Guest post by NANDAGOPAL R MENON
Some recent posts on Kafila have identified a “movement of sorts” in South Asian Islam – A Short Memoir On the Arabisation of Islam in India and The Sheepification of Bakistan
Named ‘Arabisation’, this is a “remarkably dispersed” and “subtle” movement most readily evident in certain changes in quotidian linguistic choices, for example, Khuda Hafiz and Ramazan has or is being replaced by Allah Hafiz and Ramadan. This linguistic shift from Farsi/Urdu to Arabic is taken to index a “great cultural battle” under way in South Asian Islam – one that attempts “to ‘correct’ Islam as Muslims in the subcontinent have understood, practiced and lived it, and instead replace it with an Islam which is uniform, seemingly universal and which need not have any affiliation with our cultural and local identities and beliefs”. That ‘Arabisation’ is not something innocuous or laudable is clear, for it “conveniently ignores” – or undermines? – Islam’s “age-old assimilation in the Indian sub-continent”. The following are some thoughts provoked on reading these posts. This is not meant as a coherent response to any of the posts, but just an unsystematic attempt to think through some of the assumptions that condition the creation of concepts like ‘Arabisation’ in public discourse.
First, what does ‘Arabisation’ mean in Islamic contexts where the exposure to Arabic language and culture is not a recent phenomenon? Islam in Kerala and certain parts of coastal Tamil Nadu is immersed in Arabic since the spread of the religion in these areas at least since the ninth century. Arab merchants and scholars brought Islam to these regions and people who proudly publicise their Arab lineage occupy revered leadership positions in the Muslim community. Mughal rule and Farsi language and culture have had little or no impact in the expansion of Islam in Kerala and some areas of Tamil Nadu. Except for people who have studied Urdu or those exposed to north Indian Islamic culture, hardly any Malayalee Muslim is likely to have ever heard of or used Khuda Hafiz in daily conversation. Arabic is pervasive in the everyday lives of Muslims in Kerala through things as mundane as the name of shops, loan words in Malayalam, the numerous Arabs who are frequent visitors to Kerala, and school and university curricula that include Arabic language and literature. And since the burgeoning migration of Malayalee Muslims to Persian Gulf countries, which began in the early 1970s, the prominence of Arabic in Malayalee Muslim life has only deepened. In fact, one could say that the Persian Gulf and north Kerala towns such as Kozhikode are two points in the same continuum. So much is the pervasive presence of Arabic and Arabs. In such a context, it is not exactly clear what ‘Arabisation’ would signify, especially if it is defined as somehow contrary to “Muslims’ age-old assimilation in the Indian sub-continent”. Islam in Kerala cannot be comprehended divorced from these strong links to Arabic and Arabic-speaking parts of the world. Or should one think that Islam in Kerala and Tamil Nadu is less “assimilated” to sub-continental life?
Further, the term “Arabisation” implies that something from without has been imposed on south Asian Islam. A culture and language that somehow do not belong to this region have been exported and has succeeded in destroying what is really indigenous. For one this argument assumes that the nation-state is the natural unit of socio-political life and considers everything that comes from beyond it as somehow alien to it. Such methodological nationalism cannot do justice to or account for what is going on when Khuda is dropped in favour of Allah. This wariness of the external plays out in another ironic way. “Arabisation” conveniently ignores the significance of Arabic to Islam. Arabic is not something external or merely incidental to Islamic practices, which can be replaced without loss. According to Islamic doctrine, it was the language in which the Qur’an was revealed, the literal word of Allah. And this is why many Muslims believe that the Qur’an can be interpreted but not translated. The same logic applies to a crucial word like Allah – its usage is not simply about conveying some meaning that can be done by other means too. Semantics is not the main point here, but that the language (or media, in general) used matters to what is communicated. Some pious Muslims can claim that Allah is indispensible to convey a sense of the divine in Islamic traditions, which God or Khuda cannot. Perceiving this choice as detrimental to Urdu or Farsi misses the reality that even Muslims who use Allah do not switch wholesale to Arabic in daily life. Their medium of interaction remains Urdu, or Malayalam or Tamil. It is in contexts that are religiously significant that one encounters the tendency to “Arabise”. And that is an important point not worth missing.
So what exactly does the term “Arabisation” do? What does it seek to describe? Consider how Khuda Hafiz is “corrected” as Allah Hafiz – explaining why the choice of the word Allah is crucial to being a Muslim, something that the usage of Khuda or Bhagwan do not do. Instead of seeing this as an attempt to impose a “uniform” Islam or a platform of identity politics, would it not be better to see it as a religious practice of encouraging piety? Correcting the usage is part of an ethical comportment of being a pious Muslim. And inviting other Muslims to do so is seen as a religious obligation. Understood thus, the novelty of the so-called “Arabisation” is lost, not to speak of the apprehensions that it seemingly creates. This project of consciously promoting piety and fashioning oneself to conform to what the Islamic traditions demand is an attempt at religious reform that is as old as Islam itself. In the sub-continent, history attests, several Islamic reformist tendencies and individual scholars have taken up this agenda of reform and renewal at least since the Mughal period. Unsurprisingly, there are important differences in interpretations of the tradition (which explains the diversity in the reformist movements) and organised reform movements emerged only in the 19th century, but a wish to live a more pious life abiding by the traditions is a common thread in all of them.
Significantly, none of these movements have used ‘Arabisation’ to describe their work. And individuals like Rizwaan Nana too may not. Instead they are more likely to use islah and tajdid, Arabic words that signify the religious nature of the task undertaken and the necessity to live according to the tradition. So what remains of ‘Arabisation’? I think it is best understood as a rhetorical label used to designate tendencies that one does not approve of for various religious, political and/or cultural reasons. ‘Arabisation’ identifies, categorises and brings into existence a “movement of sorts”. It becomes an object of knowledge that needs to be studied, commented upon and, possibly, a project that needs to be rolled back. It is not so much that what is described – the shift in linguistic choice from Farsi/Urdu to Arabic, for example – is unreal, but it is made into a kind that simultaneously marks it as problematic. ‘Arabisation’ is problematic because it diverges from an imagined Islam that fits into the frame of the nation-state and agrees with sensibilities and practices that are supposedly quintessentially Indian. That is, ‘Arabisation’ denotes the opposite of an Islam that is affiliated “with our cultural and local identities and beliefs”. And it is cognate to other terms used to designate a problematic other in Islam – fundamentalist, Wahhabi, Salafi. Put very crudely, an “Arabised” Islam is an Islam we do not like.
Nandagopal R. Menon is a research fellow at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen, Germany.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
The point about ‘Khuda’ is well taken. But ‘Bakistan’ ? How does that work ?
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I still use Khuda Hafiz and have never felt the need for switching to “Allah Hafiz”. Still I think this post is a lot better than the previous two in terms of exploring causes behind the current “wave of orthodoxy” in India.
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Maybe we should read the Quran, and understand what it teaches. Quran is here http://www.clearquran.com
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It is not “Arabization” but takfiri Saudification, which is happening. And 6 or more decades of Saudi money and missionary activity has brought this about.
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@Shama
You are clearly painting a very simplistic picture of a much complex thing. Perhaps you originally come from the North? Western UP/Delhi perhaps.
if you cared to read what was written, Islam in coastal India, from the konkan coast of Maharashtra through through coastal karnataka, Kerala upto Tamil nadu came via Arab traders and merchants while in the rest of the country it came via Mughal (not arab) peoples (rulers and nobility).
This is why most Muslims in the coastal regions normally speak the native language (be it konkani or Tulu or Malayalee or tamil etc) whereas in the north, most muslims (at least in public) resort to Urdu rather than bhojpuri or Maithelee etc). So the muslims in the south has always had a link to the arabs way before any Mughal set foot in Delhi.
So this is a subject with many shades of Gray than is pointed out to be
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My bone of contention with this article is that Mr. Menon has created a straw-man argument using the Keralite experience with Islam by juxtaposing it with Islam in other parts of the subcontinent where it has had a different history.
There are three contentions that Mr. Menon lays out which are inadequate in scope and take a parochial view on the broader discourse on ‘Arabisation’. I would be glad if he were to refine these ideas further.
• ‘Or should one think that Islam in Kerala and Tamil Nadu is less “assimilated” to sub-continental life?’
Islam in Kerala/Tamil Nadu is indeed ‘differentially’ assimilated to subcontinental life. The experience with Islam and the language of Islam has been much varied in northern India, Pakistan, Bengal and other regions. The spread of Islam by Arabic traders in Kerala was markedly different than the spread of the religion in Bengal where translation of the Quran into Bengali (more so verbally as the religion spread, and the acceptance of interchangeability of language makes it entirely a question of language, not nation-state. This spread of the Quran in various languages did not take place within the construct of a nation state (or even linguistic identity consciousness).
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• ‘Instead of seeing this as an attempt to impose a “uniform” Islam or a platform of identity politics, would it not be better to see it as a religious practice of encouraging piety?’
This statement does not appreciate the nuance of the argument that it is the very definition of ‘piety’, which Mr. Menon assumes, is in-fact the bone of contention. The current Arabisation of Islam hopes to define ‘piety’ as an extended form of identity politics does not recognize vernacular usages of ‘Allah’. This goes much beyond ‘Allah’ and ‘Khuda’. Looming in the background of this debate is the question whether piety in Islam really requires a word-to-word transliteration of the text to daily life, or is there scope for a broader interpretation. If the former, then the switch from ‘Khuda’ to ‘Allah’ is a slippery slope that should logically end with the individual being fine with decapitation of apostates. It is an imposition of identity politics that seeks to reverse a broader understanding of the Quran developed over time in which Khuda can be a viable alternative to Allah.
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• “Arabisation’ is problematic because it diverges from an imagined Islam that fits into the frame of the nation-state and agrees with sensibilities and practices that are supposedly quintessentially Indian.”
I think Mr. Menon is being disingenuous here by claiming that the ‘quintessentially Indian’ Islam is supposed and imagined. He seems to have confused the problems of defining India as a ‘nation-state’ with associating Islam with a more easily understandable ‘nation-state’ in the conventional sense. Even so, if one were to assume a quintessentially Indian Islam, there are indeed several important differences in the interpretation of Islam in various parts of the subcontinent that are quite different from the “Arabic” lands. For example, the abhorrence of death by stoning for adultery and decapitation of apostates are indeed a part of quintessentially Indian Islam and diverges from ‘Arabised’ Islam as both of them currently exist. It is for this very reason that the last line of the article is true, ‘an “Arabised” Islam is an Islam we do not like’, from the perspective of Indian Muslims and those of us who share the latter’s acceptance of that version Islam.
Thus, while Mr. Menon has come to the right conclusion, I hope that he uses a refreshed line of thought to arrive at it.
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Saudi agency is perhaps less the direct ’cause’; at best, Saudi could take sides with potential debates in the subcontinent, seeking to resist religious-ideological homogenization toward Barelvi-te Islam. In this, it could be aided by financial control and resources in the service of preferred cul. ideology/practice (IDB etc). (Some of these W.Asian states are ‘ascendant’ states of preeminent world rank!) Economic autonomy and ‘adequacy’ (for S.Asian muslims) assumes importance, but is hardly visible/forthcoming for this group (but who are regularly granted sops for haj, mass marriages etc)
Homogenization is a response to real/perceived ‘manipulation’ of the culture/community, whether from intra-state politics, or international affairs. Such homogenization (of religious ideology and practice) can be seen as a ‘team response’ to manipulation. Well meaning stipulation of ‘good/undesirable’ cultural practice/modernization (of religious curricula) could also assume the form of manipulation and interpreted as such (esp. after a recent history of colonialism, partition, communalism, nationalist voluntarism and recent state action)
Continued engagement with these debates and related semiotics, from scholars in the field, might be a good idea. After all, the only analyses one might come across in English about S.Asian Islam or muslims (or their literary production), is mostly restricted to popular magazines and websites (less to scholarly/soc sci analyses). Those with claim to such (idiographic) expertise, sadly, happen to be the state and its journos, both with a (convenient) economy of words and funds (…not listing present author)
‘when universalisms oppress, people [tend to] take refuge in particularisms’
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I don’t think the influence of Arabic is the actual problem but rather the Salfi, Wahabi influence which is generally accompanied by the tendency to ‘arabise’ (whatever that may mean). And of course it would be ridiculous play down the impact of the Arabic language or culture on Muslims worldwide. What I want to say is that it’s not all a deliberate attempt by the orthodox elements to kill diversity. Muslims can be heavily influenced by the the Arabs without joining the Wahabis.
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The issue according to me is that by giving in to such extraneous pressures we are conceding that the religious authority of Indian Islam resides in Arab lands and the wisdom accumulated by Islam over the hundreds of years of interaction in India is of no value. This is a dangerous can of worms to open as it opens Indian Islam to be manipulated from outside India.
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