Were Buddhists and Jains Persecuted in Ancient India?

Re: # 382
Cheema sahib
I was wondering as well what got laddan talking about Mirzais in a forum that addresses the persecution of Jains & Buddhists in Ancient India, which made it necessary to provide some feedback for his urge to conspire.
Did not mean to derail the intended topic discussion.
My apologies to the author and commentators.

Kaal (re #368),

Bhai … no need to protect and get defensive about “Indian thought� and “purpose�. Granted, ummah wants to trademark the term “Muslim�, but I hope you are not about to claim ownership of “Indian thought� (LOL). It would be a race to the bottom between you and the ummah.

Ahmadi view is that Islam and jihad have been abused for political gains and senseless violence. They have rebelled against regressive Islam, and for this they are being persecuted. You may call them a cult … but that also describes initial followers of each prophet. So you’ve failed to make your point …

Earlier, in #353 I reviewed the crux of your issue with Ahmadis. My apologies if I was too blunt … but you need to rethink things. Once again, no offence intended; but the part about you being annoying, minus the 4-lettered-word, stands. Cheers …

DM (#356);

No teasing taken; you are on the right track. Over time, owing to human weakness, any ideology is likely to get corrupted, with its adherents going astray.

No one knows what Ahamdis would do if/once they revive “true Islam� globally. There is a distinct possibility that over time, they too would succumb to fanaticism. So your point is not lost …

… I was only poking fun at kaal's petty mindset … as he continues to fruitlessly agonize over the past ...

[reposting; earlier post got lost, it seems …]

replying #400

muradbaig,

400 interacts is good but not great when we talk about any religion (any one of them):-) So we can add a few more.

Also, when you say hinduism is no different, you are again simply wrong:-)

It is degree that matters not just good or bad. everybody is both good and bad in some way. What matters is how good or how bad you can be or you are. Now if you simply ignore that Hniduism is nowhere as bad as Islam or Christianity than it is your problem. Though the credit goes to you for saying exactly that in your post that Islam and Christianity have done much worse things than hinduism. That is where you negated your own statement that hinduism is no different. Hinduism and Buddhism are still quite different from Islam and Christianity. The indic religions are certainly not similar to religions derived from Judaism.

Kaal (#357),

Don’t get too hung up on the punjabi issue; the next prophet of Islam may be a pathan (grin)!

And the aspect of #301 you mentioned is nothing new; you’re trying too hard to reinvent the wheel here.

Your disappointment with the ummah over centuries, culminating in an obsession with Ahmadis, is not something to be proud of. You are carrying too much baggage - just a thought.

muradbaig#399,400:

Thanks for confirming what Rushdie said.
You do not have to say that you are against Hindu religion (and it would be just fine, if you are). This article is not about hindu religion but about the people who lived in the subcontinent in the pre-islamic period. The article is saying is that they were intolerant, brutal and genocidal towards those they vanquished but it does not say that, in doing so, they were motivated by their holy book or books or because buddhists or jains said anything against the vedic gods or godesses.

Robindro Nath

A dear Indian e-friend, Dr. Kaushik Sen, sent me one of Rabindranath�s novels, Gora, which helped me, at least partially, to begin my effort to better understand the world-poet�s perspective. After reading Gora, I wrote a 3-part series "Reflections on Tagore's Gora: Layers of ignorance and voices against prejudice" in which I have highlighted how Muslim/Islamic themes have been so respectfully dealt with by Rabindranath. This respectfully approach can be better understood in the context that "Tagore was predictably hostile to communal sectarianism (such as a Hindu orthodoxy that was antagonistic to Islamic, Christian, or Sikh perspectives)." [Amartya Sen] Subsequently, I came across a powerful short story of Rabindranath, "Musalmanir Golpo", which was written by him just a few months before his death. I have attempted a crude translation of that story (see link). Now I can relate to Rabindranath not only at human and Indian level, but also as a Muslim.

As Amartya Sen noted that Rabindranath himself described of his Bengali family as the product of "a confluence of three cultures, Hindu, Mohammedan and British. Rabindranath's grandfather, Dwarkanath, was well known for his command of Arabic and Persian, and Rabindranath grew up in a family atmosphere in which a deep knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient Hindu texts was combined with an understanding of Islamic

Robindro Nath

A dear Indian e-friend, Dr. Kaushik Sen, sent me one of Rabindranath�s novels, Gora, which helped me, at least partially, to begin my effort to better understand the world-poet�s perspective. After reading Gora, I wrote a 3-part series "Reflections on Tagore's Gora: Layers of ignorance and voices against prejudice" in which I have highlighted how Muslim/Islamic themes have been so respectfully dealt with by Rabindranath. This respectfully approach can be better understood in the context that "Tagore was predictably hostile to communal sectarianism (such as a Hindu orthodoxy that was antagonistic to Islamic, Christian, or Sikh perspectives)." [Amartya Sen] Subsequently, I came across a powerful short story of Rabindranath, "Musalmanir Golpo", which was written by him just a few months before his death. I have attempted a crude translation of that story (see link). Now I can relate to Rabindranath not only at human and Indian level, but also as a Muslim.

As Amartya Sen noted that Rabindranath himself described of his Bengali family as the product of "a confluence of three cultures, Hindu, Mohammedan and British. Rabindranath's grandfather, Dwarkanath, was well known for his command of Arabic and Persian, and Rabindranath grew up in a family atmosphere in which a deep knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient Hindu texts was combined with an understanding of Islamic

.........Actually Vivekananda was never happy with the word Hindu which is the key word in VD Savarkar’s Hindutva (1923), the bible of the Sangh Parivar. In his address at Jaffna in 1897 Vivekananda said: “The word Hindu, by which it is the fashion now to style ourselves, has lost all its meaning. I, therefore, would not use the word Hindu.� (ibid, iii, 118). And Vivekananda was equally allergic to our cults growing around our mythological figures. In an interview given to the Hindu in Madras in February 1897, Vivekananda said: “The sublimity of the law propounded by the Ramayana or the Mahabharata does not depend upon the truth of any personality like Rama or Krishna, and one can even hold that such personages never lived."

And Vivekananda’s attitude to the Indian Muslims is lucidly stated in his address on the Future of India: “The Mohammedan conquest of India came as a salvation to the down-trodden, to the poor. That is why one-fifth of our people have become Mohammedans. It was not the sword that did it all. It would be the height of madness to think that it was all the work of sword and fire.� (ibid, iii, 294). It was not distortion of history. It was a humane and intelligent interpretations of what happened in our country. Vivekananda gave a lecture on Mohammed at San Francisco on 25 March 1900 in which he said: “Mohammedanism came as a message for the masses. The first message was equality.� (ibid, i 483

Vivekananda and Indian Islam
Gautam Kundu, Georgia Southern University
“Neo-Hinduism� (or the so-called “Hindu Modernism�) involves “reinterpretation�—of the tradition, of the interrelationship of the indigenous and the foreign, and of what often has been termed as the “degree of receptivity (of India) vis-a-vis the West�, etc. Swami Vivekananda (Narendranath Dutta, 1863-1902), Sri Ramakrishna’s most well-known disciple, both at home and abroad, became an influential shaper and propagandist of neo-Hinduism, an “exemplary exponent of Hindu self-representation� during the early phase of Indian nationalism. However, for all the seeming vigor and vision with which Vivekananda sought to infuse his own brand of Hindu self-assertion, he lived and practiced a problematic and ambivalent position that neo-Hinduism occupied in colonial India and the West. While he criticized the materialism and secularism of the West, Vivekananda also admired the energy and dynamism associated with the Western sense of (among other things) national identity, and, ironically, by implication, religious nationalism: Vivekananda’s belief that India’s special gift to the world was her (Hindu) spirituality.
Tapan Raychauduri has claimed that Vivekananda’s “deep regard for Islam was in a way [the] most striking expression of his faith in validity of all religions�, and that Vivekananda’s highest prayer for the “good of the Motherland was that she might manifest the twofold idea of ‘An Islamic body and a Vedantin’s heart’�. But a closer examination of Vivekananda’s writings reveal that such a “validation� of Islam and of the Muslim Indian is more apparent than real, however. His vision of a non-discriminatory future is undermined by its fatal ambivalence, and its slide into the familiar (Orientalist) binary of Indian/Hindu/Bengali “effeminacy� and the “manly/muscular virtues� of Islam (and the Muslim Other), etc. Like Tagore, but unlike Bankimchandra and Savarkar, Vivekananda is more than willing to concede that Muslims have made India their homeland through centuries, but they continue to be the Other, if not quite the “first Outsider�. Further, like Rabindranath, when Vivekananda discusses the glories of the Indian past, it is almost always the ancient Aryan past. Over nine hundred years of Islamic presence in India and its myriad contribution to the country’s “composite culture� remains unacknowledged, if not ignored. When Vivekananda does praise Islam (and Muslims), it is mostly for what he considered to be the robust vigor of its “masculinity�; the ethical and metaphysical aspects of Islam suffer a near-total erasure. Like other neo-Hindu religious cultural and religious nationalists of his time, for Vivekananda, the Muslim Indian resides “outside the fold�, as it were, of that which makes for a “true� Indian: one who possesses a life of manas, not bahubal

I KNEW BUT REMIND YOU FOR YOUR RHETORIC OF COMMUNALISM



And before Gandhi, Hindu reformer Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) said: "The Muslim conquest of India came as a salvation to the downtrodden, to the poor. That is why one-fifth of our people have become Muslims." Further, he denied that "it was all the work of sword and fire," denouncing such a violent approach to history as "the height of madness

Muslim ethos in Indian literature


Literature is often described as he conscience of a nation. It mirrors the finer sensibility of a people and denotes their intimate responses to the everyday challenges of national life. Hence the cultural ethos of a community is perhaps most faithfully represented in literature, particularly poetry.

Indian Muslims have always been such an integral part of the nation, that it will be nearly impossible to identify their distinct role without considering the whole gamut of the cultural heritage. Practically in all modern Indian languages, their role has been quite significant for one cannot discuss Bengali without Nazrul Islam, or Punjabi without Waris Shah or Kashmiri without Habba Khatoon, or Awadhi without Jaisi or Brij Bhasha without Rahiman or Tamil without Abdur Rahman or Malayalam without K T Mohammad or, for that matter Indian literature without Ghalib; the list is endless.

But let's start from the beginning. Islam came to India in the 8th century and the first Muslims who arrived were the Arabs who landed in Kerala as traders and were warmly received by the Zomorin. Undoubtedly Indo-Arab relations go much further back than the advent of Islam. But the new religion brought by Prophet Mohammad emphasized mono-theism with great vigor and, as a corollary advocated and to a great extent, practiced equality among men of different race, colour and social strata. This message of equality attracted a large number of converts and it soon spread to other parts of the land.

The second major contact developed in Sind-not as traders but as conquerors for here Mohammad Bin Qasim, an Arab lad of 14 years conquered a part of Sind in 712 AD as a reprisal to the looting of a ship of Arab pilgrims by Raja Dahir of Sind. This contact, though political had a cultural impact and it was to this that the Sindhi language and literature owe their origin. To this day, Sindhi is written in a modified Arabic script and bears a strong component of Arab and Islamic influence in the tone and tenor of its poetry.

And it was here that Abdul Latif Bhitai composed his songs of mystic devotion and human love. A new era had already began- the era of cosmopolitan mystic vision.

Undoubtedly mysticism is no monopoly of Islam but in the centuries that followed, several groups of Muslim mystics so swarmed over parts of North India that mysticism began to acquire as a Muslim face. Till today, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti who came from Iraq in the 12th century to settle down in Ajmer as a lonely immigrant is held in high esteem both by Hindus and Muslims and the compositions of one of his disciples, Baba Farid, form part of the holy book of the Sikhs - the Guru Granth Sahib. Both of them emphasized the concept of the equality of man and sang of man's total submergence in the divine existence of God Almighty. The idea caught on and spread with speed and alacrity to practically all the dialects and languages of the land, and assumed different shapes and forms.

One of these was that of allegory and symbolism. Human existence was symbolized as a woman in love who has been unwittingly separated from her beloved and consequently sings the songs of separation form her divine love and thirsts for re-union. Hence, the poet- or human existence was portrayed as a woman in love while God was taken to be the separated husband.

This also took the form of Bara-masa, (Twelve months) in which the damsel describes the charms of every season, month by month, and implores her beloved to take pity on her and to join her in enjoying the seasonal blessings. The first available Bara-masa was written by Addiman, who is believed to be a convert to Islam named Abdur Rahman. He belonged perhaps to the area between the North West Frontier Province (NWFP)and Sind in the 12th century, according to Hazari Prasad Dwivedi and Vishwanath Tripathi, the first editor of the treatise, Sandesh Rasak and this happens to be the first literary work traceable in Awhat, the language deemed the precursor of the present Hindi and Urdu.

This marks the great beginning in practically all-modern Indian languages. The mystic era had begun. The famous Indian historian Dr. Tara Chand has traced the origin and development of the Bhakti movement in the south and its spreading in the north to the impact of Islam and Muslim poets and saints played a very significant part therein.

In Hindi, for instance even before the advent of the four recognized categories of Bhakti poetry Gyana-Kshri, Prem Margi Sufi, Ram Bhakti and Krishna Bhakti , the emergence of Amir Khusrau was noticeable . Though mainly a Persian poet, born in Patiali (Uttar Pradesh) or, according to some scholars, in Delhi Khusrau was a devout mystic and disciple of the Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auslia of Delhi, and his bridal songs, riddles and stray couplets mark the beginning of poetry in a mixed language with an amalgam of Khari Boli grammatical syntax and a sprinkling of Turkish, Persian and Arabic words. He sings praises of his motherland and mixes with the common man of his times so as to give unhampered expression to his feelings with exuberance and spontaneity.

Later on Kabir (whom several scholars consider Muslim) and his followers wrote poetry of iconoclastic humanism and robust commonsense in the Gyana-Kshri and Nirgun Bhakti which are similar in not worshipping idols and believing in the non-material existence of God. Syed Mohammad Jaisi's Padmavat, on the other hand, was the allegorical and anecdotal exposition of man's quest for Divine Beauty, and of self-abnegation in the process, as narrated in the form of Alauddin Khiliji's abortive attempt to conquer Padmini, who burns herself to death and escapes surrender. And the followers of Jaisi's philosophy and diction were many, who adorn the ranks of Prem Margi Sufi poets, including Mulla Daud, Qutban and Manjhan.

Then came the Krishna Bhaktas and these also include a number of Muslim poets. Sri Krishna has often been symbolized as the romantic embodiment of divine existence and not only in Brij Bhasha Hindi poetry of the 16th century but also in Urdu poetry of the 20th century. Poets like Maulana Hasrat Mohani took pride in proclaiming himself a Krishna Bhakt, Hence the continuing tradition from Ras Khan (the famous Brij Bhasha poet) to Hasrat Mohani.

Of course, Riti Kal of Brij Bhasha Hindi poetry abounds in Muslim names and these includes some very distinguished poets, like Akbar's Minister Abdur Rahim Khan Khanan whose dohas are exemplary.

Another branch of the Khari Boli developed as Urdu literature, which claims Amir Khusrau as the common ancestor and extends its frontiers to Gujarat and Deccan (mainly parts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra), in the form of Gujri and Deccani. In these literary traditions, too, Indian Muslims played a significant, even predominating, role. In Gujarat, saint poets like Mahmud Daryai, Miranji, Janam and Khub Mohammad Chishti enriched the allegorical mystic tradition while in far off Deccan, first under the Bahmani Kingdom and later on under the Bijapur, Golconda and Ahmadnagar Kingdoms, a whole corpus of literary writings developed with Muslim authorship.

Even prose pieces in Deccani like sab Ras of Wajhi (of Golconda) were written and acclaimed. Wajhi's is a perfect allegory with Beauty, Reason and Heart as symbolic characters and, according to some, draws heavily from a Persian mystic's work and, according to others from Prabhad Chandra Uday, an Indian classic. Earlier, a Muslim saint-disciple of Nizamuddin Aulia of Delhi, living in Gulbarga (Karnataka) had written copiously in prose and poetry for propagating his humanistic teachings, bearing close resemblances with Hindu mystic thought.

In Bijapur and Golconda kings, saints, courtiers and itinerant scholars and poets, all made their contribution in making an indigenous language rich. These included the Muslim ruling monarch Quli Qutub Shah, the first Urdu poet with a regular collection and poets like Nizami, Nusrati, Ibn-Inishati, Ghannasi, Hashmi and a host of prose-stylists like Burhanuddin Janam, Aminuddin Aala, Miran Yakub and others. That their writings are enriched by their cultural environs is beyond doubt as they sought to achieve a blend of cosmopolitan elements with the indigenous traditions.

The development of Urdu language and literature in the north began rather late but the imprint of Indian Muslims on it is so unmistakable that it has been wrongly identified with them though a galaxy of non-Muslim Urdu writers adorn the pages of literary history.

Urdu literature in the north flourished mainly in the 18th and 19th centuries in Delhi , Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where masnavi writers like Afzal, Mir, Mir Asar and Mir Hasan continued to enrich and extend the tradition of allegorical and non-allegorical romantic poetic tales and started writing ghazals in Urdu, thus combining earthly romance with deeper metaphysical thought pattern. Of course, Muslim poets played an important part in giving shape to this new idiom, which heralded a new cultural climate - the climate of secularism, cosmopolitanism and urban sophistication.

The stalwarts included Mir Taqi Mir and Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib in Delhi whose Catholicism and free-thinking earned for them an eternal place in the hearts of millions; Agha Hasan Amanat's Inder sabha in 1846 attempted an amalgam of Hindu mythology with Awadh culture and ushered in a new era in Indian drama; Mir Anis' religious epics on the battle of Karbala gave its Arab characters local habitation and an Indian look the inimitable Nazeer Akbarabadi of Agra identified himself with the common man and wrote poems on everyday subjects like bread, water melons and the rainy season.

Urdu literature by itself stands witness to the involvement and identification of Indian Muslims with the Indian ethos. Urdu literature particularly the ghazal, gave typical expression to the agony and ecstasy of the national scene throughout the ages. Of course, non-Muslim writers participated equally in the process but any literature can be justly proud of poets like Mir, Ghalib, Iqbal and Josh Malihabadi; fiction writers and movelists like Nazeer Ahmed, Mirza Mohammad Hadi Ruswa, Abdul Haleem Sharar, Sajjad Yaldram, and in our own times, Qurratulain Hyder, Ismat Chughtai, Jilani Bano, Hayatullah Ansari and Khwaja Ahmed Abbas; prose writers like Abul Kalam Azad, Qazi Abdul Ghaffar and Rashid Ahmed Siddiqi; and dramatists like Agha Hasan Amanat, Agha Hashr, Imtiaz Ali Taj and Mohammad Mujib. The whole galaxy of progressive writers who lit the fire for the independence struggle and stormed the citadel of conservatism and obscurantism comprises of names like Faiz, Majaz, Makhdoom Mohiuddin , Parvez Shahidi, Ali Sardar Jafri, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi and Majrooh Sultuanpuri. No history of Indian literature can be complete without mentioning the literary and artistic sensibility brought about by Urdu poets and literatures. Every one of them deserves a whole chapter for his or her achievements. K.A. Abbas, for instance, left an indelible mark not only as a storywriter or a novelist but also as a distinguished filmmaker and outstanding journalists.

Iqbal by his philosophy of Self aroused the Asian nations from their long slumber and gave them the message of self-reliance and dignity. His clarion call for the emancipation of the subject nations of the Orient added a new dimension to contemporary literature. Similarly Josh Malihabadi's revolutionary poetry and Abul Kalam Azad's fiery writings made the struggle for national independence an article of faith and extended the frontiers of literary consciousness.

In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the cradles of Urdu and Hindi Khari Boli literatures the galaxy of great names in both poety and prose include Rasikh, Shad, Hasrat Mohani, Jigar, Josh and innumerable others. Yet the Indian Muslims contribution to folk literature of the area should not be overlooked. In local dialects as well as in Khari Boli folk idiom. Muslim writers and composers have made their mark in Kajri, Laoni and other popular folk forms. Recently, Azhar Husain Faruqi's Uttar Pradesh ke lok geet gives a long list of Muslim composers and these represent only a portion of such contribution.

But the contribution of Indian Muslims was by no means restricted only to Urdu literature. In Punjab literature, for instance, mystics and saints left their own indelible marks. Waris Shah and Bulhe Shah composed classics in the 18th century, which are yet to be surpassed in excellence and acceptability. Even when the subcontinent was divided into two hostile countries, India and Pakistan and the border state of Punjab, the land of five rivers, was itself partitioned, the gathering of Punjab soldiers on both sides of the frontier could be seen listening to or reciting Waris Shah's epic Heer Ranjha jointly in the dead of night.

Further North, Kashmiri literature also boasts of its Indian Muslim authors, the greatest of them being, perhaps, Habba Khatoon, a plain peasant girl wedded to a ruling monarch and sharing his destiny in glory and Suffering. Then comes Mahjur, who sang songs of liberty and social justice and enthused Kashmiris to wrest their rights with courage and determination. Of course, these two names are only representative of dozens of other such writers and poets.

Further east, the development of Bengali literature, according to some literary historians, owes much to the patronage of Muslim kings of Bengal. Since its very inception, Muslim poets and writers have been in the vanguard of Bengali literature but the stature of Qazi Nazrul Islam remains unsurpassed. His poetic talent came to a sudden flowering when lying in a trench in a 21-day ambush during the Second World War and he broke into revolutionary song. Nazrul stands next to Tagore in his appeal and artistic excellence and his poetry inspired millions of Bengali-speaking people of India and Bangladesh in their struggle for independence. In fact, Nazrul inspired poets of all the modern Indian languages and provided a model for Josh Mahilabadi in Urdu, Subhramaniam Bharati in Tamil, Vallathal in Malayalam and Dinkar in Hindi.

Bengali literature can boast of other Muslim writers and composers, among them the outstanding literary critic, Kazi Abdul Wudood, Communist writer and intellectual Muzaffar Ahmad and of course, the innumerable Muslim singers and minstrel poets who roam the countryside and compose and sing Baul poetry.

Further down, we come across Oriya in which Mughal tamasha, a distinct form of folk drama, owes its origin mainly to Muslim writers. In Tamil, Abdur Rahman is still considered a major poet. In the sister languages of Kannada and Telugu, the present writer has limited information but the first Urdu poet with a regular poetic collection, the Golconda king, Quli Qutub Shah was also credited to be a Telugu poet. In Marathi, and Gujarati too, Muslim writers made their mark while in Malayalam, the stories and novels of K T Mohammad gained distinction.

This is only a cursory outline of the Muslim contribution to the various and modern Indian languages and literatures. But merely listing names of Muslim poets and writers, does not do justice to their role nor does it evaluate the true nature, extend and depth of their impact. This impact was not restricted only to Muslim writers but percolated to all levels and all kinds of writers irrespective of their religious fidelities.

What does this impact really mean in terms of the literary structure of these languages?

Firstly, it must be appreciated that the word Muslim denotes a much wider cultural domain than Islam. Islam was a set of beliefs but Muslims of different countries, though adhering to these common beliefs, developed their own cultural identities in conjunction with their indigenous environments. Islam for instance, forbids, or at least discourages all arts, frowns on the practice of music, dance and sculpture and deprecates painting, yet in all these fields Indian Muslims, and devout Muslims at that, earned distinction. It has often been the case that the artistic talent of Muslims in the forbidden arts found expression either in permitted media (for example, the expression of painting talent in calligraphy or of sculpture in the carving of Quranic verses on the Qutub Minar) or in the innovative transfer of these talents to other media. Hence the Muslim contribution to literature and poetry should be taken in this context, which in some measure, explains the popularity enjoyed by poetry among Muslims in general so that couplets form part of ordinary everyday conversation.

The second important factor that should be noted is that this contribution was basically secular and cosmopolitan in character. Secular - because Muslim poets and men of letters could not identify themselves with Hindu religious or devotional poetry (barring instances where it had been raised to mystical or allegorical heights) and hence their writings, both in poetry and prose, opened the gates of secular and materialist subjects. What sustained this new poetic idiom was its cosmopolitanism.

To bracket this cosmopolitanism with alien influences would be erroneous. The fact remains that the Turco-Iranian cultural tradition was, in the Dark Ages, the predominant world tradition. Europe was still to emerge as the new arbiter of human destiny and Arabs were dispensing the knowledge acquired from Greek sources, through translations. The Turco-Iranian tradition had absorbed this corpus of knowledge and had become its champion in Asia and the Middle East. Hence, the adoption, or acceptance of these Turco-Iranian influences meant imbibing the impact of the then pervading world culture.

Thirdly, it should also be borne in mind that Muslim contact was not primarily through administrators or rulers but mainly through traders (who purchased handicrafts and other manufactured goods and materials from the Indian towns or trade centres and sold them in Central Asian and West Asian courts and markets), Sufi saints, scholars and mercenary soldiers. Consequently, the adoption of these influences was the acceptance of world cultural norms and values of that period. The literary exchanges between Turco-Iranian traditions and modern Indian languages were therefore a part of this transaction, which can be compared to the impact of the English language and literature on various Indian languages today.

The Indian Muslim writer's contribution to various modern Indian languages and literatures, therefore, is two-fold: first in creating a secular and cosmopolitan literary idiom, and second in forging a new syntactical conciseness and close-knit poetic and literary expression mainly brought about as part of this Turco-Iranian impact.

Though very close to Sanskrit, old Persian had taken a different syntactical line of development. To discuss in detail the nature of the syntactical influences of the Turco-Persian traditions on the modern Indian languages is beyond the scope of this essay but the use of izafat (conjunctional lower apostrophe) alone gave much greater compactness and conciseness to expression.

The same holds good in the case of symbols- and non-religious and non-mythical symbols at that. The Indian Muslim writers in many cases revolutionized the literary idiom by introducing new symbols or by communicating a different conceptual system through old and familiar images and symbols. Even Nazrul Islam, who is greatly influenced by Hindu mythological symbols, introduced several new dimensions to them and introduced a series of symbols from the Turco-Iranian tradition.

The system of symbolism was used in a peculiar way by the ghazal, a poetic genre born in Arabic as an introductory digressive part of Qasida (eulogy) poetry which came to flowering in Persia as a separate form with scattered self-contained couplets bound together by common rhyme and ending with a subjective tone and symbolic expression of its own. Even though the ghazal symbols were not altogether indigenous, its popularity in practically all the modern Indian languages is due to its compact subjectivity and generalised symbolism, which covers at once different fields of human activity. For instance, a ghazal couplet, though apparently addressed to one's beloved can thanks to the prevailing generality of ghazal symbols be recited as a political statement. Hence, the ghazal as poetic form remains popular in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali and several other languages. Not exclusively a contribution of Muslims alone, it has however a Muslim connexion.

This clearly shows that the Muslim contribution to Indian languages and literatures has been a source of strengthening its cosmopolitan links and giving it a modern, secular and worldly look. In fact, this literary contribution was a part of the composite culture, which brought the diverse religious and regional identities together and tried to develop it into a national culture. Unfortunately, the process was rudely interrupted by a long spell of British rule which erected various barriers between the various components and constituents of this composite cultural ethos and the final act of the country's partition undermined the very basis of this emerging synthesis.

In the post-Independence period, Urdu has suffered the greatest setback with total exile from most of the north Indian states and this exile covers schools, libraries, government offices and courts. Yet mushairas are held in almost every important town and attract large crowds. ghazal concerts are a craze and immediate commercial success. Of late, however, Urdu has been accorded the status of the second official language in Bihar and UP and about ten Urdu Academies and a Bureau for Promotion of Urdu have been set up in several states and at the centre.

While Muslim writers are among the prominent literary authors of various Indian languages, in many cases, a sense of alienation separates them from their fellow writers. Recurrent communal Hindu-Muslim riots breed extremists on both ends and create distrust and insecurity. Hence the psyche of the Indian Muslim writer, whether writing in Urdu or Malayalam or Marathi, experiences an ordeal different from his compatriots.

Add to this, the rise of fundamentalism, the eleven year rule of Pakistani military dictators and the reign of orthodox papacy of Imam Khomeini of Iran, which have been posing serious threats to liberalism and rationalism to Muslims everywhere in the world and we get a complete, or a near complete, picture of the context an average Indian Muslim writer finds himself in.

Yet there is a silver lining to this dismal panorama. A number of Indian Muslim writers view their own preservation as well as that of the composite culture evolved through centuries of communion as a part of the defence of democratic values in our land. This crusade cannot be waged and won in isolation but with wider, much wider, cooperation and support of the people. And it is for this that writers, and among them Muslim writers too, though it fit to break the conventional framework of communication media and reach the common man through street theatre. Habib Tanvir attempted to mobilize the actual man in the street and, without any commercialized make-up, express through him the woes and sufferings of a suffocated society. Safdar Hashmi took street theatre to the masses even more vigorously and addressed them on burning topics directly connected with their own lives. For the temerity of criticizing the Establishment he paid the price with his own life, and symbolized the participation and involvement of Indian Muslims in the struggle of making India a safer and a better place to live and in preserving the highest values of a composite culture evolved during centuries of our history.

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Re: # 400


Muslim Contribution to Indian Architecture



Muslims & Architecture


Indian architecture took new shape with the advent of Islamic rule in India towards the end of the 12th century AD. New elements were introduced into the Indian architecture that include: use of shapes (instead of natural forms); inscriptional art using decorative lettering or calligraphy; inlay decoration and use of coloured marble, painted plaster and brilliantly glazed tiles. In contrast to the indigenous Indian architecture which was of the trabeate order i.e. all spaces were spanned by means of horizontal beams, the Islamic architecture was arcuate i.e. an arch or dome was adopted as a method of bridging a space. The concept of arch or dome was not invented by the Muslims but was, in fact, borrowed and was further perfected by them from the architectural styles of the post-Roman period. The Muslims used the cementing agent in the form of mortar for the first time in the construction of buildings in India. They further put to use certain scientific and mechanical formulae, which were derived by experience of other civilizations, in their constructions in India. Such use of scientific principles helped not only in obtaining greater strength and stability of the construction materials but also provided greater flexibility to the architects and builders. This amalgamation of the Islamic and Indian elements led to the emergence of a new form of architectural style called the Indo-Islamic Architecture.

One fact that must be stressed here is that, the Islamic elements of architecture had already passed through different experimental phases in other countries like Egypt, Iran and Iraq before these were introduced in India. Unlike most Islamic monuments of these countries, which were largely constructed in brick, plaster and rubble, the Indo-Islamic monuments were typical mortar-masonry works formed of dressed stones. It must be emphasized that the development of the Indo-Islamic architecture was greatly facilitated by the knowledge and skill possessed by the Indian craftsmen, who had mastered the art of stonework for centuries and used their experience while constructing Islamic monuments in India.
In simple terms the Islamic architecture in India can be divided into religious and secular. Mosques and Tombs represent the religious architecture, while palaces and forts are examples of secular Islamic architecture. Forts were essentially functional, complete with a little township within and various fortifications to engage and repel the enemy.

Muslims' Contribution to the Growth of Music in India


Music continued to flourish in medieval India in spite of the acquisition of political power by the Turks, Afghans and Mughals. It was patronized and thrived at the imperial courts of Delhi and Agra and at the centers of provincial kingdoms like the Sharqui kingdom of Jaunpur, the Khilji kingdom of Malwa and the Bahmani kingdom of Bijapur and Golcunda.

In his memoirs Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty, has named several leading musicians of his time including Sheikh Ghuran, Sheikh Adhan, Khawaja Abdullah Marwareed, Sheikh Nai, Sheikh Quli, Ghulam Saadi, Meer Anju and many others. It is believed that the renowned musician Baiju was among the musicians in Humayun's court.

In the reign of Akbar there were many immortal musicians like Mian Tansen, Sujan Khan, Tantarang Khan, Bilas Khan, Baaz Bahadur, and Pirzada Khurasan. During this period some well known ragas such as Darbari Kanhra, Jogia, Mian-ki-Malhar, Mian-ki-Todi, Mian-ki-Sarang were introduced by Tansen. Similarly Nayak Bakshoo, a musician of the court of Raja Mansingh of Gwalior created many ragas like Bahaduri Todi, Nayaki Kanhra, Nayaki Kalyan, etc.

The Sufis from the countries of Central Asia who started coming to India with the establishment of the Muslim rule in North India in the eleventh century made a major contribution to the growth of musical institutions in India. Music played a central role in all of their congregations. They skillfully blended the Arab and Persian styles with Hindustani music and utilized it as a medium of communication for their messages of moral and spiritual uplift for the common man.

Among a number of Sufi sects in India the contribution of two sects, the Chishtis and the Suhrawardis is most noteworthy. The contribution of Hadrat Nizamuddin's disciple Amir Khusru is only too well known. He broke away from the old traditions and introduced new forms such as Qaul, Qawwali, Qalbana, Naqsh-e-gul and Nigar. Khusru is said to have created about twelve new melodies, among which are Zilaf, Muafiq, Ghanam, Farghana, Zangula and Sarpada. In the court of Jalaluddin Khilji the ghazals of Khusru were regularly recited by the famous musicians.

Several new musical forms were developed during the medieval Muslim period. Two of the most outstanding forms are Dhrupad and Khayal, which are still dominant in today's Indian music. The beginning of Dhrupad occurred in the thirteenth century and it reached the zenith of its popularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Two renowned books of the era Ain-e-Akbari and Raga Darpan state that most of the musicians of that time were Muslims. Kitaab-e-Nauras written by Ibrahim Ali Shah the ruler of Bijapur also mentions the popularity of Dhrupad as far as Deccan. Today the well known Dagar family is continuing to uphold the traditions of Dhrupad.

On the other hand the genesis of Khayal can be traced to the eighth century. The old musical forms of Khayal were influenced by Qaul and Qawwali. Sultan Hussain Sharuqui, the ruler of Jaunpur took keen interest in the development and popularization of this style. In the Mughal court of Mohammad Shah Rangeela his court musicians Niamat Khan and Feroz Khan composed hundreds of Khayals with a high degree of perfection. A large number of Muslim musicians were accomplished Khayal singers in the medieval period.

Another contribution of the Muslim musicians has been the establishment of the Gharana system starting in the eighteenth century. Several such Gharanas have flourished in various parts of the country. Among some of the prominent Gharanas are those of Gwalior, Agra, Jaipur, Kirana and Delhi. The Gharanas specially emphasized disciplined singing or playing an instrument according to the traditional style established by an extraordinary musician.

Among other musical forms Tarana, Thumri and Tappa are also popular styles which developed through the synthesis of the indigenous Indian music with influences brought in by the Muslims. The origin of Tarana is associated with Amir Khusru whereas Nawab Wajid Ali Shah is credited as one of the early patrons and composers of Thumri. Tappa style of singing is believed to have been the innovation of Shori Mian of Lucknow.

During the later medieval period a large number of standard works on music, both original and translations from Sanskrit, were undertaken. The three major works belonging to this period are: Raga Darpan by Faqirullah; Tohfat-e-Hind by Mirza Khan; Naghmat-e-Asfi by Ghulam Raza.

Tracing the history of the contribution of Muslim musicians to the growth of Indian music it becomes evident that the Muslims of medieval India were what the indigenous culture had made of them in the course of five hundred years. They became Indian in thought, speech and action and religion was part of the culture, but not the whole of it. It is obvious that music has been an unmatched medium to bring Muslims and Hindus together in India through the last six hundred years, and it is impossible to separate the Muslim components from the Hindu components in Hindustani music.

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Re: # 393
Mystic...
Muslims fought British. What special about it? Muslims had fought with Indians also. After the western floodget was opened on early 11th/12th century, India had become playground for middle eastern and central asian invaders. And that resulted in infusion of mediaval,middle eastern barbarism in major part of Indian society. When British ( and other european countries)had arrived, India was no more a civilisation.


What history should we read? Created by mediaval arab/central asian looters/destroyers and ignore Vivekananda, whom large section of civilised world respect?
He had travelled large part of India and identifed the main reason for the sorry state of present India. When he travelled europe and USA, he identified what steps to be taken to get rid of this barbarism.
His follower list conatins Nocola Tesla, Rabindranath, J C Bose etc... And for the sake of mediaval, middle eastern barbarism, we, Indians have to ignore him!! What an audacity.

Regarding 1000 years of islamic existance in India- A dog is a dog, whether you keep it in your house for 1 day or 100 days. It does not change the fact. If Brits would have stayed in India for couple of more centuries, does that make them Indians.

Regarding M K Gandhi...He deserved to die like that. No Indian is proud of his killing. He was responsible for islamic carnage in Malabar coast (Moplah) and his stupidity allowed the arab slaved to go on rampage in Calcutta and most part of Bangladesh (Great Calcutta killing, Noakhali massacre etc...). You,arab salves, may be very happy with him (he has kept one side unarmed, such that barbarians can carry out whatever way they want).
What statistics, you are using to prove that moslem % of population in West Bengal is not increasing abnormally? GOI ( NSA) is already concerned about it. Naturally, with migration of bangladeshis ( non-moslem share has dropped from 25% to now 10% in present day BD), the moslems population % should have reduced. But it has increased manyfold.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040915/asp/opinion/story_3752632.asp

400 interacts is pretty good and not too many have strayed too far from the main subject.

Let me only say thay I have no anti Hindu, anti Muslim, anti any religion agenda. Im only anti the many bigoted who believe that there is no truth but their own and sustain it with myths and unhistorical fairy tales.

The followers of all religions did many good and many bad deeds and this article only tries to show that `Hindus' were not different.

I also believe that the people of ALL religions can live happily together if only the Padres, Mullahs, Pandits and other professional `keepers' of religion would stop breeding hatred for the followers of other faiths.