The Hindus

by Wendy Doniger

  The administrator learned who had killed the peacocks and asked him how, being a Bengali and a Muslim, he had dared to kill a living thing in a Hindu district. Manrique answered for his servant, arguing that a Muslim had no need to respect the “ridiculous precepts” of the Hindus; that God nowhere prohibited the killing of such animals but had created them for man’s use; and that killing the peacocks did not violate the precepts of the Qur’an. The administrator, however, pointed out that when Akbar had conquered Bengal sixty-four years earlier, he had promised that he and his successors would let Bengalis live under their own customs; the administrator sent the man back to jail, awaiting a sentence that might require whipping and the amputation of his right hand. Manrique bribed the administrator’s wife with a piece of Chinese silk taffeta, embroidered with white, pink, and yellow flowers. She persuaded her husband to forgo the amputation and merely subject the man to a whipping.104

  Though there is significant blurring of the line between the injunction against killing any living thing or only against killing sacred things (peacocks perhaps being sacred to Skanda/Murugan, whose vehicle they are), the main point of this story stands out clearly in either case. Though the Christian was, by his own confession, prepared to mock Hindu sensibilities and to resort to concealment and bribery (which succeeded, in part) to evade them, his expectation that a Muslim judge might share his chauvinism was not justified; like Akbar, whom he invoked, the Muslim administrator respected Hindu law and did not privilege Muslims before the law.

  RELIGIOUS FUSION

  In the realm of religious texts, both bhakti and Sufism transfused popular literature so thoroughly that it is often hard to tell which tradition is the source of a particular mystical folk song.105 Much of the poetry written by Muslims, with Muslim names, in Hindi, Bengali (Bangla), Gujarati, Punjabi, and Marathi begins with the Islamic invocation of Allah but goes on to express Hindu content or makes use of Hindu forms, Hindu imagery, Hindu terminology. In return, the sixteenth-century Bangla text entitled The Ocean of the Nectar of Bhakti, by the theologian Rupagoswamin, tells the life of Krishna in a form modeled on a Sufi romance.106 The heroes of the Persian epic the Shah Nama and the Sanskrit Mahabharata interact in the Tarikh-i-Farishta, composed under the Mughals. Hindu-Muslim sects flourished, especially in Bengal, and new Hindu sects emerged, headed by charismatic leaders. Muslims allowed Hindus to perform sacrifices in the ruins of old temples, and many Muslim pilgrims attended the Hindu shrines in Kangra and Mathura.107

  Syncretismjq remained at the heart of Sufism, which in the course of time produced Muslim disciples who had Hindu disciples who had Muslim disciples, and so on, some of whom called God Allah, some Rama or Hari (Vishnu).108 In Sufi centers, low-caste Hindus, including Pariahs, shared meals with other Hindus as well as with Muslims.109 A similar synthesis took place in the seventeenth century in “Dakani” poetry composed in Urdu, which blended Islamic and Hindu genres as well as male and female voices, introducing, from the Hindu lyric tradition and the Arabic storytelling tradition, a female narrator.110 Popular religion often mixed Hindu and Sufi practices together inextricably, to the annoyance of reformers.111 Many people were Hindu by culture, Muslim by religion, or the reverse. Mughal emperors patronized yoga establishments. Hindus worshiped Sufi Pirs.112

  TRANSLATING RELIGIONS

  The enrichment of Hinduism by Islam, and Islam by Hinduism, was greatly facilitated by the production of translations, which inspired new, original genres in both cultures. By the time of the Mughals, Indian literature was flourishing in North India in a number of languages: Sanskrit, Persian (the official court language), Arabic, the Turkic languages, and many regional languages, including Sindi, Punjabi, Pashto, and Hindi.113 In public spheres in South India too, particularly but not only in the Telugu-speaking world, language boundaries were porous both geographically and linguistically, and multiple literary cultures were loosely connected.114 Urdu (“camp”), a hybrid dialect that Akbar developed in the military encampments, was widely used; it was written in Perso-Arabic script, with much Sanskrit-Hindi syntax and vocabulary.115 Developed further under Shah Jahan, Urdu became the primary fusion language.

  The Mughals extended their patronage to many Hindu scholars and commissioned the translation of many Hindu works from Sanskrit into Arabic and Persian. Already by the eighth century, the collection of animal fables called the Panchatantra had been translated into Arabic (known as The Mirror for Princes [Kalila wa Dimna]), and another version into Persian (entitled The Lights of Canopus [Anvari Suhaili]). Akbar had Abu’l Fazl translate it into Persian again and also had both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana translated into Persian.116 There were Persian translations of the Harivamsha, gorgeously illustrated.117 Jahangir had an abridged translation made of the Yoga-vasishtha, and Dara Shikoh himself later translated it again, more fully. Dara also provided the first Persian translation of the Upanishads, which became known in Europe (through a French translation of Dara’s Persian) and introduced the British Orientalist William Jones to Indian literature. Thanks to Akbar and Dara, Sanskrit became an important literary language in the Muslim world.118 The Turkish and Afghan courts of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries sponsored a rich and interactive mixture of vernacular and classical or cosmopolitan languages and fostered the growth of regional literature, music, and art.119 The erotic literature of the Turks and Persians easily assimilated translations of the Kama-sutra into Persian, often with wonderful illustrations; the Persian was then translated into European languages.

  ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

  As the Mughals were superb plunderers, so were they superb builders. Their architecture was strongly influenced by Hindu architecture,120 and in return, Mughal architecture had a vivid impact on many Hindu monuments,121 inspiring, as in literature, unprecedented Hindu forms.

  Babur, who scorned most things Indian, disdained the Indian builders: “A stone mosque was built, but it was not well made. They built it in the Indian fashion.”122 But Akbar, who admired most things Indian, admired its architecture, too; the eclectic architecture of Fatehpur Sikri combined Persian with Hindu and Jaina forms. Akbar employed nearly fifteen hundred stonecutters at Agra.123 He gave Man Singh permission to erect a number of temples in Vrindaban, built of red sandstone, the material usually reserved for Mughal official architecture; these Hindu temples also had many Mughal architectural features.124 Since there were no Rama temples in Ayodhya until the sixteenth or seventeenth century, there is some irony in the strong possibility that Babur, whose mosque was to become such a cause célèbre, may have sponsored the first Rama temples in Ayodhya, built when he built the ill-fated Babri Mosque.125

  In painting too a fusion of Hindu and Muslim forms led to innovations in both cultures. Many paintings on Hindu themes are signed with the names of Muslim artists, and many Hindu miniature paintings were modeled on Persian originals126 or incorporated composite figures and other fantastic themes from Persian miniatures.127 Though Indian painters already knew how to illuminate manuscripts with miniatures, the Persians made it a court practice and introduced new techniques and refinements.

  As always, the common people of India picked up the tab.128 The great Mughal monuments were also monuments to Mughal “extravagance and oppression.” Though there were no more crop seizures, there was still crippling taxation on peasants and artisans, and the plight of the cultivator was worse than ever, with increased exploitation from above.129 As there was no free temple, there was certainly no free mosque.

  CHAPTER 20

  HINDUISM UNDER THE MUGHALS

  1500 to 1700 CE

  CHRONOLOGY (ALL DATES ARE CE)

  1486-1533 Chaitanya lives

  1498-1597 Mirabai lives

  1532-1623 Tulsidas lives

  1608-1649 Tukaram lives

  1622-1673 Kshetrayya lives

  It is a simple fact that contemporary Hinduism as a living practice would not be what it is if it were not for the devotional practices initiated und
er Mughal rule.

  Amitav Ghosh (1956- )1

  Hinduisms of various kinds flourished under the Mughals. The production and preservation of a large number of digests, as well as literary and religious texts, during this period suggest that this was another of those periods—we have encountered several—when the presence of foreign cultures in India led many Hindu intellectuals to take pains to preserve their cultural heritage.2 This was not an unalloyed Good Thing. Some Hindus retreated into more conservative practices lest someone mistake them for Muslims in the dark of cultural fusion. As K. M. Pannikar, prime minister of Bikaner in the 1940s, put it, with benefit of hindsight, “The reaction of Hindu lawgivers to [the Mughal] challenge was in general to make Hinduism more rigid and to re-interpret the rules in such a way as to resist the encroachments of Islam. It is perhaps this defensive attitude toward society that is responsible for the orthodoxy of views which is characteristic of the Dharma Sastra literature of this period.”3

  But in a more positive vein, Hindu kings in medieval India arranged large-scale public debates.4 Fear of Muslims and a desire to circle the wagons were among the inspirations for this burst of literary and religious activity. Mughal policies that encouraged trade and pilgrimage5 (in part because several of the Mughals collected taxes on pilgrims) benefited the sacred Vaishnava sites of Ayodhya and Vrindavan. Devotional Vaishnavism flourished under the Mughals in the sixteenth century in ways that are foundational for subsequent Hinduism. The establishment of Muslim rule and the subsequent loss of a political center for Hinduism triggered a shift of focus in Vaishnavism away from the more warriorlike and kingly aspects of Vishnu to those of the passionate god of the forest, the playful, amorous god, Krishna the cowherd.6 Though the Mughals picked up some aspects of caste, by and large they ignored it, and some Hindus followed their lead and loosened up. Outside the nervous world of the Brahmin imaginary, many good things were happening.

  TULSIDAS AND SITA IN NORTH INDIA

  Tulsidas (c. 1532/1543-1623), one of the main architects of North Indian Vaishnavism, was close to several movers and shakers at the Mughal court, including Man Singh.7 His retelling of the Ramayana in Hindi, titled “The Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama” (Ramcaritmanas), is still read and enacted each year at the “Rama Play” (Ramlila) throughout North India, particularly at Ramnagar near Varanasi. Tulsidas, who composed his poem at a pilgrimage center that had been attacked by Muslims, said that even the Muslims would be saved by Rama’s name8 (rather reminiscent of earlier claims that this or that pilgrimage spot would save even Pariahs). The Brahmins of Varanasi, where the text was composed, are said to have been shocked by the composition of such a text in a vernacular language. They tested it by placing it in the Shiva temple for one night, with the Vedas and Puranas placed on top of it. In the morning Tulsidas’s’s text was on top of them all, legitimizing its authority,9 like that of the scriptures in the South Indian myth (which texts will float upstream?), buoyancy being, apparently, a sign of sanctity.

  Some Brahmins also objected to Tulsidas’s challenges to caste. Although by and large Tulsidas toes the Brahmin party line and upholds caste, there are also moments of compassion for Pariahs and tribals, such as this story about a Pariah, told, significantly, through the masking device of an animal:

  RAMA AND THE CROW

  When Rama was still a little baby, he began to cry when he could not catch the crow that came near him; he pursued the crow no matter how high the bird flew into the air. The crow fell into the child’s mouth and watched for thousands of years as Rama was born again and again as a child on earth. Then the child laughed, and the crow fell out of his mouth. Rama granted the terrified crow the boon of eternal devotion to him, and so the crow sings Rama’s praises eternally.10

  The manifestation of god’s universal form within an anthropomorphic body, a manifestation that we have seen experienced by Brahma and Vishnu, by Arjuna (in the Gita), and by Krishna’s mother, is here given to a crow, an unclean scavenger. The caste issue is explicit here: The crow was an uppity Pariah in a former life, until Shiva cursed him to be reborn as a crow. This story stands in marked contrast with Rama’s treatment of a crow in Valmiki’s Ramayana, in which he regards the crow as an enemy and blinds him.

  Tulsidas also tackled in his own way the problem of Rama’s treatment of Sita. In the centuries that had intervened since Valmiki’s Ramayana, as Rama had become one of the two great gods of Vaishnavism (Krishna being the other), Sita’s fate had become more vexing than ever. Tulsidas dealt with this problem by incorporating into his poem the tradition of the illusory or shadow Sita from earlier Sanskrit texts. Sita enters the fire at the ordeal and “both the shadow form and the stigma of public shame” are consumed in the blazing fire.11 Thus the Vedantic concept of illusion allows Tulsidas to argue that Rama never intended or needed to test Sita (since he knew she wasn’t in Ravana’s house at all) but goaded the shadow Sita into undertaking the fire ordeal merely in order to get her into the fire so that he could bring the real Sita back from the fire.12 And the real Sita then stays with him; Tulsidas omits entirely the episodes in which Sita bears twin sons and enters the earth; the story ends with Rama and Sita together, happily ever after.

  CHANDIDAS, CHAITANYA, AND RADHA IN BENGAL

  Like Sita, Radha suffered in separation from her beloved (Krishna), but the spirit of Radha’s longing in separation was different from Sita’s and was interpreted still differently by each of two great medieval Bengali poets, Chandidas and Chaitanya.

  In the fourteenth century Bangla poetry of Chandidas, Radha is already married when she goes off with Krishna. (In the sixteenth-century Sanskrit plays of Rupagoswamin, Chaitanya’s most famous disciple, Radha is married to Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna.13) Chandidas writes:

  Let us not talk of that fatal flute.

  It calls a woman away from her home

  and drags her by the hair to that Shyam [Krishna].

  A devoted wife forgets her spouse

  To be drawn like a deer, thirsty and lost.14

  The legends about Chandidas tell us how the tradition regarded him. His poems say that he was a Brahmin and a village priest who openly declared his love for a low-caste washerwoman named Rami. Legends say that he was dismissed as a priest and fasted to death as a protest but came to life again on the funeral pyre, or that the begum of Gaur took such a fancy to him that her jealous husband, the nawab, had him whipped to death while tied to the back of an elephant.

  The Bengali saint Chaitanya (1486-1533) was born into a Brahmin family and received a sound education in the Sanskrit sacred texts. After the death of his father when he was twenty-two, he made a pilgrimage to Gaya to perform the funeral rituals, and there he had a religious experience that inspired him to renounce the world. The world, however, would not renounce him; people flocked to him and joined him in singing songs (kirtana) to Krishna and dancing in a kind of trance, as well as repeating the names of Krishna, worshiping temple icons or the tulsi plant (a kind of basil sacred to Vishnu), and retelling Krishna’s acts, particularly his loveplay with the cowherd women (Gopis).15 Chaitanya settled in Orissa in the town of Puri (rather than Vrindavan, the scene of Krishna’s youth) at his mother’s urging, so that he could more easily stay in touch with her. He had frequent epileptic seizures and may have died by drowning while in a state of religious ecstasy.

  Chaitanya and his followers believed that he was an incarnation of Krishna and Radha in one body, where at last the two gods (and Chaitanya) could simultaneously experience the bliss of both sides of the couple in union.16 The Bengali sect called Sahajiyas (“Naturalists”) saw Krishna and Radha united not only in Chaitanya but in every man and every woman; their goal was not to worship or imitate Krishna or Radha, in a dualistic, bhakti sense, but to become them, in a monistic and Tantric sense, to realize both male and female powers within their own bodies.17 They praised the ideal of love for another man’s wife or for a woman of unsuitably low caste, or an unmarried woman’s love for a man (for
even in texts in which Radha is not anyone else’s wife, she is usually not Krishna’s wife), because they admired the intensity of such love in the face of social disapproval. The adulterous love between Krishna and Radha or the Gopis made a positive virtue of the addictive vice of lust, coming down solidly on the side of passion and against the control of passion through renunciation; adulterous passion, which had long been the benchmark of what religion was designed to prevent, now became a metaphor for the proper love of god.

  Yet unlike the model of Shiva as Skull Bearer, these ideals were never taken as paradigms for an imitatio dei; they were theological parables, not licenses to commit adultery. The difference can be accounted for when we consider the radical contrast between the relatively lawless period in which the Kapalikas thrived, not to mention the antinomian nature of their community, and the more tempered and theocratic atmosphere of even the most erotic of the cults of Krishna.

  Chaitanya was said to have reconverted the Muslim governor of Orissa back to Hinduism, from which he had converted and to which he had also converted many Pathans (ethnic Afghans).18 Chaitanya’s followers include many groups, beginning with the antinomian Bengali Sahajiyas, who were his contemporaries. His main disciples were the renunciants called Goswamins. One of them, Nityananda, continuing the paradigm, was said to be the incarnation of Balarama, Krishna’s brother. In his efforts to convert the Bengali Tantrics, Nityananda is said to have consorted with “prostitutes, drunkards, and others of dubious character,” behavior that his followers justified by his association with Balarama, who was known for his excesses.19 Other Goswamins developed an erotic devotional theology that incorporated still more antinomian and ecstatic Tantric influences and took root among the people known as Bauls.20