3. Towards the development of the concept of parallel culture

Towards the development of the concept of parallel culture

AN introduction


Abstract

This paper seeks to cast a fresh look on medieval Indo-Muslim culture. Here it is argued that this culture cannot be treated as a single, monolithic phenomenon. The very advent of Islam in India is seen as marked by two distinctly contrasting figures of Mahmud of Ghazna-Uthman b. Hujwiri in the eleventh century and Shahabuddin Ghuri-Muinuddin Chishti in the twelfth-thirteenth centuries. While the former in the two pairs are known for their love of plunder and wealth, the latter are recognized through their cultivation of poverty. These two modes of personalities are seen as representatives of two cultures. While the property culture is most typically reflected in the life of the sultan/king, that of opposing or parallel culture is epitomized in the personality of ascetic/faqir. The two cultures, each recognizing the necessity of the other, yet keep their respective autonomies by offering distinct sets of values and ideals in human life. Whereas the established culture offers man the possibility to seek happiness in appropriation of wealth and property, the parallel culture provides for the principle of freedom and autonomy from the material world. The qualitative difference between the two was universally recognized equally among the rulers as well as the common people. If we are able to do so today, it may lead to some significant repercussions in respect of our understanding of Indo Muslim society in particular and man in general.



Islam penetrated into India in the eleventh century[1] as a composite of two distinct cultures. The one is manifested in the life of Mahumd of Ghazni [d. 1030], whose love for plundering the wealth of India far exceeded his better know passion for the propagation of his faith.[2] The opposing culture is represented in the personality of the famous Sufi, Ali bin Uthman Hujwiri[d. 1072], who, incidentally, also hailed from Ghazni, but settled in Lahore sometime in the fourth decade of the eleventh century at the direction of his sheikh. He considered wealth as a misfortune for a faqir.[3]

In the late twelfth century this pattern was again repeated in a similar fashion. This time we find, on the one hand, Shahabuddin Ghauri [d. 1206], an adventure par excellence, who after repeated invasions of India laid the foundations of the Dehli Sultanate, the first Muslim kingdom of India [1206-1526]. The treasure he left behind, in the words of Firishta, was ‘almost incredible’, with the weight of diamonds of various sizes alone amounting to 500 maunds.[4] On the other side we see the figure of Muinuddin Chishti [d.1236], who settled in Ajmer, in the capital of the Hindu ruler Prithvi Raj, shortly before the defeat of the latter at the hands of Ghauri in 1192.[5] The pride and distinction of Muinduddin was his self-cultured poverty.[6]

Around these two figures of the king and faqir is evolved the whole of medieval Indo-Muslim culture.[7] In other words, medieval Indo-Muslim culture is essentially a pluralist culture, or to be more accurate, a unity of multiple cultures where the established culture, whose arch representative is the king, co-existed with the parallal culture, led by the faqir. The individual and society is permeated with two sets of values and ideals. One is motivated by the acquisition of wealth and physical power over the others while the other is based on the cultivation of personality, detachment from the physical world, and integration with the Whole, the totality of existence. However, the two cultures exist with the consciousness of each other’s necessity for social existence. The term ‘parallel culture’ therefore should by no means imply that it intended to replace or impose its hegemony by ousting the other and vice versa. Thus what we call the medieval Indo-Muslim culture is in fact the unity of two cultures, at once in harmony as well as in opposition to each other.

The popular tendency however is to trace the socio-historic or cultural pattern of this period from the vantage point of politics and the state. This inevitably leaves the culture of the faqir in the periphery while the major, sometimes even the sole emphasis goes to the lives and culture of the kings and their dynasties. This tendency grows from our perception of the state as the chief embodiment of socio-political and cultural life of the society. This perception also derives from the fact that to the state is dependent the institution of property which we conceive as the primary and objective form of man’s creation, as his supreme self manifestation. However, the faqir’s life and work does not come into the domain of politics, state, and property. To say in more popular terms, he lived outside the world. But we tend very often to perceive his living outside the world too literally and place him at the periphery of the society. The fact is that he only lived outside the established culture and not the culture and society itself. His being was the manifestation of the higher dimension of human consciousness, the consciousness that endeavors not to be tied down to the given and the concrete, that aims to remain free from the actualized, the materialized dimension of human consciousness. Thus in his idealized form the faqir was free from all the given relations of family, state, and property.

The faqir, in other words, represented the other end of the social order and his existence for the survival of society was universally reckoned as necessary a condition as that of the king, or even more than his. While the king was taken to represent the body of human society, the faqir or dervish was the soul, and the superiority of the soul over body was never doubted, for soul represented the eternal dimension of human existence. A medieval Muslim historian writes:

The world is bound by serious law and order, upheld by men of faith. In every country there lives a master-mind, in every region a man of acquirements. Although every country has a king, it is really protected by a dervish. The kings lord over the land, but the dervishes consume its calamities. Were there no autar on the face of the earth, the seven-fold tent of skies would have collapsed. When the Lord of days and nights wills to destroy a land, He first orders the man [of God] to depart from there and then appoints there a tyrant as a ruler.[8]

The tendency to see the king, or the state as the pivot of society signifies the one-sidedness of most evaluations of pre-modern Indian culture, resulting in the enormous deficiency in the understanding of the culture of the faqir. Out of this deficiency emerges an incomplete picture of man in general, an essentially distorted understanding of human nature and consequently a failing in the comprehension of the totality of human culture.

Though the king and the faqir are typified in the character of Ghauri and Chishti, we find the great mass of humanity living with two cultures intricately bound or diffused together. Thus we are in fact confronted with the phenomena of not only two but three cultures. That is, it may be that we find a faqir who manifests deficient understanding of the parallel culture and thus represents a confusion of two cultures. Likewise a king can manifest traits of parallel culture in his character or a deep sympathy and understanding of the role of parallel culture in maintaining balance in the individual and social spheres of human life. But whereas the broad social consensus on the role of the two, the king and the faqir, as the essential ingredients of human culture was never questioned, the relationship between the two was far from being smooth: it ranged from friendship, indifference, suspicion, tension and sometimes hostility.

The tension and hostility between the two cultures grew also from the active role of the ulama on the side of the established culture. Though the state was not run strictly according to the sharia, the Islamic law governing the relation of family, state and property, yet it provided the basic categories on which the identity of the Muslim rule was established. Since the ulama were the ultimate authority, the specialists on sharia, their coalition and association with the royal court was a fact taken far granted. In their capacity as a party in the structure of the given order their relationship towards the leaders of the parallel culture was bound to be tense and fraught with difficulty and suspicion. Here we cannot go into detail over the history of this not too pleasant relationship. Suffice to say that though the ulama had their share of differences with the king but as a class or a party they largely confronted the culture of the faqir which they found too erratic and liberal for the identity and absolute nature of sharia.

The prime features of the established culture are reflected in, firstly, the finitude of human consciousness ascertained in the dogma of the duality of God and man, vigorously expounded by the ulama as the very foundation of sharia, and, secondly, the property-relation with the world. The parallel culture emerged in the context of a conception of man in which he was tied down to the world of matter while his consciousness lacked the content of infinity, the experience of the whole. If by asserting the essential oneness of man and God the parallel culture asserted that man, in his essence, was immortal and infinite; through cultivating the non-possessive relationship with the world, popularly known as renunciation, asceticism, non-detachment, or faqr (voluntary poverty), it also sought to free man from the bondage of the outer world.

Unity with the Whole, i.e. infinity and immortality of consciousness and faqr, i,e., non-property relation with the world go hand in hand and each fails to realize its meaning in isolation from the other. This is because struggle to attain Unity without faqr, which is also defined as the absence of desire, of self, turns out to be hypocrisy, and faqr not directed towards or without the goal of Unity degenerates into destitution and dogmatism. If the latter is the theory of the former, the former is the practice, the methodology for realization of the latter. Abul Qasim Junaid’s remarkable description of the state opf the faqir that ‘when his heart is empty of phenomena he is poor’[9] points to the dialectical nature of Unity and faqr. Emptiness of phenomena indicates freedom at once from property-relation with the world as well as from duality, that is, from everything other than God. This dialectic assures that neither lack of physical objects or apparent destitute condition nor high flying in the realm of mind or metaphysics can lead one to Transcendence.[10]

However it needs to be emphasized that the parallel culture neither arose nor developed in a neat and well marked demarcation from the established, given culture. Within its domain grew different from the established, given culture. Within its domain grew different tendencies or currents. Its core was represented by what may be called the essential Sufism. It stood for ascension, the movement from humanity to divinity; that is, nothing less than essential union between man and God. It perceived sharia as the initiatory discipline that reflected and governed the given condition of man, the condition of duality, of man’s separation from God, of his finitude. This condition is often stated in Sufi writings as human nature or the humanity.[11] As man actively engages himself in the movement of spirit, and sheds his given condition, the state of bondage and duality, the human qualities, he grows out of the domain of sharia since the condition reflecting that domain begins to fade. Sharia, in other words, is the consciousness of the alienation, of separation from the truth, the whole, the totality of existence. This consciousness in turn implies the struggle to move out of separation. And when one moves nearer to the Unity the discipline practiced in the state of separation becomes redundant and its memory a sin. Saadi offered a very apt description of the point when he wrote:

The sinners repent from their sins
The Gnostics implore forgiveness for worshipping.[12]

The arif (gnostic) repents from worshipping since the worshipping represents the duality, the separation of I and thou, worshipper and the worshipped. Ibn Arabi, in a brilliant exposition of the two contrasting positions, remarked:

God is known only by means of God. The scholastic theologian says: “I know God by that which he created” and takes as his guide something that has no real relation to the object sought. He who knows God by means of phenomena, knows as much as these phenomena give to him and no more.[13]

Here Ibn Arabi conceives the knowledge of God essentially as transcendence. The concept, and the corresponding endeavour, remains alien to the alim because he approaches the Creator from the vantage point of the creation, to the Whole from that of the fragment which is as hopeless an endeavour as that of the blind men seeking to know the elephant by touching his different limbs separately in Rumi’s famous story. The knowledge of God on the other hand implies a decisive break from the condition of humanity, of creation, of separateness and fragmentation. In simple words, only through assuming the consciousness of Unity, of the Whole that one becomes Whole and by no other means.

Besides essential Sufism there were also the middle and the orthodox currents within the large domain of Sufism. The moderate tendency did manifest the consciousness of the autonomy of the Sufi culture but remained equally concerned to expound the inner consistency between the sharia and the Sufi path. The orthodox tendency, however, failed to draw the demarcating line between Sufism and orthodoxy, the institutional religion. It visualized Sufism merely as the rigorous fulfillment of ritual and absolute exclusion of initiative and individuality from spiritual life. This current gained ground as the prestige and role of the Sufis in society grew rapidly affecting almost all the domains of social life. It therefore became increasingly apparent that Sufism could only be combated in its essentials; or, in other words, much of its exterior was interiorized by the orthodoxy with the awareness that it could not be dealt with from without. So that with the passage of time it become increasingly difficult for an ordinary man to decipher who was who and what was what? How far essential Sufism lagged behind to allow this development is a vexed question needing a separate treatment.

[11]

When Sufism arrived in India, it had already reached to its highest theoretical development. This development manifested itself both vertically, i.e., in its theory, and, horizontally i.e. in its practice. In theory it represented in almost universal consensus among the major Sufi thinkers in the twelfth and thirteen centuries that the highest destiny of man lay in unity (with God). This unity we can term as Transcendence or even Freedom which implies release from the (individual) self and realization or attainment of the consciousness of the Whole. Its best formulation was offered by Ibn Arabi, in the doctrine of Wahdat al-Wujud, the unity of all being, so much so that he and his doctrine eventually became identified with Sufism itself. Besides Ibn Arabi, Jalaluddin Rumi was the most powerful voice expounding the cause of Transcendence and Freedom.

The horizontal development of Sufism was manifested in the origination and expansion of the great associations of the Sufis, called the silsilahs, (spiritual) ‘chains,’ brotherhoods or orders. These orders, originating from the major Sufi leaders of the twelfth-thirteenth centuries, were the outcome of more than one inter-related developments in the world of Sufism. Mainly among these were, on the theoretical side, a near consensus on essential unity of man and God, and the determination of the goal of spiritual endeavour as the shedding of human nature and assumption of the divine. On the practical side of the development was the emergence of khanaqah as the parallel institution to the mosque and its gradual establishment as the center of not only spiritual but wider public socio-culture activity. Out of the interaction of these two developments grew the powerful figure of the Sheikh, the embodiment as well as the manifestation of the Divine.

But whereas quite a few orders had already come into being in the Islamic world by the turn of the twelfth century, the first to gain roots in India, the Chishtiya, did not have a prior history. However its early history in India in the span of a hundred and fifty years provides a superb illustration of the growth of parallel culture in the Indo-Muslim world from humble beginnings to its zenith when the Chishti centre in Dehli emerged as the parallel center of power in the Sultanate in the first quarter of the fourteenth century, to its dispersion and persecution at the hands of state power in the second quarter.

It is important to remember that the parallel culture had a rich indigenous history in India. Thus when Muinuddin Chishti settled at Ajmer by the end of the twelfth century, the country already had the yogi’s[14] culture firmly established on its soil. Dumont writes:

Is it really to adventurous to say that the agent of development in India religion and speculation, the “creation of values”, has been the renouncer? The Brahman, as scholar, has mainly preserved, aggregated, and combined: he may well have created and developed special branches of knowledge. Not only the founding of sects and their maintenance, but the major ideas, the “inventions” are due to the renouncer whose unique position gave him a sort of monopoly for putting everything in question.[15]

The central figure of this culture was individual, the individual whom society not only allowed to exist but sanctified for having his own mode of existence, i.e., his personal way towards life and truth.[16] It was sanctified because he was occupied with the fundamental questions of freedom and salvation with which the whole society was deeply concerned. The society took responsibility for his living for the reason that the questions and the quest towards their resolution was given a place far higher than earning one’s living. Basically it was this preoccupation with what may be called transcendence that formed the paramount feature of India and newly emerging Indo-Muslim society. And it is only through this context that the pioneer position of faqir/dervish or yogi/sanyasi in the society can be determined.

There were also some other factors which contributed in the growth of tolerant culture in India that most Muslims encountered on their arrival. Of these the paramount factor was diversity in religion and mode of spirituality. Perhaps in no other part of the world can one find the evidence of such great variety of sacred scriptures, sects, deities, and rituals, modes of worship, beliefs, and seers with the caliber of prophets as that which emerged in India in the span of two to three thousand years. This remarkable diversity gave birth to an atmosphere of peaceful co-existence, a generally tolerant attitude towards divergent beliefs. It was due to this liberal environment that the Muslims who settled in India peacefully during the eighth to the ninth-eleventh centuries mainly through the coastal areas did not face hostile attitudes from the local population or rulers and were allowed to build mosques and preach their religion.[17]

The strong presence of the ascetic, the renouncer, in the Indian soil played an important role in Muinuddin Chisti’s settlement at Ajmer, the capital of a strong Hindu state even before its conquest by Shihabuddin Ghauri. For he was well advanced in the discipline of renunciation and had not come into an absolutely alien soil. The importance of discerning the real circumstances of Muinuddin’s integration into a new soil, or, to be more precise, the discernment of the close affinity between the Sufi and Indian spiritual traditions, lies in the fact that failure in doing so has led, consciously or unconsciously, many Muslim writers of the past as well as present to resort to fabulous miracles in order to account for the Sufis’ survival in such ‘hostile’ conditions. Typical is the case of the seventeenth century writer of Jawahar-i Faridi who offers quite a fantastic description of Muinuddin’s arrival and settlement at Ajmer.[18]

[111]

Muinaddin Chishti, born in Sijistan, east Persia, had travelled widely and shared the company of a number of Sufi leaders of Islamic world when he decided to settle in India. He seems to be a man free from dogma and ritual. Besides that his great asset in gaining roots in the new soil must have been his deep faith and practice in the cultivation of voluntary poverty. He was a Unitarian and his thought was characterized by fullness of humanist content. Love could be realized through transcendence from externals and coming into grips with the essence, the oneness, while the highest form of devotion to God was ‘to redress the misery of those in distress, to fulfill the needs of the helpless and to feed the hungry.’[19] The three principles of the life of faqir attributed to him were later to become the epitome of Chishtiya order. These are: River-like generosity, sun-like affection and earth like hospitality.[20]

It may well be pointed out that though knowledge and practice, Unity and faqr are ultimately inseparable in Sufi doctrine, yet in the twelfth-thirteenth centuries we may find individuals in whom one aspect outshined the other. Ibn Arbi for instance is a case of high excellence in the domain of knowledge and theoretical exposition of the doctrine. In Muinuddin Chishti on the other hand is manifested more the domination of ecstasy of faqr and service to humanity as the hallmark of spiritual life. Thus his successors were to offer the model of the individual who lived with minimum needs for himself but lived among the people fulfilling multiple responsibilities: meeting their spiritual needs both by guiding them towards higher goals and soothing and sharing them in their everyday pains and difficulties; he also comforted them in their physical needs from the resources invested in him by the society itself.

His successor in Dehli, Qutbuddin Bukhtiyar Kaki [d.1236] was equally well-versed in faqr. The two had met in Baghdad finding commonness in their character and approach towards Sufism. Qutbuddin came to India probably sometime in the second decade of the thirteenth century during the reign of Shamsuddin Iltutmish [1211-36]. Iltutumish had a high regard for the Sufis and, we are told, himself bore a mystic temperament and sought the company of the saints.[21] Hearing the news of Qutbuddin’s arrival he went out of the city to receive him. He also offered Qutbuddin residence near his palace and later the post of Shaikh ul-Islam. The latter declined both the offers[22] presumably as part of his attempt to safeguard the autonomy of Sufism by keeping it away from the Muslim rulers and the state. In this endeavor he was also helped by another outstanding Chishti leader, Hamiddudin Sufi, also scholar of high repute, for whom spiritual excellence grew predominantly from a critical attitude towards property rather than excessive zeal in the fulfillment of religious duties.[23]

Thus the most important contribution of these Chishti leaders towards the development of parallel culture in the newly emerging Indo-Muslim society lay in their strict adherence to the ideal of distance from property, politics and all the institutions of the state. In a time when Muslims were strongly identified with the state, the symbol of their power, and all the aspirations of the intelligent members of this community were directed towards joining the state institutions, the channels of wealth and power, the Chishtis struggled towards the growth of culture based on altogether different aspirations, that enjoyed autonomy from the state power, property and their associated values of greed, hatred and ruthless competition to jump over the other for a higher prize.

But at same time it should also be noted that the Chishtis were not advocating polarization of the spiritual and material in the society. This is indicated by the fact that high officials of state including princes, and sometimes also the king, for instance Iltutmish, would visit the khanaqah, and occasionally were even accepted as the lay disciples. But spiritual excellence was reckoned an autonomous discipline that required one’s establishment in a centre different from that of the worldly culture. The identity of spiritual realm could only be maintained if its leaders exercised as much autonomy in their thought and behavior as their counterparts did in their sphere.[24]

Chishti leaders also introduced music as the essential component of spiritual life. If their commitment to faqr helped them to distance themselves from the court and the Muslim ruling classes, their devotion to music led them increasingly towards estrangement from the religious establishment and nearer to the common people and the native culture. Music, in the form of sama (musical rendering of poetry in a gathering) accompanied by dance was practiced as means to ecstasy, i.e., freedom from self consciousness. The Chishtis’ immense contribution to the cause of music in India in early Muslim period is epitomized in the person of Amir Khusrau [1254-1325] who was raised in Chishti circles. A composer as well as a theoretician, he is known as the founder of the Indo- Muslim musical tradition.

Sufism in India took a new leap with the coming on the scene of two great Chishti leaders, Fariduddin Shakarganj [d.1265] and Nizamuddin Auliya [d.1325]. Fariduddin hailed from the Punjab while his grandfather was an immigrant from Kabul. Though the greater part of his life passed in Punjab, ‘it was due to his efforts’ ‘observes Nizami, ‘that the Chishti order attained an all-India status and its branches came to be established in many important towns of India.[25] And further that ‘he gave to the Chishti silsilah the momentum of an organized spiritual movement.’[26] He was very conscious of the autonomous character of Sufi culture. So when he was designated by his master as the chief of the Chishti order after his death, the first decision he took was to move the Chishti centre away from Delhi. He found the city unsuitable, being too polluted by the royal presence, for the organization and expansion of the spiritual movement. With it he took another bold decision . He left even Hansi, where he was staying before his master’s death, and chose a deserted place near the town of Ajodhan (now Pakpatten) as his home and the new centre of the order, thus setting a difficult example for his followers.

Fariduddin Shakarganj is also known, particularly in the Punjab, as the ‘father of Punjabi language and literature.’ This title comes from the collection of dohras, rhymed couplets, attributed to him appearing first time in the Guru Granth, the sacred book of the Sikhs compiled in 1603-4.[27]The verses often look like whispers, more to one’s own self. Sometimes they are addressed towards the given condition of man characterised by a conditioning in which even the knowledge of good does not deter him from evil and heedlessness emerges as his dominant trait. When the poet finds himself a member of this species, sharing so much with it, fear comes in. Then he thinks of death and the limited period of time at his disposal. The time seems too short given so much to redress, so long to go. He is forced to visualize the grave. The immobility in the grave terrorizes him;

Faridaa it sarhaana, bhoen son, kiraa lario maas
Ketariaan jug vaapre, ikat piaan paas.[28]

O Farid! A brick under your head, lying on the soil, while the insects eating your flesh; the ages would pass and you would keep lying on one side.

It is this immobility, inability to move, to act, in the death that pushes him towards action, towards overcoming his inner nature and heedlessness. As long there is life, the possibility of freedom of union is alive. There are two other verses in which the indecision, conflict and resolution is portrayed beautifully:

Faridaa galien chikkar dur ghar naal piaare nenh
Turaan taan bhijje kambli rahaan taan tutte nenh

Bhijjo sijjo kambli Allaah verso menh
Jaae Milaan tinhaan sajnaan tutto nahin nenh.[29]

O Farid! The streets are full of mire [with consistent rain], the house of the one I love is far away: if I step out I wet my garments but if I stay home I loose my love.

O let the garments be wet, let God pour rain as much as He
Likes; I must see my beloved so that my love may survive.

The movement that Fariduddin organized found its finest expression in the personality of Nizamuddin Auliya. Born in 1238 in Badayun, a city near Dehli, he was yet in his twenties when Shaikh Farid, as he was then called, chose him as his chief successor of all his older disciples. Such was Farid’s vision that this young successor soon rose to become what was later reckoned to be ‘the greatest Indo-Muslim saint of all time.’[30]

Nizamuddin began his work in the outskirts of Delhi called Ghiyaspur. There he synthesized in himself to the utmost the Chishti emphasis on faqr, on the one hand, while realizing it in the process of disseminating its meanings to humanity, on the other. Expounding the common Sufi theme of renounciation of the world, he observed once that world renunciation by no means implied that one should sit semi naked idly. On the contrary it was to wear clothes and eat. But whatever came to him he should spend and not attach his heart to anything.[31] He emphasized that the world in Sufism signified not the gold, silver or the property itself but it was the relationship with it, of love and possession, which was in question.[32] On another occasion he pointed out the complexity of the concept of world-worship, or the relationship of love with the world as envisioned in Sufism. He said:


One [attitude ] is that of world [worship] in form as well as in content; the other is neither in form nor in content; the third is not in form but in content and the fourth is in form but not in content. And what is world in both form and content? That is having beyond one’s needs. That which is world neither in form nor in content, what is that? That is prayer in poverty. That which is not world in form but is in content is prayer for personal ends. And that which is world in form but not in content is fulfilling one’s wife’s rights, that is, meeting the needs of one’s family with the thought that he is paying to the family what is its due. Apparently this act may appear as worldly but in reality it is not.[33]


Nizamuddin Aliya was the embodiment of Sufi liberality and it should therefore be evident that by prayer he is not implying dogmatic fulfillment of the religious duties as the apparent reading of the passage might have us believe. Once he even suggested that a man too much occupied with the religious duties might have some other guilt to compensate and not fulfillment of prayers. And it was precisely for this reason, he added, that the need for a guide arose on the path of spirituality for it was he who led towards sincerity and purity even if there were not too many prayers.[34]

He would often narrate to his audience, in the assemblies at his khanaqah, the stories of the derwishes and Sufis pertaining to the fact that the formal acts of worship devoid of sincerity were meaningless while inner purity on the other hand was not dependent on the performance of the rituals.[35] He differentiated between devotion that led only to personal benefit and that which was source of comfort for others. The former comprised of the performance of the religious duties like prayer, fasting etc. whereas the latter was derived from spending money on others, showing affection towards people and helping them in their needs.[36] He would even express his dislike for excess in supererogatory prayers. He believed it could lead one farther from God rather than bringing him any nearer.[37] He followed his master’s instructions strictly that fasting covered half the path towards God while the rest, prayers, pilgrimage et al, did the other.[38]And once he endorsed the view that pilgrimage was meant for one who had no pir, the guide (to lead him to the path of spirituality that made the act of physical pilgrimage superfluous).[39]

He was a man of charisma and his presence radiated light and power. His influence grew quickly in the early years of the thirteenth century so that he soon emerged as the paramount leader of the parallel culture among the Indo-Muslim community. In a way the pattern narrated above, that of faqir and king as the twin centres of culture and power, epitomised in his personality at the one side and that of all-powerful sultan, Alauddin Khilji [1296-1316], on the other. However the difference with the previous patterns is too remarkable to be ignored. Whereas previously the figure of the faqir seemed too docile or withdrawn, in Nizamuddin Auliya it emerged as the embodiment of power and grandeur. His khanaqah grew into a great centre of spiritual culture, becoming almost a centre of pilgrimage for all Indian Muslims. Ziauddin Barani, by no means having much to share with what the Shaikh stood for, but nevertheless attracted by his magnetism and authority, observed that ‘people came to see Shaikh Nizamuddin from two thousand and three thousand farsangs, and the young and the old, the literate and the illiterate from the city tried to present themselves before the Shaikh by every means they could.’[40]

It was but natural that doubts began to grow in the royal court that this parallel centre of power might threaten the royal authority. Sultan Alauddin Khiji offered the Shaikh responsibilities in state affairs presumably to test his intentions. When the Shaikh got the message he in a way ridiculed the offer by inviting his audience to raise their hands for the fatiha, which is recited at the death of someone. Then he said sternly to the messenger, who happened to be the son of the Sultan, that if at all he was told to do anything like that again only because he happened to be in the city [same as that of the Sultan], he would simply leave the city, for God’s land was very vast. Khilji was obviously delighted at this but now he asked to be allowed to pay a visit to the saint. The saint declined by saying that there was no need for it since he was already praying for his welfare. When the sultan insisted he was told that the faqir would better leave his house than receive the sultan there.[41]

Thus in the personality of Nizamuddin Auliya was realized the power which brought to the fore the perennial assertion of spirituality that world-renunciation or the cultivation of spirit was not a passive state. It induced in man a certain power that raised him above the material constraints. Hitherto this power had manifested itself in individual transcendence of physical limitations, i.e. in the show of miracles. Now in the early period of Indo-Muslim history it was demonstrated on a larger, social scale. The faq- power equation emerged as a direct opposition to the property-power equation. The power in the former was of course radically varied from the latter. It involved neither coercion nor compulsion. Rather it radiated assertion, an energy that flowed and impressed upon the one it encountered the presence and power of the spirit.

Conversions and preaching of Islam among non-Muslims did not form part of Nizamuddin Auliya’s work. Of the common Hindu folk he thought only a fine example could lead them to change of their heart and therefore preaching was of no use. However he had a great regard for their devotion that they manifested in the worship of their deities, and respected every people’s right to have their own religion.[42] Once he related Hamiduddin Sufi’s observation that a Hindu residing in his area was a Wali Allah, friend of God.[43]

The Chishti attitude towards conversion is important in the evaluation of their contribution to parallel culture. Modern scholars have gone against the exaggerated narratives by some enthusiastic Muslim chroniclers about the Sufi ‘role in conversions.[44] However, of all the Sufis conversion formed the least part of the work of the Chishtis. In this respect again they manifested remarkable distance from the official enthusiasm for conversion displayed by the ulama and a part of the secular intelligentsia. The fundamental difference in the two approaches lay in that whereas the latter considered forcible or otherwise conversion of the non-Muslims as incumbent on every Muslim in the capacity to do so, i.e., as inalienable part of Islamic culture, the Chishtis placed little emphasis on the change of external mould. For them the chief task was transformation (of the individual) rather than conversion.

It was this indifference towards conversion or the so-called propagation of Islam accompanied with their low opinion of the rulers that gradually led to the view among the ulama, and part of the ruling elite that the Chishti Sufis were not interested in the sustenance of the Muslim power in India. This view gained further strength when Qutbuddin Mubarak, the last Khilji Sultan was murdered in 1320 by his newly convert lover, Khusrau Khan, and Nizamuddin Auliya refused to take sides in the power struggle that ensued between Khusrau and the Turk leader Ghazi Malik, who later founded the Tughlaq dynasty.

Closely related to this is the Chishti attitude towards other religions. The Chishtis did not see the Hindu Muslim difference in black and white as was recommended in the ruling Muslim culture. Very often in the history of the period we find the ulama and scholars urging the kings to fulfill their divine duty by slaughtering, or at least humiliating to utmost submission the non-Muslims who were not prepared to submit to the true religion.[45] Even if such exhortations were not all the times meant wholly literally, still the purpose was to emphasize the superior, alien character of Islam in the Hindu, Indian environment. This was part of the efforts undertaken to resist and block the assimilation of the two religious communities. Interestingly enough, ulma, the official ideologues of Islam, while taking pride in the egalitarian character of their religion, manifested same contempt towards non-Muslims which their counterparts in Hinduism, the Brahmans, displayed towards the lower castes and the Muslims. In other words, both were united in a common cause of mutual exclusiveness.[46]

Chishtis, on the other hand, represented those forces in the Indo-Muslim society which were not prepared to live in India as perpetual aliens. They were quick in assimilation and adopted many indigenous practices both from spiritual and mundane realms ranging from the techniques of yoga to vegetarianism. Thus they opened the way for dialogue between the two communities and religions that was to take place in subsequent centuries on quite a significant scale. Nizami writers:


They looked upon all religions as different roads leading to the same destination. They did not approve of any discrimination or destination in human society which was one organism for them. They had free social intercourse with the Hindus and tried to understand their approach towards the basic problems of religion and morality. It was their firm conviction that spiritual greatness could be attained by Hindus in the same way as it could be achieved by the Muslims.[47]

Such recognition of the truth in the other and readiness to assimilate and learn in a spirit of tolerance and openness grew from Chishtis’ dynamic concept of man. For them the most sacred of all things was man’s unity with the totality, the whole, the reality. And his physical environment was never outside of this reality.

To sum up, man in Indo-Muslim culture does live in singular earthly reality. His reality is defined by terrestrial as well as extra-terrestrial dimension. Other than his material concrete world, he also lives in the world of his own, the world of his consciousness, which provides him sense of identity and freedom and thus puts meaning in his life. Theoretically the former is the realm of man while the latter that of God. Yet they are the two ends of man’s world and it is the transition, the movement from the one to the other that not only unites them but also constitutes the realm of human freedom.


Conclusion

This paper is a step towards developing a non-Western historical perspective, that re-examines the sources from human past, and out of this examination constructs a new, non-Western but at the same time non-partisan history. If Western historical perspective excludes the non-Western, the non-partisan nature of non-Western perspective does not exclude the Western, for if it would, it would be essentially Western. Polarity and exclusiveness, one sidedness, partisanship or extremism, is the character of Western historical thought and not of thought and history itself.

Alan Musnslow observed that in the heyday of imperialism, the non-imperialist perspective did not exist, for it was ‘not recognized as a perspective at all in the West until the second half of the twentieth century and the advent of decolonization.’[48] My argument is that such perspective still does not exist. Although modern Western historians and those in their mould in the non-Western world claim to be adhering to non-imperialist perspective, the truth is it is a mere pretension. For the non-imperialist perspective cannot continue to treat the pre-modern past the way modern imperialist perspective did and does. So what I am suggesting is that there is no difference between the modern imperialist and non-imperialist perspectives, for both reject the pre-modern past as fundamentally non-rational or mythical and religious of no historical value, with the exception of a tiny island of Greece.

A little reflection on ancient Greek thought, of its philosophy and history, reveals that this attempt to take Greece out of her historical context is a modern construction. All Greeks and non-Greeks alike, so Plato observed, believe in the existence of gods.[49] Even a cursory reading of Greek thought clearly reveals that the Greeks as the precursor of modern rational perspective is a fabrication by modernity for its own legitimation. Whole of Plato’s work is studded with the belief in the reality of the invisible world, this being not Plato’s or Socrates’ personal belief but as the very foundation of Greek thought.

A detailed re-evaluation of Greek thought we will leave from some other occasion. In the present paper, which is based on a larger work ,[50] we limit ourselves largely to medieval Indo-Muslim history and attempt to show that modern perception of pre-modern man is essentially flawed. The problem, that is, is not with the non-Western man who ostensibly for his religious orientation is outside history. Rather it is with the modern man whose attempt to construct history of the past with the fabricated evidence of Greece only points to the fact that he has no history. That is, if ancient Greece belongs to the pre-modern world, to which Homer, Plato, Buddha and their likes belonged, modern man has no past. It was perhaps J. H. Plumb[51] who first came to the brilliant apprehension that the modern Western attempt to construct history at the burial site of the past might not succeed. Our present attempt aims to demonstrate that it has indeed failed. Modern man has no history.


The implications of the findings and hypothesis presented above can be consequential in our understanding of the nature of man, and of human culture in general.[52]

Modern age, or modernity, to be more precise, as we know, began in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries in Europe,[53] and which is now a universal perspective. It sought its legitimacy in a wholesale repudiation of the pre-modern civilizations and their achievements. It was a colossal operation of destruction of the past and its replacement by a reconstruction of what we know as history.[54] The concept of man and his culture developed out of this operation was the model with reference to which pre-modern man and his age had to be evaluated. Obviously he was found seriously wanting, for he turned out to be a lesser man; except for the ancient Greeks, though, who somehow, presumably by some great miracle of nature, escaped the misfortunes of pre-modern, lesser man, and thus emerged as the worthy ancestors of modern man.

Perhaps the chief charge against the pre-modern man is that his commitment to the life and world was half-hearted, if not hypocritical, for he was more occupied to the illusory world of beyond. From this occupation what followed almost naturally was a culture which was monolithic, authoritarian, and absolutist. What could be the greater indication of its poverty than the fact that the idea of pluralism was foreign to it!

However, the idea of modern pluralism, we may note, is wholly political on which is based the structure of modern democracy. While it is true that political pluralism was foreign to a monarchical setting, we have drawn attention to cultural pluralism of pre-modern civilizations, a concept foreign to modern civilization. For modernity visualizes man as essentially a material, physical being who is enthralled to material needs and which propel him to realize himself in the acquisition of material goods. The net result of this concept of man is not hard to see presently, when the specter of global warming and depletion of the planet’s resources haunts us as billions of non-Western peoples enter into the reckless drive to modernize themselves, i.e., to match the material affluence of the modern West.[55]

The pre-modern man, or, to be more precise, the civilizations that arose in the first millennium BC and afterwards, had developed a keen awareness that if man were to be conceived solely as a being enslaved by material ideals, he would sooner or later destroy himself, for there was after all no end to his desire for material affluence. This awareness came from the simple observation that not all men were by disposition given to material pursuits. For there are also men and women who aspire for knowledge and a life, or a life-style, if you like, devoted to this end. This life-style, epitomized in the life of the saint, of a sufi, a Socrates, sant, faqir, derwish, yogi, or sadhu, they thought, was the pre-condition of knowledge of reality, which is a concept foreign to modernity.

In short, the pre-modern thought perceived man as a unity of dual or opposite natures, and on which were raised the opposite ideals of the king and the ascetic, and their respective cultures. The pre-modern or medieval culture, then, was truly a pluralist culture in which human beings had the freedom to live their lives according to their varied, opposing dispositions. This freedom has been taken away from us by the cultural despotism of modernity. Perhaps only the re-claiming of that freedom can avert the disaster as foreseen in the NIC report and many others besides it.


Notes

[1]Until the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni Islam in India was a peripheral phenomenon contained mainly to Sind, Multan and some coastal areas.


[2] For details of Mahmud’s love for wealth see M. K. Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mohemdan Power in India, Trans.J. Briggs, Vol. 1 (London, 1908), pp. 84-5.


[3] Ali b. Uthman Hujwiri, Kashf al-Mahjub, Trans. R. A. Nicholson (Lahore: 1976), p. 20.
[4] ‘We shall only mention,’ writers Firishta, ‘as an instance of his wealth, that he had in diamonds alone, of variation sizes, 500muns. ‘[Mun appr. 38kg], Firishta, 1908, p. 187.

[5] Abdul Haq, Akhbar al-Akhyar, Urdu trans. M. Fazil, (Karachi, n.d.), p. 55; B. B. Lawrence, Notes from a Distant Flute: The Extant Literature of Pre-Mughal Indian Sufism (Tehran, 1978), p. 20. However some hold that Muinuddin Chishti’s arrival coincided with or followed the conquest of Ghauri.

[6] Kinberg, in a very instructive article in respect of our present argument, has observed that poverty was a crucial idea in Islam right from its origin. He argues that the Traditions of the Prophet praising poverty and the poor appeared before those favoring the wealth and the property. He goes on to conclude that the ‘renunciation of worldly goods was always the main current in Islam.’ L. Kinberg, ‘Commerce and Compromise: A study of early traditions concerning poverty and wealth’, Der Islam, Band 66, Heft 2, 1989, p. 152.
[7] This in no way implies that the two figures were absent from the pre- Muslim Indian culture. For a fuller treatment see Shuja Alhaq, A Forgotten Vision: A Study of Human Spirituality in the Light of Islamic Tradition, 2 vols. (New Delhi, 1997). Also published in single volume by Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1997.


[8] Isami, quoted by Aziz Ahamd, ‘The Sufi and the Sultan in Pre-Mughal India,’ Der Islam, 1963, p. 152.

[9] Hujwiri, p. 27.

[10] The role of cultivation of faqr in Sufism can be gauged by the fact that sometimes it is equated with the very state of Godhead, as that of absolute independence from need. It was for instance observed by a Sufi that ‘the faqir is one who has no need of God.’ J. Nurbakhsh, Spiritual Poverty in Sufism (London, 1984) p. 21. For a comprehensive selection of the descriptions concerning faqr, faqir, dervish, and Sufi in the Sufi literature see ibid, pp.1-62.

[11] See, e.g., Hujwiri, p. 18.


[12] Shaikh Saadi, Gulistan, Hertford, 1863, p.47.

[13] Ibn Arabi, Turjuman al-Ashwaq, ed. & trans. R. A. Nicholson, Beruit, 1966, p . 115.

[14] Yogi here also implies sanyasi, bhikshu, sadhu etc.

[15] Louis Dumont, ‘World Renunciation in Indian Religions,’ Contributions to Indian Sociology,, No. 4, 1960, p. 47.

[16] Cf. ibid. pp. 46-7.


[17] Cf. Tara Chand, Influence of Islam on Indian Culture (Allahabad, 1976), pp. 26 & 35-7. Ali Hujwari, the patriarch of Indian Sufism, it may be recalled, settled in Lahore during this period.

[18] S. A. A Rizvi, A History of Sufism in India, Vol. ! (New Delhi, 1978), p. 117; Yusuf Husain, Glimpses of Medieval Indian Culture (Bombay, 1962) p.37

[19] K. A. Nizami, Some Aspects of Religion and Politics in India During the Thirteenth Century (Bombay, 1961), p. 184-5.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid., ‘Iltutmush the Mystic,’ Islamic Culture, Vol. XX, 1946, p. , 173.

[22] Ibid p .175.

[23] See his correspondence with Bahauddin Zakariya in Abdul Haq, op.cit.

[24] The autonomy of faqr viz-a-viz the kingship was illustrated by Saadi in an anecdote. A certain pious one saw in a dream certain king in heaven while a dervish in hell. When he inquired about it he was told that king was in paradise for his proximity to the dervish, and the dervish was in hell for his closeness with the king. Saadi, op. cit., p. 54.

[25] Nizami, 1961, p. 190.

[26] Ibid. p. 191.

[27] For the discussion of the controversy over the authorship of the verses attributed to Farid see Akhlaq Hussain Dehlawi, ‘The Poetical Work of Baba Farid,’ Journal of Sikh Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1978, and B. S. Anand, Baba Farid (New Delhi, 1975), pp. 34-43.
[28] H. Singh Shan, So Said Sheikh Farid (Chandigarh, 1974), p. 53.

[29] Ibid. p. 56-7.

[30] Lawrence, op. cit., p. 24.
[31] A. H. Sijzi, Fawaid ul-Fuad, Urdu trans. M. Sarwar. (Lahore, 1973), p. 56.

[32] Ibid., p. 56-7.
[33] Ibid., p. 169.

[34] Ibid., p.111

[35] Cf., e.g., ibid., pp.111, 339, 419.

[36] Ibid., p. 78.

[37] Nizami, 1985, p. 80.

[38] Haq, p. 125.

[39] Sijzi, p. 309.

[40] Quoted by M. Habib in The political theory of the Delhi Sultanante, including a translation of Ziauddin Barani's Fatawa-i Jahandari, circa 1358-9 A.D. (Allahabad, 1960), p. 134.

[41] Nizami, op. cit., p. 80.

[42]Sijzi, p. 165.

[43] Ibid.

[44] For a brief discussion of the subject see Z. H. Zaidi, ‘Conversion to Islam in South Asia: Problems in Analysis’, The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, Vol. 6, No. 1, September 1989, pp. 102-15.

[45] See for instance Elliot & Dowson, The History of India as Told by its Historians, Vol. 11, London, 1873, p. 184; Barani, in M. Habib, pp. 5-6, 46-7.

[46] Cf. R. Thapar, A History of India, Vol. 1 (Penguin Books, 1966), p. 302.

[47] Nizami, 1961, p. 318.

[48] A. Munslow, Deconstructing History. 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 28.
[49] Plato, Laws: 886a, in his Complete Works, ed, by J. M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Co, 1997) In Timaeus Greeks are characterised as ‘those whose begetting and nurture were divine.’ (24d) In Phaedo, Socrates says that ‘the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.’ (Ibid., 64) Later he declares: ‘No one may join the company of the gods who has not practiced philosophy. [Ibid., 82c)

So Xenophon, the other important contemporary source for Socrates besides Plato, in a brilliant exposition of Greek mind, wrote in The Dinner-Party (Plato’s Symposium):

Well, its quite plain that both Greeks and non-Greeks believe that the gods know everything that is, and will be; at any rate all states and all peoples inquire of the gods by means of divination what they ought and ought not to do.. Next, its also clear that we believe they can do us both good and harm; at least, everyone asks the gods to avert what is evil and grant what is good. Well, these omniscient and omnipotent gods are such good friends to me that, because of their concern for me, I am never beyond their notice night or day, wherever I am bound and whatever I intend to do. And because of their foreknowledge, that indicate to me the result of every action, sending me messages by utterances, dreams and omens to tell me what I ought to do and what I ought not; and when I obey these, I am never sorry for it, but when I have sometimes disobeyed in the past, I have been punished for it.

Most instructively, this is not Socrates who is saying this, but one of his interlocutors, Hermogenes. Socrates responds by saying: “Well, there is nothing incredible in this. [This is because Socrates himself was guided by his god through his voice whose approval he sought in all his actions]. But I would be glad to know what sort of service you render them to keep them so friendly to you.” Xenophon, Conversations of Socrates (Penguin, 1990), p. 248.

[50] Shuja Alhaq, op.cit.
[51] J. H. Plumb, The Death of the Past (New York: Palgrave, 2004 [1969]).
[52] The findings, with reference to both Islamic and Hindu pre-modern civilizations, are presented on a larger canvas in Shuja Alhaq, op.cit.
[53] For a brief treatment of the rise of modernity see Shuja Alhaq, ‘Islam and Modernity: Towards a New Paradigm,’ The Historian, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2006, pp. 50-64.
[54] For the substitution of past with history though in European, Christian context, see J. H. Plumb, op.cit.
[55] See, for instance, the just issued report by US National Intelligence Council, ‘Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World,’ on www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html