Islamic Multiplicities in Kashmir: Debates about the Food Practices of a XVIth-Century Sufi Saint and the Modern Cult

Abstract

Abstract The spread of Islam to the South Asian region of Kashmir and its role in shaping the socio-religious and political contours in the region is a highly charged debate in academic as well as popular circles. This article examines the early modern debates about the vegetarian food practices of a sixteenth-century Sufi saint of Kashmir, Baba Hyder Rishi (b. 1504) and contemporary debates around the modern cult mainly centered around his shrine in the Anantnag (locally known as Islamabad) town of south Kashmir. It is divided into two parts; the first focuses on debates during the saint’s own lifetime and the second analyses modern debates about what has by now emerged as a cult around the saint’s shrine. We begin with a critical re-evaluation of the wide-spread notion that the saint’s practice of vegetarianism was, much like his predecessors in the local Rīshī Sufi order, grounded in local Buddhist-Hindu customs and thus exemplifies the syncretic nature of Islam in Kashmir. Instead, we argue that both the defence and contestation of the saint’s practice as well its modern cult was and continues to be located within the Islamic tradition itself. We use this discussion for a critical reflection on the widely prevalent idea of religious syncretism in Kashmir and the over-simplified and ahistorical view of Islam as a monolith, and then explore the possibility of using Islamic ‘multiplicity’ as an alternate analytical category.