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Book Review

Name of the Book: At the Confluence of Two Rivers—Hindus and Muslims in South
India

Author: Jackie Assayag

Publisher: Manohar, New Delhi

Year: 2004

Pages: 313

Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand



Compared with north India, relatively little has been written on the social
history of Islam and Hindu-Muslim relations in the southern states of India.
This is particularly unfortunate, given that Islam arrived in coastal south
India considerably before Muslims appeared in the north, and that the spread of
Islam in the region, in contrast to much of north India, was not accompanied by
Muslim political expansion, being the result mainly of the missionary efforts of
Sufis and traders. Furthermore, and again unlike the situation in much of the
north, Hindu-Muslim relations in most parts of south India have been fairly
tension-free, and continue to be so, although things are now changing with the
rise in recent years of aggressive Hindu organizations in the region.



This book sets out to explore various aspects of Hindu-Muslim relations in the
southern Indian state of Karnataka. In doing so it seriously challenges several
key assumptions that underlie both commonsensical notions as well as scholarly
writings on this vexed issue. Examining various shared religious traditions,
cults and shrines in Karnataka with which both Hindus and Muslims are
associated, Assayag questions the notion of ‘Islam’ and ‘Hinduism’, as actually
practiced, as being two monolithic entities, neatly defined and clearly set
apart, if not opposed to, each other. In turn, this challenges the understanding
of ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ as two distinct communities that have little or
nothing in common at the level of social practice and religious belief and
ritual. In this way, Assayag questions the grossly simplistic and misleading
notion of ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ as being inherently and necessarily the
theological ‘other’ of each other.



The shared religious traditions in which many Muslims and Hindus in present-day
Karnataka jointly participate forms the main focus of this book. Assayag
provides interesting anthropological details of the beliefs and practices
associated with the cults of various Sufis and local deities, showing how the
common participation of both Hindus and Muslims in these cults helps to promote
a shared tradition and culture. Thus, Hindus flock in large numbers to Sufi
shrines; village Muslims often visit Hindu temples where some of them even
‘experience’ being ‘possessed’ by a local goddess; Hindus enroll as disciples of
a Muslim saint; Muslims and Hindus jointly participate in rituals on the day of
Ashura in the month of Muharrum; a Hindu chooses a Muslim as the custodian of a
Hindu shrine and vice versa, and so on. This shared religious tradition owes in
part to the nature of the process of the spread of Islam in the region.
Islamisation, typically, took the form not of a sudden and drastic
conversion, but, rather, as an process of religioi-culural change that was
limited in its impact, leaving many aspects of the converts’ pre-Islamic
tradition somewhat unchanged. To add to this was the fact that Sufi saints used
several local traditions and motifs in their missionary work so that much of the
local tradition came to be understood as ‘Islamic’ by the converts. Furthermore,
the belief in local ‘Hindu’ deities as well as Sufis as powerful beings, able to
cure ailments or grant wishes attracted Hindus as well as Muslims to their
shrines, a phenomenon that is still observable in many parts of Karnataka.



Yet, while all this undoubtedly helped bring Hindus and Muslims into a shared
cultural universe and into closer contact with each other, the bond of shared
tradition has not entirely free of tension. In the case of several shard shrines
and cults, the coexistence between Hindus and Muslims could, Assayag argues, be
described as ‘competitive sharing’, ‘competitive syncretism’ or even
‘antagonistic tolerance’. This is reflected in myths and counter-myths about
commonly revered figures through which each community seeks to stress its
superiority over the other and in the process fashion an identity for itself
based on a re-written collective memory. Increasingly, this antagonistic aspect
is becoming particularly pronounced, as for instance, the dispute over the
shrine of the Sufi Raja Bagh Sawar, whom many Hindus now claim to have been a
Brahmin, Chang Dev, or the case of the shrine of Baba Budhan in Chikamagalur,
which Hindutva militants now seek to convert into a full-fledged Hindu
temple, denying its Islamic roots and associations altogether. Assayag
discusses these new challenges to the shared Hindu-Muslim tradition in the wider
context of the process of urbanization, the rise of Hindutva militancy in
Karnataka in recent years and the consequent heightening of Muslim insecurity,
the emergence of Islamic reformist movements and the role of the state in
defining fixed religious identities and policing community borders.



As an anthropological study of Hindu-Muslim relations, focusing on the complex
nature of shared or ‘syncretistic’ religious traditions, this book poses
important questions related to how local Muslims and Hindus identify themselves
and relate to each other. In that sense it rightly critiques the notion of
Hindus and Muslims as monolithic communities inherently opposed to each other.
Not everyone will agree with everything that Assayag has to say, however. Most
crucially, his understanding of Islam and local Islamic traditions can easily be
faulted. Thus, he refers to emergence of the Mapilla Muslims of the Malabar
coast as a result of mut’a or temporary marriages contracted by Arab Shafi’i
Muslim traders (p.37). He does not provide any evidence of this, and it is
unlikely that this is correct, since mut’a is not recognized by the Shafi’I
school. He refers to the great Deccani Sufi Hazrat Bandanawaz Gesudaraz as
‘Bandanamaz’, and claims that his tomb is ‘worshipped’ by many Muslims
(p.39). This, of course, is completely incorrect, as the devotees of the Sufis
do not worship their tombs at all, and Assayag here confuses reverence for
worship. He refers to the panjahs, a hand-shaped metal object often displayed
at village shrines during the month of Muharrum, as generally having only three
fingers, ‘in keeping with the Sunni creed which recognizes only the first three
Caliphs’. This is simply untrue. The panjahs almost inevitably have five
fingers, representing the panjatan pak





In what can only be described as a meaningless statement he writes, again
without any substantiation, that ‘[C]ontemporary Muslims always seek to
establish their nobility (sharafat) by claiming that they have been named God
[?], who caused them to be born in the Prophet’s family or as descendants of
saints who came from Arabia’ [42]. At several points he makes sweeping
statements, again without adducing any evidence, as when he talks about the
‘masochistic character to which the austere piety of the Shi’ites is so
inclined’ [p.76], or when he talks of the rulers of various Sultanates in the
Deccan as ‘waging war’ to convert Hindus to Islam [p.39].