After reading through a number of works discussing South Asian Islamic history, and also many of the references, I have thought a lot more deeply about the traditions of South Asian culture than my last series of posts on this subject. Every time I read the numerous moving stories, I marveled at how totally lost Muslim South Asians, especially ex-patriots and their children, have become from their traditional past. While the first Masjid in India was built in Kodungallur by Malik Bin Deenar(R), a Sahabi (during the Prophet’s (S) lifetime), it certainly seems that most of what occurred after that point has been forgotten by South Asian Muslims living abroad.
The Islam that I experienced in American South Asian dominated mosques and organizations was so utterly disconnected from the traditional understanding of Islam of India, that without being mentally prepared, I would certainly have considered what I was reading as pure fiction. The attraction of Muslim South Asians in America to various agenda-driven forms of Islam (and their lack of awareness as to their shifted reality by these agendas) has been complete and total. This has made the alien into the norm and the norm into the alien.
The sheer volume of information on the subject of the spirituality, plurality, tolerance and strength of South Asian Muslims, combined with the natural understanding as to how South Asian society flourished with Muslim and Hindu interaction for over the 1400 years, makes it clear that the fiction was that which I was sold most of my youth.
In fact, it was the desire and clearly defined curriculum of organizations such as ICNA and early administrations of the various masjids that I attended (dominated by South Asians at nearly all levels of organization) that Muslim youth study the life and works of Seyyid Qutb, Maududi, and Bilal Phillips.
This created an entire generation (including most of my friends) that had never heard the name of Khwaja Moiuddin Chishti (R) much less the name of a single one of the countless saints buried in South Asia. The importance of knowing those names (and therefore, understanding and respecting their teachings) is vitally important for immigrant South Asian Muslims in the West for a proper return to the spiritually moving faith connected to the Prophet (S), as practiced by these holy people who carried Islam to us.
The difference between what has become ‘modern Islam’ and the traditional Islam of South Asia and other traditional Muslim communities is striking.
One is focused on a singular attempt at ‘authenticity’ and ‘purification’ of Islam using new understandings of Hadith and discussing their authenticity, the other is focused on the application of the immediate tradition for the purpose of bettering the soul.
One is focused on the political, absorbing worldly power and doing so with various levels of crassness, looking for religious and legal legitimacy the entire time, while the other has always been about building bridges between hearts with subtlety and care.
The Islam of South Asians in the West has mirrored that of converts. Many converts were in love of the faith of Islam primarily due to its claim of textual authenticity of the Quran (and hence the faith), which was unchanged for centuries. This was in stark comparison to the faiths of the West which suffered from deep questions of relevancy and authenticity, faiths which they had left for just those reasons. There is no doubt that the weight of the extreme desire for textual authenticity led to the ‘off’ switch of South Asian immigrants in examining the Islamic faith as understood by their families for generations.
The lack of textual information about Islam in South Asia certainly did not help. Modern South Asians were brought up appreciating the written word much more than that spoken word, a side effect of making education the largest priority in their lives (a means to escape poverty of the homeland). The idea of following a way of life which couldn’t be immediately checked, verified, and looked up for confirmation led most to the path of various forms of Wahabism.
Of course, most of groups eschewed the name ‘Wahabi’ itself, preferring to claim the title ‘Muslim’ for themselves. Interestingly enough their use of ‘Muslim’ was to the exclusion of their ‘grave worshipping’ ancestors or family members, which they considered to be misguided and confused. Most likely, however, the situation was actually tragically reversed, with modernized South Asians being extremely confused about their faith and the ‘ignorant’ visitors of graves seeing with a spiritual clarity.
Many South Asian parents had not bought into their own intellectual superiority, and hence many had not adopted the Wahabi ideal in order to critique the problems ‘back home’. These parents were quiet on the subjects of question (saints, graves, intercession, etc), and very few had the ability to respond back to the arguments presented by Wahabi philosophies from their children. Growing up their entire lives in that society, it was difficult for parents to forsake that which they had learned was de-facto Islam, an Islam which had run their lives and so many loved-ones lives could not easily be discarded… Saints, Milad, Naats, Qawaali, and all. Largely, they kept their distance from argument and supported the now adjusting faith of their children.
Interestingly enough, this comfortable nature of the different Islam between father and son, mother and daughter, in matters of practice of faith was a direct consequence of the open nature of the parents Islamic faith. It is this same South Asian pluralism which had created large periods of relative peace between Hindus and Muslims over a span of centuries, which now allowed children to look, dress, and act radically different from their parents, with hardly more than a word spoken.
This is not to say that parents did not fear the children would become ‘Christian’ in the West, indeed such fears existed and were a large part of growing up South Asian in the West. However, I would argue the fear towards Christianization was much more focused on the change in culture, and what that would mean for marriage, dress and social standings than what it meant to their soul. The pluralistic values of South Asia centered around a common culture, where often the weddings of the Muslim were not so dissimilar from that of the Hindu, in terms of dress and celebration. Exiting this culture was much more profound an issue than disagreements over details of faith.
After coming to terms with the reality of the rigid nature of a singular interpretation of Islam, the American convert experience, a struggle and challenge in its own right, seemed to need an understanding of how Islam survived with pluralistic flexibility in order to continue and progress in their faith. The first struggle for those espousing a return to the traditional understanding of Islam was to establish authenticity. This was done by focusing on the Madhabs, the schools of Islamic Law. Within these Madhabs lived the intellectual contribution of all Muslim legal scholars for centuries.
However, the reality was that the average South Asian Muslim had never heard of Madhabs in any Islamic sense. Since the overwhelming majority of their society was Hanafi, there was no need to even learn the names of other approaches in matter of form or externals. So, in fact, in American Masjids, it was those espousing “Madhabs” who ended up looking as if they were speaking of something new.
As a completely wayward path, the Wahabi agenda of puritanical groups looking to take over Islam in the West was rebuffed with this larger understanding of Islamic Law. The only escape for American converts from this type of Islam, was a broader understanding of the faith with multiple legal opinions. This has become to be known as “traditionalism”, espoused by famous converts and speakers such as Sh Hamza Yusuf, Imam Zaid Shakir, and Sh Nuh Keller.
However, this following of converts, with their own issues of reconciliation of culture cannot be followed by South Asians descendants who plan on keeping their own culture alive. It seems the South Asian child’s only two choices today are assimilation into three categories: the secular West, the Western Islamic discourse dominated by anti-traditionalists, or the Islamic discourse of Arabized traditionalists. As noted in my previous articles, it is clear that a traditional South Asian Islam has been ignored by the West. Revivalists of traditional sciences in the West have ignored the South Asian contribution for too long.
A focus on historical personalities and works of South Asian descent is a personal priority of mine. It is time the Milad, Ghazal, Naat, and Qawaali was understood and loved again, not simply analyzed through the lens of a protracted argument about good and bad “innovations”.
“That is so 90’s.” It’s time to move on.
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This account presents Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali, a Christian, conversing with the pious Meer Hadjee Shaah, and some of his parting words. Excerpted from “Observations on the Mussulmauns of India” pub 1917
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The Mussulmauns of the present age discourse much on the subject of that
prophecy–particularly during the contest between the Greeks and Turks, of
which however they had no very correct information, yet they fancied the
time must be fast approaching, by these leading events, to the fuller
accomplishment; often, when in conversation with the most religious men of
the country, I have heard them declare it as their firm belief that the
time was fast approaching when there should be but one mind amongst all
men. ‘There is but little more to finish;’ ‘The time draws near;’ are
expressions of the Mussulmauns’ belief, when discoursing of the period
anticipated, as prophesied in their sacred writings;–so persuaded are
they of the nearness of that time. In relating the substance of my last
serious conversation with the devout Meer Hadjee Shaah, I shall disclose
the real sentiments of most, if not every religious reflecting, true
Mussulmaun of his sect in India.
Meer Hadjee Shaah delighted in religious conversations; it was his
happiest time when, in the quiet of night, the Meer, his son, translated,
as I read, the Holy Bible to him. We have often been thus engaged until
one or two, and even to a later hour in the morning; he remembered all he
heard, and drew comparisons, in his own mind, between the two authorities
of sacred writings–the Khoraun and Bible; the one he had studied through
his long life, the other, he was now equally satisfied, contained the word
of God; he received them both, and as the ‘two witnesses’ of God. The last
serious conversation I had with him, was a very few days before his death;
he was then nearly in as good health as he had been for the last year; his
great age had weakened his frame, but he walked about the grounds with his
staff, as erect as when I first saw him, and evinced nothing in his
general manner that could excite a suspicion that his hours had so nearly
run their course.
We had been talking of the time when peace on earth should be universal;
‘My time, dear baittie (daughter), is drawing to a quick conclusion.
You may live to see the events foretold, I shall be in my grave; but
remember, I tell you now, though I am dead, yet when Jesus Christ returns
to earth, at His coming, I shall rise again from my grave; and I shall be
with Him, and with Emaum Mhidhie also.’
This was the substance of his last serious conversation with me, and
within one short week he was removed from those who loved to hear his
voice; but he still lives in the memory of many, and those who knew his
worth are reconciled by reflecting on the ‘joy that awaits the righteous’.
‘Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring,
and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one fold, and one
shepherd.’ Also, ‘In My Father’s house are many mansions’. These were
particularly pleasing passages to him, and often referred to in our
scriptural conversations.
InshaAllah, I will be wrapping up the few more select excerpts from this book and then provide my thoughts and rationale in sharing these snippets.
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‘Of bigoted Mussalman’, Bara Banki’s settlement officer conceded, “I have little personal knowledge; these men either stay at their own houses or keep their bigotry to themselves in government service’ [1] This simple observation says a lot about Awadh’s qasba life in the second half of the nineteenth century.
A devout Muslim told Meer Hasan Ali about the strong similarities between his community and the Hindu population: “the out-of-door celebrations of marriage festivals, for instance, which are so nearly resembling each other, in the same classes of society, that scarcely any difference can be discovered by the common observer” More than a century later, a leading scholar at Lucknow’s Nadwat al-ulama opined that social life of India’s Muslims did not present any marked difference from the cultural norms and pattern around them. Distinctive features, customs, and manners, too, like those of their local compatriots, marked their culture [2]
In other words, besides differences and distinctions there were also relationships and interactions.
Today, the history of Islam in South Asia - the writing of which has always been peculiarly susceptible to the climate of current politics - demands a serious intellectual reassessment. The historian Aziz Ahmed (1913-1978) refers to ‘the alternating and simultaneous process of mutual attraction and repulsions’ in medieval Indian society. Steering clear of such generalizations, I suggest that the qasbas predisposed ashraf or families comprising the gentry to the rational and ethical dimensions of Islam, to the virtues of charity, tolerance, generosity, good neighbourly conduct, and to those elements of piety that go into the making of the Perfect Man or Insan -e Kamil. Without denying the existence of negative critiques or the wide gap between ideals and reality, I draw attention to one Weltanschauung of significance, the rationalist and humanist construction of Islam. To be educated in the second half of the nineteenth century meant to be steeped in those values, and promised signity and advancement in life. Hence the comment that, presumably, alludes to such people, especially the aspiring intellectuals: “The Mussalamans of Oudh cannot, as a body, be accused of bigotry or intolerance” [3] This is corroborated by Meer Hasan Ali’s experience in Lucknow, of being received without prejudice, and allowed to observe her European habits and Christian faith. [4] Some, if not all, the men who figure in her narrative thus became typical carriers of moral and ethical piety or akhuwat, in the qasbas.
Excerpted from “Pluralism to Seperatism Qasbas in Colonial Awadh”
Mushirul Hasan - Oxford University Press
[1] Chamier, Report, p51
[2] S.A.H.A Nadwi The Masalman (Luikcnow 1977) p41
[3] Irwin Garden of India, p 38
[4] Ali, Observations on the Mussulmans of India Vol 2. p 424
On many weekends Wliayat Ali and his group took time off from their professional and domestic chores to gather together in Bara Banki. For this they used the loop line of the Awadh and Rhilkhand railway system. It ran from the erstwhile Nawabi capitalto Faizabad, the city founded by Saadat Ali Khan (1772-39) and refurbished by Safdar Jang (vazir from 1748 until 1753), and Banaras, traversed the district from west to east, and passed throguh Bara Banki, Rasauli, Safdarganj, Dariabad, Makhdumpur, Rauzagaon, and Rudauli. En route, they visited the shrine of Shah Abdur Razzaq (1636-1724) at Bansa, who not only won the recognition of his contemporaries but who exerted after his death one of the most powerful influences in Awadh spiritual history. His shrine, a nucleus of ascetic pietism, shelters the devotee, Hindu and Muslim alike, from disease and mental ailments, and offers a place where one seeks refuge from the pressures of everyday life. In the 1870s, the urs at Bansa attracted as many as five thousand devotees. The Shah’s twenty-three immediate successors included at least three members of the Kidwai, and six of the Farangi Mahal family. sitting cross-legged at one of the shrines, they may well have repeated the following lines:
I stood by the Reformer’s tomb: that dust
Whence here below an orient splendour breaks,
Dust before whose least speck stars hang their heads,
Dust shrouding that high knower of things unknown. (Iqbal)
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Excerpted from “Pluralism to Seperatism Qasbas in Colonial Awadh”
Mushirul Hasan - Oxford University Press
Satrikh, the home of several ‘respectable’ Muslim families who had built several mosques of burnt bricks, was the site of a huge fair held in March at the shrine of Sheikh Salat, the father of Ghazi Miyan Salar Masud, whose shrine is at Bahraich. Pilgrims visited the shrine, bringing with them long poles covered in cloth, which is left at the shrine. A leather worker living in Rudauli built the mausoleum in 1799. Sleeman’s Hindu camp followers revered the shrine as much as the Muslims (*) At such sites dotted on Awadh’s graph, and this is indeed a point that needs to be constantly underlined, the ulama and the theologian could scarcely turn against the more emotive and expressive aspects of Sufism. This was true of Rudauli as of Bilgram. The follow statement sums up the overall tone and tenor of Awadh society:
“When the conch sounded in the temples in its notes [in Bilgram], the Muslims heard the voices of unity and kinship. When the call for prayer (azan) sounded, the mellifluous voice entranced the Hindus to accept Allah’s greatness. During Muharram, Hindus and Muslims walked shoulder to shoulder reciting elegies and dirges. Music did not provoke violence nor did the Pipal tree cause conflict. The slaughter of animals during Bakr Id did not lead to human killings. In short, be it matters of religion or matters temporal Hindus and Muslims were like sweetness in milk… This is the atmosphere in which I grew up” -Hosh Bilgrami, Mushahidat p. 3
* Abul Fazl comments on the shrine “The common people of the Muhammadan faith greatly reverence this spot and pilgrims visit it from distant parts, forming themselves inbands and bearding gilded manners.” One day Muhummad Husain Khan asked the Sheikh (Abul Fath of Khairabad) ‘ what sort of man was Salar Masud” The Sheikh replied, “he was an Afghan who met his death by martyrdom”. -Muntakhabu-t-tawarikh pp 46-7
Amoung the many traditions quoted is the following one: ‘Sahu Salar died in Satrikh 800 years ago, was considered as holy man, but probably little would have been known of him but for his son Syud Salar Mahmud Ghazi who was very active in the crusades all over Oudh; and eventually was killed in Bahraich at the early age of 21 years’ Chamier Report p 55,288
As a part of the Islamic service gentry and given their proximity to Nawabganj, then a lively cultural centre, the Kidwais operated beyond the local boundaries, transmitting ilm-e deen (knowledge of Islam) through madaris, mosques, and kanqahs, and providing a local Muslim as well as secular leadership. Doubtless, nascent revivalist assertions and the temple-mosque dispute in 1855 at Hanumangarhi in Ayodhya had heightened Hindu-Muslim consciousness and led to the intervention of the king’s troops under Captain Barlowe near Rudauli. Nevertheless, pluralism, no matter how amorphous, played a significant part in Awadh, both generally and at the qasba level in particular. It is true that religious attributions were by no means uncommon, but more often than not they were banners under which different economic and social groups organized themselves. The point to stress is that their motives had little to do with religion. The occasions when qasba society actually got polarized along the lines of religion were relatively rare.
The gentry’s patronage and the common man’s veneration of Muslim shrines and holy men enhanced, undoubtedly, the qasba’s solidarity as a unique entity. In some ways, the qasbas shaped Lucknow much more than the other way round. Admittedly, divisions existed; for example, intermarriage across religious communities remained difficult and rare, and marks of distinction manifested in the details of dress and food as expressions of personal, familial, caste, and religious taste and identity. Negative social stereotypes and attitudes regarding the other religious group also continued; but specific strategies evolved by individuals enabled them to avoid conflict whilst interacting in mixed social contexts.
Friendship, cooperation and coexistence characterized daily interaction between the followers of Islam and Hinduism. Peasant and craftsmen created bonding through festivals, melas, and shared religious traditions, wheres gentry families, conscious of having fashioned a civilized world as apposed to the chicanery, huckstering, and manipulative materialism of city life, interacted with one another in the high tradition of a specifically Indo-Persian culture. Sharp social divisions and cultural fragmentation marked the city; consequently, the qasba people invoked their unity of experience. What enabled them to do this was the predominance of a typically Awadhi culture expressed through an Awadhi dialect, spoken in Sandila and in Unao, Lucknow, and Sitapur districts. As the temple bells rang and the muezzin’s cadences floated in the air, one of Rudauli’s prominent service families celebrated Basant and Diwali with much fanfare. Among such families there existed a much longer tradition, provided both by structural and liminal artifacts, of aiding the process of acculturation and extending its reach among the masses.
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Excerpted from “Pluralism to Seperatism Qasbas in Colonial Awadh”
Mushirul Hasan - Oxford University Press
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