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Naqshbandi Silsilah in Mughal India
BA (Hons.) History
University of Delhi
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NAQSHBANDI
SILSILAH IN
MUGHAL INDIA
Analyse the establishment of
Naqshbandi Silsilah in Mughal
India. Explain the role of Shaikh
Ahmad Sirhindi under the
Naqshbandi Order in India. Examine
the conflicting trends of ‘orthodoxy’
and ‘syncretism’ in the 17th century.
The term ‘Naqshbandi’ incorporates two basic ideas: the naqsh or ‘engraving the name of Allah in the heart’ and the band or ‘bond’ ‘describing the link between the individual and the creator’. The Naqshbandis were also known as the ‘silent Sufis’ due to their practice of silent meditation of the heart. There is no consensus among the various historians regarding the nature of the Naqshbandi movement.
The Naqshbandi Silsilah was introduced in India by Khawaja Baqi Billah during the late years of Akbar’s reign who came from Kabul and settled at Delhi. He was seventh in the line of succession from Khawaja Bahauddin Naqshband, its founder. He had received full training in the principles of the order under different Shaikhs and proved himself to be a great organiser. Within a short span of four to five years, he managed to establish the Naqshbandi order on so firm a footing that since then it has gone on spreading without any break.
enthusiastically for the progress of the Naqshbandi order and attracted people in large number to their master’s fold.
Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (1563 – 1624) emerged as the most important mystic of the Indian subcontinent during the Mughal period. He played a multifarious role in the religious, social and political domains. It was owing to his strenuous efforts that the Naqshbandi order became the principal mystic discipline for nearly two hundred years and exercised a deep influence on the religious life of the Muslims. He developed the concept of unity of appearance to counter the principal of unity of existence, which had gained strong currency among the people inclined towards mysticism.
Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi was a very powerful orator and a great administrator of religious affairs and therefore using his abilities of influencing people he gave Naqshbandi order a distinct ideology,
motive power and effective organisation that assisted in the spread of the order throughout Mughal Empire. He formulated his own theory of Sufism. According to him, all the Mughal rulers should devote their energies to revive the Muslim Law in its purest form and in the process, they should remove all the impurities and innovations incorporated by the Ulema, other Sufi Shaikhs and even other Muslim leaders. He was openly against non-Muslims and wanted Mughal emperor to persecute all the Shias. He believed that the Mughal state should change its policies in accordance with Sunni faith. He openly criticized various other Sufis, the Ulema and the policies of Emperor Akbar for being un-Islamic in nature.
When the Naqshbandi order was under the control of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, it was brought under systematic administration system which assisted in the spread of this order to Jaunpur (Shaikh Tahir Badakhshi), Allahabad (Saiyid Mohibullah), Burhanpur (Mir Muhammad Nu’man), Deoband (Shaikh Ahmad Deobani), Bengal (Shaikh Hamid
mukuwwat. He used the medium of makhtubat (letters written to the individuals for propaganda) to make his religious, mystical and political views known to the people. It was mainly directed towards the rehabilitation of Islam in India.
Sirhindi was a mystic. There was an element of mystical egoism in his own utterances which disturbed the spiritual elites of Muslim India. He claimed to have reached the spiritual stage of Abu Bakr who was the first caliph of Islam and the fountainhead according to the Naqshbandi order. He also claimed to have elevated the mystical ‘reality of Muhammad.’
He was successful in asserting his position as the renovator of Islam. He transformed the concept of a qutb to that of ‘qayyum.’ He assumed the title of tajdid, jadid, mujaddid. He believed that Akbar had corrupted the
religion and regarded himself as the one who was renewing it.
- He regarded Islam and Kufr as adverse and mutually exclusive. One could flourish only at the expense of other. The honour and the security of Islam were dependent on the humiliation of the unbelievers and their faith. He encouraged the Muslims to regard the infidels and their idols in a contemptuous manner. Innovation could be tolerated only in the days of the glory of Islam but not in the age of its political decline. According to Muzaffar Alam, some of Sirhindi’s letters stressed on the differences between the Hindus and the Muslims and expressed outright hostility towards the Hindus. He emphasised on the Hindu concept of ‘hulul’ or ‘incarnation’ to dispel illusions of similarity between Islamic and Hindu beliefs in the ultimate reality. He asserted that no Sufi order should ever be prepared to accept the
propagator of this new philosophy known as wahdat al-shuhud as it opposed Arabi.
Orthodoxy & Syncretism
According to Aziz Ahmad, the Naqshbandi Sufi order which played a leading role in encouraging an Islamic reaction against Akbar’s heresy was somewhat new to India. It was closer to orthodoxy and it initiated a policy of close association with the orthodox nobles of the court to neutralise the effects of imperial heresy. It was mainly Akbar’s neglect of Islam and his experiments with ‘imperial heresy’, which prompted the Naqshbandis to answer with an orthodox reformation of Sufism. This was intended to uphold the general rehabilitation of Islam in India.
In seeking the spiritual and intellectual roots of the movement, many scholars have argued that the emergence of the Naqshbandi line at the start of the 17th century was a critical moment in the encounter between the two contending forms of the Islamic mystical tradition. While one was ‘wahdat al-wujud’ or the ‘unity of being’, the other
- Conservative aspect under the leadership of Shah Waliullah
- Liberal aspect was represented by Mirza Mazhar Jan-i Janan
Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, the leading figure of the Naqshbandi reaction to the syncretism of 16th century India, while known as Sufi to some, has in later history emerged primarily as an orthodox scholar who purified Islam. This image is a strange historical development given that he was essentially known as a Sufi for whom mysticism is normative within orthodoxy.
Shah Waliullah (1702-1762) was a noted scholar and a saint of the Naqshbandi order. His contempt against the Hindus was identical to Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi. The rise of two Hindu rebellious groups namely Marathas and Jats against the Muslim rulers in 1750s stirred the mystic spirit of Waliullah and he invited Ahmad Shah Abdali, the Afghan ruler to invade India to save the Muslims
from the subjugation of Hindus. While formulating the contours of his mystical ideology, he transformed the Islamic mysticism to a theo- political concept for supremacy of Islam and for political power to the Sunnis.
He tried to reconcile the two doctrines of Wahdat- ul Wujud and Wahdat-ul Shuhud, his contention being that there is no fundamental difference between the two theories. He pointed out that in both these views the real existence belongs to God and that he alone has actual independent existence. The existence of the world is not real, and yet it can not be called imaginary either. To maintain that there is one reality which manifests itself in infinity of forms and pluralities is the same as to hold that contingent beings are the reflection of the names and attributes of the necessary being. If at all there is any difference between the two positions, it is insignificant.
Sirhindi’s writings and influence checked the process of Indian Islam’s disintegration into syncretic heresies. He re-integrated the formalistic dynamics of religion and inner vitality of deep mysticism. By the end of 18th century, the Naqshbandi Order which began as a Conservative movement and by the end of the period it became syncretic in nature.
Naqshbandi Silsilah in Mughal India
Course: BA (Hons.) History
University: University of Delhi
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