Wandering Dervish of Laila Majnu: Sufism and Socio-Political Mobilization in Kashmir

Abstract

Historically Sufism has been portrayed as an acceptable mode of Islam in Bollywood and political Islam as a threat to Indian secular ethos. This has been particularly true of Kashmir films. However, Bollywood’s emphasis on the syncretic dimension of Sufism is a misappropriation of Kashmir’s Islamic history. This study establishes that Kashmir’s Sufism has to be seen as a socio-political movement that has been instrumental in liberating the lower caste Kashmiris from the Brahminic hegemony. Also, Islamization in Kashmir has to be seen as a historical evolution of a community, rather than a transition from one set of beliefs to another. The syncretization of Hinduism and Islam in Hindi cinema is an assertion of the postcolonial nationalist imagination of a secular India. This assertion is a product of the anxieties of loss of the territory with which the nation shares a turbulent relationship. Sufism conceived of in this way becomes instrumental in ideological co-optation of the Muslim-majority Kashmir. The study probes Laila Majnu’s (2018) wandering dervish protagonist to chart out the representation of “individualistic” and “renunciatory” dimension of Sufism that couches Orientalist notions of the primitive and repressive “Muslim mind”. The apolitical narrative of the film mandates a critical inquiry since it is set amidst the politically charged atmosphere of Kashmir.