From: "Sumit Guha" <sguha@HISTORY.RUTGERS.EDU>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2011 11:54 PM
Subject: REVIEW: Sanyal on Aquil ed. Sufism and Society
> Raziuddin Aquil, ed. Sufism and Society in Medieval India. Debates
> in Indian History and Society Series. New Delhi Oxford University
> Press, 2010. xxiv + 184 pp. $45.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-806444-2.
>
> Reviewed by Usha Sanyal (Queens University of Charlotte)
> Published on H-Asia (November, 2011)
> Commissioned by Sumit Guha
>
> The Role of Medieval Sufis in Converting Hindus
>
> This is an interesting collection of essays on aspects of Sufism
> during the twelfth through eighteenth centuries by well-known
> scholars in the field, such as K. A. Nizami, J. M. S. Baljon, and
> Simon Digby, among others. All nine essays have been published
> previously. They are brought together here, along with an
> introductory essay by Raziuddin Aquil, the editor, as part of Oxford
> University Press's Debates in Indian History and Society series.
> Thematically, many of the essays are concerned with the role of Sufis
> in the subcontinent in Islamization and conversion of Hindus to
> Islam, with the authors taking different stands on the issue.
> Subsidiary sets of issues relate to Sufis and their relation to the
> state and to possession of wealth and property, as well as relations
> between different Sufi orders and between Sufis and scholars of
> Islamic law (the ulama), language, and social class. One essay, by
> Richard M. Eaton, deals with the role of women's songs in
> transmitting Sufi ideas to illiterate villagers in the
> seventeenth-century Deccan.
>
> Aquil frames the primary concern of the book, namely, the roles that
> medieval Sufis played in the conversion of Hindus to Islam, in
> historiographic terms by focusing on the perspectives of the essay
> writers themselves. Broadly, Aquil sees three distinct scholarly
> positions: those whose "writings ... emphasize the pluralistic
> character of Indian society and the commendable role of Sufis in
> providing a practical framework for communal harmony" (essays by
> Nizami, S. A. A. Rizvi, and Carl W. Ernst, in Aquil's view, belong in
> this group); those who adopt "a more empirically sustainable approach
> even while remaining committed to the idea of secularism and such
> other virtues expected from historians in Indian academia" (in this
> group, he places the contributions by Eaton, Digby, and Muzaffar
> Alam); and those who take "a Muslim separatist position" (the only
> example in the volume is the piece by Aziz Ahmad) (p. x). On the one
> hand, Aquil expresses strong disagreement with Ahmad, writing that he
> "offers a somewhat cynical interpretation marred by his separatist
> outlook, which, in turn, was influenced by the post-Partition Muslim
> predicament in the Indian subcontinent" (p. xv). On the other hand,
> Aquil feels that Nizami, for example, is prone to making broad
> generalizations, characterizing the ulama as "conservative and
> reactionary theologians,... [leaving] the Sufis to rise to the
> occasion, releasing 'syncretic forces which liquidated social,
> ideological, and linguistic barriers' between Hindus and Muslims for
> building a 'common cultural outlook.'" In contrast, Aquil clearly
> esteems the work of those he terms "empiricist," describing the essay
> by Alam, for example, as a "balanced and empirically dense argument
> on the question of community relations" (p. xvi). Seen in this light,
> the essays not only offer different perspectives on the roles of
> Sufis in medieval India, but also illustrate different academic
> approaches, over the past fifty years, to that history.
>
> Four essays (by Nizami, Eaton, Ernst, and Digby) deal with Sufis of
> the Chishti order. Two others (by Ahmad and Rizvi) also do so, though
> more generally as part of an overview of Sufism in the medieval
> period. Why were the Chishtis so important? As Digby explains, the
> Chishtis rose to prominence during the Delhi Sultanate (1192-1398) in
> large part because they possessed the "historical advantage ... of
> ascendancy at a particular moment in the development of the capital
> city [Delhi] of a great kingdom" when "the ideologues and the
> writers"--namely, Amir Khusrau, Amir Hasan, and the historian Ziya
> al-Din Barani--expressed their allegiance to Nizam al-Din (d. 1325),
> and wrote about him in works that were widely disseminated and became
> very popular over time (p. 136). Without these panegyrists, Digby
> argues, the Chishtis would never have occupied center stage in
> Sultanate Delhi.
>
> In this context, geography was key, given that Nizam al-Din's Sufi
> hospice (_khanqah_) was located in Delhi, the capital city. Each Sufi
> shaikh claimed _wilaya_ or spiritual authority over a specific
> territory. Claims to such authority, Digby writes, were "vigorously
> and actively pursued by shaikhs in Khurasan in the eleventh and
> twelfth centuries.... In the Delhi Sultanate this notion of the
> territorial _wilayat_ of a Shaikh led, at the beginning of the
> fourteenth century, to the common identification of Shaikh
> Nizam-al-Din of the Chishti _silsila_ [Sufi order] with the
> well-being and fortunes of the capital city of Delhi and the realm
> over which it held sway" (p. 126). Although these spiritual claims
> were contested by other Sufi orders, the ulama, and the sultans
> themselves, over time Nizam al-Din's tomb-shrine in Delhi
> "permanently ... affected the historical consciousness of Muslims in
> the subcontinent and ... furthered the notion of a special position
> of the Chishti _silsila_ in the establishment of the enduring Muslim
> presence in India" (p. 127). The status and significance of the other
> "great" Chishti masters--particularly that of Mu`in al-Din (d. 1230)
> of Ajmer, the founder of the order, but others as well--were
> magnified in order to support the legend of Nizam al-Din. Here again,
> geography was significant, for Ajmer was an outpost, a frontier,
> which, once associated with the Chishti founder, became central to
> the story of India's Islamization.
>
> As Aquil points out, many of the authors disagree about the Sufis'
> role in converting the local population to Islam. Nizami argues that
> the Chishti sheikhs attracted low-caste Hindu converts in rural
> India, away from the centers of political power, by the force of
> their spirituality and egalitarianism. Focusing on the Chishti ideals
> of social service, nonpossession of material goods, pacifism and
> nonviolence, disassociation from the state, and refusal to accept
> grants of land, Nizami argues that "the early Chishti saints of India
> did not form a part of the Delhi Empire. They formed a world of their
> own. The contamination of court life could not touch their spiritual
> serenity and classless atmosphere" (p. 24).
>
> Ahmad posits a series of transformations in the different orders'
> attitudes toward Hinduism, "which begins with hostility, passes
> through a phase of co-existence and culminates in tolerance and
> understanding" (p. 47). However, the essay itself does not do a good
> job of illustrating this series of phases. While Ahmad does discuss
> differences between the attitudes of early Chishti Sufis and those
> who came after Nizam al-Din, his discussion of the Naqshbandi,
> Shattari, and Qadiri orders is rather static.
>
> Rizvi's essay is a brief overview of different historical epochs.
> Peaceful proselytization by Arab traders in Gujarat and Malabar, who
> married Hindu women and brought up their children as Muslims, was
> followed by political conquest by Muhammad bin Qasim in the eighth
> century and further conquests by subsequent sultanates. In general,
> the sultans concentrated on the tribal chieftains and Brahmins,
> hoping that converting them would lead to large-scale conversions at
> the local level. However, in Rizvi's view, this "policy was not very
> successful because most of [the] converts apostatized" (p. 57). Only
> war captives, who had no choice in the matter, converted.
>
> Rizvi includes an interesting discussion of Ismaili resistance to the
> raids and killings by Mahmud of Ghazni. He disagrees with historian
> Muhammad Habib that there was a "landslide in favour of the new
> faith" during Nizam al-Din's era (p. 59). He also disagrees with Sir
> Thomas Arnold that Sufis were responsible for the "wholesale
> conversion" of Hindus, though Mu`in al-Din "converted a large number
> of Hindus, presumably low-caste ones" (pp. 59-60). But he continues:
> "The Chishti interest in the betterment of Hindus and of the
> untouchables among them as is claimed by modern Muslims, is a figment
> of their imagination" (p. 62). Indeed, apart from the mother of Farid
> al-Din (d. 1265) and Gisu Daraz (d. 1422), who engaged in conversion,
> Rizvi believes, none of the Chishti Sufis was interested in doing so.
> The state policy of conversion was terminated by Akbar in the
> sixteenth century.
>
> Eaton's essay maintains that part of the problem with understanding
> how conversion occurred in medieval India arises from the fact that
> historians have been looking at elite, esoteric forms of Sufi
> discourse, which were never meant to be widely disseminated in
> society at large. What sense could ordinary village folk, such as
> cotton carders and barbers, possibly make of "an abstract system of
> mystical stages and states requiring an immense degree of
> intellectual and spiritual discipline" (p. 70)? To understand how
> knowledge of Islamic precepts spread beyond the limited circle of
> Sufi initiates, Eaton looks at folk literature in the medieval
> Deccan. Short poems sung by women while doing household
> chores--spinning thread, grinding food grains, rocking a child to
> sleep--touch on elements of Sufi doctrine in simple terms, in the
> vernacular Dakkani spoken by everyone. "Devotion to God and respect
> for one's _pir_" [spiritual guide] are constant themes of this
> literature (p. 73). Eaton also shows how the process of Islamization
> was furthered by women's visits to _dargahs_ (Sufi tomb complexes)
> and by their concern with childbirth and fertility more generally.
>
> Ernst deals with the question of conversion with reference to the
> Chishtis of Khuldabad, in Maharashtra (not far from Aurangabad). Like
> Eaton, he too emphasizes the elite nature of Sufi discourse in
> _malfuzat_ [anecdote collection] texts, among others. He notes that
> apart from the occasional mention of yogis, these texts make no
> mention of Hindus whatsoever. Hindus are only mentioned in a
> political context, which had no religious significance as far as
> Sufis were concerned. Ernst therefore concludes that although the
> medieval Sufis of Khuldabad lived in an Indian environment and
> adopted certain features of Indian culture, such as Indian poetry and
> the practice of eating _pan_, they lived in a world apart, one that
> was closed to most of the people around them. This argument is
> reminiscent of Nizami when he writes that the Sufis lived "in a world
> of their own," though Ernst's discussion is historically grounded in
> a way not found in Nizami (p. 24).
>
> Three essays address other Sufi orders and periods: Yohannan
> Friedmann's is excerpted from his larger study of Shaikh Ahmad
> Sirhindi (d. 1624), and argues that Sirhindi seldom talked about
> Hindus in his correspondence, indicating that he was indifferent to
> them. However, he was hostile to their participation in the Mughal
> government, and expressed these views forcefully in letters he wrote
> to Mughal officials. Baljon's essay discusses Shah Wali Allah's (d.
> 1762) views on the visitation of Sufi tomb-shrines, showing how these
> views changed over time. Because Shah Wali Allah had been brought up
> in a home where such visitation was common practice, he saw no
> objection to it initially. But in his middle years--influenced,
> Baljon writes, by the writings of Ibn Taimiyya (d. 1328)--he became
> more critical of the practice, and by the end of his life, he was
> sharply critical of it and of belief in the miraculous powers of dead
> Sufi _pirs_. But unlike Ibn Taimiyya, he never condemned the practice
> of visiting the Prophet's grave in Medina.
>
> Alam's essay, the last in the book, deals with the complex relations
> between Muslims and Hindus in Awadh in the seventeenth and eighteenth
> centuries, exploring the economic and political relations between
> Rajputs, local zamindars, and Muslim gentry in the countryside. He
> highlights the importance of the Sufi concept of _wahdat al-wujud_
> (unity of being) in Awadh, particularly as seen through the life of a
> Qadiri soldier-Sufi, Sayyid Shah Abd al-Razzaq Bansawi, who founded a
> Qadiri hospice in Bansa, near Lucknow, in the eighteenth century.
> Bansawi had cordial relations with Hindus and _malamatis _(Sufis who
> flouted the sharia), among others, though he himself, Alam believes,
> adhered strictly to the limits of the sharia. In my view, the essay
> would have been stronger if the author had included direct source
> material to illustrate his many-sided arguments, and refrained from
> the use of such labels as "liberal," "reconciliatory," "syncretism,"
> and "resilient Islam" (pp. 163, 171). These characterizations often
> marred for me an otherwise fascinating topic.
>
> Although this slim volume does a good job of illuminating academic
> discussion of the role of Indian Sufis in conversion during the
> twelfth through eighteenth centuries and particularly illustrates the
> importance of the Chishti order during the Sultanate period, I would
> critique the title _Sufism and Society in Medieval India_. The book's
> overarching concern is to explore Hindu-Muslim relations, in
> particular efforts at the conversion of Hindus by Sufis after the
> Muslim conquest of India in the twelfth century. This is a much
> narrower lens than is implied by "Sufism and Society," and one
> grounded in the contemporary, post-Partition politics of India and
> Pakistan. In a sense, then, it engages in the very dynamics that
> Aquil sees animating the work of some of the historians presented in
> the book.
>
> Citation: Usha Sanyal. Review of Aquil, Raziuddin, ed., _Sufism and
> Society in Medieval India_. H-Asia, H-Net Reviews. November, 2011.
> URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=32240
>
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
> Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
> License.
>
>
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