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

THE OLD MAN OF AJMER
Consequently, an initiation that was both popular and within the
reach of the masses could be an initiation only to the ethical aspects
of the doctrine of the fraternity, to the notions about the mundane
life worked out by it and the interiorization that is common to all true
believers and the reason for the external forms of piety. The Chishtis
based their ethical preaching on above-mentioned postulates, of which
the most relevant were: poverty (not identical with the universal Sufi
principle of selflessness), non-violence (a ban on all kind of aggression
and on doing harm to any living being), non-collaboration with the
authorities and renunciation of proselytizing activity, which signified
transition from the obligatory Islamization of non-Muslims to a
dialogue with them in the field of ideology. It is natural that in the
conditions of medieval Indian society, where indigent non-Muslims
were in the overwhelming majority, such a programme was destined
for massive success.
Penetration of Chishti ethos into the commercial and vocational
strata of the society; collaboration of Chishtis with representatives
of various social and religious groups; their recourse to the languages,
images and concepts of the local population – all these became that
deficient ferment, under whose effect the spontaneous syncretism
which is usual for popular religion could come right and be transformed
into the peculiar composite culture of South Asia in the
fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.
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