Table Of ContentMUWO_007.fm Page 223 Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:33 AM
T D A
BOMT29310OTTT020hhhlxrUa00ieeefgcoW2 ikMDMrndwOaeuu,el ess UlAnlllii KmmdrPtaiu cWWrbl eAlooisnrrhlljddue mrF•i hnaVaglonl l2Lu0tmd0e2 92 • Autumen 2002 Deendar Anjuman:
Between Dialogue and
Conflict
Yoginder Sikand
Institute for the Study of Islam and the Muslim World
Leiden, The Netherlands
B
etween May and July 2000, a series of bombs went off at twelve places
of worship in different towns in south India. Most of these were
churches, but a Hindu temple and a mosque were also targeted and
damaged. Anti-Christian hate literature purported to have been distributed by
Hindu chauvinist groups was found at the sites of many of the blasts. Fingers
of suspicion were initially pointed at Hindu groups who have, in recent years,
been involved in violent attacks on Christians in large parts of India. However,
in July 2000, police and Union Home Ministry sources claimed to have
discovered evidence of a hitherto little-known Muslim group, the Deendar
Anjuman, in masterminding the blasts, accusing it of seeking to provoke
further hostility between Hindus and Christians. The Indian press gave much
publicity to these reports, indeed much more so than it had to confirm evidence
of earlier Hindu attacks on Christian churches and priests. The manner of
reporting about the alleged role of the Deendar Anjuman in the incidents
strongly suggested that the events were given the image of a Muslim–Christian
confrontation or as yet another expression and evidence of Muslim “terrorism”
and Islamic “fundamentalism.” Further, the distinct impression was intentionally
created that Hindu militant groups, whose role in previous attacks on Christians
in India had been clearly proven, had been all along wrongly blamed, and that
behind much of the current anti-Christian wave in India was a hidden “Islamic”
or “Pakistani” hand. For right-wing Hindu organizations, the attacks came as a
blessing in disguise, which they sought to use to absolve themselves of
accusations of violent anti-Christian activity in order to salvage their sagging
public image, which had attracted sharp criticism at home and abroad.
In the wake of the attacks, many Indian papers went so far as to claim that
the alleged involvement of the Deendar Anjuman in the incidents was part of
a larger Pakistani plot engineered by its secret service, the Inter-Services
223
MUWO_007.fm Page 224 Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:33 AM
T M W • V 92 • F 2002
Intelligence (ISI) to instigate Hindu–Christian conflict and, thereby, further
destabilize India.1 It was said that the next target of the attackers had been the
famous temple at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, which they had planned to blow
up, thereby triggering large scale communal rioting all over south India.2 The
Home Minister of Andhra Pradesh claimed that these attacks were merely a
prelude to a grand conspiracy planned by Deendar Anjuman leaders based in
Pakistan to launch a jihad against India with a vast army of 900,000 Pathans
from Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, reportedly “planned as per the
dictates of the ISI.”3 A Union Home Ministry source claimed to have discovered
“significant evidence” of the Anjuman’s involvement in the blasts, and declared
that this was part of a sinister campaign to “spread terror among Christians and
hatred between Christians and Hindus.”4 Echoing this view, the influential
English fortnightly India Today commented, “It is clear that the followers of
the sect . . . are now part of a larger game of waging jehad against the Hindus
and Christians in India . . . and [their] long term goal is to make India an
Islamic state.”5 For this purpose, police sources claimed, members of the
Anjuman had from 1992 onward been crossing to Pakistan, ostensibly on
pilgrimage, but actually for receiving armed training at camps set up by the
head of the Anjuman’s Pakistan wing, Zia-ul Hasan, son of the founder of the
sect, based at Mardan in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province.6 Hasan, an
Indian newspaper report alleged, had been “brainwashed” by the ISI into
helping it in its alleged mission of destabilizing India.7 A special report
prepared by the Andhra Pradesh police claimed that in 1995 Zia-ul Hasan had
“hatched a conspiracy to disturb communal harmony and the secular fabric of
Indian society, thereby affecting internal security.” The report accused him of
a plot to “create nifaq (hatred)” between different communities in India, as a
prelude to a grand jihad to invade India and convert the Hindus to Islam. As
the initial stage in this “conspiracy,” Indian Anjuman members are claimed to
have been trained at an Anjuman camp in Pakistan in handling explosives,
after which they returned to India and were reportedly involved in the
destruction of several statues of the Dalit8 hero Ambedkar at several places in
Andhra Pradesh in an effort to instigate conflict between Dalits and the caste
Hindus.9 It was alleged that Hasan had paid a visit to Hyderabad in mid-May,
2000 and at a secret meeting had selected a group of his Indian followers,
taken them to Pakistan to be given armed training, and sent them back to
south India to bomb places of worship, so that, as the director general of
police put it, with the south torn apart with communal rioting, the Anjuman,
leading an army of almost a million Pathans from Pakistan, could invade India
from the north some time in 2001.10 An arrested member of the Anjuman is
said to have revealed to the police during his interrogation that Zia-ul Hasan
had announced to his followers that, “The time had come for attacking
224
MUWO_007.fm Page 225 Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:33 AM
T D A
Hindustan and that everybody should be ready to give up their lives [sic] and
become a mujahid.” He had allegedly promised them that all of India would
soon turn Muslim.11 In the wake of these allegations, the Indian government
came out with a statement asking its intelligence agencies to expose the “grand
design” of the Anjuman to “foment communal tension in the country” with what
it alleged to be the “active support” of the ISI.12 The Indian Home Minister
L. K. Advani declared that the government of India was contemplating a ban
on the sect.13 It was declared an outlawed organization in early 2001.
Predictably, leaders of the Deendar Anjuman based at the group’s
headquarters in Hyderabad (Deccan) strongly rebutted the allegations levelled
against them. They asserted that the Anjuman had nothing to do with the forty
persons said to be responsible for the attacks, almost all members of the
Anjuman, who were later taken into police custody. The acting president of
the Anjuman, the eighty year old Maulana Muhammad Usman, ‘Ali Mallana,
declared that his organization “strongly condemned any such activity that
would hurt the religious sensibilities of people” and offered to cooperate with
the police in tracking down the attackers.14 He also categorically denied any
association with the ISI,15 and said that allegations of the Anjuman’s links with
it and of its involvement in the attacks were “a conspiracy” to defame the
group. He claimed that it was the CIA that had possibly masterminded the
blasts.16 Some Anjuman members commented that their success in winning
converts to their version of Islam had won them the wrath of the Indian
establishment and that the entire controversy about the blasts was simply a
means to defame them and put a halt to the spread of their faith.17
Just as the various reports of the involvement of the Anjuman in the blasts
presented contradictory images, so too did reports about the nature, history
and identity of the organization. Several Muslim groups denied that the
Deendar Anjuman was Muslim at all, for the sect believes that Allah and the
Hindu Ishwar are one and so are Imam ‘Ali and the Hindu god Ganesh. The
Amir-i-Shari‘at of Karnataka, Mufti Ashraf ‘Ali, reiterated a fifteen year-old
fatwa declaring the founder of the Anjuman as a kafir and well outside the
pale of Islam for having claimed that he was the incarnation (avatar) of a
Hindu deity, Channabasaveswara.18 Some described it as a strange and in many
ways unique syncretistic cult, drawing upon Islam as well as local religious and
cultural traditions.19 According to one newspaper account, it was “a concoction
of Hinduism and Islam” which was “not acceptable to a large number of
Muslims” because it believed that “Allah and Om were the same.”20 According
to another version, it represented “a strange alchemy of religion and
mysticism,” “propagating the concept of the universal appeal of all religions”
and “giving a new meaning to the principle of showing mutual respect and
peaceful co-existence.” It was portrayed as “a fighting team taming the rising
225
MUWO_007.fm Page 226 Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:33 AM
T M W • V 92 • F 2002
communal passions,” preaching “harmony and peace” between followers of
different religions, and “doing yeoman service in bridging the differences
based on religion, race, caste and colour.”21
For their part, the Anjuman authorities based in Hyderabad claimed that
the main focus of the community ever since its founding some three-quarters
of a century ago has been to “propagate peace and harmony” and asserted that
never in its history had the Anjuman ever been involved in controversies.22
They maintained that the organization had “never indulged in activities
detrimental to mankind.” A report prepared by the Andhra Pradesh police
presented quite a different image of the Anjuman, describing it as “a highly
fanatical and shrewd Muslim militant organization,” with its sole objective
being to Islamize India through proselytization and preaching. The Anjuman
was said to have “cleverly masked its hatred towards other religions under the
guise of universal peace and brotherhood,” using this as a cover to carry on
with its agenda of Islamizing India.23 In a similar vein, the Andhra Pradesh
Home Minister, echoing the views of senior police officials, claimed that the
Anjuman’s annual inter-religious dialogue and peace conferences and other
such activities were simply a guise under which, he declared, “the organization
planned to spread terror through violence and incite communal trouble in the
state and in other parts of the country.”24
These widely differing representations of the Anjuman clearly point to the
fact that little seems to be actually known about the group. This article seeks
to unravel several complex issues involved in the present controversy in which
the Anjuman has been implicated. While it is not possible for lack of any firm
evidence to ascertain whether or not the Anjuman has actually been involved
in the recent bomb attacks in south India, a critical analysis of the history of
the group can provide critical insight into how the Anjuman has tended to
perceive other religious groups and how it has sought to relate to them over
time. This could provide valuable clues as to how the group today sees its
place in and engages with the contemporary Indian context of religious
pluralism, which is being increasingly challenged by the rise of ethnic and
religious chauvinist groups. In particular, the Anjuman’s own inter-religious
dialogue project is closely looked at to see what this entails regarding the
group’s relations with members of other religious communities. Is this project
geared to the creation of universal brotherhood and love between people of
all faiths, as Anjuman authorities insist, or is it simply a cover-up for a political
agenda or for religious proselytization, as Indian police and newspaper
accounts allege? Focusing on the Anjuman’s peculiar doctrinal positions, which
mark it as quite distinct from other Muslim groups, this booklet traces the
origins and development of the Anjuman in early twentieth century south India
and, in the process, looks at the ways in which it has sought to position itself
226
MUWO_007.fm Page 227 Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:33 AM
T D A
vis-à-vis other groups, Muslim as well as Hindu. This examination of the
historical development of the Anjuman might help shed some light on the
present controversy.
Siddiq Hussain: The Founder of the Deendar
Anjuman
Sayyed Siddiq Hussain, the founder of the Deendar Anjuman, was born to
Sayyed Amir Hussain and his wife Sayyeda Amina in 1886 at Balampet in the
Gurmatkal taluqa of the Gulbarga district, then part of the Nizam’s Dominions
and now in the Karnataka state in south India. His family traced their descent
to the Prophet Muhammad, and were known for having produced numerous
leading Sufis belonging to the Qadiri order. Siddiq Hussain received his
primary education first at Gulbarga and then at Hyderabad. Later, he enrolled
at the Muhammadan Arts College, Madras, and from there went to the Bursen
College in Lahore for his higher education. In the course of his studies, he is
said to have mastered eleven languages and developed an expertise in
medicine and the martial arts.25
As a young man, hagiographic accounts tell us Siddiq Hussain developed
a great interest in various religions and came into contact with several noted
Sufis and Islamic scholars of his time. These included Shibli Numani, the noted
“alim, Baba Tajuddin of Nagpur, Maulana ‘Abdullah of Tamapur, Hazrat Miskin
Shah Baba, and Zohra Bi and Maulana Mir Muhammad Sa‘id of Hyderabad.
From the last mentioned, he took the bai“at or oath of initiation in the Qadiri
Sufi order. In 1914, in his “passion” as he put it, to study the Qur’an, he joined
the Qadiani branch of the heterodox Ahmadiyya community, considered
outside the pale of Islam for its belief that its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad,
was a prophet sent by God and in doing so denying the Islamic belief in the
finality of the prophethood of Muhammad.26 He took the oath of allegiance at
the hands of the then head of the Qadiani jama“at, Miyan Bashiruddin
Mahmud Ahmad, son of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, but 14 days later he renounced
his membership, accusing the Qadianis of being kafirs for considering the
Mirza a prophet. It is likely that at this time he moved closer to the rival Lahori
branch of the Ahmadis, who split off from the main Ahmadi jama“at in 1914
on the question of the status of the Mirza. Unlike the Qadianis, the Lahoris, led
by the well-known Islamic scholar Maulana Muhammad ‘Ali, insisted that the
Mirza was not a prophet but simply a mujaddid (renewer of the faith). He
quoted the well-known tradition attributed to Muhammad that at the end of
every Islamic century, God would send a mujaddid to the world to revive the
faith, and claimed that the Mirza was the mujaddid of the fourteenth century
of the Islamic calendar.27 It is possible that Siddiq Hussain might actually have
formally joined the Lahori jama“at, for in his tract A“ada-i-Islam (Enemies of
227
MUWO_007.fm Page 228 Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:33 AM
T M W • V 92 • F 2002
Islam), dating to the mid-1920s, he wrote that he and members of his Anjuman
believed that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had been sent by God as the mujaddid of
the fourteenth century, indicating he continued to hold the Mirza in great
esteem despite having parted ways with the Qadianis.28 In one of his early
writings from the late 1920s, he wrote that after he left the Qadiani jama“at,
he spent some time in the company of Maulana Muhammad ‘Ali and Maulvi
Khwaja Kamaluddin, the leading lights of the Lahori branch of the Ahmadis.29
The Launching of the Mission
In early hagiographic accounts of Siddiq Hussain written by his followers
and even in his own writings, we hear little of his activities until 1924 when
he publicly declared what he claimed was his divine mission and established
the Deendar Anjuman (The Religious Association). The 1920s were a crucial
period for Hindu–Muslim relations in India, witnessing a marked rise of
Hindu–Muslim conflict after a brief spell of inter-communal harmony in the
course of the short-lived Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements. In early
1923, the Arya Samaj, a militant and openly anti-Muslim Hindu chauvinist
group, launched a massive drive to bring into the Hindu fold hundreds of
thousands of Rajput Muslims in the north Western districts of the United
Provinces. Soon, the campaign spread to other areas of India, and Arya leaders
began issuing calls for converting all the Indian Muslims. Muslim leaders
responded with alarm, launching efforts to counter the Aryas through various
Islamic missionary (tabligh) groups.30 Siddiq Hussain is said to have actively
worked with one of the leading Tablighi activists of this time, the Amristar-
based lawyer, Ghulam Bhik Nairang, and his Anjuman Tabligh-ul Islam, in
attempting to prevent the Aryas from making further inroads among the
Muslims and also in spreading Islam among non-Muslim groups, particularly
the lower castes.31 This is the first evidence that we have of the beginning of
what was to become his life-long involvement in missionary work and in
combating the Arya Samaj.
After spending some time in the north with the Lahori Ahmadis with
members of the Ahl-i-Qur’an32 and with Nairang and his Tablighi group, Siddiq
Hussain returned to Hyderabad and established a medical practice there. By
this time, aggressive communal politics, which had become such a
characteristic feature of north Indian life, had made its way into the state.
Ruled by a Muslim Nizam and a small, largely Muslim feudal class, Hyderabad
was a Hindu-majority state with a Muslim population of hardly one in ten. By
the 1920s, resentment against the predominance of Muslims in the upper
echelons of government service increasingly led a rising generation of newly-
educated Hindus to the path of confrontation, which soon assumed the form,
as elsewhere in India, of Hindu-Muslim antagonism.33 In 1933, the Arya Samaj,
228
MUWO_007.fm Page 229 Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:33 AM
T D A
which until then had been limited by its predominantly north Indian base,
turned its attention to Hyderabad, where it had already established a small
presence in the late nineteenth century.34 Beginning in 1931, a series of clashes
took place between the Aryas, who saw themselves as defenders of the
Hindus, and the Nizam’s forces. Several branches of the Samaj were now set
up in the Nizam’s Dominions. In 1938, the Aryas launched a mass struggle,
along with the Hindu Mahasabha, against the Nizam which carried on for
several months, in the course of which some 8000 Aryas and other Hindus
were arrested. The Arya agitators, according to one report, are said to have
exhorted the local Hindus to “rise and fight the Muslims, kill them and
overthrow them, as the country belonged to the Hindus and not the Muslims,”
in addition to appealing to them not to pay their taxes to the Nizam.35 A fierce
communal riot broke out that year, in which scores of Muslims were killed. As
‘Alam puts it, “a warlike atmosphere” between Hindus and Muslims seems to
have taken hold of Hyderabad.36
Deeply involved as he was by this time with various Islamic movements,
Siddiq Hussain seems to have been greatly affected by what he saw as a grave
threat to Islam and Muslim interests at the hands of aggressive Hindu groups.
Launching a large-scale missionary campaign aimed at nothing less than the
conversion of all the Hindus of India to Islam suggested itself to him as the
need of the hour. This was to go on to become his life’s major vocation, in
response, he asserted, to a divine command which he claimed to have received.
Siddiq Hussain’s missionary career may be divided into three phases, each
related to the changing nature of Hindu–Muslim relations and the general
socio-political context of the times. To begin with is what could be called the
phase of “peaceful persuasion,” roughly from 1924 to 1930, in which
preaching, persuasion and distribution of literature were adopted as a means
of spreading his message among, first, the Lingayats, and then the Hindus in
general. This phase corresponded with the emergence of rumblings of
discontent among the Hindus of Hyderabad, but which had yet to take on
violent, aggressive forms. The period from 1930 until 1948 could be termed as
the phase of “violent aggression,” in which among other means, Siddiq
Hussain advocated the declaration of actual war, styled as a jihad, in addition
to being involved in several court cases with his detractors. This corresponds
to the period when the Arya Samaj had grown into a powerful oppositional
force in Hyderabad challenging, like the emerging Communist and the
Congress parties sought to do, the power of the Nizam and the largely Muslim
feudal elite. After his release from prison two months before his death in 1952,
Siddiq Hussain once again seems to have gone back to his earlier mode of
preaching, and this short phase can be termed as one of “pragmatic
accommodation.”
229
MUWO_007.fm Page 230 Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:33 AM
T M W • V 92 • F 2002
Missionary Work Among the Lingayats
Siddiq Hussain began his missionary career among the Lingayats, a group
of Shiva-worshippers living mainly in the Kannada-speaking districts of the
Nizam’s Dominions and in neighbouring Mysore. Once, according to Anjuman
sources, while on a trip to the shrine of Kodekkal Basappa37 (a Sufi highly
venerated by the local Lingayats), he reportedly heard that the Sufi had
predicted the arrival of a saviour of the Lingayats in the form of Deendar
Channabasaveswara, who would be born in a Muslim family and would make
the Hindus and Muslims one. This, he was to later claim, was a prophecy
heralding his own arrival.38 By this time, as he writes, he had already dedicated
his life to the cause of the spread of Islam and, noting the “special features”
(khususiyat) of the Lingayats, decided to work among them. In order to
communicate with them, he married a Kannada-speaking Muslim woman who
taught him their language.39 After his marriage, he visited several Lingayat
temples and monasteries, spending much time with the priests, learning
Sanskrit and their scriptures from them. Then, it is said, he received divine
inspiration in the form of a dream informing him that he had been appointed
by God as an avatar of the Lingayat saint Channabasaveswara, in the form of
Deendar Channabasaveswara, to bring all the Hindus of India to Islam.40
Accordingly, he travelled to Gadag, a small town near Hubli, and on
February 7, 1924, publicly announced that he was the much-awaited messiah
of the Lingayats, the Deendar Channabasaveswara and the saviour of the
Hindus. “Oh Hindus!,” he declared, “I am the guru who has been predicted in
your scriptures.”41 Besides claiming to be the Deendar Channabasaveswara, he
also at this time declared himself to be the kalki avatar, the tenth and last
incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu, who the Hindus believe would arrive
to extirpate misery from the world, put an end to the “evil age” of kali yug and
herald the arrival of the “age of truth” (sat yug). This, he said, had been
revealed to him by God Himself who had told him that he would establish
the sat yug in 1943. As he put it, “Shri Bhagwan has informed me that I
will appear as the kalki avatar. The kali yug is soon to be abolished and
the sat yug inaugurated.” Shortly after that, he said, in the second half of
the fourteenth (Islamic) century, the Day of Judgement (qayamat) shall
come.42
In his A“ada-i-Islam, a tract penned to convince Muslims of his claims,
Siddiq Hussain wrote that it was as a response to the successes of the Arya
Samaj in bringing to the Hindu fold several thousand Muslims in northern India
that he received a divine inspiration, informing him that “God had willed that
the greatest incarnation (avatar) of the Hindus should emerge to declare to
the Hindus that their only hope for salvation lay in converting to Islam.”43
Elsewhere, he wrote that in the wake of the shuddhi movement of the Aryas,
230
MUWO_007.fm Page 231 Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:33 AM
T D A
India had witnessed “heinous assaults” on Islam and the person of
Muhammad. “God,” he said, “was watching this, and had decided to take
revenge by making all India Muslim.”44 He now assumed the name of Siddiq
Deendar Channabasaveswara and in doing so, claimed that he was simply
fulfilling the prophecies contained in the holy books of the Lingayats and the
Hindus, which he asserted had predicted his arrival and also indicated the
truth of Islam. In his words:
Allah has appointed their biggest avatar in order to make them Muslim
by pointing out the directions contained in the books of the enemies of
the Muslims (dushmanan-i-islam), and he [this avatar] has announced:
‘Oh Hindus! If you seek salvation then become Muslim because you can
see that till your avatars recited the creed of confession (kalima) of our
Master, Muhammad, peace and Allah’s blessings be upon him, they did
not gain salvation, so how can you be saved if you do not do so?’45
Siddiq Hussain’s choice of the Lingayats as the first group to which to
direct his missionary concerns was probably motivated by the fact that the
Lingayat tradition, being in its original form sternly monotheistic and having
emerged from a powerful protest movement against idolatry and caste dating
back to the twelfth century, shared much in common with Islam.46 Aware of
the powerful anti-Brahminical traditions of the Lingayats, Siddiq Hussain
probably believed that his claims would fall on receptive ears and that the
Lingayats would respond warmly to his appeals. Many Lingayats of what is
today northern Karnataka are also followers of the cults of the Sufis, whose
shrines are found scattered all over the countryside. Given this syncretistic
tradition among the Lingayats, Siddiq Hussain probably felt that his appeals to
them to convert to Islam, claiming himself to be the incarnation of
Channabasaveswara, son-in-law of the founder of the Lingayat sect, Basava,
and the one responsible for consolidating and leading the community texts
after Basava’s death, might evoke a positive response.47
In a pamphlet written in the mid-1920s addressed specifically to
the Lingayats, Siddiq Hussain declared that the time had come for the entire
world to be united as one on the basis of Islam. He claimed that if the
Muslims were only to fulfill their religious duties, “all the people of the
world are ready to fall into their lap.” In particular, he said, the Lingayats, were
ripe for conversion to Islam because, in his words, they were “pitiable,
powerless, bereft of friends” and “their source of support has always been the
Muslim community.” He described the Lingayats as an oppressed group,
awaiting a messiah who would deliver them from the persecution of the
Brahmins, and saw himself as having been appointed by God for that purpose.
As he put it:
231
MUWO_007.fm Page 232 Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:33 AM
T M W • V 92 • F 2002
This community is crying out, saying: ‘Oh Mercy of the Worlds (rahmat
al lil “alamin)48! You are most merciful. Take pity on us. We are without
any support and helpers. Save us from the clutches of our oppressors
and take us into your refuge. For thousands of years the worshippers of
Vishnu (hari wale) have oppressed us and our neighbours, the Dravidian
communities, and have reduced us to the status of Shudras. They
snatched away our political power and forced us to flee to the forests,
where, for thousands of years, we roamed the jungles like barbarians.’49
Employing the logic so central to the discourse of the emerging Dravidian and
Dalit movements of his times that saw Brahmin/Aryan hegemony as the source
of the plight of the lower castes, Siddiq Hussain then went on to suggest that
it was Islam that had historically played a crusading role in liberating the
downtrodden castes from the shackles of caste oppression, a role that it could
once again play in mobilizing the Lingayats and other Shiva-worshipping
lower caste groups against the control of the Brahmins, the worshippers of
Vishnu [hari wale]. Thus, he added:
The Lingayats now tell us: ‘Some eight hundred years ago, when the
Muslims arrived in the Deccan and established their political power, they
helped us to rise again and, with their help and in the face of the
opposition of the worshippers of Vishnu, we set up large thrones
(singhasana) in many towns, but, now, unfortunately, our helpers
(Muslims) have been ousted from power.’50
The message then is clear: Lingayats must join hands with Muslims
and work to re-establish Muslim political power if they are to be able to
effectively counter the forces of Brahminical revival which is set to reduce
them, once more, to the status of slaves. Siddiq Hussain claimed that the
Dravidians were being rapidly absorbed into the fold of Vaishnavism as part
of a conspiracy on the part of Vishnu-worshipping high caste Hindus to
enslave them. On the other hand, the Dravidians were, he said, also being
targeted for conversion by Christian missionaries and the Arya Samajists.
The time was not far off, he predicted, when the entire Dravidian race might
finally be extinct. If this happened, the Lingayats would be “forced into free
labour (begar)” by the Brahmins, a form of social slavery that had been
imposed on the Dravidians for centuries. In this context, Siddiq Hussain saw
a glimmer of hope for the Lingayats, and wrote:
[The Lingayats say]: ‘Our only source of hope is the prediction in our
sacred scriptures that one day a saviour will appear who will deliver us
from all our woes and will take us to the pinnacle of glory and will make
us triumph over all our enemies. He will come in the form of Deendar
Channabasaveswara, who, in accordance with the predictions of
Mauneswara51, will make the Hindus and the Turukus (Muslims) one.’52
232
Description:Anjuman, in masterminding the blasts, accusing it of seeking to provoke reporting about the alleged role of the Deendar Anjuman in the incidents.
