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SUFIS OF SINDH
Dr. MOTILAL JOTWANI
PUBLICATIONS DIVISION
MINISTRY OF INFORMATION AND BROADCASTING
GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
April 1986 (Chaitra 1908) (First Edition)
September 1996 (Bhadra 1918) (Revised Edition)
© Publications Division
ISBN : 81-230-0508-3
Price : Rs. 75.00
PUBLISHED BY THE DIRECTOR PUBLICATIONS DIVISION
MINISTRY OF INFORMATION & BROADCASTING
GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
PATIALA HOUSE, NEW DELHI-110 001
SALES EMPORIA • PUBLICATIONS DIVISION
SUPER BAZAR CONNAUGHT CIRCUS NEW DELHI-110 001
COMMERCE HOUSE CURRIMBHOY ROAD BALLARD PIER
MUMBAI-400 038
8 ESPLANADE EAST CALCUTTA-700 069
RAJAJI BHAWAN BESANT NAGAR MADRAS-600 090
BIHAR STATE CO-OPERATIVE BANK BUILDING ASHOKA RAJPATH
PATNA-800 004
PRESS ROAD THIRUVANANTHAPURAM-695 001
27/6 RAM MOHAN ROY MARG LUCKNOW-226 001
STATE ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM BUILDING PUBLIC GARDENS
HYDERABAD-500 004
PRINTED AT : SHEEL PRINT-N-PACK, SHAHDARA, DELHI-110 032
TO
Professor annemarie schimmel
AS A TOKEN OF RESPECT AND ADMIRATION
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Preface to the First Edition
Sufis of Sindh as also of other regions in the world have been
secular. And let me say at the very outset that the word ‘secular’
in the Indian subcontinental tradition doesn’t mean the same as in
the Western one, and add that the ‘sacred’—far from being
contrary to the ‘secular’—becomes meaningful only when it is
‘secular’. In order to substantiate all this, I recount here a
significant incident of my early life. The incident illustrates
according to the Indian subcontinental tradition what the ‘secular’
is and underlines the idea that secularity enriches the spiritual life.
Incidentally, it is the one great incident to which I owe my
scholarly interest in the Indian subcontinental saint/Sufi literature.
It was January 8,1948, and I was barely 12 at that time. Our
country had been divided into India and Pakistan on a narrow
religious basis on August 14/15, 1947. After the Partition,
communal frenzy raised its ugly head and cities ran amuck, their
streets roaring ‘Allaho Akbar’ and ‘Har Har Mahadev’
Originally from Rohri, a town in Sukkur district of Sindh
(now in Pakistan), we were in Karachi Sindh during those days,
for my father had taken up a teaching job there. We lived in a
rented set of two rooms in a building belonging to a devout Muslim.
Things were never bad in Sindh before the Partition, for the
people, bred and brought up as they were on the Sindhi Sufi soil,
lived in peace and harmony. But on the fateful day of January 8,
1948, it looked like the world would come to an abrupt end for us.
The rioters were at the gate and demanded of the house-owner
to quietly hand over all the kafirs (non-believers, i.e., Hindus) in
his premises. Huddled alongwith other members of the family in
a small store room of the house, I waited with bated breath for
destruction and death, I knew what could happen to us in such
circumstances, but my younger brother and sister in the cell would
not quite know that they lurched between life and death.
Presently our house-owner lied to them, saying “The
people you are looking for sailed to India yesterday...The poor
creatures couldn’t even take alongwith them their possessions...
Do you want their belongings ?”
A few killers came inside and collected a few things— the
mementoes of a sad chapter of human history! My father, a
Sufi—for, there have been Sufis among the Hindus also—took a
hesitant decision on that day to migrate to the newly-formed India.
Continuing to live there would have meant an untold misery for us
and for the Muslim brethren sympathising with us. I remember,
the two families—ours and that of Allahdino, the house¬
owner—were sad and gloomy for the rest of the day.
Allahdino ? He is so dear to our heart that we in our family
never use any honorific before his name. God’s good man, he is
God himself—God without any honorific. Allahdino ? He is a
commoner in the Indian subcontinent, with a name having roots
in the Indian composite culture: he is Allahdino with a Sindhi-
Sanskritical suffix dino (dutt, meaning ‘given by, or gifted by’;
Allahdino meaning gifted by Allah, or God) in his Muslim name,
as there are many Hindu names like “Gurubakhsh” with a
Semitic suffix bakhsh (again meaning ‘given by, or gifted by’;
Gurubakhsh meaning gifted by the Guru, or Preceptor) in them.
As the night descended on that gloomy day, my father and
