HYDERABAD: A leader visits a Dargah and helps in construction of a road for the convenience of devotees. Doesn’t it sound surprising? Actually not. One can come across such stories of communities, cutting across their faiths, taking part in the development of Dargahs and Pir Houses in most parts of the South India. People from all faiths visit these Dargahs and even contribute to their construction and maintenance.
This has been part of the Indian culture for centuries. Not many people are aware that senior Congress leader from Telangana K Jana Reddy got his name from Jana Pahad Dargah located in Nalgonda, since he was born after his parents paid a visit to this dargah. Likewise, we can see several Hindus with Muslim names like Mastanaiah, Husenappa, Zakaraiah, etc. It is a common practice to see people from different religious faiths visiting the holy shrines of Muslims. There is no clash of faiths, as the devotees, whether they are Hindus or Muslims, who visit a Pir House first recite the first verse of Quran before breaking a dry coconut in nearby temple.
Muharram, observed by the Pirs in South India reflects a harmony between Hindus and Muslims as they practice a shared set of rituals and other modes of devotion in memory of the martyrs of Karbala. Professor Afsar Mohammad, a poet and Telugu writer, who is now settled in the United States, brilliantly recorded this cultural unity in diversity in India in his book ‘The Festival of Pirs’ published by Oxford University Press.
Afsar, who visited a famous village Gugudu in Anantapur Town, a unique place where Hindus and Muslims offer the prayers to Kullaya Swamy and Lord Hanuman. Why is a Hanuman Temple located near a Pir house? Because locals see Kullayappa is an incarnation of Lord Rama. According to locals, Rama visited the village after several centuries as a Muslim pir who was given the Persian name Kullayappa, literally meaning ‘a god with a cap. (Kulla is Persian for cap, and appa is the local Telugu word for God). In fact, the village name Gugudu came from the name of Guhudu who was a staunch devotee of Rama in Ramayana.
Muharram is observed with a lot of piety at Gugudu. The writer stayed in the village for nine months and studied the aspects of devotion that contribute to the local Islamic practices. He sought to address the questions through an examination of Gugudu’s local and popular transformation of normative Islam, giving particular focus to the various devotional rituals that blend Muslim Hindu practices during the rituals practiced during Muharram.
Afsar rightly argues that our understanding of living Islam remains incomplete, if we do not consider the local, pluralistic devotional settings. Besides, the fact that thousands of pilgrims visit local Pir Houses and “Karbala” not only during the month of Muharram but throughout the year indicates that the village of Gugudu extends beyond the contours of a sacred site.
Afsar feels that in the wake of recent political, social, and religious developments in South Asia and elsewhere in the Islamic world, new understandings of public devotional spaces among Muslims are crucial to the study of Islam. He says most Muslims in Gugudu now claim that their specific practices of Islam are true and proper, in a seemingly direct challenge to the growing notion of “true Islam” as preached by reformist Muslim groups. Local devotees in villages such as Gugudu are extremely self-conscious about possessing distinctive local practices and a unique devotional path. A local Muslim devotee told Afsar, “There is no Hindu or Muslim. All have one religion, which is called ‘Kullayappa’ devotion (bhakti).”
The ‘Festival of Pirs’ opens the eyes of those who refuse to see the truth which transcends the barriers of religion, caste and creed. After all, the essence of Sufism and Hinduism are reaching out to the God with ‘purity of heart’.