ISLAM-HINDUISM INTERACTION

Islam-Hinduism Interaction

Early Muslim knowledge about the religious belief of India was very small; and no wonder, for Hinduism is utterly different from Islam in most of its ways. Its beliefs were not investigated for Islam before al-Biruni (q.v.) compiled his K. Tarikh al-Hind in Ghazna in the 5th/11th century, this deals, however, mostly with the beliefs of the Brahman community, the highest grade in the Hindu social order. Al-Biruni, though he mentions many popular practices, does not seem to have gone so far as collecting material on "popular" Hinduism, the beliefs of the non-Brahman population. To the Muslim conquerors all these shades of Hindu belief were anathema; their practitioners were not Ahl al-Kitab, and therefore in theory they could not be beneficiaries of the dhimma (see DHIMMI), and be given the choice of paying the djizya (q.v.); the alternatives were Islam or death. This, however, is not easy for a minority to impose on a majority, and there is early evidence (from the Cacnama, a Persian work of ca. 613/1216 said to be a translation of an Arabic account of the conquest of Sind) of the Sindhis being allowed the status of dhimmi. There are references to jizya early in the chronicles of the Delhi sultanate, but these may relate to the payment of tribute by Hindu chieftains.

The rulers of India seem to have taken little interest in the belief of their subjects before the reign of Akbar. That ruler introduced many forms drawn from Hindu worship (as from that of the Djayns and Parsis Iq v..] and from Christianity) into his personal devotions, and later into his own syncretistic faith the Din-i-llahi. Akbar's religious curiosity was followed by that of his great- grandson, Dara Shukoh (q.v.) in whom it was perhaps more dangerous to Islam in India as he saw the mixing of the two seas of Muslim and Hindu pantheistic mysticism as a scholastic counter to orthodoxy, and sought in this the common factors of Hinduism and Islam.

Although the apparent rapprochement of Islam to Hinduism in the writings of the Indian sufis suggests that Islam in India may have come under Hindu influence, this does not in fact appear to have been the case; although some trends in Hindu mysticism may have stimulated the sufi mystics. This mysticism was in Sufism long before its arrival in India, and indeed al-Halladi (q.v.) is not far from the thought of the Upanishads. The real union of Islam and Hindu notions comes rather from the Hindu side, in the syncretistic movements of north India in the 9th/15th and 10th/16th centuries: Kabir (q.v.) in spite of his name, is more in the Hindu tradition than the Muslim, and indeed his Islam appears to have been learnt at second-hand; what singles him out from other Hindu preachers is his uncompromising monotheism, expressed pantheistically, rather than the usual mediaeval Hindu monotheistic expression which is a henotheism and susceptible of compromise. The later Islamic influence in some of the syncretistic cults, such as the Pran-nathis, the Kabir-panthis, the Dadu-panthis, and not excluding the Sikhs (q.v.), stems directly through Kabir's monotheism.

Hindu influences on some of the Muslim writers of Hindi (q.v.) are rather literary than religious. When Indian literature began to be studied as an art form in the Mughal courts and under Mughal patronage a whole additional repertory of image and metaphor, already couched in Hindu terms, became available to the Muslim poet; indeed, we know that much of this repertoire was already familiar to the sufi poets of Awadhi (see Malik Muhammad Djayasi). But its acceptance by Muslim poets such as Rahim (see Abd Al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan) certainly does not involve the acceptance of the theology. indeed, it does not seem to involve it on the part of many Hindu writers.

There do, however, seem to have been some Hindu. influences on Muslims in social rather than in religious practices. The Hindu conception of caste (djat, djati), a pre-Aryan social division of society which, by being grafted on to the Aryan concept of social order (varna), has acquired Brahmanical sanction and consequence sanctification, has certainly spread to Muslim minority communities in some of the remoter districts of India. Caste is, for example, usually endogamous, and some Muslim communities have adopted similar restrictive endogamic patterns to those of their Hindu neighbors, in some cases even community of worship has ceased to be observed, and commensality has been replaced by mutually restricted eating groups. This is particularly noticeable among recent converts from Hinduism, especially from the lower caste Hindus or from the so- called "untouchables".

(Extract from Encyclopedia Brittanniea)

Gen. K.M. Cariappa on Muslim Loyalty

The partition of India came as a result of the demands of the top leaders of the Muslim League who wanted Pakistan. In this context, I make a fervent appeal to all my Muslim brothers and sisters in India to please come out in the open and declare, at least to their conscience, a whether their loyalty is to India or Pakistan. If on the other hand, if it is to Pakistan, they must pack up lock, stock and barrel and go to Pakistan at once. If it is to India and I know there are Muslims who sincerely and truthfully feel so they must expose disloyal elements in their community with all speed and get them to quit India.

(Source: The Organizer, 29 September, 1996)