the time of “Garib Navaz,” the famous Chishti Sufi saint of Ajmer who lived during Akbar’s reign.25 This conversion likely took place during that same era in which the name change, Yagyapur to Jahazpur, was inscribed.
In summer 2007 we interviewed a distinguished Muslim citizen of Jahazpur, who was then seventy-two years old. Bhoju asked him, “How many generations have you resided in Jahazpur?” He replied that his community had been there for six hundred years. He said that Muslims had not been in Jahazpur when it was first settled but came during the Mughal period, under the emperor Jahangir in 1602 CE. He estimated that eighteen or twenty generations of his family’s forefathers had lived in the town.
Both Hindus and Deshvali Muslims tended in interviews for the most part to downplay the differences between their respective communities’ practices and character. Both stressed shared roots, shared lineage names, shared cultural traditions, and a long-standing mutual regard.26 Middle-class Hindus often said of Deshvali Muslims: they are “like us.”27 If asked to elaborate, they pointed to two factors: landownership and parallel customs.28 (For example, before a wedding among Hindus the first invitation goes to Ganesh; among Muslims it goes to the saint, Garib Navaz. Thus, in both cases, the invitation initiating an auspicious event goes to an enshrined and revered persona—as both Hindu and Muslim interviewees explicitly noted.) Of course Hindu and Muslim interviewees did emphasize evident noncontentious distinctions such as festivals celebrated or the ramifications of internal divisions (or lack thereof).
A class factor entailed by “sameness” discourse is evident.29 When middle-class Hindus say that Deshvali Muslims are “like us,” they mean they are solid, propertied citizens, businessmen, and people with an obvious stake in the peaceful and prosperous life of qasba trade. The category Pardeshi Muslims is often contrasted to Deshvali in essentializing discourse: they are viewed as rootless potential troublemakers lacking stable sources of livelihood. The propertied versus indigent divide does not in reality align with the Deshvali/Pardeshi distinction, however. Among the Pardeshi Muslims are families possessing considerable land both inside and outside the walls. Some Pathan families were historically a kind of nobility whose ancestors probably played roles under Muslim rule similar in function to Rajput hakim under Hindu kings. Other Pardeshis are of a lower economic status. An example often given to me in this regard was that Pardeshi women roll bidis (locally made cigarettes) for a living; there were always a few such women sitting on the street visibly engaged in exactly that work. But certainly not all of Pardeshi Muslims are poor. Neighborhood is another factor used to classify Muslims prone to disruptive behavior. I heard it said again and again that the Muslims who live around the crossroads known as Char Hathari (“four markets”) are unruly and quicktempered, spoiling for a fight, so to speak. Yet both Hindus and Muslims often testified—Hindus ruefully and Muslims proudly—that all Muslims have a special unity within religious contexts: they eat and pray and vote together, although the different Muslim communities do not intermarry.
One Hindu man, Bhairu Lal Lakhara, explained to us why Hindus are disadvantaged by the unity of Muslims. Although the similes he employed (“Hindus are like dogs but Muslims are like pigeons”) were unique within my interviews, the ideas expressed—that Hindu unity suffers from multiple fissures because of caste divides, but Muslims are all for one and one for all—were extremely common and often expressed by Hindus and Muslims alike. Bhairu Lal had a way with words and spared no one in his social commentary; he is the same person who defined the middle class to me as a “camel’s fart” hanging between the sky of wealth and the earth of poverty. Here is how he characterized the difference in unity between Hindus and Muslims:
Muslims just say Bishmillah [“in the name of God”], and then eat together. And if you fight with one Muslim, then ten more will come to support him. But among us [Hindus], people will say: “That’s a Mali, that’s a Brahmin, that’s a Gujar, that’s a Kir, that’s a Carpenter,” so no one will come to your aid. The Butchers are separate; the Sweepers are separate. But they [Muslims] have unity. Hindus are like a pack of dogs; if you throw them one piece of bread, they will fight each other over it, and even kill each other. Muslims are like pigeons: if you throw a handful of grain, they all will peck it together.
[Bhoju Ram for my benefit, spelled it out even more clearly: “The dogs would rather lose the bread and kill each other; but the pigeons happily share.”]
Muslims, in spite of belonging to named groups that operate very much like Hindu jatis in terms of marriage, replicated this discourse of their superior unity and egalitarianism in the context of religion.
For example, Sariph Mohammad Deshvali—a dignified, successful businessman in his prime—discussed internal differences among Muslims with Bhoju Ram and me. Bhoju put to him a question about Pardeshi Muslims, asking Sariph if the Deshvalis transacted “daughters and feasts” with them: that is: did they intermarry and did they co-dine?30 Sariph answered without hesitation: “Not daughters, but we do share food.” He spent a fair amount of time telling us about the different Pardeshi communities, all of whom, like the Deshvali, are endogamous.
Then, spontaneously (that is, without any prodding from either me or Bhoju), Sariph went on at length to emphasize lack of discrimination among Muslims at religious events.
When people are praying, there is no difference, all the Muslims are together. At Id [for example] the time for prayer is fixed for 1:30 and everyone will be standing; suppose the maulvi [esteemed scholar or teacher] comes a minute late, he can’t go in front he has to stay behind, but if a poor person comes early he will stay in front; there is no special respect.
Once we were reading namaz, and a minister of the Rajasthan state government, a Muslim, came to join us, and he stood in the back. No one said “here is a minister.” Even though he was standing in the sun, no one took care to give him room. And he didn’t say anything either, he did not ask for room, for a place in shade. He stood there in the back, in the sun. There is no discrimination among persons.
What may divide Jahazpur Muslims (although this was in my presence rarely discussed) is religious orthodoxy, rigidity, or strictness—attributes wrapped up together in the Hindi word kattar. A number of persons from both communities used this word to describe certain Hindus as well as certain Muslims, but it was more often used for Muslims. The term kattar seems to hold implications of embracing global, acultural Islam, and stricter application of many rules. For example, I heard Deshvali Muslim women use it, disapprovingly, to refer to those Muslims who promoted stricter veiling practices.
Here is one usage supplied by a highly educated (Hindu) Mina man, who lived in a nice house outside one of the twelve hamlets but commuted quite some distance to teach college; he succinctly unites the two main elements of class and strict religion that people say make some Pardeshi Muslims prone to troublemaking: “The Deshvalis get along [with us] because their culture is like that of the Hindus and they have land and business (kheti dhandha), so they think about that. But the Pardeshi—they have neither land nor business, and they follow Islam very strictly [literally: “they are kattar”].”
Not long after the November festival (urs) of Jahazpur’s main Muslim saint, Gaji Pir, my husband and I went shopping for shoes. A bearded young shopkeeper we encountered on this excursion told me he had heard that I had attended the urs (word gets around, Jahazpur is village-like in that way). To my discomfiture, he lectured me (partially in Hindi and partially in passable English) on his views that such events were the culture (sanskriti, using not the English, but the Hindi term) of India and not “true Islam.” He told me he had personally stayed away from the urs, and that he preferred always to pray in the mosque. His views were not at all the norm in Jahazpur, I should emphasize. I bought the shoes but brooded over encountering such views unabashedly articulated in the heart of Jahazpur market.
Elsewhere in South Asia, some Islamic leaders have critiqued visits to saints.31 Yet all
