Two Gifts from Ivan Aguéli: Sufi, Anarchist, Theosophist, Painter

Nov

10

2024

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From Bitter Winter, A magazine on religious liberty and human rights, by Massimo Introvigne

A museum in Sala and a book on his magazine “Il Convito” help understanding the different aspects of the extraordinary career of the Swedish artist.

This year, I received two gifts from a character I had been interested in for decades, Swedish painter Ivan Aguéli (1869–1917). First, I was finally able to visit the Aguéli Museum in his birthplace, Sala, Sweden. Sala is located some 130 kilometers from Stockholm, and the museum is open only four days per week. It is a small museum but still essential for understanding Aguéli as an artist. 

In fact, there is a different perception of Aguéli in Sweden and elsewhere. In Sweden, he is primarily known as a painter, and one who eludes classification in a specific current, and honored as such. Abroad, his artistic production is less known than his role in the history of the spread of Sufism in the West, esotericism, and anarchism. In fact, a closer look at the Egyptian landscapes may open a window on Aguéli’s spirituality. But you have to look at them twice.

Massimo Introvigne visiting the Aguéli Museum in Sala, August 17, 2024.

The second gift came by the mail. It was the book by Paul-André Claudel “Un journal « italo-islamique » à la veille de la Première Guerre mondiale : Il Convito / النادي [al-Nâdî] (Le Caire, 1904-1912)” (Alexandria: Centre d’Études Alexandrines, 2022). The book is a jewel and confirms that there is no substitute for the printed paper. The elegant composition of text and illustrations would never be the same on Kindle. 

The museum in Sala introduces the artist but does not reveal the important role of Aguéli as a cultural strategist who tried to create a friendship between a part of the Western culture and Islam. This is the subject matter of Claudel’s book, organized around the magazine “Il Convito,” published in Italian, Arabic, and sometimes Ottoman Turkish in Cairo between 1904 and 1907, with two further issues in 1910 and 1912 by Aguéli and Italian medical doctor, scholar, and intelligence agent Enrico Insabato (1878–1963). 

Claudel’s tour de force succeeds in showing the idiosyncratic nature of the magazine. There is little doubt that Insabato, under his hat (one of many, though) as an Italian spy, produced the magazine to persuade Muslims that, unlike Britain and France, the secular Italy of the early 20th century was a friend of Islam. Engaged in an ideological and political conflict with the Vatican, Italy did not support Catholic or Protestant missionaries either.

The cover of Claudel’s book.

However, the continuous dialogue and cooperation between Insabato and Aguéli produced a magazine unlike the many others published by Europeans in Egypt. The latter often praised reformist and modernized Islam. On the contrary, Aguéli was a Sufi and “Il Convito” praised a traditional Islam resisting modernization and criticized the reformists. 

It also maintained that traditional Islam needed a caliphate, which led the magazine to a pro-Ottoman position that finally led to its undoing. When Italy attacked the Ottoman Empire in 1911 to add Libya to its colonies the contradiction between the pro-Italian and pro-Turkish attitudes of “Il Convito” exploded. The Young Turks revolution of 1908 had already changed a landscape where Türkiye could be perceived as the representative of a traditional Islam opposing modernity.

Aguéli (standing, left) and Insabato (standing, center) with others in Cairo, circa 1904.

Of course, Aguéli the Muslim convert and Sufi is well-known as the man who introduced René Guénon (1886–1951) to Sufism, although on how extensively the latter was influenced by the Swedish painter (perhaps more than he cared to admit) opinions differ.

Claudel’s book also offers some curious clues about Aguéli’s relationships with esoteric milieus. Given what “Il Convito” was and its connections with the Italian intelligence, it may look strange to find there Theosophical references and an obituary of Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907), co-founder of the Theosophical Society. But the references are less strange if we consider that Aguéli was a member of the Theosophical Society himself. 

Obituary of Colonel Olcott in the June 1907 issue of “Il Convito” (from Claudel’s book).

As many in Swedish esoteric milieus and beyond, he was also influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Claudel adds some interesting details, including the close relationship in Cairo between Aguéli and Eugène Dupré (1882–1944), in fact so close that they shared for a while the same apartment. Dupré co-founded the Egyptian branch of the Martinist Order and another esoteric society, the Ordre du Lys et de l’Aigle. Claudel also mentions Dupré’s claim that Aguéli was “a very close friend” of Charles Grolleau (1867–1940), another Martinist and disciple of Papus (Gérard Encausse, 1865–1916). Grolleau later converted to Catholicism and, via an introduction by Guénon, participated in the initiatives in Paray-le-Monial of iconographer Louis Charbonneau-Lassay (1871–1946) promoting the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Here, Claudel’s book needs to be read together with another essential text on Aguéli I already reviewed in “Bitter Winter”: “Anarchist, Artist, Sufi: The Politics, Painting, and Esotericism of Ivan Aguéli” (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), a collection of fourteen essays and of some key texts by Aguéli, edited by Mark Sedgwick. The collection includes decisive chapters by Per Faxneld on Aguéli and esotericism and by Sedgwick himself on the Swedish painter and Guénon (and a contribution by Claudel too).

Ivan Aguéli, “Egyptian Landscape,” circa 1895. Aguéli Museum, Sala.

The most puzzling question is how Aguéli could have been at the same time a Muslim Sufi, a member or associate of different Western esoteric organizations, and an anarchist. Insabato had been an anarchist too, but at least from a certain date on he was more a spy on anarchists circles on behalf of the Italian intelligence service. Claiming that Aguéli moved from anarchism to Sufism and esotericism would not solve the problem. He remained an anarchist, although in his later years a less active and outspoken one, until his mysterious death near Barcelona in 1917, hit by a train. 

Left, French police photograph of Aguéli taken by the inventor himself of the mugshots, Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914); right, Leda Rafanelli (credits).

In fact, Aguéli was not the only anarchist who claimed that anarchism was atheistic as it rejected the religions that sided with the rich and the powerful, such as 19th-century Christianity, but Islam was a religion of the oppressed and an entirely different matter. 

Here, a comparison may be proposed with Tuscan anarchist Leda Rafanelli (1880–1971). While many know her only as the lover of pre-Fascist Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), Rafanelli was at the same time an anarchist, a self-styled Muslim (if an idiosyncratic one), and a professional Tarot reader who cultivated a number of esoteric interests. Comparing her to Aguéli would do for another interesting book and would confirm that anarchy and esoteric spirituality were not necessarily incompatible.

BLASPHEMY

Pakistan ‘vigilantes’ behind rise in online blasphemy cases


By AFP
October 14, 2024

The families of young Pakistanis say their relatives were duped into sharing blasphemous content by strangers online

 - Copyright AFP Aamir QURESHI

Zain Zaman JANJUA

Aroosa Khan’s son was chatting on WhatsApp but suddenly found himself the target of “vigilante” investigators who accused him of having committed blasphemy online, a crime that carries the death penalty in Pakistan.

The 27-year-old is one in hundreds of young men standing trial in Pakistan courts accused of making blasphemous statements online or in WhatsApp groups, an offence for which arrests have exploded in recent years.

Many of the cases are being brought to trial by private “vigilante groups” led by lawyers and supported by volunteers who scour the internet for offenders, rights groups and police say.

The families of young Pakistanis, including doctors, engineers, lawyers, and accountants, say that their relatives were duped into sharing blasphemous content by strangers online before being arrested.

“Our lives have been turned upside down,” Khan told AFP, saying that her son, who has not been named for security reasons, had been tricked into sharing blasphemous content in the messaging app.

One local police report suggests that the vigilantes may be motivated by financial gains.

One such group was responsible for the conviction of 27 people who have been sentenced to life imprisonment or the death penalty over the past three years.

Blasphemy is an incendiary charge in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even unsubstantiated accusations can incite public outrage and lead to lynchings.

While they date back to colonial times, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were ramped up in the 1980s when dictator Zia ul-Haq campaigned to “Islamicise” society.

AFP has attended multiple court hearings in the capital Islamabad, where young men are being prosecuted by private vigilante groups and the FIA for blasphemous online content.

Among them is Aroosa’s son — who had joined a WhatsApp group for job-seekers and was contacted by a woman.

She sent him an image of women with Quranic verses printed on their bodies, his mother said, adding that the contact then “denied having sent it and asked Ahmed to send it back to her to understand what he was talking about”.

He was later arrested and prosecuted by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).



– ‘Noble cause’ –



The most active private investigation group is the Legal Commission on Blasphemy Pakistan (LCBP), which told AFP they are prosecuting more than 300 cases.

Sheraz Ahmad Farooqi, one of the private investigation group’s leaders, told AFP that more than a dozen volunteers track online blasphemy, believing that “God has chosen them for this noble cause”.

“We are not beheading anyone; we are following a legal course,” Farooqi told AFP outside a courtroom that heard 15 blasphemy cases, all filed by his group.

He said that most of the accused were addicted to pornography and were disrespecting revered Islamic figures by using their names and dubbing voices attributed to them over pornographic content.

He acknowledged that women were involved in tracking and arresting the men, but they were not members of his group.

Cases can drag through the courts for years, though death penalties are often commuted to life in prison on appeal at the Supreme Court and Pakistan has never executed anyone for blasphemy.

A special court, attended by AFP, was formed in September to expedite the dozens of pending cases.



– ‘Vested agenda’ –



The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) reported that multiple vigilante groups were working in a “dedicated manner” to “witch-hunt” people for online expression or to fabricate blasphemy evidence using social media with “vested agendas”.

“All such groups are formalised by self-declared defenders of majoritarian Islam,” the group said in a report published in 2023.

A 2024 report by police in Punjab province, the country’s most populous province, that was leaked to the media said that “a suspicious gang was trapping youth in blasphemy cases”.

“The Blasphemy Business” report was sent to the FIA with recommendations to launch a thorough inquiry to determine the source of the vigilante groups’ funding.

Two FIA officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that they had received the report but denied that their office was acting on the tips of vigilante groups.

The FIA did not respond to requests for official comment.

An official involved in prosecuting the cases told AFP outside the court: “Not a single person arrested was trapped by any manner. They committed the crime.”

“The law is very clear about it, and we have to enforce it as long as the law is there.”

Arafat Mazhar, the director of Alliance Against Blasphemy Politics, a group advocating against the misuse of blasphemy laws, told AFP that the alarming rise in cases was not because people “are suddenly more blasphemous”.

He said the rise in the use of messaging apps and social media and the ease of sharing and forwarding content was a significant factor.



– Shunned –



The accused struggle to find defence lawyers willing to represent them and the slightest accusation can turn an entire family into pariahs.

Nafeesa Ahmed, whose brother is accused of sharing blasphemous images on WhatsApp and whose names have also been changed, said her family was shunned by close relatives.

“There is a massive cost that families of accused are bearing. First of all, our security or lives are at risk,” she told AFP.

She said some of the families have sold thousands of dollars worth of houses and gold, given to brides on their wedding, to fight the cases.

Dozens of families which have formed a support group have protested in the capital calling for an independent commission to investigate the vigilante groups and their role in prosecuting Pakistanis for blasphemy.

“In this society, if someone commits a murder, he can survive because there are thousands of ways to come out of that but if someone is accused of blasphemy he cannot,” said Nafeesa.

“When it comes to blasphemy, the public has its own court and even family members will abandon you.”

SOCIETY: DEFYING THE MOB

Masood Lohar

Published October 13, 2024 
EOS/DAWN

PAKISTAN

Thousands turn up to demand justice for Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar in his hometown of Umerkot, Sindh on September 25, 2024 | Social Media


The swiftness with which the blasphemy allegation against Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar, a 36-year-old doctor at a government hospital in Sindh’s Umerkot district, spiralled into violent bloodlust, reflects the deadly intersection of religious extremism, personal vendettas and mob violence.

It did not matter that the alleged blasphemous remarks appeared on the doctor’s social media account, which he insisted had been hacked. The people wanted blood, and the police, it seems, were too willing to comply. A hardline cleric announced a bounty of five million rupees, while local law enforcement went into hyperdrive to apprehend the doctor.

OF MURDERERS AND SAVIOURS


The doctor was arrested by the Umerkot police from Karachi a day later, on September 18. He was killed a little after midnight on the same day, according to a high-level police report, “in a staged encounter” that took place in the jurisdiction of Sindhri police.

The local police in-charge, Sindhri Station House Officer (SHO) Niaz Khoso, claimed that the doctor was killed “unintentionally”, but the doctor’s family and rights group disputed the claim.

The day after the murder, the SHO, along with high-ranking police officials from Mirpurkhas and Umerkot, were seen in video clips uploaded on social media being feted as heroes by the same hardline cleric who had offered the reward for killing the doctor. The videos also show a local lawmaker, part of the Pakistan Peoples Party, congratulating the policemen.

The groundswell of support for Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar, who was murdered over blasphemy allegations, eloquently articulates Sindh’s culture of tolerance, rooted in its Sufi traditions…

In one of the videos, the now-suspended SHO can be heard saying that he wasn’t worthy of such a task, but was grateful to God for giving him the opportunity, while referring to Dr Kumbhar’s extrajudicial killing.

Meanwhile, the doctor’s family wasn’t allowed to perform funeral rites, and an enraged mob snatched the body and set it on fire. A brave Hindu youth, Premo Kohli, tried to protest and protect the body, but the mob attacked him as well. Despite that, he still retrieved the badly burnt body once the enraged mob had left.

The incident spread terror throughout Umerkot, the only district in Pakistan with a Hindu majority. There was palpable fear of a blasphemy accusation, like a sword dangling on their heads, and many felt that they could be ‘next.’

But what was truly worrisome was the emerging complicity of the police, who had played the role of the executioner. A week earlier, another blasphemy accused had been shot dead while in police custody in Quetta, with the cop hailed as a hero.

Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar



AN UNEQUIVOCAL RESPONSE

But unlike the reaction in Quetta, and in the majority of blasphemy cases elsewhere in the country, the public response in Sindh was altogether different.

It likely has as much to do with the brave act of the Hindu youth, who stopped the lynch mob from completely burning the body, as it does with Sindh’s long history of Sufi saints.

A week after the murder, on September 25, thousands of people from across Sindh flocked to Dr Kumbhar’s village to take part in his funeral, in an unequivocal response to right-wing bigotry. Manji Faqeer, a prominent folk artist, sang Sufi tunes at the grave as it was garlanded with petals.

This defiance is the product of the deeply ingrained culture of religious tolerance and interfaith harmony that Sindh has maintained over thousands of years. It dates back to poets and saints of the Sufi genre, such as Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, Sachal Sarmast and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, who are revered for their message of love, peace and harmony.

This is also reflected in numbers. According to a study by the Centre for Research and Security Studies, published in 2022, 89 people were killed in Pakistan for allegedly committing blasphemy between 1947 and 2021. There were roughly 1,500 accusations and cases during this period. Of those, 1,098 cases — more than 70 percent — were in Punjab. In the same period, Sindh reported 173 cases.

With their latest and most unequivocal response to blasphemy accusations, the people of Sindh have compelled the provincial government to take action. Since then, several high-ranking police officials have been booked in the case, along with the cleric who offered the reward for Dr Shahnawaz’s murder.

A HISTORY OF INJUSTICE

A similar pushback was witnessed in the case of Mashal Khan, who was murdered on the campus of a university in Mardan by a mob in 2017, but it tapered off with the accused acquitted.

Many other cases have followed a similar trajectory, with the blasphemy accused either murdered, going into exile or forced to rot in prison — with the recurring theme being that they are denied the right to fair trial.

It includes academic Junaid Hafeez, who was given the death penalty over social media posts. In 2014, a year after his arrest, his lawyer was gunned down in his office. Hafeez was given the death penalty in 2019 and remains on death row.

The case of 14-year-old Rimsha Tahir of Islamabad is equally chilling, after a court found that she was wrongly accused of blasphemy. The cleric accused of planting the evidence was, however, acquitted after witnesses retracted their statements.

Even in the case of the recent murder of the blasphemy accused at a police station in Quetta, the victim’s family has pardoned the policeman, meaning that he would get away scot-free.

EMBOLDENING FANATICISM

The frequency with which those who instigate blasphemy accusations and take part in mob violence escape justice has emboldened many others. This can be tracked by the increase in not just the number of reported blasphemy cases, but also the recent spate of attacks on places of worship belonging to Pakistan’s persecuted Ahmaddiya community.

The cases in which the perpetrators have to face justice is rare, such as that of the murder of Sri Lankan national Priyantha Kumara. Many in civil society believe that the death sentences handed out to the perpetrators were given due to the victim being a foreign national and the resultant outcry over it globally.

The systemic abuse of blasphemy laws has tarnished Pakistan’s image globally, and gives credence to the perception that there are strong strands of religious intolerance and extremism in the country.

The horrific spectacle of vigilante ‘justice’ inflicted by lynch mobs, captured in real-time on cell phones by individuals taking part in it — and often shared with pride on social media — speaks volumes about how deeply entrenched the exploitation of religious sentiments is in Pakistan.

The strange and chilling fact is that the blasphemy laws themselves are almost never enforced in these cases. The mobs circumvent the legal system to seize power and administer their own form of ‘justice.’

A CLARION CALL OF RESISTANCE

But as opposed to previous episodes of mob violence, where response to the violence and brutality has often been limited — if not completely muted — the response from the people of Sindh has been clear: they want to stand against such injustice.

The groundswell of support for the victim and his family, who continue to face harassment from religious hardliners, has provided a template for people in other parts of the country to take a stand against those preaching violence.

The swiftness of this organic response, which saw a province-wide mobilisation, and support from the rest of the country, is a reminder that the culture of resistance and tolerance remains strong in Sindh. It eloquently articulates the need to protect those accused of blasphemy so that they get a fair trial.

The state must now respond in a similar manner, by instituting legal reforms to ensure that such tragedies are not repeated.

The writer is a climate change expert and the founder of Clifton Urban Forest. He can be contacted at mlohar@gmail.com.
X: @masoodlohar

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 13th, 2024

SMOKERS’ CORNER: SAFEGUARDING SINDH

Nadeem F. Paracha 

Published October 6, 2024

Illustration by Abro

Last week, protests erupted in Umerkot, a city located at the edge of the Thar Desert in Sindh. The protests were held to condemn the extrajudicial killing of a doctor who had been accused of committing blasphemy. The Sindh government confirmed that the accused was killed by the cops who had arrested him. His dead body was then snatched by some ‘fanatics’ and set on fire.


This horrific incident shocked a large number of ethnic Sindhis, who are in majority in Sindh outside the province’s multi-ethnic capital, Karachi. For over two decades now, Sindhi media and Sindhi scholars have been airing concerns about the ‘radicalisation’ of Sindhis.

However, the Sindhi-majority regions of Sindh have not witnessed as many incidents of ‘religiously motivated violence’, as have the country’s other provinces — especially Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). For example, according to a 2022 report, out of a total of 1,415 cases of blasphemy registered by the police between 1947 and 2021, 1,098 were in Punjab and just 173 in Sindh.

Even though there were even fewer such cases registered in KP and Balochistan, these two provinces (and Punjab) have witnessed far more incidents of sectarian violence and Islamist militancy than Sindh. However, Sindh’s ethnically diverse capital Karachi is somewhat of an exception. Its streets witnessed sectarian warfare in the early 1980s and then, from the mid-2000s, the city became a hub for various Islamist groups to raise money for their militant activities, through extortion, kidnappings, robberies, etc.



Incidents of violence and killings in the name of religion in Sindh are the remnants of a state-sponsored project that is no longer in play — but also indicate that secular forces need to secure social spaces they have abdicated to extremists

In 1979, the state had started to roll out an ‘Islamisation’ project. Sindh, apart from its capital Karachi, somewhat succeeded in avoiding the impact of the project. Over the decades, though, the project began to mutate and started to be navigated from below. It eventually fell in the lap of multiple segments of the polity. These segments began to use the contents of the project for lucrative evangelical purposes, and to accumulate social power. In many cases, the contents were also used to bolster anti-state Islamist militancy.

Karachi, despite being impacted by the outcomes of the project, has remained largely secular due to its diverse ethnic make-up, massive size and cosmopolitan nature. The rest of the province, on the other hand, which has a Sindhi majority, has often frustrated many attempts to radicalise this majority. This is largely due to the inherently pluralistic and ‘moderate’ disposition of Sindhis.

In a 2021 study, the Karachi-based researcher Imtiaz Ali noted that “Sindhis have unwaveringly discarded those who have denied their traditions of tolerance.” According to Ali, “the progressive literature widely circulated in Sindh has played a huge role in developing resilient minds.” Ali adds that Sindh’s arts are influenced by Sindhi poetry that is largely feminine in nature and tightly tied to Sufism. This has shielded Sindhis from being overwhelmed by the outcomes of the ‘Islamisation’ project that has wreaked havoc in Punjab and KP.

Those concerned about the rising incidents of religious extremism among Sindhis are of the view that the incidents are the outcome of the resources and effort that the state once invested in its bid to ‘Islamise’ the Sindhis. These efforts were part of a larger scheme formulated by the state that wanted to ‘Islamise’ polities in Sindh, Balochistan and KP. The state believed that ‘political Islam’ and a vigorous propagation of Islamic rituals were effective tools to neutralise Baloch, Sindhi and Pakhtun sub-nationalisms.

The scheme was a success in KP, mainly due to Pakistan’s role in the anti-Soviet ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan, which was lavishly bankrolled by the US and Saudi Arabia. Some political commentators have suggested that, since Pakhtuns by nature are religious, the state was able to lure them towards more extreme expressions of the faith. These expressions were being propagated by the state and by its Islamist assets to romanticise the Afghan insurgency against Soviet troops. As a result, secular Pakhtun sub-nationalism lost a lot of traction in KP.





The scheme to radicalise the ethnic Baloch in this regard was not as successful, though. Baloch society can be conservative, but it is inherently secular. Most Baloch insurgencies before the recent one were driven by leftist ideas. However, Balochistan’s ‘Pakhtun belt’ was more receptive to the ways of the scheme.

Indeed, while the overriding purpose of the scheme was to neutralise Sindhi, Baloch and Pakhtun sub-nationalisms, one of the spillovers of the scheme and of the ‘Islamisation’ project was the eventual radicalisation of Punjab — the country’s largest and most powerful province. In fact, the scheme was often viewed by non-Punjabi sub-nationalists as the work of Punjabi elites. This is thus a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Another ironic outcome has been the recent alliance between secular Baloch separatists and militant Islamists in Balochistan.

However, the claim that such schemes are still being rolled out may not hold much truth anymore. With China firmly in the picture and anti-state Islamist militancy stalling Pakistan’s new economic and regional aspirations, the state is now trying to assert itself against the outcomes of its own schemes. It is clearly planning to completely overcome these, even if this requires an entirely reformed state structure in the areas of economics, judiciary and even within the military establishment. This is unfolding in plain sight.

This is why the increasing frequency of sporadic, religiously motivated violence in Sindh is probably a belated outcome of a scheme that is no longer in play. This violence in Sindh is more the handiwork of groups who, years ago, had entered through a window that was opened in Sindh by the scheme. Gradually, through madrassas [religious schools], these groups began to flex the contents of the now-defunct ‘Islamisation’ project. The groups are trying to accumulate social power and influence because they have found no mentionable electoral traction in the province.

The ‘left-liberal’ Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) remains Sindh’s largest political party. It has won four consecutive elections in Sindh, from 2008 onwards. Its vote bank has continued to swell. The sweeping PPP wins in Sindh have made sure that no Islamist groups or their allies are able to enter the Sindh assembly. Sindhi sub-nationalists, who were once at the forefront of maintaining the indigenous secular disposition of Sindhis, have disintegrated. In fact, recently they were seen riding on the coattails of conservative/anti-PPP Sindhi elites.

With Sindh electorally secured, the PPP will have to invest a lot more in the social areas that have been vacated by the Sindhi sub-nationalists and are being occupied by the radical Islamists. It’s time that the party secures these areas as well.

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 6th, 2024

NON-FICTION: A GLORIFIED HISTORY OF SINDH

Soonha Abro 

Published October 13, 2024

Sindhis in a Global Context: Past, Present, Future, and Origins (2600 BCE to…)
By Dr Maqbool A. Halepota
Halo Publishing International, Texas, USA
ISBN 978-1-63765-584-9
444pp.

Dr Maqbool A. Halepota’s Sindhis in a Global Context: Past, Present, Future, and Origins (2600 BCE to…) is an ambitious project that attempts to chronicle the rich history of Sindh from 2600 BCE up to present times. This includes the prehistoric period in Sindh, the Indus Civilisation and discovery of Mohenjo Daro, the Vedic age, the conquest of Sindh by the Arabs, the indigenous Sindhi rulers, and the British colonial period in the province.

He, then, provides an account of the post-1947 period, including Pakistan’s martial law periods, as well as some important political movements, such as the anti-One Unit movement and the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD). The author also touches upon the movements and spread of the global Sindhi diaspora and, briefly, the future outlook for Sindhis.


The book is a rather informative and somewhat enjoyable read. The portions on prehistoric Sindh, especially its origins, as well as the reigns of the Persians, the Greeks and the Arabs, were particularly interesting because these are not very familiar topics for Pakistani readers. In fact, it would be an excellent idea to include more of such material in school history textbooks, so our young children can begin learning about these portions of our local history at a young age, irrespective of whether they are Sindhis or not.

The process of rediscovering the history of the Indus Civilisation and the excavation of Mohenjo-Daro, in much greater detail than the tiny portions on the topic one read in history textbooks during school, proved to be an immensely enjoyable experience and informative. Readers interested in learning more about the various aspects of Sindh’s history can also benefit a lot from the excellent bibliography included at the end of the book.


An ambitious and informative book about the history, culture and politics of Sindh through the ages is not critically rigorous enough but could still serve as a starting point for future research

For a book of such a huge magnitude and potential, it regrettably contains some glaring editorial errors. It includes some unfortunate factual errors, which could have been easily verified through a simple Google search. For instance, the year of Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s death is incorrectly cited as 1947 on page 167, instead of 1948. Furthermore, the citations given throughout the text are rather disorganised. Another particularly bothersome aspect of the book is that it lacks an index, without which it is quite difficult to search for any specific information within the book. This will make it rather difficult to use for any scholars researching on Sindh.

Moreover, the book also lacks consistency in the transliterations of non-English words, mostly from Arabic and Sanskrit, and occasionally from Sindhi. This inconsistency adversely impacts one’s reading experience, because one is unaware of how to pronounce an unfamiliar word. The author has also neglected to provide a clarifying ‘Note on Transliterations’ that describes the correct pronunciations of all the non-English words used throughout the book. Such notes are considered an important convention in academic writing.

However, for a book directed at a more general readership, a suitable solution would be to do away entirely with transliterations and corresponding diacritic marks. It is acceptable to do so when writing an academic text directed at a more general audience, instead of a purely academic one. Collectively, these weaknesses spoil one’s general enjoyment of reading this most informative book. This issue could have been dealt with by the text undergoing a much more meticulous editorial process and guidance to the author.

Finally, this book claims to present the ‘glorious’ history of Sindh to the readers, especially directed at those hailing from Sindh. Indeed, the history of Sindh is immensely rich and intriguing for any history enthusiast. It is also true that Sindh has been plagued by numerous serious problems throughout its history, and continues to be affected by them even today. The painstaking research that went into writing this book is undeniable. However, these historical facts are presented with hyperboles, unsubstantiated claims and a complete lack of critique.

For example, the first half of the book, which tells the story of Sindh’s origins, its prehistoric, Vedic and Arab past, is written in an overly glorifying tone. Then, the tone switches to that of lamentation in the second half, mourning the various discriminations and oppressions meted out to Sindhis throughout history. This could have been avoided completely by conducting a critical but deeply sensitive evaluation of the historical facts and examining them for their impact on the currently existing issues affecting Sindh. This would have made this book a truly definitive history of Sindh. By doing so, it would have genuinely benefited numerous generations of readers, Sindhi or not, and academic researchers across the world.

Despite its weaknesses, Sindhis in a Global Context is undeniably an important text about Sindh’s history. It is not the definitive historical work on Sindh that it had hoped to become but, nonetheless, it does provide several points that could help formulate further research questions in the future.

Although the author intends it to be read primarily by Sindhi youth, it would be of greater interest to readers who are actually enthusiastic about history, as well as academic readers and scholars seeking further knowledge about the rich history, culture and politics of Sindh. It would be useful if the book were made more accessible to readers, especially to its targeted readership, by making it available at bookshops and libraries within Pakistan.

The reviewer is pursuing an MPhil in English literature.

Her research focuses on various South Asian literary traditions, including Anglophone literatures of South Asia, feminist literary criticism, resistance movements and resistance poetry, as well as Urdu and Sindhi literatures

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 13th, 2024

The Anti-Colonial Marxism of Mahdi Amel

The Lebanese Marxist thinker Mahdi Amel was assassinated on this day in 1987. Amel developed a version of Marxism that was grounded in the experience of colonized societies, showing how class struggle converges with the fight for national liberation.

Lebanese Marxist Mahdi Amel. (Archives of Assafir Newspaper)

BYHICHAM SAFIEDDINE
05.18.2024
JACOBIN

With rare exceptions, non-Western theorists of Marxism receive short intellectual shrift. When they register on the radar of ideological debates at all, such debates summarily present their work as proof of Marxism’s universalism rather than a means of transforming Marxism itself.

This has largely been the case with the Arab Marxist Mahdi Amel, who was assassinated on this day, May 18, in 1987. Born in 1936, Hassan Hamdan, who later adopted the pen name Mahdi Amel, was a member of the Lebanese Communist Party and had joined the party’s national leadership by the time he was killed.

Amel’s legacy did experience a revival during the Arab uprisings that broke out a decade ago. His work garnered further attention after a volume of his selected writings was translated into English in 2021. But interest in his philosophy of Marxism and its implications for how we understand colonialism in relation to capitalism remains rudimentary.

A historical materialist reading of Amel would integrate his conceptual contribution and praxis into the ideological canon of twentieth-century Marxism. This requires a sustained and critical analysis of his philosophy’s assumptions, arguments, and conclusions in comparison and contrast to European Marxism as well as heterodox or radical schools of Marxism that emerged after World War II, such as dependency theory and racial capitalism.

We can take a modest step in that direction by briefly examining his methodology and its application to major themes of post-WWII national liberation, including the ongoing struggle for a free Palestine.

Marxism, Colonialism, and Methodology

Amel called for a “methodological revolution” in Marxist philosophy in order to understand and overcome the historical reality of colonialism. He opposed the application of preformed Marxist thought to the colonial social structure, but not in the name of some supposedly authentic precapitalist thought. He equally rejected forms of postcolonial analysis that threw the historical materialist baby out with its Euro-centric bathwater. Instead, Amel labored in a dialectical fashion to construct a theory of Marxism born out of colonial social reality and employed for its socialist liberation, which he argued, is also the liberation of all humanity.

Amel laid out the logic of his methodology, first in brief and later in detail, across a series of essays and book-length treatises. He then applied it to a wide range of historical phenomena and forces including sectarianism, Islam, education, and revolutionary culture. These writings were engaged in direct conversation with ideological debates that emerged during his age and remain relevant to ours.Mahdi Amel called for a ‘methodological revolution’ in Marxist philosophy in order to understand and overcome the historical reality of colonialism.

While Amel’s texts may be dense and at times repetitive, his reasoning was straightforward. Karl Marx’s discussion of colonialism was incidental to his general analysis of capitalism. Given Marx’s own historical context in a capitalist Europe and his ignorance of the socioeconomic conditions of colonized countries, he was incapable of taking full stock of colonialism and incorporating it into his theory of capitalism.

The historical reality of colonized peoples is the inverse of that experienced by Marx. Their encounter with capitalism was incidental to, or mediated via, colonialism. Colonization, in the words of Amel, “cut the thread of continuity” in their history and “sent through it violent tremors.”

He believed these tremors reached all the way to the strata of the relations of production, as the material basis for precapitalist production was destroyed while the material basis for industrialization was denied. To put it another way, the difference between capitalist and colonial social formations does not merely concern the level or scale of production, but the entire structure of production.


For Amel, it follows from this point that the colonial relation, which is all-encompassing rather than purely economic, is the fundamental contradiction in colonized societies and that colonialism is the “objective basis for the colonized country’s social structure.” Consequently, colonialism does not end with the end of military occupation or by gaining political independence, but with the total severance of this relation in a process of violent and revolutionary transition to socialism.

Amel’s inquiry along these lines yielded the concept of the colonial mode of production (CMOP), which he defined as “the form of capitalism structurally dependent on imperialism in its historical formation and contemporary development.” Marx’s distilled observations on colonialism furnished Amel with a sound theoretical basis to develop his model. In each step, Amel drew on Marx’s relevant commentary and identified first principles.

For instance, Amel relied on Marx’s reference to the “fusion” of modes of production and on Vladimir Lenin’s description of different modes coexisting in a single social space to support the idea of a colonial mode of production as a fusion of capitalist and precapitalist modes of production under the rubric of colonial conquest, and thereby distinct from either. This methodology retained Marxian logic and concepts like class formation, class struggle, capitalization, and class consciousness, but tried to elucidate their specific historical form in a colonial setting.

Colonialism and Class Struggle

Amel’s theorization led him to conclude that the process of class formation under a CMOP is characterized by a lack of class differentiation. Thanks to the structural inhibition of large-scale industry, the colonial bourgeoisie is necessarily a mercantile rather than an industrial bourgeoisie.The instability of rule in colonized countries is a result of the stability of the colonial social structure, not a reflection of orientalist proclivities for military rule or dictatorship.

Small-scale manufacturers in this context are a faction of the petty bourgeoisie, whose members occasionally engage in finance on a similar scale. This apparent diversity in economic activity is not due to some “excess energy” of this social class, but rather stems from the limitations upon concentrating production.

These constrained economic relations of production had political implications. Tied in its own class existence to its colonialist or capitalist counterpart, the colonial bourgeoise is incapable of carrying out a political revolution and establishing a liberal democracy in its European bourgeois form. The instability of rule in colonized countries is therefore a result of the stability of the colonial social structure, not a reflection of orientalist proclivities for military rule or dictatorship.

An extreme case of the lack of class differentiation is the fusion of the two social factions, urban merchants tied to foreign trade and landowners who direct their agricultural production toward colonial trade. This fusion negates the existence of either a national bourgeoisie, usually associated with industrialists, or a feudal class, usually associated with a colonial alliance.

Similarly, the process of proletarianization of the colony’s toiling masses — prominently peasants — is never complete at the economic or social level. Given the centrality of land in colonial agricultural production, which is concentrated around cash crops and extractive labor, peasants are the overexploited class under the CMOP.

When peasants migrate to urban centers seeking employment relief, they rarely, according to Amel, experience a radical transformation in terms of class existence and consciousness. Although embedded in a new class position that involves small-scale consumer industry, they preserve their previous class connections and retain much of their past class consciousness, transitioning between the two positions with ease.

Amel described the pattern in Lebanon:


The worker returns to his village at every opportunity, for holidays, vacations, and funerals. In this way, his village becomes his centre of gravity and exerts a pull over him stronger than that of the city. Ultimately, he longs for the land he left and demands to be buried there, home to his ancestors.

Amel warned that the lack of class differentiation does not mean that class struggle is absent in the colonial setting, as nationalist forces would have it. Nor does it mean the national question is insignificant, as some anti-imperialist or internationalist Marxists would have it. Given the indirect relation of exploitation under a CMOP that is governed by the colonial relation, class struggle is directed against a structure of dependency and domination, not another social class. This means that socialist revolution in colonized societies is synonymous with national liberation:


The struggle for national liberation is the sole historical form that distinguishes class struggle in the colonial formation. Whoever misses this essential point in the movement of our modern history and attempts to substitute class struggle with “nationalist struggle” or reduces the national struggle to a purely economic struggle loses the ability to understand our historical reality and thus also to control its transformation.

Amel prevented his philosophy from lapsing into determinism or economism by placing his structural analysis in a historical perspective as he theorized class struggle.

He emphasized the nature of class consciousness as a historical force of class becoming and resistance. He argued that before World War II, sectoral and economic forms of struggle by different factions of the toiling masses independent of each other precluded their very formation as a class. The period after 1945 saw these struggles converging in a broader political struggle for liberation from colonialism.

At that moment, the colonial relation became mutually constitutive of colonizing and colonized societies. It is necessary to sever this relation in order to transcend, and thereby destroy, both capitalist and colonial social structures.The global ascendance of neoliberalism in the 1970s precipitated a conservative, culturalist turn across the Arab region.

The global ascendance of neoliberalism in the 1970s precipitated a conservative, culturalist turn across the Arab region. Amel’s intellectual labor focused on pertinent questions of culture and the growing role of religion, namely Islam, in politics.

In contrast with other Arab leftists or secularists such as Sadiq Jalal al-Azm and Adonis, Amel’s thought did not lapse into orientalist tropes. He countered the ideology of defeat that ascribed the Arab loss in the 1967 war with Israel to cultural rather than military factors and lambasted the Arab bourgeoisie for portraying their own political failings as universal failings of Arab civilization and cultural heritage.

For Amel, turath, or cultural heritage, was itself a problem of the interpretation of the past by a colonial present rather than a precolonial problem that persisted in the contemporary world. At the same time, Amel avoided absolutist perspectives toward Islam of the kind to be found in secular or communist polemics that saw Islam as being inherently reactionary.
Islam and Revolutionary Thought

By the 1980s, the culturalist turn led to the emergence of what Amel called “everyday” thought. He warned against this new discourse that depoliticized social struggle by ignoring the role of geopolitics, structural forces of history, and class interests as motivations in sectarian or regional conflicts.

Amel developed critiques of different manifestations of this new trend, some of which he categorized as nihilist, obscurantist, or Islamized bourgeois currents. His denunciation of the latter current did not lead him to dismiss Islam as an ontologically regressive force at all stages of history. Unlike many scholars of Islamic intellectual history who saw the primary contradiction in Islam — or any other religion — as being that between faith and atheism, or between religious and rational thought, Amel identified a dividing line between those who defer to power and those who defy it.

The traditional classification of precapitalist Islamic scholars is one example. Conventional scholarship associated progressive thought with reason, exemplified in the figure of Ibn Rushd (Averroes), while ascribing conservatism to philosophies that elevated religion or belief over reason, exemplified in the figure of al-Ghazali. Amel argued that such a classification was simplistic and rested on the assumption that reason was a monolith.The different manifestations of Islam demonstrate, according to Amel, that Islam was never a singular force.

He pointed out that one could find a single scholar, such as Ibn Khaldun, invoking scientific reasoning as well as Salafi legal reasoning. These contradictory forms of reason remained within a religious logic or paradigm, which meant that they were never fully antithetical to each other. As a result, subversive thought, as expressed in illuminationist Sufi Islam, took the form of rejecting reason in toto.

For Amel, the primary contradiction was not between religion and earthly life, but between two concepts of religion: spiritual (Sufi) and temporal (juridical). Spiritual Islam, however, was not atemporal in a metaphysical sense. Islam, by force of historical becoming, was temporal and by extension political. Sufism, or certain strands of it, negates the institutionalization of Islam, which turned it into an authoritarian apparatus.

The different manifestations of Islam demonstrate, according to Amel, that Islam was never a singular force. It was Islam’s material rather than otherworldly existence that determined its reactionary or revolutionary character, even if, in Amel’s estimation, it had mostly served the interests of the ruling classes.

He identified notable exceptions to this rule in precapitalist Islamic societies that included the revolt against the third “Rightly Guided” Caliph, ‘Uthman Ibn Affan, in the period following the death of Muhammed, as well as a certain phase of Qarmatian rule in Arabia. Modern examples that Amel cited of Islam forming part of a revolutionary struggle in the age of national liberation included the Algerian War of Independence and armed resistance against Israel.
Revolution, Liberation, and the Palestinian Cause

Amel’s treatment of the Algerian revolution and resistance to Israel shed light on the particularities of class struggle under colonialism, which included the role of noneconomic factors such as racism and cultural identity. In the case of Algeria, Amel noted that the overwhelming majority of European settlers, whether they were artisans, farmers, bourgeois, or workers, opposed the revolution for national liberation.

The politicized working class was no exception. The working-class Algiers district of Bab el-Oued had been nicknamed the “red neighbourhood” for serving as a popular base of the Algerian Communist Party. Yet it became “a haven of European racism” and “centre of fascist European terrorism against the revolution” after the outbreak of the war of independence.

The same anti-colonial logic applies to theorizing class struggle in Palestine. So-called labor Zionism was a racialized ideology complicit in the oppression of Palestinian workers and peasants and as such cannot be characterized as socialist. By contrast, Amel saw the Palestinian struggle for liberation from colonialism as a force of revolutionary class struggle.

The failure of Arab communist parties to recognize this distinction and their willingness to blindly follow Moscow’s directive led the leadership of these parties to support the 1948 partition of Palestine. They rationalized this decision by a simplistic depiction of the conflict as a struggle between workers, both Arab and Jew, and a mercantile and landed bourgeoise, both Arab and Jew. It caused the communist movement to suffer a loss of popular support in Arab societies.Amel saw the Palestinian struggle for liberation from colonialism as a force of revolutionary class struggle.

In the case of Lebanon, the Communist Party’s revision of its pro-partition stance in the late 1960s and its alliance with the Palestinian liberation movement was a radicalizing force that had an impact on class struggle in Lebanon itself. Following the Israeli invasion of 1982, Amel ridiculed left-wing pundits who minimized the significance of successful armed resistance against Israeli occupation in the name of focusing on strengthening the central Lebanese state at a time of right-wing Phalangist hegemony.

Israel’s own attitude toward Lebanese and Palestinian political factions was and remains determined in the last instance by the decision of those movements to adopt or reject national liberation strategies, including armed resistance, regardless of whether their ideology is secular or religious. For Amel, the significance of armed resistance to Israel and its allies derives from the objective centrality of the colonial relation in determining the character of class struggle in a colonial context.

Unlike many leftists of his time, Amel was careful to assess Islamist resistance forces in relation to this structural contradiction without ignoring the role of political (and therefore subjective) consciousness in swaying this struggle toward a socialist or progressive horizon. In 1984, when sectarian Islamist forces rebelled against pro-Israeli sectarian Christian forces in Beirut, Amel identified the objective revolutionary significance of the military victory, while stressing that it was uncertain whether this victory would point toward the end of sectarianism or its reproduction:

Either they go against the reactionary sectarian form of their ideological consciousness, i.e. in the direction of radically changing the sectarian political system of rule by the dominant bourgeoisie, or they align with this same reactionary sectarian consciousness — (but against the class interests of their toiling factions) — and lean towards sectarian reform of this system. In the latter case, the system would catch its breath in a movement that would renew its crisis, and subsequently the conditions for civil war.

There is no sectarian crisis in Palestine similar to that of Lebanon. But the leading armed resistance forces today in Palestine and across the region are Islamist in their ideology. Analyzing this resistance without centering the colonial relation, as Amel showed elsewhere, is a methodological error that mischaracterizes its revolutionary role as the latest stage in the war of national liberation.

The twentieth-century global conjuncture of national liberation may have passed in relation to other regions of the world. The colonial social reality of Palestinians, however, remains unchanged, as does their right to resist by all means necessary. A Marxist analysis that ignores this primary contradiction is bound to repeat the mistake of early Arab communists, and, in this case, contrary to Marxist tradition, the second version will be as tragic as the first.

CONTRIBUTOR
Hicham Safieddine is an associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Banking on the State: The Financial Foundations of Lebanon (2019) and the editor of Arab Marxism and National Liberation: Selected Writings of Mahdi Amel (2021).

2024 Elections: What’s at stake for India’s minorities?

Could a third term under Narendra Modi see the formalising of second-class status for minorities and the destruction of the country’s ancient composite culture?

Sajjad Hassan 

Published April 29, 2024 

PRISM/DAWN

If the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi succeeds in winning a third five-year term in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, many fear that India’s religious minorities, especially Muslims, will see their second-class status formalised in law and practice.

But for Hindu supremacy to be fully realised, which is the stated aim of Hindu nationalists, they will have to expunge India of any Muslim influence, of which there is much, historically. When Indians cast their vote in the coming weeks, they would do well to be aware of the weight of their electoral choices. And the international community would do well not to drop the ball on India.
Second-class citizens

In a recent article, political scientists, Ashutosh Varshney and Connor Staggs asked the rhetorical question: “Is India under Narendra Modi … beginning to resemble the American South under Jim Crow?” referring to state and local laws introduced in the southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th century that enforced racial segregation.

They explain that Jim Crow laws were aimed at blunting the Reconstruction Amendments that abolished slavery and gave equal rights to Blacks. They were designed to make Blacks second-class citizens. Similarly, in India, Hindu nationalists seek to diminish the constitutionally guaranteed equal citizenship of Muslims and turn them into marginalised, less than fully equal citizens.

Jim Crow laws lasted for almost a century, ending only in the 1960s. Varshney and Staggs claim that since Hindu nationalism is in its early phase, it could still be forestalled before it is institutionalised via political and legislative processes. They suggest that the ongoing national elections present an opportunity for Indians to do that.

However, the comparison between Jim Crow and Hindu nationalism diverges in their ultimate objectives. While Jim Crow merely targeted the equal citizenship of Blacks, Hindu nationalism has a more totalitarian goal.
What does Hindutva want?

To fully grasp the end-goals of Hindu nationalism or Hindutva, it is necessary to read its foundational texts. There are none more seminal than We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) by Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, who led the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from 1940 to 1973. The RSS is considered the heart and soul of the vast network of Hindu nationalist organisations, of which the BJP is the political wing. Narendra Modi, a life-time member and former official of the RSS, credited it for grooming him to political leadership.

In his text, Golwalkar writes of his wariness of “hostile elements” within the country that “act as menace to national security”, singling out Muslims as the number one threat, followed by Christians. His solution to “the danger of a cancer developing into its body politic” was offering the “foreign element” two options: “either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow it to do so, and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race”.

MS Golwalkar. Credit: Golwalkarguruji.org — image via Scroll.in



Another of the movement’s foundational texts is Essentials of Hindutva (1923) by Vinayak Damodar Savakar, who is considered by many to be the foremost Hindutva thinker. In Essentials, he provided Hindu nationalism with an ideology, which in a nutshell claims that India was special, as it offered something nobody else could — Hindu thought. This unique Hindu supremacy, Savarkar believed, was under threat because of the presence of non-Hindus. He called on Hindus, fragmented as they were, to unite and reclaim their supremacy. Violence against Muslims, Savarkar said, was the means to achieve that goal.

Golwalkar drew on Savarkar’s thoughts. He also admired the race theories of fascist Germany and Italy and recommended that Hindustan, the land of Hindus, should profit from their lessons. In We or Our Nationhood Defined, he wrote: “To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of its semitic races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here.”

Golwalkar saw the world in apocalyptic terms. His objective was clear: “To rule over the world was the heavenly task ordained to Hindu race.” He called upon Hindus to “rally to the Hindu standard, the bhagwa dhwaj [and] set our teeth in grim determination to wipe out the opposing forces”.

Some Hindutva leaders today have explicitly articulated this vision. For instance, in March 2020, a Hindu priest named Yati Narsinghanand, who is the president of Akhil Bharatiya Sant Parishad (All India Priests Council) and someone close to the BJP, was reported to have told his followers, “Humanity can only be saved if Islam is finished off. Hindus: Read the Gita along with Mahabharat, and learn how to die fighting.”

This call was made around the time BJP leader Kapil Mishra was leading processions in Delhi calling for violence against the mainly Muslim participants in protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, chanting the mantra: “Desh ke ghaddaron ko, goli maro saalon ko [Shoot the traitors of the country].”

In 2023, another BJP leader, an MLA from Telangana, T Raja Singh, at a rally in Mumbai, urged his audience to take to arms. “I would like to request all my Hindu brothers that the coming time is the time of struggle, it is the time of war,” he said. “Every Hindu is obliged to unite. Hindu should not become one who rings temple bells, but rather he should become a Hindu who kills landyas”, a derogatory reference to Muslims.

At a public meeting of Hindu priests in December 2021, in the holy town of Haridwar, a star speaker, Annapurna Maa, the general secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha, was heard exhorting her audience: “If you want to eliminate their population, then be ready to kill them and be ready to go to jail. If only a 100 of us become soldiers and each of us kills 20 lakhs of them, we will be victorious…”

Modi is circumspect in his speeches now, but was not always so. As chief minister of Gujarat, soon after the pogrom there in 2002 during his term that left at least 2,000 dead, mostly Muslim, he was often reported in his public speeches to evoke visions of a religious struggle of good over evil.

“This is the holy place of shakti [godly power], the power for extermination of asuras [demons],” he said in one speech. “We have resolved to destroy and stamp out all forces of evil…”
The montage that is India

Beyond the goal of cleansing the Hindu land of the “cancer” to save the nation, there is another equally compelling reason for the Hindutva project to be more than just about marginalising Muslims. That has to do with the fact that India today is, in the words of historians Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot, “an intricate montage assembled from assorted material”, of which the Islamic is a critical element. The desire on the part of Hindutva leaders to fully realise Hindu supremacy will also require extirpating Muslim life and Muslim imprint from today’s India.

Historians view the era between 1200 AD and 1750 AD (Medieval India in history textbooks) as the foundation for the highly diverse human landscape of modern South Asia, with its pluralistic culture that draws on both Indic and Islamic traditions. In their magisterial work, India Before Europe (2006), Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot show how the Central Asian ethnic heritage, Persian cultural orientation and Islamic religious affiliation of North India’s ruling elite class in the period after 1200 AD led to the dissemination of many innovative elements through the subcontinent.

While acknowledging that the encounter between Indic and Islamic peoples and cultures led to short-term conflicts, Asher and Talbot note the vast degree to which cultural practices inspired by Perso-Islamic traditions became integral to the subcontinent as a whole in the long run. South Asia’s art and architecture, its political rituals, its administrative and military technologies and even its popular religions were deeply inflected by the new forms.

This composite culture, the authors note, forms the basis of India that exists today, in its foods, dressing and music, languages that people speak, the built architecture, and its popular religions, among others.

The ruins of the Krishna temple in Hampi, Karnataka, in 1868. 

Credit: Lyon, Edmund David (1825-1891)., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — taken from Scroll.in

In the south of the peninsula, the ‘Hindu’ Vijaynagara empire (1350-1550) drew significantly from Islamicate influence in military technology, secular architecture, courtly dress, as well as local languages. The successor ‘Muslim’ sultanates of the Bahmani state in the Deccan too, followed in this tradition, most importantly in their patronage to local languages, so much so that Golconda rulers, around today’s Hyderabad, occupied an important place in the historical memory of Telengana language — with one of the sultans, Ibrahim Quli Qutub Shah (1550-1580) often called Ibharama Chakravati by Telgu poets.

Bijapur’s Ibrahim Adil Shah II (1580-1627), called Jagat Guru, authored a collection of songs in dakani, Kitab-e-Nauras (book of nine rasas), that opens with an invocation to Saraswati, Hindu goddess of learning, followed by praise of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and then the Chisti saint Gisu Daraz. These were no exceptions.

In Bengal, the Hussain Shahi (1493-1538) rulers adopted local customs, such as purification by the water of Ganga at coronation ceremonies, and the Sufi poet, Saiyid Sultan (d 1648) published a genealogy of prophets of Islam, called Nabi Vamsha that included the Hindu god, Krishna.

In Gujarat, amid the flourishing literary tradition that the Ahmad Shah rulers patronised was the Sanskrit work Raja-Vinoda (pleasure of the kings), written in honour of the ruler, Mahmud Begada (1460s), presenting the sultan as an ideal Indic king, whose court was graced by the presence of the Hindu deity Saraswati, the goddess of learning. In Malwa, in central India, capital Mandu had fine libraries that included among their collection the track Nimat-nama (c. 1500), an illustrated recipe book for making dishes suitable for all seasons, including vegetarian as well as meat-based, with illustrations drawing on both Persian and Indic tradition, including the Bhagwata Purana.

However, it was the Mughals, especially Akbar (1556-1605), who helped create a state that was more Indian in character. The aesthetic that developed under Akbar’s guidance was composed of a fusion of Timurid and Indic models, and which went on to set a standard for subsequent Mughal arts and culture, including food, architecture and courtly dress and culture, Asher and Talbot argue.

Besides, in the realm of built architecture, of which there is ample evidence, literary production was an important site of Indic and Islamic collaboration. Examples are the translation of Ramayana and Mahabharata in Persian (Razm-nama) and Abul Fazl’s including in his Ain-i-Akbari, extensive sections on “the learning of India” — including philosophical schools, music, life cycle rituals, and modes of image worship. The scale of the borrowing led Audrey Truschke, a prominent historian of Sanskrit at the Mughal court, to conclude that these were efforts on the part of Abul Fazl to convince Akbar’s supporters of the virtues of infusing Sanskrit knowledge into Indo-Persian thought.

The tendencies towards synthesis had significant consequences. Man Singh, the highest ranking noble in Akbar’s court, only after his sons, built temples throughout the domain, including the Govinda Deva temples in Vrindavan, the largest in North India, in a recognisably Mughal style, and helped to spread Akbar’s belief in multiculturalism, just as Abdul Rahim Khaan-e-Khanan did by commissioning an illustrated Ramayana.

Among the most consequential contributions of the Mughal court to Indian letters, Allison Busch shows, was its engagement with Brajbhasha. A local (Hindavi) dialect of the region around Agra and Delhi, Mughal heartlands, Brajbhasha had existed until then, mostly as bhakti devotional poetry. Under Mughal patronage, it developed a sophisticated courtly style, inspired by Sanskrit poetics, and became the principal poetic language of north India. In creating the outcome, that could be described as classical Hindi, were Akbar’s nobles composing works in the language, including Todar Mal, Birbal and the Rajput nobles, as also Faizi and Abdul Rahim Khana Khanan — showing how courtly literature in Brajbhasha was nurtured within the multicultural context of elite Mughal society.

There were other enduring contributions too, of this age and milieu, outside the courtly realm. A major influence in the early part of this period was Sufis, and their dispersal, throughout much of the subcontinent. By the 14th century, the practice of Sama, devotional musical congregations, and Urs, annual pilgrimage to the shrines of Sufi saints, had become established Sufi traditions. Sufi shrines drew both Muslims and Hindus, and were themselves influenced by local traditions, including the Shattari Sufis of Bengal drawing on Nath yogis, and Rishi Sufis of Kashmir who led celibate lives and practised vegetarianism.

Sufism also contributed to reform in Hindu tradition, starting in the 14th century with the rise of sants, who like Sufis, were mystics, believed in a formless God, and extolled devotion to God as a primary religious practice. Kabir, the most influential, attacked rituals and customs of traditional religions, and excoriated the caste system. Guru Nanak (born in 1469), the founder of the Sikh tradition, also came from the same context.

Notably, Sufism also influenced Hindu bhakti tradition, as the historian of Indian religion John S Hawley points out. This is evident in the commonalities that the latter began to show in its focus on love for God, as did Sufis, the use of poetry and music in worship, and an ethics of compassion for others. Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas (1575), crafted in about the same age and the middle Gangetic Awadhi milieu of Sufi poets, Malik Mohammad Jayasi (Padmavat, 1540) and Mir Siyyid Manjhan (Madhumalati, 1545), exemplified this shift. Ram, an incarnation of Vishnu, became the preeminent object of devotion, in place of Siva.

It is these constructions of a cosmopolitan Indian paradigm, resulting in innovations that spoke to both traditions that Hindu nationalists must disentangle and destroy to be able to achieve their vision of a Hindu supremacist India. This will undoubtedly leave much violence in its trail.
‘Authentic fantasies’ of suffering

These historical accounts of co-living and co-production contradict Hindutva claims that have much purchase today, in popular as well as scholarly circles about the thousand years of conflict between Muslim “outsiders” and “local” Hindus; of forced conversions and the wanton destruction of temples. Hindu nationalists have developed a wide repertoire of suffering and victimhood of Hindus at the hands of Muslims. Evidence to support their thesis is slim.

Richard Eaton, one of the foremost historians of medieval India, shows how the claim that Islam spread in South Asia by the sword is incongruent with the geography of Muslim conversions in South Asia. There is an inverse relationship between the degree of Muslim political penetration and the degree of conversion to Islam, he notes. Most conversions happened in the north west and north east — Punjab and Bengal, farthest away from centres of Muslim power.

As to temple destruction, Eaton found, over a span of more than five centuries from 1192 to 1729, there were “some 80 instances of temple desecration”, well short of the 60,000 claimed by Hindu nationalists. Typically, the desecrated temples would have been associated with the authority of an enemy kingdom. The instances of desecrations followed a long-established pattern in India, of temples having been natural sites for the contestation of kingly authority, well before the coming of Muslim Turks, including their destruction. Among the most recent examples was the destruction in the 10th c of the Pratihara temple of Kalapriya near Jamuna, by the Rashtrakuta king Indra III.

But as the Bosnian historian, Edin Hajdarpasic, shows from his study of Balkan nationalism in the 19th century, enthusiastic depictions of suffering convey the essence of a political threat more vividly than simple facts or documentary narratives — a phenomenon he calls “authentic fantasy”. Hindu nationalists, themselves inspired by European nationalist movements at the turn of the 19th century, relied much on the construction of suffering and victimhood of Hindus, however divorced from facts.

Decolonial historiography shows how they drew on the Orientalist bias of British colonial historians, who saw the period of the previous 600 years, as a history of Muslim arrival and their dominance over Hindus, marked by Muslim fanaticism, and temple destruction, forced conversion, and Hindu oppression. In contrast to the dark Muslim medieval age, colonial historians like James Mill posited the ancient Hindu age as golden, and modern British, as liberal.
Call to violence

Hindu nationalists in power today are seeking to inflict retribution for their perceived sufferings by rewriting history. In some cases, this has taken physical forms — such as in the destruction in 1992 of the 15th century Babri mosque in Ayodhya, a criminal act that was legitimised by the Supreme Court of India in 2019. Claims for several other historical mosques to be converted into temples have been set in motions across the country.

Elsewhere, place names have been changed to erase any hint of their Muslim heritage. Allahabad is now Prayagraj, Mughalsarai station is Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction, Aurangabad is Sambhajinagar and Gulbarga is Kalaburagi. Not satisfied with occasional erasures, the BJP government has thought fit to change high school history and politics textbooks by significantly altering and in some cases, fully scrapping the sections on Mughal history.


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redit: Yasminsheikh, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons — taken from Scroll.in



The act of political forgetting targets minorities to deprive them of history, of the right to narrate, of the capacity for recognition. History tells us it is also a precursor to violence. As eminent historians Aditya and Mridula Mukherjee noted recently, “…genocide of a community is often preceded by the community being demonised, their names changed, their history being erased”, claiming “these processes have begun in India and open calls for genocide of Muslims are being given in various parts of the country with amazing impunity”.

More than Jim Crow South, the history of the Balkans in the late 19th century and post-Yugoslavia 20th century provides a better guide to understanding the future of minorities in India today. Hajdarpasic’s account of Balkan history alerts us to the real consequences of the claims of victimhood. Nationalists there used stories of suffering not only to inspire collective sacrifice but also to encourage mass violence against entire communities perceived as threats. He demonstrates how certain stories of victimisation in the region long outlived their original inspirations. Decades after overthrowing Turkish rule, Serbian nationalists could revive narratives about Turk-like enemies even in the late 20th century with catastrophic consequences.

Tanika Sarkar, eminent historian of modern India, demonstrates similar impulse in early modern Hindu nationalist thought. Emblematic of this repertoire was Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s 1818 novel, Anandmath, whose main character, the Hindu sanyasi (ascetic) rebel, Satyanand, is engaged in a messianic battle “for exterminate(ing) all Muslims on this land, as they are enemies of God”, a recompense for “inflicting misfortune on Hindus”. The novel is set in the context of the 1770 famines in Bengal, as the East India Company was inserting itself at the expense of the Nawabs of Bengal, and that resulted in a third of the population starving to death, both Hindus and Muslims. Historians inform Muslim fakirs (ascetics) rose up, along with sanyasis, against the depredations.

Sarkar calls for Anandmath, “the first explicit message in our literary history for ethnic cleansing”, one foretelling Hindu nationalist thoughts to emerge later in 20th century. Its protagonists deemed “elimination of Muslim rule and Muslim presence from the land” an act of worship of Bharat Maata (motherland), a deity that first emerged in the novel. In 1920, Savarkar and Golwalkar adopted Vande Mataram — hymn to Bharat Maata, contained in Anandmath — as aHindu nationalist anthem. Vande Mataram was also the rallying cry of Hindu communalists in anti-Muslim violence to follow during Partition.

Vande Mataram continues to inspire Hindu nationalist thoughts and action to this day. So when the terror-accused BJP MP Pragya Thakur recently instructed her audience to “keep your weapons sharpened”, to “in this world created by god … finish all oppressors, wrong-doers, sinners…”, she was deploying Anandmath’s template of the holy war — calling for violence against the entire Muslim population.

It is in such violent contestations borne out of ‘authentic fantasies’ of past sufferings that Hindu nationalists of today — following that of Savarkar and other Hindutva ideologues — seek to create Hindu supremacy, by waging permanent war against India’s 200 or so million Muslims and other ‘foreign elements’. Already, United Nations experts are alerting us to the fact that “India risks becoming one of the world’s main generators of instability, atrocities and violence, because of the massive scale and gravity of the violations and abuses targeting mainly religious and other minorities, such as Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others.”

Mass atrocity experts are warning: “If nothing is done to address these risks, India may continue to experience a rise in the number of violent (and fatal) attacks against religious minorities, an escalation in the scale of the violence, and an increased level of state involvement in atrocities.”

The burden on Indian voters to use the ballot to forestall the institutionalisation of Hindu nationalism, before it reaches a point of no return, is therefore, even heavier.

This piece is a longer version of the article, titled “Is the 2024 Lok Sabha election India’s last chance before the point of no return?” by Sajjad Hassan published on Scroll.in. It has been reproduced here with permission.

Header image: A protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act — photo taken from Prashant Waydande/Reuters