Cosmopolitan Culture of Medieval India; An appraisal of Sufi contribution

Owing to common and contiguous borders, with similar geographical features and geo-cultural affinity, India-Central Asia relation dates back to the remote past. This relationship covers all aspects of human relationship-social, political, intellectual, commercial etc. Caravans of men and stream of thoughts constantly shuffled across the India and central Asia. It gave fillip to intimate cultural contacts between the two regions. The exchange thus played a significant role in developing both these societies. In this paper an attempt is made to analyse the contribution of Central Asian immigrants especially the Sufis and saints of 13th 14th centuries in establishing and developing a unique phenomena of absorption, adjustment, and assimilation of diverse cultural elements in India, giving shape to a new culture which Babur in his Tuzki-Baburi refers as “Hindustani culture”.

This Hindustani culture was not restricted to living only, but in thinking and writing as well. Besides the literary personals who introduced Persian style in Indian historiography, the Khanqahs of medieval Sufis consequently developed into places where people of all types, belonging to different religious and cultural backgrounds, assembled and a process of interaction started in language-language of elite i.e. (Persian and Arabic) and the language of common man i.e. a colloquial Indian one came together and paved the way for the emergence of new language intelligible to both. So the earliest sentences of Hindawi that we have discovered were uttered in the Khanqahs.