Margins or Center? Konkani Sufis, India and “Arabastan”

Abstract

The study of Muslim interactions across the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent have popularly constructed Northern Indian Muslim culture as either Islamic or pre- or anti-Islamic. It is only sporadically recognized that non-Islamic regions were equally subject to Islamic influences. The Konkan coast in Maharashtra constitutes one such example that was deeply influenced by Sufi saints from Arabastan (the Arabian Peninsula). Konkani Sufi Muslims demarcated themselves as different from North Indian Sufi Muslims, viewing Konkan as a ‘verandah’ to both India and Arabastan simultaneously. By doing so, Konkani Sufis collapsed complex regional and religious dichotomies and constructed a conceptual region that evaded both Islamic and Hindutva hegemony, especially as Konkani Muslims continued to speak in Konkani, which subverted the politics of Urdu and Marathi nationalism.