Islam and Religious Change in Pakistan

Sufis and Ulema in 20th Century South Asia

Saadia Sumbal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367622428
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000415049
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the history of, and the contestations on, Islam and the nature of religious change in 20th century Pakistan, focusing in particular on movements of Islamic reform and revival.

This book is the first to bring the different facets of Islam, particularly Islamic reformism and shrine-oriented traditions, together within the confines of a single study ranging from the colonial to post-colonial era. Using a rich corpus of Urdu and Arabic material including biographical accounts, Sufi discourses (malfuzat), letter collections, polemics and unexplored archival sources, the author investigates how Islamic reformism and shrine-oriented religiosity interacted with one another in the post-colonial state of Pakistan. Focusing on the district of Mianwali in Pakistani northwestern Punjab, the book demonstrates how reformist ideas could only effectively find space to permeate after accommodating Sufi thoughts and practices; the text-based religious identity coalesced with overlapped traditional religious rituals and practices. The book proceeds to show how reformist Islam became the principal determinant of Islamic identity in the post-colonial state of Pakistan and how one of its defining effects was the hardening of religious boundaries.

Challenging the approach of viewing the contestation between reformist and shrine-oriented Islam through the lens of binaries modern/traditional and moderate/extremist, this book makes an important contribution to the field of South Asian religion and Islam in modern South Asia.

1 Migrant Sufis and ‘rooting’ of Islam (ca. 1600–1900)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003119364-2

This chapter explores the relationship between Sufis and local tribal kinship structures in a society where tribal identities and local forms of religious organization were closely associated. The focus is on conditions in society from the early eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, which grounded the power of Sufi and shrine in heterodox beliefs regarding the Sufi’s abilities of intercession between man and God. After the death of the Sufi, his shrine became a microcosm of local Islam which provided support to its devotees in tangible and intangible forms. This chapter argues that shrine-based Islam is historically grounded in Mianwali. The core argument of this chapter pertains to the historical context of shrine-based Islam (Sufism) and the way it was articulated in Mianwali’s spatial perspective. This chapter draws upon the position of Richard Eaton and David Gilmartin, that the Sufis acquired symbolic importance in the particular context of ecological and political change which formed the pattern of conversion in rural Punjab. Islam was accessible to the masses through Sufis and rituals of shrines which integrated them into religious culture.¹ The chapter provides more a nuanced understanding of the variety of Sufi traditions and tendencies. Sufis had played active roles in conflicts ranging from local rivalries to inter-tribal wars or militia movements. They could hardly be considered pacifists or apolitical.² The Sufi’s various roles as tribal leader, mediator, jurist and religious mentor are studied in the context of changed social and economic structures. The focus will also be on identifying factors which integrated the Sufi and their disciples in a spiritual bond in two main contexts: first, the hyper-corporeality of the Sufi, and second, through dreams and visions, as important aspects of Muslim religiosity. The chapter also discusses the politics shaped by the ideology of the British imperial state which collaborated with Sufis, drawing them closer to power structures. State intervention in the culture of khanqah and dargah necessarily shifts the interplay between liminal identities that develop in the context of the shrine and the state-sanctioned categories of identity. This worked in two ways, it enhanced the social and religious influence of Sufis in local society and at the same time, it deviated them from the life of austerity – hence religious authority declined with the subsequent decline in piety.

The Indo-Islamic traditions that evolved between 711 and 1750 helped to shape Islam according to the regional cultures of South Asia and linked Muslims in those cultures to the Muslim community worldwide.³ Thus the Indo Islamic traditions were essentially and inevitably ‘pluralist’. Sufism in South Asia flourished in such a socio-cultural setting. The autonomy and authority of Sufi orders struck their roots in a society in which hierarchical distinctions among human beings were taken for granted.⁴ Indian Islam was essentially a holy man Islam. The migrant Sufis in a Hindu environment in India acquired the cult of holiness and the notion as well as the practice of piety, which attracted Indians to them rather than to sharia Islam.⁵ In embodying the sacred as a lived reality, the living Sufis created and extended new Sufi brotherhoods (tariqa), strengthened cults and made tombs a focus of devotees.⁶ The great Sufi mystics of the Delhi Sultanate period – Baba Farid of Pakpattan, Shaykh Bahawal Haq Zikria of Multan, and Syed Jalal-ud-Din Bukhari of Uch – had a pivotal role in the conversion and spread of Islam in western Punjab.⁷ The interaction between local cultures and the culture of powerful Muslim states helped to constitute the rural Punjab’s Islamic institutions. The Sufi khanqah (hospices) and later Sufi shrines (tombs) constructed by Muslim sultans acted as, in the words of Gilmartin, important ‘symbolic cultural outposts of the power of Islam’ in a rural society where local tribal identities were of crucial significance.⁸ In another sense the shrine served as a bridge between the local religious system and the wider world of Islam.⁹ The masses believed in the closer and special relationship between God and Sufi, the Sufi with his spiritual power (baraka) could intercede with God on the devotee’s behalf.¹⁰ When shrine called dargah in India replaced khanqah, Sufism became more a devotional than a mystical movement.¹¹ The popular devotionalism that developed at shrines had little link with Islamic tradition, however it appealed to the common folk, who believed the saint would provide access to divine favours and relief from worldly anxieties.¹² Devotion to the Sufi continued through his descendants, central figures of religious authority and the inheritors of the Sufi’s baraka, called sajjada nashin, to whom the power transmitted through spiritual charisma, placing them in a line of direct access to moral authority.¹³ The shrine’s magicality was grounded in heterodox beliefs regarding the divine powers of Sufis and their ability to intercede for devotees in their quest for personal boons (fertility, worldly success, health). These Sufis are described as miracle makers. Practice and belief were grounded in ethical premises, rituals were practiced not as a result of strong belief but were embodied, ethical and aesthetic practices.¹⁴

Mianwali's geo-historical perspective

Mianwali¹⁵was geographically and historically a significant part of the Sindh Valley (Indus), established on the east of the river Indus (a Cis-Indus district). Social structure in Mianwali is essentially tribal, with tribal chiefs being the fountainheads of political influence. The normative code and ethics, the centrality of patriarchal supremacy, the concept of honour, economic interests, and a strong sense of tribal identity are the distinctive features of this region. Economic interests and ethnic prejudices had fomented inter-tribal rivalries and stunted social cohesion. The region was essentially agricultural in the sense that land and cattle were the only source of livelihood. The land was divided into the riverine area, intersected by creeks and flooded during monsoon, a hilly tract in the north, and the desert region called ‘Thal’ in the east and west of the district. Living in a terrain where life was an arduous exercise, environmental factors and scantier economic prospects contributed to the economic and agricultural backwardness of the region.¹⁶

Map 1.1 Mianwali District in the twentieth century

Source: Deputy Commissioner Record Office Mianwali District

The physical and cultural topography of Mianwali is shaped by saintly remains. Islam was popularized and sustained here by the Sufis, whose shrines are the sites of veneration in the countryside. Islam spread in the region as a result of constant interaction between Sufis professing Islam, marked by uniformity of shariat and tariqat and pre-existing indigenous religious beliefs. An ordinary Muslim’s understanding of Islam was mediated through the agency of a Sufi or Pir. The ideas of evil spirits, multifarious methods of dispelling the effect of such evil influences, witchcraft, and magic were common among the people.¹⁷ To their following, steeped in the tradition of orality, Sufis presented models of perfect behaviour, and came to symbolize what it meant to be Muslim.

Islamic inclination and Pathan Culture

Islam was introduced as a ‘civilization building ideology’, aimed at settling and populating the land and constructing a transcendent reality.¹⁸ Two factors helped in developing an alliance between Sufis and the local Pathan tribes. One stemmed from particular political and socio-religious conditions in which Islam spread with the help of local forces, the Sufis as tribal intermediary, in the face of threats and resistance in the region. The second factor was the growing issues of settlement and ownership of land with the penetration of Pathan tribes into Mianwali.

The first Sufi to enter this land was, as Richard Eaton has mentioned, ‘the chalk of the dawn’ of Islamic civilization in this region.¹⁹ Mian Ali, a Sufi, belonging to the Qadiriyya order, migrated from Baghdad in the sixteenth century (1584). He was the one who was known to have spread Islam into the area.²⁰ During that time the cities of Baghdad, Cairo, Medina and Mecca were the most famous centres of religious instruction in the Islamic world, and migrant scholars from these centres enjoyed great prestige in Indo-Muslim society. The Arab identity helped in the social elevation of the Sufi and his shrine in a local context.²¹ Qadiri Sufis who migrated to Deccan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries retained a distinctly Arab character with an orthodox orientation. Their strict doctrinal position made them indistinguishable from ulema. They were reformist with orthodox orientations, indifferent towards non-Muslims and indicated no interest in converting them to Islam.²² They also avoided social interaction with the Hindu population.²³ Unlike them, Mian Ali mingled with people from all religious persuasions. His all-inclusive approach gave rise to a distinct identity to the local Islam which earned him popularity and a large fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• A note on the transliteration
• List of abbreviations
• List of appendices
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Migrant Sufis and ‘rooting’ of Islam (ca. 1600–1900)
• 2. Reformist Islam and Sufism: A dialectical religious identity
• 3. Reformist Islam and Majlis-i-Ahrar's politics of nationalism
• 4. Sectarianism and the politics of religious exclusion
• 5. Deobandi identity and sectarian cleavage
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Index