Prem Shankar Jha on the mutual impact of Hinduism and Islam

Jha begins his article by differentiating between mystical and non-mystical religions. The word mysticism derives from the Greek word 'mystikos'- 'I initiate'. All Religions into which one must be initiated are, by definition, mystical. They all feature a notion of union with the Divine.

Are there any Religions into which you don't have to be initiated? Yes. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is one. You can yourself make up other such examples.

Alternatively, you can believe Jha when he writes-

The idea of religion as a set of beliefs that have to be practiced and not simply professed is not limited to Hinduism, Buddhism and other mystical religions, but has managed to carve out a niche in Islam and Christianity as well.

Religions feature orthopraxy as well as orthodoxy. If there is only a doxastic requirement, no Religion exists because there is no ritual of initiation. What you have may be termed a Philosophy or an Ideology or more simply a bee in your bonnet.

Christianity developed out of Judaism and Islam was closely connected to both Judaism and Christianity. All three Religions require initiation and hence are mystical. They also have long established traditions featuring union with the Divine as arising in a manner that passes all human understanding.

Jha next says something odd-

In the 11th and 12th centuries, it found a home in a Christian sect called the Cathars (or Albigenses) in southern France and Spain, and in some branches of Shia Islam such as the Alawis of Syria, Iraq and Turkey.

I think Jha mentions the Cathars because he is thinks 'Dharma' must always have a doctrine of reincarnation and the fact that this doctrine appears in some 'heretical' or 'esoteric' Jewish, Christian and Islamic sects means they are not wholly bad. Indeed, they redeem the mainstream Religion.

This is a foolish view. The Brahmanic and Shramanic Religions of India hold rebirth to be contingent or illusory. Enlightenment means not having to bother with it.

Similarly, Judaism, Christianity and Islam use orthodoxy merely as a bridge over which one can cross over to living the proper Jewish or Christian or Muslim life without bothering with what is beyond Human ken but yet, going about one's daily life, suffused with joy and faith in the Divine.

The ancient Greeks, like other ancient peoples, had a doctrine of metempsychosis which, however, was not compatible with the notion of bodily resurrection at the end of days which, though it may be of Zoroastrian origin (arising out of the notion that the Earth must, to itself observe Eusebia, give back the dead buried in it at the end of time) is orthodox in Judaism and its daughter religions. But only silly people get exercised over whether someone is cremated rather than buried. Sensible Muslims or Christians or Jews understand that cremation is not a way of 'cheating' the Resurrection or Final Battle or the examining angels or whatever.

Jha, showing his deeply Hindu prejudices (but prejudices of an ignorant sort) thinks Christian or Muslim sects which believe in metempsychosis are 'Dharmic' and this is the reason they get attacked by mainstream Christianity or Islam-

Not surprisingly, both sects (Cathars and Alawis)have been treated as heretical apostates by the clergy of orthodox Christianity and Islam. In AD 1200, Pope Innocent III launched a little known Fourth Crusade against the Cathars, and instructed the knights and Barons who joined it to kill all they met without mercy, and leave it to God to sort out the heretics from the true believers. As for the Alawis, the most recent of innumerable attacks upon them in Syria has still not ended.

There was a strong mercenary and geopolitical motive for the Fourth Crusade which is itself pretty well known to Indians through Raja Rao's 'the serpent and the rope' which Jha probably read- or heard about- at Oxford.

The doctrine of reincarnation had ancient roots in Greek philosophy as well as in Celtic and other indigenous European traditions. But, as with the Judaic notion of 'ibbur' or even our own Sufi notion of 'ri'jat' or 'tanasukh', the thing can be treated as metaphorical or as an aspect of the mystery of Divine Grace.

Jha thinks the Alawis in Syria currently believe in reincarnation. They don't. They have conformed in all externals to orthodox Sunni practices and have suppressed their esoteric doctrine. The Druze on the other hand do keep up their separate identity- which doesn't, however, make them a target for attack save at Assad's whim. Jha is an utter fool if he thinks the Syrian Civil War is about the persecution of those who believe in reincarnation. Assad is an Alawi kleptocrat. ISIS are Sunni kleptocrats. When opposed, Assad's goons were as ruthless as the Caliphate's goons. They collaborated to attack the Druze in Suweida last year.

It is true that, unlike the Caliphate, Assad isn't completely crazy and has reliable allies. Meanwhile, as Obama said, US foreign policy consists in 'doing stupid shit'. But, Obama also says, this is because Britain and Europe have a great taste for this type of activity more especially when it rebounds against themselves almost immediately. Trump is not per se opposed to doing stupid shit. He just wants Europe to pay for any stupid shit it wants the US to do.

Jha thinks the fact that Islamic rulers could rule large Hindu populations- because those Hindu populations were cowardly or so consumed by internecine conflict as to prefer a wholly alien overlord- without being obliged to convert them to Islam to secure their loyalty shows that there is some magic which Indian 'Dharma' (as requiring belief in reincarnation) has which makes even Turkic Sunni Islamic Imperialism as gentle as a lamb.

In the sharpest possible contrast, the confrontation between Dharma and Islam in India has been peaceful.

Jha is being silly. Where Hinduism would put up a fight- as under the Shahi (who were of Turkic origin and thus not cowardly poltroons or fraticidal nincompoops) rulers in Afghanistan- it was either extirpated by Islam or prevailed and extirpated jihadi Islam.

The fact is, Hinduism and Buddhism have all but disappeared from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Both religion have lost significant population share in Bangladesh. In the Valley of Kashmir, there has been an ethnic cleansing of Hindus. If Hindu majority areas are 'peaceful', it is because Muslims get asymmetrically massacred or locked up if they confront the dominant Religion in a violent manner. But this is also true of Europe and America and everywhere else Muslims are a minority. Otherwise Muslims rule and, sooner or later, become the majority or else are kicked out or made subservient.

Dharma’s first contact with Islam occurred when Arab traders came to Gujarat and built mosques there in the 8th and 9th centuries.

False! Kerala was the first landfall.

Not only did this not spark religious conflict, but as contemporary Jain texts recorded, two centuries later, when Mahmud of Ghazni attacked the Somnath Temple, Arabs, who had by then been living there for generations, joined in the defense of the temple and died to protect it.

Shiah 'heretics' were cleansed from Sindh and came to Gujarat as refugees. They made common cause with the Hindus because their heads were equally at risk from the fanatical Turk.

The fact that Somnath was a Hindu temple did not matter to them. It had to be defended because it was important to the Hindus among whom they lived.

Somnath was a rich temple which financed commercial trade. Its being looted affected all local merchants. Anyway, Somnath was repeatedly destroyed by Muslims in subsequent centuries. Sardar Patel and K.M Munshi shifted a mosque at the site and constructed the present temple which was inaugurated by President Rajendra Prasad.

The prolonged interaction between Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism in Afghanistan and Sogdhia etc led to the utter extinction of these religions. Substantial numbers of Hindus and Sikhs remained in Sindh and West Punjab and even in Baluchistan. Where are they now?

The second, more prolonged, interaction between Dharma and Islam occurred after the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. This is the period that the RSS would like to erase from memory, if not history. It is what has motivated the Modi government to change Aurangzeb road to A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Marg among scores of other such changes in the BJP-ruled states.

The Delhi Sultanate ended with Babur's invasion. What followed was the Mughal period. Aurangazeb was a Mughal. He may be a hero to Jha but he is not a hero to most Hindus and it is Hindus who are the majority in Delhi and in India.

Jha writes in English. He studied at Oxford. Why does he not condemn the Congress Party for renaming things named after British people? Why should 'Connaught Circus' be 'Rajiv Gandhi Chowk'?

But it is a period in which there was an unprecedented flowering of art, music and literature.

As was the British period- indeed, much more so. Why get rid of the British and change the names of everything they built?

It is the time of Amir Khusro, it is the time when khayal gayaki and Kathak dance were born, when the delicate penmanship of Persian miniature painting fused with the vivid colours of Hindu art to create a profusion of Moghul, Rajput, Kangra, Basohli and other schools of miniature painting. It is the time when Indo-Islamic architecture was born, and reached the heights scaled by Humayun’s Tomb, the Taj Mahal and scores of other monuments spread across the length and breadth of northern India.

The British period saw achievements of far greater utility. Nobody now clamors for their kids to be educated in Farsi. They want English education. more particularly in the new Sciences which the British introduced.

Hindutva ignores all this and prefers to dwell on the defeat of the Rajputs, the destruction of temples and the conversion of large numbers of Hindus to Islam during this period.

Just as the Congress party likes to dwell, preferably while speaking English in an Oxbridge accent, on the inequities of the British and the heroic, but quite useless, struggle put up Gandhi and Nehru and Azad and so forth.

But here too its memory is selective and distorted. The Rajputs, who then ruled most of north India, were driven into the wilds of Rajasthan. But these defeats arose from the superior military technology of the invaders, such as the superiority of cavalry over elephants, and of archers over infantry – and not from any innate superiority of the (Muslim) fighters. On the contrary, the conquerors recognised the valour of the Rajputs and quickly inducted them into their armies.

Indians had archers and cavalry. What they didn't have was cohesion and a doctrine of a Holy War.
The Brits inducted Rajputs and Sikhs and Pathans and Coorgis and Gurkhas and so on into their armies even more successfully than the Mughals.

The votaries of Hindutva harp endlessly about the damage the Muslim invaders did to the Hindu polity and society, but they choose to ignore the fact that the same Muslim dynasties saved India from the greatest scourge of the Middle Ages – the Mongol invasions that ravaged Europe.

The Mughals claimed descent from Genghis Khan- hence their name. If Indians should be grateful to Turkic Sultans for saving the country from Mongols, why should Indians not be grateful to the Brits for saving them from the Japanese?

Like other impoverished groups from the Asian steppes, the Mongols first tried to invade India.

The Mongols were enormously wealthy by the time they got to India.

The first foray, in 1243, took the Delhi Sultanate by surprise and the invaders were able to come all the way till Lahore and sack it to their leisure. But that was the last time they were able to enter the plains of India. Balban, the ruler in Delhi, created a standing army – India’s first – built a string of forts along the border and prevented all subsequent invaders from getting far into the plains of Hindustan. After his death, Alauddin Khilji inflicted two successive defeats on them in 1304 and 1305, with such great slaughter that they turned towards Europe and never returned.

The Brits chased the French out of India permanently ended the Afghan threat, curbed the Maratha and the Pindari, put an end to Suttee and Thuggee, ended Famine, and prevented ethnic cleansing. Their achievements are incomparably greater than that of the Sultanate or the Mughals. To this day we speak English- if given the chance to gain proficiency in the language- and show scant interest in Farsi literature. Yet, we don't consider Gandhi and Nehru and Azad to have been ignorant fanatics for having so devoutly wished the British to leave no matter what disasters this led to for millions of Indians.

Why? It is because an independent country has the potential to make better decisions and thus improve the life-chances of its people. This is why freedom is prized. Others may know more than us, but we would rather hire them to advise us than come under their government. We may also have non alethic beliefs about our own rich history and exalted destiny. This may motivate us to greater achievements than a constant brooding on our abjectness and the inglorious record of our cowardice and stupidity.

Temples were admittedly destroyed, and precious art, sculpture and architecture irretrievably lost, but the motive of the invaders was pillage, not conversion to Islam.

Why respect the progeny of pillagers?

All but a fraction of the conversions that took place in the next 400 years were voluntary.

So some variants of Indian religions were shite which is why people kept 'voluntarily' converting from them. Since Hindus today are descended from those who did not convert, it makes sense to valorize that type of Hindu religion which beats the shit out of anyone who turns up to pillage, or proselytize. Why? Because we can see what the Caliphate has been doing. Whatever Islamic expansionism was like in the past, we can see with out own eyes that it is not something we would want to be subject to now.

Jha's version of 'Dharma' involves presenting one's backside to pillagers. Modi's version involves using Israeli smart bombs to kill the terrorists in their own safe havens. Guess which the Indian voter has preferred? But then, every sensible nation has reacted in exactly the same way.

The converts came from the lower castes.

Iqbal's grandfather was a Brahman who was given the choice between conversion or death. There are many high caste Christians and Muslims. Some converted voluntarily. Others under compulsion.

They converted because Islam offered an escape from the iniquities of caste –

But those inequities persist in Pakistan and Bangladesh and India.

in much the same way as Buddhism had done two thousand years earlier,

Buddhism exported untouchability to Korea and Japan!

and as the Bhakti movement in south India had been doing since well before the arrival of the Muslims.

Without removing Untouchability at all!

Far from being a blot on the conquerors, the conversions were a protest against the Brahmanical, temple-centred Hinduism from which they had been systematically excluded.

If this were so, why did the Dalits not convert en masse to Christianity under British auspices? After all, that exclusion had persisted. The Brits would have been obliged to protect Christian converts. The Anglican Religion was certainly preferable to Hinduism or Islam. It permitted consumption of beef and liquor and so forth. Its educational system was so greatly superior to anything indigenous that, to this day, Indians clamor to get their kids into 'convent schools'.

Either untouchability was wholly independent of Religion or else Ambedkar was as stupid as shit. He should have got all the Dalits to convert while the Brits were still around to protect them.

Since Ambedkar was bright, not stupid, it follows that Untouchability had nothing to do with any particular Religion. It would take some action on the part of those stigmatized to alter their own status. This makes sense. Suppose you belong to a class of people who keep getting robbed and raped. If you start killing anyone who tries to rob or rape you, people will stop pointing at you in the street and saying- 'look! There goes one of those perpetually robbed and raped people.'

In northern India, the encounter between Islam and Hinduism proved beneficial to both in important ways that the Sangh parivar prefers not to remember.

Since both Muslims and Hindus were conquered with laughable ease, this mutual benefit was worthless. Why harp on the subject now?

In Hinduism, it weakened the link between religion and the state by cutting off the single most important source of patronage to the temples. As state patronage dwindled, Brahmins, who had previously flocked to the peeths and mutts were forced to remain in their villages and tend to the spiritual needs of the villagers.

Nonsense! Villages have priests- if the villagers are willing to support them. State patronage does not result in all priests turning up at the Court or at the main pilgrimage centers.

The emphasis in their functions, therefore, shifted from presiding over elaborate temple rites to providing guidance on the issues they faced in everyday life. The importance of ritual in Hinduism therefore declined and that of Dharma increased.

Brahminism predates Temple worship. Its rituals are based on the household, the Court or the Tribal Assembly. These rituals are adapted to the Temple, it is not the other way round.

The Bhakti movement spread to the north and met the challenge from Sufi Islam by disseminating the core ideas of Dharma through the literature, poetry and song of Tulsidas, Surdas, Kabir, Rahim, Mira Bai, Tukaram, Chokhamela and a host of lesser-known poets, bards and singers.

The Bhakti movement predates the appearance of Islam in India. Indeed, it predates Christianity. Consider the Besnagar inscription. It points to a Vaishnavite Bhakti cult in central India. No doubt, this absorbed other popular deities- like Hanuman and Ganesa both of whom are worshiped in Japan and China as part of the Buddhist pantheon.

Devotional piety of a humble and heartfelt sort arises wherever an indigenous bardic tradition is incorporated by a knowledge based Religion. It represents a bridge to the 'pagan' element in backward rural areas.

The interaction between the two made Hinduism accessible and mellowed Islam further, to the point where except for scripture, little remained of what divided the one from the other. No couplet I know captures this more succinctly than one by Kabir that I learned as a child and have never forgotten:
Moko kahaan dhoondhate bande, Mai to tere paas me;
Na Mai Mandir, na Mai Masjid, naa Kaaba Kailash me.
(Where dost thou seek me oh devotee, for I am right beside thee; Not in a temple, nor in a mosque, not at the Qaaba, nor on Mount Kailash, shalt thou find me).

There's a Guru named Rampal who claims that Kabir is the Supreme Godhead which, luckily for himself, he happens to incarnate. Currently he is in jail for murder.

Every religious tradition has produced some people who claim to be God or the ultimate Prophet or whatever. Such people are all deluded. Jha alone know the Truth. Yet stupid Hindus are not listening to him. Thus they will all be reborn as cockroaches.

This profound reconciliation between Hinduism and Sufi Islam is perhaps best reflected in the writings of Guru Nanak and the other gurus of Sikhism.

And the effect of that profound reconciliation can be gauged from the body-count associated with the pogroms of Partition and the more recent Khalistan campaign. Hindus have learnt a lesson. Run away if you can't asymmetrically retaliate. When people start talking about Kabir and Nanak, sell your house and run to an area where your own community isn't just in the majority, it is also highly aggressive and intolerant.

And it was not confined to the villages. It was codified by no less august a person than Emperor Akbar and his counsellors in the Ibadat khana, as the Din-e-Ilahi, the religion of God, at the height of the Moghul empire. Some British historians have described it as an attempt at finding a new religion based on universal tolerance. The Encyclopedia Britannica dismissed it as a religion that never had more than 19 followers.

The guy wanted Muslims to prostate to him as though he were God almighty. Since his Imperial finances were sound and he was one tough dude, he got away with it. His drunkard son abolished the practice.

In fact, Akbar had no such intention. The Din-e-Ilahi was no more than a distillation of what today’s corporate world would call “current best practices” of the heterodox population of India. It propagated sulh-i-kul – universal peace – and urged ten virtues upon the realm. Among these were: liberality and beneficence; forbearance from bad actions and repulsion of anger with mildness; abstinence from worldly desires; frequent meditation on the consequences of one’s actions and “good society with brothers so that their will may have precedence over one’s own”, in short, putting the well-being of one’s fellows ahead of one’s own.

Also prostration to the throne coz that's what today's corporate world would call 'current best practice'.

Unlike Emperor Ashoka, Akbar issued no edicts. Nor did he create a religious police to oversee their observance. The significance of the Din-e-Ilahi lay in what it did not prescribe: It did not ascribe primacy to Islam, and it did not give a special place to Muslim clergy within the structure of the state. Instead, it declared emphatically that “he (the emperor, i.e. the state) would recognise no difference between [religions], his object being to unite all men in a common bond of peace”. The entire document was, therefore, a restatement of Dharma in a contemporary form.

If so, Dharma means prostration to some dude who can cut your head off if you piss him off. Anyway, the thing soon collapsed. What was important about Akbar was that his Empire was solvent.

In Hinduism, the practice of Dharma has been – and remains – sullied by its endorsement of the notion of ritual purity and pollution that is associated with caste. But its core idea, that true religion is not what we preach but what we practice, has remained the driving force behind all movements for religious reform from the Buddha till the present day.

Religious reform is about making organizations more effective and productive. This involves using money raised in grand cathedrals to set up schools and hospitals which in turn means that Missionary enterprises yield a profit because they are associated with selling knowledge based services like health and education.

Reformed Hinduism is represented by organisations like the Arya Samaj- which has a lot of schools- and the Swami Narayan Temples which are so clean and beautiful that they attract worshipers from other sects.

The content of a Religion doesn't matter. What matters is the utility of its institutions.

It is what Swami Vivekananda electrified the ‘Parliament of Religions of the World’ in Chicago in 1893 with, by explaining that Hinduism does not merely tolerate, but accepts, all the great religions of the world because they are like different paths up the same mountain, or different rivers that flow into the same sea.

Tolstoy was greatly influenced by Swamiji and Gandhi, in his turn, was greatly influenced by Tolstoy. However, all this influence was wholly beside the point. What mattered was whether utile institutions were created. The Ramakrishna Mission had good schools- an Uncle of mine attended one before becoming a Nuclear Physicist and working on the Indian A bomb. Vivekananda did some good in his brief life.

In Pakistan, the same impulse has led to a sustained study of the writings of Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan’s eldest son and heir apparent, a scholar of Sanskrit and translator of the Bhagavad Gita, who had wanted to promulgate the Din-e-Ilahi before his life was cut short by Aurangzeb. In 2010, the noted playwright, Shahid Nadeem, wrote a play, ‘Dara’, that highlighted his syncretism, as a protest against the rampant Islamic sectarianism that Partition had unleashed upon Pakistan and was, even then, tearing it apart.
Three years later, two Pakistani historians from GC University, Faisalabad, published a peer-reviewed paper in the International Journal of History and Research titled ‘Dara Shikoh: Mystical And Philosophical Discourse‘, which highlighted his belief that the fact that “the mystical traditions of both Hinduism and Islam spoke of the same truth.”

Jha rightly commemorates these epoch making events because they have fundamentally changed Pakistan's trajectory.

In 13th-century France, Roman Catholicism gave no quarter to the Cathars, and decimated them. In Syria, the attack on Bashar Assad’s secular Baathist regime was preceded by two years of relentless demonisation by Wahhabi and Salafi clerics.

Assad's 'secular Baathist regime'- like Saddam's in Iraq- was in fact demonic, at least to those whom it tortured and killed. They tried to overthrow a corrupt tyranny- perhaps trusting in Obama Mama- but made things a lot worse for themselves.

In Pakistan, Salafi extremism has come close to killing the syncretism that the country had known before Partition.

That 'syncretism' was utterly futile. It didn't stop genocide and ethnic cleansing.

But that syncretism is still very much alive in India.

Where? The Kashmir Valley? But the Pundits were ethnically cleansed. Hindu majority areas may tolerate, or not actively persecute Muslims, but that is only because the Hindus feel that can exterminate the Muslims if they act up.

It is what made Indian Muslims virtually immune to the lure of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Numbers tell the tale: against 27,000 to 31,000 Europeans, only 106 Indian Muslims joined it. Of these, only three went directly from India. The rest were recruited while they were migrant workers in the Gulf.

The Europeans were complacent. They were too respectful of human rights. Had their Police and Security services followed Indian methods, European Muslims seeking to join ISIS would have had their heads kicked in at the local mosque. Why? Other worshipers would have feared that heavy handed cops would lock them up and beat the shit out of them while robbing them of their savings.

This is the awe-inspiring syncretism of religion in India that the votaries of Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra are bent on destroying.

What awe can a syncretism which did not prevent ethnic cleansing inspire? Jha talks as though we live in a world where Islam is building bridges to other religions and has an irenic and ecumenical public face. Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra are winning because some Muslims destroyed the myth that 'syncretism' mattered. It's like the belief that a Muslim who was clean shaven and who enjoyed a beer couldn't possibly be a terrorist. That myth has been well and truly exploded by suicide bombers of just such a description.

It may seem unfair that Hindutva has received a boost from Jihadi Islam just as it may seem unfair that Pakistan's hand in the Pulwama atrocity permitted Modi to win the election on the basis of his retaliatory Balakot strike, but facts are facts. Fairness has nothing to do with how History unfolds.

Jha is welcome to go on clinging to his 'syncretism' but, as far as the voter is concerned, it is cretinism simply.