Hindu–Islamic relations

Last updated

Akbar greeting Hindu Rajput rulers and other nobles at court, he attempted to foster communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims. 1577-Akbar greeting Rajput rulers and other nobles at court-Akbarnama.jpg
Akbar greeting Hindu Rajput rulers and other nobles at court, he attempted to foster communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims.

Interactions between Muslims and Hindus began in the 7th century, after the advent of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. These interactions were mainly by trade throughout the Indian Ocean. Historically, these interactions formed contrasting patterns in northern and southern India. While there is a history of conquest and domination in the north, Hindu-Muslim relations in Kerala and Tamil Nadu have been peaceful. [2] However, historical evidence has shown that violence had existed by the year 1700 A.D. [3]

Contents

In the 16th century, the Mughal Empire was established. Under the Mughals, India experienced a period of relative stability and prosperity. [4] [5] [6] The Mughals were known for their religious tolerance, [7] [8] [9] [10] and they actively patronized the arts and literature. During the Mughal era, Indian art and culture thrived, with the construction of grand monuments such as the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort. While the Mughals promoted religious harmony and cultural advancements and nurtured Hindu scholars, poets, and artists, facilitating a dynamic cultural interchange that enriched both Islamic and Hindu traditions, there were instances of religious conflicts between the Mughals and the Rajput over control of territories. Aurangzeb was criticized for his policies of religious intolerance towards Hindus. [1] [11]

During the 18th to 20th centuries, India was ruled by the British, who introduced a policy of divide and rule to maintain their control over the country. [12] [13] [14] The British also introduced a system of separate electorates, which further exacerbated the divide between the Hindu and Muslim communities. [15] [16] The First Indian War of Independence in 1857, also known as the mutiny of 1857, was a major uprising against British rule in India. The rebellion was fueled by a range of grievances, including economic exploitation, social and religious discrimination, and political oppression. [17] [18] [19] While the rebellion was not solely based on religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims, these tensions did play a role in fueling the conflict. During the rebellion, there were instances of both Muslim and Hindu soldiers and civilians fighting together against the British, as well as instances of conflict between the two communities. [20] [21] [22]

Islam and Hinduism share some ritual practices, such as fasting and pilgrimage, but their views differ on various aspects. There are also hundreds of shared ritual spaces, called dargahs (literally, “doorway” or “threshold”), for Hindus and Muslims. These mark shrines for revered Muslim (frequently Sufi) leaders and are visited by both Muslims and Hindus. Their interaction has witnessed periods of cooperation and syncretism, and periods of religious discrimination, intolerance, and violence. As a religious minority in India, Muslims are part of the Indian culture and have lived with Hindus for over 13 centuries. Despite the longtime assertion that the origins of Muslim-Hindu tensions were greatly attributed to 19th Century British colonial rule in India, it has been argued that Britain had little influence on constructing the religious identities of Islam and Hinduism in the region and that divisions existed beforehand as well. [23] For example, 18th-century Mughal–Maratha Wars. Ajay Verghese argues that the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India can be better understood by analyzing the historical relationship between the two communities. He contends that precolonial India was marked by a fluidity of religious identity and that religious boundaries were not always clear-cut. This led to a degree of intermingling between Muslims and Hindus, but also created conditions for tension and conflict. [3]

Music

There have been instances of syncretic cooperation on music with Islamic and Hindu themes. For example, the national poet of Bangladesh, Kazi Nazrul Islam, wrote many Islamic devotional songs for mainstream Bengali folk music. [24] He also explored Hindu devotional music by composing Shyama Sangeet, Durga Vandana, Sarswati Vandana, bhajans and kirtans, often merging Islamic and Hindu values. Nazrul's poetry and songs explored the philosophy of Islam and Hinduism. [25]

Poetry (Shayari)

It is popularised under Mughals times, we have great poets in history like Amir Khusro, Baba_Bulle_Shah, etc

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hindus</span> Adherents of the religion of Hinduism

Hindus are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of India</span>

Anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to 30,000 years ago. Sedentariness began in South Asia around 7000 BCE; by 4500 BCE, settled life had spread, and gradually evolved into the Indus Valley Civilisation, one of three early cradles of civilisation in the Old World, which flourished between 2500 BCE and 1900 BCE in present-day Pakistan and north-western India. Early in the second millennium BCE, persistent drought caused the population of the Indus Valley to scatter from large urban centres to villages. Indo-Aryan tribes moved into the Punjab from Central Asia in several waves of migration. The Vedic Period of the Vedic people in northern India was marked by the composition of their extensive collections of hymns (Vedas). The social structure was loosely stratified via the varna system, incorporated into the highly evolved present-day Jāti system. The pastoral and nomadic Indo-Aryans spread from the Punjab into the Gangetic plain. Around 600 BCE, a new, interregional culture arose; then, small chieftaincies (janapadas) were consolidated into larger states (mahajanapadas). Second urbanization took place, which came with the rise of new ascetic movements and religious concepts, including the rise of Jainism and Buddhism. The latter was synthesized with the preexisting religious cultures of the subcontinent, giving rise to Hinduism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Partition of India</span> 1947 division of British India

The partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, the Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan. The Union of India is today the Republic of India and the Dominion of Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The partition involved the division of two provinces, Bengal and the Punjab, based on district-wise Hindu or Muslim majorities. It also involved the division of the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury, between the two new dominions. The partition was set forth in the Indian Independence Act 1947 and resulted in the dissolution of the British Raj, or Crown rule in India. The two self-governing countries of India and Pakistan legally came into existence at midnight on 14–15 August 1947.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Islam in India</span>

Islam is India's second-largest religion, with 14.2% of the country's population, or approximately 172.2 million people, identifying as adherents of Islam in a 2011 census. India also has the third-largest number of Muslims in the world. The majority of India's Muslims are Sunni, with Shia making up around 15% of the Muslim population.

Hindus have experienced both historical and ongoing religious persecution and systematic violence, in the form of forced conversions, documented massacres, genocides, demolition and desecration of temples, as well as the destruction of educational centres.

Shuddhi is Sanskrit for purification. It is a term used to describe a Hindu religious movement aimed at the religious conversion of non-Hindus of Indian origin to Hinduism.

India since its independence in 1947 has been a secular country. The secular values were enshrined in the constitution of India. India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru is credited with the formation of the secular republic in the modern history of the country. With the Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India enacted in 1976, the Preamble to the Constitution asserted that India is a secular nation. However, the Supreme Court of India in the 1994 case S. R. Bommai v. Union of India established the fact that India was secular since the formation of the republic. The judgement established that there is separation of state and religion. It stated "In matters of State, religion has no place. Any State government which pursues nonsecular on policies or nonsecular course of action acts contrary to the constitutional mandate and renders itself amenable to action under Article 356". Furthermore, constitutionally, state-owned educational institutions are prohibited from imparting religious instructions, and Article 27 of the constitution prohibits using tax-payers money for the promotion of any religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Hinduism</span>

The history of Hinduism covers a wide variety of related religious traditions native to the Indian subcontinent. It overlaps or coincides with the development of religion in the Indian subcontinent since the Iron Age, with some of its traditions tracing back to prehistoric religions such as those of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation. Hinduism has been called the "oldest religion" in the world, but scholars regard Hinduism as a relatively recent synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and no single founder, which emerged around the beginning of the Common Era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bengal Renaissance</span> 1800s–1930s socio-cultural and religious reform movement in Bengal, Indian subcontinent

The Bengal Renaissance, also known as the Bengali Renaissance, was a cultural, social, intellectual, and artistic movement that took place in the Bengal region of the British Raj, from the late 18th century to the early 20th century. Historians have traced the beginnings of the movement to the victory of the British East India Company at the 1757 Battle of Plassey, as well as the works of reformer Raja Rammohan Roy, considered the "Father of the Indian Renaissance," born in 1772. Nitish Sengupta stated that the movement "can be said to have … ended with Rabindranath Tagore," Asia's first Nobel laureate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent</span>

The Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent mainly took place between the 13th and the 18th centuries, establishing the Indo-Muslim period. Earlier Muslim conquests in the subcontinent include the invasions which started in the northwestern subcontinent, especially the Umayyad campaigns during the 8th century. Mahmud of Ghazni, Sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire, preserved an ideological link to the suzerainty of the Abbasid Caliphate and invaded vast parts of Punjab and Gujarat during the 11th century. After the capture of Lahore and the end of the Ghaznavids, the Ghurid ruler Muhammad of Ghor laid the foundation of Muslim rule in India in 1192. In 1202, Bakhtiyar Khalji led the Muslim conquest of Bengal, marking the easternmost expansion of Islam at the time.

Criticism of Hinduism has been applied to both the historical and the current aspects of Hinduism, notably the caste system and the sati practice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pakistani nationalism</span> Nationalism as applied to Pakistanis

Pakistani nationalism refers to the political, cultural, linguistic, historical, religious and geographical expression of patriotism by the people of Pakistan, of pride in the history, heritage and identity of Pakistan, and visions for its future.

Religious violence in India includes acts of violence by followers of one religious group against followers and institutions of another religious group, often in the form of rioting. Religious violence in India has generally involved Hindus and Muslims.

The cow protection movement is a predominantly Hindu religion and political movement aiming to protect cows, whose slaughter has been broadly opposed by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians and Sikhs. While the opposition to slaughter of animals, including cows, has extensive and ancient roots in Indian history, the term refers to modern movements dating back to colonial era British India. The earliest such activism is traceable to Namdhari (Kooka) Sikhs of Punjab who opposed cow slaughter in the 1860s. The movement became popular in the 1880s and thereafter, attracting the support from the Arya Samaj founder Swami Dayananda Saraswati in the late 19th century, and from Mahatma Gandhi in the early 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Asia</span> Subregion of Asia

South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethnic-cultural terms. As commonly conceptualised, the modern states of South Asia include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. However, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are typically categorized as South Asian countries, their cultural, historical, and geopolitical identities are more complex, blending influences from South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. As a result, their classification within South Asia remains a subject of debate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mughal Empire</span> 1526–1857 empire in South Asia

The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India.

There have been several instances of religious violence against Muslims since the partition of India in 1947, frequently in the form of violent attacks on Muslims by Hindu nationalist mobs that form a pattern of sporadic sectarian violence between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Over 10,000 people have been killed in Hindu-Muslim communal violence since 1950 in 6,933 instances of communal violence between 1954 and 1982.

Punjabi Muslims are Punjabis who are adherents of Islam. With a population of more than 112 million, they are the third-largest predominantly Islam-adhering Muslim ethnicity in the world, after Arabs and Bengalis.

The Jat people, also spelt Jaat and Jatt, are a traditionally agricultural community in Northern India and Pakistan. Originally pastoralists in the lower Indus river-valley of Sindh, many Jats migrated north into the Punjab region in late medieval times, and subsequently into the Delhi Territory, northeastern Rajputana, and the western Gangetic Plain in the 17th and 18th centuries. Of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh faiths, they are now found mostly in the Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and the Pakistani regions of Sindh, Punjab and AJK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hindu–Muslim unity</span> Religiopolitical concept in the Indian subcontinent

Hindu–Muslim unity is a religiopolitical concept in the Indian subcontinent which stresses members of the two largest faith groups there, Hindus and Muslims, working together for the common good. The concept was championed by various persons, such as leaders in the Indian independence movement, namely Mahatma Gandhi and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, as well as by political parties and movements in British India, such as the Indian National Congress, Khudai Khidmatgar and All India Azad Muslim Conference. Those who opposed the partition of India often adhered to the doctrine of composite nationalism.

References

  1. 1 2 Chandra 2007 , p. 252
  2. Vasudha Narayanan. Hinduism and Islam.
  3. 1 2 Verghese, Ajay; Foa, Roberto Stefan (5 November 2018). "Precolonial Ethnic Violence:The Case of Hindu-Muslim Conflict in India" (PDF). Boston University. Retrieved 7 April 2023.
  4. Smith, Stephanie Honchell (1 August 2023). "Aurangzeb: Mughal Emperor". The Ohio State University. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
  5. Kanwal, Fariha. "Mughal Rulers' (1526-1707) Religious Tolerance Policy and its Impacts on the Society of Sub-Continent". ANNALS OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND PERSPECTIVE. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
  6. "The majestic Mughal Empire: The rise and fall of India's most powerful dynasty". History Skills. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
  7. Kinra, Rajeev (1 April 2020). "Revisiting the History and Historiography of Mughal Pluralism". Reorient. 5 (2). doi:10.13169/reorient.5.2.0137 . Retrieved 2 March 2024.
  8. "MUGHALS AND THE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS". Proquest. September 2012. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
  9. Akhtar, Awais. "Religious Policy of Emperor Shahjahan (1627-1658AD)" (PDF). Journal of Indian Studies.
  10. Giordan, Giuseppe (15 July 2019). "Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Volume 10 (2019)". Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh. p. 278. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
  11. Mehrotra, Abhishek (9 December 2017). "The Real History of Hindu-Muslim Relations Under Akbar". The Diplomat. Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  12. Rehman, Aziz (11 May 2018). "The British Art of Colonialism in India: Subjugation and Division". Peace And Conflict Studies Journal. Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  13. Smith, Randall (10 August 2017). "The Partition: The British game of 'divide and rule'". Al-Jazeera. Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  14. Belkacem, Belmekki (2014). "Muslim Separatism in Post-Revolt India: A British Game of "Divide et Impera"?". Oriente Moderno. 94 (1): 113–124. doi:10.1163/22138617-12340041. JSTOR   44280740 . Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  15. Tharoor, Shashi (2017). Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India. Hurst. p. 101. ISBN   978-1-84904-808-8.
  16. Markandey Katju. "The truth about Pakistan". The Nation. Archived from the original on 10 November 2013. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  17. Metcalf & Metcalf 2006, pp. 100–103.
  18. Brown 1994, pp. 85–86.
  19. Peers, Douglas M. (2006), "Britain and Empire", in Williams, Chris (ed.), A Companion to 19th-Century Britain, John Wiley & Sons, p. 63, ISBN   978-1-4051-5679-0
  20. Robb, Peter (18 May 2017). "On the Rebellion of 1857: A Brief History of an Idea". Economic and Political Weekly. 42 (19): 1696–1702. JSTOR   4419572 . Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  21. "1857 War of Independence... when Hindu-Muslim separatism, hatred wasn't an issue". Counter View. 13 May 2020. Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  22. YADAV, SANJAY (1994). "The Indian Mutiny of 1857: Why Britain Succeeded and the Rebels Failed". Journal of Asian History. 28 (2): 136–153. JSTOR   41930953 . Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  23. Pillalamarri, Akhilesh (16 March 2019). "The Origins of Hindu-Muslim Conflict in South Asia". The Diplomat. Retrieved 7 April 2023.
  24. Kamrunnessa Azad. 2001. Dharmiya Chetonay Nazrul. Nazrul Institute, Dhaka. 1999. pp. 173–174
  25. Kamrunnessa Azad. 2001. Dharmiya Chetonay Nazrul. Nazrul Institute, Dhaka. 1999. pp. 19–20

Bibliography

Relations
Islam in South Asia
Communal violence
General