Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

‘There are amongst them some who merely look at a man and he falls dead on the spot. The common people say that if the breast of a man killed in this way is cut open, it is found to contain no heart, and they assert his heart has been eaten. This is commonest in the case of women, and a woman who acts thus is called a kaftar . During the famine in Delhi they brought one of these women to me, saying that she had eaten the heart of a boy. I ordered them to take her to the sultan’s lieutenant, who commanded that she should be put to test. They filled four jars with water, tied them to her hands and feet and threw her into the river Yamuna. As she did not sink she was known to be a kaftar … He ordered her then to be burned … Her ashes were collected by the men and women of the town, for they believe that anyone who fumigates himself with them is safe against a kaftar’s enchantments during that year.’

Some of the Hindu ascetic sects in medieval India were like the warrior monks of medieval Europe, and there are some graphic accounts of their activities during the Mughal period. Following the collapse of the Mughal Empire, these ascetic gangs — known as Nagas, their generic name — came to play a notable role in the politics of the late medieval and early modern India, serving under various rajas and sultans — these Hindu warrior ascetics had no compunction to serve under Muslim rulers.

The Nagas were quite bizarre in their appearance as well as their mode of fighting. Colonel Malleson, a British officer in India in the mid-eighteenth century, describes a band of them he saw in the army of the nawab of Oudh as ‘all perfectly naked and covered with paint and ashes.’ Battle was a rite for them, and they, as modern historian W. G. Orr describes them, went into battle in ‘a kind of whirling dance, during which they became wrought up to a pitch of uncontrollable excitement. Then, with ear-piercing yells, they rushed upon the enemy.’

The Nagas belonged to the extreme periphery of Hindu religion, and had virtually no role in the everyday life of Hindus. The most notable of the mainstream medieval Hindu religious movements were the Bhakti cults, which came to prominence in the centuries immediately preceding the Turkish invasion of India. [16] For a detailed account of the Bhakti movement, see The First Spring , Part XII, Chapter 7. These supercharged devotional cults originated in South India around the sixth century, and gradually, over the next few centuries, spread all over the subcontinent. The Bhakti sages held that only total and unswerving bhakti (devotion to god) can save man from the pitfalls of life and earn him salvation. And for this one does not have to go to temples or perform rituals, for god is latent in every man, and this god within can be awakened through loving devotion.

The defining characteristic of the Bhakti sages was that they lived totally immersed in the sea of devotional ecstasy. Quite appropriately, the Tamil Vaishnavite Bhakti sages were known as Alvars , meaning the immersed. These sages ignored all class and caste distinctions, preached in vernacular languages, using simple maxims and parables, so their teachings were accessible to all right across the social spectrum, to the literate as well as to the illiterate. The movement had no intellectual pretensions, but had strong emotional fervour, which appealed to rustics and to urban underclasses. Orthodox Hindus, particularly Brahmins, initially disapproved the movement, as it was disruptive of the established social order and religious practices. But eventually the movement gained wide acceptance among all Hindu castes. In the process, however, it lost some of its radical features — it no longer opposed the caste system or idol worship — but fitted itself into a niche in the orthodox Hindu socio-religious structure.

ISLAM, UNLIKE HINDUISM, did not ever go through any transformative evolutionary processes. Its beliefs and practices were defined in detail by Prophet Muhammad, and these have remained unchanged since then. And, although several sects had appeared in Islam over the centuries, these differed only in organisational matters and social practices, not in religious faith. Similarly, authorities often differed in their interpretations of Koranic prescriptions, but the prescriptions themselves were never questioned.

The rigour of the enforcement of Koranic prescriptions however varied from sultanate to sultanate, and from sultan to sultan. The primary concern of sultans, even of the most orthodox of them, was with the preservation and expansion of their power, not with the enforcement of religious directives. Thus Balban, despite his strict personal observance of orthodox religious prescriptions, was, in matters of administration, guided primarily by the needs of the state, not by Islamic law. Ala-ud-din Khalji followed the same policy. ‘When he became sultan he came to the conclusion that polity and government are one thing, and the rules and decrees of Islamic law are another,’ observes Barani. ‘Royal commands belong to the sultan, Islamic legal decrees rest upon the judgment of the qazis and muftis.’

Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, is a monotheistic religion. This is stated in the Kalimah, the Islamic confession of faith: La Ilaha Illa-Allah; Muhammadur Rasul-ullah : there is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Sharia, the holy laws of Islam — based on the prescriptions of Koran, the sayings and conventions of prophet Muhammad ( hadith), and the rulings of Islamic scholars (fatwas) —regulate every aspect of Islamic society, economy and government, as well as the totality of the life of individual Muslims. Islam makes no distinction between religious and secular laws. Every law has a religious base, and the violation of any law is a crime as well as a sin.

There are, however, a few purely religious duties for Muslims to perform. All Muslims, for instance, are required to pray five times a day at home or office, and to gather in a mosque for congregational prayers on Fridays. They are also required, if they can afford it, to go on Hajj, pilgrimage to Mecca, at least once in their lifetime.

Islam abhors idol worship, and maintains austerity and high decorum in its religious ceremonies. While temple worship in Hinduism is often accompanied by music and dance, Islam sternly prohibits them in mosques. Religious festivities in Islam are solemn acts of submission to god, unlike in Hinduism in which they are carnivals in celebration of deities. In fact, Islam, unlike most other religions, has no religious rituals at all, and therefore no ordained priests or bishops, no supreme religious authority like pope.

There are however religious leaders in Islam, termed Imams, men of piety and scholarship, who lead the prayer in mosques. The other prominent socio-religious functionaries in Islamic society are Mullahs (religious scholars), Pirs (spiritual guides), Sheikhs (tribal patriarchs), and above them all the Caliph (the supreme authority over all Muslims of his sect everywhere in the world, in temporal as well as spiritual matters). But all these functionaries, even the Caliph, hold their posts by their personal merit recognised by their community, not by ordination. The role of the Caliph was similar to the role of the sultan, except that the sultan’s power was confined to his kingdom, while the Caliph had, in theory at least, authority over all Muslims of his sect everywhere in the world, though often he was just a figurehead.

ISLAM, LIKE ANY other religion, has a number of sects, the most prominent of which are Sunnis, Shias and Sufis. The difference between Sunnis and Shias is primarily in organisational matters. These two sects initially emerged out of their difference over the mode of succession to the Caliphate — while Shias preferred hereditary succession to the office through the descendants of Ali, prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, Sunnis wanted succession to be decided by the consensus of the Muslim community. Later other differences also arose between the two sects, and the gap between them widened. The Sunni is the predominant sect in the Muslim world, including the Indian subcontinent, while Shias are mostly in Iran.