OBJECTIVE ONE:         To show the manner in which Islam comes to India, not simply as an old
                                           Arab faith but as a rich synthesis of the Mediterranean heritage,
                                           thereby representing the coming of what will become important components
                                           of the "New Indic" dimensions of Indian culture and civilization.

OBJECTIVE TWO:          To trace the coming of the British, first, as traders, then as conquerors,
                                            and to show how the older Indic and Indo-Islamic traditions reacted by way
                                            of developing Neo-Muslim and Neo-Hindu traditions.

OBJECTIVE THREE:      To provide an overview of India's struggle to become a modern nation-state
                                           and to highlight the most important achievements and tensions as India moves
                                            into the future.

MODULE 13:  THE INDO-ISLAMIC  ca., l200 - l757)

INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS:

Sometimes this period is called the medieval period in the history of the subcontinent, but it is more accurately characterized by the appearance of a  remarkably new cultural force, Islam, and the resulting emergence of yet another layer or level of cultural development on the subcontinent, the  Indo-Islamic. 

Contact with Islamic culture occurred as early as the middle of the seventh century of the Common Era, largely through Arab traders coming to the west coast of India across the Arabian Sea. Some military forays into India by Arab Muslim armies began as early as the eighth century in the region of Sind (present-day Pakistan) and Gujurat, but it was not until the latter part of the tenth century that these intrusions became serious threats to the independence of the subcontinent.

ISLAMIC CONQUEST: THE DELHI SULTANATES AND THE MUGHALS

When Islamic conquest did begin to occur, however, it was not of the original Arab variety. It came during the period of the 'Abbasid Caliphate (750 - l258), and more than that, during a late phase of the 'Abbasid dynasty in which a number of independent succession states had emerged, one of which on the far eastern end of the Islamic world, namely, that of the Turko-Afghan Ghaznavid state, was to be the first agent of Islamization on the subcontinent.

By the time of the 'Abbasid Caliphate, Islamic culture and civilization had become a cosmopolitan, imperial presence throughout the Middle East and the Mediterranean world, and had indeed become the heir of the heritage of Middle East civilizations, including Jewish, Christian, Hellenistic, Byzantine and Sasanian cultural components. When it entered India, in other words, it brought with it a much richer heritage than the original Arab faith of the founder, Muhammad.

This is not at all to suggest that all of this came with the invading forces of Mahmud of Ghazni and Sultan Muhammad of Ghur in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was, however, the beginning of a cultural invasion and cultural transformation the likes of which the subcontinent had not experienced in over two thousand years of previous history. Mahmud of Ghazni and Sultan Muhammad of Ghur, in other words,may have appeared to be only two more outside invaders on analogy with so many who had come before. This time, however, there was a profound difference. This time it was not simply an invading force to be absorbed or accommodated, sooner or later, into the dense and rich subcontinental civilization. This time an entire civilization, at least as dense and rich as the subcontinental, was making an appearance, and the encounter and accommodation would be exceedingly fruitful, albeit also deeply frustrating and painful.

From 997 onwards, Mahmud of Ghazni, a Turko-Afghan Muslim from Afghanistan, led his armies in some seventeen bloody attacks, not only in the Punjab region but well into North India as well. A number of important Hindu religious sites were attacked and plundered, including those at Thanesar, Kanauj, Mathura and the famed temple at Somnath. The Ghaznavids, however, made no attempt to hold extensive portions of the subcontinent beyond some areas in the Punjab and Sind. It was over a century later, when Ghazni itself was conquered (1173) by another Central Asian Muslim, Sultan Muhammad of Ghur, that North India became the target for permanent conquest and settlement. In 1192 at the second battle of Tarain the Rajputs under Prithiviraja were completely defeated.

Thereafter most of North India was open to permanent conquest by the Muslim armies. Sultan Muhammand of Ghur himself withdrew from North India and returned to Ghur, leaving the task of the further conquest of North India to his most favored Turkish commander, Qutb ud-din Aibak, and, as was mentioned above, when Muhammad of Ghur was assassinated in 1206, Qutb ud-din Aibak claimed the title of Sultan for himself in Delhi and began the series of Turko-Afghan Sultanates called simply the Delhi Sultanates (1206 - 1526). These Sultanates ruled most of North India from the Punjab in the North-West to the borders of Bengal in the North-East, but they were for the most part simply large regional polities. There were a number of other regional powers during the period, Hindu as well as spin-off Muslim politities, including the Rajput Confederacy (Hindu) in the West (the Rajasthan region), the Bahmani (Muslim) dynasty in the Deccan, the Ilyas Shahi (Muslim) dynasty in Bengal, the Vijayanagar (Hindu) dynasty in the Karnataka region, and so forth.

When yet another Turkish line, the Timurids or Mughals, founded in 1526 by Babar (purportedly a descendent of both Timur on his father's side and the great Chingis Khan on his mother's side), supplanted the last of the Delhi Sultanates (the Lodi dynasty, 145l - 1526), the battle was not just with the Lodis.  The Rajput Confederacy under the Rana Sanga of Mewar (the region of Rajasthan) was at least as formidable as the weakened Lodis.  In any case, Babar was finally successful after a series of major encounters in the North with various regional polities. The most important of the Mughal rulers included, in addition to Babar himself (ruled 1526-30), his son Humayun (1508-56, ruled from 1530), the great Emperor, Akbar (ruled 1556 - 1605), Jahangir (ruled 1605-1627), Shah Jahan (ruled 1628 - 1658, builder of the Taj Mahal), and Aurangzeb (ruled 1658 - 1707).  Under Akbar the Mughal dynasty achieved its greatest success and coherence, controlling most of North India from the far North-West to the far North-East, although much of the South remained outside of Mughal control. 

With Aurangzeb the extent of Mughal power covered almost the entirety of the subcontinent (including most of the South), but the control was loose at best and decline was already setting in.  By the end of Aurangzeb's rule, the empire was overextended, financially weak, and, therefore, in serious decline, and thereafter the dynasty continued largely in name only until its final representative, Bahadur Shah II, was deposed in 1858  by the British (at the conclusion of the North Indian rebellion, 1857-1858). 

EARLY ISLAMIC FAITH AND BELIEF: SUNNI, SHI'A AND SUFI

As mentioned above, apart from some early contacts on the western coast by Arab traders, the vehicle for the transmission of Islam into the subcontinent was not the original tradition of the Arabs but, rather, the much more cosmopolitan and sophisticated Islam of the 'Abbasid caliphate.  The tradition of the original religious Arab Islam was simply (a) that there is only one God (Allah), (b) that God is revealed in the sacred text of the Qur'an, (c) that Muhammad is the final messenger (rasul) or prophet of this God and his revelation, that is to say, the final prophet or "seal of the prophets" in a long line of previous prophets or messengers who brought new revelations leading back through (the Christian) Jesus to the ancient (Hebrew) prophets or messengers, Abraham and Moses, (d) that all believers are equal before God and must together exercise total submission (islam) to God and have faith (iman) in Him, his angels, his revelation, and his lordship over corporate life (that is, all of history, including family, society and state), (e) that believers should obey the law (shari'ah) as determined by the Qur'an, the traditions of the prophet (hadith), the consensus of the community (ijma) and basic custom or "orthodoxy" (sunnah), and (f) that believers should observe the five "supports of the religion" (arkan ad-din), namely, the "witnessing" or credo that there is only one God (shahadah), daily "prayer" (salah), "fasting" (sawm) during the month of Ramadan, "almsgiving" (zakah), and "pilgrimage" (hajj) to the sacred city of Mecca. It was a faith that enabled a broader vision of communal life than the constraints of older Arab tribalisms and that provided a powerful rationale for conquest and proselytization in order to establish a universal "abode of peace" or "house of Islam" (dar al-islam).

One other interesting historical development should also be mentioned which coincides with the appearance of Islamic culture in India, and again, it has to do with the 'Abbasid Caliphate.  Just as the 'Abbasids had provided a context for the diffusion of a common culture, the collapse of that same Caliphate in its later phases, after the tenth and eleventh century, provided the occasion for many scholars, artists, intellectuals, and religious leaders in the eastern regions of the learned Islamic world to seek refuge in India.

The subcontinent, fortunately, with the exception of some portions of the Punjab, escaped the Mongol invasions, and the Delhi Sultanates (l206 - l526) of North India became a place where Islamic culture could develop in new and intriguing ways.  Sunni, Shi'a and Sufi forms of Islam, all of which had developed into mature traditions by the twelfth century, long before the appearance of Islam as a conquering force in India, underwent a new and vigorous development on the subcontinent.

Sunni Islam was the main "orthodox" tradition.  The term "sunni" is the adjective derived from the word "sunnah," meaning "custom."  Sunni Muslims accept the first four Caliphs (kalifah or "deputy," namely, Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthman and 'Ali).  They do not ascribe any special spiritual powers to 'Ali (as do Shi'ites and Sufis), and they follow one or the other of the four Sunni Schools of Law (the shari'ah): the Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki or Shafi'i (representing mainly variant traditions in geographic regions).  They accept, of course, the Qur'an and the hadith ("authentic traditions" about the Prophet) as authoritative revelation, but Sunni Islam also puts great importance on the notion of the "consensus" (ijma') of the community, either the collective consensus of the legal specialists or learned men of the community (the 'ulama') or the corporate Muslim community as a whole (the umma).  The great majority of all Muslims (well over 80%) through the centuries have been Sunnis.  The majority tradition in India has always been Sunni, and Sunni Muslims in India have followed the Hanafite School of Law.

Shi'ite Islam represents a minority of about l0% of the Muslim world, and it has three major divisions, the largest of which is Twelve Imam Shi'ism.  This latter has had its base primarily in Iran (Persia) and Iraq.  There are two other smaller groups, namely, the Five Imam Shi'ites in theYemen and the Seven Imam Shi'ites or Isma'ilis, largely in India.  Shi'ism became an important force in the spin-off (from the Delhi Sultanates) Muslim regional polities in the Deccan in the sixteenth century.  Also, Bairam Khan, the guardian and minister of the Mughal emperor, Akbar, was a Shi'ite.  The Shi'ites (from the term "shi'ah," meaning "partisan," and more specifically, "shi'at 'Ali," the "party of 'Ali") believe that 'Ali was the first legitimate Caliph, since he was in the blood-line of descent (a cousin) of the Prophet.  'Ali was assassinated, and his oldest son, Hasan (through his wife, Fatimah, the daughter of the Prophet), was coerced into abdicating the Caliphate to Mu'awiyah, the founder of the Umayyad dynasty in 66l.  When Hasan finally died, Husayn, 'Ali's second son by Fatimah, proclaimed himself Caliph, but Husayn and his small band of followers were ruthlessly massacred on the battlefield of Karbala (in Iraq) in 680 by Yazid, the son of Mu'awiyah.  This massacre (commemorated on the l0th day of Muharram in the ritual calendar) is the most important symbolic event for Shi'ism, since it marks the martyrdom and sacrifice of the 'Ali line.  Shi'ites believe in a line of spiritually empowered "Imams" in the 'Ali blood-line of descent from the Prophet who preserve and transmit the esoteric or "inner" truth of Islam.  It is a messianic form of Islam.  The Twelve Imam tradition in Iran and Iraq believes that the last Imam is currently in "occultation" and will return at the end of the age as "al-Mahdi" ("the guided one") to restore righteousness and the legitimate Caliphate.

Sufism (probably from the term "suf," meaning "rough wool" worn by early Muslim ascetics) represents the mystical tradition within Islam, influenced probably by Neo-Platonism from the Hellenistic tradition and possibly by older traditions of Indic mystical thought from Central Asia (via Buddhism and Iranian Manichaeism).  Like Shi'ism it focusses on the "inner" truth of Islam with special emphasis on a living, personal relationship with Allah.  Mystical traditions appeared very early in the history of Islam and developed considerably after Islam expanded into Iran or Persia in the late seventh and eighth centuries.  Key figures include Abu Yazid al-Bistami of Iran (d. 874) and al-Junayd of Baghdad (d. 9l0), and the writings of the great Persian or Iranian poet, Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi (l207 - l273).  It received its definitive theological formulation and thereby its solid place within Islamic orthodoxy by the great Persian or Iranian theologian-mystic, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (l058 - llll).  Sufism focusses on the mystical truth and blessing passed on from Allah to Muhammad and, thence, to either Abu Bakr (the first Caliph) or 'Ali (the fourth Caliph), and, then, in sequence to "spiritual leaders" (Shaykhs or Pirs) who maintain "lines of transmission" (silsilah) and establish "retreat centers" (khannaqahs or tekke) wherein followers cultivate and follow the mystical "path" (tariqah).  Some of these "retreat centers" became favored places of pilgrimage after the death of a particularly popular Shaykh or Pir.  The inner, spiritual or esoteric mystical path parallels the outer, external or exoteric legal way (shari'ah).  By the time that Islam entered India, Sufism had already become a mature, orthodox tradition.  Three Sufi "orders" became especially dominant in India: the Chishti Order (founded by Mu'in ad-Din Muhammad Chishti, ll42 - l246), strong especially around Delhi, the Suhrawardi Order, strong mainly in Sind, and the Firdausi Order, strong in the region of Bihar.  The Sufis were important in India as a missionizing force, and the obvious parallels between Sufi "retreat centers," "lines of transmission," and popular traditions of pilgrimage, on the one hand, and Hindu-Buddhist-Jain ashramas ("hermitages"), monasteries, and devotional (bhakti) groups, on the other, became important points of contact between Islamic traditions and older Indic traditions. 

INDO-ISLAMIC SYNTHESIS: PERSO-ARABIC-CUM-RAJPUT HINDU

With the coming of the Mughals in the sixteenth century, and especially the reign of the great Akbar, Indo-Islamic culture emerged as one of the truly sparkling phases in the world-history of Islamic civilization as well as within the history of the older Indic civilization.  Indo-Islamic culture was an intriguing combination of the Perso-Arabic (and Hellenized) traditions inherited from the cosmopolitan world of the 'Abbasid era together with the Rajput-Hindu traditions of Western and North Central India, largely patterned after Iranian or Persian culture and fashioned by migrant Iranians, Persianized Afghans and Turks and, of course, the many converts to Islam in India from peasant agrarian communities (in Kashmir and Bengal), urban artisan groups (in North Central India and in the spin-off Muslim regional polities in the Deccan) , various trading groups (on the western coast from Gujarat through Karnataka and down into what is now Kerala), and including, last but not least, the fellow-travelling Rajput clans, some of whom converted to Islam but many of whom remained Hindu, in the Rajasthan region.

The state under Akbar's tutelage became an interesting combination of the traditional Muslim notion of kingship and governance, derived mainly from Iranian sources, with its focus on the maintenance of stability, the enforcement of the SharI'ah, and the general moral uplift of the population through the true practice of Islam, together with older pre-Muslim Persian notions of the majesty and grandeur of the king and of the lavish display of royal patronage in cultural productions and grand public works.  Akbar also developed a unique administrative system known as the mansabdar system, involving a network of administrative military officers in a hierarchical ordering.  The position of the military "office-holder" (mansab-dar) in the hierarchy was determined by how many troops he was able to provide in the event of a battle.  The administrative military officer was paid in cash or given an estate (jagir).  The officer would collect revenue and be in charge of a large administrative area.  Below him were various local chieftains and  regional revenue collectors (zamindar-s).

The country overall was divided into provinces (suba-s), local districts (sarkar-s) and subdistricts (pargana-s).  Most of the administrative military officers were brought from outside of India, but as many as twenty percent were Hindus (mainly Rajputs and Marathas). Over time elaborate lineage systems of both Muslim and Hindu elites were developed.  When the British first established their presence in India, they were quick to see the merits of Akbar's system and to imitate them, especially the overall administrative structure and the symbolic, political value of lavish public displays of power and royal patronage.

On the level of material and political reality, it can be plausibly argued that no great transformations took place during the long centuries of Muslim domination.

Muslim rulers accomodated themselves to the larger Hindu culture, if only because they were greatly outnumbered overall and very much in need of Hindu support.  Hindus were early along designated "protected peoples" (dhimmis), and during some periods of Muslim rule--for example, during the reign of Akbar--the "head tax" (jizya) for "protected peoples" was waived. 

For a time under the Emperor Akbar, an open-minded and tolerant attitude towards other religious traditions, including the Hindu, became prevalent, at least among the court elite.  Here is where the intriguing blend of Perso-Islamic and Rajput-Hindu traditions became most manifest.  Discussions about religion were regularly held in the Hall of Worship with the Emperor presiding.  Taking part in these discussions were Sunni ulama ("learned jurists"), Sufi Shaykhs or Pirs, Hindu panditas, Jains, Parsis and even some Catholic priests (Jesuits) from Portugese Goa.  Akbar also devised a new, eclectic religion, later known as the "Divine Faith" (Din-i-ilahi), a sort of broad-based monotheistic faith that included a variety of religious traditions (mainly Islamic and Hindu).  The Emperor likewise encouraged the translations of some basic Vedic texts, and the two great epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, into Persian.  He also appointed a Hindi court poet.

Akbar's great grandson, Dara Shikoh (16l5 - 1659), a follower of one of the Sufi mystical orders, was also a student of Hindu philosophy.  His brother, Aurangzeb, however, who came to power as Emperor (ruling from 1658 - 1707) had Dara Shikoh executed in 1659, mainly for political reasons (since Dara Shikoh was a principal claimant to the throne) but with the "religious" excuse that Dara Shikoh had become too influenced by Hindu ideas.  In any case, with the coming of Aurangzeb's leadership, the brief period of accomodation between Islamic, Hindu and other religious traditions came to an abrupt halt, and thereafter Islamic orthodoxy was enforced in court circles.

Even during the years of accomodation between Islam and Hindu traditions, however, many of the orthodox ulama ("learned jurists") were opposed to any close connections between Islamic and Hindu traditions.  Even many of the Sufi Shaykhs or Pirs were keen to maintain a distance between Islamic belief and practice and Hindu belief and practice.  Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (1564 - 1624), for example, a Sufi of the Naqshbandi Order, troubled that the Muslim mystical doctrine of the "unity of existence" (tauhid-i-wujudi) might get confused with Hindu notions of monism, argued that the authentic mystic experience is simply "unity of experience" (tauhid-i-shuhudi, a subjective sense of the presence of God) and not the "unity of existence" (an objective claim that the mystic and God are one), thereby preserving the absolute transcendence of God and the need for revelation. 

In a similar fashion, Shah Wali-Ullah (1703 - 1762), also a Sufi of the Naqshbandi Order, during the decline of the Mughal dynasty and before the coming of the British, argued for a clear separation between Islamic and Hindu traditions both spiritually as well as politically.  Later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the thought of Shah Wali-Ullah would be used by proponents of Muslim separatism in Pakistan and India.

It appears to be the case overall, then, that any compromise or accomodation between Islamic and Hindu traditions on the learned level during the centuries of Muslim domination hardly went beyond a very small elite in court circles.  Generally speaking, with regard to learned or "great tradition" Islamic and Hindu traditions, there has been little more than bare co-existence over the centuries.  Mutual hostility and deep suspicion among the respective elites have been the order of the day almost from the beginning of the encounter between the two civilizations, and the hostility and suspicion continued not only until the time of Partition in 1947 but is even now, nearly fifty years after Partition, still a potent factor between the Hindu and Muslim communities in India as well as throughout the South Asian area.

From the theoretical or theological perspective of the respective elites, of course, the basic reason for the deep suspicion is not difficult to identify.  The Muslim belief in one transcendent God who has definitively revealed himself in a cognitively specific revelation (the Qur'an) and who demands absolute submission among all believers who make up one universal community in which all believers are equal is nearly the exact antithesis of the pluralist, plastic, hierarchical and polymorphous spirituality characteristic of Indic (Hindu-Buddhist-Jain) civilization prior to the appearance of Islamic civilization.  It is impossible to imagine from a purely theoretical point of view two more contradictory moral visions or views of the good life than that between the learned Islamic civilization and the learned Indic civilization.

Nevertheless, it must also be noted that there were more than a few accomodations and intermixtures of a non-theoretical or practical kind that occurred on the lower peasant agrarian levels and the urban artisan levels.  Sufi pilgrimage places were sometimes visited by Hindu pilgrims as were Hindu shrines by Muslim peasants. It was common in Kashmir for Muslims to visit old Buddhist shrines.  This was also the case in Bengal.  Muslim peasants in Western India offered vows to Hindu gods for a good harvest, and  Muslim women in Bengal offerred puja to Sitala, the Hindu goddess of smallpox.  There was also a good deal of intermixture among performers and craftsmen in the areas of music, dance, architecture and painting.  Moreover, even though Islam accepts the basic equality of all believers and, therefore, in principle rejects the Hindu caste-system, nevertheless, a sort of ersatz caste-system has developed among Muslim communities in India, with "ashrafs" ("honorable" ones), that is, the ruling descendants of Turks, Afghans and Persians at the top, followed by Muslim Rajputs, followed by "clean" artisan groups and, finally, "unclean" scavenger-groups. 

REACTIONS TO ISLAMIC CULTURE BY OLDER INDIC TRADITIONS

Regarding developments within the older Indic civilization throughout this Indo-Islamic period, on most levels there was a defensive withdrawal.  Buddhist traditions as  distinctive and identifiable communities disappeared altogether by the end of the fourteenth century (in the North-West and Kashmir, in the North-East and Bengal and throughout most of the South), partly, as has been mentioned, because of the onslaught of the Turko-Afghan Muslim invaders who found Buddhist monks and monasteries to be easy targets, but partly also because much of Buddhist spirituality, especially of the Mahayana and Tantric variety, was simply absorbed into the larger Hindu framework.  Jain traditions somehow survived in certain regional areas such as Gujarat, Rajasthan, northern Maharashtra and Karnataka, partly because of royal favor in certain regional polities and partly because of extensive compromises with the larger Hindu environment.

The basic parameters of the Hindu traditions had been shaped in the preceding pre-Muslim period in terms of the three major kinds or modalities of spirituality: (a) sacrificial ritual (yajna) much of which became the simple ritual worship (puja) in the home and public temples, (b) ascetic practices or disciplined meditation (the various types of yoga) most of which became institutionalized in various monastic orders such as the Dashanamis, and so forth, and (c) devotion (bhakti) to a personal god, either in terms of Vaishnava, Shaiva or Shakta devotional groups or in terms of the pancayatana puja ("ritual worship of five symbols or deities: Surya, Shiva, Vishnu, Devi  and Ganesha) of the Smarta (traditional high-caste and Advaita Vedantin) Hindus.  In this Indo-Islamic period, the first two of these three modalities underwent only slight changes, mainly in the direction of greater consolidation and the development of defensive measures against the developing Indo-Islamic civilization.

As mentioned earlier, it is undoubtedly in this period that the caste system began to take on its modern, overly rigid structures, and "orthopractical" ritual behavior became minutely codified and pervaded with this emerging "casteism."  Furthermore, in this period Hindus put greater emphasis on vegetarianism, non-violence (ahimsa) and the veneration of the cow as a symbol of divine benevolence, all of which notions of ritual purity clearly helped to differentiate the Hindu from the Muslim.  Vegetarianism, non-violence and cow-veneration are, of course, much older than the Indo-Islamic period, the first two being traceable to the Indo-Shramanical traditions of the Jains and Buddhists and the latter (cow-veneration) going back even to Vedic times, but it is in this Indo-Islamic period that these old notions and practices became essential in the increasingly defensive self-understanding of Hindus.  The great Shivaji (l627 - l680), for example, mentioned earlier as the warrior hero and organizer of the Maratha tribes in Maharashtra who defended Hindu culture and civilization against Muslim encroachment, suggested that the very definition of Hindu tradition involves veneration of the cow, caste and the protection of the priests.

Regarding ascetic practices or disciplined meditation (yoga), already back in the eighth century, as mentioned earlier,  the great Vedanta philosopher, Shankara, had organized the various Hindu monastic orders into the ten basic groups (the "ten-named" or Dashanami-s), and Ramanuja and the Shri Vaishnavas (as well as other Vaishnava traditions) developed comparable monastic organizations from the twelfth century onwards.  Throughout the Indo-Islamic period these various monastic orders continued to consolidate their traditions and practices.  They also developed "militant" orders called naga-s ("naked ascetics" in Hindi), arranged in groups or congregations called akhadas or akharas (meaning in Hindi an "arena" or "place for wrestling" but coming to mean congregations of militant sadhu-s or holy men), groups of Yogins trained in martial arts to defend the monastic institutions against the encroachment of Muslim bands or other, hostile Hindu groups.

Mention should  also be made of traditions of Shaiva ascetics, called "Yogis," "Nath Yogi-s," "Kanphata Yogi-s," or "Gorakhnathi Yogi-s." They were followers of Tantric yoga and hatha-yoga ("exertion discipline") and appear to be related to older traditions of both Hindu (Kapalika and Kalamukha Shaiva groups) and Buddhist (Vajrayana or "Diamond Vehicle") Tantric traditions from the preceding Indic period. They are traceable to two founding figures, Matsyendranath and Gorakhnath (in Sanskrit: Gorakshanatha), who lived somewhere between the ninth and twelfth centuries either in the Punjab or far North-West region or in the North-East in the area of Bengal, both of which regions, interestingly, were centers for Tantric traditions.  The Nath Yogi-s are called "Kanphata" ("ear-split" in Hindi) because of the practice of cutting the cartilege in the ears in order to hold the large earrings that the cult followers wear. The focus in these Shaiva ascetic groups is on becoming a "master" (natha), or "perfected" Yogin (siddha) by making use of magico-religious rituals (including alchemical, occult and erotic ritual performances) and extreme Yogic exertions of posture and breathing.  They were largely low-caste groups and paid little attention to caste rules.  They became widely prevalent as magic-workers and healers on a popular level in North and Central India between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and they seem to have interacted easily with Sufi Shaykhs and Pirs, possibly because of their low caste status and their general indifference to issues of caste.

 Of much greater significance for the development of Hindu traditions in the Indo-Islamic period is the remarkable increase in devotional Hindu spirituality or bhakti.  Here again the antecedents can be traced back many centuries, to the Indo-Shramanical period when hero-cults and local devotional traditions appeared for the first time alongside of the Indo-Brahmanical Vedic system and to such texts as the famous Bhagavad-gita in the Indic period which represented the first major theoretical statement about devotion or bhakti as a form of yoga (bhakti-yoga) within an Indo-Brahmanical context (but also clearly under the influence of Indo-Shramanical traditions).  Traditions of bhakti developed further with the emergence of the Tamil poet-saints of South India, already discussed earlier, both Vaishnava and Shaiva (called Alvar-s and Nayanar-s respectively), whose exuberant devotional piety spreads from the Tamil country to Kannada-speaking Karnataka, thence to Marathi-speaking Maharashtra and finally finds its way to the Gujarati-Hindi, Punjabi and Bengali regions of the North-West, North Central and North-East regions.  These devotional traditions utilize the local vernacular language rather than Sanskrit, are frequently open to all castes, even low and untouchable groups, avoid excessive ritualism and have for the most part a clear anti-brahmanical bias.  They represent, in other words, many of the characteristics of the old Indo-Shramanical traditions and indeed may be interpreted as the equivalent of those older traditions in the Indo-Islamic period.  Mention should perhaps also be made to the Lingayats ("wearers of the phallic stone," one of the prime symbols of Lord Shiva) or Virashaivas (devotees of "Shiva the virile one"), a Hindu group, founded by a certain Basavanna in the twelfth century in what is now Karnataka in South India, with its exuberant devotional poetry to Lord Shiva in the regional language of Kannada.  Like their Tamil counterparts, Lingayats or Virashaivas also rejected the caste system, eventually coming to be considered in later times a caste-sect.

These older traditions of devotional spirituality became much more intense all across North India, beginning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and reaching a remarkable crescendo in the sixteenth century.  This is unquestionably related in important respects to the growing presence of Islamic traditions, especially Sufi devotional mysticism that was spreading rapidly across North India through the medium of the various regional languages, although it is difficult to determine whether Sufi devotional mysticism influenced Hindu bhakti or vice versa. It could well be the case that both Sufi devotionalism and Hindu bhakti have a natural affinity for one another (possibly traceable ultimately to Indic influences on original Sufi traditions in Central Asia and eastern Iran) and that, therefore, there was simply a broad-based mutual interaction between these traditions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and after.  One might also posit a Weberian elective affinity in the sense that it is hardly an accident that Sufi missionizing was especially effective in areas such as Kashmir, Bengal and those areas of the subcontinent under strong bhakti influence, and among low-caste peasants and artisans, areas and groups, in other words, in which the old Indo-Shramanical traditions had been especially prevalent.

The devotional songs of Kabir, for example, the poet-saint weaver from the Hindu city of Varanasi, who lived in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century and who appears to have had some sort of connection with Islam, either in terms of actually having been Muslim or of having been raised in a Hindu family recently converted to Islam, clearly combine Islamic (and probably Sufi) motifs, Hindu bhakti as well as Nath Yogi motifs together with a strong critique of the rigidities of both Islamic and Hindu traditions. According to Hindu traditions, Kabir's guru on the Hindu bhakti side was the famed Vaishnava, Ramananda, credited with having brought the Rama cult and the Shri Vaishnava tradition of Ramanuja from the South to North India.  Ramananda settled in the city of Varanasi, supposedly turned away from the high caste orientation of the southern Shri Vaishnavas, developed a rich bhakti devotionalism centering on the repetition of the name of Rama, and accepted followers from all walks of life, including low castes, untouchables, women and even Muslims.  He taught in the vernacular language (Hindi) and is the supposed founder of the largest Vaishnava ascetic community in North India, the Ramanandi-s, known as Vairagi-s ("renouncers"), who down to the present day have many monasteries in Varanasi, Ayodhya and elsewhere all across North India.  Whether Kabir was really a Muslim originally or whether Ramananda was his guru who taught him to use the vernacular and a bhakti devotionalism focussing on the repetition of the name, Rama, are historical issues that have not yet been satisfactorily settled, but the interesting combination of Islamic (Sufi) motifs,  Hindu bhakti motifs and Nath Yogi references are clearly in the poetry regardless of how these traditions came together in Kabir's own life and training.

A somewhat comparable conflation of Hindu, Muslim and Nath Yogi motifs may be found in the spirituality of Guru Nanak (l469 - l539), the founder of the Sikh religion.  Clearly the Sikh tradition's focus on one transcendent God and its rejection of the caste system (in theory if not always in practice) owes much to Islamic ideas, while its incorporation of Hindu devotional songs in its sacred scripture (the Adi Granth, the "Primal Book," or the Guru Granth Sahib, the "Book of the Lord," compiled by Guru Arjan in l603-04) shows clear influence from the Hindu side.  In the final analysis, however, the Sikh tradition is itself a distinct religious tradition that differs from both Islamic and Hindu traditions.  Or again, the untouchable shoemaker, Ravidas (ca., sixteenth century), like Kabir from the city of Varanasi, represents a form of devotional theism that does not quite fit either Hindu or Islamic patterns completely, but owes much to both.  Interestingly, all three poet-saints, that is to say, Kabir, Nanak and Ravidas are considered by tradition to be within the same lineage known as the "sant" tradition.  The term sant (a participle from the root as, "to be") comes to mean something like a "truly authentic being," or, in other words, a "good or holy person," and the "sant-s" are said to be proponents of bhakti or "devotion" to the one transcendent God "without attributes" (nirguna).  God, in other words, cannot be adequately represented in any form or by any particular name.

Other forms of emergent bhakti are more identifiably Hindu, although they bear clear family resemblances to the composite Indo-Islamic devotionalism so characteristic of this period.  There are, for example, the Hindu poet-saints of Maharashtra, beginning with Jnanadeva and Namdev (ca., thirteenth century), continuing through the work of Eknath (ca., sixteenth century), reaching a high point in the exuberant devotional poetry of the famous Tukaram (l598 - l649) and coming down to the present, with their intense devotional songs to the various regional forms of Krishna or Vishnu in the regional language of Marathi. In the medium of Hindi in North  India, there is Surdas (l483 -l563) and the woman-saint Mirabai (l498 - l546), both devotees of Krishna.  There is, of course, also in Hindi in North India (in and around the city of Varanasi) the famous devotional poetry of Tulsidas (l532 - l623), author of "The Spiritual Lake of the Acts of Rama," Ramacaritmanas, a Hindi version of the famous old Sanskrit epic, Ramayana.  Most Hindus who are followers of Rama (and hence also Vaishnavas) are much more familiar with Tulsidas's Hindi version of the Ramayana than they are with the older, elitist Sanskrit version.  In the North-East region of Bengal, there is the famous Caitanya (l486 - l533), the great exponent of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition (or simply the Bengal Vaishnava tradition), the emotional and expressive devotionalism in the regional language of Bengali (but also utilizing a good deal of Sanskrit as well), focussing on devotion to Krishna and his consort, Radha.  Those followers of bhakti who believe that God can be named and represented in a specific form, as, for example, Surdas, Mirabai, Tulsidas, et al., are said to belong to the lineage known as "devotion" (bhakti) to the one God "with attributes" (saguna).

CONCLUSION

Regarding the overall assessment of the impact of Islam on Indic culture in this period, there have tended to be two seemingly divergent views.  On the one hand, there are those who point out the huge gap between the learned Islamic and the learned Indic traditions.  On the other hand, there are those who point out the remarkable synthesis that occurs on the practical levels of everyday life.  Undoubtedly, there is more than a little truth in both perspectives.  The encounter of the Old Indic with the coming of the first phase of the New Indic, though exceedingly painful on many levels, also generated one of the great cultural flowerings in the history of civilization.