Keynote Address by Dr Ankur Barua

Exploring Hindu-Muslim Relations in the Longue durée of South Asia

Hindus & Muslims in a Third Space

Hello everyone.

I am very happy to be here in your company, albeit in an online form. The organizers have invited me to speak to you on the motif of global history; they have also asked me to indicate some research-based challenges that one may encounter when approaching this motif, and share any advice I may have for young scholars navigating similar challenges. So, as you can see, that’s quite a challenging “to-do” list – I will try my best to meet this intellectual challenge.

My job description at Cambridge is “Senior Lecturer in Hindu Studies”, and I try my best to live up to that designation – that is to say, I primarily study texts and traditions rooted in scriptures such as the Vedas, the Bhagavad-gītā, the Bhāgavata-purāṇa, and so on. At the same time, a central component of my research involves the study, from some theological and sociological perspectives, of Hindu-Christian relations, and, increasingly in recent years, of Hindu-Muslim relations.

One way to introduce this ongoing research is through the leitmotif: “The Hindu self and its others”, where by “others” I mean Christian and Muslim others in South Asia as well as Western interlocutors in Europe, Britain, and North America. The leitmotif, as you see, has two components: first, the Hindu self, and second, its others.

First, one needs to have a good understanding of the Hindu self. I need to study scriptural and commentarial texts in Sanskrit and some north Indian languages, and also try to situate these texts in sociocultural history. Some of the questions I would ask in this register are as follows:

What does this text say? Who has produced this text – men or women; and if men, men from which social class or socioeconomic group? How has this text been recalibrated across the centuries? How is this text being reworked today through, say, social media channels such as YouTube?

Second, one also needs to have a good understanding of how this Hindu self has been dialogically or dialectically shaped in dense matrices of conversation or contestation with its non-Hindu neighbours. Some of the questions I would ask in this register are as follows:

Who are the doctrinal competitors of this Hindu viewpoint? What types of translation have been undertaken across the borderlines of these Hindu and non-Hindu affiliations? Who is in control during these translatory transactions – is it the Indic self or the European coloniser?

As you can see, this type of long-range inquiry moves across various disciplines such as theology, philosophy, cultural studies, social anthropology, and political theory. I am certainly not an expert in all these disciplines – I am heavily reliant on the current scholarship on these diverse fields, including the scholarship of my own MPhil and PhD students who explore in minute detail this or that aspect of the scholarly terrain.

In this context, one of the great ironies of our shared postcolonial situation in South Asia is that while, on the one hand, South Asia is said to be the home of spirituality (for better or worse), on the other hand, there are very few institutions where religion is discussed in a historically informed manner that does not directly require religious affiliation. If you want to learn about Hinduism, you may have to go to a Hindu institution which is only concerned with making this declaration: “Hinduism is the greatest thing ever”. Likewise, if you want to learn about Islam, you may have to go to an Islamic institution which is only concerned with making this declaration: “Islam is the greatest thing ever”. Now, there is no problem per se with such institutions – I would even say that we need such institutions where a scripture rooted perspective is articulated, developed, and defended. However, what if someone says: “Never mind whether Hinduism is or is not the most wonderful religious vision. Where can I learn something about the basic values, ideas, and practices of a Hindu or Muslim way of life?”. That is a significant lacuna in our systems of higher education – a lacuna that is shaped, to repeat, by our postcolonial inheritances relating to anxieties about studying, exploring, and debating religion in the public square.

As a result, there seem to be only two highly polarised ways of addressing the question of religion in India. According to the first, religion is nothing but the undiluted transmission of the primordial tradition – whatever a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian says about their religious life is the final word, and any attempt to contest it will be met with violent retaliation. According to the second, religion is nothing but the regressive force par excellence that is pulling us back again into the abyss of a medieval darkness. Even to whisper the word “religion” is to run the risk of being denounced as an unreflective reactionary. So, Indian institutions of higher education lack a third space where religion can be studied – critically, methodically, sensitively, and patiently – through multidisciplinary lenses such as anthropology, sociology, and theology.

What could such a third space look like? In the next twenty minutes, I will gesture towards some possibilities.

For many years, indeed many decades, I have been studying the patterns of relations across Hindu and Muslim borderlines in the region of Bengal. On the one hand, there are various shared forms of cultural affiliation across Hindu and Muslim social contexts in Bengal; on the other hand, there are deep fault lines across these contexts shaped by economic asymmetry and social hierarchy. Some years ago, I published a book on this topic, where I argue that across the last six centuries, Hindu-Muslim relations in Bengal have been modulated by a spectrum of intellectual, socioeconomic, and political factors. Various patterns of friendship and antipathy have been generated at dynamic intersections between Hindu and Muslim

representations of one another and shifts across socioeconomic contexts. So, the characterization of relations between Hindus and Muslims either in terms of an implacable hostility or of an unfragmented peace is historically inaccurate, for these relations have been formed by a shifting array of socioeconomic and sociopolitical variables.

Now, across Islamic visions, there are two scriptural strands which are sometimes sharply opposed to each other and which sometimes coexist in an uneasy tension in the same text, tradition, or teacher. The first is “the anxiety of influence” – a deep worry that an immersion in Indic cultures amounts to a departure from the narrow and straight path of truth. The second is “the will to hospitality” – the confident stance that an immersion in Indic cultures is precisely an expression of commitment to the narrow and straight path of truth.

Again, across Hindu visions, there are two scriptural strands which are sometimes sharply opposed to each other and which sometimes coexist in an uneasy tension in the same text, tradition, or teacher. The first is “the vision of austerity” – certain codifications of the Hindu dharma characterise the non-Indic outsider as a hostile enemy or a resident alien. Thus, the second-century Sanskrit text, Manusmṛti, declares: “The range of the spotted antelope is the land fit for sacrifice; beyond that is the land of the mleccha” (that is, the foreigner with whom people of dharma must not have any exchanges). The second is the “vision of abundance” – the Hindu dharma, which is not exhaustively codifiable, is said to be the universal umbrella that encompasses the whole world under its spiritual canopy. Thus, the motto of the University established by Rabindranath Tagore, Visva-Bharati, declares: “where the world makes a home in a single nest”. All these scriptural strands are mediated or modulated by a spectrum of constraints such as socioeconomic asymmetry, material deprivation, and social hierarchy.

In an ideal world, a Hindu “vision of abundance” would live happily alongside a Muslim “will to hospitality”. However, in real-world circumstances, a Hindu “vision of austerity” has often collided with an Islamic “anxiety of influence”. Why is it that Hindus and Muslims alternately speak the language of “anxiety” or “hospitality” or the language of “austerity” or “abundance”? More specifically, why do some Hindus speak with the Manusmṛti’s language of anxious prohibition and why do some Hindus speak with the language of Rabindranath Tagore’s warm reception? Here is one relatively straightforward answer: “we are shaped by a range of variables such as our psychological temperament, our childhood upbringing, our social location, and so on”.

Against this complex backdrop, what may we do to initiate, or reinforce, forms of dialogical outreach across Hindu and Muslim borderlines? To begin with, we face a daunting challenge – the burden of history filled with incidents of hostility or indifference, where these incidents have been expressions of long-range structures of material inequality. Human history is

indeed the complex narrative of how mortal beings compete for scarce resources, where this competition is shaped by the language of “outsider” and “insider”. Depending on the language being invoked – region, nation-state, caste, class, race, or religion – we can alternately find ourselves on the wrong side or, if we are lucky, the right side of a divide.

In the light of this problem, let us explore some dimensions of the socioreligious landscape of northern India in the time of twelfth-century poet, Amīr Khusrau. Central to many forms of Hindu religious imagination and social structure is the polyvalent term dharma which – like the Greek word logos and the Arabic word dīn – defies translation. From a cosmic perspective, dharma is the cement of the universe: the sky is not falling on my head right now because the sky has a specific dharma-grained structure. From a socio-moral perspective, dharma is the existential engine animating everything related to what I think, where I live, and how I act. Around the turn of the first millennium, the motif of dharma was codified by Sanskrit-speaking brahmins who prescribed specific duties for women (strī

dharma) and for individuals belonging to specific groupings (varṇa) with their distinct occupations. These socio-ritual classifications are encompassed in the dharma sāśtra literature, which was subsequently reworked by the different Vedantic traditions. Crucially, the dharma-sāśtra codifications point to the lands of the “outsiders” (mlechha, yavana) where the cosmos-regenerating dharma cannot be practiced.

A few centuries later, Islam arrived on Indic lands. In one sense, this generalization is as misleading as the claim “Hinduism landed at Heathrow in 1972”. People move, and they move along with their ideas housed in their sociocultural systems. Likewise, we should speak of a diverse spectrum of intellectuals, poets, traders, soldiers, and settlers who began to stream eastward from lands as far away as Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan. In 1206, a Sultanate was established at Delhi by a Persianate dynasty; much of the landmass of South Asia was controlled by Indo-Turkic and Indo-Afghan kings before Mughal paramountcy was founded in 1526.

Picture Delhi in 1625, that is, four hundred years ago. The “inter-faith” landscape does not look particularly promising. To many of the Hindus we meet in the local temple, Islam is stamped with alienness – the Persian and Mongol rulers and courtiers are ethnically distinct, they speak weird languages, and their stand-offish mleccha-lifestyle does not conform to the dictates of dharma. But perceptive ethnographic eyes would discern something more, especially in the vast hinterlands beyond the contact zones ravaged by military mobilization: Islam is becoming indigenized in music, painting, medicine, and dress. Urdu appears at the intersections of Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit linguistic streams; Muslims are translating Hindu scriptural texts such as the Mahābhārata, the Rāmāyaṇa, and the Yoga–vaśiṣṭha into Persian; and certain styles of architecture combine Islamic and Indic forms.

One such “inter-faith” pioneer was the Mughal prince Dārā Shukōh (1615–1659), who was born at Ajmer, the city with the tomb (dargāh) of the Sufi master Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti. Shukōh felt inspired to boldly declare that explanations of the Qur’ān could be found in the Sanskrit Upaniṣads. A recurring Islamic critique of Hindu religious life-worlds is founded upon the latter’s “polytheism”; however, while Dārā was plumbing the depths of Islamic unicity (tawḥīd), he discovered Indic pearls such as this declaration from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (6.2.1–6.2.3): “In the beginning, this was simply what is existent–one only (ekam

eva), without a second”. The following discourse from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (3.9.1) too would have resonated with Dārā’s quest.

Then Śākalya questioned him: “How many gods (deva) are there?”

He replied: “3,306 gods.”

“Yes,” said he, “but really how many gods are there?” “33.”

“Yes,” said he, “but really how many gods are there?” “6.”

“Yes,” said he, “but really how many gods are there?” “1 and ½.”

“Yes,” said he, “but really how many gods are there?” “One [eka].”

This affirmation that the imperishable God (brahman) is one, while the minor deities are multiple, receives some distinctive formulations across the vast array of Hindu religious beliefs and practices.

A generation before Dārā, Ras Khān (Syed Ibrahim Khān: 1548–1628) had walked down another pathway that would become a vitally osmotic site of synthetic borrowings across Hindu-Sanskritic and Muslim-Perso-Arabic milieus – the language of self-effacing love (prem, bhakti, ‘ishq, maḥabba). While little is known about his life, it is clear from his couplets (doha) that he was immersed in Hindu theological universes, and especially fluent in speaking the idioms of ecstatic love of Kṛṣṇa as expressed in the Bhāgavata-purāṇa by the exemplary cowherd women.

In a scriptural narrative that would be engraved into multiple styles of painting, poetry, architecture – and later Bollywood music – the Hindu God Kṛṣṇa plays on his world enchanting flute whose mesmerising call is heard by his ideal devotees, the cowherd women (gopī). Leaving aside their strī-dharma in response to this call of the spirit, the gopīs rush to meet Kṛṣṇa. The scriptural narrative now unfolds through a series of dialectical twists and turns – the gopīs become inflated with pride and think that they possess Kṛṣṇa, suddenly Kṛṣṇa disappears, they are riven with an unbearable pain of separation (viraha), and finally, Kṛṣṇa re-appears and dances with them in a circular formation. Reflecting on the pathos experienced by them in separation from Kṛṣṇa, Ras Khān writes that when a gopī hears the melodious call of the cuckoo in the springtime, she feels an excruciating pain.

An entire army of Hindu exegetes began to work on this narrative. How did they explicate it? The Kṛṣṇa-gopī dance represents the spiralling oscillation between the non-finite divine self and the finite human self. God wishes to draw us ever more tightly into the divine matrix, but we are not yet ready for God–marked as we are with our worldly imperfections. So, God calls out to us with the lure of love (bhakti) and keeps on – time and again – turning us away from our worldliness till our hearts become perfectly Godward. In loving this world – God’s world – we must inhabit it by unswervingly turning our heart’s compass towards God. At the spiritual summit, a Hindu devotee would declare: “God: everything I do – including submitting this confession to you – is an expression of my bhakti for you”. In short, love is not just a candlelit dinner but also a fiery crucible that burns away our existential impurity so that we become increasingly worthy of the God who would dance with us. Love hurts, and in that agony is salvation.

Depending on your academic affiliations and existential dispositions, all this may be too much “theologizing” for you. However, no theological system can survive for too long if it is completely disconnected from the heat and dust of everyday life – and indeed, everyday analogues of these cosmological claims can be found. That you may experience presence in absence is a fact to which the wisdom of Bollywood repeatedly points you (such as a song from the movie Choti Si Baat: “Why does it happen in life – when you have left, it is just then that I suddenly remember all these little things about you?”), and every divorce lawyer will caution you that taking your spouse for granted is a recipe for existential disaster.

Figures such as Ras Khān recognized that this bhakti-shaped vision was malleable for Sufi (in Islamic terms, taṣawwuf) hermeneutic recalibration. The Sufi motifs of the painful surgery or annihilation (fanāʾ) of the world-immersed self, the symbolic exile (hijrat) from the divine who is our true home, and the practice of constantly re-calling (ḏhikr) the ninety-nine names of our gracious host were housed across the hinterlands of Hindustan by reimagining Hindu hymns. The utterly destitute (Arabic: faqīr; Sanskrit: akiñcan) devotee abides in, and because of, the divine plenitude. Again, in the Sufi cosmologies of Mir Sayyid Manjhan’s Madhumālatī (1545), love (Sanskrit: prema) is presented as the cosmic glue through which the tissues of the “unity of being” (waḥdat al-wujūd) are threaded together. The narrative is set as a circle of love within which Manohar meets the heroine Madhumālatī at night, gets separated, and painfully works his way back to her through various halting places. Manohar and Madhumālatī become the relishers of the sentiment (Sanskrit: rasa) of prema, such that the wayfarer (sālik) is the lover (‘āshiq) who sees in their love for the human beloved (‘ishq-i majāzī) a reflection of their love for the divine beloved (‘ishq-i ḥaqīqī).

In short, both these worldviews, of taṣawwuf and bhakti, are shaped by the allegory of love – what applies to the human beloved is a this-worldly instance of what is perfectly exemplified by the divine beloved. Thus, propelled by the call to return to God, the Sufi wayfarer wanders about, bewildered and yet assiduously, on the paths of love – paths that lead through the battlefields of Karbala, the rose gardens of Shiraz, and the hermitages and the marketplaces of India.

These syntheses of bhakti and taṣawwuf spread across Indic terrains, and by the eighteenth century, some Muslim poets were singing of Kṛṣṇa. In a middle Bengali reworking of the narrative Majnūn Laylā, Daulat Uzir Bahrām Khān (c.1600 CE) infuses the Perso-Arabic idioms of veiling, confusion, and selfless love (maḥabba) with the vernacular valences of painful separation (biraha).

Lāylī says:

The fire in my mind burns without respite

Strength, intellect, happiness, purity – all have I lost

In solitariness do I stay enclosed in biraha.

In this way the grieving woman-in-separation (birahiṇī) suffers always As she lies close to death.

Sometime before the eighteenth century, we hear the lament of another Muslim poet as he sings of Kṛṣṇa (not named but hinted at with stock allusions).

Without my friend –

I waste away day and night, I cannot restrain myself.

Tell me, my girl-friend, what do I do now?

Without my friend my life has no companion,

I keep on waiting every day for my friend.

In that waiting I go about floating on sorrow,

If I were to find my friend, I would hold on to his feet.

Irfān says –

“My friend is the flute player,

By playing on that enchanting flute he stole my heart away.”

In such premodern songs, it is only in the line where the author signs their name that the author is revealed as an individual from a Muslim milieu who is lamenting their sorrow in separation – or exile – from their friend who is the divine beloved. This stream of sonic theology – Hindu and Indo-Islamic – continues to flow through the lands of Bengal (in India and Bangladesh).

I shall let the national poet of Bangladesh, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976), have the last word. He inherited some of the theological idioms configured by figures such as Ras Khān, and his socioreligious visions do not allow any straightforwardly modular characterisation as either “Hindu” or “Muslim”. For instance, he composed songs about both the Prophet Muhammad and the Hindu goddess (debī). Married to a Hindu woman, fired by a cosmic vision of Islam as the gospel of egalitarianism unto the wretched of the earth, and tragically reviled – both by Muslims and by Hindus – precisely because of his hybrid socioreligious locations, Nazrul skilfully interweaves the threads of bhakti into the tapestry of taṣawwuf.

O girl-friend, in your youth dress up as a yogi

Go looking for Kṛṣṇa in forest after forest

Hearing his flute, abandon all concerns about family honour Keep searching for him along the pathways.

To conclude, the study of Hindu-Muslim interactions in the longue durée of South Asia calls for a collaborative multidisciplinary enterprise, in which it is vital to avoid two pitfalls – the first is “demonisation” and the second is “romanticisation”, which are both styles of homogenization or essentialization. According to the first, the non-Hindu other is fundamentally incapable of speaking in local Indic idioms and is doomed to remain a sociocultural outsider – this claim is historically incorrect, as we have seen. The second represents these translatory spaces as utopic enclaves of peace and harmony, forgetting that they remain structured by various hierarchical forms of socioeconomic deprivation. So, a middle way through these pitfalls will remain attentive both to the theological possibilities of relationality and to the social realities where such relationality is alternately reinforced, rejected, or recalibrated.

Epilogue (in the light of Q&A)

To generate long-range social change, one needs transformation at two levels – (a) individual subjectivities through discussion forums where different viewpoints are explored and (b) the political goodwill to ensure the vitality of such dialogical spaces. An agonistic form of discussion need not be antagonistic.

This question is often put to me: “Why do religions have such a bad track record of concretely implementing the visions of love that they routinely preach?”

Here is a relatively straightforward answer to a difficult question – there is a tension between, on the one hand, a religious vision that preaches harmony, unity, and interdependence, and, on the other hand, real-world constraints of fragmentation, antagonism, and violence. So, the world cannot be transformed simply through recitals of theological poetry – the world requires structural adjustment. However, even if a group of, say, 50 individuals can become inspired by a cosmological vision to undertake non-egocentric social action, this critical mass could become the site of a much wider societal transformation. The crucial point is the “if” – sometimes in human history, the gap between theory and practice has been bridged, but, perhaps more frequently, the gap has not been bridged. So, if theory and practice can form a feedback loop, bottom-up existential transformation at the grassroots and top-down systemic reconstruction would become harmonised.

My research stands at the intersection of intellectual history and social history. So, I study what ideas mean to the inhabitants of religious universes, and I also study how these ideas are densely located in sociality marked by asymmetric power.

In the talk, I have focused on (A); if you are especially interested in (B), you can read this transcript of another talk.

https://projectnoon.in/2023/06/22/the-muslim-self-and-its-hindu-neighbors/

The PPT from the presentation can be accessed here

-Dr Ankur Barua, Senior Lecturer, Divinity Studies, University of Cambridge

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