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Hello and welcome back to the New Books in the New Books in the New Books podcast, a podcast channel on the New Books network. I'm your host, Dr. Raj Walcarone. More importantly, today I have the pleasure of welcoming to the podcast Dr.
Murabuntaz, author of a fascinating and beautiful, in many senses, a publication called Faces of God, Images of Devotion in Indo-Muslim Painting, 1500-1800. You're welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much Raj for inviting me. Pleasure to be here.
Yes, likewise, a pleasure to have you. Tell us a bit about the genesis of this project. How did this project come into being? It's the longest story so I'll keep it short.
As long as you like, go round. It started of course during my dissertation, BSD. I was story-starcing earlier because I'm coming from a practicing artist background and Indian military painting technique and my undergrad in the essay called The Parts in the Heart where they really love for South Asian traditional painting was born and I've been practicing since then, almost 20, 25 years. And along the way, 2012 I decided to also enrich and deepen this knowledge by actually diving into the history of this practice.
And that brought me into a whole world that we as practitioners and generally people from South Asia are not really as much tied to or connected with because of the modern transformation of the regions. Of course, practitioners, they use road in this disconnect with history as well as colonialism. So for me, this was a very personal project in a way. And then I went to local repositories.
I started with the law museum collection and I kept coming across these series of Sufi saints. Again and again, I knew nothing about them. A lot of them were from the 18th century, 19th century, and then when I looked at some other European American collections I found similar paintings that I realized that this is the whole theme of great import. That is then we talked about at all in any historical academic or any other way in that Emperor Shajahan held there to him, for example, or in say Akbar, Jangi, all the great, more than a emperor's in all their great albums but always have Sufi saints.
And the question became like, are these guys doing in these grand and be real gestures? What are these humble Sufis whose main aim in life is union with God and to leave a life of asceticism in these hermitages? What are they doing these? So that's where the inquiry began and that was what the seeds for the development of this into an entire book.
Fascinating. Now, it's worth mentioning that the book is available open access and the illustrations, the images are in full-text color, glory, colored. So there's a great deal to love about this publication. So by all means, if you're interested at all, the link is in the podcast notes.
I don't want to phrase this without being too much of a leading question. What impact or intervention do you hope that this publication will accomplish? There are several, in my mind it was a very layered or multivalent project. The first and foremost was, of course, that in a more polarized South Asia, where you have, for example, India going towards its own Hindutva ideology, Pakistan going towards its own Islamicist ideology, the actual lived realities of culture, of people, of human beings, gets completely lost in this wrestling match, this ideological and political wrestling match, which means not just the two countries, but these overlapping traditions, such a long history of Islam in South Asia.
But especially, of course, over the last 20-50 years, the way Islam has been looked at among academia, among gender-deeda western-reading audience, English-speaking audience, has been through politically, I would say, a rather negative lens, of course, with Orientalism and then of course, modern turn. And the idea I even thinking about the movie, what was it, Madamavati, and the way the Muslim emperor is shown as this neat, eating, desirous, crazy, wild bloodthirsty matter, that's the image that has been portrayed, that's coming right out from the colonial and Oriental turn, and that's seeped so into our ideas and memories of the nation. All I have in my mind is brain-eating at the Temple of Doom. It's been a challenge.
That's our intellectualizing fantasies, but they're still so very real. When we think about how the whole Hinduist ideology has taken that to heart and actually is practicing through that colonizing mindset on the very lived realities of Muslims in India, look at the ongoing genocide, and those ideas are actually very living. So for me, talking about history, I'm actually talking about the present very much. So of course, I'm not claiming to change anything.
This was a great personal quest to really understand what is Islam in South Asia through my entry point, which is art history, South Asian art history, and the idea was to present an emic or a local framework, not to look at history through contemporary modern westernized or whatever, you know, that sort of contemporary lens, but to see what frameworks, ideologies, and belief systems were in a pre-modern context. And I think what we really need to keep at the deeper level, now we can come to the deeper. The back of the mind was to also show that not just Islam, but look at any culture. If you look at pre-modern humanity and then you look at modern and post-modern humanity, there's a huge ideological divide.
Essentially, you have pre-modern man. Essentially, being of faith and devotion, there's a hierarchical or cosmological and ontological belief system that comes with it, whereas when you come with the enlightenment and socialist, as well as the capitalist turn and into the 20th and 21st century, that is essentially we are right now living in a materialist paradigm. We all are, you are, I am, we all are within that. So it's a way, and the most common way to history, even look at modern history is through the power politics, which is the language of academia today.
But I really was trying to shun that very materialistic socialist perspective and look at it from the very words and ideas and sentiments of the people who are presenting and making and patronizing that art. I mean, there's so much to be said there, certainly, to my mind, as responsible scholars of any tradition, any religious tradition, really any subject in the humanities, whereas for most we need to allow the data to speak for itself before we proceed to theorize it or impose it into my mind when one is engaged in studying South Asia. If one's categories of conceptualization and theorization are not molded or bent or assuaged by the data, one finds one is not properly studied, so they should. Absolutely, and you'll be surprised that that often happens, that people that you don't believe or want to believe in that primary source.
So that's proven. And there's so much to be said also about this idea of pre-moderant, post-moderant, and certainly we have a particular, we are part of a great, maybe even global civilization, but certainly it's a Western civilization. Like all civilizations, there are prejudices and there are pensions and there are productions, and the things that do very well, and things that do not so well, and when it comes to materiality, we can put a stent in your heart and, wow, extend your life for three decades, fantastic. When it comes to spirituality, we grow up out in dark a little bit.
And there are those among us who can code switch, just fine. Okay. But it's more to your wonderful work here. Tell us a bit about the structure of the law.
Structure is less strictly speaking on the timeline. It's less following a chronology. It's more thematic. There's a little bit of chronology that happens naturally because you have to, yeah, the main ostentatially, the main theme of the book is looking at the devotional culture of Islam in South Asia, prior to the modern term, particularly looking at the, sort of what we tend to think of as early modern, but the year is around 1500 to 1800, so those are the time of more or less majority Muslim rule within a large swath of South Asia.
And there was a particular Persianate culture that was intermingling with the Indic spheres. So there was a lot of homogeneity in certain courtly spheres that you can think of, and you see that through the artworks as well. And so philosophically and metaphysically speaking as well, there is a certain language and a certain belief system that a lot of the South Asian region is sharing in several ways. So when I got into an Indoch Muslim culture, of course, and so the idea was to present that underlying framework that was giving rise to these particular artworks.
That you see in albums and manuscripts to do with images of devotion. And the images of devotion primarily you see are images of Sufi say, insides also angels and sometimes also kings and princes embody sacredity and the devotion within them. So these are the things that I was trying to approach. The first chapter of the introduction has to do with the Sufi doctrine and the underlying Sufi ideas for visualizing the spiritual guide in your mind.
And for me, that is the real underlying reason why they eventually get articulated into the actual iconic image. And then the then the semi-ipronology starts and start looking at the early images during upper and jungle, southern period when jungle was the prince of Yogis. And it becomes clear that a lot of the iconography and the ideas of Islamic spirituality in South Asia are also sourced or influenced from the local spiritual traditions of the north Yogis particularly. So that had to be dealt with because that's a historical reality.
And then I dive more into a history of these devotional images within the great, three great emperors, upper jungies and Shah Jhan and looking at the others and also always trying to get to the bottom of the heart of what is the meaning that has been generated. How are they being viewed? How are they being embodied? How is their presence being transferred onto the viewer?
Those sort of ideas and looking at a lot of primary textual material as well. And then we go into the crux, the heart of the book, which is to do with the birth of this genre as an iconic art form in the mid-17th century, which takes place under the two children of Empress Shah Jhan, Tara Shiko, the heir apparent and Jhanara taken the first lady of the Mool Empire. And the last three chapters focus on that. So many directions.
How do you think, how do I ask? Could you comment upon the function of the aesthetic in this context? How is this art functioning? Whether with respect to, you know, art history as a whole or something particular in the self-Asian context, but I'm sensing that and certainly having read your work that there's much to be said about the purpose and the meaning being imbued in the sort of art.
There's again, there's a layered way or a multi-valence there in which these artworks are performing several roles. I think the most literal role would be as illustrations to particular stories. For example, you have the lives of saints in Islamic tradition and you have art but the illustrations of that or you have the Jokur Vassishta that Prince Seim had illustrated or the other Sufi romances and illustrating those. So there's that very little aspect to it.
But then when we go deeper, there's also the element of embodied presence, which I'd like to really talk about in the book. So, particularly starting from even a late Akbar period, you show how during the Akbar period he clearly aligned himself not with the more orthodox and mainstream Islamic ideas. He's separated himself and I'm trying to show how he actually spiritually speaking aligned more with the Antinomian, the Vassish, the wandering Palimgar type who was more, was less attached to the Sharia, for example, but more on the fringe of the society labeled as the ones who don't follow the Sharia. But very much through the visual book, I have to realign themselves with that very inspired Palimgar type.
So the image making then is also, so there's the second level. How there's a self-hashing that is happening through the images of saints, so there's that. But then we can go deeper into the idea and there's actually also the embodied sacred presence of these saints, which are passing on Barakah or blessings and sometimes even spiritual teachings through the image itself to the viewer. And that really starts happening with the Jangi period and then Shahjan, but the two children of Shahjan, Dara, and Dara Begum were active followers of the Sufi order in South Asia.
And so that's when the Jangi came into being when they had a need to depict images of their own Sufi masters and to show the chain of transmission of that legacy as well. And for Jangi, Dara Begum, since you couldn't always have personal access to these male shakes or Sufi masters, the image actually acted as a portal of communication. Very much like you can really think about it as a way in Darshan can work. And I think I'm genuinely convinced of course that local Indic climate really played a huge role in the development of this genre of devotional poetry.
That's a certain thing. Certainly this phenomenon is fertilized by certain soil and I think Darshan is a lot more of a lot. You know, there might be subtle differences between Darshan and Mwipsey and understanding what else is taking the blessings through such visuals as here. And I think that certainly there's something in the air.
That's being known that's the subtle common. Are there particular images that anybody who hasn't yet done so well means that these images are stunning? But are there particular images that really move? I don't want to say favorite because how do you choose between your children?
But are there particular images that sort of set you on this quest to find what's inspiring or compelling and powerful in some way? Some of the most plain simple stock profile portraits of these non-saints, these historically non-saints, are mainly the most moving ones because for example, Janara Beggam's own spiritual guide was Molata, who lived in Kashmir. And some of his portraits are some of the most beautiful, direct images that you will ever see in Indian painting. And clearly the idea is not to create this very elaborate showing, like the art is not showing its skills and they are stunning detailed portraits, but the idea is that the function, the function of it acting as the surrogate and the actual presence of the saint in the image is what's so important.
And you can really capture that spark in the eyes. Even the tiny hair coming out from the ears, if you really zoom in, these are tiny portraits, sometimes the face itself is no bigger than my thumbnail. Literally, but you have to zoom in with the magnifying glass and you can see the stunning details. So there's this immediacy and yet there's so much detail, it just keeps on deepening as more.
You look, it's almost you can see yourself in the shoes of these patrons looking at these images and receiving that benefit from these images. So those are some of the most beautiful ones. And other wonderful, I mean, there's so many as you said. Another important, more popular, well-known type is those that were made for Janghir as these dream analogies of his dreams.
And that were made for his royal Adam. And one of them is this beautiful one in which Janghir is offering his own autobiography to Sheikh Busan, the keeper of the Terga in Ajmer. And he is privileging the Sheikh over all the worldly emperors. The Ottoman emperor, you have Prince James, who's completely out of the hair.
The lowest on the hierarchy of kings. And then at the top, you have the angels coming down. That's a beautiful, but for me, the multi valence of that image is so beautiful the way of course it's an emblem of imperial and royal power. And it's also essentially coming out from that specific indompslim devotional epistemology or worldview.
It would not have come into being, had it not been the fact that all these rulers, this entire culture was structured and molded out of this unique devotional framework. And that through these particular images, you can really dive into that framework. Fascinating. Was there anything that stood out to you or surprised you about this process?
Oh, I mean, on every level. Yeah, sometimes the books go more or less the way we think the research I should say. And oh yeah, surprise. And sometimes there are things that, wow, I didn't expect this at all.
Yes, essentially, initially it was going to be far more focused. The book, it was going to just focus on, you know, non-images of saints and albums and just represent, like who was being depicted, who was the whole sort of thing. But then I was, it felt like those images were screaming out and trying to tell me that you need to tell the whole story and go deeper, into their deeper meaning and how they all connect into this underlying framework, metaphysical and devotional framework. So for me, that was much this idea of one could keep on deepening the meaning of the book.
And for me, that was a very surprising element because, and that really got unlocked because of me taking on Farsi, learning Farsi as a language. That's the other tragedy that's happened within South Asian people who focus on South Asia that we, just like the partition of Indian Pakistan, languages are also divided. So India takes on the Nagari and the and Pakistan takes on Urdu and Persian and the train shows every meat unfortunately. And that's, for me, such a tragedy.
And I really wanted to get rid of those, or at least transcend those actual boundaries. So I had to take a deep dive into Persian and that itself unlocked so many doors. Just to realize how that culture was so deeply seeped into the Persianate world was a huge awakening. Fascinating.
What do you think would most benefit from this book? I think anyone, well, a lot of, I've read focused, consciously writing a book that was not get to get into the nitty gritty terminology and philosophy. I've tried to keep it very reader friendly. And literally anyone from undergraduate students interested in Islamic South Asia to scholars of Islamic South Asia and South Asia would be interested in this sort of book, but particularly scholars of history and art history.
But yeah, I had a wider audience in mind. People who want to know more about South Asian Islamic South Asia, pre partition, I would say, would benefit from it most. But the idea was that it could also be used as a parallel sort of survey of model art history as well. So depending on what focus people want to have.
And tell us about continued research. It's just worth it. You hope to continue in some sense. Lots of projects that have been in mind, the two projects in particular that are coming out from any footnotes of the Hana Shum, the bulk site research one is thinking about moving in both projects, I really see myself moving away from just your art history and go deeper into cultural history.
I think that's been my real interest lives translating Persian texts, looking at the cultural context of lived individuals. So one team that I've been thinking one more is the great upper era saint from Lahore, Shavasan, who was a London and an Omen and his love for the Hindu boy, Madhula is a staff of legend, at least in the Punjab it is, and people know that very well and and Madhula then became his senior disciple and then his disciple wrote this fascinating biography of Shavasan in in poetic verse, which I think is too translated and through that again going local going into the crowded someone was essentially a way controversial figure. Shavasan known for his drunkenness about literal and metaphysical as well as other elements which were clearly going against mainstream Islam and mainstream social activities very much and antonomian. How has he continued to be so popular and what was the context that made him into this almost like a cultic figure in 17th century northern India is that's that's a theme that I'm working on.
And the other thing that I really want to work in on is basically a biography of Dara Pregum, the princess she was the most powerful woman on the planet when she was alive. She had all the resources, she had all the fleet of ships for trading in the most important port on Surat. She helped the royal steel in her own hands and she was great patroness of architecture and art and gardens and she played in a huge important though failed role during the war of succession between Jana, between Auden Zevan Dara. She was a beloved figure in South Asian history and yet who wrote and not a biography who wrote a biography of saints.
So prolific she was a poet, not a single word has been uttered about her and I'm just like surprised about that and someone needs to do something. I'm not the best person to do it frankly because I'm not a trained historian or a cultural historian but someone needs to do it so that's on my bucket list. So no shortage of things to keep you busy. Oh absolutely.
And there's all these side projects that are continuing to happen and working on this fascinating album which I start with the book with this Deep Usulan album made in South India in my soul in the late 18th century by Deep Usulan for him and I'm doing a more lengthy project on the album itself trying to contextualize it, translate and a comment on the opening preface as well as think about why that album was made at that particular time and for that particular patron so that's that project also happening. Fantastic. Was there anything else about this publication that you hope you would touch on for today? There's several facets that but I think that I mentioned something that wasn't very clearly said in the book itself.
Just the idea to realize a how nuanced Islamic history is generally and this is just one tiny sliver of a slice into one particular region and one particular period. Just to give an idea of I thought thinking about of course the idea that somehow image making is not allowed in Islam itself should be completely dismantled and I think that was one of the things that I would like to highlight in this book that the idea of Islam slims and Muslim devotion are always tied in with image making. It's a beautiful idea upon which to end. Well thank you very much for being on the podcast today.
Thank you so much for inviting me. Oh certainly it was our pleasure. For those listening we have been speaking with Dr. Murad Montaz, he's a assistant professor at the Department of Art at Williams College and speaking with us.
I just got associated with that on the associate professor. That's an update. Murad needs to update his email. See that's your cause he's a down associate professor.
So sorry you're right and you do that. It just happened like July 1st. Congratulations congratulations. It's a big deal so great.
Wonderful. He's speaking to him about his brand new open access, real publication. Faces of God, images of devotion and Indo-Muslim painting, 1500-1800. Keep well until next time keep listening, keep reading and keep contemplating the power of art.
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