M.a. Thesis - Composite (Final Edition)

Asif Syed Zaman Introduction

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In the summer of 1857, the zamgarh1 Proclamation was issued in the midst of a regional nativist struggle against the East India Company now known as the Sepoy Mutiny. Though it was not an all-out war of independence as per the anachronistic application of nationalist mythology, the proclamation did intend to achieve a Mughal restoration. Allegedly issued by one of the grandsons of Bahadur Shah Zafar, it made a series of appeals, mainly fiscal and political, to rally support against the British for those who would heed their call to arms, while threatening those who refused to submit to their demands.2 Bahadur Shah was the symbol of their anti-British message, proclaimed as the Badshah-iHind3 (Emperor of India) when Sepoys had seized Delhi. Previous Mughal emperors, most notably in the period from Babur to Aurangzeb (1526-1707) had employed this title previous to the Sepoys conferment of this title, while the various monarchs of Britain from Queen Victoria until George VI would continue to use the honorific following it. Contrary to popular opinion, Hindustan and India are two disparate concepts the former constituting a Weberian community of sentiment4 that had many precursory and competing fluid identities in the pre-modern world and the latter a finite country with temporal boundaries, popular sovereignty, and all the trimmings of a modern nation-state.

1

Pronounced aa-zam-garh, as most appropriately indicates the equivalent for the Hindi vowel in (commonly spelled as Azamgarh in English). I would like to briefly discuss the usage of macron letters in this paper (e.g. ,,). While I employed these characters so as to emphasise a pronunciation of a word closer to that which is found in its language of origin (whether it is Sanskrit, Arabic, Farsi, Hindustani or any other language for that matter), it is very difficult to guarantee the uniform spelling of a particular word considering the immense variety of sources that have been used and the number of eras from which they date. For example, Hindustan can be rendered as Hindustan or Hindustn, and even as Hindostan. The intended meaning is, nevertheless, the same. I apologise if this has caused any confusion. 2 Embree, Ainslee Thomas, Stephen N. Hay, William Theodore De Bary. Sources of Indian Tradition. Volume Two: Modern India and Pakistan. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) 177. 3 Hindustani / 4 Ray, Rajat Kanta. The Felt Community: Commonality and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism. (New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2003) ix.

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Hindustan is a more accommodating concept than India could ever be particularly in light of the 1947 partition of India along communal lines. Hindustan, as the Mughals had understood it, more accurately reflects the social, economic, and political demands of the people of South Asia. The great diversity of cultures, ethnicities languages, lifestyles, philosophies, and religions home to the Indian Subcontinent all help make Hindustan a more viable position, given that it can be embraced by the population as a whole, just as the mutineers had done with the term Hindus and Musulmans of Hindustan in 1857.5 In the last five centuries, Hindustan has had a number of differing connotations. The Mughal sovereign Akbars approach to Hindustan was one that was tolerant to all religions. Akbar and Aurangzeb were both Mughal emperors of Hindustan, but Aurangzeb was not as inclusive of Hindus as his great-grandfather had been. The Azamgarh Proclamation that sought to restore Bahadur Shah II to the Mughal Empires former glory follows Akbars model of Hindustan in its allusion to the Hindus and Muslims of Hindustan. Decades later, the Vinayak Damodar Savarkar that authored Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? in 1923 viewed Hindustan in a nationalist and communal light. Seeing Hindustan as the homeland of Hindus, Savarkar demanded that for one to be considered true Indian, a person must consider India as his motherland, fatherland, and holy land. How does this definition vary from all others? Aurangzeb levied the jizyah tax from Hindus, but he nevertheless considered them as both his fellow subjects and as people of Hindustan. What Savarkar has done is excluded Muslims from the concept of Hindustan by placing the requirement of punyabhm (Indias status as a holy land) upon them. There are a number of competing approaches to understanding the phenomena associated with the nation-states of the contemporary world. Among these approaches, I5

Ibid, 546.

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will limit my discussion to only three of these prevailing views on nationalism: Benedict Andersons imagined communities theory, Ernest Gellners sociological necessity argument, and Max Webers communities of sentiment. Yet, even these theoreticians, are capable of admitting as Anderson does, Nation, nationality, nationalism all have proved notoriously difficult to define, let alone analyse. In contrast to the immense influence that nationalism has exerted on the modern world, plausible theory about it is conspicuously.6 In other words, the challenge of explaining three of the most fundamental words associated with nation still proves to be a difficult one. An imagined community, as Benedict Anderson (b. 1936) defines his concept, is "an imagined political community [that is] imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign."7 The imagined nature of this community does not entail its falsity, but this adjective is used because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the images of their communions.8 As a result, this community, while being real and extant, must use political and cultural institutions to imagine themselves as a coherent group of individuals by sharing a certain set of attitudes and belief systems. Without this creative employment of imagination, such a community would cease to be a nation, and the people within it would regard one another as strangers. Let us apply Andersons theory to a hypothetical example in India. Were it not for Indian nationalism, a group of booksellers in Patna would not be able to identify fishermen in Port Blair as fellow Indians. In a non-nationalist world, these two groups of people6

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. (New York: Verso, 2003) 3. 7 Ibid, 6. 8 Ibid, 6.

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would consider each other as strangers. It is the Indian nation-state and the ideology of nationalism which has been able to tie such divergent groups such Biharis and the Andaman peoples together as Indians. Though the merchants in the kitab-khana in Patna Market have probably never been to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and will most likely never visit these islands, they know that these islands are a territory of the Republic of India, and will logically conclude that the inhabitants of these islands, whether aboriginal or settler, are Indians. Not only does Anderson argue that the nation is imagined, he asserts that it is limited and sovereign. To quote him, The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations.9 India fits Andersons example precisely, as it has more than a billion citizens in its community. Nevertheless, there are boundaries that mark India from Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar. These boundaries may be disputed, but the L.O.C. is very different from the way the Mughal Empires frontier with the Safavid Empire operated. These frontiers were grey areas that were not clearly defined as belonging to one entity or the other. The nation is confined to operating within its own limits (from where it is imagined as being sovereign)10, unlike universalising concepts such as gender, class, and religion. While Anderson focused on the notion of imagined communities, Ernest Gellner (1925-95) was more concerned with the derivation of nationalism in cultural necessities.11 These necessities have their roots in the Industrial Revolution, which demanded a greater9

Anderson, 7. Ibid, 7. 11 Ibid.10

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degree of homogeneity in high culture.12 Furthermore, Gellner holds that, "nationalism is primarily a political principle that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent."13 In the way Anderson explains how nationalism fills a niche in making strangers the members of a nation, Ernest Gellner points to how it meet the demands of an increasingly modern society. Several decades before Anderson and Gellner offered their contributions to contemporary discussions on nationalism, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) had offered his own definition of the nation, saying In so far as there is at all a common object lying behind the obviously ambiguous term nation it is apparently located in the field of politics. One might well define the concept of nation in the following way; a nation is a community of sentiment which would adequately manifest in a state of its own; hence, a nation is a community which normally tends to produce a state of its own. It is this understanding of the nation that has served as the inspiration for Rajat Kanta Rays The Felt Community: Commonality and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism. Weber argues that before there was a nation, there was a community of sentiment.14 Ray identifies Hindustan as being that community of sentiment for Hindus and Muslims alike in a time before this term became communalised in the decades after the Sepoy Mutiny.15 A substantial portion of R.K. Rays book is devoted to the events of 1857 uprising. In one passage, he explains how At the instinctual level of the collective mentality, it was the violent protest of a black subject people against their white oppressorsIt was not, however, the rebels who put the struggle in terms of a war between the racesthough the mutinous crowds and sepoys gave went to the racial antipathy in word as well as deed, this was not the most typical expressions of they clothed the underlying race war in the ideological garb of a struggle12 13

Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006) 105. ibid, 1. 14 Ray, ix. 15 ibid, ix.

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between the true religions and the false one. The joint brotherhood of the religions expressed, in so far as they were capable of expressing it, the instinctive feeling that the native subject expressed, in so far as they were capable of expressing it, the instinctive feeling that the native subject race constituted one people against the white Christian rulers.16 Therefore, the Hindus and Muslims of Hindustan rhetoric acts as a nativist precursor to Indian nationalism. It also represents Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khans Two-Nation Theory in one of its earliest phases, an idea that Ray ardently supports. However, this is a more inclusive version of the theory, closer to Khans articulation of it rather than Savarkars Hindutva ideology. Another work that would be extremely useful to our discussion is Partha Chatterjees The Nation and its Fragments. Chatterjees main objection with Benedict Anderson is that If nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from certain modular forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine?17 Thus, nationalists of Asia and Africa would have to resort to a fragmentary nationalism rather than a wholesale transfer of nationalist dogma. By adapting the European model to fit locally sourced ideological fragments, the Indian nation was conceived. I argue that Hindustan is one of the most prominent of these pre-national fragments. Not only was the European model modified for Indian consumption, the fragments themselves were modified for accommodation with nationalist theory. It is worth noting that some of these fragments fit better than their counterparts, while still other pieces were cast aside completely. As one of the fragmentary tools that Indian nationalists had at their disposal, the concept of Hindustan was transformed through use of the nationalist16 17

Ibid, 357. Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and its Fragments. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993) 5.

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imagination. For example, Hindustan became a limited, sovereign entity rather than the imperial domain of the Mughal Empire. Even though Hindustan became a synonym for the Republic of India in common parlance, it still could not emerge as the official name of India in the 1950 Constitution as a result of communalist connotations that became associated with it from the 1920s onward. To this day, Hindustan cannot be accommodated smoothly in discussions of Indian national identity because it is not simply the Indian nation itself, but a pre-national nomenclature that became one of the pieces in conceiving the Indian nation-state. Consequently, this is why Chatterjees fragmentary model best describes Hindustans complicated relation with Indian nationalism during the course of the 20th century. My paper is divided into three chapters. The first of these chapters discusses the concept of Hindustan in pre-modern and early modern India. In this section, I seek to investigate ancient, internally-ascribed nomenclatures for the land that later became known as Hindustan such as Bharatvarsh and Jambudvipa during antiquity, and demonstrate the changing contexts in which terms for outsiders such as yavana and mleccha were used. I will also discuss early Muslim encounters with Al-Hind and the circumstances in which Hindustan was used in the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire. This chapter argues that the coming of Islam consolidated Hindustan as a concept, and had gained such a degree of legitimacy as an idea that outlived the very existence of these two Islamicate regimes. By the close of this first chapter, I will introduce Hindustans relation to the postMughal states of the eighteenth century. This discussion will continue into the second chapter, with emphasis on their interactions of these states with the emerging East India Company regime. Other topics considered in the second chapter include the Sepoy Mutiny

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and the Bahadur Shah IIs identification as the Emperor of Hindustan, the Azamgarh Proclamation, Victorias proclamation as Empress of India at the Delhi Durbar of 1877, the emergence of modern Hinduism and the Indian nationalist and independence movement. By the end of this chapter, I seek to prove how Hindustan came to be understood in an increasingly communal light, whether it was used by the Muslim League or Hindu nationalist groups. My third and final chapter entails India as a present-day nation state from 15 August 1947 onward. Against the backdrop of Pakistan and later Bangladesh after 1947, I aim to compare and contrast India from its pre-modern counterpart Hindustan. I will investigate the use of this new Hindustan in Indian nationalist culture, specifically in Bollywood films, popular songs, and lay histories of the subcontinent. This closing chapter establishes Hindustans confinement to the Republic of India, while nevertheless asserting how the old Hindustan represents a powerful alternative to the Indian nation-state.

Chapter 1: Hindustn in Pre-Modern and Early Modern India

Sindhu and Hindu: Inception of Hindustn Hindustn literally means land18 of the Hindus. However, the definition of Hindus is not simple. Unlike Muslims who are defined by their submission19 to Allah, Christians in their relation to Christ, Buddhists to Buddha, and Jews to the tribe of Judah, Hindus constitute the only one of the five major religions of the world that has a distinct status based purely on geography, and an identity not entirely of their own choosing. Just18

From Sanskrit stnam and Old Persian sthna, both of which mean place or where one stands. For details, consult Safire, William. The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time: Wit and Wisdom from the Popular On Language. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004) 218. 19 Arabic

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as Hindustn is home to Hindus, Hindus are in-turn defined by this geography. The word Hindu is derived from the Sanskrit Sindhu for the Indus River. Given that Sindhu was a foreign word to the neighbouring Persians who could not pronounce the s sound, it was rendered Hindu. According to Rajat Kanta Ray, An inscription of the Sassanid Emperor Shapur I, datable to 262 CE, refers to Hindustn, land of the Sindhu probably referring thereby to lower Indus country.20 This inscription constitutes the most primitive reference to Hindustn, almost one and three quarters of a millennium ago. In time, Hindu meant to include not only the river Indus but the people who lived around it. Purnic Places: Ancient Alternatives to Hindustn A similar though slightly older counterpart to the term Hindustn is Bhratvarsha. Prior to being known as Bhratavarsha, the subcontinent of India was known in Vedic texts as Himahavarsha or Haimavatavarsha.21 Before the 5th century, India was also occasionally known by its inhabitants as Magadh, given that this was the most powerful of the republics at the time.22 Yet another self-ascribed name for the region was the Kingdom of the Brahmanas, due to their influential role in the Aryanisation of the subcontinent.23 Hindustans Indus-centric nomenclature is analogous to how Mount Meru acted as the centre of Indian cosmology in antiquity. 24 Romila Thapar describes how this mythological mountain was surrounded by the four continents or dvipas, literally islands, separated by oceans. The southern continent was Jambudvipa (literally, the island of the rose-apple tree, and also

20 21

Ray, 55. Sagar, Krishna Chandra. Foreign Influence on Ancient India. (New Delhi, India: Northern Book Centre, 1992) 1. 22 Ibid, 2. 23 Ibid, 2. 24 Thapar, Romila. The Penguin History of Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300. (Penguin Academics: New Delhi, India, 2002) 38.

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referred to by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka in his inscriptions) and within this, the area to the south of the Himalaya, was Bharavarsha, named after the ruler Bharata.25 While Jambudvipa referred to many areas which now fall within the nation-state of India (e.g. Magadh, Bengal, the Deccan), it was neither a country nor a political entity. If Jambudvipa was an ancient precursor to the Indian Subcontinent, then Bhratvarsha was a region within that subcontinent.26 The Bhratas, a legendary family the Mahabharata is eponymous for, hailed from what is now Haryna.27 Varsha refers to continents or realms in the Puranas, so it is synonymous with dvipa28. Furthermore, it is King Bharata, the son of Dushyanta in the Mahabharata, that Bharatavarsha (The Realm of Bhrat) is named after.29 It is worth noting here that the Indus River does not pass through Haryna, though this region is part of the Indo-Gangetic plain watered by the Yamuna River. Only after Hindustn began to connote broader swaths of land in the Indian subcontinent did Haryna become part of both Bhrata and Hindustn. Bhratvarsha came to include references to lands outside Haryna in much the same way that Hindustns meaning expanded beyond Sindh; the only difference is that Hindustn was an external label that evolved into an Indic form of identity while Bhratavarsha was internally applied within an Indic culture. The Purnas help elucidate the division of the world into different parts while complicating cartographies for this time in history with the proposition of various, often times conflicting cosmological schemes. While one scheme divided the world into four parts, another has determined that there are seven divisions of the world (Bhuvana), stipulating that25 26

Ibid, 38-39. Ibid, 38-39. 27 Haryana. Microsoft Student 2009. [DVD]. (Redwood, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2009). 28 Dvipa is also used in the Puranic texts. 29 Sagar, 1.

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Jambudvipa is the first and foremost which is divided into nine sub-parts called varshas Of the nine Varshas, Ilvritta is the main sub-part. South of Ilvritta and beyond Himalayas is situated Bharatavarsha. Bharatavarsha is again subdivided into nine parts, viz. (1) Indravipa, (2) Kasaru (or Kaseruman), (3) Nmraparva (or Tmravarna or Tmpraparni or Tmradvipa), (4) Gabhistiman, (5) Ngadvipa, (6) Smya (or Krthhatia, (7) Gandharva or Sinhala (Ceylon), (8) Varuna, and (9) Kumrdvipa or Kumaridvipa. The last one is India proper. It is said to extend from Kumari (i.e. Kanykumri) in South to the source of the Gangas in the North. 30 Accordingly, it is Bharatvarsha that acts as the collection of many domains that are now considered as Indian or Indic in their geography. Bharatavarsha would also act as the domains of the emperor Bhrata, the son of Shakuntala in the famous play by Kalidsa. As a product of the Gupta Empire, the Bhratavarsha in the Abhijnakuntalam (Sanskrit Recognition of Shakuntala) also symbolically describes the imperial realms of this essentially segmentary state. The complexities of geography in the ancient world allowed for Bhrata to be substituted for Jambdvipa. J.B. Harley in his History of Cartography notes, There was a high degree of consensus to the names of the northern and southern dvipas (continents) Kuru or Uttarakuru and Jambdvipa (though Bharata was also often used for the latter) but the names of the eastern and western continents differed widely in the Hindu and Buddhist Traditions.31 In a scheme of four continents that represented the four different directs (north, south, east, and west) Jambudvipa or Bharata was the southern one. Centuries before the US State Department articulated the term South Asia, the Purnas described Bhrata as being a southern realm on their cosmological scheme of the world. What sets this scheme apart from many of its contemporaries is that it does not perceive distant realms as less glorious than their own revered home region (whether Jambudvipa or Bharatavara)As Eck observes as we move outward from Rose- Apple Island into the terra incognitae of the outer islands, the world is not imagined to be shadowy and dangerous, but on the contrary in more and more sublime. The outer islands

30 31

Ibid, 3. Harley, J.B. and Woodward, David. The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies. (New York: University of Chicago Press, 2002) 336.

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are not thought of as heavens, since the heavens rise in the vertical dimension of the Brahmanda, but life is idealised beyond the horizon.32 The implications of these fluid attitudes demonstrate how malleably the world could have been construed in the cartographies of the Purnic Era. Bharatavarsha might have been a holy land, a sacred land where pilgrimages brought various linguistic communities, but the domains of the earth were not juxtaposed against one another in a hierarchy, as they were in China with the ethnocentric notion of the land of Qin being a Middle Heaven. In other words, Indias holiness to the religious communities that were to be consolidated as Hindus in the 18th and 19th centuries did not take away from the sacred aura that other realms may have had. Bhrat, and not Jambdvipa, still continues to be used today by the Government of India as an official, self-ascribed name for the country. The Indian Constitution affirms India, that is Bharat, shall be a union of states.33 Unlike universalising forces such as religion, nationalism has confined the nation to the temporal borders of the nation-state. In Hindu mythology, it is perfectly acceptable to have the world divided into four and possibly seven parts, and for this name to be flexible. However, nationalism cannot afford to make that compromise or offer that flexibility, due to the temporal nature of this ideology. The Puranas, Vedas, Upanishads, Mahabharata, Ramayana, and similar mythological books construe the world in terms of epic time, while nationalist mythology demands the use of novel time. Epic time features a phenomenon that Anderson calls simultaneity, where the past and is novel time occur at the same time.34 Novel time, on the other hand, is standardised, measured, and much more predictable. The random, unpredictable nature of epic time finds use in the stabilisation of the values of religious32 33

Ibid, 336. Government of India. The Constitution of India. (New Delhi, India: Create Space, 2009) 2. 34 Anderson, 24.

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texts such as the Puranas, whereas the regulated nature of novel time allows it to be an indispensable source to the nation-state (with India being no exception). Even though the word Bhrat in the Devanagari script35 appears on all Indian stamps, coins, and banknotes, it is not the same Bhratvarsha of the Purnas. Insiders and Outsiders: Hindu, as Opposed to Yavana and Mleccha The term Hindu is a much newer term than yvana (literally Ionian) and mleccha (literally barbarian). Hindus did not refer to or even think of themselves as Hindus in antiquity.36 Of these three italicised words mentioned above, it is only the latter two terms that are mentioned in the Mhbhrata (even though the Mahabharata is presently identified as a Hindu text). While Hindustan was used by Persians to describe the peoples of first Sindh and eventually the larger Indian subcontinent in late antiquity, yavana and mleccha were used by Aryanised peoples against other ethno-linguistic groups. Thus, a collection of Brahmanical varnas and jtis that stretched from the Arabian Sea in the west to the Bay of Bengal in the east could not collectively figure themselves into one coherent unit, but they could contrast themselves against those they viewed to be inferior and less pure.37 This does not mean that Hindus thought of themselves as Hindustnis; but they were not mlecchas and not yavanas, while they relegated their own positive identities as a combination of this default system of nomenclature and their own locally based identities (e.g. Magadhas, Kosalas, Angas, Kurus, et cetera). The concept of the yavanas is not unique to India. The Sanskrit word Yavana is derived from Ionia, much in the same way as the Old Persian Yauna, Hebrew Yawan,35 36

Hindi Ray, 55. 37 Ibid, 55.

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Arabic Yunan, and the Chinese Ye-me.38 Ionia constituted the central portion of the west coast of Asia Minor, acquiring its name from Greeks who had migrated from the Greek mainland to Anatolia at around 1000 BC.39 It took several centuries for Ionia to become an integral component of the Hellenic world, and Alexanders military campaigns were the catalyst for Ionian to become synonymous for Greek and the West to Arabs, Hebrews, Persians, Chinese, and Indians alike. Closely related to the term yavana is the label yona; the form word is Sanskritised version of the latter, which more directly resembles the original Greek. In a tablet from Girnar in what is now Gujarat, Antiochus I (r. 324-262 / 261 BCE) is described as Antiyako yona rjayaye vpi, in the context of raja Piyadasi (now known to be Asoka the Great).40 An 1838 issue of the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India observes that the principal fact which arrests attention in this very curious proclamation, is it allusion to ANTIOCHUS, the Yona (Sanskrit Yavana) or Greek, kingAnd were there still any doubt at all in my mind, it would be replaced by the testimony of the Cuttack version, which introduces between Antiyake and Yona the word nma making the precise sense the Yona raja by name Antiochus.41 It is logical for Antiochus, the son of Seleucus I and a contemporary of Asoka (r. 269-232 BCE) to be referred to as a yona raja or Ionian king, if Yona is substituted for Greek or foreigners. While the Macedonians were never regarded as genuine Hellenes by the ancient Greeks however much they might have intermarried with Greek colonists,42 by Antiochus time, Macedonian dynasties such as the Seleucids played a prominent role in the proliferation of Hellenistic civilisation. Thus, Antiochus who would have otherwise38 39

Ball, Warwick. Rome in the East: The Transformation of an Empire. (New York: Routlege, 2001) 126. Sacks, et al. A Dictionary of the Ancient World.. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) 144. 40 Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australasia. Vol. XXVII New Series. September December 1838. (London: Wm. H. Allen & Co, 1838) 208. 41 Ibid, 209. 42 Harrison, James Albert. The Story of Greece. (New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1892) 486.

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been called a barbarian by the Greek had he lived a few decades earlier, is being identified as an Ionian, as a Greek in Mauryan pillars due to Alexanders cataclysmic conquests in the late 4th century before the Common Era. Greeks were not the only ones to apply labels such as barbaros, the word that became the basis for the English noun barbarian. The Sanskrit equivalent of barbaros was mleccha. Mleccha was used by Aryans to refer to the uncouth, incomprehensible speech they heard places beyond the Hindu Kush43; this is very similar to the Greek impression of non-Greeks: all that could be heard from the barbaros were the sounds barbar-bar because they were not applying what they saw as the proper sounds of the Greek language.44 At the same time, the Aryanised elites began to speak Sanskrit according the rules perfected by the grammarian Panini (c. 400 BCE). These elites regarded their language as sasktabh (literally refined speech), which was spoken during the late ancient and early medieval periods.45 As people who did not speak according to the tenets of Sanskrits refined speech, the mlecchas of Northwestern India were seen as ritually impure and people who had no place within the caste system.46 With the arrival of Islam on to the Indian scene, the expression mleccha increasingly referred to Muslims.47 In a much later context, yavana continued to be used in the Satya Pir texts of Bengal.48 In the same way that Satya Pir has been labelled as syncretic,49 yavana is43

Hoiberg, Dale and Ramchandani, Indu. Students Britannica India, Volume 1-5. Volume 4: Miraj to Shastri. (New Delhi, India: Enyclopaedia Britannica (India) Private Limited) 8. 44 Herodotus and Grene, David, trans. The History. (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987) 35 45 Ali, Daud. Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 172. 46 Hoiberg and Ramchandani, 8. 47 Gilmartin, David and Bruce B. Lawrence. Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Identities in Islamicate South Asia. (Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 2000) 31. 48 Ibid, 31. 49 To call Satya Pir a syncretic phenomenon would be an overstatement, though Given the ambiguity of this double reading (between Vishnu and Allah), it is easy to see why this tradition is given the label of syncretic. Consistently through the more than two hundred pages of this text describing scores of

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translated from these texts as Muslim.50 Considering that Islam emerged out of Arabia in the years following the Prophet Muhammads death in 632, and that Arabia is west of India (much in the same way that Ionia is west of India, though not as far), it is understandable why yavana is translated as such. Nevertheless, yavana is a non-specific term that operates on the controlling premise that someone whose ways are not of the traditional Hindu (the term is occasionally used adjectivally, but never nominally) has taken control of the countryside, and that in itself poses a threat to the stability of a common brahmanical culture, especially in the unsettled reaches of Bengal.51 Thus, it is not the Hindu that is being juxtaposed against the Muslim as Orientalists and religious nationalists might otherwise interpret; it is the Brahmanic Bengalis that are contrasted against non-Brahmanical foreigners. For these foreigners to be Muslims is merely coincidental. From Hindustan of the Sassanians to Al-Hind of the Saracens When the first inscriptions referring to land known as Hindustan were produced in 262 CE, the land now known as Iran in modern parlance, from where Shapur I (r. 240 / 42 270/72) administered the Sassanian Empire, was called Persia. A relatively new yet significant influence in Persian society at the time was the establishment of Zoroastrianism as the official religion of the state, under Shapurs father Ardashir.52 Just four years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, his second successor, the caliph Umar set his eyes on conquering the region they knew as Fars.53 Persia, the home of several of the majoradventures, Satya Pir demonstrates an Islamic orientation towards divinity and world powerhe is intent on establishing that in the world (Gilmartin, 31). With Satya meaning truth in Sanskrit and pr the equivalent of guide Farsi, it also becomes easy to oversimiplify Satya Pir as the mixing of Hinduism and Islam. The problem that this assertion creates is it essentialise these two religions in a time where identities were still more fluid than they are today. 50 Ibid, 31. 51 Ibid, 31. 52 Persia." Microsoft Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. 53 The Arabs could not pronounce the sound that is endemic to the letter p, and in this particular case the f sound was substituted for it. By the time that Persian began to be written in the Arabic alphabet, the letter was added for this sound, where it remained the basis for Farsi, Kashmiri, Urdu, and a host of other languages today.

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empires in antiquity, was now a part of an Arabian Muslim empire, based first in Madnah, then in Kufa, but by the time of the Umayyad sultans, it was centred in Damascus in what is now Syria. In Islamicate Persia, Zoroastrianism went from being the state-sponsored religion in the early seventh century with a prevalent majority to retaining a scant minority as opposed to a predominantly Muslim population by the advent of the second millennium of the Common Era (the mass conversion of Persians towards the Shia persuasion did not occur until the emergence of the Safavids slightly more than five centuries later); many Zoroastrians even fled to India, where the live today, primarily in Bombay. Nevertheless, Zoroastrianism, like Judaism, Christianity, and Sabeanism was regarded to be a scriptural religion, and its adherents like those of the three religions were regarded as People of the Book, that were entitled to a dhimmi (protected) status so long as they paid the jizyah and abided by the Pact of Umar. What did all these monumental changes in the socio-political landscape entail for the Subcontinent directly? While being a dhimmi offered the chance to retain Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian beliefs under the Islamic state, pagan religions (which would include the Brahmanical systems of India now understood as Hinduism) faced in theory a much harsher set of choices when their homes fell now within the realm of a man who was seen to be Gods vicegerent on Earth, the caliph: conversion or death.54 India however remained blissfully ignorant of these new realities that were created for such peoples as the Persians, Egyptians, Levantines, and Berbers. The subcontinent, at least theoretically from point of view of the Orthodox ulama, was part of the Dar al-Harb (the Abode of War, which represented lands waiting to be brought under the realm of the caliph and the Islamic sharah) while Persia had already been brought under the mantle of54

Wolpert, Stanley. A New History of India. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) 105.

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Dar al-Islam, or House of Islam. Within this expansive house, however, regional concerns continued to dominate. While the concept of an ummah (the Islamic community) has been around since the classical period of Islam, Pan-Islamism is a relatively recent phenomenon. Even though India was part of a theoretical Abode of War, this did not mean that there were constant incursions into the land known as Al-Hind. There were, however, attempts very early on by Muslim sovereigns to acquire lands in India. Umars successor, Uthman55 (r. 644-56), was the first such person to take on this venture, as documented in the Futuhu-l Buldan of Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Jabir al-Biladuri: When Usman, son of Akkan [sic] became Khalif, he appointed Abdullah son of Kuraiz, to (the government of) Irk, and wrote to him an order to send a person to the confines of Hind in order to a send a person to the confines of Hind in order to acquire to knowledge and bring back information. He accordingly deputed Hakim, son of Jaballa al Abdi.56 Hakim ibn Jaballah al-Abdi was essentially a spy sent from Iraq to report on the conditions on India. Uthman needed logistical information from this jsoos in order to determine on whether Hind was ripe for plunder, conquest, and incorporation into his caliphate. As for when Hakim came back from Hind, he was sent to the Khalif, who questioned him about the state of those regions. He replied that he knew them because he examined them. The caliph then told him to describe them. He said Water is scarce, the fruits are poor, and the robbers are bold; if few troops are sent there will be slain, if many, they will starve. Usman asked him whether he

55

Arabic .This word is pronounced as Uthman in the original Arabic. The ,despite having a sound that lies somewhere th and s can be rendered as both th and s, particularly in transliterating from languages such as Persian and Turkish, and subsequently Hindustani (Hindi / Urdu) which adapted the s pronunciation from Farsi in more modern times. To illustrate my point, in Farsi and Hindustani, his name is Usman, while in Turkish it is pronounced Osman (because the has been rendered as o rather than a guttural u. Please note the Uthman, Uthman, Othman, Osman, and Usman can be used interchangeably when drawing from various sources from various time periods, and that all these transliterations refer to the third Sunni caliph unless otherwise noted. 56 Elliot, Sir Henry Miers. The History of India, As Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period. (London: Trber and Co., 1867) 116.

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spoke accurately or hyperbolically [Lit. in rhyme]. He said that he spoke according to his knowledge. The Khalif abstained from sending any expedition there.57 The dismal report maintained the status quo by effectively keeping India out of the caliphate. Hind is conceived as a land of bandits and highwaymen with inadequate crops to maintain efficient supply lines for the caliphs army, and while this may be true of the northwest frontiers of Hindustan, it does not consider the interior. Hakims description used such profoundly negative terms that even his master Uthman had to confirm whether or not this was an exaggeration. To the spy, it was not, and while Uthman accepted this survey of Indias state, present-day historians beg to differ. R.K. Ray argues that The spy maintainedhard fact. He was of course unaware at the time of a vast subcontinent watered by perennial rivers. 58 Noting that the Usman ibn Affans spy was impervious to the complexities of Indias geography, Ray observes how it would take another seven centuries for Islam as a political power to reach the Ganges delta.59 While the chronological gap between Hakims audience with the Ameer ulMumineen60 on the conditions present in Hind and the eventual Islamic incursions into the Gangetic valley is a long one that spans hundreds of years, Muslims were making considerable inroads into the north-western most part of South Asia by the close of the seventh century. Only a few decades after the Islamic calendar began with Muhammads hijrah from Mecca to Madinah in 622, Arabs faced some of their strongest resistance to date in the region known as eastern Sistan (arguably the most difficult portion of the Sassanian domains to absorb into the caliphate), where the Afghan provinces Helmand and

57 58

Ibid, 116. Ray, 75. 59 Ibid, 75. 60 Arabic . Literally meaning Commander of the Faithful, and in this case, this phrase refers to Usman ibn Affan

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Qandahr lie today.61 Hugh Kennedy describes the implications of the Muslim experience with people of this region, who were neither Zoroastrian nor Buddhist but worshippers of a god named Zn (probably an adaptation of Shiva, as the Italian Orientalist Guiseppe Tucci has suggested62): A Muslim force had raided the area as early as 653-4, when the Arab commander had allegedly poured scorn on the image of the god, breaking off one of his arms and taking out his eyes. He returned them to the local governor, saying that he had wished to show only that the idol had no power for good or evil. The god, however, survived this insult and was still venerated in the eleventh century, symbolizing the fierce resistance of the people of these barren hills to outside interference. The early Muslims were well aware that this area was a potential route to India, with all its riches, but the Zunbls and their relatives, the Kabulshhs of Kabul and their people, mounted a spirited and long-lasting resistance to the Arabs, making it impossible for Muslim armies to reach northern India.63 Thus, while Hakims faulty intelligence on Hind may have discouraged a Muslim invasion into Hindustan, the Zun-worshippers of southwest Afghanistan physically stopped such a foray from taking place. Only three years after the Arabs began fighting the Zunbls along the Helmand River, the Fitna64 broke out in the Islamic heartlands. The immediate catalyst for this revolt was the assassination of Usmn, and what it essentially entailed was a struggle over his succession. Nevertheless, the relative stability of the Islamic lands in the late 7th and early 8th centuries allowed for increased expansion along the frontier, which included Hindustan. By the time of Muhammad bin Qasim, who in 711 conquered Sind, the Umayyads had taken over the lower Indus valley.65 Ibn Qsim, a distinguished Arab general, was nephew61

Kennedy, Hugh. The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In. (New York: Da Capo Press, 2007) 195.

62

Wink, Andre. Al-Hind: Al-Hind, the Making of the Indo-Islamic World: Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam 7th -11th Centuries. (New York: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002) 118. 63 Kennedy, 195. 64 Arabic ,this comes from the word for purification from iron ore. That is why theological discourse of fitna refers to a trial by faith that has similar etymological derivation to trial by fire. What the Fitna in this historical context refers to the First Islamic War (665-661), though in religious circles, it is simultaneously considered a trial of faith, since it acted as a test of Islamic unity. 65 Kennedy, 307.

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of Al-Hajjj b. Yusuf, the first Umayyad governor to preside over both the Arab and Ajami66 portions of what once was the Sassanian Empire. To reiterate, Hindustn, which in 262 meant Sind for the Sassanians, had fallen into Saracen hands. This still does not explain why the Arabs had gone any further into Hind. Hugh Kennedy maintains: The area from Multn south to the mouth of the river was to be the limits of Muslim settlement on the Indian subcontinent. It was separated from the rest of India (Hind) by the deserts that now divide Pakistan from India to the east of the Indus. The north of Multn, the Punjab was outside Muslim control until the early eleventh century, when the Ghaznavids from eastern Afghanistan extended Muslim rule further to the north and east.67 Checked by the Zunbils and Rajputs in what are now Afghanistn and Rajasthn respectively, it was difficult from the Arabs to advance beyond their existing holdings on the frontiers of Hind. Though Muhammad ibn Qasim has been portrayed in a polemical fashion by Hindus and Muslims alike, it is worth noting that Ibn Qasim was no mindless butcher. When he was disgraced and removed following the death of his patron al-Hajjaj, it may well be that the people of Hind wept,68 considering that Hindu and Buddhists establishments were respected as if they were the churches of the Christians, the synagogues of the Jews or the fire temples of the Magians [Zoroastrians] and the even though the jizya, the standard poll-tax on all infidels was imposed yet brahmans and Buddhist monks were allowed to collect alms, and temples to received donations.69 Qasims legacy in the Sindh reflects the incorporation of Hindus within the realms of dhimmi status. Not only does this illustrate a more tolerant side of the Umayyad conqueror, but it also shows how fluid the category of dhimmi could become, particularly in the land of Hindustan. Moreover, it was the exposure of Muslims to Buddhists and Hindus in places

66 67

Arabic meaning non-Arab Kennedy, 307 68 Keay, John. India: A History. (New York: Grove Press, 2001) 185. 69 Ibid, 185.

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such as Brahmanabad that allowed for more a pragmatic application of theology to include adherents of these Dharmic faiths within the framework of the Islamic state.70 Terror, Travels, and Trading in Al-Hind Over the next three centuries after the Muslim conquest of Khorasan, Afghanistan went under an immense transformation, in which Buddhism and Zunbilism were replaced by Islam as the majority religion of the Afghans. While Islam proliferated socially and politically, Hindu kings in Afghanistan began to withdraw further into the Indian Subcontinent. Andr Wink observes that The Hindu Shahis, having thus been pushed eastward from Kabul to the Panjab by the Hindus, could still reassert themselves as the greatest of the kings of Hind.71 Despite the fact that the Kbulshhs were now founding themselves off the frontier of Hindustan, they were drawing themselves into the interior of Hind rather than being pushed out of it. Kabul was a frontier of Hind, but the Indus River Valley was the core. Accordingly, a seemingly obvious military disadvantage such as retreat can be converted into a boastful moniker that tactfully pronounces ones identity. Essentially, the coming of Islam was the determining factor in the consolidation of a Hindustani geography. Long gone were the days of Arab conquest. From now, it would be Turkic Muslims that would bring the Islamic religion into the interior of the Indian Subcontinent.72 Unlike the Umayyads, who ran their capital from Damascus, the Abbasids were more easternoriented and administered their empire from Baghdad. The latter caliphate became increasingly reliant on strong Turkish tribesman, the majority of which had embraced the70 71

Kennedy, 306. Wink, Andr. 126. Al-Hind: Early Medieval Indi and the Expansion of Islam, 7th 11th Centuries. (New York: Brill Academic Publications, 2002) 126.. 72 Oldenburg, Philip. India: History. Microsoft Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008

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shahdah, who would be responsible for protecting it against rebellion.73 Within a matter of time, as the caliphs of Baghdad grew ever the more dissolute, these Turks began to reverse the relations with their Arab masters. In 962, while the Seljuqs were still emerging in the Middle East, a new Turkic state had formed in Afghanistan: Ghazni.74 Ghazni was the region from where the Kushnas had ruled from the first century until about 230 after Christ. Like the Kushnas, the Ghaznavids were Central Asian warriors with an appetite for loot and plunder. However, Mahmud of Ghazni, the most powerful of the Ghaznavid kings, did not come to India to stay. Though he raided as far east as present-day Uttar Pradesh, the only territory he attempted to administer was the western Punjab, which he formally annexed before dying in 1030.75 On his military expeditions into Hindustan, the great Muslim intellectual Al-Biruni (973-1050) wrote a scathing account: Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country [Hind] and performed these wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all dimensions and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people. Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate hatred towards all Muslims. This is the reason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benares, and other places. And there the antagonism between them and all foreigners receives more and more nourishment from both from political and religious sources.76 Al-Birunis statement about the hatred of Muslims needs to be questioned, however. In fact, most Indian records refer to the Turk, rather than the Muslim, as the Other of the Hindu. The Ghazni Empire crumbled a little more than a century after Mahmuds death;

73 74

Adler, et al. World Civilisations: Volume I: To 1700. (New York: Wadswort Publishing, 2007) 200. Duiker, et al. World History to 1500. (Wadsworth, Cengage Learning: Boston, 2010) 251. 75 Oldenburg, Philip. India: History. 76 Embree, Ainslee T. Sources of Indian Tradition. Volume One: From the Beginning to 1800. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) 438.

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the very capital that Mahmud Ghaznavi so meticulously built up with Hindustani loot was destroyed by Afghan tribal warfare.77 In 1175, one of the successors to the now dismembered Ghaznavid Empire, Muhammad of Ghur, began his own series of raids into and northern India. As opposed to Mahmud, Shihabuddin Muhammad Ghori had come to conquer and not simply to plunder.78 For the next eleven years, Ghori overran Sind and Punjab, though he was unable to subdue Gujart.79 Muhammad left his territories in Hindustan in charge of his obedient slave and friend Qutubuddin Aibak, who went on to establish the Delhi Sultanate in 1206.80 More than a century after Qutubuddin Aibak had passed away, it was the sultan (Muhammad bin Tughlaq)81 in Delhi who the legendary explorer Ibn Battuta82 (1304-69) in his Rihlah (Travels) called the Emperor of Hindustan.83 The Bdshah-e-Hindustan thus has its earliest roots in the principal Muslim state in early medieval India: the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). In an age well before nationalism and the nation-state, Delhi was identified not only as a part of Hindustan, but as its political locus. Ibn Battuta makes constant reference to a land he calls Hindustan, not only with sovereigns such as the sultan of Delhi, but people, languages, trees, and almost anything a country can be identified with in an age prior to modernity. His usage of the term77 78

Oldenburg, Philip. India: History. Ibid. 79 Muhammad of Ghor. Microsoft Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008 80 Chopra, et al. A Comprehensive History of Medieval India: Part II. Translated and Edited by Rev. Samuel Lee (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 2003) 16. 81 Ibn Battuta identifies him as Muhammad Shah, which was Tughlaqs official title as sultan. Muhammad Shah I, who reigned from 1325 to 1351, is the only ruler of the Delhi Sultanate to match the descriptions provided in the Rihlahs chapter on Hindustan. This monarch was the first of the Tughlaqs, the third major dynasty that assumed power over the Delhi Sultanate (the first two being the Mamluks, of which Qutubuddin Aibak hailed from, and the Khiljis). 82 Also spelled Ibn Batttah. In the original Arabic, 83 Ibn Battuta. The Travels of Ibn Battuta in the Near East, Asia, and Africa. (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications Inc., 2003) 101.

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demonstrates that use of the word had become common by the time of the Moroccan travellers adventures (1325-54). He not only reflected on Indias contemporary situation, but also sought to legitimise his positions by referring to what he considered the history of Hindustan. This history was found in collections of the utterances of Prophet Muhammad (the hadth84), which by Battutas time had been compiled and collected voluminously in places as far in between as Cairo, Damascus, and Bukhara. Alluding to the past, the medieval Muslim explorer reports how Even before the rise of Islam the prophet Sulaymn... [came] to a mountain in Sind from where he could view India but was intimidated by its darkness and turned his back on it. It is said that the prophet Sulaymn ascended this mountain and from its summit looked down on al-Hind which was then in darkness (fa nazar il ar al-hind wa hya mazlama). He went back without entering the country, and the mountain was named after him.85 Andr Wink astutely sees how this passage reflects that Muslims throughout the Indian subcontinent tend to relate Indian Islam to the very beginnings of Indian history, and in the hadth collections the prophet Muhammad himself is credited with aspiration of conquering India.86 Whether or not the Islamic prophet Sulaymn (Solomon) had been to Sind is clearly beyond the point. The imagery of darkness reflects jahiliya (the ignorance that Muslims associated with pre-Islamic Arabia), and it is contrasted against the light of Islam. The Islamic heartlands are portrayed in terms of being bright in the most spiritual of senses, while Al-Hind is awaiting what men like Ibn Battuta viewed as the inevitable enlightenment of Islam by the conquest. To have Sulayman rather than Muhammad in this narration makes this argument stronger and more plausible (given that Muhammad is not known to have visited India in his lifetime), because the Islamic theological understanding84

The saying, action, or tacit approval of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Using the Arabic script, this word is spelled . While in Arabic it is pronounced hadith, in Farsi, Turkish, and Urdu (among many other languages, particularly the ones used in South Asia), this word is rendered hadees, as it contains the same discussed in footnote 61. Thus, for the purposes of this paper, hadith and hadees will be used interchangeably. 85 Wink, Al-Hind: Volume 1, 193. 86 Ibid, 192-93.

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of men known as prophets87 entails that all these disciples of God are Muslims88. To reiterate, the geography of Hindustan and the narrative of Islam had become mutually integrated. For a Muslim who lived more than millennium and a half prior to Muhammads prophethood to have been reported to have visited the frontier of Al-Hind, further legitimised in the minds of their fellow co-religionists, Battuta included, actions such as Muhammad ibn Qasims conquest of Sind, Mahmud Ghaznavis plundering of the temple at Somnath, and Qutubuddin Aibaks election as sultan by his Turkic noble comrades in Delhi. Hadees like these did not only legitimised conquest, but conversion as well. The growing number of Indian Muslims would have a stronger claim to a higher social status (whether working as merchants, zamindars, ulema, political potentates, or any other field for that matter) considering that their embracing of the kalimah was prophesised by none other than Muhammad himself, and even by Solomon before him. Hindustan was not only a land where religious identities were being transferred and gradually solidified; it was a place where commercial commodities were exchanged at the same time. Moreover, the trade of material goods acted as a venue for the spread of Islam, particularly south of the Deccan on the Malabar Coast. Considering that Kerala was home to the oldest Muslim community in South Asia, dating as far back as the seventh century,89 it is worth noting that Specific regions brought forth some of the most illustrious merchant families active in the Indian Ocean, as well as successfully exporting their distinct strands of

87 88

Arabic Esposito, John L. What Everybody Needs to Know about Islam. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) 12. 89 Qureshi, M. Naeem. Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics: A Study of the Khilafat Movement, 1918-1924. (New York: Brill Academic Publishers, 1999) 445.

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Sufism. The Hadhramaut region of the Yemen, for instance, has a particularly strong association with the mercantile and religious activities in Malabar as well as insular Southeast Asia.90 Furthermore the inhabitants of the Malabar region who adopted the Islamic creed, known as Mappilas, had little in common with their co-religionists to the north. More closely associated with the trading patterns of the Indian Ocean basin, the Mapillas embraced the Shafii jurisdiction of Islam (which is also practised in Yemen, Somalia, the Maldives, in Malaysia, and the Indonesian archipelago), unlike the predominantly Hanafi regions that lay to the north of the Deccan Plateau.91 Nevertheless, the Malabar Coast was part of AlHind, as identified by the Akhbar al-Sin wal-Hind from the mid-9th century.92 Bazaar and bhakti93 went hand in hand, as the buying and selling of material goods also became a place to import and export forms of religious devotion. Offering food for the stomach and the soul alike, there was a sufficient amount of space left for accommodation of pre-Islamic practises, such as matrilineal nomenclature, which is generally more popular within the traditional Dravidian community.94 Even though the Mapillas were among the first peoples of the Indian subcontinent to adopt Islam, Andr Winks writes how It seems to have taken several centuries before these coastal Muslims emerged from their obscure conditions and superseded the Jewish and Christian groups which in some areas, like Malabar, had played comparable roles in overseas trade.95 Moreover, only after seven centuries of evolution of this complex maritime society did Ibn Battuta become the first person able to document the far-flung Muslim culture of the coastal regions of al-Hind rigorously.9690

Feener, R. Michael and Terenjit Sevea. Islamic Connections: Muslims Societies in South and Southeast Asia. (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009) 37. 91 Wink, Al-Hind: Volume 1, 69-70. 92 Feener and Sevea, 29. 93 In the generic sense. 94 Feener and Sevea, 36. 95 Wink, Al-Hind: Volume 2, 268 96 Ibid, 268.

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While the Muslim population in the Indian subcontinent was burgeoning in this period, whether in the Indo-Gangetic plains of the north or the trading posts of the Deccan, the domain of Hindustan was itself expanding. By the early thirteenth century, Orissa had become so well integrated into the neighbouring region of Bengals economy (and the geographical classification of Hindustan by implication) that its ruler was considered to be the most powerful of the rais of Hindustan.97 If Hindustan meant Sind in the mid 3rd century for the Sassanids, it had now grown to include much of the present day nation-state of India, including the Deccan Plateau, Eastern and Western Ghats, and the Malabar Coast. The centre of Hindustan had shifted east from the Indus River to Delhi with the emergence of the Delhi Sultanate as a regional power, and with it, the expansion of the Delhi Sultanate allowed for the territorial growth of Hindustan. While the Mamluks, the first major dynasty of the Delhi sultanate remained confined to the north, it was the Khilji dynasty (1290-1320) that proceeded with the extension of this political entity across the most of the subcontinent.98 The decision by Muhammad Tughlaq to move his capital from Delhi to the more centrally located Daulatabad (which lies in what is now Maharashtra) in an effort to assert a more permanent rule over his southern lands illustrates how the concept of Hindustan so powerfully permeated the interior.99 The sultans city of wealth, however, was not to be as Tughlaq met a series of challenges from the amirs of the Deccan, who revolted in 1341 while an outbreak of cholera or perhaps smallpox consumed the southern peninsula100. Daulatabad itself was to be incorporated into the Bahmani and eventually the Bijapur97 98

Ibid, 262. Delhi Sultanate Microsoft Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. 99 Oldenburg, Philip. India: History. 100 Haig, Sir Thomas Wolesley. Historic Landmarks of the Deccan. (Allahabad: Pioneer Press, 1907) 29.

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Sultanates. Nevertheless, simply because Hindustan expanded with the growth of Delhi Sultanate did not mean that Hindustans realms shrank with territorial decline of Delhis hukmat101 during the latter Tughluqs (who had to bear with the 1398 sacking of Delhi by Timur-e-lang102), the Sayyids, and Lodis. In addition to the Bahmanis, Bengal, Gujarat, and Vijayanagar103 emerged as breakaway successor states, independent of Delhi as sovereigns in their own right. The founders of the Vijayanagar Empire, Harihara and Bukka, sometimes presented their regime as an extension of the Delhi Sultanate, and thus of Hindustan. Political actors such as Harihara and Bukka not only prolonged the concept of Hindustan beyond its core in the north, but enhanced it as well, setting the stage for the Hindustan of the Mughal Empire. The Bburnma and the Beginnings of Mughal Hindustn The emperor Bbur (r. 1526-30) was the first of the Timurid dynasts to reign in India. Descended from Timur-e-lang on his fathers side and Chengez Khan on his mothers, he established what is popularly known as the Mughal Empire.104 As interesting as Baburs origins are, his three arguably most momentous legacies105 the Mughal Empire (lasting for almost two centuries until the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 as a viable political entity, and for another century and half, as an enduring fiction that coped with the rise of101 102

Rule Also known as Tamerlane 103 Though Vijayanagar was ruled by Hindu rajas who broke off from the Muslim-ruled Delhi sultanate, the communal treatment of this phenomenon does not do justice to the historical realities of the period. The establishment of Vijayanagar in 1336, is somewhat comparable to the Khusra Khan episode some sixteen years earlier, in that it has been given an overly religious colouring and mishandles contemporary sources such as the Tughlaq-nama, and the Tarikh Firuz Shahi. Thomas Hardy identifies this Orientalist-driven contention as follows: Islam was in danger in Hindustan from a resurgent Hindu rj. For a more extensive discussion on the reign of terror that took place in 1320, please see Hardy, Thomas. Historians of Medieval India. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenow , 1982) 125-26. 104 In present-day Farsi, Mongolia is known as . Literally, this means land of the Mongols, even though the Moghulistan of Baburs time it referred to areas further west of modern Mongolia, particularly Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Xinjiang. 105 Rushdie, Salman, introduction to The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur Prince, and Emperor. (New York: Random House, Inc., 2002) vii.

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post-Mughal states and the East India Companys stranglehold over Hindustan), the Bbr Masjid in Ayodhya (demolished in on 6 December 1992 by Hindu nationalists in one of the great crises of modern India), and the Bburnma,106 which has enchanted readers to this day with its account of his life as a warrior-prince in Central Asia and Afghanistan and emperor in Hindustn. In all fairness, Baburs treatment of Hindustn in the Baburnama is a mixed one. Babur was shocked with what he saw as extreme disparities from Kbul: Hindustan lies in the first, second, and third climes, with none of it in the fourth clime. It is a strange country. Compared to ours, it is another world. Its mountains, forests, and wildernesses, its village and provinces, animals and plants, peoples and languages, even its rain and winds are altogether different107 For the person who established the empire which was most successfully able to manipulate the concept of Hindustn to its advantage, Babur demonstrates that while he could be an effective ruler of Hindustn, he was not from Hindustn, which was literally alien to him.

From Akbar to Aurangzeb: the Apogee of Mughal Hindustn It is Baburs grandson Akbar (r. 1556-1605) that is often regarded as the true founder of the Mughal Empire.108 In fact, Akbar is the most illustrious of the Mughal kings in that he is the real conqueror of Hindustan.109 Through an astute combination of tolerance, generosity and force, Akbar was able to win the allegiance of the Rjpts and assert hegemony over the entirety of North India.110 Not only would he wed two Rajput106

Rushdie refers to the three best things that Babur is remembered for. To the novelist, they are (1) the story of Baburs death, (2) the Babri Masjid, and (3) the Baburnama. 107 Babur, Emperor of Hindustan. The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur Prince, and Emperor. (New York: Random House, Inc., 2002) 332. 108 Oldenburg, Philip. India: History. 109 Agrawal, Ashwini. Studies in Mughal History. (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983) 29. 110 Akbar. Microsoft Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008.

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princesses, but he also pioneered a new faith known as Din-Ilahi (the Divine Faith) by marrying Islam with Brahmanism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism.111 As a religion, DiniIlahi was an outright failure, winning few notable converts beyond the sovereign and his devoted servant Abul-Fazl (1551-1602), but it represented how willing Akbar was to commit himself to intellectual experimentation as emperor of Hindustan. Furthermore, DinIlahi was much more successful in its assertion of the semi- divine nature of the Mughal monarch, which, like the word Hindustan itself, was a concept pioneered by the Persians.112 What the Mughals were able to do is take these two initially foreign concepts and adapt them so brilliantly to India that Hindustan became a self-ascribed label and the Persian model of kingship became an Indian one. Abul Fazls articulation of this theory of kingship lies in the n-i-Akbar, the third volume of the Akbarnama, the official chronicle of Akbars reign as emperor. Chronicler and court historian Abul-Fazl articulated his theory of kingship as follows, No dignity is higher in the eyes of God than royalty, and those who are wise drink from its auspicious mountain. A sufficient proof of this, for those who require one, is the fact that royalty is a remedy for the spirit of rebellion, and the reason why subjects obey. Even the meaning of the word pdshh [emperor] shows this; for pd signifies stability and possession. If royalty did not exist, the storm of strife would never subside, nor selfish ambitions disappear.113 In a tactful, insightful, and well-thought out approach, Abul-Fazl has given his justification of absolute monarchy. In this passage, he not only demonstrated his influences from the pre-Islamic Persians such as the Sassanians, but by Sh conceptions of the imamate and the Platonic theory of the philosopher-king as well.114 In a text that is in Farsi, the word pdshh is examined for its etymology. In the way that that the Sha revere their imams111 112

Ibid. Spear, Percival. The History of India, Volume 2. (New York: Penguin, 1990) 37. 113 Abul-Fazl. Ain-i-Akbari from Sources in Indian Tradition: Volume 1. Trans. Ainslee T. Embree et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) 425-26. 114 Embree, 425.

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with a demigod status,115 the king acquires his authority from God Himself. While the king is not divine, the divine source of his power necessitates that obedience to the monarch is obedience to God. Likewise, disobedience to the monarch is disobedience to God. The use of logic also finds its way into the n-i-Akbar, as Abul-Fazl makes it clear that Silly and short-sighted men cannot distinguish a true king from a selfish ruler.116 Thus, a wise person who uses reason will be able to determine who a true king. Fulfilling a social contract, the monarch is expected serve his people by ruling a fair and equitable manner, while expecting complete submission from his subjects in reciprocation. In the same way that Plato distrusts the masses, Abul-Fazl calls for an enlightened despot that has parallels in the philosopher-king of antiquity. Though Akbar was by no means a democratic leader, adherence to Abul-Fazls model of the ideal king is what allowed the appeal of Hindustan and the Mughal emperor to outlive the empire. Whether it was in the use of divinely sanctioned power, political acumen, religious tolerance, imperial magnanimity, or even the use of brute force, Akbar had a created an imperial cult of personality that would thrive irrespective of the Din Ilahis status as a theological phenomenon. With an empire that stretched from Afghanistan to the Bay of Bengal, from the Himalayas to the Godvari, Akbar was able to command a greater degree of legitimacy and hegemony over North and Central India than the Mauryans before him and the British after him.117 It cannot be stressed enough how Akbar did not desire merely to be the latest in a series of Indo-Muslim kings, but to elevate himself to the status of accepted ruler of all

115

Mutahhari, Murtaza. The Reciprocal Services between Islam and Iran. (Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran: Tawhid Printing House, 2000) 122. 116 Embree, 426. 117 Wolpert, 129.

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Hindustan.118 Establishing the apogee of the Mughal conceptualisation of Hindustan, Akbar managed to rule with relatively little opposition, virtually unchallenged after 1581.119 Akbars successors Jahangir (r. 1605-27) and Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58) presided over significant territorial acquisitions in the Deccan.120 It was under the latter of these two that the shift towards orthodoxy made itself apparent. Though there was not a systematic persecution of Hindus under Shah Jahan, the pilgrimage tax on Hindus was re-introduced in his time.121 Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707) continued this trend by imposing the jizyah that Akbar had strongly felt was contrary to the will of God. Indeed, his great-grandfather Akbar may very well have been considered a heretic in the mind of Alamgir I,122 given the latters more fundamentalist approach to Islam. In spite of the somewhat reactionary approach of the Mughal state towards its Hindu population under Aurangzeb, the concept of Hindustan persisted. The monarchs that followed him, however, were never able to restore the Shhn-e-Moghul to its former glory. In fact, J.F. Richards dates the ending point for his volume on the Mughal Empire at 1720 noting how by this date, the essential structure of centralised empire was disintegrated beyond repair.123 While there are some of the later Mughals are worthy of note, their significance pales in comparison with the emperors from Babur to Aurangzeb. An oft-recited ditty from the mid-18th century describes Shah lam II (r. 1760-1806): Az Delhi to Palam Badshahi Shah Alam meaning From Delhi to Palam is the realm of Shah

118 119

Spear, 31. Ibid, 36. 120 Mughal Empire. Microsoft Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. 121 Chand, Hukm. History of Medieval India. (New Delhi: Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2005) 21. 122 An abbreviated version Aurangzebs royal title. 123 Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) xv.

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Alam.124 Considering that Palam is where Delhis airport is now located, the political realities of Shah Alams day did not allow him to be considered the ruler of Awadh, much less so Hindustan. The lesser Mughals cannot truly be considered emperors, in the sense that most of Hindustan did not fall under their actual control. Nevertheless, the understanding of the Mughal king as Emperor of Hindustan continued to endure all the way into the 19th century when the rebels of 1857 invoked the term to further their cause against the Company Raj. Concepts can far exceed the lifetimes of the individuals that author them. The Mughal Empire remained a useful fiction that resonated with the diverse peoples of Hindustan long after its administrative functions had ceased. Likewise, Hindustan has outlived the Classical Period into which it was born and the Sassanian Empire of which it was a product of. Adapting to the Islamic interactions with India, both peaceful and violent, by land and by sea, with contributions from travellers and thinkers alike, the term Hindustan developed into the self-ascribed term of choice in describing the Indian subcontinent. No longer was it merely the Indus River Valley, the Sind, or even simply Northern India. The Hindustan of the 1700s was a proto-India that housed people of various backgrounds, faiths and languages. This pre-national geographical region was not yet communalised, as being Hindu or Muslim had no particular bearing on ones status as a Hindustani. The term Hindu was yet to be consolidated, and the boundaries of Hindustan were still in flux, but not as much as they had been centuries before. Even Hindustan as a community of sentiment was still in its nascence, reaching maturity only in the decades surrounding the Sepoy Mutiny.124

Bakshi, S.R., et al. Delhi Through the Ages, Volume 1. (New Delhi: Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., 1995)

73.

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Chapter 2: From a Felt Community towards a National CommunityOn the 3rd of March 1707 at the age of 88, the aged Aurangzeb breathed his last.125 In the wake of his death, a series of rebellions took place across Hindustan, sparking the creation of smaller kingdoms and principalities by Hindu and Muslim adventurers and the formation of larger independent states by the governors of the imperial provinces. These new entities are known as the post-Mughal states, the first of them to emerge in Hyderabad125

Chaurisia, Radhey Shyam. History of Modern India, 1707 A.D. to 2000 A.D. (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2002) 1.

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in 1712.126 Despite the fact that the Mughal Empire would formally last for another a century and a half until its dissolution at the behest of the British, Aurangzebs death marked the apogee of Mughal expansion. As an overdetermined phenomenon, the decline and eventual collapse of the Mughal Empire can be attributed to a number of factors such as an overstretched empire, a series of weak successors,127 the degeneration of Mughal nobility, court factions, a defective law of succession, the rise of the Marathas, the demoralisation of the Mughal army, the failure of the Mughal sultanate to create a more comprehensively composite political society, the Afghan invasions by Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah Durrani, intellectual bankruptcy, widespread corruption, the neglect of naval power, and agrarian discontentment.128 Though Mughal hegemony in Hindustan had steadily disintegrated throughout the 18th century, Hindustan continued to live on, in its varying usage by such diverse actors as the post-Mughal states, Hindustani artistic and literary elites, the East India Company, the rebels of 1857, British imperial administrators, and Indian nationalists alike. It cannot be emphasised enough how Hindustan had gone from a description of a conquered land by its Muslim conquerors into an increasingly selfascribed label that both Hindus and Muslims took pride in. Furthermore, as a cultural phenomenon, Hindustan reached its apex in precisely this lateMughal period.126

Oldenburg, Philip. India: History. Microsoft Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008 127 The Mughal Empire was too dependent on an imperial cult of personality that this may have in fact have hastened the decline of their rule over India. The upstanding character of the emperor meant that the empire was strong, but a weaker emperor meant for a weaker empire both literally and figuratively. While strong emperors such as Akbar and Aurangzeb were able to use an imperial personality successfully (the latter of these two was less inclusive in his approach to his Hindu and Shia subjects, though nevertheless a s powerful ruler), the weakness and debauchery of latter rulers also made their empire susceptible to invasion. For example, the looting of Delhi in 1739 happened under the watch of Muhammad Shah (r. 1719-48) nicknamed Rangeela (the colourful) due to his excessive dalliances with sharaab and shabaab (wine and women). 128 Chaurisia, 2-12

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C.A. Bayly summarises the transformations that Hindustan underwent from the sixteen to eighteenth centuries as follows: Beginning as a geographical description usd by Muslim invaders to designate the conquered territory across the river Indus, Hindustan came to mean first an imperial territory inhabited by Indians, mostly Hindus. Late, it began to signify our cultural realm of Hindustan common to Hindus and Muslims as the literati and administrators of the northern Indian empire came to identify increasingly with their abode.129 Baylys line of reasoning can be demonstrated fairly well in the example of Babur, who in the previous chapter of this paper had seen Hindustan in an overwhelmingly negative light. Babur saw himself as a foreigner, and not a Hindustani. Humyn continued this trend, spending much of his reign in exile. Akbar had brought to an end to this approach with adoption of policies that are mistakenly seen as cross-communal, especially when Hindus and Muslims had not yet been consolidated into the communities that they are today. Hindustan contained the cultural material of proto-nationhood, and Akbars inclusive version of Hindustan with its royal cult of devotion was a pre-national form of patriotism.130 Though Aurangzeb had attempted to stop this in his proliferation of a more Orthodox version of Islam that alienated Hindus and heterodox Muslims, he failed to stop a culture of devotion131 to Hindustan in intellectual elites across the subcontinent. Baburs lack of appreciation for Hindustan persisted,132 but this perception continued to shrink as time went as a growing proportion of the cultural and political elites of north India, Muslim as well as Hindu, increasingly saw themselves as Hindustanis.129

Bayly, C.A. Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998) 38 130 ibid, 38 131 Literally desh-bhakti, as it is known to today in Hindi / Urdu. This patriotism is of pre-national form of patriotism, like the one in Elizabethan England where the word patriotism has its roots. 132 Bayly observes that While many Muslim writers and literati continued to denounce India as hot, dirty, and full of black idolaters one Persian sufi [Shah Muhammad Hazin in reference to Benares] even declared that it was a dunghill poetic paeans in praise of Hindustan proliferated. Vide Bayly 38. What Bayly fails to mention is that even the mystic Hazin still acknowledged all Brahmins in Benares were Ram. Please consult Malik, Jamal. Perspective of Mutual Encounters in South Asian History, 1760-1860. (New York: Brill Publications, 2000) 100 for details.

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In Aurangzebs own time, the Tuhfat al-Hind (1690)133 was published. Setting out to establish the key elements in the education of a well-brought up Mughal prince134, this text, along with a number of its contemporaries135 demonstrated a sympathetic account of Hindustani traditions in music, art, and poetry which blend elite and popular, Indian and foreign, Hindu, and Muslim forms. Comparable works of Indian cultural anthropology proliferated as Mughal grandees patronised Hindu artisans, musicians, and dancers, seeking to broaden their bases of support in the community.136 Though the authoring of works such as Mirza Khans Tuhfat al-Hind may have started as an attempt to bring about popular appeal, the continued pro-Hindustani sentiment over the next several decades shows how it was, as Bayly puts it endowed with emotional meaning.137 This emotion138 would grow to be so strong that the legendary Hindustani poet Mirza Ghlib (1797-1869) would pen in his Persian letters that Benares was the Mecca of India.139 The use of this analogy describes not merely how Benares was sacred to Hindus, but Ghalibs own emotional attachment to Hindustan through equating it to the holiest site in Islam. Awadhs Role in the Proliferation of Hindustani Culture

From meaning gift, thus this work means The Gift of India. The date is an approximation. Bayly has dated it 1690, while Joep Bor considers 1675 as more appropriate. Please consult Bor, Joep. Three Important Essays on Hindustani Music. http://web.mac.com/wvdm/JIMS/Issue_36-37_files/2_bor.pdf (accessed 08 January 2010). 134 Alam, Muzaffar and Sanjay Subrahmanayam. The Making of a Munshi. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Volume 24, Number 2, 2004, 61 135 Tuhfat al-Hind is undoubtedly one of the most famous examples of such sympathetic accounts, but it was certainly not alone. Other examples include the Rg Darpan.published by Faqir Allah in 1666 and Dara Shikohs translation of the Upanishads. 136 Bayly, 39. 137 Ibid, 39. 138 In the 1700s, we see the emergence of a more sullen portrayal of Hindustan. C.A. Bayly notes how In the eighteenth century, the theme was more often represented in a more melancholy tone: ashob sheher, elegies to the fading beauty of Hindustan, the decay of its cities, and the pollution of the land (39). Amidst the backdrop of a declining Mughal Empire and a rising East India Company, this gloomy vision of Hindustan neither has the adventurous tone of Babur nor the grandeur of Akbar, but a sad one that is rather mournful and longs for a return to the heyday of the Greater Mughal kings. 139 Malik, Jamal. Perspective of Mutual Encounters in South Asian History, 1760-1860. (New York: Brill Publications, 2000) 100.133

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Mirza Ghalib was part of much broader cultural phenomenon that took place between the Mughal and colonial periods. While the political centre of Hindustan was in Delhi, its cultural centre undoubtedly resided in Lucknow. It was here in the capital of Awadh that Urdu poets such as Mr Taq Mr (1724-1810) and Sauda (1713-1718) competed to outdo one in another in their praise of Hindustan decades before Ghalib. The eighteenth century, however, was not merely a time to celebrate ones Hindustani identity. As Mir Taqi Mir and Sauda demonstrate through their Shahr-Ashobs (poems which lament Delhi sacking at the hands of Nadir Shah in 1739), this was a period of great calamity for the people of Hindustan.140 Both these poets originally lived in Delhi, but spent the latter part of their lives in Lucknow, demonstrating the cultural shift to Awadh that took place on a grander scale.141 Despite these shared traits, these men were bitter rivals in their mushairas. Mir Taqi Mir was from a humble upbringing, his poetry somber and melancholic, while Sauda was from an affluent background with his verses vibrant and exultant. In one Urdu qita, Mir Taqi Mir lamented, Why asks about our whereabouts, O denizens of the East, Know we are poor, why taunt us and tease? Delhi which was once considered the worlds crown and pride, Where only the chosen few once did reside, Which has been razed and ruined by the cruel skies, We belong to the same city, now a wasted pile.142 Mir was speaking of the city which once was so proudly the capital of the Mughal Empire. The great emotion in this poem demonstrates his attachment to Delhi, which like the Shahan-e-Mughal, was now merely a shadow of its former self. While this is not a140

Kanda, K.C. Masterpieces of Urdu poetry: Text, Translation, and Transliteration. (New Delhi, India: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 2005) 13. 141 Ibid, 13 and 23. 142 Ibid, 29.

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nationalist set of verses, it relects a pre-national patriotic sense of duty to mourn over his citys fall from grace. Lucknows rise is tied to Delhis fall. Mir Taqi Mirs shahr ashobs illustrate the scope of that legacy in the most literal sense, as some of Urdus finest poetry was written in a period when Mughal hegemony in India had already ceased to exist. While Mirs competitor Sauda is generally portrayed in a more vivacious light, he too could not help but despair over Delhis plight in the eighteenth century. In the Weerani-e-Shahjanbad, Muhammad Rafi Sauda writes: If I tell the tale of Delhis devastation, Even a simpleton will feel struck with consternation. If someone for evening prayers visits the holy mosque, Hell find it dark and lonesome, without a flame or spark Not a single house is there where jackals do not bawl.143 Sauda goes on to say, Who knows whose evil eye has swallowed up this park Whose steps have profaned its soft, scented paths; Where once grew the firs and pines brambles stand at guard, Only crows and kites over this garden loo, Where once the nightingales frolicked with the buds and bloom144 The order of everything in the city of Delhi has now been reversed. Where there was once life, there is now death. Light and company have now been replaced with darkness and loneliness. Pleasant birds such as the bulbul145 have been replaced with more sinister ones that are associated with death, such as the crow (a scavenger) and kite (a bird of prey). Not even the plants that now inhabit its landscape are appealing to the senses. Sauda describes a place that truly has been cursed (afflicted with what he describes as the nazar, the evil eye) with verses that illustrate not only the depravity of the situation but the intensity of his143 144

Ibid, 17. Ibid, 17. 145 The nightingale, to which many Hindustani odes have been compiled in its praise.

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sentiment for it. In another set of verses, Sauda admits You were not, O Delhi, deserving of this plight.146 In a time when adherence to such things as tehzeeb and adab mattered so much to the people of Awadh, Delhi has faced the ultimate shame. As Sauda would have it, the city has been erased from earth like a fulsome lie. The honour and dignity which got it the respect of inhabitants across the world has now been taken away. Like the women in his poem, the city has symbolically been reduced to a state of begging, a most shameful act. The people of Delhi cannot and will not do what the gentlemen of Lucknow because the former is on the decline and the latter in its ascendancy. Nevertheless, because Delhi and Lucknow are part of shared community of sentiment, the poets of Lucknow must mourn for their brothers to the west, just as if they were giving them a janzah. As pitiable as the state of Delhi was following the raids of Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah Abdalli, Delhi did not die. Even if the Peacock Throne was gone, there was still an ongoing, although significantly diminished Mughal courtly culture. As opposed to Mir Taqi Mir and Sauda before him, Mirza Ghalib came from the region now known as Uttar Pradesh and settled in Delhi. Ghalib lived in a much later period than Sauda and Mir, but most of his life still fell within the Mughal era. It was only in his final years that he witnessed the turbulence of the Great Mutiny and its brutal suppression. While he still lived in a period prior to the emergence of Indian nationalism, he had great sentiment for the land of Hindustan. In his poem entitled Hindustan, Ghalib says Hindustan ki bhi ajab sar zameen hai, Jis mein wafa-o-mehr-o-mahabbat ka hai wafoor which in its English meaning affirms how Wondrous is the Indian soil, fruitful, and fertile, Faith, kindliness and love, bloom on every side.146

Kanda, 19.

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As the East is the source of the sun and light, India is the ancient home of