didn't hindus do this under muslim rule as well? claim to be one of the people of the book? i'm speaking out of my sphincter, idk anything abt india. but i do remember reading abt it /somewhere/... and there's bali for a modern example of this exact sort of thing
This book combines scholarly research into certain aspect of Sufi doctrines and history with a penetrating account of the spiritual and meta
so the thing is, it seems like the mughals were meaningfully *less* dicks about it than the british.
Eventually, the monistic view of the universal brahman turned itself inside out to generate another sort of universalism: it argued not only that all physical and immaterial things were one, but that all religions were essentially the same, or, as it were, oneâ that Muslims and Christians really worshipped the same god that Hindus worshipped, but just called him Allah or Christ. (An early seed of this belief may be seen in Krishnaâs much-quoted line from the Bhagavad Gita [9.13]: âEven those who are devotees of other gods and sacrifice to them with faith, they too worship me,â though those who quote this line often fail to cite the final clause: ââ but in the wrong way.â) This idea took on new meaning and power in twelfth-century India, when Sufism (a mystical form of Islam) proclaimed that Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians (called Parsis in India) and Hindus were all striving towards the same goal and that the outward observances that kept them apart were false. Such a move had obvious political motives, of course, in a country where interreligious tensions were already in evidence, but it also expressed a genuine mystic view of universalism.
The Mughal emperor Akbar (1542-1605) sponsored religious debates between different Muslim groups (Sunni, Shia and Ismaili, as well as Sufis), Parsis, Hindus (devotees of Shiva and of Vishnu), Sikhs, Jains, Jews, Jesuits and Materialists, but he was particularly partial to Sufism. He proclaimed that âthe wisdom of Vedanta is the wisdom of Sufismâ, 8 thus further universalizing the two great universalizing religions by equating (which is to say universalizing) them. The Jesuits misunderstood his pluralism and thought they had converted him; they sent joyous messages back to Rome: the emperor of India has become a Christian! But then, alas, they saw him going into a mosque. Horrified, they asked him, was he not a Christian? Of course, he said; but Iâm also a Muslim. He could encompass them, but they could not encompass him.
but also i think she's mentioned that she doesnt know the mughal period that well, because her knowledge of indian history is like 90% through a philological lens
anyway, i think the presence of the sufis made islam's interaction with hinduism much more chill than the anglicans interaction with hinduism (now if the catholics had conquered india...interesting syncretism could have happened)
