Secularism Sufiyana Style

Author: Satiricus
Publication: The Organiser
Date: November 26, 2000

It is time for Swadeshi freaks from Sarsanghchalak Sudarshan to swayamsevak Satiricus to hang their ignorant heads in shame.  The day the Sarsanghchalak made his call for a Swadeshi Church, the crass communalism of the rabid RSS was revealed to a shocked, secular world.  True, his simultaneous call to Indian Muslims is, at least for the time being, limited to urging them to recognise and accept their Hindu ancestry.  But who can tell what a saffron Swadeshi monger would do next? Today he has asked for a virtually Swadeshi Christianity-tomorrow he might even ask for Swadeshi Islam.  And that is precisely where Satiricus feels mortified.  For it has been pointedly pointed out that such a call, were the RSS to give it, would be just strident stupidity, as "Swadeshi Islam has existed here for centuries".  In her 'faith'-ful newspaper column Renuka Narayanan, learned lady and prominent practitioner of soul-searching secularism, writes, "With all the noise about a Swadeshi Church, has anyone ever appreciated that a swadeshi Islam has already existed in Hind for Centuries?" See? Sudarshan never appreciated this about Hind, nor did Satiricus.  By the way, why "Hind"? Of course Satiricus knows that calling Hindustan Hindusthan would be the height (or is it the depth?) of communal folly, but why not plain and simple Bharat? Oh well, Bharat is a Sanskrit name and so cannot escape a tinge of communalism, while Hind, which the Arabs have been calling our country all along, is safely secular.  In fact it is so secular and therefore so safe, that the main heading of this particular precious piece by Narayanan is "Black day for Hind", referring to the recent 'black day' bandh in Kashmir.  In it she waxes eloquent about Hazrat Nizamudin, Delhi's Sufi saint of seven centuries ago, and quotes a book titled A History of Sufism in India to show that for this Sufi, Islam was "a highly ethical code".  Well, now, Satiricus sees that our Lady of the Secular Church is delighted with this description of Islam, for if Islam is a highly ethical code it automatically follows that secularism is a highly ethical code.  Still, with due apologies to her, the questioning cuss in this ignoramus cannot help raising a few irreverent doubts.  For instance, is she talking about Sufism when she confidently assures all and sundry that Swadeshi Islam has existed in India that is Bharat that is Hind for centuries? True, India has a history of Sufi Islam, but is not this Indian variety of Islam now history? Would Renuka recognise a Sufi if she met one in the street? Satiricus thinks not, because Satiricus does not see a single Sufi strolling down a street in Srinagar.  On the other hand would she permit Satiricus to refer her to another book, according to which Indian Islam, which she so endearingly calls Swadeshi Islam, is the origin of Islamic terrorism? In this book, titled The Abyss-Pakistan after the Coup as many as a dozen Pakistani scholars describe the Pakistani factories of fanatics called madarsas, and write, "The dragon seeds sown in 2500 madarsas produced a crop of 225000 fanatics ready to kill and die for their faith when ordered to do so by their religious leaders." According to them the syllabus for this madarsas originated in India, in Deoband.  They actually say, for the hardware of terrorism the software is from Deoband.  According to these Pakistani scholars, the Deobandis have gained ascendancy over all others (page 25, 96-99); they want even the Shias to be declared heretics and physically exterminated, the Taliban movement is inspired by Deobandi Islam (p.  94), and finally it is Deobandi militias that are waging jehad in Kashmir (p.  94).  So what does Madam Narayanan think of this Indian Islam? In particular, what does she think of the fact that unlike Sufi Islam Deobandi Islam is not history but present and active in our Swadesh from Kashmir to Coimbatore? There is another funny thing that this hopeless Hindu and stupid swayamsevak cannot understand, but which the erudite Renuka could kindly explain to him - if Swadeshi Islam has existed in India that is Hind for a number of centuries, how come for the same number of centuries the Swadeshi followers of Islam, the Indian Muslims, have been actually called Hindus by the Arabs, the original Muslims? A book titled Marauvi Mouroom, published in Lucknow in 1867, has a verse that goes- "Char Hindu daraike masjid khand, bahade tau taraike vo sajid shudand," meaning, "four Hindus went to pray at the Kaaba in Mecca".  Surely Hindu Narayanan, but for all her secularism, wouldn't go to Mecca and pray at the Kaaba, would she? Unless, of course, she was an Indian Muslim called a Hindu.  Unfortunately Renuka's religious status is rather enigmatic for Satiricus.  For, while referring to Kashmir she says it was once "so totally Sufi-oriented", and also it was once "a nest of Sanskrit singing birds like Kalhan and Bilhan".  Well, now, if she can recall Sanskrit song-birds of Kashmir like Kalhan why cant' she recall Hindu kings of Kashmir like Lalitaditya? Why can't she recall Sharada Peeth, one of the holiest Hindu shrines? And if she can recall that Kashmir was once 'so totally' a land of Sufism, why cant' she recall that thousands of years before Sufism was on the scene Kashmir was so totally a land of Hinduism that it was the birthplace of a substantial segment of Hindu philosophy? In his best-selling book The Triadic Heart of Shiva Dr Paul Muller, one of America's leading theologians, has described "Kashmir Shavism" as a major school of Hindu philosophy on par with Vedanta.  And going even beyond that, research has found that some of the 'Agamas', the foundations of Hinduism, were composed in Kashmir.  What would that mean? It would mean that if Kashmir was once Sufi-oriented, it was more than once not only oriented towards but rooted in Hinduism.  But of course all this is heresy for a Sufi secularist who distinguishes between Hindu and Hindu.  She talks about 'Kashmiriyat', but has not one word for Bharatiyata, let alone Hindu nationalism.  Why? Because that is the stuff of which scholarship is made-scholarship needed for a weekly column for a monthly cheque.
 

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