Number of words: 476 At the leading edge of this Islamic reform, was Deoband, founded in 1867 by Ulema imbued with the tradition of Shah Waliullah. They believed that education should no longer be for the purpose of training Muslims for serving the Empire, instead it ought to train them in the art of ‘survival’ … Read more
Number of words: 307 Afghani’s views were astonishingly correct for those times; he advocated nationalism of a linguistic and territorial variety, implying a unity of Hindus and Muslims, with little said about unity amongst Indian Muslims or with Muslims of other lands. He was not a pan-Islamist, at least not then, effectively refuting such notions … Read more
Number of words: 162 An unexpected, perhaps inevitable but nevertheless, sad consequence of the multiple traumas of 1857 was a decline in the status of Persian in India. In consequence the ashraf suffered most, and some of the rational sciences, those distinctive contributions of Iran and Central Asia to Indian Islam, began to lose their … Read more
Number of words: 285 In areas where the Persian Islamic traditions were dominant, that distinctive culture (Perso-Islamic) began to represent the culture of the rulers, these were/are the ashraf, the global people, whose ancestors had come from other cultures, or so they averred, and some certainly had but most only so claimed. The ashraf had … Read more
Number of words: 425 Because most Indo-Persian chroniclers of medieval India identified Islam with the fortunes of their royal patrons, therefore, with sycophantic inaccuracy they reduced accounts of those reigns into such hagiographical nonsense as ‘India’s history’ begins only from when Muslims began to rule areas around Delhi/Agra/Malwa. This attitude can be traced to the … Read more
Number of words: 222 It is, of course self-evident that Islam is not, just as Christianity or Zoroastrianism are not, indigenous to India, for born elsewhere Islam came to India wielding the evangelising sword of the invader; in consequence it arrived as an outsider and, at least initially, remained just that (an alien faith). But … Read more
Number of words: 864 Bhakti is divided into two portions. One is called Vaidhi, formal or ceremonial; the other portion is called Mukhyâ, supreme. The word Bhakti covers all the ground between the lowest form of worship and the highest form of life. All the worship that you have seen in any country in the … Read more
Number of words: 144 As the tortoise tucks its feet and head inside the shell, and you may kill it and break it in pieces, and yet it will not come out, even so the character of that man, who has control over his motives and organs is unchangeably established. He controls his own inner … Read more
Number of words: 320 It is easy to concentrate the mind on external things, the mind naturally goes outwards; but not so in the case of religion, or psychology, or metaphysics, where the subject and the object, are one. The object is internal, the mind itself is the object, and it is necessary to study … Read more
Number of words: 278 When the entire army of monkeys was busy making the bridge on the sea to reach Lanka to take Sita, a small squirrel living in the area watched the entire scene. Seeing them, the squirrel also wanted to contribute to building the bridge. But the squirrel was too small to even … Read more
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