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1 Beyond Ethnicity? Being Hindu and Muslim in South Asia Shail Mayaram Introduction whose self-description was of a Hindu-Christian monk. The larger issue I have lived with for This paper addresses a question I have visited some time is, how do these states of living, before in my work which is, as the title suggests, feeling and being, destabilize boundaries of what does it mean to be simultaneously Hindu religion, sect and denomination? In terms of and Muslim? The partners of the combine can numbers this refers to the cultures of a fairly easily be substituted by other combinations substantial population since the South Asian involving being simultaneously Hindu and population comprises one-fifth of the world’s Christian or Muslim and Sikh/Christian and population (Stein 2001). The region is home to Buddhist/Jewish and Christian. The early part of the paper will appraise some of this complex the largest concentration of Muslim population ethnic universe in South Asia and elsewhere. in the world. The second part of the paper will review the Three significant themes need to be fore- conceptual vocabulary used to describe this ground in the contemporary discussion of universe. I regard this section, to use a Sufi religious identities: the consequences of cultural metaphor, as a further maqam (station, halting encounter for the histories of castes and commu- place) in a journey that has time and again nities; the possibility of dual or triple religious negotiated with and interrogated the idea of the affiliation expressed openly or unconsciously; syncretic and also attempted to contend with and, dimensions of liminality articulated through the question of an alternativeCOPYRIGHTED that will describe varied MATERIAL registers. These manifest as a series of states of identity that are seen as mixed, impure, identities that are seen as ‘border line Muslims’, even heretic and most certainly, confused and a ‘half Hindus’ or ‘half Muslims’, or ‘half Chris- source of contamination. I conclude with a more tian’ (whatever the components of the ‘half’ contemporary case from our times of a person may be). Perspectives on Modern South Asia: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation, First Edition. Edited by Kamala Visweswaran. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. BEYOND ETHNICITY? BEING HINDU AND MUSLIM IN SOUTH ASIA 17 How does one approach the theme of Islam opened up new connections with West cultural encounter? One obvious way in the Asia, just as Buddhism linked India with East subcontinent is to narrate a history of conquest, Asia (Kulke 1990). ‘Conversion’ intensified iconoclasm, conflict and underwrite a politics the available plurality that had already seen the of writing historical wrong. But there are other efflorescence of the vaidika and non-vaidika ways. The political theorist, Rajeev Bhargava, religions, the challenge of the sramana tra- uses the metaphor of the palimpsest, the idea ditions of Buddhism and Jainism, the many that something is altered yet bears traces of adivasi cosmologies, the atheist Carvaka and its original form.1 One visualizes here a stone the agamika-tantrika schools as also the wave that is constantly written over or an artist’s of devotional traditions that would become palette, witness to the magical play of colours, such a prominent theme through the medieval the emergence of endless new shades through period. Friedhelm Hardy refers, in addition, to flow and combination. We know of Tibetan the somewhat autonomous world of gramya or civilization that became Buddhist but could village religion that involved, from the point not quite overwrite its past of the Bon reli- of view of the vaidika Brahman, heterodox gion (Snellgrove 1967). The pilgrimage site of vulgarities of village cults involving the con- Mount Kailash is resonant with the overlapping sumption of alcohol, smoking opium, shedding symbolism that is Hindu and Jain, Buddhist blood, killing animals, eating meat, states of and Bon and is what draws the inveterate possession (Hardy 1995). South Asia has had Himalayan trekker, philosopher-psychoanalyst more complex identities than any other region Madhu Sarin season after season. Fisher’s of the world. recent ethnography of the Thakali of Nepal who The idea that peoples, regions and cultures inhabit the borderlands of central Nepal wryly have had more than one religious affiliation, comments that scholars have seen Hinduism, however unacknowledged and silenced, has Buddhism and shamanism together intensifying gained some currency. Ashis Nandy reminds us their influence on the Thakali (Fisher 2001). that for a Japanese it is possible to be simulta- Sylvain Levi commented in 1905, that the tradi- neously both Shinto and Buddhist. Shintoism, tions of Hinduism and Buddhism are so closely the original religion of Japan, involved the interwoven in Nepal that it made no sense to worship of local deities called kami that were see Nepalese gods as either Hindu or Buddhist. later introduced into Buddhism so that Buddha The Indian subcontinent is not unique in and Bodhisattvas were identified with local this respect. From Indonesia to the Maghreb deities.2 Similarly in China no absolute bound- a range of scholarships have described the ary demarcated Buddhism from Confucianism fascinating negotiation between Islamic textual (the cult of the ancestors). A community in models and pre-Islamic worlds. Even as the Vietnam continues to incorporate both Hindu contemporary Afghan has been frozen into the Ahier Cham and Muslim Awal Cham sections, Taliban terrorist, we know the long tradition representing the yang (male) and yin (female) in Afghanistan of adaptation to both Islam principles, respectively. and Pakhtunwali/Pushtunwali, the legal and In South Asia, some enumerations relating to moral code that frames the social order and India mention 600 odd bi-religious communi- might even be in opposition to the shariah. ties and there are even thirty-eight tri-religious Ethnographers have described Afghan identity communities according to K. Suresh Singh with its blood feud and own interpretation (Singh 1992, cited in Nandy 1995). Describing (some would call distortion!) of Islam. The these groups in terms of bi-religiosity and tri- good violent Pathan in Tagore’s Kabuli wallah religiosity, however, presents problems as these (1916), is a case in point. categories elude the rather high levels of inter- The coming of Islam and Christianity to the nal differentiation within these communities, Indian subcontinent resulted in a phenomenal Further, the phenomenon of overlapping and cultural encounter. India’s encounter with blurring of identities is far more pervasive than 18 SHAIL MAYARAM has hitherto been suspected and I will merely became crucial to the making of a new literary indicate the range in the subcontinent which culture in India as it inspired music, painting, requires far greater attention from researchers. sculpture and drama. Gayatri Spivak writes of We know today of a large number of identi- the ‘poetic counter theology’ of the famous ties that have at a historical juncture occupied Baul singer, Lallan Shah fakir (1774–1890) an interstitial space, straddling two or more in which advaita becomes the abstract God religious traditions. My own familiarity is with of Islam. The nirakar, the formless, combines the Muslim Meos of India and Pakistan, who with the dualist urge to rupa (manifestation are today one of the largest Muslim commu- or form) so that Khadija, Mohammad’s eldest nities of the subcontinent and with the Merat of wife is Allah (je khodija a sher to khobai) but north-western India. The Rawat–Chita–Merat also the chief goddess (Spivak 1999). comprise a complex group formerly called the Like the cultures of performing artists, those Mer and were divided into Hindu–Muslim– of peasant and pastoral tribe-castes have hitherto Christian sections. Significantly the Hinduism been ‘mixed’. I deliberately use the hyphenated of the Hindu Rawat was described as hardly tribe-caste to highlight that these were also not recognizable and the Muslimness of the Merat walled-off social formations. The data is telling. was viewed as similarly evanescent! They The 1921 Census records that there were 47.3 not only intermarried but their cosmologies per cent Hindu and 33.4 per cent Muslim Jats inhabited by gods, goddesses, spirits, pirs, and (besides others who were Sikh). In this respect ancestors were shared. The psychologist, Morris they were similar to the Rajputs (27.7 per cent Carstairs, describes secret cults called kunda Muslim and 70.7 per cent Hindu) and Gujars or kachli panth whose practices challenged (25.3 per cent and 74.2 per cent Muslim) (Edye the dominant discourse with respect to caste, and Tennant 1923). Wink points out that the cul- gender and sexuality so that even what is called ture of Jats and Gujars had a significant Persian incest is redescribed as a mode of worship component (1990:138). The Ahirs likewise had (Carstairs 1961). Muslim branches even as the Mewatis and Mira- Across the subcontinent there are many sis had Hindu populations. groups whose cultures suggest that it is possible Ruling and warrior castes and the so- to be simultaneously Hindu and Muslim. Castes called Sudra castes of the subcontinent also and communities associated with storytelling suggest significant religious complexity. In and the performing art traditions in South the region of Rajasthan, with which I am Asia have had particularly nubile identities. In more familiar, the category ‘Muslim’ includes western India the Langas, the Manganiyars and the Musalman Rajputs, Khanzadas, Desi the Mirasis also defy categorial classification.3 Musalman, Kayamkhanis and Sindhi Sipahis In eastern India the role of the Baul singers is (Kothari 1984). In Uttar Pradesh we know particularly illustrative. These singers are clas- of the Malkanas who claimed to be neither sified as Muslim but their identity transcends Hindus nor Muslims and preferred to be called our simplistic classifications, ‘Hindu’ and Mian Thakur.

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