In last few weeks i finished yet another book by William Dalrymple. Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in modern India is the latest work by him.
He writes very emotively about various faiths and faithful spread across the breadth of India. I found this book a product of a confused mind. Its hard to believe that the author of From the Holy Mountain and The Last Mughal can write such a book. He started well with the story of Jain faithful who is going to have her last rites (known as Santhara, a slow peaceful death) , then he wrote about the Theyyam (religious rite of Kerala accompanied with vigorous dance and music). After that he lost his way and started to write the story and behavior of various faiths and cults. I don't know why he has missed Islam and Christianity in his book. I have no idea why he has included the story of Lal ShahBaz Qalandar in this book. That site is in Sind, Pakistan and its not even part of the disputed territory of India. May be William Dalrymple is still living in the fantasy of British India.
Time Pass (5/10)
5 comments:
I think most of the authors, when writing about Indian faiths leave out Islam and Christianity as they are after all,not Indian faiths but alien. Still, I feel that they should be included in such "studies" as despite their being alien, they have been around in this country for a very long time now and have adherents amounting to nearly 20% of the population (or maybe more). Agree with you though, book was kind of confused.
He should have mentioned atleast the Sufi Islam. Sufi Islam had a very close relationship with the Bhakti movement of medieval India. Christianity in India is older than in Europe and America.
Islam in India is older than Islam in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria, Egypt etc.
Persian Muslims have names close to Persian while India Muslim names are very close to Arabic and Persians.
Sometimes i ponder why Indian Muslims can not have Hindi or even Sanskrit names, like Dileep Kumar.
Its basically a language thing that creates "aliens".
Well, most Indian Muslim names are in Urdu (which developed in India, am sure you're aware) while a few are have Persian influence and very few are Arabic (like mine). The usual effort is to name the children in conjunction with Arabic names (as they appear in the Qur'an) or their Urdu equivalent.
Well Urdu is very new language about 400-500 years old. As far as my Muslim friends are concerned all have Persian-Arabic names.
May be i am wrong but general impression is that names are inspired from Persian-Arabic vocabulary.
Urdu is a mix of Persian/Arabic and the local Indian languages and that's why they all seem the way they seem.
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