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Rizwi S. Faizer Ph.D. McGill
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© 1998 Rizwi Faizer.
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Eternal Garden:
Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center
Carl Ernst
Albany: SUNY Press, 1991.
ISBN: 0-7914-3150-9
"Eternal Garden," the title used by Carl Ernst to refer to Khuldabad,
a prominent Sufi center of the Chishti order in the Deccan
region of India, is a phrase borrowed from the first line of a poem by
the Persian poet Hâfiz (d.1332) which declares: "The
cloister of the Dervishes is an eternal garden." The subject of this
book is thus Khuldabad and particularly the Chishti school of Sufis led by
the dervish to whom its origin is ascribed, namely Burhan al-Din Gharib
(d.738/1337). Significantly, the Chishti order which in Delhi had earned a reputation for
being independent of the state, was not so clearly defined in Khuldabad,
where one also finds the tombs of sultans such as Aurungzeb, the notoriously dogmatic Mughal ruler.
Essentially Eternal Garden is a case study of the interaction of mysticism,
politics and history in this particular location.
Carl Ernst's thesis is that the notion that sufi saints
were responsible for the conversion of a large number of Indians to
Islam is untenable. According to Ernst, the Chishtis of Khuldabad, for instance, were
NOT involved in any conscious missionary activity designed to convert
non-Muslims to Islam. Rather their's was a teaching of interiorization
oriented not even to the ordinary Muslim, and meaningful only to a
spiritual elite who knew and practised the basic tenets of Islam.
Whether on agrees with Ernst's thesis or not, the methodology used by
Ernst is new and certainly worth considering:
It speaks of an empathetic scholar who is only too familiar
with the complexities of India, and wants to recreate the milieu of
the early sources--be they the authentic malfuzât texts
of disciples, or the hagiographic responses of later devotees-- which
inform him of the significance of Khuldabad. Realizing the inadequacy of
the latter as historical documents, Ernst suggests that one
should read the sufi texts historiographically, so as to restore the
original political context of each document.
The fact is that Ernst recognizes, as well, the
prejudicial values ingrained in the court chronicles of the Tughluq era.
It is from these that we learn of the compulsory and unhappy events
which saw the transfer of the sultan's capital from Delhi to Daulatabad
in the Deccan, which in turn led to the significance of Khuldabad if not its very
creation. But Ernst contests the picture of the aggressive Islamic state painted
by these chroniclers. Indeed he disagrees with the notion that
Islam was the religion of the state, and asserts that the state in fact
contributed to the maintenance of numerous Hindu and Jain temples as well.
To appreciate the exact nature of religion in India, he suggests that the documents of Khuldabad
be used to modify the information communicatd by the chronicles.
Thus by closely examining the perspectives of all the available textual
materials on Khuldabad, and then plotting their trajectories through
history, he tries to come to an understanding of how Islam was actually
practised in Khuldabad, and hence in so called "Muslim India."
Eternal Garden is an important text because of the vision it offers
regarding the interpretation of sufi literature which is undoubtedly
heavy with symbolic meaning.
The book is difficult, however, not only because of the ambitious nature of
Ernst's methodology, but also because of the very complex civilization
of the Indian subcontinent. To me it signifies a more realistic
approach to what Islam in India was probably about.
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