Akbar and Kabir's religious and literary blending

Maqbol Ahmed Siraj, India: A Laboratory of Inter-religious Experiment

Background info and concise summary of misconceptions about religion in India:

·         Pg. 319 1/5 of the world lives in India, containing nearly all religions

·         Hindu origins: Aryans of Central Asia came and drove off the Dravidians, indigenous to north Indian plains, to South Indian peninsula

·         Muslim origins:

o   Through Malabar coast in Kerala

o   Merchants from Arabia

o   Arab-Muslim amies conquered Sindh in 712AD

o   Muslims from Central Asia via the Khyber Pass (between modern day Pakistan and Afghanistan) àestablishment of Muslim Kingdom in Delhi that would continue til 1857

·         Pg.320 Among all the faiths of India, Hinduism and Islam have most followers

o   The partition removed 2/3 of India’s Muslim population and moved them into Bangladesh and Pakistan…but the separation “does not erase the history of interregliious experiments in this vital area of the globe. The whole area is still considered a single civilizational entity.”

·         Pakistan looks to Middle East to be incorporated into Muslim world, but it’s in fact distinctly Indo-Aryan, though Pakistan is reluctant to accept its Indo-Aryan origin WHY?

o   Regional Cooperation Development, the now defunct treaty among Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan in the 60s and 70s

·         Bangladesh, which seceded from Pakistan on ethno-lingual differences, has always embraced its South Asian status

·         The political tension between these south Asian countries is misinterpreted as historical tension between Hindus and Muslim

o   Pg.321 but that assumes Hinduism and Islam are on opposite poles

o   Contemporary tension between the two is traced back to the Muslim rule of India, which is interpreted as oppressive

·         On the contrary, that Muslim rule was 650 years of lively social, cultural, political, intellectual exchange

·         History is being simplified and politicized for modern Hindu interest: both Muslims and Hindus are being recast as “monoliths”—in order to ignore the contradictions in one and demonize the other

·         Muslims in fact interacted with Indian culture, ethos, customs, mythology, and literature

o   Example: the Hindu epic Ramayana is most translated in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, as mandated by Akbar

o   Pg.322 Akbar also had Sanskrit classics translated into Islamic languages by a committee of scholars with cross-lingual expertise

§  Many other obscure examples of literature in translation on pg.322

Akbar

·         Akbar was inspired by morals of Indian folktales in Panchatantra, had them translated, then translated again into Ayyer e Danish

·         Akbar himself wrote poetry in Hindi under pseudonym Rai Karan

o   “The world is a hospitable inn for those who are just and right, wherever they may find themselves/ As a form of worship, their life’s journey will be assured of success”

·         Pg.323 Akbar filled his court with Hindi and Sanskrit poets and scholars, and his embrace of Indian languages made Hindi a lingua franca; his own son Prince Sultan Daniyal became a Hindi poet

Kabir

·         Kabir Das: Biography shrouded in mystery, and various groups compete over the details:

o   Hindus: claim he was born to Hindu woman, raised by Muslim family, became disciple of Hindi Guru Ramananda

o   Muslims: emphasize Muslim upbringing, initiated into Sufi tradition

·         Many claim Kabir was a religious reformer with an eye for unifying castes and religious sects

o   BUT “Even though Kabir showed a healthy disregard for conventional boundaries of society and organized religion, his intrinsic pursuit was rooted in spirituality and spirituality alone. In the process of conveying the innate spirituality of all creation, Kabir, in all likelihood, had to deal with and overcome prevalent parochial barriers. But this ought not to be misconstrued to imply that his intent was to reform society or religion.”

§  He was a traditionalist! This goes so well with modernist vs. traditionalist stuff

·         Born in 1398 AD in Varanasi, admired virtues of Islam and Hinduism, satirized the external rites and rituals of both

·         Critical of hypocrisy among religious authority and urged people to seek God within themselves and follow the path of honesty, simplicity, and integrity

·         Pg.324 Kabir spoke in universalist terms to break down barriers to the divine

o   Product of Bhakti (devotion) movement

·         Spawned a following of “Kabirpanthis” who practiced mélange of Islamic and Hindu rites/rituals

·         Violence between Hindus and Muslims when he died: cremation vs. burial

·         If we call Kabir a perennialist, which I think we can, this would bust Guenon’s theory…this was a traditionalist who resisted the same things that Geunon associated with “modernity,” long before India had been infused with modernity or Western influence

Akbar

·         The uneducated Akbar tried to compensate by keeping the accomplished ulama close by at all times

·         “Governance of a country of as vast a diversity as India imparted a rare catholicity to his outlook.”

o   Porgtuguese missionaries, Zoroastrian delegation, Sheikh, Sikh, Hindus, all had access to his court and that diversity influenced him greatly

·         “All this led to Akbar developing a basic belief in the commonness of all religions, but never to the extent of heresy against Islam or coercing his citizens to follow a new faith.”

o   Historical manipulation shows that he created a new faith, Din e Ilahi

·         Pg.325 banned cow slaughter in respect to Hindu cow worship, and in response to advice from doctors who showed the medical threat of cow beef—ban extended to buffalo, horses, camels

·         “The essence of Akbar’s catholic outlook was a matter of Sulhe kul, or “general consensus,” among all religions on certain human values.”

Post Akbar

·         Tradition of cultural blending continued

·         More translations (pg.325 for examples)

·         Cool example: under Shah Jehan’s rule, Maulana Adbur Rahman Chishti wrote poetic dialogue between Hindu deities Mahadev and Paryathi, constructing an analogy to this pair and Adam and Eve

·         Dara Shikoh, third son of Shah Jehan, wrote Majmaaaul Bahrain, an attempt to bridge gap between Hindu and Islam as “two springs from the same source”

Sikhism

·         Pg.326 the whole religions represents a blending of Hinduism and Islam, and it was born in India!

·         Distinct from both traditions, a blend of each religion’s egalitarian aspects and mystic traditions

·         Guru Nanak, the founder, denounced orthodoxy and embraced intercommunity relationship

·         Embraces reincartion, karma, tawhid/monotheism, congregation in worship

·         How much more do we want to explore Sikhism? It’s huge, so probably don’t want to get in too deep, but it’s an incredible illustration of what we’re talking about!!!

“Beyond the Hindi Heartland”

·         Pg.327 Sultan Nasir Shah (1282-1325) like Bangla, the Bengali language, and commissioned many classics to be translated

·         In Guajarat, on the Indian peninsula, Gujri emerged as a dialect as a product of Hindu-Muslim interaction

To look up: Hinduvta movement which poses the theory that Hindus were the original inhabitants of India (look for undertones of anti-Muslim sentiment, potentially ethnic/nationalist tones as well); destruction of Babri Masjid on Dec 6, 1992