Making Muslim Indians

Numen 58 (2011) 375-403 brill.nl/nu Memory and Minority: Making Muslim Indians Anna Bigelow Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies North Carolina State University Campus Box 8103 Raleigh, North Carolina 27695 USA [email protected] Abstract In Malerkotla, the only Muslim majority town in Indian Punjab, citizens are involved in a mnemotechnical project that produces a collective identity based on inclusiveness and interreligious peace. This memory work connects the emotional resonance of love and unity to what Jan Assmann terms memory sites (the dargahs, stories of the saints, the physical territory of Malerkotla). The process involves erasures and coercive prac- tices that discipline the collective recollection of the past into a version that serves the present interest. Yet this does not wholly obscure the variant versions of history that coexist within the perpetually shifting terrain of Malerkotla’s stable collective memory system. The production of memory sites fixes in certain places and popular narratives the dominant interpretation of the past, which is most conducive to Muslim integra- tion into the contemporary Indian state. In particular this essay explores the creation of written and oral versions of the collective history that account for and justify the continued existence of a Muslim population in post-Partition Punjab. Keywords: collective memory, Malerkotla, dargah, memory sites, Partition, secularism, hagio graphy Introduction Talking with Ahmad, a descendent of the 15th century Sufi saint who founded Malerkotla, the only Muslim majority town in Indian Punjab, I was struck by his vast repertoire of stories, anecdotes, information, and his authoritative demeanor.1 His knowledge of Haider Shaykh (the 1) Names of all interview subjects have been changed. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156852711X562353 376 A. Bigelow / Numen 58 (2011) 375-403 saint) and the town were not grounded in books or other public records, but were passed down to him by his elders, particularly his father and his teacher, an elderly hāfị ẓ (one who has memorized the Qurʾān).2 In Ahmad’s estimation the traditions of the saints in Malerkotla that have been handed down from generations past have solidified the town’s shared religious culture and secured it from internal and external threats to its much-vaunted interreligious harmony, especially the peace during the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. He attributed this peace to the many saints interred in the area: “The main thing is the blessing of the buzurgs (saints). On all four sides there are buzurgs and buzurgs here. All around the boundary of Malerkotla there are buzurgs. It is only through their blessing that all Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs are one” ( January 28, 2001). Furthermore, Ahmad argued that the physical spaces of the saints’ tombs, called dargahs, are interactive nodes that facilitate positive interreligious interactions and relations: “The love between people is so strong that they never thought that they were Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs. At the shrines of the buzurgs people exchange love (aapas me muhabbat bante) with each other.” In these statements Ahmad forged conceptual links between the memories of the founding saint, the town’s communal harmony, the physical space of the shrines, and the interactive choreography taking place there. In so doing, he illustrated how collective memory in Malerkotla operates to produce a collective identity based on inclusiveness and interreligious peace. Ahmad summed up his sense of historical truth after telling a story about the 15th century saintly founder, saying “At that time writers were very few, nothing was written, only things were heard from generation to generation, but they are real” (August 2, 2001). For Ahmad the “reality” of the past is known through storied local traditions, giving it authority in the present. Consciously or unconsciously, he also iden- tified what Jan Assmann termsmemory sites (the dargahs, stories of the 2) Steeped in his ancestors’ lore, Ahmad is an excellent example of what Dell Hymes terms a competent communicator, one who is not only capable of preserving and repeat- ing cultural information, but also of transmitting and interpreting it (Hymes 1981:79– 86). In Hymes’ theory of narrative performance, competent communicators have the inclination, ability, and authority to represent a communicative behavior in a particular context. Other qualities of the competent communication are that it be interpret- able, reportable, and repeatable. .

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