India Needs More Of Their Kind: The Seers Of Indic Islam 

In May 2016, the Narendra Modi government hosted an event that could be a welcome precedent for other seminars around the globe—the World Sufi Conference at New Delhi. In his inaugural speech at the event, the Prime Minister dealt at length about the diversity that exists in Islamic traditions and spoke of the Sufi movement as the light of hope for a world that increasingly sees Islam and terrorism as synonymous.

The Sufi tradition in India has two faces. It entered India with the Islamic conquests. It was the famous Sufi Shaykh Alf Sani Ahmad Sirhindi, who vehemently opposed jizya taxation on Hindus.

However, Eaton, in his Sufis of Bijapur points out that in the traditional hagiographic portrayal of early Sufis in the Deccan, they emerge as 'militant champions of Islam', who ‘usually emerge waging jihad, slaying countless infidels against overwhelming odds'.

However, there is also another tradition of Indic Islam which can be considered Sufi and which has absorbed into it the Hindu value system, and has jettisoned monocultural expansionism.

The mystic hymns of Kunangudi Mastan Sahib (1792 – 1838), in Tamil Nadu for example, show a strong influence of a Hindu mystic who preceded him – Dayumanavar (1705-1742). The works of both speak of a unitary mystic experience and combines it with a deep sense of devotion. Kunangudi Mastan freely employs Hindu spiritual terminology as he sings of Nandi, Shivam and Shakti. In the modern Saudi-funded Islamist propaganda, Kunangudi Mastan is singled out for attack. The Hindu dimensions in his poetry, are negated and it is argued that they are only superficial and symbolic. That the seer employed mystic symbolism not just as a poetic technique but also a tool for his sadhana is often forgotten.

The tradition of Indic Islamic seers in South India continues well into 20th century and has influenced the spiritual landscape of all communities.

Mohamed Abdul Katheer (1891-1959), also known as Meghanand Baba, whose dargah is in Keezhkarai in Ramanathapuram district, is a famous seer whose contribution to Tamil mystic literature is important. Unfortunately, his works have not been studied or popularised in public psyche beyond the limited circle of spiritual seekers. His poetry (Advaita Geetham) is very similar to that of Bhagwan Ramana (1879-1950). Though both were contemporaries they never met and a mutual influence can be rejected. Yet, the similarity of the verses validate for a non-spiritual person the genuineness and the ‘oneness’ of the mystic experience.

Another name in this list is that of Paranjothi Mahan (1900-1981), who is said to be an important initiator of modern yoga practices in Tamil Nadu through Vedathri Maharishi (1911-2006).

Shatavadhani Seyku Thampi Pavalar (1867-1950) was a prodigal poet. Born in Kanyakumari district, he had the extraordinary capacity of simultaneously doing hundred acts of conscious cognition. On 10 March 1907, he underwent a rigorous test of all these acts before an expert panel at Pachaiyappa College in Chennai. After being subjected to a strenuous examination by subject experts from a variety of fields in which the human capacity for creativity, concentration and memory was stretched to its extremes, he was conferred the title of Shatavadhani.

He was also a staunch nationalist and a pious Gandhian who campaigned against the secessionist forces which were aligned with the British Raj in Tamil Nadu. He was also a mystic and based his performances of the avadhana on a deep sense of spirituality. His biographer records that a European scholar who witnessed his performance in Madras remarked that such deeds defied the conception of mind formulated by Western psychologists. Unfortunately the name of that European is lost in history. Apart from his outpouring of Tamil verses on Islamic themes, he also sang of Saraswati and Krishna. There is also a song with a verse which he explained as simultaneously dedicated to Ganesa, Skanda (Muruga), Shiva, Vishnu and Allah.

The identification of these Sufi traditions and reviving them is necessary in the present day, particularly in South India, where aided by the Dravidian movement, leftist intellectuals and Tamil secessionist movements, a Saudi-sponsored Salafism is destroying these Indic strands of Islam.

Even in north India, right at the heart of the Kashmir conflict, it has been documented that the power of Indic Sufi Islam has been a real challenge to the Pakistan-sponsored jihad. Writer Fariba Nawa writing for 'Foreign Affairs' records the following event.

'Nasruddin' was an America-born Afghan boy who grew up as a 'typical American teenager'. He became an atheist after his parents died in a car accident. But sometime in the 1990s he slowly became radicalised while living in Houston, Texas. The strain of Islam he acquired was Salafism - 'the dominant form of Islam being preached in U.S. mosques, due in large part to funding from Saudi Arabia'. Once he had become radicalised enough, Fawa writes that Nasruddin 'was soon introduced to a recruiter for Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based Islamist militia fighting against India in Kashmir'. He was given taped lectures and when he was 18 he 'flew to Pakistan and completed intense physical and weapons training before crossing over to Indian Kashmir, ready to become a martyr'.

And then the unexpected happened. 'After four months in the freezing temperatures of the Himalayas, Nasruddin met a mystic, a Sufi sheikh from the United States, who told the impressionable young man that the fighting in Kashmir wasn’t jihad.'

Slowly he started questioning his Salafist conditioning even as he was being attracted to join the Taliban. The encounter with the Sufi mystic helped. 'Nasruddin' returned back to United States where was rejected by the Salafists. After 9/11, he was being monitored by security agencies even as he himself had turned inwards. He started reading the holy texts of all religions and realised that he was not alone. There were other Salafists and even former jihadists who were abandoning hardline clerics, talking about mysticism, and praying at mosques that practiced a different sort of Islam, Sufism. (Fariba Nawa, 'American Sufi: From Texas to the Taliban, and Back' Foreign Affairs, October 12, 2016)

Given the great contribution that Indic Islam has made consistently and is still making for the organic unity of India, it is essential that India preserves and nurtures this heritage and creates a space for their continual growth. Hopefully, one day, the model of Indic Islam will become the model of a pluralist dynamic Islam on a pluralist planet where diverse spiritual traditions can live with mutual respect and harmony.