Nurturing Abstractions of the Nation in Religio-Cultural Identity Assertions and Spaces of Generosity in Sufi Darghas of Karnataka
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International Journal of Interreligious and Intercultural Studies (IJIIS) ISSN: 2654-2706, Volume I, Number 1, October 2018 NURTURING ABSTRACTIONS OF THE NATION IN RELIGIO-CULTURAL IDENTITY ASSERTIONS AND SPACES OF GENEROSITY IN SUFI DARGHAS OF KARNATAKA Amitha Santiago Bishop Cotton Women’s Christian College, Bangalore <[email protected]> ‘But why do nations celebrate their hoariness, not their astonishing youth?’ Benedict Anderson Socio-political reality is often into effect communities that nurture brought into being through performative binarizing abstractions such as what it acts. To say that religio-cultural identity is to be ‘Indian’, the idea of who is a stakes its claim on the socio-political ‘Hindu’ and the notion of nationalism through performative utterances is to that elects an umbilical connect to the also state that socio-political realities Hindu Vedic lineage. appear as effects of articulated ideology. It is to understand the processes It has been well acknowledged that that are involved in the crafting of socio-political ideology presents itself these extra political truths of being and as if it were offering some ‘deeper, extra becoming, to examine whether these political truths’ of being and becoming truths are in fact extra political, and that are constant. This brings forth a to come to an understanding of how believing community, which functions the believing communities which are as a stabilizing occurrence for these effected preserve an abstraction of ‘deeper, extra political truths’ of being pure national identity that this study and becoming. Assertions of essential engages shared sacred spaces that have religio-cultural identity constitute one been claimed by Hindu right-wing such discursive practice that brings assertionists in India. In such an effort, 85 Nurturing Abstractions of the Nation in Religio-Cultural Identity Assertions and Spaces of Generosity in Su› Darghas of Karnataka the juxtaposition-ality of these shared identity is made possible by a return to sacred spaces of grace that harbor a and recovery of pre colonial narratives substratum of generosity and sharing, involving events and sites that are marks the essentializing procedures sought out as evidence to demonstrate of right wingers and their aggressive the ‘truth’ of these pure identities. These mining for a pure Indianness. Except identities are then exhibited as attaining that the ground they mine is amorphous. feasible political possibilities. Political Located as it is within the terrain because the very procedure of return is of religio-cultural identity studies, an endeavor to create an epistemology this study inevitably focuses on the of everything that revolves around contractual laboring of the historical the category of ‘national’. And this and the political in India. This alliance epistemological project typically points to processes that sustain the extends an Orientalist procedure that articulatory systems that liaison with invests in the essentializing rigors of identity politics. There is in India, sel›ng and othering. These mutually reminiscent of decolonization times, a enabling processes project a political deafening clamor to describe national possibility of attaining hegemonic identity in terms of a pure, religio- dominance in the socio-political arena, cultural essence that is to deliver a alias, the realm of national politics. historically constituted national identity. It is within this range of In the context of the growing polemic consequential relationships that the on the issue of who is a nationalist and Darghas of Karnataka surface as what comprises the national in India, having an inbuilt ‘juxstaposition- this study attempts to theorize the ality’ vis-à-vis the narratives of ways in which the idea of a nation and purist claim and assertions of pure nationalism has relied on a return to religio-cultural essence propelling the pre-colonial past in order to present de›nitions of nationalist and nation. answers to questions surrounding the The pre colonial that is accessed by notion of Indianness, what constitutes pure identity assertionists is accessed national identity and how religious using a discourse of exclusion, in identity attaches to these questions. that, it frames identity assertions on Political possibilities emerge, the basis of evidence that is sifted when speci›c religio-cultural histories and which is fenced in within a pre- are traced to fiesh out the notion of a colonial temporality. The corpus of united, homogenous nation/national evidence that assertionists tap prompts identity. As stated earlier, often enough, the exclusionary protocol upon which the assertion of pure religio-cultural their identity is imagined as having essences as constituting national national imperatives. Therefore, the 86 Amitha Santiago pre-colonial evidence that is presented exists alongside the cave. The Hindu as the building material for purist self right wing in India commonly known assertions, reveals excluded evidence of as the Sangh Parivar has disrupted this a large terrain of hybridities, ambivalent coexistence of Hindu-Muslim religious identities and shared sacred spaces. One practices consistently leading to the such terrain is the shared spaces of the communalization of the site. One of the Darghas of Karnataka. Within these performatives that has brought about a spaces, land, practices, pilgrimages, believing community of Hindus in the devotion and deities unfold within a nearby town of Chikmagalur at the base resourceful generosity that de›es the of the Baba Budan hills is the festival vulgar binaries of purist sel›ng and of Dattatreya Jayanti or the birthday of othering. Swami Dattatreya that has never been One of the most disputed sacred celebrated by Hindus before the Sangh sites in Karnataka’s recent history is that Parivar took to communalizing the of Baba Budan Giri Swami Dattatreya region. Peeta, in Chikamagalur district. It Sudha Sitaraman in her working has attained the dubious status of a paper on the Baba Budan Giri Dargha disputed site in recent years due to the attributes the signi›cance of the site for ideological utterances of the Hindu both Muslims as Hindus to the fact that right that persist in presenting the site “Dada Hayath Qalandar, the founder of as stolen from Hindus by Muslim the Qalandar order is believed to be one rulers. It has been reconstructed in of the three-and-half Qalandar masters the popular imagination as belonging who visited South Asia, the other two originally to worshippers of the Hindu being Lal Shahbaz Qalandar of Sehwan deity Dattatreya. This claim attempts to (Sind) and Bu Ali Shah Qalandar of erase the history of Baba Budan Swamy Panipat (Harayana).” Sitaraman goes on Dattatreya Peeta as it has been known to state that: for centuries in Chikmagalur district of Muslims as well as many non- Karnataka. Muslims participate in some form of Atop a scenic hill range the saint worship, a model that is centered khanqah or hospice of Dada Hayath on the belief that the divine blessing Qalander is a sacred site of pilgrimage. of the saint does not disappear after The devotees of both Hindu and Muslim death but is transferred to the chillah/ religions have regularly offered prayers dargah and the living descendants of the at both the cave that Baba Budan silsila (spiritual pedigree). For Muslims is known to have meditated in and saint worship is an integral part of their broken coconuts and conducted pujas orthodoxy, which holds that the barakat to Swami Dattatreya at the temple that (spiritual blessing) of the saint was 87 Nurturing Abstractions of the Nation in Religio-Cultural Identity Assertions and Spaces of Generosity in Su› Darghas of Karnataka transferred to his living descendants and usually follow the ful›llment of a vow is concentrated in certain individuals, taken by the devotee. the custodians of the shrines, who are The celebration of Urs at Baba also the representatives of the saint on Budan Giri Dargha has representatives earth, the sajjadah nashins. belonging to the Qalandari and fuqara The practice of wearing amulets of four orders who hold Dada Hayat and curing diseases remain at the centre in high esteem. On the morning of of ritual and religious mediations of the ›rst day of Urs fuqara from these many Darghas. The power of their orders parade through the streets of spirituality, known as barakat, and their Chikmagalur with the green fiag that ardent devotion to God it is believed is to be hoisted at the Dargha. They gave Su› saints powers to perform walk 32 kilometeres up to the point miracles. Karamat, which refers to the of Dada Hayat’s hospice where the miracles displayed by the ‘friends of sajjadah nashin formally heads the God’ or auliya made up an integral part procession leading the gathering to the of the faith practices of Su›s. Sitaraman shrine‘s entrance to hoist the fiag. Three notes that devotees who visit the Dargha fiags are hoisted- one, at the hospice, often offer supplications and prayers a second at the mazar of Sayyed Shah with regard to ‘the curing of diseases, Jamaluddin Maghribi and a third at the levitation, and prayer for rain, bountiful entrance of the cave. This done du’a or crops, controlling of demons, and the prayer is offered. A procession is then presence of the saint in more than one taken bare foot to Attigunde, a village, place simultaneously.’ a little more than eight kilometers away, Sitaraman reports in her study of where a sacred pot of sandalwood paste the Baba Budan Giri Dargha, that on wrapped in a green cloth is carried any ordinary day, pilgrims and devotees by a mendicant on his head, while visiting the Dargha routinely walk to another accompanies him, holding a the natural spring at Manikyadhara. The richly embroidered protective umbrella ritualistic bathing involves discarding to shade him. The procession steps an item of their clothing in a symbolic out of the house, with the mendicants gesture of getting rid of the unclean and singing and playing their tambourines, impure and retaining the pure within and then returns to the cave of Dada the self.