About the Book
This book begins by interrogating the assumption
that coherent religious identities emerged
in the Indian subcontinent only in the nine-teenth
century, when the colonial state initiated the census and made it necessary for Indians determinately to identify themselves as
Hindus or Muslims.
The author
studies the medieval Bengali kavyas and discerns the beginnings
or religious identities in them. The kavyas thus, he argues, formed an
emotional inheritance which impacted the literature and sense or history which emerged in colonial Bengal under European
influence. In the second-hall' or the nineteenth century, this new
literature, teamed with a freshly acquired historical consciousness,
demonstrated the various ways in which the contemporary Hindu and Muslim
intelligentsia tried to make sense or each other. In
the process, the literature or the period, the book suggests, both reflected
and aided the gradual 'becoming' or Hindus and Muslims as political
communities.
Saumya Dev did his Ph.D at the Centre for Historical Studies. Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi. He is currently working as a
Senior Research Associate at Jindal Global Business
School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana.
Introduction
WORKING HALF A CENTURY AGO, E.P. Thompson demonstrated that
the working class did not explode upon history, fully formed and with an innate
revolutionary consciousness, with the emergence of industrial civilisation.
Thus, his masterpiece traced what things shaped the working class and, more
importantly, how it shaped itself, how "it was present at its own making." Like Thompson,
we too wish to study an "active process" and establish that Hindus
and Muslims did not "rise like the sun" at the appointed moment- the
coming of colonialism to the Indian subcontinent. Instead, they
"became" through a great diversity of consciously made choices. The
word "becoming," as a result, and the process implied by it, will
form the core of our methodology. Because, like Heidegger, we too believe that history is derivation from a past and
"stands in the context of a becoming." We find it implausible that
the immense numbers of the subcontinent discovered their passionately contested
religious allegiances suddenly in the nineteenth century upon being prodded by
the white man. For long this has been the narrative, the result of a
"primacy attributed to colonialism in forming contemporary Indian identities.?" An example of this primacy is Sandria Freitag's argument that
the "process of forging group identities" was "part prompted by
the efforts of an alien British administration to identify the constituent
units in Indian society." As a result, she says, "drawing on European
historical experience, the administrators applied the collective labels 'Hindu'
and 'Muslim' to groups who were far from homogeneous communities.?"
An understanding as Freitag assumes that before the
arrival of colonialism Indians were either not aware of or not using the group
labels "Hindu" and "Muslim." Her kind of analysis is also
completely oblivious of cultural encounters which began with the arrival of
Islamic ideas and modes of worship in India. Hence, a narrative like the one
presented by Freitag fails to explain the perceptions
of, or prejudices for, each other we find individuals or groups calling
themselves "Hindus" and "Muslims" holding and expressing
long before an alien administration arrived on the Indian scene. Though it ought to, if these group labels were, after all,
fabricated by colonialism. We do not deny, however, that the colonial
state's interventions and the vocabulary used by it to describe the community
signifiers helped the process of consolidation of individuals under
collective labels. Freitag's narrative also does not
explain the coexistence of multiple codes of consciousness, of conflict and
concord, friction and accommodation which always marked, and still marks, the
interaction of Hindus and Muslims. Nor can we gather from it as to why, from
the very beginnings of political agitation in colonial India, the language
employed by the protagonists was one of cultural exclusivity. Our tale will
take an amble down the long centuries and look for answers to these questions
in leaves of verse and prose etched in a corner of the pre-colonial
subcontinent-Bengal. We will observe the becoming of the "Hindus" and
"Muslims" and witness how our protagonists were consciously at work
to become what they did. We will deal at length with their cultural encounters
long before the colonial official strode in with the census register. Like
Thompson's workers, we will find them present at their own becoming.
Today, Bengali speaking Muslims form one of the
largest Muslim communities in the world. The result is Bangladesh, located
thousands of miles away from the desert peninsula where Islam had its
beginnings, being the third largest Muslim country in absolute demographic
terms. Legend has it that the region fell to Turkish cavalrymen on a fateful
day in the year 1204. The ensuing centuries saw the rule of the Ilyas Shahis and the Husain Shahis. They were followed by the Mughals who established
their sway over Bengal in the final decades of the sixteenth century. These
centuries saw the expansion of Islam in this easternmost margin of the
subcontinent. Apparently, the diffusion of Islam in Bengal was gradual. Richard
M. Eaton locates its final spurt in the decades following the establishment of
Mughal rule. As understood by him, the process was driven by the promotion and
expansion of the agrarian economy in the region by the new state.
Islam, planted in the fertile deltaic soil of
Bengal, became of it. This belief system, as also the cultural complex
surrounding it, expressed itself in the language of the soil. Alongside,
Bengali grew in refinement and firmly established itself as a literary language
under the rule of the Muslim dynasties. Fourteenth century onwards, the
language cast forth a prolific kavya tradition.
Mangala kavyas and
vijaya kavyas were
the two main strands that twined to make this luxuriant vine. The former were
mainly devotional odes to the various demigods and goddesses while the latter
sang their triumph or of the Prophet of Islam. Enduring till the eighteenth
century, the tradition was authored and nurtured by both non-Muslim and Muslim
hands. The kavyas form a voluble repository of the
universe of emotions and experience of' the age and reveal its constant
becoming. They, thus, provide the ideal material with which to illustrate the
process of the becoming of "Hindus" and "Muslims." A
substantial part of this book is based on the material available in these
texts.
Eaton posits Islam as contriving itself into a web
of beliefs which were yet indeterminate and unself-conscious. As seen by him,
the Islamic deity was first identified with the existing deities and in the
course of time supplanted them. As he claims, "one readily sees local
cosmologies expanding in order to accommodate new superhuman beings introduced
by foreign Muslims"? in the corpus of the
pre-modern literature produced in Bengali. He, however, cites no concrete
evidence or source to cast light on the complex mechanisms of this process. All
Eaton does to substantiate his thesi is to provide us
with a scrap from an East Bengal ballad. 10 What aided this process of accommodation was also the fact that, as he
avers, there were groups of people in Eastern Bengal who had not yet been
incorporated in the Hindu social order. This was the case, for example, in Chittagong.!' We will, thus, begin by trying to form an idea
of the social organisation and religious beliefs of the region from a set of
contemporary texts. Then, we will attempt to get a measure of the perception of
Islam from the kavyas of non-Muslim authorship. We will
note that they yield a weave of emotions, sentiments and anxieties which makes
for a cogent religious cosmos. This cosmos has sharply defined deities
enshrined within its bounds and yields evidence that religious identities had
had their beginnings. Beginning with the fourteenth century, Bengal saw the
emergence of the cult of numerous folk deities. Mostly strong willed and
irascible goddesses, it does not appear to us that they were very amenable to
identification with any deity from without the bounds of their cosmos. The kavyas of non-Muslim authorship, thus,
evince a cultural vocabulary which is very conscious of its distinctiveness,
though, as we will see, it was sometimes permeated with ambiguities and
ambivalences. Most importantly, we have their authors calling themselves and
their audience "Hindu" in a denominational sense. They also,
apparently, are cognizant of Islam forming a distinct complex of culture and
belief. These description of the practices and professions of the Muslims are
borne out very well by Kavi Kankan Mukunda in the Chandimangal kavya. The kavyas of non-Muslim authorship also often associate Islam with
peoples of foreign provenance, such as Mughals and Pathans,
and sometimes with state-power represented in the form of some zealot qazi. In the end, they betray
anxieties, as done by the authors of Manasa Mangal and Sri Chaitanya Bhagpat when they put in their tales
the archetypal zealot qazi bent on effacing what he terms Hinduani. It seems obvious that in some form
the presence of Islam was contributing to the becoming of the
"Hindu." One study, for example, notes the Vaishnavas
calling themselves "Hindu" only when
engaging with the Muslims."
The poets of the age who strove to be
"Muslim" also perceive a cultural cosmos which is parallel and
different. This is what someone like Alaol, a poet in
the far off court of Arakan, apparently does when he
mentions Hinduvani as being one of the several things
that his guru was versed in." Unlike
what is claimed by Eaton, the verses of these poets too reveal no perceptible
sign that any process of conflation of deities across cosmogonies was on. True,
we have one Daulat Qazi
referring to Allah with the Sanskritic sobriquet of niranjan.14 But Qazi
is also unflinchingly sure that it is shari'ali alone that can lead to this deity.
It is as though the poets of the age are speaking with the aid of two very
distinctive cultural thesauri and are acutely aware of the fact. Only, they
will often look for a cognate in the other's thesaurus for a word or an artifact drawn from their own.
Contents
Acknowledgements |
vii |
Introduction |
Ix |
1 |
|
The Discourses Emerge, 1342-1757 |
1 |
2 |
|
The Inheritance and Auguries, 1757-1857 |
96 |
3 |
|
Becoming Hindus, 1857-1905 |
150 |
4 |
|
Becoming Muslims, 1857-1905 |
204 |
5 |
|
Conclusion |
251 |
Bibliography |
263 |
Index |
272 |
About the Book
This book begins by interrogating the assumption
that coherent religious identities emerged
in the Indian subcontinent only in the nine-teenth
century, when the colonial state initiated the census and made it necessary for Indians determinately to identify themselves as
Hindus or Muslims.
The author
studies the medieval Bengali kavyas and discerns the beginnings
or religious identities in them. The kavyas thus, he argues, formed an
emotional inheritance which impacted the literature and sense or history which emerged in colonial Bengal under European
influence. In the second-hall' or the nineteenth century, this new
literature, teamed with a freshly acquired historical consciousness,
demonstrated the various ways in which the contemporary Hindu and Muslim
intelligentsia tried to make sense or each other. In
the process, the literature or the period, the book suggests, both reflected
and aided the gradual 'becoming' or Hindus and Muslims as political
communities.
Saumya Dev did his Ph.D at the Centre for Historical Studies. Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi. He is currently working as a
Senior Research Associate at Jindal Global Business
School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana.
Introduction
WORKING HALF A CENTURY AGO, E.P. Thompson demonstrated that
the working class did not explode upon history, fully formed and with an innate
revolutionary consciousness, with the emergence of industrial civilisation.
Thus, his masterpiece traced what things shaped the working class and, more
importantly, how it shaped itself, how "it was present at its own making." Like Thompson,
we too wish to study an "active process" and establish that Hindus
and Muslims did not "rise like the sun" at the appointed moment- the
coming of colonialism to the Indian subcontinent. Instead, they
"became" through a great diversity of consciously made choices. The
word "becoming," as a result, and the process implied by it, will
form the core of our methodology. Because, like Heidegger, we too believe that history is derivation from a past and
"stands in the context of a becoming." We find it implausible that
the immense numbers of the subcontinent discovered their passionately contested
religious allegiances suddenly in the nineteenth century upon being prodded by
the white man. For long this has been the narrative, the result of a
"primacy attributed to colonialism in forming contemporary Indian identities.?" An example of this primacy is Sandria Freitag's argument that
the "process of forging group identities" was "part prompted by
the efforts of an alien British administration to identify the constituent
units in Indian society." As a result, she says, "drawing on European
historical experience, the administrators applied the collective labels 'Hindu'
and 'Muslim' to groups who were far from homogeneous communities.?"
An understanding as Freitag assumes that before the
arrival of colonialism Indians were either not aware of or not using the group
labels "Hindu" and "Muslim." Her kind of analysis is also
completely oblivious of cultural encounters which began with the arrival of
Islamic ideas and modes of worship in India. Hence, a narrative like the one
presented by Freitag fails to explain the perceptions
of, or prejudices for, each other we find individuals or groups calling
themselves "Hindus" and "Muslims" holding and expressing
long before an alien administration arrived on the Indian scene. Though it ought to, if these group labels were, after all,
fabricated by colonialism. We do not deny, however, that the colonial
state's interventions and the vocabulary used by it to describe the community
signifiers helped the process of consolidation of individuals under
collective labels. Freitag's narrative also does not
explain the coexistence of multiple codes of consciousness, of conflict and
concord, friction and accommodation which always marked, and still marks, the
interaction of Hindus and Muslims. Nor can we gather from it as to why, from
the very beginnings of political agitation in colonial India, the language
employed by the protagonists was one of cultural exclusivity. Our tale will
take an amble down the long centuries and look for answers to these questions
in leaves of verse and prose etched in a corner of the pre-colonial
subcontinent-Bengal. We will observe the becoming of the "Hindus" and
"Muslims" and witness how our protagonists were consciously at work
to become what they did. We will deal at length with their cultural encounters
long before the colonial official strode in with the census register. Like
Thompson's workers, we will find them present at their own becoming.
Today, Bengali speaking Muslims form one of the
largest Muslim communities in the world. The result is Bangladesh, located
thousands of miles away from the desert peninsula where Islam had its
beginnings, being the third largest Muslim country in absolute demographic
terms. Legend has it that the region fell to Turkish cavalrymen on a fateful
day in the year 1204. The ensuing centuries saw the rule of the Ilyas Shahis and the Husain Shahis. They were followed by the Mughals who established
their sway over Bengal in the final decades of the sixteenth century. These
centuries saw the expansion of Islam in this easternmost margin of the
subcontinent. Apparently, the diffusion of Islam in Bengal was gradual. Richard
M. Eaton locates its final spurt in the decades following the establishment of
Mughal rule. As understood by him, the process was driven by the promotion and
expansion of the agrarian economy in the region by the new state.
Islam, planted in the fertile deltaic soil of
Bengal, became of it. This belief system, as also the cultural complex
surrounding it, expressed itself in the language of the soil. Alongside,
Bengali grew in refinement and firmly established itself as a literary language
under the rule of the Muslim dynasties. Fourteenth century onwards, the
language cast forth a prolific kavya tradition.
Mangala kavyas and
vijaya kavyas were
the two main strands that twined to make this luxuriant vine. The former were
mainly devotional odes to the various demigods and goddesses while the latter
sang their triumph or of the Prophet of Islam. Enduring till the eighteenth
century, the tradition was authored and nurtured by both non-Muslim and Muslim
hands. The kavyas form a voluble repository of the
universe of emotions and experience of' the age and reveal its constant
becoming. They, thus, provide the ideal material with which to illustrate the
process of the becoming of "Hindus" and "Muslims." A
substantial part of this book is based on the material available in these
texts.
Eaton posits Islam as contriving itself into a web
of beliefs which were yet indeterminate and unself-conscious. As seen by him,
the Islamic deity was first identified with the existing deities and in the
course of time supplanted them. As he claims, "one readily sees local
cosmologies expanding in order to accommodate new superhuman beings introduced
by foreign Muslims"? in the corpus of the
pre-modern literature produced in Bengali. He, however, cites no concrete
evidence or source to cast light on the complex mechanisms of this process. All
Eaton does to substantiate his thesi is to provide us
with a scrap from an East Bengal ballad. 10 What aided this process of accommodation was also the fact that, as he
avers, there were groups of people in Eastern Bengal who had not yet been
incorporated in the Hindu social order. This was the case, for example, in Chittagong.!' We will, thus, begin by trying to form an idea
of the social organisation and religious beliefs of the region from a set of
contemporary texts. Then, we will attempt to get a measure of the perception of
Islam from the kavyas of non-Muslim authorship. We will
note that they yield a weave of emotions, sentiments and anxieties which makes
for a cogent religious cosmos. This cosmos has sharply defined deities
enshrined within its bounds and yields evidence that religious identities had
had their beginnings. Beginning with the fourteenth century, Bengal saw the
emergence of the cult of numerous folk deities. Mostly strong willed and
irascible goddesses, it does not appear to us that they were very amenable to
identification with any deity from without the bounds of their cosmos. The kavyas of non-Muslim authorship, thus,
evince a cultural vocabulary which is very conscious of its distinctiveness,
though, as we will see, it was sometimes permeated with ambiguities and
ambivalences. Most importantly, we have their authors calling themselves and
their audience "Hindu" in a denominational sense. They also,
apparently, are cognizant of Islam forming a distinct complex of culture and
belief. These description of the practices and professions of the Muslims are
borne out very well by Kavi Kankan Mukunda in the Chandimangal kavya. The kavyas of non-Muslim authorship also often associate Islam with
peoples of foreign provenance, such as Mughals and Pathans,
and sometimes with state-power represented in the form of some zealot qazi. In the end, they betray
anxieties, as done by the authors of Manasa Mangal and Sri Chaitanya Bhagpat when they put in their tales
the archetypal zealot qazi bent on effacing what he terms Hinduani. It seems obvious that in some form
the presence of Islam was contributing to the becoming of the
"Hindu." One study, for example, notes the Vaishnavas
calling themselves "Hindu" only when
engaging with the Muslims."
The poets of the age who strove to be
"Muslim" also perceive a cultural cosmos which is parallel and
different. This is what someone like Alaol, a poet in
the far off court of Arakan, apparently does when he
mentions Hinduvani as being one of the several things
that his guru was versed in." Unlike
what is claimed by Eaton, the verses of these poets too reveal no perceptible
sign that any process of conflation of deities across cosmogonies was on. True,
we have one Daulat Qazi
referring to Allah with the Sanskritic sobriquet of niranjan.14 But Qazi
is also unflinchingly sure that it is shari'ali alone that can lead to this deity.
It is as though the poets of the age are speaking with the aid of two very
distinctive cultural thesauri and are acutely aware of the fact. Only, they
will often look for a cognate in the other's thesaurus for a word or an artifact drawn from their own.
Contents
Acknowledgements |
vii |
Introduction |
Ix |
1 |
|
The Discourses Emerge, 1342-1757 |
1 |
2 |
|
The Inheritance and Auguries, 1757-1857 |
96 |
3 |
|
Becoming Hindus, 1857-1905 |
150 |
4 |
|
Becoming Muslims, 1857-1905 |
204 |
5 |
|
Conclusion |
251 |
Bibliography |
263 |
Index |
272 |