Defending the Sufis in Nineteenth Century Hyderabad (original) (raw)
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The nineteenth century is considered to be one of the most eventful times in the history of the Indian Subcontinent. The latter half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century was the period that witnessed the process of transition from the centuries-old Mughal rule to the colonial domination of the British, extending over a period of almost a century. Marked by a gradual but cataclysmic shift in the political arrangements, the era holds historical significance since the political transformation taking place at the centre and elsewhere was heralding changes in varied spheres of society as well. However, the gradual erosion of the political power of the Mughals was not accompanied by a complete decline in the social, cultural and religious spheres of the polity. Historical evidence bears ample testimony to the fact that despite political chaos and decay, there were certain strikingly observable signs of growth and vitality in varied spheres of the Indian society. Though there emerged sectarian, communitarian and ideological conflicts between the Shias and the Sunnis, and the Hindus and the Muslims, many religious, social and cultural institutions generally retained their vitality.
Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century: Saints, Books and Empires in the Muslim Deccan
Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century: Saints, Books and Empires in the Muslim Deccan, 2006
Sufism is often regarded as standing mystically aloof from its wider cultural settings. By turning this perspective on its head, Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century reveals the politics and poetry of Indian Sufism through the study of Islamic sainthood in the midst of a cosmopolitan Indian society comprising migrants, soldiers, litterateurs and princes. Placing the mystical traditions of Indian Islam within their cultural contexts, this interesting study focuses on the shrines of four Sufi saints in the neglected Deccan region and their changing roles under the rule of the Mughals, the Nizams of Haydarabad and, after 1948, the Indian nation. In particular Green studies the city of Awrangabad, examining the vibrant intellectual and cultural history of this city as part of the independent state of Haydarabad. He employs a combination of historical texts and anthropological fieldwork, which provide a fresh perspective on developments of devotional Islam in South Asia over the past three centuries, giving a fuller understanding of Sufism and Muslim saints in South Asia. Table of Contents 1. Muslim Mystics in an Age of Empire: The Sufis of Awrangabad 2. The Poetry and Politics of Sainthood in a Mughal Successor State 3. The Sufis in the Shadow of a New Empire 4. Saints, Rebels and Revivalists 5. The Awrangabad Saints in the New India. Conclusions
Sufism : A study in the city of Hyderabad
India evolving for over 1,000 years. The presence of Sufism has been a leading entity increasing the reaches of Islam throughout South Asia. Following the entrance of Islam in the early 700s, Sufi mystic traditions became more visible during the 10th and 11th centuries of the Delhi Sultanate. A conglomeration of four chronologically separate dynasties, the early Delhi Sultanate consisted of rulers from Turkic and Afghan lands. This Persian influence flooded South Asia with Islam, Sufi thought, syncretic values, literature, education, and entertainment that has created an enduring impact on the presence of Islam in India today. ] Sufi preachers, merchants and missionaries also settled in coastal Bengal and Gujarat through maritime voyages and trade.
'Abd al-Mājid Daryābādī and Reforming Institutional Sufism in Colonial India
Journal of Islamic Studies (Oxford University Press), 2023
This article examines the reformation of the Sufi tradition in the writings of the Urdu journalist and Qur'an translator and exegete 'Abd al-Majid Daryabadi (1892-1977), especially as articulated in relation to his spiritual connection with the colonial-era Sufi master and Hanafi jurist Mawlana Ashraf 'Ali Thanavi (1863-1943). Daryabadi's balanced, pragmatic approach to the meaning and practice of the master-disciple relationship reflected, on the one hand, the South Asian reception of Enlightenment rationalism and epistemic democratization, and, on the other, certain discursive and practical developments internal to Thanavi's sub-branch of the Chishti Sufi order. This article contributes to scholarship on religious authority in modern South Asian Islam by underscoring the interplay between affect and reason, arguing that it is not mere feeling that structures Sufi communities but something like rationalized affect, a strategic use of feelings and emotions to construct, transmit, and contest religious authority. Thanavi and Daryabadi re-articulate the master-disciple relationship to affirm both personal freedom and communitarian belonging; in so doing they posit traditionalist Islam as an effective alternative to colonial (and now postcolonial) governmentality.
A Nineteenth-Century Blueprint for Recasting the Muslim Mindset in British India
Oriente Moderno, 2021
The reformist endeavour famously known as the Aligarh Movement, initiated by the prominent Muslim intellectual Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Ḫān in the wake of the fateful happenings of 1857, indisputably represents a significant modernist movement among Indian Muslims in nineteenth-century British India. Despite having a limited base among the community, given its elitist character, the role that this movement played in shaping the Muslims’ destiny during the twentieth century cannot be overstated. As a reformist project, this movement set as its main objective the remodelling of the Muslim mindset as well as the resuscitation of the hitherto moribund community to bring it back to the mainstream. In line with this intention, the reform-minded Sayyid Aḥmad put forward an elaborate three-pronged scheme. This article, therefore, seeks to shed light on the Aligarh’s ambitious programme which targeted every aspect of Muslim life, political, religious and socio-cultural.
Against current debates about the gradual 'Islamisation' of South Asia by Sufi cults, and the shifting ambiguity and fixity of religious boundaries in colonial India, this article is an account of the cult of the Qadiriyya-Qalandariyya saints in the Mirpur district of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Mirpur is perhaps best known in Pakistan for its diaspora, especially in the United Kingdom where there is a significant literature on the cultural and economic dimensions of that now longstanding presence. However, there is still little specific or detailed ethnography of homeland traditions of Mirpuri religiosity. Based upon research in Mirpur and Britain, this article is an original attempt to fill this significant gap. It focuses on the cult of two 'intoxicated' Sufi saints at Kharri Sharif, the most significant shrine complex in the region, and makes use of textual sources of sacred biography and romantic poetry, as well as first-hand participant observation. In this regard we follow Werbner and Basu (1998) who view Sufi Islam as 'a single, total, symbolic reality'. We also adopt their innovative agenda for study of 'the connections [and, we suggest, the possible disconnections] between Sufi cosmologies, ethical ideas, bodily ritual practices and organisational forms'. Ultimately, it is argued that the Qadiriyya-Qalandariiya cult is presently waning, having produced no living saint to act as ethical guide since the beginning of the twentieth century. Moreover, while the popularity of demotic ritual embodying a Sufi cosmology continues unabated in Mirpur, since Partition a neo-orthodox epistemology has (rather belatedly) begun to transform dominant socio-religious discourses in the region. Indeed, Kharri Sharif and the income from its offerings have also come under the control of the ministry of awqaf (pious endowments). Thus, the Qadiriyya-Qalandariyya cult appears to lack both the charismatic leadership and organisational autonomy that has allowed other Sufi cults to imagine 'spaces of potential freedom' beyond the stranglehold of the postcolonial state.