Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to ... - blog blog blog

THE INDIAN TOMB
major communities have actively influenced each other, and one of
the consequences of such an influence has been the accession of the
Hindus to the Islamic cult of saints and to the rites of the veneration
of their tombs.
Judging by historical sources, everything connected with the relics
of the Sufi preceptors, warriors for faith and miracle workers, carried
the greatest spiritual authority within the most diverse strata of
medieval society, irrespective of social status and religion. Thus, in
the year 1747, when the Afghan conqueror Ahmad Shah Abdali
invaded India, a minister of the rulers of the Kalhora dynasty, Diwan
Gidumal, himself professing Hinduism, met him and presented him
with the most precious treasure of Sind – a bag containing dust from
the tombs of the local awliyā. 1
Several graves of Sufi shaikhs on the territory of Punjab also
became objects of veneration for the community of Sikhs, among
them the tomb of Shaikh Fariduddin (also known as Baba Farid)
ranks high. Discourses of this Muslim mystic have found a place in
Ādi Granth – the sacred book of the Sikhs. Among the devotees of
the tombs of Muslim saints were not only people of other faiths but
also marginal groups: horrifying stranglers – thugs, worshipping the
cruel goddess Bhavani; the Mevati tribe, whom the English used
to call ‘robbers’; transvestites (hījrā) and nomadic Gypsies (banjārā).
In other words, it was not at all obligatory to be a pious Muslim in
order to participate in the cult of saints.
Human life in medieval India, as, for that matter, in any society
with a traditional type of culture and a retarded type of consciousness,
was wholly determined by religious concepts. For a Muslim,
in particular, there remained not a single opinion, event or deed in
which connection with the Qur’ān, the Sunna of the Prophet and
Islam as a whole, could not be perceived. Perception of the external
world, the macrocosm, and the inner, spiritual world, the microcosm,
was exclusively religious, which generated an intensity of faith in all
strata of medieval society. The all-embracing imperative of Islam,
in particular the dictates of Sharī ‘at, it seemed, did not leave room
for secular, religiously neutral spheres in human activity: from birth
to death each step of the true believer had to be correlated with the
norms and injunctions of faith.
However, even in such an intensively saturated atmosphere of
religious devotion, sincere piety and effective transcendence could
not be constant and general. Precisely because exceptional plenitude
of religious experience and whole-hearted concentration upon
questions of faith was strictly enjoined upon the entire population,
2