main reason for this was the ‘deterioration in faith [viśvāsapar-
amāya apacayam]’ (Mannalamkunnu 2010a: 36). What is lacked in piety
cannot be made up with other achievements. Significantly, in historical and
literary writings, the end of al-Andalus did not only signify the end of an
empire or even a civilization. The end of al-Andalus ‘mirrors the traumas of
history and sheds light on the discursive processes by which hermetic bound-
aries are set between periods, communities, and texts’ (Anidjar 2002: 6). What
is interesting here is that Mannalamkunnu’s (2007c) critique of al-Andalus
enables him to think about a geopolitics and history that is not separated into
discrete domains. A well-formed piety could have prevented the downfall of
al-Andalus in the face of ‘crusader incursions’ (ibid.: 57). Boundaries of var-
ious kinds would not have been necessitated if al-Andalus had survived with
the strength of piety. Correct piety would have made the twentieth-century
Kerala Islamic renaissance an altogether different project and averted the
creation of sectarian divides. Al-Andalus and Kerala could thus have become
two ends of an Islamic continuum that disrespected national borders and
imagined another global space that encompassed far-flung regions. However,
it may be recalled, Mannalamkunnu (2010a, 2010b) is unsympathetic to the
mainstream versions of Islamic sectarianism in Kerala. They have all com-
promised with modernity in some way or the other. Islamic renaissance in its
complete, correct sense was embodied by pre-modern ‘ulamā’ like the Makh-
dūms. This postulation raises interesting questions about the temporality of
the revisionist narrative: Where is the Islamic renaissance today? What is its
concrete manifestation? What is its present and future? Except for outlining
what the real Islamic renaissance ought to be, tracing it back to the fifteenth
century and describing the authentic Islamic subject, there is little in the revi-
sionist critique (particularly in the work of Mannalamkunnu) about the present
of the Islamic renaissance. The critique, in this respect, shares the temporal
assumptions of conventional historiographies of Kerala Islam in implying the
end of pre-modern dīn. The critique brings to public consciousness an alter-
nate history of the Islamic renaissance in Kerala. Nevertheless, by writing
that, the critique exports the Islamic renaissance to the past and indeed per-
forms its historical distancing. The very act of testimony of the revisionist
critique inscribes and seals the event of Islamic renaissance as belonging to
the past (Anidjar 2006: 226).
It could be argued that Mannalamkunnu’s (2007c) engagement with al-
Andalus is nothing special. In a heavily mediatized world, such geographical
imaginaries are possible. However, this is not the case with the thought of the
modern renaissance ‘ulamā’ and their pre-modern counterparts. Their
thought instead is framed by the particular history of Kerala as an important
port of call in millennia-old maritime trade routes. Consider the paths
through which reformist ideas traveled to Kerala in the twentieth century.
There is little or no contact with north Indian centers of Islamic scholarship,
which could imply a religious imaginary encapsulated within the geographical
frontiers of the nation-state or the British Empire. Neither is Moulavi’s
thought exclusively embedded in the imagined community of a global ummat.
Instead, Vakkom Moulavi’s links to ‘Abduh and Ridā’s al-Manār map onto a
longer and variegated history of contacts with the world that predated the
advent of colonial modernity or even the origin of Islam. This history
includes the movement of ‘ulamā’ from Yemen to the Malabar coast and to
Southeast Asia (Ho 2006), and the much older evidence of maritime trade in
spices that brought Romans, Arabs and Greeks to southwest India.
Thinking about this history the noted Malayalam literary critic Kesari A.
Balakrishna Pillai (1889–1960) asked a striking question: ‘Is Rome a chapter
in the history of Kerala or is Kerala a chapter in the history of Rome?’ (cited
in Menon 2010: 141). Importantly, this feature of the modern Islamic renais-
sance is something that it shares with its pre-modern counterpart too. ‘Ulamā’
like the Makhdūms I and II and Mamburam Thangals have their family roots
outside Kerala and India. Some of them were educated in Mecca, but
returned to work in Kerala. Their travel from Yemen to Kerala and beyond
belies the territoriality of the empire and the modern nation-state. They form
part of an ‘antiquated geographical imaginary’ (Devji 2005: 86) of Muslim
trade in the Indian Ocean. All these ‘ulamā’ are put forward by the revisionist
critique as pioneers of Islamic renaissance and in opposition to ‘ulamā’ like
Vakkom Moulavi. However, despite the differences (several of which have
been noted earlier in this chapter), both the modern and the pre-modern
Islamic renaissance reflect the multiple histories of movement of people,
objects and ideas that have given Kerala its idiosyncratic position. Such
geographical imaginaries coexisted with and have survived the age of colonialism
and the drawing of national boundaries.
Conclusion
This chapter has tried to show, inter alia, how the discourse about national
belonging or non-belonging of certain forms of Islam is complicated by reli-
gious and geographical imaginaries that pre-date the origins of the nation-
state. Nation-state remains the power that makes subjects and discourses
categorize Islam as nationalist or otherwise, and the concepts employed by
conventional and revisionist historiography to understand the Kerala Islamic
renaissance is ultimately comprehensible only in the context of the ambitions
of the nation-state to reshape religion. On the other hand, Kerala’s long his-
tory of being part of an Islamic and trade-related oceanic circuit survives in
contemporary discursive imaginaries, opening up a different perspective to think
about religion as a global space of piety and ethical living that necessarily
transcends the frontiers of the modern nation-state.
Notes
1 While the Jamaat-e-Islami is active in electoral politics through its affiliate, the
Welfare Party, the Mujahids are not directly involved in politics but do take political
positions during elections.
2 It may be noted here that similar demands for combining spiritual with worldly
advancement were articulated by Sree Narayana Guru too (Kumar 1997: 256).
Both Vakkom Moulavi and Narayana Guru hailed from neighboring areas in Tra-
vancore, leading to speculation about mutual or one-sided influence (Muhammad
2010: 223–230).
3 Dhikr majlis are gatherings to recite litanies and prayers used to remember Allah,
and Burda is the short for Qasīdat al-Burda, an ode to the Prophet written by the
thirteenth-century Egyptian Imam al-Būsīrī.
4 Pedagogical practices in the pre-modern Middle East and India also display this
attention to the person of the teacher as an important tool of ethical instruction
that transcended an exclusive reliance on textual learning (Makdisi 1981: 89–90;
Berkey 1992: 34; Green 2012a: 202–228; cf. Nakissa 2014).
5 Similar innovative practices in the teaching of Islamic sciences were pioneered at
the eponymous Darul Ulum in Deoband (Metcalf 1982: 100–111).
6 Mannalamkunnu’s (2007c) interpretation should be read as a critique of the mod-
ernist public/exterior–private/interior dichotomy, and reaffirming an older Islamic
tradition in which external behavior and internal dispositions were coordinated in a
range of bodily practices to craft a pious Muslim self (Mahmood 2005: 131–139).
7 Adhkiyā’ is the short for Hidāyat al-Adhkiyā’ ilā Tarīq al-Awliyā’ (‘Guidance of the
intelligent towards the way of the friends of God’), and Tahrīd stands for Tahrīd
Ahl al-Īmān ‘alā Jihād ‘Abadat al-Sulbān (‘An exhortation to the believers to fight
against the cross-worshippers’).
8 Even when a reformist ‘ālim like Makthi Thangal is praised for combating Chris-
tian missionary attacks on Islam, he is indicted for his ‘devotion [bhakti] to the
British, which can never be justified Islamically’ (Mannalamkunnu 2007a: 53).
9 Some of the main arguments in this section are inspired by Caeiro (2013). I thank
the author for permission to cite from this unpublished paper.
15 Mullā Vajhī’s Sab Ras
Christina Oesterheld
Mullā Asadullāh ‘Vajhī’ (1580–ca. 1660?) was among the most prominent
poets in both Dakini and Persian at the court of Golkonda/Deccan. Around
1609 he composed his famous masnavi Qutb Mushtarī, one of the first mas-
navīs1 of the Dakini language. The second work he is remembered for today is
the allegorical prose tale Sab Ras (‘all tastes/flavours’, 1635), the first literary
prose text of Dakini and also Urdu, if Dakini is regarded as an old variety of
Urdu.
The background: Vajhī and his patrons

Vajhī dedicated his work to Sultan ‘Abdullāh Qutb Shāh of Golkonda
(reigned 1035–83 H/1625–72 AD). The ruling dynasty of Golkonda patronized
all arts (architecture,2 poetry, music) and, with few exceptions, was given to
good living, enjoying and praising the pleasures of wine and women. Several
of the rulers were poets in their own right, foremost among them Muhammad
Qulī Qutb Shāh (reigned 1580–1611/12), whose poetry is steeped in Indian
themes and shows a clear influence of Indian poetics. Sanskrit erotic manuals
were translated into Persian and Telugu at the court of Golkonda, and the
title of Vajhī’s work indicates that he was aware of the Indian rasa theory.
Here one may point also to the Dakini Kitāb-i Nau Ras about the rasa theory
which was composed by Ibrāhīm ‘Ādil Shāh II ‘Jagat Gurū’ (1580–1627), the
ruler of neighbouring Bijapur, around 1597 or later, but before 1610 (Jālibī
1984: 214). Husain states that Vajhī’s Dakini prose was modelled after Mullā
Nūr al-Dīn Zuhūrī’s (d. 1615) Persian preface to the Kitāb-i Nau Ras (Husain
2000: 164), whereas Jālibī also sees Fattāhī’s ornamental rhymed prose as an
important model for the style of Sab Ras (Jālibī 1984: 460). The steady influx
of scholars from Iran, who where granted high positions in the administration
and the cultural affairs of the state, guaranteed a stable influence of the Per-
sian language and Persian literary forms, prosody and genres, within Deccani
courts.
Little is known about Vajhī’s life. He was born in the reign of Ibrāhīm Qutb
Shāh (1550–80) and rose into the position of poet laureate (malik al-shu‘arā’)
under Muhammad Qulī Qutb Shāh. He spent a life of comfort and pleasure
280 Christina Oesterheld
until the death of his first patron whose successor, Muhammad Qutb Shāh
(reigned 1612–25), was of completely different character. He led a very reli-
gious life, keeping strictly to all Islamic injunctions, which brought hard times
to his courtiers. A reflection of Vajhī’s situation is to be found in his Persian
verses where he laments his lack of income and even thinks about searching
for another profession (Kāshmīrī 2003: 168–169). There are indications that
Muhammad Qutb declared prohibition in his kingdom, by which Vajhī,
however, did not feel bound: ‘bar gadāyān-i tarīqat hukm-i shāhanshāh nīst’
(‘For beggars on the Sufi path the king’s order has no meaning/is of no con-
sequence’; Kāshmīrī 2003: 169). Wine is linked to the Sufi path in this verse,
and here it clearly denotes actual wine, not the metaphorical wine of spiritual
intoxication. Seen against this background Vajhī’s strong advocacy of drink-
ing wine in Sab Ras becomes more understandable. Praising wine had of
course been a staple of Arabic and Persian poetry, but in Sab Ras the apolo-
getic insistence on the legitimacy of drinking wine in the case of kings is really
remarkable and surpasses the conventional wine rhetoric.
The situation took a turn for the better when Muhammad Qutb Shāh died
in 1625 and ‘Abdullāh Qutb Shāh took over. Vajhī again enjoyed the patron-
age of the court until his death between 1656 and 1671 (around 1659,
according to Qādirī Zor; cf. Jālibī 1984: 434). However, he had to compete
with his contemporary Ghavvāsī whom ‘Abdullāh Qutb Shāh had appointed
as malik al-shu‘arā’ (Jālibī 1984: 443), and Sab Ras was Vajhī’s first work
commissioned by the king.
Besides his masnavī Qutb Mushtarī, which is regarded as one of the mas-
terpieces of Dakini, Vajhī composed a Persian dīvān in which he used the
takhallus Vajīh, occasionally Vajiyah and Vajīhī (cf. Siddiqua 2011: 308; Jālibī
1984: 432–433). Quoting the later Golkonda poet Taba‘ī, Matthews (1992:
230) states that Vajhī ‘was always highly regarded and is one of the few to be
mentioned with some reverence in the works of later poets’.
A brief summary of the structure and content of the narrative

The story is based on Muhammad Yahyā Ibn Sībak Fattāhī Nishāpūrī’s Per-
sian prose summary Qissah-i Husn-o-Dil (The story of Beauty and Heart,
1439) of his masnavī Dastūr-i ‘ushshāq (Code of lovers, 1436). Jālibī (1984:
445) assumes that ‘Abdullāh Qutb Shāh knew the immensely popular Persian
story and hence ordered Vajhī to write a Dakini version.
The story combines two main leitmotifs: the search for the Water of Life
and the love between Husn (‘Beauty’) and Dil (‘Heart’), which also leads to a
battle between their fathers ‘Ishq (‘Love’) and ‘Aql (‘Reason’), ending in ‘Aql’s
defeat and flight. In accordance with Sufi teachings, Love triumphs over
Reason, and after some trials and separations Beauty and Heart are united in
marriage, and ‘Ishq appoints ‘Aql as his minister. All characters bear ‘telling’,
allegorical names, mostly corresponding with their function in the story. In
contrast to the Persian model, Vajhī drops the storyline of the water of life
Mullā Vajhī’s Sab Ras 281
somewhat mid-way. It reappears on page 121 and is taken up at the very end
when Dil, Himmat and Nazar in a drunken state all of a sudden see the
fountain of life and Khizr who is guarding it (Vajhī n.d.: 279). Dil respectfully
apporoaches Khizr, touches his feet and sits down at his side, whereupon
Khizr gives him his blessings and shares the secret of the water of life with
him. They communicate through the heart and the eyes (ibid.: 280). Dil has
now finally reached his goal, sets up house and fathers a number of sons, the
eldest of whom is this book (ibid.: 280). One may ask, however, whether for-
getting about the water of life indeed was a technical flaw, as Haqq and Jālibī
see it, or corresponds with the inner logic of the tale, underlining that once
Dil has fallen in love and attained the object of his love, the water of life
becomes unimportant for him. Thus, Husn is expressly called the ‘water of
life for lovers’ half through the text (ibid.: 198), and may be interpreted as a
symbol of ‘immortality-inducing gnosis’ (Ernst 2006: 157).
The text follows the standard formal pattern of masnavi texts, beginning
with praise of God, of the Prophet and of Ali, continuing with the reason for
composing the work and praise of the king. All chapters are preceded by
subtitles in Persian which summarize the contents. The third chapter explains
the title of the work and mentions the author’s intention, the role of literature
and literary language, and promises deep insights into mystic wisdom and
truths as reward for reading the text. The next chapter containing the main
story bears the title Āghāz-i dāstān zubān-i Hindūstān (‘Beginning of the story
[in] the language of India’). The narrative is opened by the word naql (‘tradi-
tion, tale; imitation, copy’), in line with the convention of storytelling which
lays no claim to originality (Vajhī n.d.: 14). The place of action is changed from
Yūnān, the fountainhead of metaphysics, to Sīstān, perhaps to de-emphasize the
metaphysical dimension, or simply to bring the story closer to home (ibid.:
14). It does, however, not start with the description of action but with a very
detailed excursus on love and reason. It is interesting to note that Vajhī here
speaks of a language that links him to northern parts of India, in fact to the
region where the language originated. In a line in Qutb Mushtarī he self-
confidently claims to be unsurpassed by any other poet of Hindūstān (Vajhī
1953: 12; Jālibī 1984: 433). Thus, although firmly based in the Deccan, he saw
himself as part of a wider literary scene and a tradition of knowledge/wisdom
in which he wanted to participate.
References to Muhammad Ghaus Gvāliyārī and the Shattārī Sufi order

Vajhī several times mentions the ‘wise men from Gwalior’. This mention of
Gwalior in all probability points to the tradition of Muhammad Ghaus
Gvāliyārī (ca. 1502–62/63)3 whose own works were composed in Arabic and
Persian. Sab Ras, however, contains striking similarities with the Sufi love
romance Madhumālatī composed in Hindavī by Muhammad Ghaus’s disciple
Manjhan in 1545.4 It is also possible that Vajhī drew from other, more con-
temporary sources in a language that looks close to Braj Bhasha, Avadhi and
partly also Gujri. In any case it is a fascinating example of the translation or
adaptation of terminology of Indic wisdom in a Sufi context, albeit in a text
produced for a courtly audience to be consumed outside a strictly Sufi envir-
onment. Apart from technical terms of Indic origin, which are rather few in
number, Vajhī uses colloquial expressions and common sayings to circum-
scribe or illustrate abstract and esoteric concepts while simultaneously
grounding most of his moral pronouncements on the Qur’an and hadīth.
Muhammad Ghaus Gvāliyārī was one of the most powerful Sufis of the
Shattārī order which had been brought from Iran to India in the mid-fifteenth
century ‘but became codified in India’ (Behl 2012: 2). From Gujarat it
reached Bijapur and probably also Golkonda. Among its genealogy it coun-
ted Shaykh Bayazīd Bistāmī (d. 845), one of the first ‘intoxicated’ Sufis (Eaton
1978: 58). The name of the order was explained to denote a swifter approach
to the Ultimate Reality (cf. Kugle 2007: 131). The Shattārīs regarded the
shaykh as someone ‘in direct communication with all the saints, all the pro-
phets and, indeed with God’ (Mujeeb 1967: 300). In India Shattārī Sufis
‘showed a remarkable capacity to absorb non-Islamic ideas’ (Eaton 1978: 58).
Bada’ūnī reported that they ‘lived in forests like the yogis on a frugal diet of
fruits and herbs, and subjected themselves to hard physical and spiritual
exercises’ (Ahmad 1969: 137). The same applies to Muhammad Ghaus, who
is said to have spent 13 years in severe austerity. With his advent in 1540 the
order became firmly rooted in Gujarat. He had been on very intimate relations
with the Mughal Emperor Humayūn but left for Gujarat when Humayūn
was driven out of the country by Sher Shāh Sūrī. In 1555 Muhammad Ghaus
returned to Agra and later retired to Gwalior for the last three years of his life.
Later generations of Shattārī Sufis exhibited more conservative, shar‘ī lifes and
teachings, perhaps as a result of earlier persecution.
Muhammad Ghaus, who reportedly knew Sanskrit, wrote a treatise on
meditation (Javāhir-i Khamsa, Five Jewels, 1523), including some practices
with superficial resemblance to yogic exercises. It was later translated into
Arabic by a Mecca-based Shattārī teacher who ‘taught these practices to dis-
ciples from as far away as North Africa and Indonesia’ (Ernst 1996: 10). He
further wrote Kalīd-i Makhāzin (Key to Hidden Treasures, ca. 1533), a text
combining Sufi doctrines with astrological theories (Mujeeb 1967: 301),
thereby outlining the Shattārī cosmology (Behl 2012: 250). The concepts and
visions outlined in this text inform most of Vajhī’s treatment of Sufi teachings.
He also translated Hawd al-Hayāt, the Arabic version of the lost Sanskrit or
Hindi work Amrtakunda (‘The Pool of Nectar’), into Persian under the title
Bahr al-Hayāt (‘Ocean of Life’), ‘probably around 1550, in order to clarify
the obscurities of the Arabic version’, expanding it in size from a pool to an
ocean by adding much new material, such as increasing the yogic postures
from five to 21 (Ernst 1996: 10).5 Ernst discusses a ‘Dakhani Urdu’ transla-
tion of two frame stories of this Persian version which was composed in the
nineteenth century under the title Hayāt Samandar (‘Ocean of Life’) (ibid.:
149–150).
The first (probable) reference to Muhammad Ghaus Gvāliyārī and the
Shattārī order occurs in the first paragraph of Sab Ras after quoting a Persian
verse/saying:
‘agar dar khānah(-i) kas ast yak harf bas ast’, haur gvāliyar ke cāturā̃ ,
gun ke garā̃ , unõ bhī bāt kū̃ khole haĩ. yū̃ bole haĩ. fard: potī thī so khotī
bha’ī pandit bhayā na koe // ekī achar pem kā phere so pandit hoe.
Approximate translation: When just one letter is in the house, it is
enough. And the clever (men) from Gwalior, rich in qualities, have also
revealed the same.
Verse: When there was a book, it proved useless, nobody became wise/
learned/a scholar // when one letter of love was drawn he/they turned
wise/knowledgeable.
(Vajhī n.d.: 1)
Before the action really starts, there are many more didactic digressions on
the role of reason (‘aql), the importance of self-knowledge and self-realization,
on the evil effects of greed, and on the complex relationship of zāt (essence)
and sifāt (attributes). Vajhī quotes the pronouncement hama ūst and goes on
to give a Persian verse, introduced as a saying of Persian friends of God
(‘vāsilā̃, … sāhib-i dilā̃ ’) and continues with a verse by:
vāsil-i haqq, ‘āshiq-i mutlaq Gujarātī Shāh ‘Alī, khudā ke ladle khudā ke
khāse, khudā ke valī, dā’im khudā sū̃ mil rahe, uno bī yūci kahe: jab māle
car car kahū̃ sabhī // sab vohī vohī sab vohī vohī.
He who was united with the Ultimate reality, the unconditional lover,
Gujarātī Shāh ‘Alī, God’s favourite, God’s chosen one, the friend of God,
always in his presence, he has also stated: Climbing on the highest roof I
say everything, (really) everything is Him.
(Vajhī n.d.: 22)
It is not absolutely clear whom Vajhī refers to in this passage. The passage
could refer to the Shattārī Sufi Shaykh Vajīh al-Dīn ‘Alvi (Haidar ‘Alī Sānī)
Gujarātī (1504–89) of Ahmadabad whose malfūzāt in Persian are preserved
and could contain some Dakini verses. He was an ardent defender of his pīr
Muhammad Ghaus, but in contrast to him did not engage in yogic prac-
tices and allowed no space for non-Muslim influence in his teachings (cf.
Eaton 1978: 60–61).6 The fact that Vajhī wrote his takhallus as ‘Vajīh’ in
many places in his Persian poetry may also indicate a connection to Vajīh
al-Dīn, but this is mere speculation. Nevertheless the verse itself suggests a
Shattārī affiliation, and the overall ethos of Sab Ras reveals clear Shattārī
leanings.
Localizing the language of love and wisdom
The statement right at the outset sets the stage for the argument: love is the
guiding principle and the sole path to attain wisdom and (esoteric) knowledge,
as was to be expected given the background of the story and one of the main
principles of Sufi teachings. What is interesting here is the use of the word cātur
(Sanskrit catura: ‘clever, shrewd’) as a qualifier: Monier-Williams (1993: 386) gives
the meaning as ‘swift, quick; dexterous, clever, ingenious, shrewd’, etc. Note how
beautifully this corresponds to the meaning attached to ‘Shattārī’ as derived from
shattār for swift and to the related Urdu word shātir meaning among others ‘sharp,
clever, astute, cunning’ (Platts 1994: 717). The correspondence could hardly
be accidental. Catur will be repeated throughout the text with regard to several
characters, but in particular with reference to Husn as one of her epithets.
The concept of ‘one letter’, which is Alif, denoting Allah, the Ultimate
Reality, is a well-known trope of Persian poetry (cf. Schimmel 1984: 187, 191–192).
Similarly, the Sanskrit word a-kshara (‘imperishable, unalterable’) may also
bear esoteric meanings, referring not only to a letter or word, but also to
Shiva, Vishnu or the brahman (Monier-Williams 1993: 3). (Also think of the
brahman-ātman identity of the early Upanishads.) However, note the differ-
ence: in the Persian version, no need is felt to qualify the ‘letter’, whereas in
Dakini (Braj?) it is qualified as a letter of ‘love’ (pem).
Vajhī goes on to describe the unity/uniqueness of God as ‘vahdah, lā sharīk,
na mā̃ , na bāp, āpī̃ āp’ (‘oneness/singleness, without associate, no mother, no
father, only He alone’), (Vajhī n.d.: 1), and uses a Persian as well as an Indic
word for ‘creator’: parvardagār, sansār kā sarjanhār (ibid.: 1), which also
produces a perfect rhyme.
The majority of the abstract nouns used by Vajhī are of Persian or Arabic
origin, clearly supporting Jālibī’s statement of a growing Persian influence in
this period. In similes and images illustrating a certain point, however, the author
draws heavily on Indic elements, very often taken from everyday life, Indian
flora and fauna, etc. However, even when only pronouns and verbs are
‘Indic’, the language acquires a distinct flavour, as the following description of
the unity of all beings demonstrates: jis kī nā̃ õ khudā hai vo sab sū̃ miliyā haur
sab se judā hai (‘whose name is God, He is together with all and apart from
all’ (ibid.: 1). It is of course very difficult to find the appropriate translation
for miliyā here which may allow for different interpretations and may cover
the whole range of interpretations of wahdat al-wujūd and wahdat al-shuhūd.
In the next passage an interesting allusion to the Hindu concept of līlā as
well as to the Qur’an (6:32)7 occurs:
Sāt zamīn sāt āsmān mẽ uskā khel, jo kuch vo kare so hoe us ke hukm kū̃
kaun sake t.hel.
His play goes on in the seven worlds and seven heavens, what He does,
happens, who could stall/obstruct/disobey His command/order.
(Vajhī n.d.: 2)
The ‘seven worlds and seven heavens’ are Islamic as well as Indian concepts,
and of particular importance in the Shattārī cosmology, no doubt, and one
may well assume that not all facets of the concept of līlā as the play or acts of
God in the world or the playfulness of deities are alluded to here, yet a sense
of wilfulness and amusement may be implied.
Next comes the praise of the Prophet, of ‘Alī and of the first caliphs Abū
Bakr, ‘Umar and Usmān in the introductory verses (Vajhī n.d.: 6).8 Referring
to the Prophet’s ascension, Vajhī speaks of his perfection in gyān dhyān
(wisdom, gnosis and contemplation) (ibid.: 6).
The next passage/chapter contains the reason for the book and the tradi-
tional praise of the king. Sultān ‘Abdullāh is described with the usual epithets,
almost exclusively with phrases and comparisons taken from the Perso-Arabic
tradition, with the exception of the expression niyam dharam aur sat ke sāhib
(‘possessing/lord of self-control, religious observance/righteousness and truth
(fullness)’) (Vajhī n.d.: 7). These panegyrics are rather brief, however, and
highly conventional. What is most interesting here is the triad of niyam,
dharam and sat, which will occur time and again with reference to the differ-
ent royal characters of the story, hence it seems to be a central concept Vajhī
wants to endorse. In the Yogasūtra, niyam is described as a step in the path of
perfection. Derived from a root denoting stopping, controlling, restraining,
etc., it can have a wide variety of meanings according to the context. Thus,
with regard to statecraft it means ‘any fixed rule or law, necessity, obligation’
(quoting the Rājataranginī, Monier-Williams 1993: 552). In Vajhī’s use
apparently both concerns, spiritual as well as worldly, overlap or rather
merge. His kings embody, or are advised to follow, the three principles that
would make them into ideal, exemplary rulers, combining self-control and the
art of statecraft with transcendental wisdom. Here we may note a combination/
confluence of the Perso-Arabic tradition of adab for rulers with Indian works
on statecraft. Thus the image of the exemplary king in the Arthaśāstra
(Kautilya 1992: 144–145) that had been translated into Arabic probably in the
ninth century AD has much in common with Vajhī’s portrayal, despite the
obvious differences in the nature of the texts. Vajhī’s repeated praise of kings
which is closely linked to an exemplary performance of their duties is in
line with similar passages in the prologues of earlier Persian and Hindavī
romances (Behl 2012: 48–56).
The next passage eulogizes speech/poetic language (sukhan) and comments
on the name of the book. Vajhī praises his work to the skies and remarks that
his Sab Ras will/should generate a desire/appetite/craving (havas) for it in
everybody, and every word will create intense heat (umas) for which the work
would be remembered several hundred thousand years (ka’ī lākh baras) (Vajhī
n.d.: 9). Note the beautiful rhyme, produced here again by combining words
of different origin. The book is hailed as equal to revelation, as a source of
complete knowledge about the world and the faith, etc. (ibid.: 9). Under-
standing this book will turn the reader into a pīr-o-murshid (‘spiritual guide’)
among Muslims and a jangam sid (‘a great wandering saint’) among Hindus
(ibid.: 10). Vajhī goes on to stress: Ek kalīme kā farq hai, bāqī khudā kī vah-
dāniyat mẽ hindū haur musalmān gharq hai (‘There is only the difference of
the confession, otherwise Hindus and Muslims are equally immersed/absorbed
in the (belief in) the oneness/unity of God’).
Then he adds: Agar khudā kū̃ samje haur use īmān hove, ‘ajab kyā jo hindū
bhī musalmān hove (‘if he understands God and has faith in Him, it should
not be surprising if a Hindi could also be/become a Muslim’) (Vajhī n.d.: 10).
Vajhī claims that a story like this has never before been written with so much
eloquence, either in poetry or in prose, in ‘Hindūstān’ in the ‘Hindī’ language
(ibid.: 10). He compares the effect of this work with the breath of Jesus and
describes its merits in a number of similes, stressing, however, that the foolish
will fail to grasp its meaning (ibid.: 10). Those who do not understand are
‘blackhearted infidels’ (kāfir-i tārīk dil) (ibid.: 11). Here again he mentions the
wise/intelligent (fahīm) men from Gwalior, quoting an Arabic phrase (a‘ūdhu
bi-’llāh min al-shaytān al-rajīm – ‘God save me from the cursed Satan!’),
which is followed by kūr bhasht, kū sū̃ masht (the fool is bad/spoiled, from a
fool there is (only) silence) (ibid.: 11).
The theme of wisdom/knowledge/deeper insight is further elaborated,
making use of stock motifs such as the love of Farhād and Shīrī̃, where
Farhād is said to have cut the mountain with the axe of knowledge (dānish)
(Vajhī n.d.: 12). The search for the right path (bāt) is hard and troublesome,
one has to get blisters on one’s heart (dil ke talūyā̃ mẽ chale ānā hai) (ibid.:
12) – an interesting extension of the common Persian image/metaphor of
ābila pā’ī. Vajhī claims that his words possess a special magic, and those who
hear them will be smitten (hamārī bāt mẽ ‘ajab kuch tonā hai suniyā une ghā’il
honā hai) (ibid.: 12). Those who smell the flowers of his garden in their mind
will feel a fresh spirit in their body ( jis ke dimāgh mẽ phūl kī bās jāve gī, tāzī
arvāh tan mẽ ā’egī) (ibid: 12). He also claims that these are the words of God,
and who does not believe in them, cannot claim to be a Muslim (ibid.: 12). Of
such persons one should beware (ibid.: 13).
Vajhī then uses the word rīj (urge, desire, passion) as a term for the attrac-
tion to God, perhaps equivalent to Arabic jadhb or, somewhat weaker, shauq:
jine rīj kū̃ jalāyā, une khudā kū̃ pāyā (‘Those who kindled their desire attained/
reached/found God’) (Vajhī n.d.: 13). Only wisdom makes a human being, with-
out wisdom he is an animal (insān ya’nī gyān, jis mẽ kuch gyān naĩ vo haivān)
(ibid.: 13). However, not only knowledge is needed; feeling/heart/sympathy is as
important: be dard nā mard, mard mẽ dard, sakht be kattar vo ādmī naĩ pathar
(‘without pain means no man, a (real/true) man has pain, one who is hard and
cruel is not a man but a stone’) (ibid.: 13). Muslims without true faith are
described as follows: ba‘ze ‘ajab lokā̃ haĩ odharm uno kū̃ khudā kī bī naĩ sharm
(‘Some strange people have no dharam, they even do not feel ashamed before
God’) – if those are regarded as Muslims, how then would one describe infidels?
(ibid.: 13).
A motif of clearly Indian origin is that of the humble bee (bhãvar) who
finds pleasure by sucking the nectar of the (lotus) flowers. This deeply erotic
image of Krishna bhakti has been used by many poets, among them Dādū,
Kabīr, Hardās and Nanddās, most of them writing in Braj or related lan-
guages. In Sab Ras Vajhī states: ‘Man is a bee, he has come to take the ras of
the flower’ (Vajhī n.d.: 245).
Within lengthy reflections on attaining God by getting beyond oneself and
devoting oneself fully to the love for God, Vajhī uses an idiomatic expression
which is very common until this day: he stresses that reaching out for the final
truth needs passion and courage, because yū bī kyā khālā kā ghar hai (lit-
erally: ‘Is this your aunt’s house?’, meaning: It is not an easy matter/pushover)
(Vajhī n.d.: 20).
Contrasting the ‘ābid (‘votary, worshipper’) with the ‘āshiq (‘lover’) in a
typical Sufi manner, where the ‘ābid is on the lowest stage of the fourfold
path, Vajhī writes: ‘ābid dīn kī khātir janam khoyā hai, ’āshiq khudā khātir
dīn-o-dunyā tī hāth dhoyā hai is bāt kā kaun pāyā khoj, kahā̃ gangā telī kahān
rājā bhoj (‘The pious has lost his lot for his righteousness, the lover has for-
saken the world and the faith for God. Who has understood this, where is
Gangā9 Oilman and where King Bhoj?’) (Vajhī n.d.: 20). The legendary King
Bhoj of Malwa (eleventh century) is remembered as a great writer and patron
of learning as well as a very powerful ruler, therefore here he is contrasted
with the lowly illiterate/uneducated oilman.
Very down to earth is the wording used by Vajhī for the beloved veiling his
appearance: Ma‘shūq dīdār dikhlātā to hai vale tuk tapā kar dikhlātā hai,
ghū̃gat mẽ mū̃ chupātā hai (‘The beloved allows a glimpse, but immediately
teases by hiding the face under a veil’) (Vajhī n.d.: 20). This act of teasing, of
saying yes and no, gives a special pleasure: Hā̃ nā̃ miyāne miyā̃ ache to bahūt
s(u)vād (ibid.: 21). This, like much of ghazal poetry, could be read in a pro-
fane, sensuous, as well as a mystical sense. The word tapānā is related to the
Sanskrit tapas (heat; pain, torment), a central term in Yogic practices,
denoting pain caused by austerity, etc.
Describing an assembly at King Dil’s with wine, women, music, jesters and
storytellers, Vajhī sums up: Jis kā rāg ism hai vo ‘ishq kā jism hai is jism mẽ
‘ishq kā jān hai is jān mẽ subhān hai (‘What is called rāg is the body of love, in
this body is the life/soul of love, in this love is (God’s) glory’) (Vajhī n.d.: 33).
The use of the Indic term rāg is remarkable. Apart from the meaning
mostly referred to in modern parlance, the term may also denote ‘colour, hue,
tint; mental affection, feeling; passion; joy, delight’ (Monier-Williams 1993:
872). Hence one often encounters the coordinating compound rāg rang in
later texts. In the present context, it can be understood as ‘music’ and at the
same time, as its emotional effects: rāg mẽ ‘ajab hai tāsīr, ‘āshiq ke dil kū̃ yū̃
lagtā jū̃ tīr (‘Music has a strange effect, it hits the lover like an arrow’). This
image is then amplified: It causes running water to stand still, it stops an
animal in flight, it makes the sober drunk, makes the lover weep, and yet he
can never get enough of it (Vajhī n.d.: 34). At the end of this passage Vajhī
quotes a Persian verse on the inseparable link between music and love. The
term sarod/surūd is, however, much more limited in its semantic scope than rāg.
While explaining the special place of a king as God’s shadow on earth,
Vajhī describes a person who does not realize this as follows: Arsī hāt mẽ haur
mū̃ dekhne mẽ naĩ ātā, khīsā kamar mẽ haur naqd lene naĩ pātā … sar mẽ phūl
haur dimāgh mẽ bās naĩ ātī’ (‘He will not see his face, even when he has a
mirror in his hand, he will not get a penny, even when he has the purse bound
around his waist … he will not smell a thing though he wears flowers on his
head’ (Vajhī n.d.: 40). Kings have to be obeyed, and to serve a king is called
savāb (ibid.: 40).
Talking later about the reciprocal relationship between master and servant,
Rām is mentioned as an exemplary king who was supported by an equally
exemplary aide: Rām jaisā sāhib ā’e to hanuvant jaisā nafr paidā ho’e (‘When
a master like Rām comes, a servant like Hanuman is born/created’ (Vajhī n.d.:
134). Comparing love and devotion/worship, as is to be expected, Vajhī gives
clear precedence to the former: ‘The tavern is the Medina of love, a lover’s
worship is to look at beauty, listen to music and drink wine. What the lover
finds/gets in the tavern, the devout worshipper will not get in the Ka‘ba’ (mai
khāna ‘ishq kā madīnā hai, ‘āshiq kī ‘ibādat husn dekhnā rāg sunnā sharāb pīnā
hai. ‘āshiq jo kuch mai khāne mẽ pāyā, so ka‘ba mẽ zāhid ke hāt naĩ āyā) (ibid.:
32). Love is companionship, devotion is service. The loved ones sleep in the lap
of the Lord, servants keep standing with folded hands: Mahbūbā̃ haĩ so sāhib kī
god mẽ sote, cākarā̃ haĩ so hāt jor kar khare hote. Prayers can never be equal to
love, etc. After all, these are different stations (marātib). Finally the true station
will be revealed only on the Day of Judgement, but Vajhī repeats that the station of
the lover is the highest and then returns to the subject of wine. Wine is used in a
metaphorical sense in the following statement: ‘jū̃ haqīqat kī sharāb mẽ te
Mansūr ek qatra pī kar ana’l-haqq kahvāyā ba‘ziyā̃ ne khumā̃ khālī ki’e vale ko’ī
rāz bhār naĩ batāyā (‘After drinking one drop of the wine of truth Mans.ūr
announced, ‘I am the Truth’, several (others) emptied gallons of wine but did not
disclose any secret’) (ibid.: 32). They kept the secret to themselves, as the Prophet
did (ibid.: 33). He passed on the secret to ‘Alī Murtazā who had the capacity to
hold/absorb it: Yū samā’o yū gambhīrī unoc kū̃ sahāve, kam zarf ādmī te yū kām
kyū̃ ho āve (‘This capacity, this profundity was only his, how could a less
capacious person have mastered it’) (ibid.: 33).
In an aside Vajhī laments how difficult life is for an honest man: Khudā sab
kare vale kise bhalā ādmī na kare, apnā herā āpī khānā, apnā lahū āpī pīnā, to
dunyā mẽ bhale ādmī ho kar jīnā (‘Whatever God may do, he should not make
us an honest man. To eat one’s own flesh and drink one’s own blood, this
means living as an honest/good man in the world’) (Vajhī n.d.: 44). The idea
is underscored by a saying from the Deccan and a number of further exam-
ples and general statements on the wickedness of the world. However, even
then, quoting another saying from the Deccan: Marnā cūke nā, aisā marnā jo
ko’ī thūke nā (‘Die you must/will, but die in such a way that nobody will spit
on you’) (ibid.: 46).
Vajhī stresses that to reach God one has to purify the self instead of fight-
ing and quarrelling with others: Apas kū̃ pāk kar khudā sū̃ anparne mẽ hunar
hai na logā sū̃ larne haur jhagarne mẽ hunar hai (Vajhī n.d.: 113).
Verse forms in the text

Verses, usually only single couplets, are scattered throughout the text, many of
them in Persian, occasionally also with the name of the poet, but all ‘Indic’
couplets are quoted without naming a source. Most of them were probably
composed by Vajhī, but even where he introduces them as quotations, he does
not give a source. It is quite possible that these verses, too, are his own.
Some of the ‘Indic’ verses are introduced as dohā or dohrah, a term
obviously derived from the Indian poetic tradtion but acquiring its own form
in Dakini and later in modern Urdu. Dohās are one of the prominent verse
forms in Ibrāhīm’s Kitāb-i Nau Ras and were a popular vehicle for the
expression of spiritual or moral teachings. See the following examples: sāt
sahel ek piyo caundhar piyo piyo hoe // jis par piyo kā pyār hai so dhan bar li
koe (‘Seven friends (= the Seven Sisters/Pleiades), everywhere calling out for
the beloved // who is loved by the beloved will take away the riches/will be
rewarded’) (Vajhī n.d.: 20).
Another verse (bait) in Dakini: Dīn-o-dunyā kī khūbī bhī niyam aur dhar(a)m
hai // īmā̃ kī nishānī sū̃ mard kū̃ sharm hai (‘Order and moral conduct are the
good of faith and worldly life // faith instils in man the sense of shame’) (Vajhī
n.d.: 47), is followed by a hadīth of the same meaning (ibid.: 48).
After quoting a hadīth on the subject of patience, Vajhī adds the following
dohrah: Dhartī miyāne rīc dhar bīj bikhar kar bo’e // mālī sī̃ce sar khara rut ā’ẽ
phal ho’e (‘After sowing the seeds in the ground with much desire/love/pleasure
// the gardener waters them, the sprouts shoot up, when the season comes they
bear fruit’) (Vajhī n.d.: 172).
Another dohrah is again related to Gwalior: jā̃ lagan gvāliyar ke haĩ gunī,
uno te bī yo bāt sunī: dohrah: jin kū̃ darsan it hai tin kū̃ darshan ut // jinkū̃
darsan it nahī̃ tin kū̃ it nah ut’ (‘As regards the worthy (men) from Gwalior, we
have heard from them as well: Who have a vision/sighting here, they will also
have it there // who does not see a thing here, will see it neither here nor
there’) (Vajhī n.d.: 227). The context here is the role of majaz (the worldly,
profane) in reaching God and the path from the outward/visible (zāhir) to the
inward (bātin).
In Husn’s garden we find the only ghazal of the text (Vajhī n.d.: 91–92).
Interestingly, it is spoken by a female lover who addresses her sahelī (ibid.:
91). The verbs have female endings. The overall diction is much more Indic
than Persianate, echoing the viraha motif (ibid.: 92). It is followed by another
passage on the irrestiable power of love (ibid.: 92–95). It may easily be seen as
representing an episode from a bārahmāsā like that of Manjhan’s Madhumā-
latī. Here Vajhī states that ‘ashiq and ma‘shūq are two different names, but in
fact both share the same features and the same fate (ibid.: 93). This, of course,
is a view contrary to that of the ghazal universe with its clear-cut roles for
lover and beloved. It thus seems to be nearer to a Sufi concept of love which
regards God as a lover who created the world out of love.
Conclusion
Sab Ras was written for a royal patron, ostensibly not with the aim of
instruction or indoctrination but for aesthetic pleasure and entertainment. It
followed the established pattern of narrative texts and made ample use of Sufi
themes, metaphors and similes which had become stock motifs of Persian
poetry. The text should be regarded predominantly as a literary (belles-lettres)
rather than a doctrinal treatise, although allegorical meaning cannot be
denied and discussions on Sufi concepts abound. Jālibī explicitly calls it the first
‘literary’ (adabī) prose text of Urdu whereas all previous prose texts were of a
‘religious nature’ (‘mazhabī nau‘iyat’) and devoid of literary qualities (Jālibī
1984: 443). Hence, a good deal of the lengthy introductory passages preceding
the story serves to demonstrate the author’s eloquence, a feature we can trace
until the beginning of the twentieth century in printed dāstān versions.
Cumulative amplification is his favourite rhetorical device throughout. The
use of rhyme is an essential component of the sound quality of the text which
was in all probability meant to be recited rather than read silently. It would
perhaps be interesting to analyse how far the author made use of poetic
licence, whether he deviated from central Sufi doctrines for the sake of aes-
thetic effects, and how close he remained to the Persian sources. None of this
could be attempted in the present study.
Sab Ras and contemporary Dakini works mark the zenith of Dakini as a
literary language. In Vajhī’s works one discerns an orientation beyond the
Deccan which was, however, to find acceptance in the north only in the first
decades of the twentieth century. Until then, the literary history of Urdu
started with Valī Aurangābādī (1667–1720/25). Vajhī’s language bears a clear
Persianate stamp,10 and his overall leanings appear to be more toward the
kind of Sufi spirituality and beliefs of Shāh Vajīh al-Dīn ‘Alvī than those of
Muhammad Ghaus, clearly influenced by his connection with the court and
its, as well as his own, libertine ways. His diction is less ‘Indic’ in vocabulary
and themes than, for instance, that of Qulī Qutb Shāh. He discusses some
central Sufi doctrines in a colloquial manner, but these remain on a general,
theoretical plane. There is no mention of Sufi practices such as meditation or
austerity, corresponding with the overall worldly outlook of the text. Many of
the themes discussed by him are part of adab or akhlāq literature. It is
important to note, however, that wherever he refers to Sufis as ‘wise men’ he
adds geographical indications pointing towards Gwalior or Gujarat, thus
stressing that his text is grounded in Indian Sufi traditions.
It is obvious that Vajhī tried his best to provide legitimacy to the king and
his libertine lifestyle, using all the common motifs of Sufi origin which
became staples of the Urdu ghazal, most centrally the celebration of love as
superior to reason and ritualistic religiosity. His argumentation is not sys-
tematic and rigorous but rather meandering, often circular. He takes up cen-
tral concepts of Sufi doctrines, perhaps also as part of ongoing debates
between different Sufi schools of thought. Most of the topics are taken up
again and again, with a great amount of redundance. One may wonder whe-
ther the discussion moves in circles on the same level or there is any upward
movement in a kind of spiral way, reflecting the concentric circles of the
Shattārī cosmology. We have no reports to ascertain how contemporary
audiences received the work, but one can safely say that the storyline was
known to the educated public and the way and manner of telling the story
was probably more important than the story itself. Vajhī certainly wanted to
exhibit his mastery of language and his erudition. Whether he really overdid
it, whether his digressions are really out of proportion, is hard to judge from
our modern (and more so from a Western) perspective.
A good deal of information is available about debates, controversies and
power struggles between different Sufi orders of the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries in Ahmadabad, Bijapur and at the Mughal seats of
power: the role of Sufis in conflicts between different contenders for worldly
power is also well documented for those regions. The situation with regard to
Sufi contestations in Golkonda in the first decades of the 1600s and the rela-
tionship between Sufis and the court, however, deserve further research. Poets
with a connection to Sufi saints and Sufi teachings may have functioned as a
kind of interface between the shrines or saints proper and the wordly ambi-
ence of the court. We can safely assume that Vajhī like his rival Ghavvāsī
served not only as entertainer and courtier but also as emissary in diplomatic
and other missions. In any case Sab Ras is a clear specimen of the use of the
prestige of Sufi ideas and Sufi saints for the legitimization of a ruler.
Sab Ras marks a transition from the Indic ambience of earlier Sufi romances
in Avadhī and Hindavī that drew heavily on Indian folk tales and Indian
poetic forms to a more distinctly Persianate template of characters and central
concepts. Nevertheless, it also displays a deliberate fusion of Arabic and Per-
sian terminology and quotations with very down-to-earth and often idiomatic
explications in Dakini and builds bridges to Indian concepts of spriritual per-
fection, statecraft, morality and general wisdom. This may point to a dichot-
omy between an elitist discourse in highly Persianized ornamental rhymed
prose and illustrating verses in more colloquial Dakini, or one may even say
Hindavī, which could be or become part of a more popular devotional cul-
ture. Shamatov estimated the ratio of words of Persian and Arabic origin in
Sab Ras as 53–57%, which is much higher than his estimate for Qutb Mush-
tarī at 25–40% (Shamatov 1974: 198). While this may point to growing
Persianization of the language, it is certainly also due to the abundance of
Sufi themes in the text. The fact that for Ibrāhīm ‘Ādil Shāh’s Kitāb-i Nau Ras
Shamatov gives a ratio of 5–10% of Perso-Arabic elements, substantiates the
conclusion that thematic content was a decisive factor for language choices.11
The Indic element is strongest in some verses and illustrating similes,
otherwise it consists mostly of pronouns and verbs. In this way the work can
be regarded as a link between elitist court and Sufi culture on the one hand
and more popular devotional culture on the other. Many of the verses in Sab
Ras are similar to older verses composed in Gujarat by Sufi poets such as
Shaykh Bahā’ al-Dīn ‘Bājan’ (1388–1506?) and Shāh Burhān al-Dīn ‘Jānam’
(d. 1582?), who used Indian metres and forms such as gīt and dohrah in
poetry for Sufi musical sessions (jikrī) (cf. Jālibī 1984: 107–110, 209–210).
They could well have become part of a standard repertoire of Sufi music
which spread all over the Deccan.
Vajhī’s work combines a pronounced (linguistic) Dakini identity with Isla-
mic and non-Islamic Hindustani (north Indian) wisdom traditions, with Per-
sian verses and sayings as well as the Arabic souces of Islam, Koran and hadīth.
While being firmly grounded in the Deccan and particularly in Golconda,
Vajhī lays claim to the literary, cultural and spiritual repository of India as a
whole and of the wider Islamic world, thus expressing a very localized as well
as cosmopolitan sense of belonging. His multilingual text was composed for
an equally multilingual audience that was able to appreciate and enjoy his
multiple acts of translation – literal translations of non-Dakini sequences and
their cultural translation into images and concepts with an Indian back-
ground and Indian associations. He created a shared space of widely accep-
table views and values, avoiding sectarian and doctrinarian disputes,
entertaining courtly connoisseurs while simultaneously confirming religious
authorities and sanctioning the power of the king.
Notes
1 Masnavī: poetic form with rhyming couplets, used for long poems on a variety of
subjects.
2 For detailed descriptions of architecture and garden architecture under the Qutb
Shāhīs and their general lifestyle, see Husain (2000).
3 See Ernst (1999) for a more detailed account of his life.
4 For a detailed discussion of Madhumālatī see Behl (2012: 218–285).
5 For a detailed discussion of the problems of translating a work on hatha yoga into
an Islamicate idiom and of the transcription of Sanskrit terms, see Ernst (2003:
205–211, 218–225).
6 For details about Vajīh al-Dīn’s life and teachings and his relation to Muhammad
Ghaus, see Kugle (2007: 166–172).
7 ‘The life of the World is nothing but play and pleasurable distraction’ (quoted from
Kugle 2007: 185).
8 Haqq tells us in a footnote that these verses are absent from the second manu-
script. In Vajhī’s earlier work, Qutb Mushtarī, the praise of God, of the Prophet
and of ‘Alī is much more elaborate, covering several pages, but there is no mention
of the first three caliphs.
9 In modern usage, the name of the oilman is Gangū.
10 Jālibī has discussed the process of ‘Persianization’ in detail, albeit in a sometimes
rather tendentious manner, regarding it as a teleology of refinement and purification
(cf. Jālibī 1984: 394–592).
11 Shamatov arrived at a figure of 53% Perso-Arabic lexicon for his corpus of texts,
spanning the period from the early fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth–
beginning of the eighteenth centuries, and interpreted this relatively high ratio as a
result of the predominantly didactic nature of the texts, but remarked that lan-
guage choices depend first of all on specifics of genre and style as well as on the
cultural politics or literary school of a given time (Shamatov 1974: 197).
16 Sufism in Bengali wa‘z mahfils
Max Stille
Situating Sufism and sermons

The ‘conceptual space’ (Tschacher 2009: 58) of discussing Sufism is influ-
enced by many discourses. These include orientalist stereotypes and knowl-
edge, interlinked phenomena of religiosity in various parts of the world,
nationalist arguments about the place of religion and religious groups, and
of course media discourse. Interlinked with the scholarly and literary tra-
dition that focuses on poetry and mystical-philosophical writings, as well as
stereotypes about music and dance, Sufism came to be viewed as liberal
and individualistic Islam, by Muslims looking for new – and even ‘secular’ –
interpretations of Islam, or by non-Muslims joining in universal mysticism
(Scholz and Stille 2014). This view is often juxtaposed with another, more
‘orthodox’ (reformist, salafist, wahhābī, etc.) Islam, to which connotations
such as strict, belligerent, law abiding, political, etc. are ascribed.1 Of course,
these outward images are again taken up in the self-positioning of Sufi
groups.
While it was often seen as narrowing, ‘mysticism’ provided the conceptual
basis for a more scholarly approach. In 1968, Clifford Geertz notes that ‘[t]he
whole process, the social and cultural stabilization of Moroccan marabout-
ism, is usually referred to under the rubric of “Sufism”; but like its most
common gloss in English, “mysticism”, this term suggests a specificity of
belief and practice which dissolves when one looks at the range of phenom-
ena to which it is actually applied’ (Geertz 1968: 48). Annemarie Schimmel’s
classic study Mystical Dimensions of Islam (1975) highlights mysticism as a
category, but largely refrains from tracing its implications. At present, the
scholarly pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Against the back-
ground of the increasing questioning of the transfer of ‘Western’ concepts to
non-European contexts in general and the use of the term mysticism as a
marker for Sufism in particular, Nile Green proposes to move the con-
ceptualization of Sufism ‘from mysticism to tradition’.2 He problematizes
mysticism’s emphasis on the inexpressible, spontaneous, individual and
‘emphatic now’ (Green 2012b: 6):
Sufism in Bengali wa‘z mahfils 295
Mystical reports do not merely indicate the post-experiential description
of an unreportable experience in the language closest at hand. Rather, the
experiences themselves are inescapably shaped by prior linguistic influ-
ences such that the lived experience conforms to a pre-existent pattern
that has been learned, then intended, and then actualized in the experiential
reality of the mystic.
(Green 2012b: 4–5)
Green proposes to analyse Sufism as a tradition, thereby emphasizing the role

of ‘external’ authorities and of non-spontaneous and non-individualistic
aspects of Sufism, as well as the importance of a perpetual relationship to the
past. This would allow ‘for the accumulative character of Sufism through its
gradual emergence as a multi-generational cultural product that emerges in
time’ (Green 2012b: 6).
Green certainly takes up many of the problematic juxtapositions mentioned
initially, and rightly questions the self-declared limits ‘common to mystic
parlance’ (Harder 2011: 310). Also the proposed emphasis on the interaction
with the past can only be supported. It seems, however, that Green’s use of
terms such as experience, tradition, now or individual does not take into
account their situatedness within hermeneutical tradition and that the study
of Sufism can profit from reflecting on them.
We might recall that the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer
emphasizes the embeddedness of the experience of art in the continuity of
human experience [Erfahrung] instead of a discontinuous rapture [Erlebnis],
thus necessarily entwining experience with tradition and not reducing it to
an ‘emphatic now’, as an experience is constituted precisely by the media-
tion of different layers of time. When it comes to analysing Sufi expressions,
we can draw on the work of later scholars who have applied Gadamer’s con-
cept of the time structure of understanding to the reception of literary
works, analysing in particular how an artwork builds on the specific
expectations of its recipients which are shaped by prior (literary and non-
literary) experiences.3 According to this perspective, the ineffable sub-
jectivization of artistic, and I think also mystic, expression – which Green
presupposes in his dismissal of the mystical experience – has to be questioned.
While there might be aspects of experience that are confined to the individual,
and while Sufi traditions certainly try to create the impression that they are,
the contention here is that many aspects of verbal utterances can indeed be
analysed. Processes of reception of mystical texts also share in the general
interplay between the subject and the object. Green himself echoes these
thoughts when he writes that the mystic ‘actualizes’ a ‘pre-existent pattern’ of
experience. While this actualization of prefigured textual structures4 also
includes each recipient’s specific horizon of expectation, they may nevertheless
be analysed in respect to the experience they envisage. In this way, for exam-
ple, varying attitudes of recipients to literary or religious figures may be
discerned.5
296 Max Stille
That Green dismisses experience as purely subjective and therefore not
investigable seems to be linked to his understanding of the concept of
‘expression’. However, we might follow Gadamer in not thinking about
expression as the expression of a subjective ineffable interior, but rather return
to the rhetorical root of the term. The term’s ‘dominant aspect [was] that of
communication and communicability – i.e., it is a question of finding the
expression. But to find the expression means to find an expression that aims
at making an impression’ (Gadamer 2004: 503).6
Discussions relating specifically to a major field of Islamic expression –
Islamic sermons – are equally confronted with the conceptual issues sketched
so far. First, some differentiation must be made between different kinds of
Islamic sermons. The sermons dealt with here (wa‘z) are taking place outside
ritual time and space, as opposed to the formal Friday sermon (khutba)
inside the mosques. With fewer legal restrictions and a wider time frame, this
genre has overlapped with storytelling traditions ever since its inception. Also,
due to the popularity of topics such as the fleetingness of the world and the focus
on the day of judgement, it was observed that in the Middle East ‘the tradi-
tion of popular preaching and storytelling became, over the medieval period,
increasingly intertwined with Sufism’ (Berkey 2001: 20). It nevertheless seems
challenging to determine the precise nature of this interlinkage.
A study of Egyptian ‘cassette sermons’ of the 1990s mentions that ‘[p]ara-
doxically, while the da‘wa movement has often adopted the anti-Sufi rhetoric
of salafī-modernist trends, the techniques of social discipline it has facilitated
have privileged ethical and affective dispositions historically linked to Islam’s
more mystical variants’ (Hirschkind 2006: 121–122). The paradox here seems
to be between an ‘anti-Sufi rhetoric’ yielding in ‘affective dispositions’ vaguely
linked to Sufism. In the following, however, the author describes as ‘affective
dispositions’ – not rhetoric! – the employment of zikr and ‘Sufi poetry’ within
the sermons. It is thus similar in perspective to a more historical study which
shows that the famous Arabic wa‘z preacher of the twelfth century, Ibn al-
Jawzī, has likewise been an ideological critic of what he deemed excesses of
Sufism (Hartmann 1987: 360), while at the same time using (allegedly Sufi)
love poetry to stimulate the masses in his sermons. She mentions that in order
to explain this seeming paradox, al-Jawzī made an argument about the func-
tioning of sermons which would lie not in thinking (fikr), but in the religious
practice of commemorating God (zikr), a practice central to Sufism (Hart-
mann 1986: 161). Without specifying how exactly they would do it, Hart-
mann offers the interesting thought that the sermons, by means of quoting
love poetry and the like, might work as a substitute for mystical states as well
as for drama (Hartmann 1987: 366).
Both authors seem to rely on the premise that there is a specific ‘Sufi’ and
‘anti-Sufi’ rhetoric which is independent of the theological position of the
respective preachers and even of the effect the sermons have. However, besides
the quotation of love poetry, there are no specific instances for both Sufi and
anti-Sufi rhetoric. How to treat such single elements of speech? How to deal
with instances of chanting that are reported from al-Jawzī’s time,7 and which
certainly are part and parcel of the sermons described in this chapter? Are
they instances of Sufi audition (samā‘)? Similarly, what does it imply when
wa‘z features the abovementioned commemoration of God (zikr), which has,
as mentioned above, been included in sermons mediated by cassettes or tele-
vision in Egypt (Hirschkind 2006: 122; Wise 2003), and which is a prominent
means for eliciting collective response in the sermons considered here?
While one cannot underestimate the effects of such practices and direct
audience involvement, one might ask whether they suffice to label the whole
sermon Sufi, as has been claimed (Wise 2003: 73). These instances might not
belong to any group, but be general aspects of the communicational frame-
work of the genre. Here, the framework established by reception theory of
differentiating between a general horizon of experience and the role of the
work therein will prove useful.
This chapter inquires into a specific genre of supererogatory Islamic sermon
gatherings taking place in the late evenings in contemporary Bangladesh,
called wa‘z mahfils (henceforth abbreviated as WM). As their name and
timing indicate, they stand in the above-described tradition of wa‘z as in that
of the mahfil, the musical and poetic gathering.
Let us mention some overt ritual and theological affinities of the WM genre
to Sufism. Next to the abovementioned instances of poems, songs, chanting
and zikr, it seems relevant that the WM are, as opposed to the mandatory
Friday sermon, a purely supererogatory activity. To put it in a slightly exag-
gerated way, one could say that Friday sermons are related to the ritual
Friday prayer (salāt) as the WM are to the supplicatory prayer (du‘ā’). The
supererogatory nature (surpassing the purely obligatory) and the individual
supplication and intimate communication with God already indicate Sufi
affinities. The prayer at the sermon’s end and the narratives jointly work
towards eliciting an emotional response on the side of the listeners, a climax
which could even lead to perceiving the whole sermon as an extended prayer,
which promises salvific gains (sawāb) to the listeners.8 For the success of this
collective endeavour, calling upon the Prophet, and sometimes other holy
figures, plays a decisive role, as they are believed to intercede for their
community – i.e. also the listeners.
We will learn more below about rhetorical techniques to conjure up the
presence of these figures. Here it should suffice to mention a ritual aspect of
this presence which is also decisive for group identity: in some WM the pre-
sence of the Prophet is ritually acknowledged by the audience standing up
(qiyām), while prayers and blessings are evoked for Muhammad (durūd). This
practice and the joyful mood of many WM corresponds to the mawlid tradi-
tion (Katz 2007).9 In addition to durūd and qiyām, many WM also share with
the mawlid tradition and Sufi practices the joint meal after the sermons
(tabarruk) (Katz 2007: 136). All in all, salvation, intimacy and presence are
interlinked in the setting of the mahfil as the court (darbār, another Sufi term)
of God (Pernau 2011; Taneja 2012). It is thus no coincidence that the term
298 Max Stille
mīlād mahfil is often employed as a synonym for WM, which can be held not
only on the Prophet’s birthday but at any auspicious occasion. These practices
already point to group-specific differences in the field of Islamic groups in
contemporary Bangladesh as the narrative techniques as well as the corre-
sponding ritual are addressed in what seem to be stable discourses of con-
troversy,10 having become a point of demarcation between the Deobandi and
Barelwi schools of South Asian Sunni Islam.
The reflections on Sufism as a general term and the argument for not dis-
carding experience as an analytical category have shown that it is con-
ceptually possible to see expressions in the field of Islamic sermons as
prefiguring experiences that include the individual recipient, the moment of
reception and the horizon of experience (tradition). It is beyond the scope of
this chapter to go through all of the implications and aspects in relation to a
genre that has not yet even been described in scholarship. The chapter merely
tries to sketch entry points to questions such as: On which levels is it possible
to discern expressions that can be posited in Sufi traditions? How do these
experiences relate to experience? How does the usage of these expressions
map to theological positions in the field? In what ways do the expressions of
different actors build on joint horizons of experience in the genre and at the
same time prefigure different experiences?
In order to approach these questions, we will analyse sermons of three
major poles within the discursive ‘arena’ of Bengali Islam (Harder 2011:
Chapter 8) and WM, that are linked to different institutions. The first are the
Islamic colleges modelled after the Islamic seminary in Deoband, called komī
mādrāsās in Bangladesh (derived from qawmī, as they rely on the community
and not the state, henceforth abbreviated as KM). The second is a Sufi order
(abbreviation SO, here represented by the sermon of its current head (Karim
2012). As a third entity, we consider sermons of a preacher of the Jama‘at-e
Islami (abbreviated as JI), the largest Islamic party in Bangladesh, presently
banned.
As in South Asia in general and in Bangladesh in particular, these groups
are neither exclusive nor separate from each other: the head of the SO, for
example, is also the founder of several KM11 and a small political party, and
the listening habits of recipients may include sermons of different actors
without even knowing their precise background. Nevertheless, the three posi-
tions do form discursive fields stable enough for our purpose here (cf. Harder
2011: 298).
We will start by approaching the WM from the outside, analysing the
framing of sermons in the SO and KM. Then we will turn to the role of tra-
dition by comparing the fluctuation of topoi within the sermons of a preacher
of the JI, as well as comparing differences in his employment of the topoi vis-
à-vis the one found in SO. In a next step, we will look at explicit mutual
delimitations of the groups by means of satire and parody. In all three
instances we will discuss expressions of mystical experience that are important
to the actors, whether positively valued or criticized. The last step will suggest
a means to gain access to experiential differences by analysing narrative and
vocal techniques which are important in bringing about the presence of and
identification with holy figures, and thus the divine.
Raising expectations by framing the sermons

How are the sermons of these groups introduced to the listeners? Before the
actual sermon is held, the listeners are already directed to certain expectations
by prior announcements, for example by posters put up in the vicinity of
mosques or other public places. While the design of these posters is quite
uniform for all WM – simple but attention-grabbing letters announcing the
main speakers and special guests of the sermon, often arranged in general
‘Islamic’ shapes such as minarets, stars, arches, etc. – the naming of the event
and the slogans printed in the margins of the posters convey information
about the group organizing it. Those WM organized at KM can be recog-
nized by the names of the hosting institution and the titles of the present
notables, which differ from the religious schools supervised and financed by
the state; similarly, a Sufi shrine as location is a reliable indicator of the
ideological background of the congregation in the case of SO. Additionally,
specific slogans are often placed at the top of the poster which convey certain
information about the group: ‘oh Messenger’ (yā rasūl Allāh), for example, is
an indicator that the group performs qiyām and is thus to be counted among
the ‘Sufi’ groups (Sanyal 1998: 642), while the posters do not have such slo-
gans when the sermon is organized by the KM or the JI. In the latter case, the
organizing committees (‘Islamic benefactory committee’, etc.) are specifically
mentioned. Here, the appearance of posters varies according to the space
given to it by the government.12
Next to this framing of the sermon before its onset, there are also framings
during the WM itself. As a succession of speakers performs in a WM, there
are opportunities for short oral performances preceding or following each
sermon. Already descriptions of wa‘z gatherings from as early as twelfth-
century Iraq testify to the effort and effect of the framing of Qur’anic recita-
tions prior to sermons.13 In contemporary Bangladesh, such framings also
encompass songs in praise of the Prophet, slogans pertaining to the respective
groups, and the recitation of hadith. In religious schools, it is often students
who get a chance to show their skills, as do adherents of a Sufi order at
gatherings at Sufi shrines. To what extent do the songs, like the posters, build
on and re-emphasize institutional boundaries? Let us examine the example of
two songs sung at congregations of different groups.
The first example is a song that was performed during the WM of the SO.
It was introduced as ‘Islamic song of the love for God’ (eshker gajal), and was
sung to a popular melody known from various Islamic and folk songs:
The love for the Lord (Mawlā), the love’s play is not understood but by
the lover (‘āshiq)
300 Max Stille
I do not care whether it’s day or night, crazy [as I am] for the Lord
With which worship do I reach you, tell me, Lord, where shall I go?
I will remain infused with your light [tomār nūre]
Give me an address
Burning in the pain of separation from the Lord
It is not possible to bear
It is not possible to utter
Waiting, life doesn’t move on
Please do something
Having drunk the potion of love I get lost in you
Take up this downtrodden one
I can’t bear this life.
(Karim 2012: 5:13 mins)
The song seems to express typical mystic ideas and topoi such as explicitly
thematizing the limits of understanding of those who do not tread the Sufi
path and the inexpressibility of the experience. It incorporates many topoi of
Sufi songs prevalent in contemporary Bangladesh,14 such as love’s play
(Harder 2011: 244–249), madness, and the bodily pain of the lover, particu-
larly the pain of separation, stylistically culminating in the address to the
beloved, thus sharing in the specific forms of expression of Bengali Sufism. Its
melody is that of a very popular religious folk song by Abdul Alim (1931–74),
‘I have high hopes that I’ll go to Medina’. We could thus conclude that the
song sets the tone for a gathering that includes Bengali Sufi and folk tradi-
tions, a gathering which culminates in a long zikr session. As we will see later,
the following sermon also builds on and extends the specific ‘dialectic of lure
and withdrawal’ (Urban 1998: 235) of public announcements of mystic
‘truths’.
Let us now have a look at a song presented during a WM of the Hefazat-e
Islam, a movement publicizing and politicizing the concerns of the KM. It
is performed by a student trio and is modelled not on folk songs, but on songs
of mostly leftist mobilization (jāgaraner gān). The chorus of the song parallels
the chorus of a popular communist song (‘Guerrilla, we are Guerrilla’),
except that it uses the school’s name (al-Farooq), to become ‘Al-Farooq, we
are al-Farooq’. The other lines, which are sung alternately with the chorus, are:
We are a swarm of birds in the universe of melodies

Filling this world with melodies
We came with the true message
To enlighten, holding tight to the source
Stopping injustice and misjudgement
Destroying all the oppressed’s [majlūm] worries
Our strategy is the way of the Qur’an
We don’t accept any obstacle or difference in opinion
If there come hundreds of hindrances and hundreds of menacing roars
After we stamp over them with our feet, what will remain?
Having fought on the battlefield of jihad we become immortal
On the path of Allah lies life’s worth
When the blood’s price will increase in a storm
Then the life of the Prophet’s companions will be with us.
(Recording, Moulbhibazar, March 14, 2014)
The choice of examples thus far may be seen to support stereotypes of

peaceful and inward-oriented Sufis who contemplate their love for the divine,
and politics-oriented ‘Islamists’ who preach a potentially violent version of
religion. The main point here, however, was to show that the framing of the
sermons guides the listeners’ expectations and situates the congregation in a
continuity of expression and impression. The melody of the songs situates
them in clearly discernible traditions with very different attitudes to the divine,
truth and political action. The texts link to different gestures of interpretation
and language.
In the case of the SO, the song hints at the limits of understanding of the
divine mystery as well as the limits of its communicability. It describes the
experiential state of the lyrical I in some detail, but at the same time denies
knowing how to find the divine, hinting at the possibility of experiencing the
divine which simultaneously eludes the seeker. While we must take notice of
the fact that the WM at the KM is also a competition in declamation, evok-
ing moods rather than pursuing concrete political goals,15 it is conspicuous
that the song at the WM of the Hefazat-e Islam claims a transparency of
language and truth, however utopian and ambiguous it might be in the end
(the Qur’an might not be a clear ‘strategy’). Such an interpretational attitude,
seeking to avoid ambiguity, can be found in other interpretations of poems
presented during the specific WM as well (Stille 2014: 108–109). So while we
find more ambiguous songs performed at KM and the Sufi song tradition
itself includes a more didactic strand next to the more lyrical strand (Harder
2011: 169–170), there seems to be a tendency that does justify speaking of
differences in raising audience expectations for what is to come.
Fluctuating Sufism and anti-Sufism

To complicate things a little further, let us consider variations in the employ-
ment of Sufi topoi that may occur even among the sermons of the same
preacher, and may be connected to other arenas than those sketched thus far.
In a recording from 1987, a preacher of the JI who has been a pioneer in
mediatization criticizes communists, the military government of the time, and
other Islamic parties. The sermon is openly political in its narration, and does
not refer to Sufism explicitly. At the same time, the preacher quotes Persian,
Urdu and Bengali poems,16 which are situated in a framework of the Prophet
being present as the mediator of blessing and the preferred access to Allah –
in other words, closely related to what we discerned as ‘Sufi’ concepts. He also
302 Max Stille
emphatically includes several durūd for the Prophet, and at the sermon’s end
performs qiyām (Sayeedi 2014).17
While maintaining the general spatial imagination of the WM being situ-
ated at God’s court, the same preacher avoided overt Sufi citations at the
sermon’s beginning and end during a sermon he held in 1999.18 Most impor-
tantly, he no longer performed qiyām. The narrative sections were much less
like political speech than they had been in 1987. Rather, they included criti-
cism of many aspects of Sufism: the accusation that people would perform
sajda (the ritual prostration) at shrines and graves as well as criticizing
‘superstitious’ practices such as the blessing of water. As will be explained in
the section on satire below, the JI preacher also mocks the word ‘fakir’ itself.
At the same time, however, he tries to claim many ‘Sufi’ aspects of Islam for
himself. To accomplish this double task, the preacher refers to the Arabic
term tasawwuf, a term unusual in the context of Bengal and quite likely a
re-translation from the English term Sufism: ‘Tasawwuf is a great issue. A
holy issue. This issue has fallen prey to business. Since the conception of the
unity of God is unclear, polytheism and unlawful innovation have increased’
(Sayeedi 2013: 13:36 mins).
Furthermore, on the level of narrative content, the preacher dwells on many
‘Sufi’ topoi. One section, for example, is dedicated to the absolute dependence
on God (tawakkul), foregrounding the close and benevolent aspect of God in
reference to one of the most often quoted Qur’anic verses in Sufi tradition:
Allah the pure says [Q2:186 in Arabic]: ‘And when My servants question
thee concerning Me, then surely I am nigh’. When the servant calls Me – to
call Allah, he doesn’t need a microphone to call Me, he doesn’t need a
telephone to call Me, he doesn’t need a mobile to call Me, he doesn’t
need to call out loud. Allah the pure says: When the servant calls me, then
I am very close to him … I am very close. How close? [Q50:16 in Arabic]
‘and We are nearer to him than his jugular vein’.
(Sayeedi 2013: 45:50 mins)
Are we then caught in the paradox between Sufi and anti-Sufi as Hartmann
described it? Let us have a closer look at the employment of the topoi in
order to disentangle processes of appropriation and reconfiguration. Accord-
ing to the preacher of the JI, tawakkul implies that one should be fearless,
also politically. He sees belief as training to gain ‘self-respect’ (ātmamaryādā),
which he in turn juxtaposes with a ‘minority complex’ (ātmahīnatā). This can
be juxtaposed with the SO preacher, who envisages the ‘cleansing of the soul’
(ātmaśuddhi). Despite the presence of the topos of tawakkul and its ‘psycho-
logical’ dimension in both sermons, we thus find an underlying difference: the
head of the SO refers to the concept of the ‘polishing of the soul’ (tazkiyat al-
nafs), a term known from Sufi adoptions of Neoplatonic mystical terminol-
ogy, while the JI preacher refers to self-respect, a topic that rather stems from
the anti-colonial context.19 His specific configuration of the Sufi topos allows
the JI preacher to turn the strengthened self against the intermediate Sufi
authority and representative democracy alike:
Therefore, the first teaching that belief – the belief in Allah! – the first
teaching of that belief is that I cannot bend my head. It is a matter of my
self-respect system that I am not the slave of any minister on earth. No
president’s slave. Not the slave of any pīr (Sufi spiritual guide) or great
scholar. Not a slave of any human. I am only the slave of whom? Say it
loudly! – Of Allah!
(Sayeedi 2013: 20:26 mins)
Similarly, the JI preacher explicitly warns against pride (ahankār) and says
that the real believer is to be humble (nirahankār, binay, binimra). However,
he does so with reference to science: only Allah has the power over life and
death, etc., not human medicine or the like. The SO preacher, on the other
hand, depicts pride as a major ‘disease of the mind’ and situates it with
reference to the all-time favourite of Sufi narratives, the ur-story of pride in
Islamic legends, the fall of Satan. Because of the sickness of megalomania
(takabburī) Satan ‘didn’t follow [the Lord’s] order and even started arguing
with the Lord’ (Karim 2012: 48:26 mins).
It seems important here that when retelling the story, the SO preacher not
only refers to a story championed by Sufi tradition, but also includes ways of
narration that show perspective alignment with those suffering from the dis-
ease of takabbur. This supports feeling with the sinner, even if it is Satan,
whose perspective is taken over at least for the short time of the narration
citing his arrogant thought, ‘I am good, I am great’ (Karim 2012: 48:16
mins). To express the ambivalent configuration within the individual, the
preacher also takes up a stylistic device common in Bengali Sufi songs, the
address to the mind (man).20 He does so as the person who wants to be cured
of the ‘disease’ of acting ostentatiously and who ‘explains to the mind: “Oh
mind, if people talk well about me, this doesn’t matter. If they talk badly, it
doesn’t matter to me!”’ (Karim 2012: 1:01:35 hrs).
Sufi topoi are thus by no means limited to sermons of the SO. They can
increase and decrease over time, in interdependence with other positions
within the same arena, and, as the ‘communists’ as adversaries in the political
arena showed, in overlapping arenas as well. It seems that shortly before the
movement for the restoration of democracy in Bangladesh, with the govern-
ment, communists and other Islamic parties as opponents, Sufism was of no
particular importance to the JI preacher. His rhetoric of simultaneous inclu-
sion and rejection focused on communism. During the second democratically
elected government after 1990, this situation changed: Sufi beliefs were appro-
priated and transformed into action-instilling categories. In other words, put
before different horizons of expectation and underlying semantic nets, the same
topos was shown to prefigure different experiences, with different attitudes to
action. One factor of this prefiguration is narrative form.
304 Max Stille
Self-positioning in satire and parody
While we will return to such an etic perspective on topoi and narration, let us
now look at ascriptions of positions made by the actors themselves as we
found them in the framing of the sermons. The most explicit positioning of
different groups vis-à-vis the others that we find in WM is of a satirical
nature. Criticism of pīrs and popular Sufism is certainly not new in Bangla-
desh, and builds on long-established registers.21 The birthday of the Prophet
(‘īd-e mīlād an-nabī) and celebrations at shrines commemorating the saint’s
‘marriage’ with God (‘urs) are ‘traditional’ topoi to articulate differences.
Let us look at some examples of satire. The JI preacher quoted above
mocks ‘wrongfully innovative’ and ‘prostitute’ fakirs, who do not possess any
of the power attributed to them by normal people and politicians. Playing on
the literal Arabic meaning of faqīr, poor, the preacher comments: ‘[Bengali]
What can he, himself fakir, give them? Indeed, he himself is fakir! [Arabic
Q47:38] “And Allah is the Rich, and ye are the poor”’ (Sayeedi 2013: 11:33
mins). The satirical thrust is here again concerned with the preacher’s main
criticism of Sufism as a wrongful intermediary power which he wants to
eliminate.
Among criticisms of shrine practices, we find many more ‘traditional’
accusations. Sufism’s alleged closeness to Hinduism is playfully established by
one preacher by building on phonetic closeness between the Hindu goddess
Durgā and the Sufi convent dargāh. Another common accusation is that of
Sufi convents pursuing financial aims. A KM preacher supposes that a shrine
would be built if only a dog died – but always close to a street and never close
to a railway track, as only here could people reach it conveniently (Recording,
Shekhpara, Sylhet, March 13, 2014).
The head of a major KM states that the organization of and international
visits to the mīlād al-nabī, as well as the slaughtering of cattle at Sufi shrines,
were done to reap financial benefit. He underlines this connection by oppos-
ing two figures of repetition, ‘money money money’ with ‘‘urs ‘urs ‘urs’ (Shafi
2011: 13:30 mins). He employs the same figure of speech he uses when
defending his own group against perceived attacks by other groups. In order
to refute the application of the term wahhābī to the KM, he qualifies Wah-
habism as hanbalī, which he in turn juxtaposes with the KM’s own identity as
‘hanaf ī hanaf ī hanaf ī’ (Shafi 2011: 16:27 mins), thereby side-lining the fact
that Wahhabism is in many respects critical of the schools of law as such. In
other words, next to his satire about Sufi practices, he positions himself as
being excluded by aggressive opponents, who deny his group’s status as part
of an emotional community to which it considers itself to belong. This
exclusion, the KM speaker insists, is without basis.
To take the performance of qiyām (contemptuously referred to as ‘standing-
shmanding’, dā̃ rāiyā khā̃ rāiyā) as a demarcating line would be absurd,
because then all women – who do not participate in this ritual – would be
excluded: ‘Then all these women who have never, never in these innovators’
(bid‘atider) whole life, performed any qiyām would be what? Wahhābī’. More
importantly for our context, the preacher claims that emotions such as love
cannot be measured objectively, and thus any differentiation according to
degrees of love for the Prophet would be untenable:
They say that in our heart (del) there is no love (muhabbat) for the Pro-
phet. I ask: do they have a thermometer that can be put onto our heart
(kalb) so that its swing can tell if our heart has no love for the prophet?
[…] Then also I myself can say that in your heart there is no love for the
Prophet.
(Shafi 2011: 17:04 mins)
Like the JI preacher, the KM preacher also endorses many aspects of Sufism,
which thereby emerges as a contested ideal. As we already gathered from
institutional overlaps, the connections between KM and SO are at times quite
close. In both cases, wonder-evoking stories of holy figures are common. Of
course they centre on scholars22 in the first and Sufi saints in the latter case,
but both categories are far from distinct, as are titles like pīr which might well
be employed within the Deobandi tradition.
Again one main difference seems to lie in the degree of rationalization. The
KM tend to rationalize religious experience, an attitude that is criticized by
the SO as a fatal error. The miracle stories that the head of the SO includes in
his sermons are geared to evoke what Rudolf Otto called the ‘mirum’, wonder
about the divine without its tremendous aspects. This may be achieved in a
personalized manner, for example describing the boundless knowledge of
these figures (while the KM would always emphasize the ‘realistic’ aspect of
great learning). The boundless knowledge corresponds to the boundless size
of paradise that the SO emphasizes, thereby hinting at the limits of the ima-
gination to comprehend the sublime. In the context of satire, it is interesting
that the preacher of the SO pits the wonder he evokes on the part of the
audience against the rationalized positions he ascribes to the JI. These, he
alleges, not only oppose the practice of zikr, but make fun of stories about
saintly miracles – an attitude that he depicts as missing the whole point out of
an all-too-limited understanding. His satire thus relies on the mystic and Sufi
credo (already poetically expressed in the song framing his sermon, see above)
that there are different levels of understanding, depending on one’s advancement
on the mystic path.
In a way, it thus claims a speech position of the hierarchically higher and
more advanced spiritual seeker talking to non-initiates. The preacher might
even combine this mystical positioning with revilements. After a miracle story
he asks: ‘How is it possible to explain this to them? Those potheads, wastrels,
crazy ones, how should they ever understand? […] [They] don’t have any
faculty for understanding.’ Fitting the aggressive tone of this passage, the
satire of the SO analogically equates the spiritual power stemming from the
Sufi technique of zikr to technical power and finally to muscle power:
306 Max Stille
If someone comes to stop zikr, then say: ‘My dear brother, good Lord,
you are very kind (daradī). You are trying to save me from sins. I am very
happy. So, if you could kindly go and close down that power house. Over
there it is not just me alone but hundreds of thousands who are on the
wrong track (bepathe), who are sinning. All of them will be saved! […]
Just go to the followers of Allah in Cormonai [the locality of the SO] and
turn off the switch of this power house.’ Are they coming? No. Did God
grant them the courage to come? No!
(Karim 2012: 41:02 mins)
In our above analysis of the fluctuation of Sufi topoi and their narrative
connections, we discerned narrative form as one key feature for the pre-
figuration of what might be specifically ‘Sufi’ experiences. On the level of
explicit demarcations by the actors we can similarly move to the level of form.
Parody, as a mimesis of the second order, draws on specificities of form,
which are crucial to our inquiry into attitudes of reception and hermeneutics
of expressions. One prominent and unsurprising object of parody are songs
similar to the one we encountered in the framing of the WM of the SO, a
criticism which of course builds on traditional registers of a critical discourse
on music in Islam, which is also widespread in Bengal (Harder 2011: 179–183).
Addressing a general audience, for example, a preacher from a KM quotes a
popular song of the Maijbhandari Sufi order23 in a distorted yet clearly
recognizable form: ‘Merciful father, Qibla Ka‘ba [epithet of a Maijbhandari
saint] / craftsman of the mirror / Put the mirror in my inner heart’ (Recording,
Dinajpur, January 29, 2013, preacher b). The preacher then comments:
I put the mirror. Even pilgrimage is not important. To make the pil-
grimage is not necessary. They can read neither the Qur’an nor the praise
of God correctly. Honoured pīrs, renewer, universal holy men. These are
Jewish-Christian teachings! To destroy the belief in one God in this
country. The Maijbhandar (order) in Chittagong. Chittagong, Maijb-
handar. When one goes there, one gets caught in a jam of ‘urs. Cows,
goats, kids and grandkids, all look the same. Microphones all over the
place, and melodies! My God! So many melodies and such a huge
number of songs!
(Recording, Dinajpur, January 29, 2013, preacher b)
The ridiculing effect of the parody leads to a criticism of holy topography, as

well as accusations about religious laxity and ‘treason’. Importantly, the
parodic effect glosses over possible meanings of the original song, which is
deeply steeped in the tradition of Bengali Sufism. Instead of interpreting its
images and topoi by linking it to tradition, the preacher refutes it altogether
by a ‘literal’ reading – a stance we have encountered a number of times by
now. Interestingly, this parody itself builds on another, secular parody of the
same song.24
The parody of the next speaker at the same WM starts from a similar
point, before extending it to audience reactions and other genres. In the
quote, the speaker alternates between parodic quotations performed in the
respective tune and subsequent spoken commentary:
[Preacher speaks] The Prophet came with the Qur’an, and the ‘āshiq
[‘(mystical) lover, Sufis’] of our society come with songs [gān o gajal] […]
They preach for two hours, without one single Qur’anic verse or hadith.
Instead ten songs. These songs are not real. [Preacher parodies] ‘One day
we have to leave this world, oh great Pīr ‘Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī!’ [Com-
ments] I got some workers who [upon hearing this] from afar shriek ‘eee
eee’. [Preacher continues parodying] ‘This great pīr ‘Abd al-Jīlānī / Hear-
ing his name fire becomes water / oh you great pīr’. [Preacher comments]
This doesn’t have anything in common with reality. Hearing his name,
fire will be extinguished. Kindling chaff but you can’t see it. You will see
how in our country the poets of Allah read: [Preacher chants in a differ-
ent tune] ‘Hundreds of thousands of people die in flocks / Counting I
only see some thousands’. [Preacher comments] This doesn’t match
reality.
(Recording, Dinajpur, January 29, 2013, preacher a: 98:56 mins)
The preacher here parodies a Sufi song, the listener response to this song, and
a particular way of chanting. Above we have already dealt with the ‘rationa-
lizing’ parody refusing to enter mystical hermeneutics; the same is applied
here to the song and the chant. The mimetic parody of the ‘shrieking’ audi-
ence response adds to ridiculing mystic experience. By depicting an instanta-
neous and unmindful reaction, the preacher aligns the reception of Sufi songs
to that of listening to pop music, rather than describing it as a carefully nur-
tured practice linked to inner insights. The preacher’s final parody, about the
high numbers of dead people, adds to this. Its text, again in the ‘rationalist’
mode of criticism shared by many currents of modern Islam, is about coun-
table evidence that might refute other impressions. Its topic hints at the most
debated issue of Bangladesh at the time of the sermon, the question of the
justifiability of war crimes during the Bangladeshi independence war in 1971,
a context in which it might be cited to show how evidence can be reduced to
nothing. The parodied melody in this case is not that of a song, but of recit-
ing manuscripts of religious narratives (pu-̃ thi), a Bengali narrative tradition
that has steadily declined over the last 100 years, but is still practised.25 As we
will see below, its way of performance is decisively intermingled with the way
of preaching at WM.
As in the case of Sufism as a shared yet embattled theological ideal, also
the form of preaching is at once shared and contested. The lines of singling
out objects of parody without turning it on the form of expression itself are
often very fine. A KM preacher, for example, parodies a supplicatory prayer
which is, in his point of view illegitimately, performed at Sufi shrines. At the
308 Max Stille
same time he narrates a story of Ibrahim’s (rightful) prayer so as to show that
he does not intend to defame the prayer, whose cross-interconnection with
the WM has been sketched at the beginning of this chapter and which is
important for KM in other contexts as well.
Satire and parody, as the framing songs, seem to be concerned with the
attitude to interpretation envisaged by each respective group. The satire of the
SO criticizes the inability of the opponents to experience the numinous object.
It shows the importance of satire by aiming at the satire of the opponents.
The critique of the ambiguity and instability of Sufi expression, on the other
hand, comes close to a critique of poetic and metaphoric expression as such,
championing a transparency of language and knowledge. Parody is an
important aesthetic device. In the context of ridiculing Sufi expressions we
might remind ourselves that humour has been described as the opposite to the
sublime,26 and parody might thus work to belittle the expressions themselves
and thereby ‘block’ them from making the right impression. Parody thus
works towards substituting one horizon of experience with another, with the
effect of Sufi expressions being received as spontaneous and non-serious
expression unfit for the numinous object, as the emblematic sound-image of
the shrieking Sufi would have it. As has been mentioned, parody presumes
that the parodied object is known to the audience, and thus shares in the double
bind of criticizing a form that it at the same time actualizes and reconstitutes.
Taken together, the effect of the parodies might thus lie in a simultaneous
increase of certain forms of expression and their ‘rationalization’ in the sense
of a more distanced – modern? – way of reception.
Varieties of identification and presence

How about mechanisms that do not work against mystical experience but
cater the same? So far, these experiences have been linked to the inexpressible,
the unknowable, mystical love and the wonder created by miracle stories.
While (hot) love for God and the Prophet is a shared ideal, and preachers of
all groups at times include miracles and wonder-inducing numbers in their
sermons,27 the sermon of the head of the SO stood out by the canon of its
references and the explicit honouring of the linked experiences. Let us now
consider the mystic dialectic of lure and withdrawal a little more closely,
focusing on narrative sections. In these, the dialectic is to a great extent per-
sonalized in the form of the presence of the depicted holy figures, as well as
the dynamics of the audience being offered opportunities for identification
with these figures, both belonging – at least for the time of the performance –
to one sphere. In the religious genre under consideration here, such aesthetic
questions are intertwined with theological conceptions relating to the presence
of holy figures and the Prophet, and the awareness and knowledge of this
presence, which we have already encountered several times during this chap-
ter. While there might well be diverse origins of the ‘knowledge by presence’
(al-‘ilm al-hudūrī), the ‘knowledge of the hidden’ (‘ilm al-ghayb), the existence
of souls of holy figures and the Prophet in their graves, or the symbolically
acknowledged presence of the Prophet through the qiyām (cf. Katz 2007:
133–134, 137–138) – it seems that there is a Sufi tendency to presence, a pre-
sence that makes possible particular experiences of feeling and communication
with those conceptualized as present.
The identification with and presence of fictional figures in the sermons lar-
gely rely on specific narrative and oral techniques. In respect to narration,
presence and identification rely on changes in narrative mood and foci of
perception. The two basic narrative moods – dramatic and diegetic – imply
differences concerning the immediacy with which language can depict its
object, and thus differences in the presence of the object that is evoked: if
something is ‘shown’ or ‘dramatically presented’, such as in dialogues
between the (fictional) figures in which the narrator is relegated into the
background, it is more likely to be experienced as present, even if situated at a
temporal distance (Genette 1980: 168).28 Another technique crucial for iden-
tification is the regulation of narrative information: limiting the perception to
one figure helps the recipient to adopt this figure’s position in the narrated
world. In the WM, such narrative techniques are linked to a particular vocal
technique, a chanting of prose passages in a simple yet catchy tune, a musical
confluence of Qur’anic recitation and tunes of Bengali popular storytelling
(pu-̃ thi, see above). Like the songs that are constitutive for the framing of ser-
mons, as well as objects of parody and satire, this technique also relates to the
Sufi concepts of samā‘ and dhawq (tasting intuitively) – concepts which high-
light that voice does much more than transmit a message. In combination,
both levels bring together imagination, bodily training and prior (collective)
experiences to convey the presence of holy figures and facilitate identification
with them.
How is this decisive means of identification and presence distributed in the
field of sermons considered so far? The SO preacher begins chanting from the
point where he narrates the story of Satan. The latter’s controversial conversa-
tion with God is also the first major dramatic passage in the sermon that
narratively caters to an immediacy of the scene. The partial assumption of the
inner voice of Satan quoted above further offers that the listeners momentarily
take his position.
The JI preacher also chants more and more over the course of the sermon.
Unlike SO, however, he never ceases to alternate between spoken and chanted
voice. In both cases the increasing employment of chanting fits the increasing
pathos in the course of the sermons, a widespread rhetoric characteristic that
the WM also share with neighbouring genres such as north Indian Shiite
sermons and poetic gatherings.29
In a significant contrast to the preachers of the JI and SO, only one of the
KM preachers quoted above employed the chanting technique. This fits the
scholarly style of persuasion for a rather homogenous audience at the madrasas,
as well as the point of view that direct knowledge would not be possible, that
no one besides God could know anything without the mediation of his senses,
310 Max Stille
or that the Prophet’s emotions could be adopted directly. It is only via the
imitation of the Prophet’s habits (sunna) that one can get close to him and
eventually love him.30 For this position, the evocation of presence and dra-
matic scenes of the Heilsgeschichte would not prefigure the right experience.
However, particularly when preaching to a more general audience, preachers
of KM also chant. A recent graduate of the KM whose principal was quoted
above, described this skill as an important asset for his efforts to establish
himself as a preacher at WM. Although it occurs, among the groups dis-
cussed here, to different degrees, chanting thus seems to belong to the general
characteristics of the genre. Does it then function similarly in the sermons of
the groups we started out with?
Building on and at the same time critiquing Gadamer for what he sees as a
side-lining of aesthetic pleasure, reception theorist Hans Robert Jauss distin-
guishes ‘between a first and a second level of aesthetic experience’. The ‘pre-
reflective level of aesthetic perception is the communicative framework for an
imaginative consciousness which is prepared to enter into emotional identifi-
cation with the action and situation of the character’ (Jauss et al. 1974: 287).
He developed a model of primary attitudes of the recipient towards the hero
(‘associative’, ‘admiring’, ‘sympathetic’, ‘cathartic’, ‘ironic’; ibid.: 298), atti-
tudes which might be undergone in different phases of reception or be the
major stance throughout a work. For our purpose, it seems particularly
important that Jauss build his ‘[i]nteractional patterns of aesthetic identifica-
tion with the hero’ on the classification of characters that lead to specific
relations – and different distances – between audience and hero.
Focusing on the chanted passages in WM, we can discern variations in the
patterns of identification with the figures depicted in the sermons. We find a
predominantly ‘admiring’ attitude towards the hero (most often the Prophet
or his companions) among the KM preachers, an attitude which necessarily
includes a certain distance between the upward-looking recipient and the
hero. A mawlid sermon by this school, for example, focuses on the validation
of the prophecy of other religious books and on the wonder of the destruction
of idols inside the Kaaba following his birth. The Prophet thus emerges as a
detached fulfiller of the preordained divine plan.
The JI follows this mode to an extent, but also shares commonalities with
preachers from the SO. The chanted passages often describe the literally
superhuman mercifulness of God. The chanted passages in sermons of the SO
often include ‘human’ emotions of its heroes. They thus call for a ‘sympa-
thetic’ identification which bursts the exemplary analogy of both KM and JI.
The recipient’s identification is based on fellow feeling. A mawlid sermon of a
preacher close to the SO, for example, might include dramatic scenes of the
child-Prophet’s needs. The more overt similarities of this role to the recipient
break down the distance of admiration.31 In short, not only do we find dif-
ferences in the frequency of a decisive narrative technique fostering the pre-
sence of holy figures, but we also sense differences in the patterns of
identification offered by these figures.
Belonging
This article offered insights into differences of expressions among prominent
discursive positions in respect to poetic language, to both the evocation and
inhibition of the numinous, and the presence of and identification with holy
figures in wonder-evoking narratives. The confluence of narrative and vocal
patterns in the WM as well as the patterns of identification, are part of a
horizon of experience that includes – as has been outlined in the beginning in
opposition to experience as an ‘emphatic now’ – literary history as well as
contemporary forms. Shifts between different metres, and connected vocal,
narrative and emotional modes, have characterized Bengali narrative litera-
ture of different kinds since the early modern period – be it in ‘romantic’ Sufi
narratives (Stille 2013), Shiite mourning songs (Dunham 1997: 225), folk
ballades,32 or pu-̃̃ thi literature in general. These old patterns belong not only to
the past, but are mediated by and interact with new forms, often relating to
new technologies and sites of production.
Above, we have caught glimpses of interactions with the political ‘arena’
leading to an inclusion and reconfiguration of Sufi topoi by a preacher from
the JI, who aims at endowing religious experience with political motivation.
A similar process can be observed regarding the ever-increasing importance
of the arena of media. The patterns of identification offered by an extremely
popular preacher ‘pull’ the genre of WM in the direction of what Jauss calls
‘cathartic’, with lengthy descriptions of its suffering hero aiming at emotional
upheaval. This preacher’s mode of presentation is linked to melodrama, ‘spi-
cing up’33 the genre’s characteristic chanting with mimetic dimensions of
voice and shifts in melodic register, with television serials and boulevard press
as influential models. It seems that here we can discern transitions from
religious to aesthetic experience.
Experience thus remains a central category that interconnects different
religious currents as well as changing contexts and configurations of the reli-
gious and the aesthetic. We do not yet know enough about the development
of modes of experience in Bengali literary history, nor about the transitions of
reception attitudes from religious to profane and vice versa. Nevertheless, the
genre of sermons considered here provides a rich micro-example for discuss-
ing varieties of experience. Framing, satire and parody show that the form of
speech and the experiences prefigured by it do matter for the actors, who aim
to ‘block’ their opponents from making the impressions they aim for.
Beyond such emic perspective, hermeneutic analysis has in no need to
decide where these experiences ‘belong’. It does not have to join laments
about mysticism in modernity and detect ‘pseudo-mystical’ (Gerlitz 2003: 69)
experiences. Rather, the next step is to ask in more detail about how the
experiences prefigured by the sermons interact with those brought about by
other genres.
312 Max Stille
Notes
1 Cf. for example Knysh (2004) as well as the literature he mentions in the first
footnotes.
2 This not altogether new idea is the programmatic title of the first chapter in Green
(2012b).
3 Among the works of the Constance School of reader response and reception
theory, those of Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert Jauss are particularly important
for this chapter. The main thoughts of the relevant chapter of Hans Robert Jauss’s
seminal work, ‘Ästhetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik’, were already
translated in an article eight years prior to the translation of the whole book into
English as Jauss et al. (1974). For Iser, cf. Iser (1978).
4 Cf. particularly Iser (1978: chapter 2).
5 See below in the section ‘Varieties of identification and presence’.
6 This is all the more instructive for our context as Gadamer also sketches that in
German, expression (Ausdruck) entered aesthetic theory from mysticism, and thus
enjoys a trajectory similar to our endeavour here: to gain a point of view that
consciously works with its terms and by doing so emancipates them from their
other non-scholarly usages.
7 As Ibn al-Jawziı- himself reports in the section ‘Drop mannerism in wa‘z’ of his
Sayd al-Khātir.
8 This stands in marked difference to the opinion of earlier mystics such as Hasan
al-Basrī, who claims that fear should exceed hope in sermons.
9 Al-Jawzī was also the author of a book on mawlid. The overlap between the two
genres is also indicated in an advertisement for a mawlid book that is addressed to
wa‘z preachers (cf. Al-Siddikī n.d.: 339).
10 For an interesting example of the reproduction of the normative criticism in Ben-
gali scholarship (by Enamul Haq) and the conclusion of a decline of this practice,
cf. Schimmel (1985).
11 This was, for example, mentioned explicitly during a WM at a KM at Rampura,
Dhaka, which I attended on March 16, 2014.
12 For an example of posters, cf. Stille (2014: 95–97).
13 This circumstance is reported by Ibn Jubayr, who attended the preaching sessions
of al-Jawzī, in his Rihla.
14 As described in detail in Harder (2011: chapter 5).
15 The motivational factor is hard to describe without closer context analysis, and
might be akin to singing ‘Bella Ciao’ as part of youth culture; this configuration is
also reminiscent of late antiquity, where one feature of declamatory rhetoric was
boasting in descriptions of war heroes during the Augustinian peace.
16 Such as, ‘O cool breeze of early morning; whenever you go to Batha, inform
Muhammad about my states’; ‘whoever meets Muhammad meets Allah’; ‘please
take these prayers to the grave of the holy Prophet in golden Medina’; ‘make these
words reach not only the tongue but the heart’.
17 This sermon seems to have been delivered in 1987.
18 Sayeedi (2013); that the sermon was delivered in 1999 becomes visible at 1:08:28.
19 Nazir Ahmad also uses the English word when, in Ibn al-Waqt, he writes that
Islam teaches ‘self-respect’ to make man ‘respectable in his own view’. My thanks
to Christina Oesterheld for this insight.
20 For references to the use of this device in Sufi songs as well as in other traditions of
Bengal, cf. Harder 2011: 192, and footnote 80 on the same page.
21 An overview about these is provided by Tony Stewart in ‘Popular Sufi Narratives
and the Parameters of the Bengali Imaginaire’, to be published in the conference
volume (forthcoming) of the workshop ‘Aesthetics of the Sublime’, held in Cairo,
December 2012.
22 The history of such narratives which I found very prominent examples of among
the KM-based movement Dawat-e Haqq (cf. recordings from their central ‘Ijtema’
on March 20, 2014, Jatrabari) is traceable to the times of Ashraf Ali Thanawi
describing rationalized yet wonder-evoking knowledge of his teacher Hajji Imda-
dullah (cf. Ernst 2009: 261–262), as well as the reference to an earlier comment on
the same topic.
23 Abul Sarkar’s Dayāl Bābā keblā kābā.
24 The parody is called Dayāl Bābā kalā khābā, ‘Mercy full father, you’ll eat a
banana’.
25 For a musicological analysis, cf. Kane (2008).
26 For an influential formulation of this perspective, cf. Jean Paul’s theory of the
ridiculous (Das Lächerliche) as the opposite of the sublime.
27 This device, known already from the early Arabic storytellers, is particularly fre-
quent when it comes to the superhuman strength of heroes. Similarly, special
communication skills, e.g. with animals, are found throughout the genre.
28 However, as shown by Stille (forthcoming), the tendency of WM is even to cut
through different layers of time.
29 An article co-authored with Carla Petievich which highlights the interconnections
between wa‘z mahfils and mushā‘ira will appear in the Indian Economic and Social
History Review in 2017.
30 This point of view was presented by the KM preacher Imran Mazhari at a WM at
Lalmatia, recorded on January 23, 2013.
31 Which is of course not to say that the Prophet would at any point be assumed to
be equal to the listeners (‘von gleichem Schrot und Korn’, as Lessing terms it).
32 Cf. for example Bonbibi, a folk ballad from the end of the nineteenth century.
33 This metaphor was used by the preacher himself, as he said that his way of
presentation was adding chilli to otherwise well-known themes.
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Index
Abbas, H. 143 Ajmalkān, P.M. and Uvais, M.M. 198,

Abbas, S.B. 152 206
Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī 270; Daftar Jailani, Akhtar, S. 212
impacts on shrine at 63, 65, 66, 73, 75, AKP (Justice and Development Party) in
80, 84, 95n15, 95n16 Turkey 27, 32
‘Abd al-Wahhāb, Muhammad ibn 271 Alam, Muzaffar 252
‘Abduh, Muhammad 266, 271, 272, Alam, Sarwar 9, 108, 118–19
277 Alam Prabhu (Lord of the World) 53–5
Abdul Karīm, K.K.M. 267 Alavi, Hamza 142, 226n10
Abdulhamid, Hashim 171n1, 172n6 Albania: Bektaşism in 27–8; communist
‘Abdullāh Qutb Shāh, Sultan of (and post-communist) rule in 27–8
Golkonda 279 Albera, D. 35
Abel the Prophet 199 Alevi-Bektaşis 22, 23–4, 32–3; see also
Aboobacker Musaliyar, Kanthapuram heterodox Islam, interfaces with
267–8 nationalist politics
Aboosally, M.L.M. 63, 65, 66–7, 68–9, Alexander, Jeffery 130
70–71, 74 Alim, Abdul 300
Aboosally, Roshan 69, 71, 72–3 All India Anna Dravida Munnetra
Abou Zahab, M. 227n16 Kazhagam (AIADMK) 206
Abraham, J. 266 All India Jamiatul Ulama 267–8
Abūbakkar, K. 269, 270 All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen
Abūbakkar, P.A. et al. 268 (AIMIM) 167, 169–70, 173n20,
Adam the Prophet 199, 208–9 173n22
Adhkiyā (Makhdūm) 270, 278n7 Aloysius, G. 198, 200–201, 207–8, 211n1
Adigal, Maraimalai 211n1 Altaf, Sasha 137
Advaita Vedanta, philosophy of 214, 218 Amarasuriya, H., Ibrahim, Z., Perera I.
Afghānī, Jamāl al-Dīn 271 and Azeez, H. 68, 69, 73
Ahl-e-Hadith 266 Ambedkar, B.R. 263
Ahmad, A. 282 Ameer Ali, A.C.L. 67
Ahmad, Nazir 312n19 Amin, Shahid 128
Ahmadkutti, E.K. 264 Amir-Moazami, S. and Salvatore, A. 274
Ahmadullah, Maulana Sayyid 116, 118 Amrtakunda (‘The Pool of Nectar’) 282
-
Ahmed, Durre S. 120 Anandasār 49
Ahmed, M. 227n22 Anderson, Zoe 127
Ahmed, Shaheen Salma xi, 14, 122–38 Anidjar, G. 276, 277
Aikya Sangham 264, 266, 267 Anjum, T. 8
Aisha (wife of Prophet Muhammad) 184 Annadurai, C.N. 204
-
Ajgāvkar, J.R. 47, 49, 50, 54, 59n20, Annaram shrine in Telangana 247
59n23 Ansari, M.T. 273
Index 345
Ansari, Sarah 98n38, 216 Baloch, N.A. 145, 153–4n5
Ansari weavers in Barabanki 106 Bandaranaike, Sirimavo 78
antagonistic tolerance, politics of 23 Banerjee, S. 169
Antulay, Abdul Rehman 192 barakat (spiritual energy), transmission
Anwar, S. 198, 200 of 10–11, 12, 13, 72
Aptul Rakumān, K. 208, 209 Barelwi 8, 262; schools of thought 190,
'Arabic-Tamil' (araputtamil) 203–4 298
Arabicization, problem of 91–2 Barth, Fredrik 33–4
Archaeology Department (Sri Lanka) 65, Bashir Qureshi, statement of 220–21
66, 68–70, 72, 73–4, 75 al-Basrī, Hasan 312n8
Armenians, mass killings of 24, 25 Basso, K.H. 42
Arnakis, G.G. 35 Bastians, D. 71
art: artistic imagery, mass media, religion Bastin, R. 75
and 130–37; contemporary art, key Bate, B. 197
concept of 123; embeddedness of Ibn Battuta 63
experience of 295; see also Sufi past, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen shrine in Philadelphia
contemporary Muslim discourse and 13, 77–99; affiliation to Sufism 80;
The Art of the Motor (Virilio, P.) 130 Arabicization, problem of 91–2; Bawa
Asad, T. 273, 275, 276 in Philadelphia 81–5; Bawa
Ashar, S.A. 169 Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship (BMF) 78,
Ashraf Ali Thanawi 313n22 80, 81–2, 83, 85, 88, 92, 96n21, 96n25,
Assmann, Jan 254 97n31; Bawa's ministry in America,
Atanas 29–30 early years of 83; bilocation, mastery
Atatürk, Kemal 20–21, 25, 26, 27 of 79; clientele in Jaffna 79; commune
-
Atmarāmsvāmī 47, 49, 59n17 house in Philadelphia 82–3; death of
audience involvement, effects of 297 Bawa 84; early admirers' plans for
Auer, B.H. 8 American introduction to Bawa 81–2;
Auqaf Department in Sindh and Punjab: early years of Bawa 78–81; entombment
anti-Sharia activities, containment of 84; fasting, mastery of 79; floral scent,
148; authority of 153; custodianship emanation of 79; gnostic vision of,
of 143; government control by 140, Islam and 91; God House at
142, 143–4, 145, 147, 148–9, 153; Mankumban 84, 87; images of Bawa,
registration system, absence of 145; dilemma of reconciliation of 89–90;
staff employed by, reverence of 148 interfaith dialogues 82; Jaffna, Bawa
Aurangābādī, Valī 290 and 78–81, 83, 84–5, 94n5; Jīlānī,
Emperor Aurangzeb 47 connection with 80; levitation, mastery
Ayaz, Shaikh 227n11 of 79; longing and belonging, issues of
Ayres, A. 213 emotions of 77–8, 92–3; longing for
Ayyathurai, G. 211n1 Bawa 85–9; loving presence 82;
Ayyūp, A. 211n4 meeting Bawa in Philadelphia 82;
Azeez, M. 208 miraculous fame, spread of
80–81; miraculous feats 79–80;
Bābar kī santān, jāo Pākistān (Children multi-denominational aspects,
of Babar, go to Pakistan) 127 de-emphasization of 85; organization
Babri Masjid demolition (1992) 122, 124, in North America, growth of 83–4;
128, 131, 132 Puliyankulam, farming in 80; roots in
Bachchan, Amitabh 162, 172n9 America, development of 81–5;
Baghdādī, Junayd 224 Serendib Sufi Study Circle (SSSC) 81,
Baig, Agha Mirza 53, 60n31 83, 85, 88, 95n17, 97n32; shrine
Balakrishna Pillai, Kesari A. 277 construction 86–7; shrine opening 87;
Balangoda Man (Homo sapiens shrine power 87–9; spiritual commune
balangodensis) 66 (āśram), opening in Jaffna of 79–80;
Bali Efendi 30 spiritual development, patterns of 91;
Balić-Hayden, Milica 39n9 split personalities 89–93; staged
346 Index
'comings' of historical Bawa, phases of Bhutto, Benazir 243
90–91; Sufism, decolonization and Bhutto, Zulfiqar Ali 213, 216, 218, 219
dissemination of 77; tasks, divine Birge, J.K. 24
assignment to 80; transnational Bistāmī, Shaykh Bayazīd 224, 282
existence 83; union with God, task of Bodhle, Cānd 53, 60n30, 60n33
achievement of 82; Vietnam War 81; Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) 62, 68–9, 72, 73,
vision of, penetrating nature of 79; 74–6
worldwide sympathizers 84–5 Boivin, M. 214, 216
Bayly, S. 208 Boivin, M. and Delage, R. 216
Bazm-e Sufia-e Sindh (Society of Sufis of Bollywood 111, 162, 186
Sindh) 214–15 Bond, G.D. 98n39
Behl, A. 282, 285, 292n4 Borneman, J. 35
Bektaşis (and Bektaşism) 22–3, 24, 26–8, Bouiller, V. and Khan, D.-S. 24
32, 36–7, 38 Bourdieu, Pierre 213, 217, 226n3; social
Bellamy, C. 5, 12 space (and social field), concepts of
belonging: collective belonging 41; cul- 139–40, 142, 150
tural belonging 177–8; Holy people Bowman, Glenn 31, 150
and contexts of 40–42; India, Sufism Brooke, P. 155n18
and politics of belonging in 9; brotherhoods (silsilas) in India,
indicators of exclusion and 23; longing importance of 188
and, issues of emotions of 77–8, 92–3; Brown, K. 25
Muslim politics of belonging 1–3; Buehler, Arthur 110
Islamic 'reformism' and 8; naming Bulgaria 28–30
and, Sufism and politics of 5–7, 13; Bulri, Abdul Karim 214
not belonging in religious-majority Bunt, Gary R. 110
nation-states and 38–9; notions of Burman, J.J.R. 58n5, 166, 172n12
'composite culture' and 196–7; Burton, Richard F. 213–14
political belonging, limits of 124–5;
politics in post-Ottoman states of 22–3; Caeiro, A. 275, 278n9
relationships for Muslim minorities of, Candorkar, G.K. 45, 49
Mukadam's concerns about 177–8; Candrabhat (Cānd Bodhala) 60n30
Sufi idioms of 103–4; 'Sufi shrines' Candrakorīcyā Chāyet (2010, ‘In the
(dargāhs) and politics of belonging in Shadow of the Crescent Moon’) 187
South Asia 9–10; Sufism in, Muslim Casie Chitty, S. 202
belonging and 2–3, 4–5, 7–8; Sufism in cassette sermons 296–7
Bengali wa'z mahfils 311 Center for Policy Alternatives 68
Bergrunder, Michael 14n1 Chakrabarty, D. 40
Berkey, J.P. 278n4, 296 Chānd, Shaykh 53, 60n31
Berman, M. 90 Chand, Tara 60n25
Besant, Annie 95n17, 98n39, 222 Chandio, Riaz 222, 227n23
Bhagavadgītā 188 Chandra, J. 43
Bhaktalīlāmrita of Mahipati 60n26, Chandra, S. 203
60n30 Chatterjee, P. 218
Bhandāre, V.N. 55 Chaudhry, H.-R. 144, 153n4
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 180, 191–2; Chaudhuri, Amit 259–60
Muslim women in India, everyday Chawla, P. 159
lives of 127, 138n4, 138n5; syncretic Chishtīs of Ajmer in India 112–16
cults in Mumbai, survival of 158, 166–7, Choudhary, Abhishek 171n1
168–70, 170–71; Tamil nationalism, citizen-subject, cultural identity and 127–8
place of Muslims in 205–6 citizenship, types of 126–7
Bhaskar, I. and Allen, R. 171 Clark, B. 24
Bhāve, V.L. 49 Clayer, N. 23
Bhil, Bhuro 221–2, 225 Collins, C.H. 66, 73
King Bhoj of Malwa 287 Colombo Telegraph 71, 74
Index 347
communal conflict 221–2 ethno-nationalism and 75–6; future of
communal violence 212; Daftar Jailani, Jailani 72–4; historical perspective
impacts on shrine at 67; Muslim 65–7; hostility to Islam, manifestations
women in India, everyday lives of 125, of 74–5; impartial conservation at,
129, 137; trauma of 128–9; Sufi past, commitment to 73–4; Jailani flag-raising
contemporary Muslim discourse and (2014) 71–2, 75; Jailani shrine and
249; Sufism as identity marker in festival 62–5; Jathika Hela Uramaya
Sindh 212, 221–2 (JHU) 68; Kuragala: Brahmi
competing masculinities, Sufism and inscriptions at 67; Muslim pilgrimage
116–20 to 66–7; struggle for control of 75–6;
composite culture: layers of 253; notions media skirmish 70–71; militant
of 196–7 Buddhist opposition to Muslim
Cornell, Rkia 112 mosques 68; Muslim piety exhibited
cotton-carders, caste of (dūde-kula) 257–9 at, Islam and 75; Rashtriya
Cox, Harvey 95–6n18 Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) 74; Rifā‘ī
Crockett, Clayton 130, 137 zikr at Jailani 65–6; St Abd al-Qādir
cross-cultural interconnectedness 40 Jīlānī 63, 65, 66, 73, 75, 80, 84, 95n15,
'crusader mentality' 272 95n16; Tamil Tigers (LTTE) 62, 67,
cultural and linguistic assimilation 252–3 83; Theravada Buddhist tradition 67;
cultural and religious diversity, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) 74
state and 213 Dale, S.F. 266, 271
cultural belonging 177–8 Dalwai, Hamid 177, 180, 184, 194,
cultural memory, history of 254 195n1; thought of, Mukadam's
cultural 'otherness' of Muslims 180–81 deconstruction of 178–9
cultural stability, group identity and 34 Dandekar, Deepra xi, 1–15, 39n1, 177–95
cultural syncretism 166–7 Dar-ul-Uloom of Vazhakkad 178, 179, 269
'cultural trauma,' lived experience and 122 dars system 265
cumulative amplification 290 Das, Saitya Brata 125, 130, 131
Currim, M. and Michell, G. 163 Das, Veena 123, 125, 134, 138
Dasgupta, Subrata 263
da Gama, Vasco 270 Dāsopant 45
Dabholkar, Narendra 180, 186, 194 Daśpānde, Brahmānanda 51, 53, 60n28
Dādū (poet) 287 Dastān Bhāratīya Musalmānānci (2005,
Daftar Jailani, impacts on shrine at 13, ‘The Story of Indian Muslims’) 187
62–76; archaeological heritage, Dastūr-i ‘ushshāq (Code of Lovers) 280–81
colonial exploration of 66; archaeology Data Darbar shrine, politics of Sufism
crisis 66–7, 68–9; Archaeology and 14, 228–44; Auqaf Department
Department (Sri Lanka) 65, 66, 68–70, 232, 235–6, 237–8, 240–41, 242; Auqaf
72, 73–4, 75; Balangoda Man, Ordinance (of 1960) 230; Bhutto,
excavation of 66; Bodu Bala Sena Zulfiqar Ali 231, 232; bureaucrats,
(BBS, Buddhist Strength Force) 62, political negotiation and 228; Data
68–9, 72, 73, 74–6; Buddhist pressure Ganj Bakhsh shrine in Lahore 228–9,
on Jailani 67–70; civil war in Sri 231, 232–4, 235, 243, 244; administra-
Lanka, aftermath of 62; Colombo tion of 235; courtyard of 236; gender
Telegraph 71, 74; communal violence segregation 239; inequality of treatment
67; Daftar Jailani (Kuragala), shrine for visitors 237–8; management of,
at 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71–2, 73, 74, complex nature of 233, 235–9; political,
75–6, 95n15; annual festival at, economic and a social center 232–3;
opening day of 65; festival activities religious administration of 235; shift
centre at 63; foundation of 63; granite structure of management 237; visitors
monoliths at 63; leadership of, problem to 232; discursive arena, shrine as
of 74; opening day (2014) crowd at 72; 241–2; Economy and Society (Weber,
situation of 62–3; struggle for control M.) 228; enlightenment, dissemination
of 75–6; tombstone inscription 63; of 230; ‘folk’ Islam 229; Hujwīrī, Data
348 Index
Darbar as resting place of 231; Ideo- information devoted to 48–9; puja
logical Orientation 230; Ideology of ritual and 54; representation of 45;
Pakistan (Iqbal, J.) 230; Islamic reverence across sectarian affiliations
Socialism 231; Islamization policies, for 44–5; social history of cult of 48;
shrines and 231–2; Kashf al-Mahjūb Śrī Dattātreya Jñyānakoś (Encyclope-
(Hujwīrī, ‘A.) 231; Khan, Ayub (and dia of Dattātreya's Wisdom) 48; Tān-
government of) 229, 230, 232; moral trikas, affiliation with 46; textual
deterioration, shrines as places of 230; productions of fakir form 49; tradition
national monument, shrine as 242–3; of Fakir-Datta, marginalization of 54;
nationalization of Pakistani Sufi as
shrines 229–32; piety, management of trimurti, mechanics of marginalization
235–9; political dimension of Data and 51, 54; Vedic knowledge, rejuve-
Ganj Bakhsh shrine in Lahore 243–4; nation of 47
politics and Sufism 239–43; public Daud Shah, P. 201, 206, 211n4
space, shrine as 239–40; regional Davar, B. and Lohokare, M. 5, 157
dominances of Sufism branches 229; David the Prophet 199, 208–9
religious authorities, secularism and Dawat-e Haqq 313n22
weakening of 231; Religious Purpose De Munck, V. 98n33
Committee 235, 238, 239, 241; shrines, De Wit, J.W. 167–8
curbing exploitation and misuse of Deák, Dušan xi, 13, 24, 40–61
230–31; state control 228–9, 231, 232; Debt (Graeber, D.) 126
Sufism and Islam, channels for Delawar Hosein, Sayyid 118
discourse between 241–2; two-nations Deobandis 8, 179; Deobandi 'ulamā' 178,
‘solution’ 229; vanguard for other 179; traditions of 298, 305
shrines, shrine as 240–41 Deraniyagala, S.U. 66
Datta sampradāyācā itihās (History of Deringil, Selim 39n5
the Datta Sampradāy) 48 Desai, Daulat 171n1
Dattamahātmya (Vasudevānanda Deshpande, A.N. 45, 47, 49, 50, 51
Sarasvatī) 48 Deśpānde, Bhīmaśankar 51
Dattātreya 44–6, 46–51, 51–4, 55–7, Devji, F.F. 213, 277
58n10, 58n13, 59–60n24, 59n21, DeVotta, N. and Stone, J. 62
60n29, 60n33, 61n37; avatārs of 45, Dharejo, S. 223
46, 48, 50, 56–7; birthday of 54; Dhere, R.C. 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 58n11
Brahmanic form of 47, 48, 49, 52, 54, Dias, M. 67, 70
56; Cānd Bodhle's shrine and 53, Dieckhoff, A. and Jaffrelot, C. 226n10
60n33; connection to Muslims 49; Digby, S. 11
devotees of, diversity of 45–6, 57; Dighe, Anand 166
Eknāth and 47, 49, 50, 53, 59–60n24, Divine associations 41
59n17, 60n28; Facebook page 51; Divine mystery, limits of understanding
Fakir-Datta 48–51, 52–3, 54, 57, of 301
58n15, 59n20, 59n21; fakir form 47, Divine Reality, human life centred on
49, 51, 52, 55, 60n29, 61n37; 105–6
Gangapur, sacred place of 55; Hindu Doja, Albert 26, 28
Brahman and fakir-Muslim aspects of Doniger, W. 164–5
46; Hindu-Muslim communalism and Douglas, Mary 33
49–50, 54; identity claims, Hindutva Doumanis, N. 25
and 51; imagining of, discursive space Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)
of 56–7; Indic sage 44; Mahānubhāvas 205–6, 209
and 45; Maharashtrian Brahmans and Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) 200
cult of 45, 47–8, 58n13; modern Dravidian Movement: erosion of atheist-
understanding of 55–6; Muslims in rationalist tradition in 199; Muslim
Brahmanic world of, accommodation reformers and 199; Tamil nationalism
of 50; non-Brahman interpretations, and political history of 197–8
influences on 47, 48; published Dunham, M.F. 311
Index 349
East Bandra State Assembly by-election identity and 127–8; gender ambiguity
(2015) 169 106; gender-bending 106–7; gender
Eaton, R.M. 98n38, 139, 144, 282 inclusiveness and progressive mind-
Eisner, A.W. 96n22 edness, association between 110–12;
Eknāth 47, 49, 50, 53, 59n17, 60n28, gender inversion 106–7; gender justice
60n30 183–4, 186–7; gender recasting 112;
Ekveera Devi 156 gender segregation 82–3, 105–6, 239;
Elison, W. 159 gendered lenses, stories through 258–9;
Engineer, Asghar Ali 184, 195n2, 195n4 interfaith activism and gender equality
Ernst, C.W. 98–9n44, 282, 292n5, 313n22 discourses, Sufis and 112–16; in Isla-
Ernst, C.W. and Lawrence, B.B. 108 mic metaphysical-spiritual traditions
Ernst, C.W. and Stewart, T. 42 105; male dominance 105–6; meaning
Eschmann, A. 58n14 making and 103–7; mixed-gender
ethnicization: of Islam 212–13; of Sufism crowds 75; sex segregation 105–6;
213 social and gender hierarchies 201; in
ethnicization of: Islam 212–13; Sufism Sufism, material and immaterial
213 aspects of 104; women in ritual life,
ethno-nationalism 75–6 visibility of 111; women in Sufi orders,
Ewing, Katherine P. 5, 94n11, 139, 142, increasing opportunities for 110–11;
143, 144, 230, 231 women’s development programs,
forces against proliferation of 119–20;
Fakhri, S.M.A.K. 198, 200, 201, 205 see also politics of gender in Sufi
Imām Faqīr Madhu 189 imaginary
Faqir Muhiyadeen 62 Genette, G. 309
Farhād 286 Genn, C. 77, 95–6n18
Farook, L. 71 Gentil, Colonel Jean Baptiste Joseph
Fattāhī Nishāpūrī, Muhammad Yahyā 59n20
Ibn Sībak 279, 280–81 Gerlitz, P. 311
Feldhaus, A. 45 Ghats of Maharashtra 156
feminized masculinity 117–18 al-Ghazālī, Abū Hamīd Muhammad ibn
The Festival of Pirs (Mohammad, A.) 251 Muhammad 120n1, 270
festivals at shrines 62–5, 180–81, 231, 257 Ghodsee, K. 28
Fischel, R. 58n15 Gilad, Uri 171n1
Flueckiger, J. 5, 107 Gilmartin, D. 143
Foucault, Michel 40 Gingeras, R. 24
Frembgen, J.W. 226n9 Glushkova, I. 57n1
Friedmann, Y. 272 Gnanasara, Galagoda Atte 68
God House at Mankumban 84, 87
Gaborieau, Marc 3 Gole, Susan 59n20
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 295–6 Golkonda, grounding in 279–80, 282,
Gafoor, Mastan Sahib Abdul 66 291, 292
Gajendragadkar, B.S. 55 Golvalkar (Maharashtrian Brahman)
Gandhi, Indira 191 60n27
Gandhi, Mohandas K ('Mahatma') 224, Gorakshanāth (Gorakhnāth), philosophy
272 of 188
Gandhi, Rajiv 172n9 Gordon, S. 173n18
Ganesan, S. 205 Gosavī, M. 60n30
Gangan, S.P. 168 Gosvāmī, P.G. 48, 58n11
Gangohī, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Quddūs 188 Gottschalk, P. 40
In the Garden of Mirrors 253–4 Graeber, David 125–6
Gavankar, Anusha 171n1 Gramatikova, N. 28
Geertz, Clifford 89, 294 grave sites, interplay between imagination
gender 2, 34, 42, 57–8n2; caste and and history and 51–5
gender discrimination 185–6; cultural Gray, Clinton 164
350 Index
Greble, E. 30 Harder, Hans 116, 118, 119, 121n15;
Greece 24, 25, 28, 33 Sufism in Bengali waz mahfils 295,
Green, Nile 8, 14n3, 42, 47, 82, 98n34, 298, 300, 301, 306, 312n11, 312n20
163, 172n5, 192–3, 278n4, 294–6, Hardgrave, R.L. 197
312n2 Hardiman, D. 157
Groys, B. and Weibel, P. 131 Hardy, P. 200
Groys, Boris 131 Harlow, Barbara 258
Guardian 103 Harmanśah, R., Tanyeri-Erdemir, T. and
Gudrī Shāh Chistī order 106–7, 112–13, Hayden, R.M. 22
114, 115–16 Hartmann, A. 296, 302
Guha, S. 58n15, 59–60n24 Hasan, Amina 114
Gulrajani, J.P. 214 Hasan, Hazrat Inam 112–13
Gupta, Charu 126, 127–8, 129 Hasan, Mushirul 249
Guru Bawa (Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, Hasan, Sayyid Mohammad 119
Muhammad Raheem) 77–8, 78–9; Hasan and Asaduddin 261n3
early years 78–81; Philadelphia and al-Hasan Sharib, Zahur 121n11
81–5; see also Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Hasbullah, S.H. 67
shrine in Philadelphia Hasen (poet) 253–4
Guru Maharaj Ji 90 Hashmi, Emraan 162
Guru Sree Narayana 263, 278n2 Hasluck, F.W. 22, 24, 26–7, 33, 35
Gurucaritra (Life of the Guru) 45, 46–7, Hayāt Samandar (‘Ocean of Life’) 282
48, 50, 59n16, 59n19 Hayden, R.M. and Walker, T.D. 23, 38
Gvāliyārī, Muhammad Ghaus 281–3, Hayden, Robert M. xi–xii, 9, 11, 13, 19–39,
290, 292n6 58n8, 75, 186
Hayden, S. and Valenzuela, S. 19, 37, 38
Haci Bektaş Veli 20–22, 24, 26, 36 Heck, P.L. 14n4
Hacibektaş in central Anatolia 20–22, 23, Hedayetullah, Muhammad 60n25
24, 26, 36; Bektaşi complex in 21–2 Hefazat-e Islam 300, 301
Hacking, I. 262 Heitmeyer, C. 9
Hafez (Persian lyric poet, born 1326) 249 Hellmann-Rajanayagam, D. 198, 202,
Haitar Alī Yakīnullāsā (Muslim prophet) 204, 207, 211n3
208–9, 211n6 Hermansen, M. 95–6n18, 107
Haj, S. 264, 275 Hertz, R. 150
Haji Ali Shah Bukhari 156, 160–65, 165–6, Heslop, L.A. 68
170–71, 172n8, 172n11, 172n14; cross- heterodox Islam, interfaces with nation-
community appeal of 162–3; cult of 156, alist politics 13, 19–39; AKP (Justice
160–65; legends surrounding 163–4; and Development Party) in Turkey 27,
Mahalaxmi Hindu temple and shrine of 32; Albania: Bektaşism in 27–8; com-
164; spiritual attraction of 163; videos munist (and post-communist) rule in
about shrine of 164–5; see also syncretic 27–8; Alevi-Bektaşis 22, 23–4, 32–3;
cults in Mumbai, survival of antagonistic tolerance, politics of 23;
Hajiyar of Balangoda, Marikar 65 Armenians, mass killings of 24, 25;
Hallāj, Mansūr 220, 227n18 Atatürk, linkage between Haci Bektaş
Hamsa Padhatī 49 and Kemal 20–21; Bektaşis (and Bek-
Hanegraaf, W. 98n40 taşism) 22–3, 24, 26–8, 32, 36–7, 38;
Haniffa, F., Amarasuriya, H., belonging: indicators of exclusion and
Wijenayake, V. and Gunatilleke, G. 23; not belonging in religious-majority
68 nation-states and 38–9; politics in
Hansen, T.B. 173n19 post-Ottoman states of 22–3;
Haq, Enamul 312n10 Bulgaria 28–30; Christian-majority
Haqq, A. 281, 292n8 post-Ottoman states, dervish orders in
Haqqani, H. 142, 143 28–31; cultural stability, group identity
Harappan civilization 217 and 34; dervish site, Christianization
Hardās (poet) 287 of 22; devotional practices of
Index 351
non-Sunni orders 23–4; ethnic vio- Home/Nation (Rummana Hussain
lence, partitions and 25; Greece 24, 25, artwork) 123–4, 129, 131, 132–3, 134,
28, 33; Hacibektaş in central Anatolia 135–6
20–22, 23, 24, 26, 36; Bektaşi complex homogenization, diversity and 44–6
in 21–2; imperial withdrawals and Hujwīrī, ‘Alī 231, 242–3
consequences, comparison of 24–5; Emperor Humayūn 282
India, partition of 24; Kanifnāth/ Husain, A.A. 279, 292n2
Muslim saint Shāh Ramzān Māhī Hussain, Rummana 122, 123, 124, 128,
Savār, shrine of 37, 38; Macedonia, 129, 131, 132–4, 135, 137
partition of 24; Muslim-majority post- Hyder, S. Akbar 255
Ottoman states in Europe, dervish
orders in 26–8; Muslim polities, cul- IANS (Indo-Asian News Service) 172n9
tural and linguistic connections within Ibn 'Arabī 95n14, 214
19; Muslim religioscape 24; Nekşi- Ibn al-Jawzī 296, 312n7, 312n9,
bendis 22, 23, 26, 27, 31, 32; Ottoman 312n13
rule in Southeastern Europe 19; popu- Ibn Jubayr 312n10
lation exchanges, compulsion in 24, Ibn Taymiyya 271
-
25; religious identities, determination Ibrāhīm ‘Adil Shāh II ‘Jagat Gurū’ 279
of 34–5; saints, appeals for assistance identification and presence, varieties of
from 24; secularism in Turkey, impo- 308–10
sition of 21–2, 25; Serbia 24, 25, 28, identity: citizenship and, idea of 125;
30–31; social ideologies of Haci histories of Sufi saints as markers of
Bektaş 20–21; South Asian compar- 247–8; identity formation, territori-
isons 36–8; Sufi traditions of former ality of 126; identity marker diffusion
Ottoman world 19–20; Sunnitification 213–17; language and 198; Muslim
of Ottoman Empire 23; syncretism 28; identity, question of 249–50; Muslim
handicap of 33–4; inherent instability religious identity 127; the ordinary
of liminality and 31–6; Turkey, dervish and 129; self-seeing of 130; social des-
orders in 26–7 ignation and 124–5; Sufi identity 103;
The Hindu 206 see also religious identities
Hindu identity formation 126 Ideology of Pakistan (Iqbal, J.) 143
Hindu militancy, constraints on Iliyās, M. 202
169–70 Ilya 30
Hindu-Muslim devotionalism 252 imagined communities 40, 43
Hindu-Muslim mixed practices imagined histories and hagiographies
248–9 250–55
Hindu-Muslim rift 12–13 India: cataclysmic events in 122; Chishtīs
Hindu nationalism: political capital in of Ajmer in 112–16; contemporary
167; Sufi past, contemporary Muslim India, being a Muslim woman in 122–3;
discourse and 249 Hindutva in, growth of 107–8; indivi-
Hindu pilgrimage 201 dualist Sufism in, production of 186;
Hindu right, divisions within 168–9 modern and vernacular in Indian lit-
'Hinduization' of Sai Baba 157–8 erature, argument about 259–60;
Hindutva in India, growth of 107–8 Muslim as ‘Other’ in nationalist
Hinduvta opinion, Sufism and 186 discourses 197–8; nationalism in 44;
Hir Ranjha (folk story) 140 partition of 24
Hirschkind, C. 276, 296, 297 Indian Express 164
historiographical strategies 256–7 Indian National Congress (INC): Sufism
Hixon, Les 94n5 and nation-state, discussion in Kerala
Ho, E. 277 on 267; syncretic cults in Mumbai,
holidays at shrines 151, 154–5n17, 231, survival of 169, 170
232 Indian Union Muslim League (IUML)
Holy people and contexts of belonging 209, 267
40–42 interanimation 42
352 Index
interfaith activism, gender equality 299, 301, 302–3, 304, 305, 309, 310,
discourses and 112–16 311
interfaith dialogues 82 Jamātis 182
internet-based technologies, Muslim Janārdan (Guru to Eknāth) 50, 53,
messaging and 110 59n17, 60n30, 60n32
Intu Ne-can 202 Jansen, S. 35
Iqbal, Allama 231 Jathika Hela Uramaya (JHU) 68
Iqbal, Javid 143, 230 Jatoi, Hyder Bux 218–19
Irschick, E.F. 197 Jauss, Hans Robert 310, 312n3
Is It What You Think? (Rummana Jauss, H.R., Bennett, B. and Bennett, H.
Hussain artwork) 123–4, 129, 132, 310
133, 134–5, 135–6 Javāhir-i Khamsa (Five Jewels) 282
Iser, Wolfgang 312n3, 312n4 Jawed, N.A. 142
-
Islam: accommodative to culture of Jīan Ditho Ahe Mūn (Sayed, G.M.) 214–15,
South Asia 8–9; caregorization of 262; 223
conservative Islam, Mukadam's criti- Jīlānī see Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī
cism of 178; Dravidian past, Islamiza- Jillani, S.M. 150
tion of 207–9; ethnicization of 212–13; Jinnah, Muhammad Ali 142, 229
hostility to, manifestations of 74–5; Jiye Sindh Qaumi Mahaz 220
ideology of, state identity in Pakistan Jogeshwari Devi 166
and 142–3; interpretations of 294; Johnstone, S. 123
Islamic claustrophobia, women and Jones, Amelia 129–30, 137–8
hell of 181–2; Islamic ideology, state Jore, D. 173n20
identity in Pakistan and 142–3; Isla- Joshi, Hariprasad Shivaprasad 48,
mic sermons 296; ‘Islamic song of the 58n11
love for God’ (eshker gajal) 299–300; Joshi, M.K. 44, 45, 46, 51
Islamist-Salafist networks 108; meta- Joshi, P.M. 58n12
physical-spiritual traditions of 105; Jośī, P.N. 46, 48, 51, 58n11
Mukadam's criticism of 178; mysti- Joyo, M.I. 218
cism in, descriptions of 189–90; Juleff, G. 66
nation-state and 271–4; patriotism,
Islamic moral value of 272–3; sectar- Kabīr (poet) 287
ianism, forms of 269; secular-liberal Kader Mohideen, K.M. 209
perspectives on 262; Sufism in South Kailasapathy, K. 206
Asia and, connections between 10–11; Kakar, Sudhir 125, 126, 127, 128
supererogatory Islamic sermon gather- Kalam, Sufiana 103
ings 297; taqwā, misunderstanding of Kalani, Niaz 222
concept of 265; traditional Islam in Kalīd-i Makhāzin (Key to Hidden
Kerala, critique and interpretation of Treasures) 282
265–6; universal Islam, Mukadam's Kamat, R.K. 58n11
positionality on 179 Kane, D.M. 313n25
Islam, R. 94n9, 94n11, 95n15 Kanifnāth/Muslim saint Shāh Ramzān
Islām par I‘tirāzāt kā ‘Ilmī Jā’iza (Musa Māhī Savār, shrine of 37, 38
Bhutto, M.M.) 223–4 Kapur, Geeta 124, 129, 131, 132–5
karāmat (miracles), stories of healing and
Jaffna, Bawa and 78–81, 83, 84–5, 5–6, 12
94n5 Karbala, Sufi symbolism and 251, 252,
Jaffrelot, C. 143 255
Jafri, S.Z.H. and Reifeld, H. 15n6 Karim, R. 298, 299–300, 303, 305–6
Jagannathan, R. 173n24 Kāshmīrī, T. 280
Jālibī, J. 279, 280, 281, 290, 292, 292n10 Katz, M.H. 297
Jamaat-e-Islami: Sufism and nation-state, Kautilya 285
discussion in Kerala on 262–3, 267–8; Kedourie, E. 226n10
Sufism in Bengali waz mahfils 298, Kerala Jamiatul Ulama 266
Index 353
Kerala Nadwatul Mujahideen impact on 252–3; love and wisdom,
(Mujahids) 262–3, 267–8 localizing language of 284–9; Telugu
Keshavswāmī 59n17 language 247–8, 249, 250, 251, 253–4,
Keune, Jon 60n31 255, 257, 258, 260
Khadija (wife of Prophet Muhammad) Latif Bhitai, Shah Abdul 140–41, 145–6,
183–4 147, 148, 149, 150–51, 154n6, 214,
Khājā 257–8 216, 218, 226n5
Khala, disciple of Nawāb Sāhib 106–7 Latour, Bruno 135–6
Khan, Ayub (and government of) 213, Le Pichon, C. et al. 81, 87, 94n11,
217, 218; Sufi shrines (mazārs) in 96–7n26, 97n27, 97n30
Sindh and Punjab 143, 144; Sufism as Levesque, Julien xii, 14, 212–27
identity marker in Sindh 213, 217, Life and Words (Das, V.) 123
218 literary aesthetics 250; alternative models
Khan, D.-S. 58n6 of 250
Khan, Sameera 128–9, 138n6 literature, Sufism and 8, 11–12, 13, 39,
Khanna, T. 158 71, 105–6, 107, 290; absence of Sufi
Khuhro, H. 226n6 and 201–4; Islamic renaissance and
Kitāb-i Nau Ras (Ibrāhīm) 289, 291 267, 271, 275; modern and vernacular
Kmetova, T. and Mikov, L. 30 in Indian literature, argument about
Knysh, A. 4, 211n2, 312n1 259–60; modern technologies,
Koli culture 156–7, 164, 166, 172n7 marshalling of 108, 112–13; self-
komī mādrāsās, discursive arena of 298, transcendence in 130; Tamil literature,
299, 300, 301, 304–5, 306, 307–8, Muslim contributions to 198, 203–4;
309–10, 312n11 see also Sufi writing in Telugu literature
Koneska, E. and Jankuloski, R. 31 Little, J. 95n14
Konkani-Marathi Muslims 192–3; Lorenzen, D.N. 43
intellectual movement of 194 Lubanska, M. 35
Korejo, M.S. 226n4 Lubin, T. 46, 58n13
Korom, Frank J. xii, 13, 77–99 Luna, James 137–8
Kotadevī of Kashmir 189
Koumaridis, Y. 28 Maalik, E. 145
Kozlowski, G.C. 153n3 Macedonia, partition of 24
Kugle, S. 282, 292n6 McGilvray, Dennis B. xii, 13, 62–76,
Kulkarnī, M.V. 43, 48, 58n11, 59n16 95n15
Kumar, U. 263, 278n2 MacIntyre, A. 272
Kumari, Rinkle 221, 222, 223, 225 McLain, K. 157–8
Kuragala: Brahmi inscriptions at 67; McPherson, K. 198, 200
Muslim pilgrimage to 66–7; struggle Madhavi, Narsalay 171n1, 172n3, 172n4
for control of 75–6 Madhumālatī (Manjhan) 281–2, 289
Kurin, R. 41 Al-Madina Enterprises VCD 164
-
Kuruppu, K.K.N. and Po-kkar, P.K. Maharashtra-kavi-caritra (Ajgāvkar) 49
273 Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)
167
Laclau, Ernesto 4–5, 7, 13, 225 Mahārāshtra Sārasvat (Bhāve) 49
Lajnathul Muhammadiya 266 Mahbub Ali Shah, Pir Sayed 223,
Lakshmi, L.R.S. 269 227n26
Lāl Dīdī 189 Mahipati (Marathi hagiographer) 45, 50,
Lal Shahbaz Qalander 216 53, 59–60n24, 59n17, 60n30
Lallā Vākka 189 Mahmood, S. 251–2, 262, 278n6
language: identity and 198; linguistic and Sultan Mahmud II 22
literary significance of mazārs 148–9; Mahroof, M.M.M. 93–4n4
linguistic nationalist discourses 197; Maizbhandari, Hazrat Gausul Azam
literature, absence of the Sufi and 116–17, 119–20
201–4; local languages, Sufi narrative Maizbhandari silsila of Bangladesh 116–20
354 Index
Makdisi, G. 278n4 56; Cānd Bodhle's shrine and 53,
Makhdūm, Zayn al-Dīn 270, 271, 277 60n33; connection to Muslims 49;
Makhdum Ali Mahimi 163–4, 193 devotees of, diversity of 45–6, 57;
Makthi Thangal, Sayyid Sanaullah 264 Eknāth and 47, 49, 50, 53, 59–60n24,
Malik, S. Jamal 139, 142, 143, 144, 148, 59n17, 60n28; Facebook page 51;
153n3, 231 Fakir-Datta 48–51, 52–3, 54, 57,
Mamdani, M. 262 58n15, 59n20, 59n21; fakir form 47,
Mamood (poet) 251–2 49, 51, 52, 55, 60n29, 61n37; Gang-
Man Samjhāvan (Svāmi Samārtha apur, sacred place of 55; Hindu Brah-
Rāmdās) 189 man and fakir-Muslim aspects of 46;
Māndavkar, B. 49 Hindu-Muslim communalism and 49–
Mann, M. 39 50, 54; identity claims, Hindutva and
Mannalamkunnu, Z. 268–70, 271–4, 275, 51; imagining of, discursive space of
276–7, 278n6, 278n8 56–7; Indic sage 44; Mahānubhāvas
Manuel, P. 108 and 45; Maharashtrian Brahmans and
'Māppillai Leppai’ Sayyid Muhammad cult of 45, 47–8, 58n13; modern
of Kilakkarai 204 understanding of 55–6; Muslims in
Marathi Hindus and Muslims, religious Brahmanic world of, accommodation
difference between 178 of 50; non-Brahman interpretations,
marginalization 46–51 influences on 47, 48; published infor-
Marpakwar, P. 168 mation devoted to 48–9; puja ritual
Marty, M.E. 96n22 and 54; representation of 45; reverence
martyr-saint stories 249, 250, 254 across sectarian affiliations for 44–5;
Massignon, L. 227n18 social history of cult of 48; Śrī Dattā-
Matthews, D.J. 280 treya Jñyānakoś (Encyclopedia of
Mauroof, Mohamad 89 Dattātreya's Wisdom) 48; Tāntrikas,
Mazhari, Imran 313n30 affiliation with 46; textual productions
meaning making, process of 108–9 of fakir form 49; tradition of Fakir-
medical miracles, tradition of 157 Datta, marginalization of 54; as tri-
megalomania (takabburī) 303 murti, mechanics of marginalization
Mehta, Aakash 171n1 and 51, 54; Vedic knowledge, rejuve-
Mehta, Deepak 106 nation of 47; Divine associations 41;
Menon, D. 277 grave sites and interplay between ima-
Menon, Nandagopal R. xii, 14, 262–78 gination and history 51–5; Holy
Metcalf, B.D. 278n5 people and contexts of belonging 40–42;
Miller, Toby 126, 266 homogenization, diversity and 44–6;
Mīr, Hazrat Miyān 189 imagined communities 40, 43; Indian
miracles: Bawa, miraculous feats of 79–80; nationalism 44; interanimation 42;
Haji Ali and performance of 162; kar- marginalization 46–51; patronization
āmat (miracles), stories of healing and 43; power, Holy people and 41;
5–6, 12; medical miracles, tradition of religious identity, problem of 42;
157; miracle stories, mystical position- sacralisation 41; saintly identity,
ing and 305–6; miraculous fame of homogenization of 43–4; sampradāys
Bawa, spread of 80–81 (varieties of Sufi orders) 43, 48, 58n7;
Mitho, Mian 221, 222, 225 South Asia, redesign of collectiveness
mnemo-history 254 in 43; syncretism, sampradāys and
modern religions, preceptors on margins modernized religions 42–4
of 13, 40–61; collective belonging 41; modernity: reform and Sufi affinity with
control of power, social demand for 268–9; Sayed's belief in basic tenets of
41–2; cross-cultural interconnectedness 215
40; Dattātreya 44–6, 46–51, 51–2, Modi, Narendra 1, 9, 158, 159, 169
59–60n24, 59n19, 59n21; avatārs of Mohamed, Kalanthai Peer 206
45, 46, 48, 50, 56–7; birthday of 54; Mohamed, Khalid 171
Brahmanic form of 47, 48, 49, 52, 54, Mohammad, Afsar xii–xiii, 14, 247–61
Index 355
Mohammad, Y.P. 254 traditions 188–9; Muslim progressive
Moidu Moulavi, E. 267 activism, rationalist movement and
Moin, A.A. 8 177; Muslim visuality, concept of 181;
Monier-Williams, M. 284, 285, 287 omnipotence and universal reality of
More, J.B.P. 198, 200, 201, 203, 208 God 187; political scenario today,
Moses 208 perspective on Sufism and 185–6;
Moulavi, K.M. 264, 267, 269 progressivism of 177; proto-secularism
Muedini, F. 9 185; public self-projection 180;
Muhaiyaddeen, M.R.B. 93–4n4, 94n5, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)
94n10, 95n16, 98n41 183, 191; rationalist movement,
Muhammad, T.J. 278n2 sidelining by 186–7; relationships of
Muhammadukkannu, H.M. 269 ‘belonging’ for Muslim minorities,
Muhiyadeen, Darvesh 63 concerns about 177–8; religious differ-
Mu‘īn al-Dīn Chishtī ('Gharīb Nawāz') ence, space for intellectual discussion
95n16, 112–13 on 177–8; rewriting fragmented poli-
mujāwirs, role of 11–12 tical identity 191–3; Richana of Kashmir
Mujeeb, M. 282 (Sadr al-Dīn) 189; secularism 178–9,
Mukadam, Abdul Kader 14, 177–95; 187, 191, 194; Shāh Turāb Chishtī of
activist origins 177; brotherhoods Karnataka 189; Shariat in everyday
(silsilas) in India, importance of 188; lives of women 182; Shiv Sena Hindu
Candrakorīcyā Chāyet (2010, ‘In the nationalists 191–2, 193, 194; Sufis and
Shadow of the Crescent Moon’) 187; 'ulamā', differentiating between 187,
conservative Islam, criticism of 178; 190; Sufism, contradiction in opinions
cosmopolitan and transcultural about 185–6; syncretism 178, 188,
Muslim society of Mumbai 192–3; 189–91; blind spot on 180–81; of
cultural belonging 177–8; cultural Darah Shukoh 189; Tablighi Jamaat
'otherness' of Muslims 180–81; Dal- 170, 178, 181, 184, 186, 190, 193;
wai's thought, deconstruction of 178–9; transformative spiritual processes 187–8;
Dar-ul-Uloom 178, 179; Dastān Bhār- Ulema-e Hind 178, 184; universal
atīya Musalmānānci (2005, ‘The Story Islam, positionality on 179
of Indian Muslims’) 187; deconstruc- Mukamatali, S.M.M. 204
tion of Dalwai 178–9; Deobandi Mukammatali Jamāli, M.N. 203
‘ulamā' 178, 179; dichotomizing the Mullā Ahmad 189
'ulamā', Sufism and 187–91; early Mullā Nūr al-Dīn Zuhūrī 279
Muslims and traveling Sufis, humanis- Mullā Vajhī's Sab Ras 14, 279–93;
tic unison with Hindus 179; eminence ‘Abdullāh Qutb Shāh, Sultan of
-
as 'Muslim intellectual' 179–80; Gor- Golkonda 279; Aghāz-i dāstān zubān-i
akshanāth’s philosophy 188; hegemony Hindūstān (Beginning of the Story [in]
of 'ulamā', perspective on 190–91; the Language of India’) 281; Amrta-
Hindutva opinion, Sufism and 186; kunda (‘The Pool of Nectar’) 282;
individualist Sufism in India, produc- King Bhoj of Malwa 287; cumulative
tion of 186; Islam, criticism of 178; amplification 290; Dādū (poet) 287;
Islamic claustrophobia, women and Dakini as literary language and 290;
hell of 181–2; Islamic mysticism, Dastūr-i ‘ushshāq (Code of Lovers)
descriptions of 189–90; Jamātis 182; 280–81; Fattāhī Nishāpūrī, Muham-
journalistic career, beginnings of 177; mad Yahyā Ibn Sībak 279, 280–81;
Konkani-Marathi Muslims 192–3; Golkonda, grounding in 279–80, 282,
intellectual movement of 194; Kota- 291, 292; Gvāliyārī, Muhammad
devī of Kashmir 189; Lallā Vākka Ghaus 281–3, 290, 292n6; Hardās
189; Marathi cultural life 178; Mar- (poet) 287; Hayāt Samandar (‘Ocean
athi Hindus and Muslims, religious of Life’) 282; Emperor Humayūn 282;
-
difference between 178; meeting Ibrāhīm ‘Adil Shāh II ‘Jagat Gurū’
Mukadam, paradox of Muslim 279; Indic element 292; introductory
political visuality and 181–7; musical passages 285, 290; Javāhir-i Khamsa
356 Index
(Five Jewels) 282; Kabīr (poet) 287; Muslim women in India, everyday lives
Kalīd-i Makhāzin (Key to Hidden of 14, 122–38; The Art of the Motor
Treasures) 282; Kautilya 285; Kitāb-i (Virilio, P.) 130; artistic imagery, mass
Nau Ras (Ibrāhīm) 289, 291; libertine media, religion and 130–37; Bābar kī
lifestyle, legitimacy for 290–91; love santān, jāo Pākistān (Children of
and wisdom, localizing language of Babar, go to Pakistan) 127; Babri
284–9; Madhumālatī (Manjhan) 281–2, Masjid demolition (1992) 122, 124,
289; Muhammad Ghaus Gvāliyārī and 128, 131, 132; Bharatiya Janata Party
the Shattārī Sufi order 281–3; Mullā (BJP) 127, 138n4, 138n5; cataclysmic
Nūr al-Dīn Zuhūrī 279; Nanddās events in India 122; citizen-subject,
(poet) 287; narrative structure and cultural identity and 127–8; citizen-
content 280–81; Persianate templates ship, types of 126–7; communal vio-
291; Prophet Muhammad 281, 285; lence 125, 129, 137; trauma of 128–9;
Qissah-i Husn-o-Dil (The story of contemporary art, key concept of 123;
Beauty and Heart) 280–81; Qulī Qutb contemporary India, being a Muslim
Shāh, Muhammad 279–80, 290; woman in 122–3; 'cultural trauma,'
Qur'an (6:32) 284; Qutb Mushtarī lived experience and 122; Debt (Grae-
(Vajhī) 279, 280, 281, 291, 292n8; ber, D.) 126; employment 122; every-
Qutb Mushtarīī (Vajhī masnavi) 279, day, key concept of 123; everyday
280; Qutb Shāh, 'Abdullāh 280, 286; violence, Muslim, citizen-subject and
Qutb Shāh, Ibrāhīm 279–80; Rājatar- 123–37; Hindu identity formation 126;
anginī 285; rationale for writing 290; Home/Nation (Rummana Hussain
Shāh Vajīh al-Dīn ‘Alvī 290; Shattārī artwork) 123–4, 129, 131, 132–3, 134,
Sufi Shaykh Vajīh al-Dīn ‘Alvi (Haidar 135–6; housing 122; identity: citizen-
‘Alī Sānī) Gujarātī 283; Sufi doctrines, ship and, idea of 125; identity forma-
central concepts of 291; Sufi orders, tion, territoriality of 126; the ordinary
power struggles between 291; Taba'ī and 129; self-seeing of 130; Is It What
(Golkonda poet) 280; Vajhī and his You Think? (Rummana Hussain
patrons 279–80; verse forms 289–90; artwork) 123–4, 129, 132, 133, 134–5,
Yogasūtra 285 135–6; Life and Words (Das, V.) 123;
Mumbai Mirror 162 lived experience, key concept of 123;
Murata, Sachiko 104–5, 120n2 Muslim religious identity 127; 'other,'
Musa Bhutto, Maulana Muhammad creation of 128; pogroms 124; political
223–5, 227n27 belonging, limits of 124–5; Refuse/
Musaliyar, Ali 267 Resist (Shaheen Ahmed artwork) 122,
musical symbolism 257–8 123–4, 128, 131, 135–6; religion, ety-
musical traditions 188–9 mological meanings of 125–6; risks of
Muslim League 267 violence, Muslim women and 129–30;
Muslim poetry 203; new writings of Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust
260–61 (SAHMAT) 124; social designation,
Muslim politics: of belonging 1–3; cul- identity and 124–5; stereotypical
tural and linguistic connections within Muslim woman 137–8; systematic
19; progressive activism, rationalist violence 124; uneventfulness, key
movement and 177; resistance politics concept of 123; violence: immanence
in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh of 125; against Muslim 'other' 137;
248; resistance to Western imperialism, violence by nation-state, justification
nationalist historiographies of 273; of 128; visibility, key concept of
right-wing, danger of attacks on Sufi 123; Weight of Violence (Das, S.B.)
shrines by 166; Tamil nationalism 125; woman in Indian polity 130;
and Ramasamy’s ‘rational’ religion Zachariah's argument for inclusion
199–201 124
Muslim religioscape 24 Mustafa, Hazrat Muhammed 116
Muslim religious identity 127 Mystical Dimensions of Islam
Muslim visuality, concept of 181 (Schimmel, A.) 294
Index 357
mysticism: mystical texts, processes of 125–6, 127, 128, 134, 137; nation-state
reception of 295; Sufism in Bengali and Islam 271–4; patriotism, Islamic
waz mahfils 294–5; Sufism in Sindh moral value of 272–3; Prabo-dhanam
and 215, 216 267; religious compromise from Paki-
stan state 220, 222; religious-majority
Nagore Dargah 205; see also Shahul nation-states, not belonging in 38–9;
Hamid of Nagoor religious reformation 264–5; religious
Naharwālā, Shaykh Ahmad 188–9 tradition, power of nation-state and
Naik, Zakir 191, 193 274–8; renaissance (navo-tthānam)
Nakissa, A. 278 262–3; conditions for 268; conven-
Nanda, M. 42, 46 tional narrative on 263–7; counter-
Nanddās (poet) 287 narrative on 267–71; dominant para-
Nandy, A. 7 digm 268; modernity, influence on
Naqvi, S. 255 269–70; political significance of 267;
Narasinha Sarasvatī 45 provenance of 264; revisionist reading
Narayana Rao, V. 252 of 273–4; revitalization,
Narayanan, V. 205 processes of 264; secular-liberal
Nasr, S.V.R. 144 perspectives on Islam 262; shrine
nation-state, Sufism and 1, 8–9, 23, 25; structures, state imposition on 144,
‘Abduh, Muhammad 266, 271, 272, 153; Sindh, Sufism as identity marker
277; Adhkiyā (Makhdūm) 270; in 14, 212–27; Sree Narayana Dharma
Ahl-e-Hadith 266; Aikya Sangham Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) 263; state
264, 266, 267; All India Jamiatul extremism, promotion of 225–6; state
Ulama 267–8; belonging and Sufism identity, Islamic ideology and 142;
in Muslim-majority nation-states 38–9; state politics, Hindu right and 169–70;
'crusader mentality' 272; cultural and Svadeśābhimāni (Patriot) 267; Ibn
religious diversity, fluctuations of state Taymiyya 271; tomb-shrines,
on 213; dars system 265; Darul Uloom veneration of 265–6; traditional Islam
of Vazhakkad 269; discussion in in Kerala, critique and interpretation
Kerala on 14, 262–78; Dravida Nadu, of 265–6; Travancore Muslim
Ramasamy's demands for 201–2; Mahajanasabha 266; Turkish state and
founding principles of Pakistan state 23, 26–8, 31–2, 33, 38–9; Vakkom
215; geographical imaginaries 263; Moulavi, Abdul Khader 264–5, 266,
Indian National Congress (INC) 267; 267, 268, 269, 270, 274, 277, 278n2;
Indian Union Muslim League 267; see also Data Darbar shrine, politics
Islam, caregorization of 262; Islam of Sufism and
and nation-state 271–4; Islamic con- nationalism: All India Anna Dravida
cept of taqwā, misunderstanding of Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)
265; Islamic sectarianism, forms of 206; Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
269; Jamaat-e-Islami 262–3, 267–8; (DMK) 205–6, 209; Dravidar Kazha-
Kanthapuram Aboobacker Musaliyar gam (DK) 200; Dravidian Movement:
267–8; Kerala Jamiatul Ulama 266; erosion of atheist-rationalist tradition
Kerala Nadwatul Mujahideen in 199; Muslim reformers and 199;
(Mujahids) 262–3, 267–8; Lajnathul Tamil nationalism and political
Muhammadiya 266; Makhdūm, Zayn history of 197; ethno-nationalism and
al-Dīn 270, 271, 277; Manna- 75–6; Hindu nationalism: political
lamkunnu 268–70, 271–4, 275, 276–7, capital in 167; Sufi past, contemporary
278n6, 278n8; modernity, reform and Muslim discourse and 249; in India
affinity with 268–9; Muslim belonging 44; Islamization of Dravidian past
in Tamil Nadu and 210; Muslim 207–9; linguistic nationalist discourses
League 267; Muslim resistance to 197; Muslim as ‘Other’ in Indian
Western imperialism, nationalist his- nationalist discourses 197–8; Muslim
toriographies of 273; Muslim woman politics, Tamil nationalism and
'other' in Indian nation-state 123–4, Ramasamy’s ‘rational’ religion 199–201;
358 Index
political history of Dravidian Paranjpe, S. 172n13, 173n20
Movement and Tamil nationalism in Parciack, Ronie 9
India 197–8; Shiv Sena in Maharashtra parody 298–9, 304, 306–7, 308, 309, 311,
197; Sindhi nationalism 214, 217, 313n24
220–23, 225, 226n4; Sufism, Tamil Parsram, Jethmal 214, 222
nationalism and idea of 198–9; Parussini, G. 173n22
Tamil-language nationalists, problems Parveen, Adiba 'Queen of Sufi Music’ 103
of 202; Tamil linguistic nationalism Pasha, K. 265
197; Tamil nationalism, place of past, contestation over 2, 10, 13, 19, 33–4,
Muslims in 14, 196–211; Tamilnadu 53–4, 210, 225, 260, 291; mysticism in
Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam Sindh and 214–15, 218–19, 224–5;
(TMMK) 206 present, past as battleground for 71–5;
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) 169, Sufi past, mobilization in service of
170 present 110–12; Tamil nationalism and
nationalization: political processes lead- 198, 201–2, 204, 207–9; see also Sufi
ing to 141, 142–4; Sufi poetry and past, contemporary Muslim discourse
139–40; of Sufi shrines, 'politicized and
space' and 142–4, 153 Patil, Sandeep 164
Nawāb Sāhib 106–7 patriotism, Islamic moral value of 272–3
Nekşibendis 22, 23, 26, 27, 31, 32 Paul, Jean 313n26
New York Times 124 Peebles, P. 67
Nguyen, M. 96n23 Pemberton, Kelly xiii, 14, 103–21
Nisar Hussain, Shah Syed 154n7 Pernau, M. 297
Nizami, Hasan 107 Petievich, Carla 313n29
Nizami, K.A. 144 Pew Research Center 1–2
Noah the Prophet 209, 211n7 Pfleiderer, B. 5
non-Muslims in South Asia, Sufi Phadke, V.K. 60n30
practices and 3, 4, 5–7, 10–11, 12–13 Phelan, P. 130
Noor, Bahar 114 Philippon, Alix 4, 9, 139, 140, 223
Noor, Meher 114 Pinglay-Plumber, P. 158–9
Nurī Mahārāj of Thane 61n37 Pinney, C. 131
Pinto, D. 153n1
Oak, P.N. 186, 191 Platts, John T. 284
Obeyesekere, G. 94n6 political socialization of students 219–20
Oesterheld, Christina xiii, 14, 279–93, politics of gender in Sufi imaginary 14,
312n19 103–21; Abida Parveen, 'Queen of Sufi
O'Hanlon, Rosalind 58n15 Music’ 103; Ansari weavers in Bar-
One Unit scheme in Sindh 217–18 abanki 106; belonging, Sufi idioms of
oral hagiographies of Sufi martyrs 252 103–4; Chishtīs of Ajmer in India
Orientalist notions of Sufis 104 112–16; competing masculinities,
Ottappilakkool, M. 267 Sufism and 116–20; creation,
Otto, Rudolf 305 identification with 105; Divine Reality,
Ottoman rule in Southeastern Europe 19 human life centred on 105–6; femin-
Öztürk, S.I. 26 ized masculinity 117–18; Gudrī Shāh
Chistī order 106–7, 112–13, 114, 115–16;
Pagaro, Pir 216, 227n24 hierarchy and authority, impact of
Pakistan, ethnicity and nation-building in new communications on 109; Hin-
213 dutva in India, growth of 107–8; ima-
Palamas, Gregory 35, 37 ginary of state, competing visions of
Palijo, Sassui 212, 213 Sufis in 120; inclusiveness, spiritual
Pandey, G. 25, 262 development and Islamic foundations,
Pandian, M.S.S. 197, 201–2 linkages between 116–17; internet-based
Panikkar, K.N. 263 technologies, Muslim messaging and
Paranavitana, S. 66, 67 110; Islamic metaphysical-spiritual
Index 359
traditions 105; Islamist-Salafist net- 189; Shaykh Vajīh al-Dīn ‘Alvi
works 108; Maizbhandari silsila 116–18; (Haidar ‘Alī Sānī) Gujarātī 283; Sir-
meaning making, process of 108–9; hindī, Shaykh Ahmad 224, 272; Sufi
Orientalist notions of Sufis 104; out- shaykhs 108, 110–11, 116; see also
sideness within Sufi circles 103–4; per- modern religions, preceptors on
ception 105; Prophet Muhammad and margins of
108, 110, 111, 112, 116, 118, 120–21n7; Prophet al-Khidr 63, 65, 72
relationality 105; religious authority, Prophet Muhammad 148, 183–4, 215,
landscape of 111–12; social activism: 278n3; birthday ('īd-e mīlād an-nabī)
fight against intolerance and 112–13; of 304; family and lineage of 114–15;
Sufism and 108, 116–20; social rules, Mullā Vajhī's Sab Ras 281, 285; poli-
defiance of 106–7; spiritual master- tics of gender in Sufi imaginary 108,
ship, achievement of 109; spiritual 110, 111, 112, 116, 118, 120–21n7;
seeking and loss of selfhood, char- Sufism in Bengali waz mahfils and 297,
acteristics of 118–19; ‘spiritual work,’ 299, 300–301, 302, 307, 310, 312n16,
engagement in 103; structural and 313n31
symbolic changes in Sufi orders and proto-secularism 185
beyond 107–12; śuddhi (purification) Puliyankulam, farming in 80
movement 107; Sufi identity 103; Sufi Purandare, V. 191–2
Path to God 111–12; Sufi Saint School Purnalingam Pillai, M.S. 202, 203
of Ajmer 112–16; school prayer 113;
Sufi shaykhs 108, 110–11, 116; The Qadeer, Muhammad A, 227n15
Tao of Islam (Murata, S.) 104–5; Qādirī, Cānd Bodhle, Sheikh 53
technological developments, commu- Qaid-i-Azam 231
nications and 109–10; Women Mystics Qazan, Qazi 214
and Sufi Shrines of India (Pemberton, Qissah-i Husn-o-Dil (The story of Beauty
K.) 106–7; Ziaul Huq Maizbhandarim and Heart) 280–81
Hazrat Syed 116, 118–19 Quack, J. 5
Pollock, S. 40 Qulī Qutb Shāh, Muhammad 279–80,
polytheism 215, 224, 302 290
Popović, A. 31 Qur'an (6:32) 284
Prabo-dhanam 267 Qureshi, Bashir Khan 220–21, 227n19,
Prager, L. 32 227n20; statement of 220–21
Prasad, B. 60n25 Qureshi, Rafat 60n31
preceptors (shaykhs, gurus) 41, 45, 48–9, Qutb Mushtarī (Vajhī) 279, 280, 281,
50, 52, 204; Bistāmī, Shaykh Bayazīd 291, 292n8
224, 282; Chānd, Shaykh 53, 60n31; Qutb Shāh, Abdullāh 280, 286
Gangohī, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Quddūs 188; Qutb Shāh, Ibrāhīm 279–80
Guru Bawa (Bawa Muhaiyaddeen,
Muhammad Raheem) 77–8, 78–9; Raeside, I.M.P. 45
early years 78–81; Philadelphia and Rafīk Ahamatu, S.M. 205
81–5; Guru Maharaj Ji 90; Guru Sree Rahman, A.R. 171, 205, 265
Narayana 263, 278n2; Gurucaritra Rahman, Fazlur 111
(Life of the Guru) 45, 46–7, 48, 50, Rahman, S. Abdul ('Kaviko') 209
-
59n16, 59n19; Ibrāhīm ‘Adil Shāh II Raja, S. 208
‘Jagat Gurū’ 279; Janārdan (Guru to Rajadhyaksha, Ashish 128, 132, 137
Eknāth) 50, 53, 59n17, 60n30, 60n32; Rajapakse, Gotabhaya 69
Naharwālā, Shaykh Ahmad 188–9; Rajapakse, Mahinda 62
Shattārī Sufi Shaykh Vajīh al-Dīn ‘Alvi Rājataranginī 285
(Haidar ‘Alī Sānī) Gujarātī 283; Rajendran, Anushka L. 129, 130, 131
Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qādir ‘Taykkā Sāhib’ Rājīvan, B. 263
of Kilakkarai 204; Shaykh Bahā’ Rajopadhye, Hemant 58n13
al-Dīn ‘Bājan’ 292; Shaykh Dawood Ramasamy, E.V. 200–202, 204, 207–8,
208–9, 211n6; Shaykh Shihab al-Dīn 209, 211n3; Muslim stereotypes,
360 Index
confirmation of 200–201; original prose and style of 279; Indic elements
Islam, advocacy for 201; Self-Respect in 292; Madhumālatī, similatities with
Movement of 200, 201 281–2; Muhammad Ghaus Gvāliyārī
Ramaswamy, S. 197 and the Shattārī Sufi order in 281–3;
Ramey, S.W. 152 prestige of Sufi ideas and 291; reason
Ranade, M.G. 45, 49 and self-knowledge, rigressions on
Ranade, Sanjay 171n1, 172n3 283; royal commissioning of 280, 290;
Rane, Naryan 169 transitional aspects of 291; wine
Rantattāni, H. 271 drinking, advocacy in 280
Rashid, Iftikar Ahmad 171n1 Sadānanda 49
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Sadānandasvāmī of Copda 49, 54, 59n17,
183; Daftar Jailani, impacts on shrine 59n20, 59n23
at 74; Mukadam, Abdul Kader 183, Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust
191 (SAHMAT) 124
Ratwatte, Mallika 66 Śahā Datta Kalama 49
Raudvere, C. 30, 31 Śahāb 267
Reetz, Dietrich 3, 6, 15n5, 15n6 Sahabdeen, M. 99n45, 198, 206
Refuse/Resist (Shaheen Ahmed artwork) Sahāranpūrī, ‘Abd al-Latīf 189
122, 123–4, 128, 131, 135–6 Saheb, S.A.A. 205
Rehman, Uzma xiii, 14, 139–55 Sāhib, Kunangudi Mastān 203, 204
religious identities: determination of Sāī Bābā of Shirdi 61n36, 98n33, 156–9,
34–5; problem of 42 160, 165–6, 170–71, 171n2; see also
religious tolerance 214 syncretic cults in Mumbai, survival of
renaissance (navo-tthānam) 262–3; con- Saif, A.B. 166
ditions for 268; conventional narrative Sainam Charitra 156
on 263–7; counter-narrative on saintly identity, homogenization of 43–4
267–71; dominant paradigm 268; Saivism 250
modernity, influence on 269–70; Saiyid Qasim Shah 146
political significance of 267; prove- sajjādanishīns (shrine carers): importance
nance of 264; revisionist reading of of 148; role of 142–4, 145–8, 154n7
273–4 Salām Sindh (Jatoi, H.B.) 218–19
Let's Return to the Sixteenth Century 256 sampradāys (varieties of Sufi orders) 43,
Ricci, Ronit 260 48, 58n7
Richana of Kashmir (Sadr al-Dīn) 189 Sanyal, U. 299
Richardson, J.T. 92, 96n22 Sarade, Rāmjī 59n21
Ridā, Rashīd 266, 271, 277 Sarangapany, G. 202
Rifā‘ī zikr at Jailani 65–6 Sarasvatī Gangādhar 45
Rigopoulos, A. 44, 46, 157 Sarhandi, Ibrahim Jan Faruqi 223
Robinson, Francis 109, 120n4 Sarhandi, Pir Ayub Jan 222–3, 225,
Robinson, Naim 87 227n25, 227n26
Roche, E. 169 Sarker, Abul 313n23
Rogers, M. 218 Sarmast, Sachal 214, 218
Rose, H.A. 59n18 Sassi Punnu (folk story) 140
Roy, M.N. 224 Sathisan, D. 202
Roy, Rammohun 263 satire 298–9, 302, 304–5, 308–9, 311
Rozehnal, Robert 9, 107, 108, 139, 144 Satyanarayana, K. and Tharu, S.
Rūh Rihān 217, 218 261n2
Rūmī, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad 22, 249 Saudagar, Gulab Mohinuddin 54
Rushdnāmā (Shaykh ‘Abd al-Quddūs Savarkar (Maharashtrian Brahman)
Gangohī) 188 60n27
Sayed, G.M. 213, 214–16, 217, 219–20,
Sab Ras (Mullā Vajhī) 14, 279–93; 222, 223–4, 226n4, 226n7, 227n17
Dakini as literary language, zenith for Sayeedi, D.H. 302–3, 312n18
290; eulogization of 285–6; Fattāhī's Scharbrodt, O. 272
Index 361
Schimmel, Annemarie 227n13, 227n18, Shiv Sena Hindu nationalists: in Mahar-
284, 294, 312n10 ashtra 197; Mukadam and 191–2, 193,
Scholz, J. and Stille, M. 294 194; syncretic cults in Mumbai, survi-
Schwerin, K.G. 57n1 val of 158, 159, 166–8, 169–70, 171,
Scott, G.M. 67 172n16
sectarian violence 212; growth of 220 Shivaji of Maharashtra 166
secularism: of Mukadam 178–9, 187, Shrigondekar, Śekh Mahammad 59n17
191, 194; secular narrative, Tamil shrines (dargāhs, mazārs): antagonistic
nationalism and 197; in Turkey, tolerance of shrines in South Asia 11;
imposition of 21–2, 25 belonging in South Asia, Shrines and
Seethi Sahib, K.M. 267 politics of 9–10; colonial patronization
Sengupta, Monimalika 164, 171n1 of 144; control in South Asia of, poli-
Sequeria, R. 172n10 tics of 10; conversion in South Asia of
Serbia 24, 25, 28, 30–31 12–13; descriptive fantasies and 12;
Serendib Sufi Study Circle (SSSC) 81, 83, early patronization of 144; ethno-
85, 88, 95n17, 97n32 graphic research on 140; geographic
sermons, 'conceptual space' of 294–9 location of the Haji Ali dargāh 163,
sex segregation 105–6 164; Haji Ali shrine: cult of 156, 160–
Seyler, Vivien 171n1 65; Mahalaxmi Hindu temple and
Shafi, S. 304–5 164; videos about 164–5; hereditary
Shah, Idries 98–9n44 descendants, shrine administration and
Shah, S.M.H. 142 145–8; 'Hinduization' of Sai Baba 157–
Shah, Umar Ali 260 8; interpretation of Sai Baba, impor-
Shah ‘Abdul Karim Bulri 141 tance of 158–9; linguistic and literary
Shah Habib 141 significance of mazārs 148–9; literary
Shāh Ramzān Māhī Savār 37 heritage, significance of mazārs for
Shāh Turāb Chishtī of Karnataka 189 149; Makhdum Ali Mahimi 163–4;
Shāh Vajīh al-Dīn ‘Alvī 290 media approach to government con-
-
Shahā Datta Alamā Prabhu 47, 50 trol of shrines 148; medical miracles,
Shahjahana 259 tradition of 157; miracles performed
Shahul Hamid of Nagoor, shrine of 63, by Haji Ali 162; multivalence of
65, 72 shrines in South Asia 139; Muslim
Shaikh, F. 213 right, danger of attacks on Sufi shrines
Shaiva 44, 49, 59n20, 189, 199, 203 by 166; Nagore Dargah 205; nationa-
Shamatov, A.N. 291, 293n11 lization of Sufi shrines, 'politicized
Shariat in everyday lives of women space' and 142–4, 153; poetry of saints,
182 contemporary relationships with 149;
Sharif, Navaz 243 political power of hereditary pīrs 143;
Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qādir ‘Taykkā Sāhib’ of propriety of dargāh worship in South
Kilakkarai 204 Asia, debates about 9–10; representa-
Shaykh Bahā’ al-Dīn ‘Bājan’ 292 tions of Sai Baba 158; Sai Baba shrine
Shaykh Dawood 208–9, 211n6 at Shirdi 157; Sainam Charitra 156;
Shaykh Shihab al-Dīn 189 Shahul Hamid of Nagoor 63, 65, 72;
Shaykh Vajīh al-Dīn ‘Alvi (Haidar ‘Alī shared spiritual worship, counter-nar-
Sānī) Gujarātī 283 rative of 159; Shirdi Sai Baba, cult of
Sheeraz, M. 153n2 156–9, 160, 170–71; eclectic nature of
Shehabuddin, Elora 120 159; shrine carers, role of 10–11; in
Sher Shāh Sūrī 282 Sindh and Punjab 14, 139–55; social
Shia imāmbārgāh in Shikarpur 212 and symbolic space of 139; social
Shibli Nomani, Allama 231 space at mazārs, mingled religious
Shinde, K.A. and Pinkney, A.M. 157 identities and 149–52; social space
Shirdi Sai Baba, cult of 156–9, 160, inside mazārs, character of 151–2;
170–71; eclectic nature of 159 social welfare, Sufi shrines as institu-
Shīrīn 286 tions of 143–4; sub-shrines, production
362 Index
of 11; tomb-shrines, veneration of Sufi Bulbul Shāh (Sayyid Sharaf al-Dīn)
265–6; visitors to, diverse nature of 141, 189
150–51, 152–3; see also Bawa Sufi orders (tarīgas) 24, 31–2, 43, 59n18,
Muhaiyaddeen shrine in Philadelphia 59n20, 95n16, 103, 222–3, 242; Chishtī
Shu'ayb, T. 208 Sufi piety and 115–16; Maizbhandari
Shukoh, Darah 189 116, 117–19, 119–20, 306; Muhammad
Shyam, R. 166 Ghaus Gvāliyārī and the Shattārī
Al-Siddikī 312n9 Sufi order 281–3; naqshbandiyya
Siddiqua, N. 280 mujaddidiyya 225, 227n25; neo-Sufism
Sikand, Yoginder 9, 12, 46, 51, 195n4, 111; power struggles between 291;
195n6 Qādiriyya 63, 80, 201, 204, 227n24;
Sind and its Sufis (Parsram, J,) 214 sampradāys (varieties of Sufi orders)
Sindh as a ‘land of Sufis’ 213–17, 225 43, 48, 58n7; Shādhiliyya 201, 204;
Sindhi, Hamid 217–18, 227n12 Shattārī 281–3; structural and
Sindhi Adabi Board 218 symbolic changes in Sufi orders and
Sindhi nationalism 214, 217, 220–23, beyond 107–12; waz mahfils (sermon
225, 226n4 gatherings) and 298, 299, 301, 302–3,
Sindhology 218 305–6, 308, 309, 310; women in,
Sirhindī, Shaykh Ahmad 224, 272 increasing opportunities for 110–11
Sirmed, M. 221 Sufi past, contemporary Muslim dis-
Snyder, B.H. 97n32 course and 14, 247–61; Annaram
social activism: fight against intolerance shrine in Telangana 247; communal
and 112–13; Sufism and 108, 116–20 violence 249; composite culture, layers
Sohoni, Pushkar 60n32 of 253; cotton-carders, caste of
Solomon the Prophet 199 (dūde-kula) 257–9; cultural and lin-
Somaratana, Ven. B. 73 guistic assimilation 252–3; cultural
Sorley, H.T. 226n5 memory, history of 254; The Festival
Sözer, Hande 23, 28–9, 32, 39 of Pirs (Mohammad, A.) 251; In the
spiritual guidance 215–16 Garden of Mirrors 253–4; Hindu-
spiritual knowledge, Sindh as center of Muslim devotionalism 252; Hindu-
214 Muslim mixed practices 248–9; Hindu
Spittel, R.L. 65 nationalism 249; historiographical
Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana strategies 256–7; identity markers, his-
Yogam (SNDP) 263 tories of Sufi saints as 247–8; imagined
Śrī Dattātreya Jñyānakoś (Encyclopedia histories and hagiographies 250–55;
of Dattātreya's Wisdom) 48 Karbala, Sufi symbolism and 251, 252,
Sri Lanka: Archaeology Department in 255; literary aesthetics 250; alternative
65, 66, 68–70, 72, 73–4, 75; civil war models of 250; local languages, Sufi
in, aftermath of 62; see also Daftar narrative impact on 252–3; local Sufi
Jailani, impacts on shrine at; Tamil devotionalism, influences of 248–9;
nationalism, place of Muslims in martyr-saint stories 249, 250, 254;
Śrīalamprabhu Mahimā Grantha (The medieval Sufism, historicization of
Book of Alam Prabhu’s Greatness) 55, 248; mnemo-history 254; modern and
61n35 vernacular in Indian literature, argu-
Srinivas, S. 157 ment about 259–60; musical symbo-
Śrīpad Śrīvallabha 45 lism 257–8; Muslim identity, question
Starrett, G. 274 of 249–50; Muslim poets, new writings
Stewart, Tony 98n38, 312n21 of 260–61; Muslim resistance politics
Stille, Max xiii, 14, 294–313 in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh
Stirling, P. 21 248; oral hagiographies of Sufi mar-
The Story of a Sufi Moon 251–2 tyrs 252; reclaiming medieval Sufi
Strothmann, Linus xiii–xiv, 14, 228–44 spaces 257; resistance and representa-
Subramanian, K. 205 tion, Sufi poems as tools of 255–9;
śuddhi (purification) movement 107 Let's Return to the Sixteenth Century
Index 363
256; Saivism 250; The Story of a Sufi and 213, 217–25; Sufi devotionalism
Moon 251–2; sub-caste histories 259; 248–9, 250, 251; Sufi identity 103;
Sufi devotionalism 248–9, 250, 251; Tamil nationalism and idea of 198–9;
Sufi histories, interactions between translocal Sufi concepts, Umar Ali
249–50; Sufi writing in Telugu litera- Shah and 260
ture: connections within 250; narrative Suhail, E. 271
dimensions of 248; Sufi writings, Suhrawardī, Shihāb al-Dīn 270
implications of 249; Telugu language Suhrawardy, N. 192
247–8, 249, 250, 251, 253–4, 255, 257, Sulaiman, S.M. 206
258, 260; Telugu Muslim cultural dis- Sumana Saman 75
course 258–9; Telugu poets, sources Sunnitification of Ottoman Empire 23
for 251; translocal Sufi concepts, Suvorova, A. 154n13
Umar Ali Shah and 260; Vaishnavism Svadeśābhimāni (Patriot) 267
250; Yakub Shah Wali of Annaram Svāmi Samārtha Rāmdās of Tanjore 189
247, 249, 254 Swallow, D.A. 98n33
Sufi Path to God 111–12 Swāmī Samārtha of Akkalkot 58n13
Sufi Saint School of Ajmer 112–16; Swaminatha Aiyar 203
school prayer 113 Swaroopanand Saraswati, Swami Shree
Sufi shaykhs 108, 110–11, 116 158–9
Sufi traditional themes (topoi) 298, 300, Syed Nisar Hussain Shah 154n7
301–2, 303, 304, 306, 311 syncretism 21, 26–7, 28–9, 30, 37, 38, 49,
Sufi writing in Telugu literature: connec- 58n3; amity imagined as 50–51; anti-
tions within 250; implications of 249; syncretic strategies 35; contestation
narrative dimensions of 248 and 33–4; cults in Mumbai, survival of
Sufism 3–8; associations with 4; belong- 14, 156–73; cultural syncretism 166–7;
ing and Sufism in Muslim-majority Hindu-Muslim syncretism 50–51, 54,
nation-states 8–9; contradiction in 188; inherent instability of liminality
Mukadam's opinions about 185–6; and 31–6; Mukadam and 178, 180,
decolonization and dissemination of 188, 189–90; politics in contemporary
77; dichotomization of the 'ulamā' and Mumbai, syncretic cults and 165–70,
187–91; divergent ideas about 4–5; 170–71; politics of religious syncretism
doctrines of, central concepts of 291; 56–7; sampradāys, modernized reli-
ethnicization of 213; excess of, Bengali gions and 42–4; syncretic interpreta-
waz mahfils and 296; as general term, tion of Sai Baba, importance of 158–9
reflections on 298; Hindu healing systematic violence 124
rituals at 'Sufi shrines' (dargāhs) 6–7;
histories of, interactions between Taba'ī (Golkonda poet) 280
249–50; as identity marker in Sindh Tablighi Jamaat 3, 8, 74, 129; Mukadam
14, 212–27; identity politics and, con- and 178, 179, 181, 184, 186, 190, 193
tradictory nature of 8–13; images of 4; Tahir, T.A. 217
India, politics of belonging and Sufism Tahrīd (Makhdūm) 270
in 9; Laclau's concept of naming and Tajuddīn Bābā of Nagpur 61n37
4–5; medieval Sufism, historicization Talbot, I. 217
of 248; miracles, 'healing' and con- Abu Talib (uncle of Prophet Muhammad)
temporary views of 5–6; multi-genera- 183–4
tional cultural product 295; Muslim Tamil Tigers (LTTE) 62, 67, 83
politics of belonging, Islamic 'refor- Tamilnadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam
mism' and 8; naming and belonging, (TMMK) 206
Sufism and politics of 5–7, 13; pil- Taneja, A.V. 297
grimage to 'Sufi shrines' (dargāhs) 5–6; Tāntrika 44
propagation of state interpretation of Tanvīr, M. 267
144; Sayed's conception of 215–16; Tanyeri-Erdemir, Tuǧba 39n1, 39n7
shared but embattled ideal of 307–8; The Tao of Islam (Murata, S.) 104–5
'struggle over representations’ in Sindh Taylor, A. 1
364 Index
Telugu language 247–8, 249, 250, 251, Vicziany, M., Bapat, J.B. and Ranade, S.
253–4, 255, 257, 258, 260 156, 157, 164, 172n7, 172n12
Telugu Muslim cultural discourse 258–9 Vicziany, Marika xiv, 14, 156–73
Telugu poets, sources for 251 Vidyasagar, Iswar Chandra 263
Terzioǧlu, D. 23 Vietnam War 81
Thackeray, Bal 191–2 violence: ethnic violence, partitions and
Thangal, Makthi 271, 278n8 25; everyday violence, Muslim, citizen-
Thass, Iyothee 211n1 subject and 123–37; immanence of
Theja Gunawardena 95n17, 98n39 125; against Muslim 'other' 137;
Theosophical Society 214, 222, 224 nation-state, justification of violence
Theravada Buddhist tradition 67 by 128; risks of, Muslim women and
Thiranagama, S. 67 129–30; systematic violence 124; see
The Times of League 209 also communal violence; sectarian
Tirukkural of Tiruvalluvar 207–8 violence
Titus, M.T. 144 Virilio, Paul 130
Todorova, Maria N. 19 Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) 74, 166
Toynbee, Arnold 224 Viswanath, R. 202
Travancore Muslim Mahajanasabha 266
Troll, C.W. 139 Wallace, Jr., D.D. 92
Tschacher, Torsten xiv, 1–15, 39n1, Walton, J.F. 27
196–211, 252–3, 261n4, 294 Waqar Ali, Shah Syed 154n7
Tulpule, S.G. 53 Waris Shah, Syed Pir 140–41, 141–2,
Turkey, dervish orders in 26–7 145, 146–7, 148, 149, 150–51, 155n20;
social and political space in Sindh
Ulema-e Hind 178, 184 shrine of 140–41, 141–2, 145, 146–7,
Umar Marvi (folk story) 140 148, 149, 150–51, 155n20
Umar Maulavi, K. 265–6 Warren, M. 46, 157
Urban, H.B. 300 waz mahfils (sermon gatherings) 297–8,
'urs celebrations 53, 63, 78, 88, 107, 114, 299, 300, 301, 302, 304, 306, 307,
166, 223, 227n26, 257; political 309–10, 311, 312n11; affinities to
dimensions of 231, 234, 240, 241–2, Sufism 297; anti-Sufi rhetoric in 296–7,
243, 323; satire and parody in context 301–3; audience involvement, effects
of 304–6; social and political spaces of 297; cassette sermons 296–7; Deo-
and 145, 147–8, 149–50, 151–2, bandi tradition 298, 305; divine mys-
154–5n17, 154n6, 154n12, 154n16; see tery, limits of understanding of 301;
also festivals at shrines; holidays at 'expression,' concept of 296; framing
shrines sermons, raising expectations and
Uwise, M.M. 99n45, 206 299–301; Hefazat-e Islam 300, 301;
heroism, identification with 310; iden-
Vadlamudi, S.S.R. 211n4 tification and presence, varieties of
Vaishnava 44 308–10; Islamic sermons 296; ‘Islamic
Vaishnavism 250 song of the love for God’ (eshker
Vaithees, V.R. 211n1 gajal) 299–300; Jama‘at-e Islami and
'Vajhi,' Mullā Asadullāh see Mullā Vajhi's 298, 299, 301, 302–3, 304, 305, 309,
Sab Ras 310, 311; komī mādrāsās, discursive
Vakkom Moulavi, Abdul Khader 264–5, arena and 298, 299, 300, 301, 304–5,
266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 274, 277, 278n2 306, 307–8, 309–10, 312n11; mega-
van Bruinessen, M. 108 lomania (takabburī) 303; miracle
van der Veer, P. 12, 15n7, 43, 56, 58n6 stories, mystical positioning and 305–6;
van Skyhawk, H. 53 mystical texts, processes of reception
Vārkarī saints 55 of 295; narrative context, spacial ima-
Vasudevānanda Sarasvatī 45 gination and 302; parody 298–9, 304,
Venkatachalapathy, A.R. 206 306–7, 308, 309, 311, 313n24; peaceful
Verkaaik, Oskar 9, 212–13, 215, 216 and inward-oriented Sufis, stereotypes
Index 365
of 300–301; polytheism 302; reli- Xavier, M.S. 94n5, 95n14
giosity, interlinked phenomena of 294,
311; rhetorical techniques 297–8, 302–3; Yakub Shah Wali of Annaram 247, 249,
satire 298–9, 302, 304–5, 308–9, 311; 254
self-positioning in satire and parody Yassine, Nadia 111
304–8; sermons, and Sufism, 'con- Yavuz, M.H. 120n6
ceptual space' of 294–9; Sufi order Yogasūtra 285
(SO) 298, 299, 301, 302–3, 305–6, 308, Yosmaoǧlu, I. 25
309, 310; Sufism in 14, 294–313; Yürekli, Z. 24
supererogatory Islamic sermon
gatherings 297 Zachariah, Benjamin 124
Webb, G. 98n41 Zahab, Abou 227n16
Weber, Max 89, 98n36, 98n42, 228 Zarcone, T., Isin, E. and Buehler, A.
Weight of Violence (Das, S.B.) 125 63
Weinberg, P.J. 98n35 Zavos, J. 58n6
Weismann, I. 108 Zayed, Ahmed A. 239
Werbner, P. 16n6, 139 El-Zein, A. 95–6n18
Werbner, P. and Basu, H. 139 Zia ul-Haq, Muhammad 213, 219, 220,
Wilson, P. 98n40 231–2, 239; Sufism as identity marker
Wink, A. 142 in Sindh 213, 219, 220
Wirathu, Ashin 74 Ziaul Huq Maizbhandarim Hazrat Syed
Wise, L. 297 116, 118–19
Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines of India Žižek, Slavoj 5
(Pemberton, K.) 106–7 Zor, Qādirī 280
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LONDON AND NEW YORK

Deepra Dandekar is an Associate Member of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia

Torsten Tschacher is Junior Professor of Muslim Culture and Society in

South Asia, with its burgeoning, ethnically diverse population, soaring

Suicide Protest in South Asia China–India Relations in the

LONDON AND NEW YORK

ISBN: 978-1-138-91068-3 (hbk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

List of ﬁgures viii

Introduction: Framing Suﬁsm in South Asian Muslim politics

2 Who’s the master?: Understanding the religious preceptors on the

3 Islamic and Buddhist impacts on the shrine at Daftar Jailani,

4 Longing and belonging at a Suﬁ saint shrine abroad 77

7 Who is in? Who is out?: Social vs political space in the Suﬁ

10 From ‘rational’ to ‘Suﬁ Islam’?: The changing place of Muslims

11 ‘Sindhis are Suﬁ by nature’: Suﬁsm as a marker of identity

12 The politics of Suﬁsm on the ground: The political dimension of

14 ‘Islamic renaissance’, Suﬁsm and the nation-state: A debate

15 Mullā Vajhī’s Sab Ras 279

1.1 Billboards in front of the tomb/lodge complex of

Muslim politics of belonging

Suﬁsm: label, concept, name

Suﬁsm, shrines and the political: a contradiction in terms?

The chapters in this volume

Search and ﬁnd.

Comparing imperial withdrawals and their consequences

Dervish orders and Alevis in Christian-majority post-Ottoman states

Syncretism and the inherent instability of liminality

Some South Asian comparisons

Conclusion: belonging, and not belonging, in religious-majority

Holy people and the contexts of belonging

Syncretism, sampradāys and modernized religions

Homogenization and diversity: who is guru Datta?

Marginalization: who could guru Datta be?

Going back to the graves

Jailani shrine and festival

Buddhist pressure on Jailani

The readership I had in mind at the time was an academic audience of

Jailani ﬂag-raising 2014

The future of Jailani

The larger picture

Taking root in America

Longing for Bawa

Gender and meaning making

The concept of being a man or a woman doesn’t cross my mind. I’m

‘Queen of Suﬁ Music’ is the title currently held by this internationally

In the ‘normal’, forgetful state, the soul is passive or ‘feminine’ toward

In Islamic metaphysical-spiritual traditions, gender as a mutable ‘quality’ of

Structural and symbolic changes in the Suﬁ orders and beyond

Suﬁs, interfaith activism and gender equality discourses: the Chishtīs of

Honor, respect and dignity may remain forever.

The school’s message of peace extends to an emphasis, subtly applied, on

Suﬁsm, social activism and competing masculinities

Hazrat Syed Ziaul Huq Maizbhandari (R) was a perfect model of

The main feature of the prophethood of the Global Prophet Hazrat

 To make an attempt to render total welfare to the followers of Maizb-

Other organizations aﬃliated with or founded by Maizbhandar Suﬁs15

To establish women[’s] empowerment by involving them in income

Suﬁs in the imaginary of the state: competing visions

Everyday violence, the Muslim and the citizen-subject

… a possible critique of violence can only be an inﬁnite interrogation of

Thus, this critique of violence is almost rendered to the periphery in the

To make an attempt to render total welfare to the followers of Maizb-

Disagreements between those following the Suﬁ path, shrine visitation

the speeches held at the Friday jum‘a prayers;