Kunnagudi Mastan Sahib : Revered by Muslims and Hindus Alike

Kunnagudi Mastan Sahib : Revered by Muslims and Hindus Alike

Sanjeev Kumar Nath

Religious bigotry is the sign of stupidity, not spirituality. The hallmark of true spirituality is all-encompassing love and complete absence of hatred.

Sufi saints have always demonstrated what true spirituality is, and have usually been revered and loved by people of all religions, not just Islam.

Saints of the Hindu Bhakti tradition and Sufi saints are particularly similar in their approach to spirituality and their interactions with human beings.

There have also been significant reciprocity of ideas and close friendships among some of the wandering Hindu Nath Yogis and Sufi fakirs.

Of course, within Islam there are certain groups of hardliners who would argue that Sufism with its veneration of saints and worship in the dargahs is not true Islam, but Sufi thought and worship can be traced to the times of the Prophet Himself.

Many would argue-against the hardliners—that Sufism with its message of love and compassion and emphasis on purifying one’s own heart and soul (to be able to receive God’s grace), is the core of Islam. Some seem to regard the mystical elements of Sufism with suspicion, but can any religion be a true religion without any mystical element in it?

Besides, one needs to remember that Islam essentially begins with a great mystical occurrence-the divine communications that the Prophet received.

Kunnagudi Mastan (or Masthan) Sahib (1792-1838), a nineteenth-century Sufi saint from Tamil Nadu is revered by Hindus and Muslims alike because of his message of love and compassion, his utter disregard for material “success”, and constant absorption in the divine. In so many ways, he exemplified the deep spirituality and spirit of equality in Sufi Islam. Tamil devotional songs composed by him are considered exquisitely beautiful, and are cherished by Muslims and Hindus alike.

Born at Kunnagudi to Nainar Mohamed Sahib and Fatima Bibi, Mastan Sahib belonged to the wealthy Rowther Muslim community, which traces its origin to the Turkish Seljuk Dynasty. In the past, most Rowthers were cavalry soldiers and chieftains employed by Tamil kings in the Chola and Pandya kingdoms.

However, some Rowthers were also indigenous Tamil warrior community members who converted to Islam, mostly because of the influence of Sufi saints. In any case, Rowthers are among the oldest Muslim communities in India. They are one important group in the multi-ethnic Muslim population of Tamil Nadu, and they have always enjoyed social prestige and wealth, and even now, Rowthers are generally known to be financially sound, with good work ethics and entrepreneurship. If they excelled as warriors in the old days, today they excel as businessmen or professionals. Often, they remember their aristocratic past.

Mastan Sahib, who was named Sultan Abdul Kadir Sahib, could have enjoyed the pleasures of a wealthy Rowther family of the times, but he shunned those pleasures to join the Qadiriya order of the Sufis, becoming a poor, God-intoxicated fakir. It is said that in keeping with the customs of his people, there was a proposal for him to marry his maternal uncle’s daughter when Sultan Abdul Kadir Sahib was seventeen years of age.

It is then that he left home to avoid family life, and began the life of a wandering fakir. In Sufi tradition, one has to learn the ascetic and spiritual practices from a master, and Mastan Sahib learnt the intricacies of the Sufi way (tareeka) from Seihu Abdul Khadirilebbai Alim. Mastan Sahib was well-read in Islamic texts, and knew both Tamil and Arabic languages very well.

In 1813, he was initiated into Sufi asceticism by Alim Maulvi Sham Sahib. Most Sufis generally consider the founder of their order as their spiritual preceptor, and Mastan Sahib toohad special regard for the founder of the Qadiriyaorder,  Muhyiddin Abdulkadir Jilani (d. 1166 CE), and regarded him as his spiritual guru.

As he started living the life of a Sufi fakir, Mastan Sahib’sdevotion to God found expression in his soulful songs which are still very popular, and heearned the name“Mastan” because of his being “mast”, i.e., God-intoxicated or perpetually absorbed in spiritual bliss.

After his initiation as a Sufi ascetic, Mastan Sahib went through a 40-day period of special solitary penance at Tirupparankundram. This period of solitary penance was in accordance with Sufi tradition, but the place where Mastan Sahib chose to go through this practice, Tirupparankundram, is interesting in itself.

The dominant geographical feature of the place is a massive monolithic hill, the Tirupparankundram (also spelt Thirupparankundram) Hill which is sacred to Hindus, Jains and Muslims. The hill is dotted with numerous places of Hindu (particularly Saiva) worship, the most important being a Murugan temple.

Murugan is Lord Kartikeya, one of the sons of Lord Shiva, and is an extremely revered deity in South India. Many Hindus go round the entire hill as an act of worship (pradakshina). There is a Muslim dargah on the hill, built over the tomb of Ala-ud-Din Sikandar Shah, the last Sultan of the short-lived Madurai Sultanate, killed in battle somewhere at Tirupparankundram in 1378. Muslims have another name for the hill-Sikandar Hill.

Hindus and Muslims also have a rather long history of conflict over the ownership of the Tirupparankundram hill. Court cases have been fought over this. However, Mastan Sahib-whose name is also associated with Tirupparankundram because of his 40-day solitary penance there-is beyond conflicts and controversies, and his syncretic spirituality can be a solution to such controversies over shared sacred spaces of different religious communities.

Mastan Sahib is often seen as belonging to the Tamil Siddhar tradition, a Hindu mystical tradition, and his devotional compositions are said to be directly influenced by Hindu devotional poetry, particularly the compositions of Thayumanavar (1705-1744).

Both Thayumanavar and Mastan Sahib’s poetry demonstrate very deep intensity of feeling, although they sometimes differ in the use of language :Thayumanavar expresses difficult Advaitic concepts and spiritual truths in remarkably simple, clear Tamil, while Mastan Sahib’s language is even simpler, and unrefined, so that some have called his language rather “crude”.

Thayumanavar’s poetry is steeped in the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta which declares the existence or reality of Brahman alone, while the wahdat al-wujud concept of Sufi thought affirms that there is just one true existence-God. While Thayumanavar’s Advaitic philosophy calls for realizing one’s unity with the universal Self or Brahman, Mastan Sahib’s songs speak about the dissolution of the self into the Divine. Both traditions also emphasize the ultimate importance of direct spiritual experience.

Decades after Mastan Sahib spent his period of solitary penance on the sacred hill of Tirupparankundram, a young Venkataraman Iyer would go round the temple of Murugun on this hill, taking Saab Jaan, his Muslim friend with him. Later, Venkataraman would suddenly leave home and arrive at Tiruvannamalai in a state of intense spiritual absorption, and then a few years after that, would come to be known as Ramana Maharshi (1789-1950), one of the greatest Advaitic sages the world has seen.

In his old years, Saab Jaan recalled that his friend Venkataraman would take him along while going round the temple of Murugan at Tirupparankundram, telling him that God was one, and that humans created unnecessary divisions. Another Muslim devotee of Ramana Maharshi, Masthan Swami, recalled how Maharshi would sometimes ask him to sing the songs of Kunnagudi Mastan Sahib, saying that he loved those songs.

Besides the Tirupparankundram Hill, Mastan Sahib is said to have visited and stayed at many other hills in Tamil Nadu, hills like Puramalai, Annamalai, Naagamalai, Sathuragiri, etc. He also travelled to other parts of India, often meditating on hills, inside forests or by the riverside.

Many miracles were attributed to him because of which people thronged to him for both material and spiritual help and solace. Legend has it that when he visited the Nagore Dargah Shareef (which again is a symbol of religious syncretism with Hindus actively taking part in the activities of the Dargah, including the construction of the minarets, the tallest of which was built by the Hindu Maratha ruler of Thanjavur, Pratap Singh Bhonsle), the doors of the dargah were closed.

Mastan Sahib then sang a soulful devotional song, and the doors opened by themselves.Even this story has interesting parallels in Tamil Hindu tradition. For instance, it is said that when the Nayanmar saints Appar and Jnanasambandhar visited the Vedaranyeswaraswamy Shiva Temple, they found the main door of the temple closed.

Appar sang ten verses, hoping for the door to open, but when it didn’t, he sang another (the 11^th)verse, and the door of the temple opened. After worshipping the Lord in the temple, the saints came out and Appar asked the boy-saint Jnanasambandhar to sing and close the door. It is said that Jnanasmabandhar sang one verse and the doors closed.

Mastan Sahib’s songs like “Manomani Kanni” and “Rehman Kanni” are deep devotional compositions about the Divine as Mother and the Compassionate One, respectively. It is said that the great Tamil poet, freedom-fighter and social reformerSubramania Bharati (1882-1921) was inspired by Mastan Sahib’s compositions.

In some of his songs Bharati regards his chosen deity, Krishna as feminine, addressing Krishna as Kannamma. “Kannamma” is a term which may be used to address a darling daughter or a beloved woman, and Subramanaia Bharati’s songs composed in madhurya bhava show him addressing Krishna as “Kannamma”.

This is thought to be the result of Sufi influence, with Sufi poets like Mastan Sahib sometimes enacting the God-devotee relationship as the relationship of lovers in their songs. Mastan Sahib’s songs are a much-valued treasure of Tamil poetry, and they have also been set to Carnatic tunes. These songs are cherished by people of all religions because of their poetic beauty and spiritual message.

Mastan Sahib’s dargah in the Tondiarpet area in Chennai is not a grand structure, but it attracts both Muslims and Hindus-many of whom simply refer to him as “Mastan Swami”, as they would refer to a Siddhar of Tamil Hindu mystic tradition-who arrive there to pay their respects to the God-intoxicated, lovable Sufi saint.

Sanjeev Kumar Nath,  sanjeevnath21@gmail.com

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