Pavan K. Varma | As Bihar Heads For Polls, Honour Syncretic Culture

On Muharram this year in Bihar, there was, as elections approach, predictable religious violence between Hindus and Muslims. In fact, anywhere in India now, every joyous religious festival is increasingly prone to discord and acrimony.

The Turkic invasion of India in the 12th century was, as global historian Will Durant said, “one of the bloodiest chapters in world history”, with destruction of Hindu temples, proselytisation, and plunder. The facts of history cannot be glossed over. But over the centuries, a syncretic Ganga-Jamuni culture has evolved in India, where Hindus and Muslims — notwithstanding the violence of Partition and occasional episodes of communal disharmony — learnt to coexist with each other and develop a symbiotic relationship of mutual interdependence and cordiality.

For instance, do people know that even today in Remanda, a village in Odisha, a Muslim family leads the annual Hindu festival of the Rath Yatra? Or, that during his trip to the Delhi suburb Mehrauli as part of the Phoolwalon Ki Sair, Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal king, always first paid obeisance at the Jog Maya temple there, before going to the mazaar of Sufi saint Khwaja Bakhtiyar Kaki? Or that, for the millions of Hindus who annually trek to the Ayyappa temple in Kerala’s Sabarimalai hills, the dargah of a Muslim saint on the way is a sacred site?

In Lucknow, large numbers of Muslims work in the chikan/zardozi industry owned by Hindu traders. In nearby Sitapur and Mirzapur, Hindus and Muslim are partners in the lucrative carpet industry. In Varanasi, Muslims weave the exquisite Banarasi sarees, the Hindus finance the trade. During Ganesh Chaturthi in Maharashtra, many Muslim artisans craft Ganesh idols; in Thrissur (Kerala), during the Pooram festival at the Vadakkunnathan temple, Muslims and Christians help with logistics; in West Bengal, during Durga Puja, Muslim artistes also create the pandals and idols.

As a child, I remember how Hindus and Muslims joyfully participated in each other’s festivals, with Muslim families preparing gujiyas and thandai during Holi, and Hindu neighbours enjoying sevaiyan and biryani on Eid. In Bengal and parts of Bihar, Hindu artisans craft taazias for Muharram processions. In Bihar, within a 100 km radius of Patna, are located the most important sites of India’s major religions: Pawapuri, where Mahavira took his mahanirvana, for Jains; Bodhgaya, the prime destination for Buddhists; Gaya, where devout Hindus pray for their ancestors; Bihar Sharif, second only to Ajmer Sharif for Muslims; and Patna Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Govind, for Sikhs. In Rajasthan’s Tonk district — a former princely state founded by a Pathan ruler — Hindus and Muslims have for generations performed qawwalis and bhajans together at local Sufi shrines.

It is a fact that cynical politicians use ordinary Indians as puppets to reinforce religion-based vote banks. People suffer, politicians prosper. Self-styled evangelists — Hindus and Muslims — are used to whip up communal hatred. For such Hindus, Adi Shankaracharya (8th century) bluntly said: “Jatilo mundi lunchitakeshaha kashayambarabahukrtavesh, pashyannapi ca na pashyati mudho udaranimitto bahukrtaveshah: Many are those who mat their locks, shave their heads, wear robes of ochre, but do this only for their stomachs (that is, self-interest).”

The great intermingling of cultures was perhaps most poetically expressed through the Bhakti and Sufi movements. These were not mere religious reformations, but civilisational conversations — between the heart and the divine, bypassing orthodoxies and embracing universality. For centuries, Muslim Sufis, one of the most famous of whom was Amir Khusro, have sung devotional songs on Hindu themes. A Hindu Brahmin family is the hereditary custodian of the Haji Malang shrine in Mumbai. Hindu pilgrims throng the tomb of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer.

Kabir (15th century), among the most eclectic voices of the Bhakti movement, evocatively said: “Poorabi disa Hari ka basa, pacchim Allah mukama; dil ki khoj dile bheetar, ihan Ram Rahimana: In the east is Hari, in the west is Allah; look within your heart, here reside both Ram and Rahim.” He, therefore, fearlessly proclaimed: “Kabir is the child of Allah and of Ram: He is my Guru, He is my Pir.” In the 18th century, Urdu legend Mir Taqi Mir could declare: “Mir ke din-o-mazhab ko ab poochate kya ho unne tau, kashka khencha dair main baitha kabka tarq Islam kiya: What do you ask of Mir’s religious beliefs? For long now, he has put on the sacred tilak, sat at the temple, and severed his relationship with Islam.” Ghalib (18th century), openly poked fun at narrow-minded Islamic clerics: “Kahan maikhane ka darwza Ghalib aur kahan vaayiz, Bas itna jante hain kal wo jata tha jab hum nikle: The tavern’s door, and the cleric, are poles apart; But all I know is that he was entering when I was ready to depart.”

What has happened to this ancient land, that aspires to become the Vishwaguru, but is unable to demolish the walls of bigotry within its own people? People of all religious denominations are spread across the country. Muslims, which are the largest minority, account for some 30 per cent of the population of West Bengal and Assam, and one-fourth of Kerala, apart from a significant proportion in most states. Hindus and Muslims live cheek by jowl in lakhs of villages, and enduring hostility between them is a prescription of endemic instability. That is why, in a letter to chief ministers in 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru said that religious coexistence is not an option but a compulsion for India. Indeed, one of our calling cards in this troubled world is that India is one country where for centuries people of all faiths have lived together as an intrinsic part of the national fabric.

But Machiavellian politicians and illiterate religious bigots have tried to besmirch this calling card, especially when elections approach, because political parties wish to cash in on the dividends of communal vote banks. Indians should tell politicians who try to divide them on religion what Sahir Ludhianvi said in the 1959 film Dhool Ka Phool: “Tu Hindu banega na Mussalman banega, insaan ki aulad hai insaan banega: You will neither become only a Hindu or a Muslim; you are born a human being, and will be a humane being.”