Pilgrim's India

by ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM

  After a long and uncomfortable journey across the Arabian Sea on the back of a giant fish, Dada Hayat and a band of his followers finally reached Chandradrona Hill. Night had already fallen when they arrived and while his disciples went off to sleep, the Dada entered the cave on the top of the mountain and began making preparation for the night prayer. Just then, so the story goes, he saw a group of palegars dragging along with them a man bound in chains. The man was to be slaughtered for having intruded into their territory. No sooner had the palegars unsheathed their swords than, all of a sudden, the Dada caused their weapons to fall from their hands and the chains binding their captive to snap open.

  Realizing that the Dada was no ordinary mortal, the palegars fell at his feet, begging him for mercy. To express his gratitude to the Dada for having saved his life, their captive became his disciple and converted to Islam. Soon, the news of the Dada’s miraculous powers spread like a forest fire and large crowds began flocking to his cave to seek his blessings. It appeared to them that Swamy Dattatreya, the much-awaited incarnation of the Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, had appeared to them in the form of the Sufi. Some of them converted to Islam at his hands, while many others, without abandoning their ancestral faith, accepted him as the Datta Avatar.

  The equation between Dada Hayat and Dattatreya in popular lore should not be seen as particularly strange or unusual given the fact that numerous other popular Sufis in the area have been associated with Dattatreya, himself a late Puranic figure and designed, it appears, to reconcile what were, till then, the conflicting Shaivite and Vaishnavite traditions. As the Gazetteer of Belgaum notes, ‘Dattatreya represents not only the synthesis of Shaivism and Vaishnavism but also of the Sufi cult’ (Government of Karnataka, 1987, p. 187). Among the several Muslim saints of the Deccan who have been equated by Hindus with Dattatreya are Shah Fakir, Chand Bhole, the Sufi spiritual preceptor of the Brahmin Janardhana Swami, and, closer to our own times, the Sai Baba of Shirdi. The early Dattatreya tradition seems beyond doubt to have been an anti-Brahminical one, part of the broader Awadhut tradition that upholds a formless god and sternly condemns the caste system and the sacrifices so central to classical Brahminism.

  In the Siva Purana Dattatreya is said to have developed the sanyasa mode of a world-renouncing mystic. In the Markandeya Purana, Dattatreya appears as an antinomian yogi. We are told that although he wanted to be alone, the sons of the sages always surrounded him. In order to drive them away, he submerged himself in a lake and emerged from it accompanied by a lissome maiden, with whom he set about sharing a glass of wine, in the hope that witnessing the amorous couple the young men would leave him alone. The Markandeya Purana tells us that once, when the gods were defeated by the demons in a battle, they approached Brihaspati for help. Brihaspati sent them to Dattatreya. When the gods approached Dattatreya, they found him drinking wine in the company of Lakshmi. The gods prayed to him for help, but he pointed out his own faults: ‘Drinking, attachment, affection and sexual enjoyment of women.’ This clearly points to a strong anti-Brahminical Tantric strand in the original Dattatreya tradition.

  To come back to the story linking Dada Hayat with Dattatreya, it is interesting to note that belief in the coming of a messiah in the form of Dattatreya to deliver the world from strife and oppression was central to the early Dattatreya cult as it had evolved in the Deccan. Dada Hayat’s battles with the oppressive palegars seem to have been a confirmation of this belief. It is thus hardly surprising that many Hindus, particularly from the ‘low’ castes, saw him as their awaited messiah who would deliver them from servitude. Consequently, Dada Hayat was regarded as none other than Dattatreya himself, the word ‘Dattatreya’ being, in this context, perhaps a corruption of the word ‘Dada’. As to the location of Dada Hayat’s grave, different stories circulate. The Pir and his followers insist that he is still alive, although hidden from the public gaze, tirelessly engaged in guiding the faithful. The custodians of at least two other Sufi shrines in south India—the dargah of Mardan-e-Gha’ib at Shivasamudra, not far from Bangalore, and the dargah of Hazrat Tabal-e-’Alam at Tiruchirapalli, in Tamil Nadu—claim that Dada Hayat died a natural death and is buried in their respective shrine complexes.

  Although Dada Hayat is believed to have remained unmarried throughout his life, he is said to have appointed a native of Yemen, a certain Sayyed Shah Jamaluddin Maghribi—popularly known as Baba Budhan—to manage the affairs of the shrine after him. Baba Budhan is best remembered for having introduced the cultivation of coffee into the area. He divided his followers into groups and dispatched them to places as far as the Nilgiris, Coorg and the hilly regions of north Kerala, where they preached Islam and special Yemeni techniques of growing the intoxicating bean. Before his death, Baba Budhan appointed his nephew, Sayyed Musa Hussain Shah Qadri, as his successor. The custodianship of the shrine is still retained by this family, the present sajjada nashin—custodian of the shrine—being the sixteenth in line from Sayyed Musa.

  Over the centuries, various Muslim as well as Hindu rulers patronized the dargah, endowing it with considerable wealth and land. Thus, during the time of the second sajjada nashin, Channamaji, the Hindu queen of Nagar, contributed lavishly for the repair of the dargah’s aslah khana, the storage house for weapons for the protection of the fakirs. Haider Ali, the ruler of Mysore, donated several villages to the dargah for its upkeep, as did his son, Tipu Sultan. Another great patron of the shrine was Sri Krishnaraja Wodeyar III, the Hindu ruler of Mysore. He is said to have held the shrine in particular reverence, and to have received regular spiritual instruction from the then sajjada nashin, Pir Sayyed Murtaza Shah Qadri Qalandar. Besides the patronage extended by various Hindu and Muslim rulers, the dargah also emerged, over time, as a popular pilgrimage centre for large numbers of ordinary Muslims and Hindus from all over the Deccan and the far south.

  It is interesting to note that the custodianship of the shrine being vested in the family of Muslim sajjada nashins was never challenged by any Hindu ruler or by the local Hindus. Indeed, in the royal documents detailing the grants given to them by various Hindu kings, the sajjada nashins were recognized as the mathadipathis or heads of the matha (shrine). They were also known, according to the Gazetteer of Mysore, by the honorific title of Sri Dattatreya Swami Baba Budhan Swami Jagadguru, ‘the Teacher of the Entire World. Accordingly, they were granted certain privileges that were on par with those granted to the heads of some leading Hindu shrines. Thus, under the Hindu Wodeyars of Mysore, the Sajjade Sri Guru Dattathreya Bababudanswami, as he was officially known, was among the seventeen ‘gurus’ to be exempted from personal appearance in the civil courts of the state, and also the only Muslim ‘guru’ to have enjoyed that honour.

  It was only in the mid-1960s that a dispute arose over the control of the shrine, and even then, curiously enough, it was not between Hindus and Muslims but, rather, between two government-controlled administrative bodies—the Karnataka Waqf Board, in charge of Muslim-endowed properties, and the Muzrai Department, the general overseer of Hindu religious and charitable endowments in the state. Interestingly, the Muslim custodians of the dargah supported the Muzrai Department’s stand, arguing against the Waqf Board’s claims on the grounds that the dargah was not exclusively a Muslim shrine as it was venerated by both Muslims and Hindus. It is likely that the sajjada nashin feared that a Waqf Board takeover would sharply curtail his privileges and his control over the considerable donations offered by the devout. The matter went to the courts, and several cases and counter-cases were registered. As matters stand today, the courts have ruled that the dargah is under the jurisdiction of the Muzrai Department and not the Waqf Board; that the Muslim sajjada nashin is the sole administrator of the dargah, and that the rituals that have traditionally been conducted at the shrine be continued and not tampered with.

  Concerted efforts to project the controversy as a Hindu–Muslim dispute can be traced to the early 1980s, when militant Hindu supremacist organizations succ
eeded in establishing a strong foothold in parts of Karnataka. In 1989 the VHP floated an organization for the ‘liberation’ of the shrine, organizing in December that year a three-day so-called Datta Jayanti at the dargah, amidst Muslim protests and tight police security. After the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992, the campaign to take over the dargah got fresh impetus. With the state seeming to turn a blind eye to Hindu militant provocation, or, as some saw it, actually being complicit in the affair, what was once a unique centre of pilgrimage bringing people from different communities and walks of life together in common worship was now transformed into a centre of furious communal contestation.

  As Hindutva leaders sped on their raths of wrath through Karnataka that early December [of 1998], Hindus clashed with Muslims. Despite pleas that the rath yatras be stopped, the state administration refused to act. The five raths reached Chikamagalur on 30 November, and the dargah on 1 December, amidst unprecedented police protection. Although the district administration had clamped prohibitory orders on a ten-kilometre radius around the dargah, banning the assembly of four or more persons, no restriction was placed on the assembly of Hindutva activists at the shrine itself. By 3 December, their number had swelled to more than 10,000. Senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had also been roped in. Prominent among them was Ananth Kumar Hegde, BJP member of Parliament from neighbouring Karwar, who, six years earlier, had personally participated in tearing down the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. Hegde had publicly announced that he would dispatch ‘suicide squads’ to ensure the success of the campaign (Parvathi Menon, 1999). A massive rally was then held outside the dargah, in which fiery speeches were delivered against the Muslims. Addressing the rally, a certain Swamy Sadanandji, head of the little-known Ajjampura Math, declared, much to the mirth of the mob, ‘The shrine will be liberated or a bloodbath is certain’ (B.R. Srikanth, 1998). Impassioned cries of ‘We will shed blood to save the Datta Peetha’ rent the air (Communalism Combat, December 1998) and it was falsely alleged that the Muslim sajjada nashin was obstructing Hindus from worshipping at the shrine.

  Emboldened by this fiery rhetoric, activists of the fascist Bajrang Dal tore down the green flags fluttering near the dargah and, in their place, hoisted saffron Hindutva flags. The police and the local administration remained mute spectators to this vandalism. The deputy commissioner of Chikamagalur, K.S. Manjunath, and the inspector general of police (Western Range), B.N. Bhonsale, claimed that this could not be stopped as this would lead to a confrontation (Indian Express, 4 December 1998). The police and the administration had reportedly been warned that if they attempted to remove the saffron flags, their hands would be ‘cut off ’ (Communalism Combat, December 1998). Sensing that the police were in no mood to stop them, Hindutva activists carried a three-headed idol purported to be that of Dattatreya inside the cave and worshipped it. The Muslims protested, arguing that this was a clear violation of the court’s orders, but their plea was turned down on the flimsy grounds that removing the idol then could result in communal violence. As a result, for the first time an idol was worshipped at the dargah. This continued for three days, till 3 December. A group of Brahmin priests associated with the VHP also tried to take a two-foot idol of Ganesha inside the shrine, fully aware of the tradition that once an idol of the elephant-headed god is installed at a particular spot it cannot be removed. The administration did not allow them to carry the idol inside, although they were allowed to worship it at the entrance of the cave. After this, the idol was taken by the deputy commissioner of the district, who told visiting newspersons that at an earlier meeting with VHP leaders, he had agreed that any ‘offering’ they made to the shrine ‘would be accepted’ (Asian Age, 4 December 1998).

  After the so-called puja gave over, a dharma sabha (religious council) was organized outside the dargah, which was addressed by senior VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders. They announced that they were giving the government a year’s ultimatum to hand the shrine over to them, failing which they would be forced to ‘choose the path of confrontation’, promising a ‘bloodbath’ (Asian Age, 20 December 1998). They also demanded the removal of the Muslim sajjada nashin and the appointment of a Hindu priest in his place, and the offering of Hindu-style puja at the dargah every day. The state convener of the Bajrang Dal, Pramod Mutalik, demanded that the annual Sufi urs festival, which has been held for several centuries at the shrine, be discontinued forthwith (Asian Age, 3 December 1998). Not to be outdone, the all-India general secretary of the Bajrang Dal, Prakash Sharma, demanded that only Hindu puja be allowed at the shrine. At a rally organized later at Chikamagalur, he thundered, ‘If Allah and Christ do not accept Saraswati Vandana, why should our Dattapeetha accept Muslims?’ (Parvathi Menon, 1999).

  From 1998 onwards the VHP and its associated outfits have been regularly holding a so-called puja at the dargah every December and organizing large, slogan-shouting rallies for the ‘liberation’ of Dattatreya. The state, true to its traditions, has done little, if anything at all, to hold in check this fast-spreading campaign of terror. And so, steadily but surely, this little shrine tucked away in a remote cave up in the thickly wooded hills of Chikamagalur is probably on its way to becoming a second Ayodhya.

  ‘Hey you, newspaper-wallah,’ someone shouted out as I headed down the next morning to catch the bus back to Chikamagalur. I turned back to find the ganja-puffing fakir, clutching at the hem of his robe and strolling towards the bus-stand, waving out to me. He seemed somehow less intimidating, in fact somewhat jovial, with his matted hair now covered with a black turban, and an enormous turquoise pendant dancing from a string around his neck.

  ‘So, you are off, are you?’ he asked me.

  ‘I don’t know what you are going to write about the dargah,’ he said, as he struck a match and lit his chillum. ‘But always remember, son,’ he mused, closing his eyes and blowing a cloud of smoke out of his hairy nostrils, ‘come what may, God is always with those who are faithful to Him.’ And, clearing his throat, he recited in a voice that seemed full of pain, a couplet which he said he had picked up from some wandering qawwal:

  Allah ko dhundo Allah ke pyaron mein

  Allah samaya hai in ishq ke maro mein

  Search for God among God’s loved ones

  For God is to be found among those smitten by love.

  ‘Allah be with you, son,’ he said, and drew me to his cloak. His heart pounded heavily against my chest. I looked up and saw a stream of kohl trickling down his wet eyes.

  _______________________________________

  This extract is from Sacred Spaces: Exploring Traditions of Shared Faith in India.

  31.

  Where the creature is

  Akho (17 century ce)

  Translated by Gieve Patel

  Where the creature is

  there is the Creator,

  but you wander elsewhere

  search in faraway places.

  The first false step, says Akha,

  was that you forgot

  to look within.

  So you forgot.

  Go then, study

  with a saint. What’s gained

  by displays of piety: growing

  venerable whiskers and a beard;

  or by presenting yourself to the world

  tonsured, sheared?

  32.

  Antimemoirs

  Andre Malraux

  Soon I was to see it [night] descend over Ellora. (It seemed that I was being drawn into a pilgrimage to Shiva: Benares, Madurai, Ellora, then Elephanta.) As in Egypt, as in Angkor, the ruins had been cleared of vegetation, which in the past had been powerfully wedded to the divinities of Destruction. But these caves combine the effect of the mountain and of the crypt. The Kailasa temples were not built; they were hewn out of the mountain. They are literally buried in the earth—and we have never seen a network of cathedrals at the bottom of a crevasse, without storey levels, without towners, their ribbed vaults suggesting the thoracic cages of legendary mo
nsters; whence, then, did this nagging memory of a cathedral come? From the sense of infinite space. The upper floors, buried in a crevasse on the Kailasa side, from the other side overlook the immensity of the plain; although the plan of the temples is the work of geomancers, Ellora as a whole preserves the mystery of the original grottoes, the geological accident of a chaos pierced with openings. The darkest parts reminded me of Lascaux. Beyond a gallery where the half-light leads a jungle of figures towards the void, the sunlight poured down on a combat of monsters in diadems and gods in tiaras, whose multiple arms are tangled in a cataract of jewellery. The memory of the confusion at Madurai emphasized the extent to which this statuary is controlled. The figures of the sacred rivers, the Ganga, the Jumna, seem as if sculpted by the men who fashioned the amphoras of the divine epics. The isolated flying genies are written in flame. And in spite of Shiva, in spite of the terrible mother-goddesses, this flame is not the flame of burning corpses. The monsters and heroes of Ellora blaze on a pyre of red gladioli.

  The greatest sculptors of these caves were seeking to grasp the ungraspable better than or in a different way from their predecessors. ‘O Lord, thou who takest on the forms imagined by thy faithful …’ But the faithful do not invent the forms of the gods; they recognize them. The prayer which applied here was more disturbing, and it is in fact owed to a sculptor: ‘O Lord of all the gods, teach me in dreams how to execute the works that are in my mind!’ Not that Ellora is any more oneiric than a lot of other temples, but what reigns there, and what the Hindu prayer invokes, is the immemorial world of archetypes and of symbols, which pursues its nocturnal life through generations of sleepers, just as the mind, for those who call upon these gods, pursues its life through their own selves. Temples, statues, bas-reliefs are part of the mountain, like an efflorescence of the divine. Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, they evoke an unseen world which they do not seek to imitate since its successive representations are all equally legitimate. The dialogue of the immutable Nirvana with the dances of the gods is self-evident; the dance of Shiva which I contemplate is said to be that of the Atman at the moment when death delivers it from the body, the mind and the soul. And this dance, even in a museum, would not belong to the world of art alone; its perfection, here, does not pertain to art, to the enigmatically convincing realm of myth, of wild things, or orchids. A work of the gods. Nowhere had I been so overwhelmingly aware of how much all sacred art presupposes that those to whom it is addressed take for granted the existence of a secret of the world which art passes on without unveiling, and in which it makes them share. I was in the nocturnal garden of the great dreams of India.