01-13-2007, 09:28 PM
Obscured by myth
The best way to approach the history of Islamic conversions in the Indian subcontinent is probably to understand the complex politics of secular academic research and history writing. Most historians of mediaeval and early modern India have typically avoided the theme.
Mohammad Habib's thesis â oppressed castes embracing an egalitarian Islam â turned out to be no more than a politically correct speculation. In the meantime, communalist historians seized the opportunity to make the best of the non-academic and entirely modern anxieties about explaining the large number of Muslims in the subcontinent.
Their ans-wer was simple, unsubstantiated and predictable: Islam is inherently proselytising and violent. The thesis of forced conversions, combined with politics of Hindutva, put present-day Muslims in the rather curious position of being both victims as well as perpetrators of the said 'crime'.
What do you do with such obviously ridiculous propositions? Secular mediaevalists vehemently and rightly rebutted them and presumably went back to writing biographies of states, and great Sufi and Bhakti saints. Worse still, some like historian Harbans Mukhia ('Muslim Puzzle', Nov 29, 2006) set out to look for answers to a question that was historically questionable. The Muslim puzzle remained just that: a puzzle to all those who seek and fail to explain the presence of Muslims in such large numbers, as if the latter were some disease defying diagnosis.
The point is this: The construct of conversion for understanding the religious processes in pre-modern India obfuscates our vision and condemns us to view Islamic expansion in the subcontinent in pre-determined ways. As a result, historians end up looking for evidence of individuals and communities choosing (one fine morning, as it were!) to embrace Islam for this reason or that.
They also look for motives or incentives behind such conversion. No wonder they end up complaining about inadequate evidence. If they tried to similarly explain the presence of staggeringly larger number of those professing Brahmanism/Hinduism in India today, they would fare no better.
However, they never try to ask that question. At least not with the intention of explaining any Hindu puzzle, and certainly never invoking conversion. Why?
One may argue that this was because Brahmanic-Sanskritic textual traditions, unlike Islamic-Persianate literary conventions, never invoked conversion as a tool of expansion. Worse, chronicles written during the Sultanate period often castigated polytheists and idol-worshippers. This, however, is a gross distortion of truth.
For, it seems to imply that Brahmanism did not evolve its own apparatus for self-conservation and expansion. Or that scurrilous doctrinal attacks on other religions was a wholly Islamic novelty in India. This is simply not true.
First, looking down upon believers of rival religious systems was not unique to Islam. Reviling other religions in highly charged offensive language, as for example in the 11th century Sanskrit play Prabodhachandrodaya, was a popular (and pre-Islamic) narrative technique, widely deployed in most religious and non-religious compositions in the high languages (especially Sanskrit and Persian) across confessional boundaries.
This linguistic excess was probably appreciated for what it was by contemporaries and not taken literally. Second, at least from later Vedic times onwards, mythic sages were routinely glorified for sanctifying and bringing this land or that under dharma. Puranic literature from the early centuries of Christian era onwards emphatically attests to the process of Brahmanisation within the subcontinent.
A large number of tribes, mostly on the frontiers of state systems and agrarian economies, appear to have increasingly come into contact with established kingdoms and religions. Over the next millennium or so, they were apparently integrated into Brahmanism with most being consigned to lowly Shudra status.
Why, then, is it that most secular historians avoid looking into the question of Islamisation, as some of them have done in the context of Brahmanisation. And how is it that those who do cannot extricate themselves from the self-defeating construct of conversion? It was almost as if they were doing a marketing survey of why people prefer AirTel over Hutch.
Why, on earth, did people convert to Islam, they seem to be asking? It is important to explode rather than answer such questions. For they emanate from the communalist article of faith that India is a natural habitat for Hindus. Everyone else needs an explanation certificate from historians, or else they may be declared to have descended on this Hindu land in objectionable ways.
Secular history cannot be written by posing communalist questions. What we need are works of history that look at patterns of accretion and change in belief systems over a long duration and in relation with other changes. Such works cannot be based on positivistic readings of Persian or Sanskrit texts. It must acknowledge and analyse politics of representation and patterns of narrative techniques. It must also harness vernacular literature and oral compositions.
Such a history must consider the fact that it is only the modern state with its vast coercive apparatus and insatiable appetite for classifiable information that demands exclusive religious affiliation from its subjects. The pre-modern state in an age not marked by mass politics had neither the will and wherewithal nor the need to even try to do that.
Recognising this may help us consider the possibility that many in that age could actually occupy that liminal space between boundaries of more than one orthodoxy which modernity finds so difficult to imagine.
(The writer teaches history at Lady Shri Ram College.)
=============================
Is this is the best that Red comrades can come up with, a daydreaming fairytale? Comparing a Sanskrit play to mau-mau 'looking down upon believers of rival religious systems' embedded in Quran. <!--emo&:omg--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/omg.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='omg.gif' /><!--endemo--> how dare you, kufr?
The best way to approach the history of Islamic conversions in the Indian subcontinent is probably to understand the complex politics of secular academic research and history writing. Most historians of mediaeval and early modern India have typically avoided the theme.
Mohammad Habib's thesis â oppressed castes embracing an egalitarian Islam â turned out to be no more than a politically correct speculation. In the meantime, communalist historians seized the opportunity to make the best of the non-academic and entirely modern anxieties about explaining the large number of Muslims in the subcontinent.
Their ans-wer was simple, unsubstantiated and predictable: Islam is inherently proselytising and violent. The thesis of forced conversions, combined with politics of Hindutva, put present-day Muslims in the rather curious position of being both victims as well as perpetrators of the said 'crime'.
What do you do with such obviously ridiculous propositions? Secular mediaevalists vehemently and rightly rebutted them and presumably went back to writing biographies of states, and great Sufi and Bhakti saints. Worse still, some like historian Harbans Mukhia ('Muslim Puzzle', Nov 29, 2006) set out to look for answers to a question that was historically questionable. The Muslim puzzle remained just that: a puzzle to all those who seek and fail to explain the presence of Muslims in such large numbers, as if the latter were some disease defying diagnosis.
The point is this: The construct of conversion for understanding the religious processes in pre-modern India obfuscates our vision and condemns us to view Islamic expansion in the subcontinent in pre-determined ways. As a result, historians end up looking for evidence of individuals and communities choosing (one fine morning, as it were!) to embrace Islam for this reason or that.
They also look for motives or incentives behind such conversion. No wonder they end up complaining about inadequate evidence. If they tried to similarly explain the presence of staggeringly larger number of those professing Brahmanism/Hinduism in India today, they would fare no better.
However, they never try to ask that question. At least not with the intention of explaining any Hindu puzzle, and certainly never invoking conversion. Why?
One may argue that this was because Brahmanic-Sanskritic textual traditions, unlike Islamic-Persianate literary conventions, never invoked conversion as a tool of expansion. Worse, chronicles written during the Sultanate period often castigated polytheists and idol-worshippers. This, however, is a gross distortion of truth.
For, it seems to imply that Brahmanism did not evolve its own apparatus for self-conservation and expansion. Or that scurrilous doctrinal attacks on other religions was a wholly Islamic novelty in India. This is simply not true.
First, looking down upon believers of rival religious systems was not unique to Islam. Reviling other religions in highly charged offensive language, as for example in the 11th century Sanskrit play Prabodhachandrodaya, was a popular (and pre-Islamic) narrative technique, widely deployed in most religious and non-religious compositions in the high languages (especially Sanskrit and Persian) across confessional boundaries.
This linguistic excess was probably appreciated for what it was by contemporaries and not taken literally. Second, at least from later Vedic times onwards, mythic sages were routinely glorified for sanctifying and bringing this land or that under dharma. Puranic literature from the early centuries of Christian era onwards emphatically attests to the process of Brahmanisation within the subcontinent.
A large number of tribes, mostly on the frontiers of state systems and agrarian economies, appear to have increasingly come into contact with established kingdoms and religions. Over the next millennium or so, they were apparently integrated into Brahmanism with most being consigned to lowly Shudra status.
Why, then, is it that most secular historians avoid looking into the question of Islamisation, as some of them have done in the context of Brahmanisation. And how is it that those who do cannot extricate themselves from the self-defeating construct of conversion? It was almost as if they were doing a marketing survey of why people prefer AirTel over Hutch.
Why, on earth, did people convert to Islam, they seem to be asking? It is important to explode rather than answer such questions. For they emanate from the communalist article of faith that India is a natural habitat for Hindus. Everyone else needs an explanation certificate from historians, or else they may be declared to have descended on this Hindu land in objectionable ways.
Secular history cannot be written by posing communalist questions. What we need are works of history that look at patterns of accretion and change in belief systems over a long duration and in relation with other changes. Such works cannot be based on positivistic readings of Persian or Sanskrit texts. It must acknowledge and analyse politics of representation and patterns of narrative techniques. It must also harness vernacular literature and oral compositions.
Such a history must consider the fact that it is only the modern state with its vast coercive apparatus and insatiable appetite for classifiable information that demands exclusive religious affiliation from its subjects. The pre-modern state in an age not marked by mass politics had neither the will and wherewithal nor the need to even try to do that.
Recognising this may help us consider the possibility that many in that age could actually occupy that liminal space between boundaries of more than one orthodoxy which modernity finds so difficult to imagine.
(The writer teaches history at Lady Shri Ram College.)
=============================
Is this is the best that Red comrades can come up with, a daydreaming fairytale? Comparing a Sanskrit play to mau-mau 'looking down upon believers of rival religious systems' embedded in Quran. <!--emo&:omg--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/omg.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='omg.gif' /><!--endemo--> how dare you, kufr?