ABSTRACT
A BELIEVER AMONG BELIEVERS:
THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, PRACTICES AND MEANINGS
IN A VILLAGE IN BANGLADESH
By

Jean Ellickson

This thesis describes the religious beliefs and practices of a
predominantly Muslim village in eastern Bengal and the interaction
between the religion and the social system. The symbol system and the
appropriate social relationships combined to produce in the minds of
the villagers the conception of living a "good" Islamic life in an
Islamic society.

The Bengali Muslim performed religious rituals in the context of
a bilateral and affinal kinship group, the atmiyo. Beyond this circle
of kinmen, he interacted with other believers on many levels. A con-
gregation of worshippers supported a local mosque, but outside acts of
worship, interacted little within the mosque congregation as such. It
was the Islamic world, at best a conceptual group, which took on great
religious significance for the Bengali Muslim. No man is raised above
any other in Islam, there are no priests. One is a believer among
many believers. The villager found himself equal in rights in the
realm of religion, but also equal in responsibility. He had to strive

for the salvation of his own soul, at the same time striving for the

Jean Ellickson

perfection of society according to Islamic law. Some men could not
stand this emotional loneliness or were simply not satisfied to limit
their religious experience to the ordinary round of prayers, fasting,
and feasting. For these individuals there were the religious beggars
and local saints and shrines dedicated to former saints, people be-
lieved to have special access to God. At these shrines and in the
company of these men, people could find assistance for physical or
emotional problems or ceremonies designed to give a mystical experience

or GOde

A BELIEVER AMONG BELIEVERS:
THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, PRACTICES, AND MEANINGS

IN A VILLAGE IN BANGLADESH

By

Jean Ellickson

A THESIS

Submitted to

Michigan State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Anthropology

1972

TO MY FATHER,

CURTIS ARTHUR ELLIC KS ON

11

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis is dedicated to my father, Curtis A. Ellickson, who
did not live to see the completion of these many years of graduate
work. He and my mother, Laura M.; my brother, James Curtis; his wife,
Mary Ann; and their daughter, Kimberley Jean gave their loving support
during this time.

There were two major turning points in my life leading to a career
as an anthrOpologist. The first was a telephone call from Washington
a little over ten years ago asking if I would like to go to Pakistan
with the Peace Corps. I had had a continuing desire to experience more
of the world beyond the boundaries of the United States. The Peace
Corps tour allowed me to see much of the world, but also focused by
interests in South Asia. Though I returned again to eastern Bengal to
do field work, the first two years living in another culture had the
greatest impact on me as an individual.

The second major change occurred after I had returned from East
Pakistan and was taking graduate courses at Michigan State University
with no well-defined purpose. I started working in the Asian Studies
Center as a student assistant. There I came in contact with the
Director of the Center, Dr. William T. Ross and the Assistant Director,
Dr. Ralph W. Nicholas. As anthrOpologists they encouraged me to enter
anthropology. This began for me a wonderful association combining

interests in anthropology and the Bengali people. Dr. Ross has remained

iii

a steadfast guide, supporter, and friend. Dr. Nicholas has become the
major influence in my academic career. His extensive knowledge of
Bengal is coupled with a willingness to extend himself for his students
that has made him an ideal teacher and an inspiration as a model for

an aspiring teacher of anthropology.

I would also like to express my appreciation to Dr. Marc J.
Swartz, Dr. Alfred B. Hudson, and Dr. Leonard Kasdan for their assis-
tance and encouragement in class and in the formulation of my research.
Dr. Iwao Ishino and Dr. Harry Raulet were very helpful to me at many
times and assisted by reading this thesis. Dr. Rachel Van Meter and
Dr. Gholam Sorrwar were excellent teachers of the Bengali language.
Under their guidance, a dreaded task became enjoyable and relatively
successful. To my fellow students in anthropology and those in other
fields who were preparing to do research in Bengal, I owe a great debt
for their intellectual companionship and the simple joy of knowing
them. In the preparation of this thesis, I wish to thank Mrs. Nancy
Morey for her editorial assistance and Mrs. Kathy Dunn for an excel-
lent job of typing.

During my first trip to Bengal, I met a number of people with whom
I was able to continue a friendship after my return to Michigan State
University. I wish to thank Mr. Richard O. Niehoff, Campus Coordinator
of the Pakistan Project, and all the pe0ple associated with the Mid-
West Universities Consortium in Internation Affairs for making it
possible for me to return to Bengal for field work. Dr. Edgar and Mrs.
Kathryn Schuler were in Comilla, East Pakistan for the first part of my

stay there as a Peace Corps volunteer. Dr. Schuler was an advisor to

iv

the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development from Michigan State Univer-
sity. Their home has always been a place where I could go to share
with them their love for Bengal and the Bengali peOple. In addition
to being humanitarians, they are both scholars of great integrity and
sincerity.

When I returned to Bengal in 1968 I was met and assisted by Dr.

S. A. Rahim and his wife, Majida; Dr. Abdul Muyeed and his wife, Lenu;
and Mr. A. B. M. Nurul Huq and his wife, Jahanara. These former col-
leagues at the Pakistan Academy for Rural Deve10pment made my return a
true homecoming and continued their kind support during my stay there.
I made many new friends and wish to express my gratitude to the entire
staff of the Academy and the staff of the Kotwali Thana Central Cooper-
ative Association. I am grateful to be able to say that I have learned
that the faculty at the Academy came through the independence upheaval
safely.

I have had no word about the fate of many other friends, those of
the village and town. My closest companions were those who served me
and assisted in my work. Much of what I learned about the meanings of
things was gathered at informal bull sessions in the kitchen as the
evening meal was being prepared. In addition to their friendship, I
am grateful to Mr. Mohammed Hussain Majumdar, Mr. Taju Miya, Mr.

Shafiq Miya, and Mr. Muksud Miya for the faithful and sincere manner

in which they performed their services to me. Mr. Majumdar was my
assistant, who translated rapid, garbled or village dialect Bengali
into slow, grammar school Bengali for me. He helped me formulate ques-

tions and generally made the way smooth. Mr. Taju Miya was a cook

whose friendship was a continuation from the days of the Peace Corps.
Taju was a stern watchdog who advised against behavior that might
offend Bengali Muslim sensibilities. At the same time, however, there
was never a task requested that he would not do. Mr. Shafiq Miya was
my regular rickshaw puller; the first to approach the strange foreigner
and announce he would work for her. Shafiq was a man, more a boy, at
once part of the village and separated from it. Anthropologists use
peOple for the purposes of their work, and for the year of my field
work Shafiq and his family went through almost every major life crisis
with me recording the events. But if I used Shafiq, I also loved him.
Mr. Muksud Miya, another old acquaintance, was taken on as night guard
only after circumstances convinced me of the need for such a post.
Little did I realize what a treasure house of folk tales and folk
beliefs was coming to spend the nights at my house. After Muksud came
the evenings were filled by listening to him rather than typing the
notes from the day's activities.

The pe0ple of the village which I have called Shaheenpur have my
everlasting gratitude. They took me into their village and were
patient with my interruptions to their work, my gauche mistakes, and
my ridiculous explanations about Americans who went to the moon. Mr.
Abid Ali introduced me to the village, and he and his family kept their
home always open to me. Mr. Abdul Huq, who explained much of the vil-
lage social structure for me, was a sensitive observer of the local
scene. I shall never be able to decide who was dearer to me, Mr. Akmat
Ali or his grandson, Joynal Abedin. It was from these two "brothers"

that I came to understand the affection between alternate generations.

vi

And for some reason they included me in this circle of affection.
There are many more names which should be mentioned, but I shall simply
extend my heartfelt thanks to all of the peOple of Shaheenpur.

I have left until last one of the most important peOple in this
story, a man to whom I owe one of the greatest debts for his influence.
I am certainly not alone in my debt to Dr. Akhter Hameed Khan. When
I first met him he was the Director of the Pakistan Academy for Rural
Development at Comilla. It was under his guidance and because of his
unstinting work that the villages of eastern Bengal were becoming
better places in which to live, and the villagers could see some h0pe
of more than unceasing hardship. My hope is that he will be able to

continue his work.

vii

LIST OF

LIST OF

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

FIGURES . . . . .

Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION
/’II. THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF A VILLAGE
III. ISLAM AND THE VILLAGE .
IV. RITES OF PASSAGE
v. SHRINES AND THEIR ADHERENTS .
VI. DISEASES AND CURING . . . . . . .
VII. CONCLUSION
FOOTNOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

viii

Page

ix

10

72
108
134
155
178
189

192

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page
1. Population in Shaheenpur by Age and Sex . . . . . . . . . . l6
2. Family Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33-34
3. Percentage of Nuclear and Joint Families . . . . . . . . . 35

4. The Process of Residence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38-40

ix

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure
l. The Layout and Genealogy of a Small Homestead . . . . . . . 21
2. The Layout and Genealogy of a Large Homestead . . . . . . . 25

3. A Comparison of Three Calendars: Bengali,
Islamic (Hijri), and Roman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

My first encounter with the people of Bangladesh was as a Peace
Corps volunteer in the years 1961 through 1963. Having had no experi-
ence in the behavioral sciences, I can describe my reaction at that
time as mere curiosity about what it was that made these peOple behave
differently from me and my fellows, taking offense at what was not
meant to give Offense and then doing things that were quite distressing
to us. This was my first course in cultural anthrOpology. When later
exposed to formal anthrOpology, I resolved to study the belief system
of these people as that which would best help me understand their
culture. Still later, my study was narrowed to the only slightly more
manageable topic of the religious beliefs and practices of rural
Bengali Muslims.

When I worked in Bangladesh it was the eastern province of the
country of Pakistan. In 1947 the peOple of eastern Bengal had hope-
fully united with the Muslim peOples of the Punjab, the Sind, the
Northwest Frontier, and Baluchistan as the state of Pakistan, separated
from Hindu India after independence from the British. After ten years
of parliamentary democracy, the country was taken over by the military,
led by General Ayub Khan. From the beginning of the nation, West
Pakistanis had dominated the government and the country because of

their greater number in the civil administration and the military,

1

though the pOpulation was larger in East Pakistan than in the western
part of the country. The East also contributed the larger share of
foreign exchange to the country through its production and export of
jute. The military take over almost completely frustrated the develop-
ment of the eastern wing of the country. The military rulers were West
Pakistanis, and the western wing prospered. Ayub Khan managed to stay
in power for eleven years through a system of indirect elections he
called "Basic Democracies." In 1968 under increasing complaints of
corruption, Ayub Khan's government began to crumble. In early 1969
martial law was again declared, and Ayub Khan handed over the reigns

Of government to his Chief of Staff, General Yahya Khan.

Ayub Khan had kept the resentment in East Pakistan under control
by occasional token concessions to the Bengalis Of a few more jobs in
the civil administration and slightly larger shares in the national
budget. Yahya Khan, however, declared that he was committed to re-
turning the country to a parliamentary form of government. The way
appeared to be Opening again for the Bengalis to have a hand in decid-
ing their own fate. Whatever little share the Bengalis had had in the
running of a government at the lowest levels and the development of at
least the agricultural sector, they and their leaders were ready. In
the elections which were held in December 1970, the Awami League, which
had almost its entire following in the eastern wing, won 167 out of the
169 seats allotted to East Pakistan. This would have given the Awami
League the majority in the National Assembly, if the Assembly had ever
been convened. Yahya Khan and the other West Pakistani leaders reneged

when they saw the result would be a civilian government run by a Bengali

majority. They postponed the meeting of the Assembly to draw up a con-
stitution and met the resulting protest demonstrations in East Pakistan
with bloody repression. The Bengalis then had to endure nine months Of
terrible repression and a fourteen day war in which the armed forces of
India interceded on their behalf before their new nation of Bangladesh
was free. In this thesis I shall use primarily the past tense not

only because I am reporting what happened during my fieldwork, but
because I do not know if the village in which I worked still exists,
nor the fate of its peOple.

Little work has been done by either anthropologists or sociolo-
gists in eastern Bengal, and very little has been written. Bertocci
(1970) has written the first full length community study. There has
been no study available, however, of the belief system of the eastern
Bengali Muslims. One can occasionally find descriptions of some par-
ticular beliefs in fantastic beings and local myths in works on other
subjects.1 Books on Islam by Bengali scholars have tended to be exhor-
tations to belief rather than descriptions of beliefs and local prac-
tices.

In my preparations for fieldwork, the study most influencing the
formation of my hypotheses about the function of religion in the lives
of Bengali Muslims was a short paper written by Glasse (1967) for the
SEATO Cholera Research Laboratory. He did his research for the paper
in the western part of Comilla district. Glasse found a prevalence of
social groupings in which the members jointly feasted on religious
occasions and met for prayers in the face of a common threat. A reli-

gious leader was hired to serve the members of the group. This group

also had the major responsibility for social control on the local
level. An offending member, who found himself expelled from the group,
was cut Off from almost all social contact and from religious services.
However, I found that these groups did not exist in the eastern part
of Comilla district where I did my work.

Some of the most stimulating work on religion, rituals and belief
systems, has been done by British anthropologists working in Africa.
Turner (1957), in his work on the Ndembu, has described a society whose
matrilineal descent and succession, coupled with virilocal residence,
has produced a social system even more prone to social tensions than
the ordinary. Overriding the fissioning tendency in the social struc-
ture were the belief system and rituals which emphasized the major
values of the society. Among the Ndembu, when tensions in the commu-
nity reached a breaking point, a curing ritual was held, which brought
individuals from each side of the dispute together in cooperation as
patients and practitioners. For the time being, at least, the crisis
was avoided. The experience of the ritual brought tensions back to a
manageable level.

Gluckman (1962:26-43) has explained why he thinks that social
relations are ritualized in tribal societies but not in modern, indus-
trialized societies. By "ritualized" he meant that an individual was
given a particular role in a ritual because of a particular social role
that he held. The individual and the members of the community were
reminded of the importance Of the social role through the ritual.
Gluckman did not include in his typology the "peasant" society, the
category of small agriculturalists into which most anthropologists

would place the farmers of Bengal. He explained the "high

ritualization of tribal society from the fact that each social relation
in a subsistence economy tends to serve manifold purposes." Tribal
roles were "multiplex" or "diffuse" (1962:26). In addition, he stressed
that because of the low level of technology and resultant uncertainty
about crOps and good health, there was a higher level of anxiety than

in modern societies. The proper performance of a role took on "high
moral import" (1962:28). The smallest disturbance, like failure to
perform a role, seriously affected the whole community. Therefore
social relations were ringed around with ritual. In modern societies

' where a person's various roles are more often

where roles are "simplex,'
played out in separate settings, social relations do not need to be
ritualized to separate the roles.

These ideas were of little help, however, in understanding a
Bengali Muslim community. Conflict was common and illness was rife,
but these problems were not dealt with ritually at the community
level. There were almost as many possible types of curers available
as there were illnesses to cure. The curers were sought out by
individuals according to what was believed to be the cause of the
disease and other factors that will be described later. The curing of
physical illness, however, had no apparent effect on the ills of
society.

Roles were only slightly less multiplex than might be found in a
tribal society. The man who owned the village shop might be at the
same time one's father's sister's son, one's creditor, the farmer who
had the neighboring plot, and the elder on the village council to which

one took his land dispute with his brother. The only individuals with

whom one might have simplex relations were met in town or at distant

village markets. There the cloth merchant was no more to the buyer
than a seller of cloth.

To satisfy Gluckman's other criterion, life could be no more
anxiety-producing and precarious anywhere than on the densely popula-
ted Gangetic delta under conditions of monsoon agriculture. Yet to my
knowledge, the community at any level did not take on mystic signifi-
cance to be set right by the ritual performance of roles. Within the
kinship group this statement did not hold. In rites of passage,
kinsmen had their Special roles to play that expressed their relation-
ship toward the kinsman for whom the rite was held.

The group that takes on mystical significance for the Muslim is
the Islamic world, at best a conceptual group. The people with whom I
worked were Muslims Operating in various groupings of Muslims. A man
was a member of a family, a neighborhood, a community, perhaps, a
market area, and a region. In each he was a Muslim among Muslims. In
reality, beyond the family circle there might be individuals of other
faiths, but it was the idea of a universal brotherhood which mattered.
As long as there were like-minded individuals with whom to interact,
with which particular group of Muslims they interacted was not of much
significance. There may have been gaps in the knowledge of why some-
thing Specific was done and misunderstanding on points of theology,
but there was still a vague idea of what a Muslim community, a Muslim
society, should be like. To this extent, Islam is a modernizing force,
mitigating against parochial forces, at least on the local level. This
is not to say that local loyalties did not exist. The religion, how-
ever, did not encourage them; therefore, the social and geographic

groups tended not to be celebrated in religious ritual.

Geertz (1960) has worked in a similarly complex situation in Java
where Islam has made inroads on an Indicized civilization which was
itself overlaid on a nature-worshipping countryside. His definition
of religion has proved to be quite useful in understanding Bengali
Muslims. He said that "a religion is a system of symbols which acts
to establish powerful, pervasive, and longlasting moods and motivations
in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and
clothing these with such an aura of factuality that the moods and
motivations seem uniquely realistic" (l966:4). Symbols, especially
religious symbols, bring to mind such concrete examples as the cross in
Christianity. In this realm, the Qur'an functions similarly for the
Muslims. There is the same awe and reverence in the presence of the
Qur'an. Special care must be taken of the book, and special prepara-
tions made by an individual before handling and reading it. The
Qur'an is not only a book of religious instruction, but these are the
actual words of God. As such, the words have intrinsic value and
mystical power to the extent that repeating them or writing them is
believed to cure illness. The tendency for these Arabic words to take
on aspects of a magic formula is probably stronger in a society where
the great majority of the peOple do not understand the Arabic language.
As with all ritual, the rhythmic chanting of the Arabic prayers is com-
forting to the pious listener.

The words of the Qur'an are symbolically significant on more than
just the awe inspiring level. In translation, they are the rules by
which a Bengali Muslim should live. God has set forth a pattern for
life. The Muslim identifies himself as one who tries to follow that

pattern. The simple acts of daily life were therefore symbolic to the

villagers as their attempts to lead an Islamic life according to their
understanding. The Muslims of eastern Bengal may be more self-conscious
about their particular customs than in other parts of the world where
Islam has predominated for a longer time. Bengali Muslims have had
another life style stemming from another great tradition, Hinduism,
available as a model. Indeed, prior to partition, Hindus dominated the
economic and political life of the area. The Muslims were only domi-
nant in number. It was the Islamic way of life by which a Muslim
identified himself, a way of life which he still follows, self-
consciously.

A Muslim villager in eastern Bengal can be identified by what he
wears, by what he eats. A man's outward piety may even be measured by
the length of his shirt. The Muslim village woman covers herself com-
pletely before strange men. All over the world Muslims refrain from
eating pork. This negative injunction is not a very distinctive fea-
ture, however, as a contrast with Hindus, among whom only the lowest
castes eat pork. In addition, a positive injunction has arisen that
Muslims should eat beef. The origins Of this belief may have been in
hostility to the Hindu community and to antagonize, but beef eating has
come to be simply an identification. Some of the poorer people may eat
beef only once a year on the day all Muslims are supposed to sacrifice
an animal. The religious literature describes a variety of animals
which are permissable to sacrifice, including camels. In eastern
Bengal the available animals are cattle and goats. To my knowledge, no
one sacrificed a goat. (Hindus commonly sacrificed goats but never
cattle.) Only beef was apprOpriate for the occasion. Muslims circum-

cize their sons and marry both their sons and daughters by contract.

Every act cannot be in contrast to those of the Hindus, but in general,
acts, social relations, social structure and symbolic of an Islamic way
of life.

I begin this study with a description of the social structure and
organization of the village in which I worked. The ideal social struc-
ture is in some cases contrasted with the social organization, or the
way in which interpersonal relations really Operate. In addition to
the organization of kinship groups and the community, I have described
some of the social forms used for working out conflicts. Islam is
primarily involved in the process of conflict resolution on an ideologi-
cal level, dictating or at least influencing the rules. Religious
ritual was seldom, if ever, used to resolve conflict. In chapter two,
I describe how the religion Of Islam, the rituals which are a major
part of the world religion, was perceived and carried out on the local
level. An arbitrary decision was made to make a separate chapter for
rites of passage. Circumcision, marriage, and death rituals are
described in Islamic literature. And the two great festivals of Islam
are partially celebrated in the family setting as in common for rites
Of passage. Rites of passage, however, have many local additions to
the rituals not found in the festival celebrations. The last two
chapters involves individuals working out individual problems by means
of mysticism and curing. Both of these activities used Islamic sym-
bols. Under the cloak of Islam, many of these activities met needs not

satisfied in the ordinary round of prayers, fasting, and feasting.

CHAPTER II

THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF A VILLAGE

The choice of Shaheenpur (pseudonym) as a research site was fortu-
itous. My assistant, whose home was three miles away in a village on
the Indian border, met a cooperative manager at the Kotawli Thana Cen-
tral Cooperative Association (Academy in local parlance) with whom he
had attended high school. The cooperative manager invited me to come
and do my research in his village. With the Academy for Rural Deve10p-
ment in the area, the rural peOple were relatively familiar with the
idea of research; people asking questions. I asked to be introduced to
the leaders of the village to get their permission. The two leaders
who were brought to meet me were the incumbent and the former Union
Council members. The Union Council was the lowest level unit in what
was then Pakistan's system of representative government called Basic
Democracies. The village of Shaheenpur was large enough to elect its
own representative to the Union Council. The two men were enthusiastic
about my working in their village. I asked about the village sardar,2
a term for traditional leaders, but was told that this village had
none.

By Bengali standards, Shaheenpur was a nucleated village in that
it was separated from other villages on all sides by paddy fields. This
was not to say that Shaheenpur was nucleated in the sense that the vil-
lages of North India and the Deccan are; all of the homesteads were not

10

ll

closely clustered. There were agricultural fields separating many of
the clusters of homesteads, but an observer could clearly see, because
of the extended open space around the village, the boundaries of
Shaheenpur. It was one of the largest villages in the area; its bound-
aries corresponding to the Old revenue and census magzg. For revenue
purposes, the Moghuls had delineated these geographical units called
gauge, and the British had retained them. Many of the gauge now con-
tained more than one named social unit or grim (village) (Bertocci
1970:12-14). The gauge Shaheenpur and the gram Shaheenpur were identi-
cal.

Shaheenpur was not an isolated rural village. Though it might
better be called urban influenced than a rural/urban village. It was
situated about one and one half miles outside Comilla, the district

headquarters town of Comilla district. In the 1961 Census of Pakistan,

 

Comilla municipality was reported to have a pOpulation of 54,759
people. It was a town of some importance in eastern Bengal, though
little in the form of significant industry had been develOped. In pre-
partition days, Comilla was known as a "cultural center," a reputation
which it has retained.

Shaheenpur is here called an urban influenced town because, though
the men of Shaheenpur could and did go into town with ease, about
fifty-eight per cent of the men sixteen and over, who were not in
school, reported that they worked exclusively in the village, mainly at
agricultural pursuits. Twenty young men sixteen and over were high
school or college students. Of the others, only eleven per cent worked
exclusively outside the village at non-agricultural occupations.

Thirty-one per cent reported that they worked partially in the village

12

and partially outside the village. Of this thirty-one per cent, one
third were day laborers. The day laborers worked primarily in agri-
culture, whether in Shaheenpur or other villages, but they occasionally
found such work as brick making in or near the town. About twelve men
were included in the category of those employed partly outside the
village because they traveled into town daily to sell milk. Most of
them had a route and sold milk at the same houses every day. They sold
milk from their own cows, plus, in many cases, the cows of their kins-
men and neighbors. An excellent cow at the peak of her production
might give sixteen to twenty pounds of milk per day. Four to eight
pounds a day was much more common. Most of the milk sellers were pros-
perous farmers, as a poor man with little land could not produce the
fodder to feed the animals. One informant, who did not sell milk,
commented on the low level to which the milk sellers had fallen. "In
the old days, no respectable man would sell milk. One kept cows to
supply one's own family and gave the excess milk to the poor in the
village."

Of those who worked entirely outside the village in non-
agricultural pursuits, most reported themselves to be brick masons'

(raj mistrI) assistants. Such work was better than day labor as it

 

required more skill and offered higher pay, but it was only slightly
more regular. Pulling a bicycle rickshaw was also in the category of
semi-skilled hard labor outside the village. Seventeen men rented
rickshaws from men in town, and one man owned his own. Those who
rented usually had to pay one quarter to one half of what they could
earn for the rent of the rickshaw. Even at that, one could make more

money pulling a rickshaw than as a day laborer, but a good amount of

13

physical stamina was required. The day laborer usually worked at his
own pace, but a rickshaw puller could not stop for a rest when he had a
fare. The rickshaw transported people from the village to town and
back again, but primarily plied the streets of the town.

A number of men worked block printing cloth in town, and a few had
employment at a textile mill about three miles from the village. A
few men had permanent employment as watchmen or messengers in govern-
ment offices such as the East Pakistan Fisheries Department establish-
ment five miles from the village and the East Pakistan Construction and
Building Department office in town. Permanent employment with the
government at even the lowest level bestowed a certain amount of pres-
tige on a village man. Fourteen men worked for the East Pakistan Water
and Power Development Authority which had a large station about one
mile from Shaheenpur and two miles from town. Two or three of these
men had the prestigious permanent employment. The rest, however, were
temporary linemen. Their temporary status was significant not only
because of the insecurity, but it allowed the Authority to pay them
less than the legal minimum wage.3

The influence of the urban center on Shaheenpur was strong. On
Thursday and Sunday the large semi-weekly market (REE) was held in
Comilla town. Most men could not be found in the village Thursday and
Sunday afternoons except in the peak agricultural seasons. They were in
town selling, buying, or just talking. They attended the semi-weekly
markets at other places within walking distance on other days, but not
in such numbers. They bought from permanent town shops, saw town doc-

tors, occasionally visited town mosques and shrines, and very occasion-

ally went to the cinema in town. But economically most of them were

14

farmers, though aware of town possibilities and ideas.

So far, in considering urban influences, it has been the men who
have been discussed. Boys could go with the men as soon as they were
strong enough to make the mile and a half walk. Girls, when they be-
came able to walk to town, were also at the age when their movements
began to be restricted. Muslim women at puberty and beyond are not
supposed to be seen by any but closely related males. The custom is
called purdah, the "veil" or the "curtain." The women of the village
visited other homes in their immediate neighborhood, and some, but not
all, moved about the entire village. When women went beyond the vil-
lage, they traveled in rickshaws draped with a curtain so as not to be
seen. Few had kinsmen in town. An indication of the isolation of the
women was their language. While men could speak the generalized urban

Bengali dialect of the town, in addition to the village dialect, most

women could speak only the village dialect.

THE POPULATION

Shaheenpur was inhabited by 1317 men, women, and children. Of
these, 1256 were permanent Muslim residents. There were ten resident
servants, young people from outside Shaheenpur who did mostly household
work. There were nineteen "masters" (tutors). Since Shaheenpur was
near a town containing a number of colleges, young men from more dis-
tant places, while attending college, tutored the children of a family
in exchange for room and board. I have not included these twenty-nine
peOple in the pOpulation for the purposes of the present study. A very

few servants and masters were kinsmen in the households in which they

15

resided. Most were not related. Though households which kept servants
or masters did so as a general rule, the turnover of personnel was
relatively high. During the year of this study three servants left and
were replaced, and fifty per cent of the masters finished their higher
education and left. Also excluded for present purposes is the one
homestead of thirty-two Hindus resident in the village.4 This is not
to say that Hindus and Hinduism have not influenced the people of
Shaheenpur. The influence will be discussed later in this thesis.
Muslim customs and behavior, however, are to be considered here, and
the inclusion of the Hindus, though residents of the village, would
confuse the presentation unnecessarily.

Of the 1256 permanent Muslim residents of the village, 637 were
male and 619 were female. The age range of the pOpulation is presented
in Table l. The reporting error on ages appeared to be large. One
indication of this was that peOple beyond their twenties in almost all
cases reported their ages at five year clusters, for example, 30, 35,
40, 45, etc. Even the ages of 20 and 25 were more popular than any of
the other ages in the twenties, though there were some reported at all
the other numerals. It was also noted that 8, 10, and 12 were more
often reported as the ages for children than were 9, 11, and 13.

Births were not recorded in the village, and birthdays were not com-
memorated. Consequently, people did not know how old they were with
any precision. Mothers knew how old their infant children were. Half
year ages were given by the parents for their children up to the age of
three. But as age advanced, the precise age became more and more vague.
Nor did people apparently remember ages by associating births with

other events which happened about the same time. When asked, peOple

16

Table 1

Population in Shaheenpur by Age and Sex

Males 100 4. Females
90 49
8°11
no"
eo-eo
Ages 36-51
90 - W
eo-n | j j
_‘ 30-10 I
~49 ] ' J

 

 

 

 

 

 

ow ‘
r 1 U I'— V I

U— 'I I I‘ “r U I l
2!! go. m- an 12: no 7: to o to If lee II: 1.79 I75 200 at

Age Male Female Total
,/ 100+ 3 l 4
90-99 - l 1
80-89 3 5 8
70-79 21 9 30
60-69 28 ll 39
50-59 . 32 27 59
40-49 47 39 86
30-39 82 58 140
20-29 76 97 173
10-19 142 152 294
0-9 .293 .219 422

Total 637 619 1256

l7

pointed out it was ridiculous of me to expect them to know when they
were born if they didn't know exactly how old they were.

The statement of one's age appeared to be more a function of one's
stage or status in life and how one felt. When a man married and had
produced a small family, he became thirty or thirty-five. When his
family was substantial and his own father had died, he became forty or
forty-five. When his children began to marry, he was in his fifties
and sixties. When his sons became family men and began to take over
much of the work because their father was losing his strength, he was
in his seventies and eighties. And when a man had lived a very long
life and felt that his life forces had almost completely deserted him,
he was one hundred. Indeed, two of the old men who said they were one
hundred died within the year of my stay in the village. This assump-
tion of age with increasing and then decreasing responsibility may help
to explain the discrepancy for men in the age pyramid in Table l of
only seventy-six males in the 20-29 category and eighty-two in the
category of 30-39. The males usually married in their late teens and
their twenties. Then when they and their wives had produced a couple
of children, they considered themselves respectable family men of the
village and took on the thirties age category. In fact, however, they
might still be in their mid twenties. A young man of Shaheenpur might
gain respect in a number of ways: by education, by acquiring permanent
employment outside the village, or by wealth, that is, as the son of a
wealthy father. But most men gained the respect of their fellow villa-
gers, that is, they could speak out and their Opinions were listened to,

when they became the heads of small, but growing, nuclear families.

18

Age was resPected in Shaheenpur, and from the foregoing one might
say that men consistently overestimated their ages. There were excep-
tions, however, when my impression was that some men underestimated
their ages. This could be explained by the fact that farming was a
strenuous activity and required vigorous men. Then men who apparently
underestimated their ages either were hoping to retain the vigor of
youth or else did not believe that they had lost any. The ages of
women, however, appeared to be consistently underestimated. It may
have been that women died earlier than men on the average, succumbing
in childbirth or to childbirth related problems. By averaging all of
the live births for the women of the village forty-five (an approximate
age for the end of childbearing) and over, it was found that the women
of Shaheenpur had had an average of 6.27 children born to them in their
life times. This is a relatively high birth rate. For the delivery of
these children, the women had no assistance other than an untrained
midwife. There were, however, no women who died in childbirth during
my stay of one year in the village. The problem seemed rather to be
the under reporting of women's ages by their husbands. Often I would
stop to check an obvious discrepancy. "If your oldest child is sixteen,
how can your wife be twenty-three?" The husband would then revise his
wife's age up a couple of years to make his child's age at least pos-
sible. I found one other obvious discrepancy for those women who had
been born in Shaheenpur and had married within the village. The
fathers consistently gave their married daughters' ages as much younger
than did the women's husbands. Whereas to me a woman might look thirty-
five, her husband said she was twenty-five, and her father reported that

she was fifteen.

19

The ages used in the statistics are those reported by the heads of
households for their wives and children living within their households,
married and unmarried. I did not try to revise the ages according to
my own estimations, except for occasionally leading the informant as
explained above. My revisions would probably have skewed the statistics
even further with my cultural biases compounding errors introduced by

the cultural biases of the informants.

TWO HOMESTEADS

As an introduction to the subjects of kinship and residence I
shall describe two homesteads. These are not composite homesteads made
up of "typical" peOple with "typical" characteristics, but two actual
homesteads which existed in Shaheenpur. Their selection was based,
however, on general principles of kinship organization which they
illustrate. I hOpe to convey by this method the dynamics of kinship
organization. Along with the description of the two homesteads, I
shall investigate the Bengali terms used for kinship and residence
groups. Not only groups, but roles in the homestead and some of wider
community significance will be introduced in this section.

The 1256 Muslim residents of Shaheenpur lived in seventy-six home-
steads (bigi). The homestead was a collection of dwelling structures
and structures used for other household purposes clustered around one
or more Open compounds. One single dwelling structure, however, might
be designated a homestead. The pOpulation size of the homesteads in
Shaheenpur ranged from fifty-one people in the largest to single persons

in the smallest. An old widowed woman, who had some land in the village

20

and only one married daughter living elsewhere, and a divorced man,
whose sons deserted him when he divorced their mother, lived alone in
their homesteads. The homestead was a geographic designation, a social
unit, and usually a kinship unit. The Hindu homestead contained three
unrelated kinship groups of the same caste, but they were recent
arrivals and, in a sense, refugees. The inhabitants of the Muslim
homesteads claimed kinship among all the members, though in a few the
ties were untraceable.

In Figure l, the layout of a relatively small homestead is shown.
The three numbers indicate three dwelling structures. These three
structures coincided with three 2215! 931a meant hearth. The woman
or women of the household prepared the meal for all the members of the
household at this hearth. The economic activities of the household
jointly provided the food to be prepared at the hearth. The members
of the household who shared this food were known as paribar. Paribar
comes the closest to meaning family, but it may also be used by a man
to refer to his wife. Sharing of food symbolizes family unity, and
£212 symbolized the unified family, but it also designated a function-
ing economic group. I shall use the term household for £313. The
homestead in Figure 1 contained four households according to the report
of the inhabitants.

In this homestead lived three brothers whose father was dead.5
The youngest brother was unmarried and had built no house, though he
claimed to have a separate household. This simply meant that he was
economically independent. He had employment outside the village. I
have no information on what the arrangements were for his eating, if he

ate in the homestead. In addition to the three brothers, the fourth

21

Figure l

The Layout of a Small Homestead

1. house of the head of
homestead.

   

2. house of older brother
who worked in textile
mill.

3. house of ”distantly"
related rickshaw
puller.

 

 

X DRAINAGE CANAL

A. cook house for house

#2.

Genealogy for Small Homestead Shown Above

 

—-— #=--‘--------

As? A A A

No
House
House #2 House #1 House #3

 

 

22

household was headed by a young rickshaw puller who was claimed to be
the other men's father's younger brother's son. When the rickshaw
puller did not appear in their genealogy, the brothers explained that
he was really related to them through their grandfather's generation,
but they could not trace the exact relationship. The rickshaw puller
said that about ten years ago he had lived in another part of Shaheen-
pur with his father and two brothers. When his father died, he and his
two brothers sold their small amount of land and house plot and went
off in separate directions. Five years ago he had returned to Shaheen-
pur, and these kinsmen with whom he now lived had given him a small
plot of land on which to build a house. In his household were his
wife, two small sons, and his widowed mother. He had no agricultural
land.

The middle of the three brothers who lived in the homestead
declared himself to be its head (pradhan). He, his wife, and small
daughter lived in house number one. The head of a homestead was usual-
ly the oldest male in the homestead, unless he was very Old and re-
tired. The middle brother explained that the reason he was head of
the homestead was that he kept accounts better than his older brother.
This statement was unlikely to have been true. The oldest brother was
the only one in the homestead with any formal schooling--through class
three. But he also worked full time in the textile mill, so he was not
always around the homestead as was his younger brother. In a number of
other homesteads, where older brothers had their primary responsibili-
ties outside the village, younger brothers were designated as the head
of the homestead. The eldest brother in the homestead in Figure B

lived in house number two with his wife and young daughter and had

23

built a separate cook house for his wife.

The middle brother was the only one in this homestead who reported
his main and only occupation on the census as grihastha. The word
means householder, but in Shaheenpur it also meant a householder who
owned agricultural land and, usually, who did agricultural work. A
man did not have to be the head of a household to be a householder.
Married sons, still members of their father's households, not owning
land separately, were called grihastha. A different designation, how-
ever, was usually found for unmarried sons of a comparable age who did
agricultural work, such as BELLE kéj (work of the homestead). But men
who had no agricultural land nor any future claim to any, though they
had wives, children, and, indeed, households, described their occupa-
tions in other ways. The eldest brother in the homestead in Figure B
reported that his main work was as an employee of the textile mill and
his secondary occupation was grihastha. The youngest brother, who was
unmarried, worked on the line for the East Pakistan Water and Power
Deve10pment Authority and named this as his occupation, not grihastha,
though he owned land and claimed to have a separate household (£2l2)°

The middle brother farmed all of the land of the homestead: his
own .20 acres and the .40 acres apiece of his brothers' which he worked
on shares. The eldest brother, who had a monthly income from the tex-
tile mill of Rs.1506 (a good income by village standards), was relative-
ly well known as a money lender. (This information was acquired from
others, not the man himself.) Taking interest on loans is forbid-
den by Islam. There were people, however, who lent money on interest,
and the practice met a need felt by many peOple in the village. The

money lenders (mahéjan) were, however, criticized by others for their

24

un-Islamic behavior. It was suggested that they would pay for their
crimes in heaven. (One story told that the interest the money lender
had taken would have to be repaid at the day of judgement before he
could enter heaven. Since there would be no money at that time, the
payment could only be made in the money lender's flesh.) Money was
also loaned on usufructuary mortgage. Such a loan was also very
profitable since the lender received all the produce of the land until
the money was repaid. The people, however, considered this to be prof-
it and, therefore, approved, not as interest and un-Islamic. The type
of lending engaged in by the oldest brother of the Figure B homestead
was called taka lagid. For such a loan, one maugd (approximately
eighty-two pounds) of géul (husked rice) must be repaid for every
Rs. 25 borrowed. Unhusked rice cost about Rs. 25 per maund at harvest
time when there tended to be a glut of rice on the market. Money
lenders did not usually sell at that time, but waited until the price
went up. So, depending on the state of the market and the rice crop
for that year, the interest could be as high as one hundred per cent,
though it was usually considered to be fifty to sixty per cent. Even
the middle brother of Figure B homestead, who only had .20 acres of
land, when he got a surplus of money by selling a cow, invested the
money in a loan to another man at this very high rate of interest.
There was no more profitable way to invest one's money than 52kg
_lagid, if one did not mind the religious injunction against the prac-
tice.

An example of a large homestead in Shaheenpur is depicted in
Figure 2. There were forty-three people resident in this homestead

which was divided into eight households. The mosque, shown in the

25

Figure 2

The Layout of a Large Homestead

head of homestead's house.
head of homestead's son's
house.
FaFa younger BrSoSo's house.
Fa Older BrSo's house.
Fa older BrSoSo's house.
Fa older BrSoSo's house.
Fa older BrSoSo's house.

I

I

N H

u e u -

Fa older BrSoSo s house.
Fa older BrSoSo 5 house.

mosque.

shop, head of homestead's.

cow shed, head of homestead's.
guest house and tutor's room
for head of homestead.

cook house for head of home-
stead.

F. guest house for houses 3-9.

U 0 w b ¢>a>\10\u1¢-u

 

Genealogy for Large Homestead Shown Above

 

   

 

ATE—A

A?
Left the
Village

 

26

diagram, was built by the peOple of this homestead and the land donated
by them for the use of the mosque. The founding ancestor of this
homestead had two sons, each of whom had two sons, according to the
memories of the inhabitants of the homestead. The names and existence
of daughters was less well remembered. The fourth of these four men
had had four sons who either died without issue or left the village.
The other three men were represented in the homestead by living sons.
One gusthI (patrilineal descent group) lived in this homestead if
we exclude the man who moved away, about whom little was known. The
gusthi was all those peOple descended through males from a remembered
male ancestor. The larger gusthis remembered great-grandfathers, none
further back than that, and many of the smaller remembered only grand-
fathers. In addition to being a kinship group, the gusthi also appeared
to be a locality group. It was generally true that if a part of one's
gusthi moved away some time previously, facts about marriage and the
birth of their offspring became vague or were completely forgotten.
Facts about married sisters, however, who lived in the homesteads of
their husbands' kin and often in other villages, were within the system
and were usually known. As far as could be ascertained, women acquired
almost a dual gusthi membership. They became members of their hus-
band's gusthi upon marriage, but they retained certain rights in their
natal gusthis. When a woman visited her parental home with her child-
ren, she and the children received gifts as representatives of an
"allied" gusthi. But at the same time she retained rights of asylum
and of inheritance. These rights will be discussed more fully later in

the chapter.

27

Besides the gusthi, there was the atmeo, or all paternal, mater-
nal and affinal kin. One's mother's kin could never be traced as far
back generationally or as accurately as one's gusthi, but they were
still known and important for their relations with one as a child and
their possible use in alliance formation: marital and political. The
recognition of affinal ties was variable and what gave the atmiyo its
elasticity. The father and mother-in-law, son and daughter-in-law,
and brother and sister-in-law all had prescribed roles in relation to
an individual. These would be included in what was called the ghanistho
atmiyo, or close kinsmen. When the atmiyo was mentioned, however, one

had to inquire if it was the ghanistha atmiyg which was meant or the

 

dur samparko (distantly related). Two affinal links between an indi-

 

vidual and a member of his distantly related atmiyo were not unusual,
especially if there was some reason to recognize the individual as a
kinsman. An individual in government Office with whom one could trace
kinship ties, no matter the type of linkage nor how far removed, was
recognized as a kinsman, and one hoped that the recognition was recip-
rocated.

A third concept involving kinship was that of banso. Banso is

 

translated in the dictionary as family, lineage, pedigree, or paren-
tage. An educated man of the region explained that baggg meant one's
direct lineal descent through males, and that at one time peOple
referred to high and low baggg. High bangg meant ashraf status, or
those who claimed descent from Arabs or other Muslim peOples farther to
the west. As such, bangg was a fixed category, except as upwardly
mobile individuals made claims which were gradually accepted in their

communities. My educated informant added, however, that in modern

28

Pakistan it was extremely poor taste to mention anyone's low banso.

The concept of banso was apparently quite different in the village
of Shaheenpur. There the expression was bhélg_(good) banso rather than
high banso, On the other hand, people did not speak of bad banso, but
adding the negative it became, "bhalo banso nai" (they don't have good
_ban§9). No one in the village claimed foreign blood, and it was my
Opinion that they did not even know that this was part of the banso
concept for other people. Good ban§g_was usually associated in the
village with family names or titles bestowed by the government, such
as, Majumdar, Choudhury, Bhuiya, etc. But the idea in the village was
more that of an inherited reputation for good character held as a
trust. The behavior and achievements of the present generation could
improve or impair the banso of succeeding generations. Good bag§3,was
helped by money or wealth, but it was very important how the wealth was
acquired. Money lenders were unlikely to have good banso, but if they
had, were in the process of damaging the good.bag§g of their patri-
lineal kin group. The listing of the attributes of good banso tended to
parallel the attributes of a good Muslim. One example that was given:
"A gusthi that produces maulavis (men with religious educations) is
much more likely to have good baflgg than a gusthi that produces
thieves."

When describing the type of girl a man wanted to find for his son
to marry, it was always mentioned that she should be from a family with
good banso. I asked if this could help the baggg of the children of a
man whose own'baggg was questionable. "Definitely not, children re-

ceive their banso only through their father." Then why was it so

29

important for the girl to be of good banso? ”Families with good banso
produce good girls, of course.”

The banso of the gusthi in the homestead in Figure 2 was fairly

 

good. The inhabitants of the homestead said that the name of their
homestead was Maulavi Bari. The head of the household in house number
nine was a maulavi. He was one of the younger males in the homestead,
but the members of the gusthi were proud of his attainment. Other
people in the village, however, sometimes referred to this homestead
by the head of the homestead. He was one of the older respected men in
the village, had the most land in the homestead (four acres), and was
relatively wealthy by village standards. Finally, the fact that this
homestead had contributed a mosque to the village increased their banso;
The household of the head of Maulavi Bari (Figure 2) was a lineal
joint family (see Table 2, p. 33). That is, living in one household
with pooled resources were the head of the household, his wife, their
son and his wife, and the son's young son and daughter. The economic
activities of this household were more than six people could handle
comfortably. There were four acres of their own land to be cultivated,
plus one acre that they cultivated on shares. Though he was seventy,
the head of the household worked at the cultivation himself with the
assistance of paid agricultural labor and the occasional assistance of
the son, who was thirty-five. The son, however, worked about eight
months of the year in Comilla town block printing cloth for additional
income. There were three cows milked by the head of the household
morning and night. He also spent a share of his time netting and

trapping fish from the tank (a man-made pond) with his grandchildren.

30

The shop he owned, which sold such household needs as cooking oil,
spices, lentils, husked rice, kerosene and tobacco, was open when there
was someone available to keep it open. The grandson, who was twelve,
went to a primary school about a half a mile away, so that he could
help around the house and shop only occasionally. The granddaughter
was only seven, but sometimes she could be found watching the shop for
short periods. Young men from the homestead and even the neighborhood
occasionally kept the shop open. But primarily it was the elderly head
of the homestead who kept the shOp and slept there at night to guard
his stock. Items in the shop could be bought with money or with
husked rice, and credit could be had for the asking both at this shop
and at the other one in the village. No tea or other refreshments
were served at these two shOps, but they were still the places where
the men of the village gathered to talk. Most of the more prosperous
homesteads had guest houses in which male guests could sit, but one
should be invited to enter a guest house or be on Specific business.
Small groups of men could be seen sitting under trees sometimes, or in
other places outside, but the shOps were the only two public places in
the village where anyone could go and talk awhile or listen to local
news.

The women of this household were also busy, but their work was
all within the compound. The wife of the head of the household was in
charge of husking the rice on a dhgki, which in effect dropped a weight
on the paddy to break off the husks. At least two women were required
for this task; one to operate the dhgki and the other to move the rice
in and out from under the weight. The son's wife helped when she had

time. Often husking rice became a group undertaking with women from

31

other households bringing their rice to be husked while they talked and
sometimes sang during this cooperative effort. Poor women sometimes
helped in return for a share of the husked rice from a more prosperous
household.

As in all households with married sons at home, the son's wife had
complete charge of cooking all the meals for the household members. In
households with more than one married son, it was the wife of the
oldest son, usually senior herself, who was in charge of the cooking.
The junior wives helped her. The mother-in-law sometimes helped in the
preparation of some of the things to be cooked, but she was relieved of
all the actual cooking chores. At Maulavi Bari (Figure 2) the wife of
the head of the homestead kept a large kitchen garden designated as
"bushes" on the map. This was a veritable jungle of plants, vines, and
bushes all of which produced some vegetable or spice. The garden also
served to shield the compound from the eyes of peOple walking along the
road. The women shared the tasks of breaking and chopping up firewood
for cooking and repairing the mud walls of the houses after the monsoon
rains had finished their damage for the year.

In Maulavi Bari house number four contained a lineal joint family
like that of the head of the homestead. At this household lived the
head of the household, his wife, their oldest son and his wife, one
unmarried son of the head of the household and four unmarried daughters.
This household with many more members was much poorer than that of the
head of the homestead, holding one 1.40 acres of land and cultivating
.80 acres on shares. Four of the remaining households at Maulvai Bari
were simply nuclear families of a man, his wife, and their unmarried

children. One was a supplemented nuclear family since the husband's

32

widowed mother lived with them. And one was the single person house-
hold of an unmarried male who had nonetheless separated economically

from his married brother.

RESIDENCE

Of the twelve households in the two sample homesteads described
above, only two contained joint families. These were lineal joint
families where one married son and his family lived in the household
of his father. A survey of the residence pattern in the entire vil-
lage Showed the same predominance of nuclear families. The accepted
norm for this area has been that married sons should live in their
father's household until his death. Brothers then separated shortly
after the death of their father. Considering the predominance of
nuclear families the question arises as to whether this norm is chang-
ing and what the residence rules really are.

Figure D is a list of the households found in Shaheenpur using
those categories worked out by Kolenda (1968:346-347) for a comparison
of family types in South Asia. In this classification a family is
considered to be joint only if it included two or more related married
couples. Therefore, a widowed or divorced head of a household living
with a married son and his family would be considered a supplemented
nuclear family in this classification. In Shaheenpur, unless the father
were very old and retired, the family would Operate as a joint family.
There were, however, only two such cases in the village; they have been

counted as supplemented nuclear families.

33

Table 2

Family Types

Number of examples

 

Definitions in Shaheenpur
1. single person household 8
2. subnuclear family--a fragment of a former 13

nuclear family. Typical examples are the
widow with unmarried children, or the widower
with unmarried children, or siblings--whether
unmarried, or widowed, separated, or divorced--
living together.

3. supplemented subnuclear family--a group of 0
relatives, members of a formerly complete
nuclear family, plus some other unmarried,
divorced, or widowed relative who was not
a member of the nuclear family. For example,
a widow and her unmarried children plus her
widowed mother-in-law.

4. nuclear family--a couple with or without 131
unmarried children.

5. supplemented nuclear family--a nuclear family 35
plus one or more unmarried, separated, or
widowed relatives of the parents, other than
their unmarried children.

6. lineal joint family--two couples between 24
whom there is a lineal link, usually between
parents and married son, sometimes between
parents and married daughter.

7. supplemented lineal joint family--a lineal 4
joint family plus unmarried, divorced, or
widowed relatives who do not belong to either
of the lineally linked nuclear families; for
example, the father's widower brother or the
son's wife's unmarried brother.

8. lineal-collateral joint family--three or more 5
couples linked lineally and collaterally.
Typically, parents and their two or more
married sons, plus the unmarried children
of the three or more couples.

34

Number of examples

Definitions in Shaheenpur

9.

10.

ll.

12.

supplemented lineal-collateral joint family-- 1
a lineal-collateral joint family plus unmar-

ried, widowed, or separated relatives who

belong to none of the nuclear families line-

ally and collaterally linked; for example, the

father's widowed Sister or brother, or an

unmarried nephew of the father.

collateral joint family--two or more married 2
couples between whom there is a sibling bond--

usually a brother-brother relationship--plus

unmarried children.

supplemented collateral joint family--a l
collateral joint family plus unmarried,

divorced, or widowed relatives. Typically,

such supplemental relatives are the widowed

mother of the married brothers, or the

widowed father, or an unmarried sibling.

other--households which do not fit into any 1
of the above categories. The example in

Shaheenpur was of a childless couple who had

living with them the man's older brother's

married son and his wife.

Total 225

 

The seventy-six Muslim homesteads in Shaheenpur were divided

into two hundred twenty-five households. Nine per cent of the house-

holds were subnuclear or single person households. Seventy-four per

cent were nuclear or supplemented nuclear households. Only about

seventeen per cent of the households contained some form of joint

family.

35

Table 3

Percentage of Nuclear and Joint Families

 

 

Specific Number of General Number of
Type Households Per cent Type Households Per cent
Single 8 3.6
Subnuclear 21 9.4
Subnuclear 13 5.8
Nuclear 131 58.2
Nuclear 166 73.8
Supplemented 35 15.6
Nuclear
Lineal 24 10.7
Joint
Supplemented 4 1.8 Lineal 34 15.1
Lineal JOInt .
JOInt
Lineal- 5 2.2
Collateral Joint
Supplemented l 0.4
Lineal-
Collateral Joint
Collateral Joint 2 0.9
Supplemented l 0.4
Collateral Joint Collateral 4 1.7
Joint
Other Joint l 0.4
Totals 225 100.0 225 100.0

 

Though the households were predominantly nuclear, except for those
homesteads which contained only one household, most of the homesteads
(socio-geographic unit) contained some form of joint or extended family.

There was only one instance of a son living in a different homestead

36

from his father within the village. The son was a man of forty-five
who had six children of his own, one a married daughter. The father
was seventy-five and living with his third wife (not the forty-five
year old man's mother) and third family, of four small children. Even
brothers who had separated economically after the death of their father
usually continued to live in the same homestead, if not the same house-
hold. There were only eight examples of brothers living in separate
homesteads. In two of these cases there was overt conflict among the
brothers over land, and they separated into different homesteads. One
instance was a case of half brothers, the sons of different mothers,
living in different homesteads. In the other cases, the brothers were
quite advanced in age, being the heads of relatively large homesteads
of just their own progeny. These cases did not include brothers who
were separated when only one migrated to Shaheenpur, or when one or

more brothers were living as ghar jamai, that is, uxorilocally in the

 

homestead of the wife's kin, while the other brothers remained in the
homestead of their patrilineal kin group.

As has been mentioned, the ideal post marital residence pattern
in Muslim Bengal and, therefore, in Shaheenpur was patrilocal; that is,
residence of the son and his wife in the same household as the son's
father with pooled economic resources. The collateral joint family,
however, was not an ideal. Married brothers were expected to divide
the land and separate economically after the death of the fathers.
There were four instances in Shaheenpur of married brothers who had not
divided economically after the death of their father, but lived in a
household together. In only one of these was the widowed mother still

living.

37

One hundred sixty-six, or seventy-four per cent, nuclear and sup-
plemented nuclear families seems quite high if the ideal is for lineal
joint and lineal-collateral joint families. One might suggest that
the ideal norm was no longer reflected in real behavior. Sons must be
setting up post marital neolocal residences, separating economically
from their fathers immediately, or soon, after marriage. Such a
practice did occur, but not with the frequency suggested by the statis-
tics. Of the one hundred sixty-six nuclear and supplemented nuclear
families living in Shaheenpur only twenty-eight or seventeen per cent
of them could possibly have been living in lineal joint households and
were not. That is, the father of the head of the household was dead
or so old that he had not remarried when his last wife died, and he
was retired. In addition, the sons of the heads of these households
were not old enough to be married. This was a marital age and longev-
ity problem. Men who did not marry until twenty to twenty-five and
died by the age of forty to forty-five would never be the head of a
lineal joint family. They would not live long enough to see their
oldest son married.

Any categorization of types will mask the differences among the
items lumped in a category. As has been mentioned above, some house-
holds were nuclear because a man made the choice to set up a household
separate from his father. Whereas for others, no choice was involved.
The household was nuclear because the father of the head of the house-
hold was dead and the sons had not yet married. In the same way,
lineal joint families may result from a range of circumstances. I have
selected fifty-three households for further explanation of how they fit

into the different stages of the developmental family cycle. Table 4

38

below is a processual explanation of some of the statistics found in

Table 2, from the father's point of view.

For this chart, supplemented

households have been combined with unsupplemented households.

a. Categorization
from Table 2.

l. lineal-collateral

joint

2. lineal-collateral
joint

3. lineal joint

4. lineal joint

The Process of Residence

b.

Table 4

Number of house-
holds which meet
qualifications
in column c.

5

c. Explanation.

The ideal, with all the
married sons living in

the household, economi-
cally joint with their

father.

The head of the house-
hold and his wife, their
daughter and her hus-
band, and the head's
younger brother with his
wife.

The head of the house-
hold had only one son
who was married and
living with his father.
These households do not
have the possibility of
becoming lineal-colla-
teral joint.

The lineal link here was
between the head of the
household and his married
daughter. These house-
holds have ghar jamai,

or husbands in the

house. There were no
sons and these house-
holds could never become
lineal-collateral joint.

 

Categorization
from Table 2

39

Table 4 (Continued)

b. Number of house-
holds which meet
qualifications
in column c.

c. Explanation.

 

lineal joint

lineal joint

nuclear

nuclear

nuclear
(supplemented)

14

Only the first son of
the head of the house-
hold was married and
living with his father.
There were other younger
sons, and these house-
holds might become
lineal-collateral joint
as these sons marry. Or
when another son marries,
the older son might set
up a separate household
as is found in the next
example, below.

One married son of the
head of the household
lived with him, but
older sons with their
wives had set up separ-
ate households.

All of the married sons
lived separately from
their fathers, there
were still unmarried
sons in the father's
household.

This old couple lived
alone in their house-
hold. Their sons, who
had separated economi-
cally, gave a set amount
paddy to the parent's
household at each har-
vest. And the old man
still cultivated a small
plot.*

For two old couples the
sons had separated eco-
nomically and the father
had retired. One son

was reSponsible for the

a.

10.

Categorization
from Table 2.

subnuclear

b.

40

Table 4 (Continued)

Number of house-
holds which meet
qualifications
in column c.

53

c. Explanation.

support of one parent
and another the other
parent. Consequently,
one parent was resident
in one household and the
other in another. These
were recorded as four
supplemented nuclear
households rather than
any kind of joint fam-
ily.**

A widow living alone
with only her unmarried
child or children.

*There were other middle aged and old couples living alone who had

no living progeny.

**One widower father and quite a few widowed mothers were reported to

eat at a different son's household each month. This shared the re-
sponsibility and economic strain among the sons. Consequently, the
household at which they were eating at the time of the census was
recorded as supplemented nuclear.
been a different household, but this would not have changed the per-
centage of supplemented nuclear households.

In another month, it would have

 

From the above, no conclusive Statements can be made about the

trend for sons to set up separate households before the death of their

fathers, or for them to stay in a lineal-collateral joint family.

There were only five fathers (category 7) all whose sons set up separate

households after marriage.

But there were also five fathers (category

1) all of whose sons stayed with them after marriage in

41

lineal-collateral joint families. Another possibility was represented
by the five fathers (category 6) whose youngest married sons stayed in
their fathers' households, while the older married sons set up separate
households. A number of people said that youngest sons got the house
and house plot of their father upon his death. Others disagreed and
said that such a practice was no longer observed. For the fourteen
fathers (category 5) whose oldest sons only had married, we don't know
the possible futures. They could remain only lineally joint, with the
older son moving out as the next son married. Or they could become
lineal-collateral joint families with the marriage of other sons.

One comparison that can be made between the lineal-collateral
joint families and those families in which the sons were either totally
or partially separated from their fathers is on the basis of land
holdings. F. G. Bailey (1957: 92) suggested that one reason for the
break-up of the joint family was poverty. Jealousy among sons and
especially sons' wives over their share of the common pot was more of a
problem when there was too little to go around in the first place.

When the land holdings were so small that some of the sons had to bring
in wages from other sources they were also more reluctant to put these
cash wages into a common pool. Another factor was that fathers with
little or no land or other economic resources to pass on to their sons,
consequently had less control over the sons. In Shaheenpur, the five
lineal-collateral joint families had average land holdings of 5.80
acres per household. Whereas, the eleven fathers who had completely

or partially divided their land had an average land holding, theirs and

the separate households of their sons combined, of 1.63 acres. Among

42

these eleven separated households, two of the groups were completely

landless.

INHERITANCE

In addition to the general census of the village, I asked a sam-
ple of nineteen households more detailed questions on how they got
their land, number and Size of land plots, kind of land, and their debt
status. In the sample, I tried to get an equal number of relatively
wealthy, middle level and poor households. The first question was
whether they received their land from their father before his death,
or simply inherited it after his death. Two men replied that their
fathers had had no land to give or pass on. Sixteen replied that they
received their land after the deaths of their fathers. Only one man
said that he got the land before his father's death. These findings
appear as a contradiction when compared with the fact of thirteen
fathers in Shaheenpur during fieldwork who had totally or partially
parcelled their land before their deaths. There are three possible
answers to the contradiction. The sample, which was not a random
sample, may have been biased. The men may have been replying to an
ideal mode of behavior rather than what actually happened. Or this
may reflect an historical change. Fathers formerly did not parcel
their land before their deaths, but now are beginning to do so.

One very good reason for a son to pressure his father to give him
the title to the land before the father's death may be found in Islamic
law. According to traditional Islamic law, if a man's son dies before

him, the son's sons do not inherit. An interesting example of this

43

law at work occurred in Shaheenpur a couple of generations ago. A man
had one son and two daughters. The son married and had two sons of his
own. But the son died before his father did, leaving the two grand-
sons. The grandsons inherited nothing, and the land went to the oldest
daughter for whom a husband was brought in as ghar jamai (husband in
the house). The present inhabitants of the homestead were the two sons
of the daughter and her husband. Of the two disinherited grandsons,
one had died and the other lived in the homestead of his mother's

brother in another village. The position of a ghar jamai is unenvi-

 

able. He is open to ridicule as one who is not his own man, but under
obligation to and control of his wife's kin. When the position of the
head of the homestead is low, the status of the homestead in the vil-
lage also suffers. Granting this, it is surprising that a man would
pass over his grandsons for a daughter and her ghar_jamai.

Another illustration of the rule took place at a dispute settle-
ment council of village elders (REESE) called by an old man of sixty-
five and his brother's son to try to get some land from the old man's
father's brother's sons. The old man's father had died before the
grandfather, so he and all of his brothers had been disinherited. This
event must have happened many years previously, but the matter was
still in disPute.

Such a disinheritance did not occur in Shaheenpur the year I was
there, but I heard of a case from another village. A man brought his
daughter-in-law in to the women working in the women's education and
extension program at the Kotwali Thana Central Cooperative Association.
He asked that his daughter-in-law be given work because his son had

died leaving two small sons. The mother of these two small boys would

44

have a difficult time unless she could earn money to support them. The
women of the program took the widowed mother aside and told her to ask
her husband's father for some land so that she and her children would
not be destitute. But the widowed mother said that she would not dare
do that, and the women of the program were not so bold as to express
their opinion to the father-in-law either.

Actually, a secular law, the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance of 1961,
had been passed by the national government which, in addition to other
provisions, struck down the Islamic law of disinheriting grandsons.
Whether the villagers knew of this, I don't know, but they were unim-
pressed by a number of other national laws which contradicted Islamic
law or local tradition. I shall give an example later of their disdain
for the law allowing women to divorce their husbands. And the law
requiring girls to be at least sixteen and boys eighteen at marriage
was ignored. There were, however, apparently contradictory feelings
among the villagers concerning the disinheritance of grandsons. One
of the religious leaders in Shaheenpur even commented that grand-
fathers who disinherited grandsons would have to answer to God in
their afterlife for this action. He was very old, however, and had not
studied for very long at the religious school. Even though the rule
of disinheritance was criticized, it was apparently observed. Such a
rule must have encouraged men to take their share of the land as soon
as possible to protect their own sons.

Of the nine widows (Table 4, category 10) living with their
unmarried children in Shaheenpur, five had land which their husbands
had received before their deaths. Two, who were without land, lived in

homesteads where no one had any land. One was a widowed daughter of

45

the homestead, none of whose immediate family was living, who had
returned home with her children after her husband had died leaving no
land. The ninth was landless, but the facts were unknown. Widow
remarriage was practiced among the MUslims of Shaheenpur, especially

if the woman was still young. Older women were less likely to remarry.
Even an old man wanted a young wife. If a widow had children, however,
she usually stayed with the children and did not remarry. In all,

there were forty-four widows resident in Shaheenpur compared to only
five widowers. Two of the five widowers were relatively young men whose
wives had died only recently. They would probably remarry.

The general Islamic rules of inheritance are that sons share
equally, while a daughter gets half of a son's share. In practice,
girls did not generally take their shares in Shaheenpur. They allowed
their shares to go to their brothers instead. This kept good relations
for the sisters with their brothers, and after the deaths of their
fathers provided a place for them to come where they would be wel-
come. So if her husband died before any children were born, or she
and her children got no land because her husband's father was still
living, she could go to her brothers' homestead. Or if her husband

divorced her, her brothers would take her in.

MARRIAGE

One in six marriages in Shaheenpur ended in divorce. Three hun-
dred fifty-eight marriages were recorded for the men of the village,
and sixty of these had ended in divorce. No offspring were produced in

forty-seven of the unions which ended in divorce. Some men took

46

advantage of the easy divorce for men to have a series of wives. The
record in Shaheenpur was held by a landless rickshaw puller who was
married to his sixth wife. His marriages had all been monogamous
unions. His brother, on the other hand, had had a series of polygynous
unions. This man's first marriage had been to his father's younger
brother's daughter to whom four sons and a daughter had been born.
While retaining his first wife, this man married and divorced two other
girls. While I was in the village, he brought in yet another girl whom
he had married in another village unknown to his family. The criticism
leveled against him was that instead of spending the money on himself,
he should have Spent the money to acquire a wife for one of his Older
sons. Such an exploitative attitude toward the system, however, was
not true of most of the other men of the village. From the statistics,
we may assume that the most common and usual cause of divorce was a
lack of offspring resulting from the union. Some divorces, however,
resulted from incompatibility. On the other hand, extreme incompati-
bility from the beginning of the marriage may have been the cause of no
offspring resulting from the union. It was not unknown for a very
young girl to keep running away from a husband she didn't like until

it was simply agreed to let her go home and stay.

About six per cent of the marriages in Shaheenpur at the time of
the census were polygynous. Eight men had two wives. None of these
men could be considered leaders in the village. Most of them were in
the middle to younger age groups. Islam allows a man to have up to
four wives at one time with certain restrictions. A national law, how-

ever, has forbidden polygyny. Neither divorce nor polygyny added to a

47

man's prestige in the village. They were rather a source of gossip and
embarrassment.

Marriages were arranged by the fathers or other older male kinsmen
of the young people. It was the kinsmen of the boy who must actively
seek a suitable girl as a bride for him. I was told a number of times
that the father of a girl whom no one approached concerning marriage
with his daughter would be left with an unmarried female on his hands.
This could not have been a very serious problem, however, as there was
only one old spinster in the village, and she was a misshapen dwarf.
Even a deaf mute girl had been married by the son of a very poor land-
less family.

Some of the fathers of young men were asked what they looked for
in choosing a wife for their sons. The first criterion was that she
should know the work of a farmer's wife; husking rice paddy, cooking,
and other housework. In addition, she should be pleasant to look at
(sundar), be from a family of good banso, and she should know the
Islamic prayers. If the boy was educated, then the girl should be
educated, too, but then she would not be expected to know the work of a
farmer's wife so well. The Islamic custom of marrying one's father's
brother's daughter was not widely practiced in Shaheenpur. Of the mar-
riages existing in Shaheenpur at the time of the census (269), seven
were of FaBrSo to FaBrDa and two were of FaSiSo to MoBrDa. When asked
if one should marry within one's gusthi (patrilineal kin group), the
answer was, "not especially." One was already aligned with the people
of the gusthi; it was better to establish a new alliance with a marriage.
The most common reason for a patrilateral parallel cousin marriage was

that one brother had no sons. A man with only daughters had the choice

48

of bringing in a ghar jamai for one of his daughters or marrying her

 

to a brother's son in order to keep the land within the gusthi.
It was common, however, for people to be married within the

O

atmiyo, especially the dur samparko (distantly related) atmiyo. For

 

example, a man's brother's wife's sister's husband's brother had a
daughter who was about the right age for his son. She might be a pos-
sible bride for his son. Such a marriage occurred while I was in the
village. These people belonged to his dur samparko atmiyo, and, there-
fore, the father knew of them, but they were too far removed for any
idea of an alliance to be in existence. Possible brides were to some
extent limited by the father's circle of acquaintances. These acquaint-
ances were his kinsmen (ghanistho atmiyo) and kinsmen of his kinsmen

(dur samparko atmiyo). The other possibility was fellow villagers of

 

kinsmen living in other villages. For example, the Sister of the head
of Maulavi Bari (Figure 2) was married into the village of Ghazipur.
It was the duty of a brother to visit a married sister in her home
periodically. While he was there he became acquainted in the village.
Many years later, when it was time for his son to marry, the father
found a wife for him in Ghazipur.

Young, unmarried men had some ideas of their own on the matter of
marriage. Unmarried girls were generally quite young and the matter
was too much out of their hands for them to have formed many opinions
about their future marriages. Such opinions, in any case, if expressed
would have demonstrated a lack of proper modesty. The young men, how-
ever took an active interest. They sometimes were even able to make
their preferences known to their fathers, not about particular girls

about whom they could know little, but about particular characteristics.

49

The young men were concerned about the appearance of a prospective
bride. They hoped to get one who was fair and perhaps a little plump.
The Bengalis, in general, did not care for extreme Obesity, as is more
the preference in Middle Eastern Muslim society, but neither was extreme
thinness considered attractive, as was more usually the case in an
area where food scarcity was a constant problem. The desire to have a
"beautiful” bride was expressed in social terms. "PeOple will laugh
at me if they hear that my bride is 'ugly'."

Young men also expressed negative preferences. They said that
one did not want to marry a girl from a household too much wealthier
than one's own. The girl, used to a certain standard of living in her
father's house, would be unhappy with less in her husband's poorer
house. A young rickshaw puller from Shaheenpur married during my stay
in the village. The father's younger brother of the prospective bride
owned two shops in Comilla town and was comparatively wealthy. I asked
the rickshaw puller before the marriage if the family of the future
bride was not a bit too wealthy for her to be happy in his house, which
was landless and poor. She would be making continual demands that he
would find difficult to meet. He claimed that this was not at all the
case, though her uncle was rich, her own father was a very poor farmer
with little land of his own. A number of weeks after the wedding, how-
ever, the new husband told the following story.

I don't get any respect (sanman) in my wife's father's house.

It has been weeks, and they have not invited me for a meal. They

have given me no gifts. My wife's older sister's husband has

permanent work at the textile mill. They gave him a new outfit of

clothing and a gold ring after the marriage. They don't respect

me like that. (He had bought some new clothes for himself and

wore them around Shaheenpur, telling peOple that they were a gift
from his wife's father.)

50

He was later invited for a meal at his wife's father's house, but by
the time I left the village, he had still received no gifts.

When the same young man's father was still looking for a bride for
his son, the father was having difficulty finding one because of his
poverty. The fathers of girls made certain demands about what gifts
should be given by the groom's party at the time of the marriage. The
cost of these gifts was also prescribed by the girl's father. So I
suggested as a possibility a local girl of about twelve whose father
was dead. She and her mother worked at various households around the
village for their room and board, though they supposedly belonged to
one of the homesteads in Shaheenpur. It would probably not cost very
much to marry her. But the young man was adamant that he would not
marry an orphan.

Then I would have no wife's father's house to which to take
my friend. It is the custom that you can take your friend to your
wife's father's house and stay for two days. They will feed you
and treat you well. A husband is an important person in his
wife's father's house.

The foregoing seemed to suggest the possibility of hypergamy. I have
no other data, however, that would indicate that wife receivers consis-
tantly had any higher status than wife givers; that there was a system

of hypergamy. This may simply have been a case of the respect shown to

any guest in the house.

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS WITH KIN

Generally, the relations among affinal kin were formal and rela-
tively respectful. The illustration of the daughter's husband has been

given. There was a tradition of suppressed hostility between a man and

51

his wife's brother. This usually manifested itself, however, simply in
maintaining formal relations. Relations between the husband's parents
and the wife's parents were formal to an extreme, on the rare occasions
when they met. I was told in town that a girl's parents never visited
her in her husband's house. Such visits, however, did take place in
the village. The exception to the principle of formal relations among
affinal kin was with the son's wife and Older brother's wife (khaki).
She became part of the household. A man and his older brother's wife
were usually peers, and close ties between them were acceptable. On
the other hand, relations between a man and his younger brother's wife
remained distant.

Affinal kin of two or more steps removed, such as husbands of
sisters, might become very close friends. There was a special type of
friendship which could be set up between two young men. This was
called dogga, a Persian word for friend, or duspan. One young man in
Shaheenpur had a dgsta relationship with his MoSiSoWiBr. As in finding
a bride, one usually only came in contact with peOple outside the vil-
lage through kinship ties. To formalize this dggtg relationship, he
had invited the young man to his house for a meal and in return had been
invited to the young man's house for a meal. The appropriate behavior
between dosta was to visit one another's homes, help each other in time
of need, and give a gift at the dosta's marriage. An old man listening
to the description, said that the dggta relationship was mentioned in
the Qur'an, and also that it was very bad for dosta to see each other's
wives. Eggta, like wives, were usually recruited from outside the

gusthi, from the dur samparko atmiyo.

52

Visiting was a well established custom in the village. Married
women regularly visited their natal homes, although less often as they
grew older. The young bride's adjustment to her new husband's home was
accomplished more gradually by these visits. After a month or less in
her new home, she would go back to her father's for a month. And
brothers regularly visited the new bride in her husband's home to see
that her circumstances were acceptable and to make her less lonely.

Young children visited the households of their parents' siblings,
especially their mother's brother's (mémé) household. Small children
on the paths between villages with bed rolls under their arms were Off

to "mamar bari." Traditional children's songs related the delights of

 

going to mamar bari. Girls, when they began to show signs of coming
maturity, were more restricted and could no longer freely walk along
public paths to visit the homes of nearby kinsmen. Boys continued to
go until marriage kept them busy at home, and they had the additional
duty of visiting their wife's father's house. When asked toward whom
they felt the strongest ties of affection, men invariably mentioned
their mothers. Mothers were very indulgent toward sons and made little
effort to control them. Men came to idealize their mothers as they
grew older. So, as young women looked forward to the comfort and com-
panionship of their brothers' periodic visits, they communicated the
affection they felt for their brothers to their small children.

There was, however, a possible bar to unrestrained affectionate
ties between a mother's brother and a sister's son. Though women
usually gave up their claims to a share of an inheritance in favor of
their brothers, Islamic law did not recognize such a renunciation (Mulla

1968:45). The woman's right to claim her share of the inheritance

53

remained in abeyance. So, though the mother of a little boy may have
relinquished her share in the inheritance to her brother, she might
later make a claim to the land, which, successful or not, would result
in a long and bitter conflict. The first step in a conflict which
resulted in a homicide in the Shaheenpur area began when two sisters
belatedly claimed shares of their brother's land immediately after his
death. They claimed that the land was rightfully theirs as the legiti-
mate inheritance from their father. The brother's son fought this
claim in the courts for eight years, losing the remainder of his land
to court COS tS .

Women indulged their sons, but controlled and disciplined their
daughters. It was the duty of a mother to see that a daughter behaved
modestly, did not go about too freely after she began to mature, and to
see that a daughter learned the duties of a farmer's wife. In turn,
girls were responsible for younger siblings. Soon after the toddler
stage, boys were expected to behave in a respectful manner toward their
fathers. In fact, boys and young men were expected to remain silent
in the presence of their fathers unless directly questioned by them.
These rules were relaxed after the young man married and became a house-
holder in his own right.

A young man, who had recently married, continually had difficulty
getting along with his father. One day the old man threw the young
couple out of the house by simply placing the couple's few belongings
in the middle of the compound while the young man was away from the
house. They had to take refuge in a dilapidated shed in the homestead.
After a few days the young man reported to me that the neighbors had

come to see his father and had convinced him to take his son and the

54

son's wife back into the house. I asked the young man if he had told
the neighbors about the trouble. He replied, "What kind of a son do
you think I am? I would never speak badly about my father to the other
villagers. Every evening I went to the shop near our house and sat
there looking sad with my head in my hands. The peOple understood that
there was trouble and came to talk to my father."

The principle of closer, more affectionate ties between alternate
generations than between adjacent generations applied in Shaheenpur.
Grandparents were affectionate and indulgent toward their grandchild-
ren. Maternal grandparents gave gifts, but saw relatively little of
the daughters' children. Children, however, usually lived in the same
homestead with their paternal grandparents and saw them continually.
Grandfathers and grandsons could address and refer to each other as
brother (bhéi). For the Bengali Muslim boy, the paternal grandfather
played the warm male role. This role, however, was lacking in the
lives of many boys. As many men did not live to see the marriage of
more than their eldest son, many more did not live to see their grand-
children. Of the four hundred sixty-three children fifteen years old
and under in the village only one hundred forty-six had their paternal

grandfathers living.
NEIGHBORHOOD AND VILLAGE ORGANIZATION

This large village of seventy-seven homesteads comprising two hun-
dred twenty-five households was divided into five neighborhoods (para)
which perhaps had more significance for social organization than did

the village as a whole. These five neighborhoods were given

55

directional names, with one exception. They were south neighborhood

(dakkhin para), west neighborhood, north neighborhood, and central

 

neighborhood. The fifth, which was east of the others and I shall call
east neighborhood, had the name of a Hindu goddess with the suffix
meaning city or large town. This neighborhood may have had a separate
status at one time. PeOple in east neighborhood would occasionally
refer to the "people of Shaheenpur" as though they were a different
entity. When asked, however, they would reply that they were also
peOple of Shaheenpur. I never solved this mystery except to say that
there was something different about east neighborhood, but behaviorally
they appeared to be a neighborhood of Shaheenpur in the same way the
other four were.

Neighborhood (Raga) was a geographical designation and anaa
was the correSponding social designation. Ideally, all the members of
one gayai lived in the same 2a£_. The social group, aayai,'was led by
a man in an hereditary position, a sardar. The sardar was assisted in
his leadership and conciliatory duties by men called matbar. In real-
ity, neighborhoods (Raga) were vaguely bounded. People in the same
homestead disagreed among themselves about in which neighborhood the
homestead was situated. Or homestead A wou1d say that homestead B was
in a different neighborhood from what homestead B itself had reported.

aayai membership was even less regular in conforming to neighborhood
boundaries. According to one informant, the gay a.in which he had mem-
bership composed part of west neighborhood, part of central neighbor-
hood, and one homestead in south neighborhood. But among all my infor-
mants, he was alone in the description of a gayai with that particular

membership. Others whom he claimed, disavowed him, and in any case, no

56

one gave an identical membership list to his. The only place where
complete consensus could be found was in south neighborhood. All the
people of south neighborhood agreed that they all belonged to the

same anal except the previously mentioned homestead that all agreed
was not a part of their gayai. In south neighborhood were one dominant
gusthi with seven homesteads and four lesser gusthi. The present mem-
ber of the Union Council was from the dominant gusthi. The dominant
gusthi used the title Majumdar, indicating a former tax collecting
status. There were others in the village who used the name Majumdar,
but the Majumdars of south neighborhood did not acknowledge the other
claimants to the title to be legitimate. The leadership of this anai,
however, was in diSpute. The previous sardar had been the eldest son
of the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son of the founder

of the gusthi in the village. The previous sardar had been the eldest
of five brothers, but had produced no sons himself. Now both his

surviving younger brother and his daughter's husband (ghar jamai)

 

claimed the sardarship. Apparently each had followers.

 

One of the poorer homesteads in the gay a held a wedding while I
was there. A primary function of the £2133 was to determine who should
be invited to feasts on such occasions as weddings (Bertocci 1970:160-
163). It was the sardar's duty to invite reyai members to a feast. For
this wedding, the father of the groom asked the sardar to explain to
thelgayai members that the household was too poor to hold a feast for
the entire aayai. The father of the groom said that he had told the

ghar jamai sardar of south neighborhood. The younger brother sardar

 

said that that was a lie, and that he himself had been told by the

father.

57

In north neighborhood there was also relatively good consensus
about the membership of the gaxa; which conformed to a fairly well
bounded neighborhood (E飧)- Six of the eleven homesteads contained
the members of one gusthi, and there were three smaller gusthis. The
man who claimed to be the sardar of this neighborhood came from one of
the smaller gusthis. Pe0ple outside the neighborhood generally did not
acknowledge his position as sardar. One informant from another neigh-
borhood explained that the north neighborhood sardar claimant had simply
invited a large number of men to his house for a feast. In apprecia-
tion, they named him sardar.

Any kind of consensus related to gayai membership was difficult
to find in the remaining three neighborhoods. A wealthy and influen-
tial man in the central neighborhood even claimed to belong to the
north neighborhood because his father's father's Sister had married
into the largest gasthi there. The north neighborhood, however, did
not claim him, and his immediate neighbors insisted that he belonged
to their £2221~ In west neighborhood, however, lived the one sardar
whom everyone in the village agreed was a sardar (notwithstanding that
I was told when I first visited the village that there were no sardars).
Some said that he was the only true sardar. His homestead was called
Sardar Bari, the only one so called. He was the eldest son of an eldest
son. His five younger brothers had either migrated from the village

or had married uxorilocally as ghar jamai to other villages, but his

 

father's younger brother's sons lived in the homestead with him. The
seven households in the homestead (thirty-three people) had, in all,
three and a half acres of land among them. This was a very poor home-

stead with most of the men working as day laborers and assistant brick

58

layers in addition to cultivating their small amounts Of land. Sardar
Bari was apparently a formerly prosperous gusthi which had produced too
many sons and fallen on hard times. The sardar, who reported himself
to be eighty, was very frail and shaky. He appeared at most of the
dispute settlement councils of the influential men of the village, but

had little to say.

VILLAGE COUNCILS

The occasions when influential men of the village met were meetings
or councils called to settle disputes among the villagers. These were
called alga; which means both judgement and discussion. There were no
formal decision making councils at the village or neighborhood level.
The REBEL attempted to settle diSputes and, when someone was clearly
transgressed against, mete out punishment. The councils were usually
composed of people from the neighborhood in which a dispute occurred.
Only twice that people could remember had men from the whole village
met for 3.21232- Once had been when two relatively wealthy farmer
brothers from the south neighborhood Majumdar gusthi had been in a
dispute over land. "It took the whole village to make those two lis-
ten." The other time was when a young man from one of the poorer
gusthis in south neighborhood had stolen a girl from the Majumdar
gusthi, with her connivance. But even all the influential men in the
village could not settle that case. Her father's brother (her father
was dead) took the case to court. The young man kept his Stolen wife,
but lost all of his family's land in legal costs. The south neighborhood

never forgave him, though he and his family continued to live there.

59

When he came down with small pox no one would help them.

Bicars were usually successful in effecting compromise, getting
one or both sides to give in sufficiently for a satisfactory settle-
ment. In fact, one villager who knew some English translated the
word aaaaa as compromise. .ElEflE councils were less successful, how-
ever, at meting out punishment. In one case I witnessed, the punish-
ment decided on by the council was carried out because the offending
side agreed. A young man was caught visiting another man's wife late
at night. He was caught by the head of her homestead, but managed to
escape and avoid an immediate and perhaps severe beating. But when he
was brought before a alga; council the next day they decided on a shoe
beating of twenty strokes. His father and brothers were so angry with
him for his behavior which cast shame on their family that they gladly
set to beating him and administered forty strokes. The head of the
girl's homestead, however, was not satisfied. He had wanted the young
man to be paraded around the whole village and shamed for his crime.
This would have better vindicated the name of the girl. But the coun-
cil would not agree to this punishment as they knew the reputation of
the girl and that such incidents had happened before. She had married
a father's brother's son and so was not only a wife but also a daughter
of the homestead. If she had been only a wife, she probably would have
been divorced and sent home. An important man in her gusthi, who was
also a friend of the Offending boy's father, forced the head of the
girl's homestead to accept the decision of the 21222 council.

In another case, however, the influential men who had been called
to the scene of a crime backed Off from making a decision. Paddy had

been cut and stolen from one man's field in the night. He had followed

60

a trail of heads of paddy to find it stored in another man's household.
The man with the paddy in his house was obviously one of the culprits,
but who were his accomplices to cut and remove a whole field of paddy
in one night? The man who had had his paddy stolen decided that since
he had gotten his prOperty back he did not want to pursue the issue.
It was reported that everyone knew who the thieves were; about eight
rather tough young men from poor families. And the victim of the theft
knew that some of them were from his own gusthi so that he did not wish
to press for action against them. Later, however, one influential old
man who had been there admitted, "We could have gotten their names
there in the daylight. And we could have prescribed punishment for
them. But we are old men. What happens when I am alone on a village
path late one night coming back from a market? We were afraid. This
is bad, too, because there were such thefts before, and we did not know
who the thieves were. This time we knew and did nothing. There will
be more thefts now."

These councils were not well constituted for the exercise of force.
They were much more successful in simple dispute settlement. One of
the duties of a sardar was to watch for disputes in his anai. He
would then suggest that some men be called for a RISES and the diSpu-
tants try to settle their differences. Influential men, other than
sardars, often took this third party role in Shaheenpur. Or if a dis-
pute had reached the stage where one or both sides were about to start
court cases, they were asked to try to settle their differences on the
local level first with a REESE: Both sides could call men whom they
respected to sit on the PEEEE council. A disputant could simply not

cooperate and not come to the council. But the social pressure

61

apparently was strong enough in almost all cases for both sides of a
dispute to put in an appearance whether they felt conciliatory or not.
The only exception was a recent migrant to the village, an educated man
with regular employment in town. His disdain for these simple villa-
gers was quite obvious. He repeatedly ignored their entreaties to come
to a alga; to work out a dispute he had with his brother over land. In
the minds of the other villagers there were no names too harsh to call
this man who disregarded the social pressure of the village.

The procedure at the REESE was for the influential men to ascer-
tain the facts through questions. These questions, however, might be
very pointed, indicating the opinion of the questioner, in the ”When
did you stop beating your wife?” form. In the process, these men would
tell relevant stories and cite precedents. Gradually the questioning
would turn to asking the diSputants what they thought might be an
equitable solution. The influential men suggested solutions and asked
the disputants for their opinions of these solutions. The successful
.Pl233 ended with the disputants in agreement on an equitable solution.
Land disputes between close kinsmen could sometimes be settled at this
local level. But beyond close kinsmen, land was too important to be
relinquished if one Side or the other thought they could gain an advan-
tage in the courts. Land disputes most often went outside the village.
But the villagers always tried to keep village matters and village dis-
putes within the village.

The one 233a; which I witnessed from start to finish was a good
example of, first, saving the reputation of the village and the villa-
gers by keeping the diSpute in the village. The PEEEE was held the day

before the case was to appear before the Union Council. The second

62

principle it illustrated was the attempt of people to play the differ-
ent systems: secular law, religious law, and local custom, one against
the other. A young man had been divorced by his wife. Or rather, the
wife's father had gotten a divorce for her. Though it was a simple
matter for a man to divorce his wife under Islamic law, it was much
more difficult for a woman to divorce her husband. And the villagers
of Shaheenpur maintained that it was impossible for a woman to divorce
her husband in Islam. But they were aware that a secular law of the

government of Pakistan (The Muslim Family Laws Ordinance of 1961) made

 

it possible for a woman to divorce her husband. They were not in
sympathy with this law, but were occasionally forced to recognize its
existance.

I could not understand what the young man hoped to gain from taking
this case to the Union Council, which, in addition to legislative and
executive functions, had judicial functions. He could not win in such
a government court on the merit of his case. The law was against him
and with his wife and her father. His strategy was made clear to me
later. He did not expect his wife's father to appear at the Union
Council, and the young man would win his case by default. It would be
an extremely shameful thing for a father to go to the Union Council to
ask for a divorce for his daughter from his peers. It was mentioned at-
the.PlE§£ in the village that the father would be shamed forever if he
went.

At the alga; the husband and the father of the wife were ques-
tioned. A woman would not appear at such a gathering of men. "What
did you do that your wife won't come back to you?" "Why don't you send

your daughter back to her husband?" Interspersed among the other

63

questions was the general question seemingly addressed to neither side,
"Who is at fault? Who is at fault?" The questioners turned to asking
the husband and his step-father to make some improvement in the condi-
tions for the wife at their house. They agreed. The 213a; participants
asked the girl's father if with these concessions he would send his
daughter back. He refused. Though the father of the girl was wrong

in the eyes of the villagers, he clearly had some of their sympathy.

The husband was an outsider. His mother had married into the village
recently and brought along her grown son from a previous marriage.

After about four hours of discussion, the husband was finally worn down.
He agreed to divorce his wife and pronounced the required phrase three
times. The 213a; was ended successfully. The rules of their religion
and the village had been satisfied. The husband had divorced his wife

in front of witnesses and could not take it back later.

INFLUENTIAL MEN

The traditional sardar system of leadership was clearly not in
good repair in Shaheenpur. I wanted to find out who the leaders, or
less Specifically the "important" men, in the village were. I wanted
to use a general term such as important and then subsequently ask what
criteria were used to make the judgements. In this way I would dis-
cover not only who the important men were, but also more about the
villagers' hierarchy of values. What qualities did they consider impor-
tant. Unfortunately, the word ”important" does not translate into

Bengali. There was apparently no general term that could be used.

People might be called "big"(§oro), but this specifically meant

64

wealthy. I finally decided to ask peOple to give me a list of the
names of the men who were the most ”PEER and khhamota” in the village.
Khhamota means strong and powerful, but it also means ability and
capacity. I was afraid the results would be unsatisfactory, but was
pleasantly surprised. For a large percentage of the men placed high on
the lists, the reason for their placement was given as, "He speaks well
at the algag." He spoke wisely and could convince people to settle
their disputes. It was true that there were few, if any, poverty
stricken men on the lists. This may have reflected the use of the word
§2£a_in the description, but I don't think this was necessarily so.
Poor men had little scope to be active in the village. They were in
debt to and dependent on others. The informants were not limited in
the number of men they could name, but they usually named about eight
or ten. Only on the longest list of twenty-two names did the name of
the poor old sardar from west neighborhood appear. And on that list
his name was third from the bottom. PeOple were asked to give the
names in order of importance. None of the religious leaders in the
village appeared on the lists. Their absence might be questioned. But
it is my opinion that the two religious leaders resident in Shaheenpur
had character problems which excluded them from leadership roles.
These two men will be described in the next chapter. They were re-
spected for their religious learning, but not necessarily respected as
men. The religious leader who was usually called to answer questions
of religious law and custom was a resident of a neighboring village.
The man at the top of many lists, and highly placed on others,
was the head of a large gusthi in central neighborhood. He owned four

acres of land and the other shop in the village. The reasons given for

65

his high placement were his large gusthi, that people listened to his
advice, and that he spoke well at the PEEEE- The nature of the village
shop, giving credit upon request, also may have inclined peOple toward
him. The other shop in the village at Maulavi Bari had only been in
existence for about a year. The setting up of a second shop in the
village may have been a move on the part of its owner for upward status
mobility, power in the village. The owner of the Maulavi Bari shop was
mentioned on the lists, but usually further down, and it was mentioned
that he was more important in his own neighborhood than in the entire
village. Another man who ranked high on the lists was a member of the
largest gusthi in north neighborhood. He was not the oldest member of
the gusthi nor apparently its head, but as much of a spokesman for the
gusthi as any of its men. He was a good friend and could usually be
found in the company of the sardar claimant of north neighborhood. The
sardar claimant, however, ranked down in the lower half of the lists.
It was the friend who was called the "wisest old man in the village."
He had two acres of land (a minimum for relative self-sufficiency) and
an even larger gusthi than the first ranked man.

The incumbent member of the Union Council ranked high on the
lists. He was ranked first, however, only by a man who did so grudg-
ingly and bitterly. "Certainly the Member. PeOple will do anything he
tells them to, even kill someone." He was a member of the south
neighborhood Majumdar gusthi and had nine acres of land. Perhaps be-
cause of his wealth and aaaaa position there was hostility toward him,
but also any elected official has enemies. He was addressed as Member
Shaheb. It was through the Union Council member that government re-

sources came into the village, and he greatly determined how they were

66

to be used. That he was not more powerful may have reflected the fact
that there were not more government resources to come in than there
were. He saw that peOple got their ration cards to buy food at con-
trolled prices. He arranged for relief in cases of natural disaster.
If any government public works were to be undertaken in the village,

it was through his efforts. For example, the bridge over the drainage
canal in Shaheenpur had been destroyed in a flood two years previously.
It had been restored temporarily by the villagers with a rickety bamboo
bridge. One reason that the project of building a permanent bridge
with government funds may not have been taken up to that point was that
the bridge led to west neighborhood and the house of the former Union
Council member. The former Union Council member's name appeared on a
number of lists, but in the lower half. The incumbent Union Council
member was also consulted by peOple on personal matters. His name,
however, was not mentioned as one of the people often called to sit on
a Ri£2£° He was forty years old, relatively young compared to the
other influential men.

Another man, high on the lists, was the head of one of the small
gusthis in south neighborhood. About him it was said, "He never tells
lies. Pe0ple always believe what he says." On only one list was a
man mentioned who typified what I feared the word khhamota might sug-
gest, as one of its meanings was powerful. He was a man of some
wealth with five acres and a large family of boys. This man was
apparently not loathe to coerce other people. The informant who in-

cluded him explained that he was boro and khhamota, but a bad one,

phasani, a goonda.

67

RECENT MIGRANTS

So far, an element in the village which may have explained some of
the confusion in the social organization of Shaheenpur has not been
mentioned. Not counting the Hindu homestead, eleven per cent of the
population in Shaheenpur were relatively recent arrivals. Fourteen of
the homesteads in the central neighborhood were inhabited by MUSlims
who had come from Tripura in India five and six years previously.
These homesteads had been occupied by Hindus who at that time migrated
to India. The departing Hindus had set up an exchange of land with
the incoming Muslims. Either a Hindu or a Muslim would first make a
trip across the border to find a corresponding farm for which to ex-
change his farm. Then he would move with his family. Some of these
recently arrived Muslims in Shaheenpur reported that they had been to
many places in East Pakistan and searched for a long time before they
found a Hindu farmer with corresponding land holdings with whom to
exchange. The Muslim then had the Hindu's deed to the land plus a
certificate of exchange (Pégli)-

In 1962 there had been communal riots in India and Pakistan stem-
ming from the reported theft of a hair of the Prophet Mohammed from a
mosque in Indian Kashmir. There had been no violence in the area
around Comilla town at that time, and the migrants to Shaheenpur re-
ported that they had experienced no violence personally in Tripura.
Rather, they said that they had heard rumors of violence in other vil-
lages and of impending violence. They had heard of forced migrations;
Muslims being taken to the border in trucks and told to cross into

Pakistan. They said, however, that they had personally experienced

68

economic harassment. Hindu neighbors would "borrow" their bullocks,
and the Muslim owner of the bullocks could not do his plowing until the
Hindus were done. Fruit was stolen from their trees, and they could
get no satisfaction from the Indian police. (Even a Muslim might not
get satisfaction from Pakistani police in such a case.) When the
Muslims would take their produce to the market and set a price for it
to a buyer, the Hindu buyers would lay down a small fraction of the
quoted price and walk off with the goods. Finally, these Muslims felt
that the climate in Tripura had become such that they should migrate to
Pakistan.

Six of the homesteads had migrated from a single village in
Tripura under the leadership of one man. He remained their leader and
was designated their sardar. His name appeared on some of the lists of
important men in the village. The ancestors of two of these six home-
steads had migrated years before to India from Shaheenpur. These two
homesteads were part of the south neighborhood Majumdar gusthi. The
people in all of the migrant homesteads, except one, reported that
either their fathers or their paternal grandfathers had migrated
originally from what is now Pakistan to Tripura. Only one homestead
reported that their peOple had been in Tripura for as far back as their
knowledge of their gusthi went. The eight homesteads, which had not
migrated with the other six under the leadership of their sardar, had
each Come separately to Pakistan. The people of these eight home-
steads acknowledged no leader nor had they any local level organiza-
tion. They had no sardar nor £2223-

The long time Muslim residents of Shaheenpur had little to say

about their former Hindu neighbors except, "We always got along well

69

with the Hindus." They reported that there had been one Brahman home-
stead, one Kayastha homestead, one homestead of barbers, a homestead of
washermen, one of potters and the rest were all weavers. The potter
was reported to have been a very big businessman in town. The potter
homestead and the Brahman homestead each had ten acres of land. The
average land holding in Shaheenpur was 1.01 acres per household with
an average of 5.4 peOple per household. About nineteen per cent of the
households had two or more acres of land while seventeen per cent of
the households were landless. The largest land owner was the older
brother of the Union Council member with twelve acres. But compared

to the 1.01 acre average for the entire village of Shaheenpur, the
average land holding for the twenty-two households in the fourteen
migrant homesteads was 3.15 acres per household. These newly arrived
Muslims were relatively large and prosperous land owners in the vil-
lage. They might have played a more important role in the social organ-
ization of the village if they had been better integrated into the
village. They may do so in the future. At the time of this study

they did not appear very strongly on the lists of important men. But
the Hindus who had left five and six years before must have played
important roles in Shaheenpur. Depending on the number of households
per homestead and peOple per household, most of the former Hindu home-
steads had enough land to free them from the fear of hunger and
dependence on other men, criteria which allow a man to become influ-
ential in the village. I don't know what roles the influential Hindus

played in the social organization of Shaheenpur.

70

VILLAGE IDENTIFICATION

The Union Council member played a village-wide role. He repre-
sented the village at the lowest tier of government and represented
and explained the government to the people of the village. He was not,
however, a decision-maker for the village as a whole. Internal village
decision making was done informally by the members of households, home-

steads, gusthis, reyais, and even friendship groups. Few village-wide

 

activities occurred. A few religious and athletic events were scheduled
which were open to the entire village, but these were identified with a
particular neighborhood or group of people. Still, the peOple identi-
fied themselves all as members of a particular village. This was
evidenced when they were outside the village or in concern about the
reputation of the village. Shaheenpur boys defended other Shaheenpur
boys in fights with boys from other villages when they were in town.

A number of illustrations have been given in the chapter of the vil-
lagers wanting to keep disputes within the village. They thought that
village affairs should be dealt with in the village. There was no
suggestion of calling in the police to deal with the young men who
stole the paddy, even when the influential older men of the village
could not handle the situation. There was competition and internal
conflict within the village, but as far as possible it stopped at the
borders of the village. The following conversation between the Union
Council member and another villager which took place in one of the
sh0ps concerned the problem of internal dissension versus village repu-

tation.

71

Member Shaheb, I have received an invitation to a feast at my
daughter's husband's village, but the invitation was not extended
to the reyai or even to my brother, Yaseen. What are we going to
do? This kind of thing is destroying the reyai system. (The Mem-
ber replied) You should go to the feast or the name of our vil-
lage will 3 ffer. They will say that the peOple of Shaheenpur
have hifisa, that is the reason we don't come to their feast. But
first go to your brother and the other members of your reyai and
tell them about the invitation, but that you won't go because it
was not extended to the entire reyai. They will tell you that you
ought to go anyway. Then there will be no hard feelings.

CHAPTER III

ISLAM AND THE VILLAGE

Bengal first came under the influence of Islam with the defeat of
Lakhshaman Sen, ruler of Lakhnawti, by Ikhtiyar al-Din Muhammad
Bakhtiyar Khalji in 1201 A. D. (Rahim 1963:37). There was possibly
some Arab settlement in the Chittagong coastal area prior to that. In
the ninth or tenth century A. D. seafaring Arab traders were known to
have been in that region. But after the Muslim conquest, Muslim
teachers and preachers and Sufi saints followed the soldiers into
Bengal to begin their missionary work (Rahim 1963:151-159).

In Shaheenpur, one informant told about Bakhtiyar Khalji when
asked how Islam first came to Bengal. In his recitation, however,
Bhakhtiyar Khalji himself was the converter, and the conversion was
accomplished by the sword.

Bhakhtiyar Khalji with seventeen men was the first to come

to Bengal and preach Islam. At the time there were many Sen

PEEEQ- "Accept the Islamic religion. If you don't accept Islam I

shall make war." At his words, many people accepted Islam.
Perhaps the peOple of the rural areas saw their religion more as a
religion of the sword as many non-Muslims do. Scholars of Bengali his-
tory, however, give overwhelming credit for conversion to the wandering
preachers and Sufi mystics who came in the wake of the invaders. The
rural people, who have experienced or have at least heard of communal

disturbances in recent times, preferred to think in terms of force

72

73

against non-believers than of gentle preachers bringing a message of
equality to an oppressed people at the lower reaches of a hierarchical
system.

Another villager gave credit for the introduction of Islam into
Bengal to a much more contemporary figure, but this was a man of reli-
gion rather than an invader or ruler. He was Maulana Karamat Ali. The
stories this villager associated with Maulana Karamat Ali were of
miracles he had performed. One such story involved a large gathering
of peOple who wished to be cured of various diseases and had come to
the Maulana with empty bottles to be filled with water which he had
blessed. There were too many peOple, however, for the Maulana to see
each personally. So he waved his handkerchief around his head, and
with that all of the bottles were filled with water. The Maulana Kara-
mat Ali of the village stories appeared to have been a IEEEE: that is,
one who practiced miraculous cures. The informant, however, gave the
additional information that Maulana Karamat Ali had died in Rangpur,

a district in northern Bengal.

An important religious figure in nineteenth century Bengal was
Maulana Karamat Ali. This may or may not have been the same person
about whom the villager Spoke. His life style was not that of a
faaag. I assume, however, that this was the man about whom the vil-
lager had heard, but to whom were attached popular stories. The his-
torical Karamat Ali was born in Jawnpur in the United Provinces in 1800
and came to Bengal in 1835. As a young man he was an adherent of the
Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah (path of Mohammed), a religious movement founded
in Delhi in the seventeen hundreds, which rejected the schools of

Islamic law: Hanafi, Shafii, Maliki, and Hanbali, as final and

74

advocated a return to the Qur'an and the Prophetic traditions. When
Maulana Karamat Ali came to Bengal "he found the Muslims of Eastern
India plunged so much in superstitious beliefs, customs, and ceremonies
that he became apprehensive of Divine retribution" and decided to
dedicate "his life to the propagation of the true doctrines of Islam
amongst the Muslims of Bengal" (Khan 1965:1xxiv). He died in Rangpur,
as did the man of whom the villager spoke, in 1873 (Khan 1965:1iii).
Diverging from his earlier position as a follower of the Tariqah-
i-Muhammadiyah, Karamat Ali became the spokesman of what came to be
known as the Ta'aiyuni movement in Bengal. His position then was that
the four schools of religious law had exhausted the possible inter-
pretations or paths of Islam. The Qur'an and the PrOphetic traditions
could not be understood outside one of these schools (Khan 1965:1xxiv-
lxxvi). In effect, Maulana Karamat Ali reversed his position. After
the death of the PrOphet, situations arose which were not specifically
described in the Qur'an. To decide what should be done in those situa-
tions the followers of the Prophet related what they remembered the
Prophet doing in a similar situation. These reports of the PrOphet's
life became known as the Traditions (Hadith). But later as times changed
and Islam had gained adherents in cultures far removed from the original
Arabic culture, further interpretations for quite different situations
were needed. These interpretations varied slightly and were codified
in the four separate schools of Islamic law. Later in the history of
Islam revitalization movements arose among Muslims in which the follow-
ers demanded that all interpretations be rejected and Muslims return to
the purer Islam of the Prophet's days. The most famous of these move-

ments was Wahhabism which arose in Arabia in the eighteenth century.

75

Followers of similar revitalization movements after that acquired the
name Wahhabis, but because of certain political connotations associated
with Wahhabism subsequent and similar movements often rejected the term
(Lewis 1966:160). Maulana Karamat Ali had been a member of a Wahhabi-
like movement, but then reversed his position.

Maulana Karamat Ali and the Ta'aiyuni movement, which stood for
the finality of the religious schools of law, found themselves in Oppo-
sition to an indigenous Wahhabi-like movement in Bengal, the Fara'idis.
The Fara'idi movement was begun by Haji Shari'at Allah of what is now
Faridpur in eastern Bengal. The Fara'idis rejected the four schools
of religious law and were dedicated to wiping out all "sinful innova-
tions" (BIBLE) not found in the Qur'an and the Traditions that had
crept into the religious practice of the Muslim Bengalis. The Fara'idi
movement became very pOpular with the poorer sections of rural Muslims.
Shari'at Allah, and later his son Dudu Miya, advised the Muslim culti-
vators not to pay the illegal Eaja taxes imposed by their Hindu land-
lords for the performance of local Hindu religious celebrations. Many
of the cultivators gladly obliged, and the Hindu landlords saw this as
defiance of legally constituted authority. The Fara'idis were in
periodic trouble with the British authorities.

The primary conflict between the Fara'idis and Maulana Karamat
Ali was over whether or not the 'Id Jum'ah (Friday) prayers could be
field in a country ruled by the British or, as the Fara'idis held,

IDar al-Harb. The 'Id and Jum'ah prayers may not be held by a Muslim
(:ommunity in a country which is not ruled by Muslims, that is, does not
have the requisite Muslim officials in charge. Such a country is Dar

al-Harb. On the other hand, Maulana Karamat Ali contended that since

76

the British guaranteed religious freedom, and their religious practices
would not be interfered with, 'Id and Jum'ah prayers could and should
be held (Khan 1965:89-102).

Maulana Karamet Ali was a moderate influence between the follow-
ers of local customs and the Fara'idis who would abolish all activities
not found in the Qur'an (Khan l965:sc-sci). Muslim immigrants to
Bengal from the west had brought some of the local customs with them.
They celebrated Milad al-Nabi, or Milad Sharif, the birth of the
Prophet Mohammed.8 A-Eilié could be celebrated at any time. ”Its
observation consists of three parts, 315., a) the narration of events
immediately preceding the birth of the PrOphet, b) the description of

the occasion of his birth, called tawallud Sharif, and c) exposition

 

of his teachings" (Khan 1965:1xxxiv). During the second part when the
Prophet's birth was described, all of the participants stood up and
sang the chorus loudly. It was believed that at this point in the
service the soul of the PrOphet was present. The Fara'idis condemned
the whole service as a sinful innovation, and found the idea of a
visitation by the soul of the PrOphet especially abhorrent.

Another such custom brought from the west was the fatihah, or
prayers to be said for the dead at periodic intervals after a death.
The term fatihah derived from the recitation of the first chapter
(EEEEE) of the Qur'an, or surah al-fatihah, at the first stage of the
ritual. Then some other portions of the Qur'an were read. The guests
were then fed a small meal. The final stage was a "prayer to God for
bestowing the rewards of the recitation and of the feast to the soul
of the person or persons in whose remembrance the fatihah is held"

(Khan 1965:1xxxv). Maulana Karamat Ali differentiated between sinful

77

innovations to be discarded and good innovations to be promoted. The
galaa and fatihah he labeled good innovations. They increased peOple's
knowledge of the PrOphet and of his teachings. There was also the
tendency to approve innovations coming from the west, that is, those
which had their origins among Arabic people. There was a certain snob
appeal to that connected with the people who were the Prophet's people.
As was mentioned when describing PEEEQ: those who could claim Arab or
other Middle Eastern descent had increased prestige.

A third innovation was the Laga, which was a fatihah at the death
anniversary of a REE, a religious teacher and sometimes a saint. On
this custom Karamat Ali agreed with the Fara'idis in condemning it.

He believed that this activity placed too much importance on the
individual, and often verged on the worship of the Egg, a man. Islam
forbade the raising up of any individual.

All three customs were practiced in and around Shaheenpur at the
time of this study. The term fatihah was not used. The religious
commemorations held the fourth, fourteenth, and fortieth days after a
death were called jephat or Qur'an Sharif, but followed the form of the
fatihah. The Milad al-Nabi, or Milad Sharif, or simply called galaa,
in addition to being commemorated on the twelfth of Rabi, the day set
aside to commemorate the Prophet's birthday, was held on any occasion
for thanksgiving: the completion of a new household building, the
start of a new shop or business, a good harvest, passing a school exam,
recovery from an illness, or, in town, the birthday of a family member.
In the town, the workers in a machine shOp would not start to operate a
new lathe until they had held a allaa for it. The reason was not

stated, but apparently the workers were asking God not to let them be

78

injured by the machine. The machine shop, however, was a cooperative,
and they may have considered the machine theirs and were thanking God
for it.

There was no opportunity to observe an aaa, but they were reported
to be held at a number of the local Shrines in and around Comilla town
which were the tombs of religious teachers and fakirs. Disciples came
and stayed at the shrine for two or three days. During that time
feasts were served for the worshippers. Khan (1965:1xxxv) described
the sacrifice of animals to feed the participants at the 33a in nine-
teenth century Bengal. In Comilla the aga were marked by prayers and
recitations from the Qur'an. The local sect of Sufis, or mystics, were
called Maijhbandaris. The shrines dedicated to Maijhbandari ELLE
marked their 23a with instrumental music, singing, and, at some shrines,

dancing.

THE PRACTICE OF ISLAM

The basis of the Islamic religion are the so-called five pillars
of Islam. They are: the confession of faith (kalimah, There is no God
but God and Mohammed is his Prophet), the five daily prayers (aaaaj),
fasting (gala), charity (J§E§£)’ and the pilgrimage to Mecca (aajj).
Most of the men in the village could enumerate the last four. No one
that I asked in the village knew the first, the kalimah. A number of
peOple said that jaaaa (war on non-believers) was the fifth pillar.
Even an educated man from West Pakistan agreed, when I asked, that
.lihfli was the fifth pillar. This is not to say that the peOple could

not recite the confession of faith: “la ilaha ill' Allah Mohammad l

79

Rasul Allah." They simply did not know that it was one of the pillars

 

of Islam. In fact, the first half of the kalimah was often used as a
chant on religious occasions. As far as the practice of these, I was
not concerned to take statistics on such matters. Many people per-
formed the five required prayers per day, some did not. Many peOple
fasted during the month of fasting (Ramzan), some fasted on other days
in addition, and some did not fast. The practice of giving jaaaa
(charity) and performing the hall (pilgrimage) were only required of
these who had the economic resources to do so. No one living in Sha-
heenpur was a hall, or one who had performed the hall. One of the
homesteads, however, was called Haji Bari. The present head of the
homestead, who reported himself to be one hundred four years old, said
that it was his father who had performed the pilgrimage.

The peOple of Shaheenpur may not have thought of the confession
of faith as a pillar of Islam because the remaining four pillars were
actions, tasks to be performed. Though the confession of faith must
be repeated and then believed, or kept in mind, it was not an action
like the other four. aaaaa (war on non-believers) was a more apprOpri-
ate action to group conceptually with the other four. The emphasis in
Islam tends to be on action. One point of difference between Maulana
Karamat Ali and the Fara'idis was according to Khan (1965:93) faith
versus practice. For Karamat Ali faith was enough without the practice
of performing the prayers, fasting, giving charity and going on the
pilgrimage. The Fara'idis denied the Islamic funeral prayer for a
Muslim who had not performed the daily prayers and fasted. In their
eyes, the confession of faith was not enough to make a man a Muslim.

Without the practice, the man would be a kafir (non-believer). Maulana

80

Karamat Ali sanctioned the funeral prayer for an individual on the
basis of confession of faith alone.

The prOper performance of the daily prayers was extremely impor-
tant. Von Grunebaum (1951:10) described the five daily prayers (aaaaj)
which are composed of a number of EEELE- A.£§EL§ has seven portions:

1) calling "God is great" standing with the hands at the side of the
face, 2) the recitation of the first chapter of the Qur'an and other
Qur'anic passages while standing with hands down at the sides, 3) a

bow from the hips, 4) straightening up to a standing position, 5)
sliding down to the knees and touching the forehead to the ground,

6) sitting back on one's haunches, and 7) again forward and touching the
forehead to the ground. Subsequent.£a§la begin with the second portion,
and at the end of the kalimah is recited and a ritual salutation. For
each of the prayers at daybreak, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and early
evening a set number 0f.£§EL§ are performed. A sixth prayer is
appropriate later at night for those who are getting old and closer to
death.

In a discussion with two men with madrasah (religious school)
educations and the son of one of them, who was then attending a madrasah,
I asked what one thinks about when performing one's prayers. The
reaction was swift and fairly shocked, "We think of nothing, absolute-
ly nothing. If we think of something while we are praying (aamaj)
it is a sin, and our prayers (aaaaj) will be no good. After the
prayer (aaaaj), then we pray (aaial). When I pray (aaLaL) then I ask
for a good harvest; that the insects will not destroy it. I ask that
my family (paribar) and my kinsmen (atmiyo) will stay well." I asked

if one also thanked God in the du'a'. They replied that when thanks

81

were due a more elaborate ritual, the allaa described previously, was
appropriate. They obviously considered that to "think of something”
during aaaaj was to think of something irrelevant to the prayer. My
command of the Bengali language was inadequate to the occasion. But
as Von Grunebaum (1951:12) quotes al-Ghazzali, the Arab mystic, during
prayer (aaaaj) one should strive toward the loss of natural powers, a

purity of heart, and a state of perfect contemplation.

THE ISLAMIC CALENDAR AND COMMEMORATIONS

The Muslim year is composed of twelve lunar months with three
hundred fifty-four days. The Muslim year moves through the seasons in
about thirty-three years. The religious commemorations are reckoned
by the Muslim calendar and, therefore, do not fall in any particular
natural season. The Muslim months are:

Muharram

Safar

Rabi al-awwal (I)
Rabi as-saani (II)
Jamadi al-awwal (I)
Jamadi as-saani (II)
Rajab

Shaban

Ramzan

Shawwal

Ziqad

Zil Haj

Two other calendrical reckonings were in use in the area. Official
business was conducted by the Western (Roman) calendar. There was also
a Bengali calendar which was solar. The villagers generally knew the
date by the Bengali calendar. They also knew the date by the Muslim

(Hijri) calendar. But in local business it was the Bengali date which

82

was cited. They occasionally asked me for the Ingriji (English) date.
In general, a calendar or some other outside source was consulted for
the date by the Western calendar. Figure 3 is a representation of how
these three calendars integrate, using the year 1969, the year I was
in the field. What is really shown is part of March through December
1969 and January through part of March 1970.

The Islamic new year was not celebrated in the village. An
educated informant explained that celebration would be inapprOpriate
as the first of Muharram is the beginning of a time of mourning. In
his home, however, he said that the night before guests were invited to
a feast. The Bengali new year (BoisakhI) arrived in mid-April and was
celebrated by all with the holding of and attendance at fairs (gala).
These fairs were large markets. The major impression was of a fish
and toy market. At least half of the area was taken up by the sellers
of very large fish which went for very large prices. The other half
comprised the sellers of small, hand made toys and brightly painted
clay dolls and figurines for only a few small coins. There were
available also some sweets and candy and a few vegetables. It was as
gala an affair as one could see as huge crowds of people celebrated the
arrival of spring and the new year together. The lunar character of
the Islamic calendar removed any aspect of seasonal celebration from
their religious commemorations. But the Muslim Bengalis celebrated
this one seasonal rite in common with Hindu Bengalis and Bengalis of
whatever faith. Though winter, when it is cool and dry, might be
considered the ideal season for foreigners to visit Bengal, the vegeta-
tion dries up and everything becomes covered with dust during that

time. In the month of Boisakh the rains and storms from the northwest

83

Figure 3
A Comparison of Three Calendars: Bengali, Islamic (Hijri) and Roman
Outer ring: Bengali 1376

Next ring: Hijri 1389
Inner ring: Roman 1969

 

 

Phalgun Chaitro

Boisakh

 

 

 

Jaistho
Poush Rabi I
Shawwal
Ramzan Rabi II
Augra- Asharh
hayan

Sept.
Jamadi
I
Rajab Jamadi II
Srabon
Kartik
Aswin Bhadro

 

 

 

IA

 

 

 

84

begin. It is with mixed joy and fear that the peOple face this month.
These rains are needed to plant the first rice crop, aaa. The storms
may bring death and destruction, but the rain brings life. Boisakhi
was the one secular holiday in which everyone participated. The
national patriotic holidays were barely noticed in the village.

The reason the first part of the month of Muharram was a period
of mourning was to commemorate the death of Hussein, the grandson of
the PrOphet. He and his followers were massacred on the tenth of
Muharram (Ashura) at Karbala in Iraq. This event was of chief signifi-
cance to the Shi'a, a large sect of Muslims. The people of eastern
Bengal are almost all Sunni Muslims, as the largest sect in Islam are
called. Shi'a are mostly found in Iran, but there are a few scattered
throughout the MUslim world. In eastern Bengal, the Shi'a are located
mostly in the towns; small pockets of Muslims who migrated from north-
ern India. The Shi'a commemorate the first nine days of the month of
Muharram with fasting and prayer. On the tenth, or Ashura, they fast
and take out processions with replicas of the tomb of Hussein and march
through the towns beating themselves until the blood flows and crying
out. This is a solemn occasion, but an emotional one. Non-Shi'a may
participate in the occasion in peace, but violence has been known to
break out between Shi'a and Sunni or between Shi'a and Hindus. Later
in the day groups of boys and young men go out and engage in mock
battle with bamboo staves. This part is not so solemn; the boys are
showing off their skill to the spectators. Any group can participate;
in Comilla even a group of Christian boys went out. But this.l§£fli

'khelfi is still in the martial spirit of Karbala and Ashura.

85

The year I did my field work no procession was held in Comilla
town. The Martial Law Authorities did not allow the procession to be
held for fear of violence. General Yahya Khan had taken over Pakistan
only four days before. A fire of unknown origin had gutted a large
area of the town market, and the feeling in town was tense. Conse-
quently, I do not know how much the people of Shaheenpur would have
participated, if at all. They were all Sunni Muslims. Upon inquiry a
few men in the village said that they knew nothing of the battle at
Karbala and the death of Hussein. One does not need to know, however,
the exact significance of such an occasion to participate in it. A
village woman said that she had fasted the day before Ashura, as Hus-
sein's mother had fasted on that day. She said, "Many women fast in
memory of her grief." Ashura was not, however, apparently of major
religious significance to the peOple of Shaheenpur.

The next commemoration is Milad un-Nabi which takes place on the
twelth of Rabi al-awwal, the third month in the Muslim calendar. This
is the commemoration of the birth and death of the Prophet Mohammed on
the date of his death, the origin of which was described previously.
.fllléé were performed in the mosques. In Shaheenpur, two private home-
steads also had.Eil§§ performed. An English language newspaper, the

Pakistan Observer, reported that discussions on the life and teachings

 

of the Prophet were held in the public halls of most of the district
headquarters towns. The participation of government officials in an
official capacity on this and other religious occasions brought the
legitimacy enjoyed by the Islamic religion to bear to increase the

legitimacy of the government establishment in the eyes of the people.

86

On the twenty-seventh of Rajab, the seventh month in the Islamic
year, Shab-i-Mi'raj, or Mi'raj un-Nabi, or Mi'raj Sharif, is commemora-
ted. This is the night that the Pr0phet Mohammed ascended into heaven
and unto the "presence” of God. Mi'raj means ascending. The ascension
is described in the Traditions (Hadith). The ascension and return to
earth are supposed to have taken only seconds. On and around the
twenty-seventh of Rajab, articles appeared in the Pakistani newspapers
describing the event and discussing various theological points such as
whether this was an ascension of the body or of the soul. A few years
earlier a director of the Islamic Academy in the provincial capital,
Dacca, wrote an article questioning whether on this occasion Mohammed
had seen God or not. The man lost his position. To suggest that any
man, even Mohammed, had seen God was blasphemy. In any case, Mohammed
was supposed to have communicated with God on this occasion and been
reinforced in the truth of his mission on earth. It was on this occa-
sion that God instructed Mohammed to have MUSlims pray (aaaaj) five
times a day.

On the night of Shab-i-Mi'raj men gathered in the mosque to pray
for the first half of the night. Women prayed at home. The occasion
of the first Shab-i-Mi'raj was described for me by one of the laaaa
(prayer leader in a mosque) in Shaheenpur.

Hajrat (honored) Mohammed Nabi (Prophet) was given an invita-
tion to come up in the sky. Allah spoke 90,000 words to the
Prophet (aaai). When the PrOphet Spoke with Allah there were
seventy purdah curtains in front of him so that the PrOphet could
not see Allah. Allah spoke loudly with the PrOphet. Allah gave
the PrOphet 30,000 Qur'ans. Every MuSlim must read this Qur'an-
Sharif. Then Allah spoke 60,000 words softly to the PrOphet.

The imam did not state that he was describing Shab-i-Mi'raj. He made

quite certain, however, that we understood that Mohammed did not see

87

God, using local idiom to impress us with how well hidden God was:
seventy purdah curtains. Associating the acquisition of the Qur'an
with the ascension was his own or local confusion. The tradition is
that the first portions of the Qur'an were revealed to the Prophet
during the ninth Islamic month, Ramzan, though the entire revelation
took twenty-three years.

I spent Shab-i-Miraj in 1969 at a Maijhbandari (Sufi) shrine. At
this shrine, most evenings were Spent drumming, singing, and dancing.
The activities on Shab-i-M'raj were little different from any other
evening I was there, except that about eleven o'clock in the evening a
meal of beef curry and rice was served to all the participants. The
£3533 who led the activities told me that the food was to commemorate
Shab-i-Mi'raj. Some other people with whom I Spoke had no idea of the
name of the evening or its particular significance. They simply said,
"It's a good night to pray." Proceeding along the road through the
country on the way home worshippers could be seen in the lighted
mosques.

Shab-i-Barat, or Lailatul Barat, occurs on the fifteenth of Shaban,
the eighth Muslim month. The occasion of Shab-i-Barat was first des-
cribed to me as the night on which one's fate was written for the
coming year. PeOple often phrased this by saying that if one were
going to die in the coming year, on that night it would be so written.
For fear of one's possible fate, they said, people spent the whole
night, or as long as they could remain awake, praying. Consequently, I
was surprised to see the joyous, if subdued, atmosphere which appeared
to reign at my first observance of Shab-i-Barat. I went out to a shrine

where many men and boys came to observe Shab-i-Barat. Two or three

88

hundred people were there, and stalls selling sweets and other food had
been set up at the foot of the hill where the shrine was located. The
shrine and adjoining mosque were decorated with flickering candles. On
the three mile rickshaw ride back to town at about midnight we met
groups of men and boys marching along carrying candles and chanting the

first half of the kalimah, ”la ilaha ill' Allah" (There is no God but

 

God). The mosques along the road from which one could hear the chant
of prayers were also decorated with candles and, in some cases, leafy
gateways. A later description of Shab-i-Barat as a time when God
bestows his blessings for the year was more in keeping with the appar-
ent attitude of the celebrants.

My second observance of Shab-i-Barat was in Shaheenpur. Services
were held in the mosques and in the small local religious school in
the first part of the night. If some men prayed for the entire night,
as reported that one should, they finished in their homesteads. At one
mosque, food was served to the participants after the services.
Especially the young men, however, went into the town to visit the shrines
and town mosques and see the lights. On this night God was believed to
descend closer to the earth with his angels. On any night but this,
the country roads were relatively deserted. There was a fear of human
thieves, but more of evil Spirits which might attack and possess a
person. These Spirits will be described more fully in a later chapter.
But on this night, the young men seemed to have no fear to be out on
the roads. Perhaps with God and his angels so near they believed that
the evil Spirits would not dare attack or might in fact be powerless.
Another factor, however, may have been that the young men found safety

in numbers.

89

In town, in addition to the lights and busy mosques, one found the
streets lined with crippled beggars. One should give charity on this
night: money and sweets. In Dacca, other places of activity were the
pastry shops. They remained open in the evening to sell sweetened
bread, often in decorated shapes, made for the occasion. In larger
cities, such as Dacca, the newspapers decried a riotous atmosphere
shattered by the continual burst of firecrackers as unappropriate to
the occasion. But if people appeared not to harbor any fear for their
fate for the coming year, the joyous character of Shab-i-Barat may be
derived partially from its calendrical placement. Shab-i-Barat occurs
approximately fifteen days before the beginning of the month of Ramzan,
the month of fasting, general abstinence and pious thought. Shab-i-
Barat is the very subdued Carnivale before Ramzan/Lent.

Ramzan, the ninth Muslim month, is observed by the faithful
Muslims, who are able, by ingesting nothing from sunup to sundown for
the entire month. Much spitting goes on as peOple try not to swallow
their own saliva. One must also abstain from sexual contact between
sunup and sundown, bad language and actions, and sinful or lustful
thoughts. Reading the entire Qur'an once or more during the month of
Ramzan was considered a meritorious act. The fast was broken at sun-
down each day with a meal called 3:33;. And a few hours before dawn a
crier went about calling peOple to wake them so that they might eat
before the sun rose. If peOple did eat during the day in the month of
Ramzan, they did so in private. One did not wish others to see one
breaking the fast, but, also, it was bad to tempt others just because
one was not observing the fast oneself. It was, however, difficult to

hide the smell of cooking food coming from the house. In Shaheenpur,

90

as the month wore on one could occasionally get a whiff of cooking
food. In town, the restaurants stayed Open to customers, but the doors
and windows were Shrouded in curtains so as not to offend the pious

and to hide the impious. If you must break the fast, do not flaunt it
in the faces of those who are fasting.

During the month of Ramzan work slowed down. PeOple rested for
longer periods in the afternoon. Since Ramzan may occur in any season
it is easier some years than others. In the winter the days, and
therefore the length of the fasts, are shorter. Fasting during the
long, hot days of summer while continuing to work in the fields is
quite difficult. In the Comilla area, however, planting an irrigated
winter crop of rice has become quite common. With three cr0ps of rice,
then, there is really no slack agricultural season, except perhaps
between the planting and harvesting when there is slightly less work.
But for the winter crop, using improved varieties of rice, more work is
required supplying water, fertilizer, and insecticide, and weeding the
crop. The year I was doing my field work, Ramzan came in November and
December. I was warned by a number of people in town and in the village
not to antagonize peOple with too many questions at this particular
time. "After all, fasting is difficult for people." But even those
who warned me claimed that the warning did not apply to them. They
were not out of sorts or cranky. No one would admit that fasting was
difficult for him personally. Fasting in the individual case was
claimed to be no ordeal, but a joy and a privilege. It made one feel
physically better, not worse. People were ready with all kinds of
claims for the physical, moral, and social benefits which fasting

bestowed.

91

The first day of Shawwal, the tenth month, the day after the new
moon has been sighted, is 'Id ul-Fitr (Feast of Breaking), or in the
local idiom, Roja 'Id (gaja means to fast). On this day peOple re-
ceived new clothes. The men and boys in their new clothing proceeded
to the prayer grounds, or 'Id gaa. Women did not take part in any form
of public worship. In Shaheenpur the prayer ground was on a raised
portion of earth next to the largest tank in the village. Von Grune-
baum (1951:63) described the service as being composed of two gaala
of prayer and a sermon, or khutba, led by an.aaaa.

Roja 'Id was a day marked by visiting and giving sweets (aayai).
In town only sweets were served. But in the village a meal of rice and
beef curry followed the sweets. The day before Roja 'Id the women of
the village rolled out the noodles by hand from sweetened dough for
the aagai. The aagai contained the noodles in a milk and sugar or
molasses sauce. In any meal which included sweets, the sweets were
served first, and then the rest of the meal followed.

The next religious commemoration is 'Id ul-Azha, or Qurban (sacri-
fice) 'Id in the local idiom. On this day an animal is sacrificed.

The sacrifice coincides with the sacrifice of an animal by the pilgrims
on the Hajj at Mecca in Saudi Arabia on the tenth day of the month of
Zil Haj, the last month in the Islamic calendar. The sacrifice was
also said to commemorate the near sacrifice of his son Isaac by Abraham,
a story found in both the Qur'an and the Bible. In Bengal those who
could afford to sacrified a cow. Poorer peOple might sacrifice a goat.
But many peOple made no sacrifice. They received a share of the meat

from their wealthier kinsmen and neighbors.

92

The weeks before Qurban 'Id saw the countryside dotted with large
cattle markets. PeOple came to buy, but also to look. Many of the
cattle were beyond the means of any of the local people. Wealthy men
came out from the cities of Dacca and Chittagong to buy the huge bulls
weighing hundreds of pounds. These creatures were never seen in the
countryside prior to Qurban 'Id, but at that time they were led along
the roadway, lumbering to the 'Id market. In the markets they were
garlanded with flowers and held down with many ropes. Thousands of
peOple swarmed in to stare with watering mouths. The larger the animal
a man sacrificed, the greater was his prestige. He also acquired merit
from God because he gave much of the meat away to the poor. This
largesse, of course, also added to his prestige and following in this
world. One could, to some extent, measure a man's political ambition
by the size of the animal he sacrificed at Qurban 'Id. The Union Coun-
cil chairman of a neighboring Union was known for sacrificing very
large animals each year and distributing the meat generously. This
year was no exception. He had bought one of the larger bulls in the
market. The day before Qurban 'Id some of the poorer people told me
with glee that they had heard that his bull had died the night before.
These peOple claimed some distant kinship to the man and would have
gotten some of the meat. But this loss did not dampen their pleasure
at the misfortune of a locally powerful man. The rumor proved untrue,
and the Union Council chairman sacrificed his bull on schedule.

The morning of Qurban 'Id began much as the morning of Roja 'Id
had. The men and boys of the village met at the 'Id.fihfl for congrega-
tional prayer. After they returned home, an ABET came to sacrifice

their animal. He called out in the name of Allah and slit the animal's

93

throat. To be proper food for a Muslim an animal must have its jugular
vein severed by a man of religious learning, who has first given the
proper prayer. Then all the blood of the animal must be removed. This
is done by pumping the animal's legs. Not just for Qurban 'Id, but to
be edible for a Muslim, all meat must be slaughtered in this way.
For Qurban 'Id the men of the household then skinned and carved up the
animal. Portions of the meat were put on banana leaves and given to
boys to carry to recipient households. Members of one's gala; too poor
to sacrifice their own animal received portions of the meat. The
women, meanwhile, remained busy cooking pots of spiced meat for the
household which performed the sacrifice. The 'Id day feast was finally
ready relatively late in the afternoon. But there would usually be
enough beef curry left to feed the household for two or three days
after 'Id. For many rural Bengali Muslims the only beef they ate was
on Qurban 'Id and at the feasts associated with marriages and other
rites of passage.

The men of Shaheenpur participated in these religious occasions
at various levels of organization. Men joined their mosque congrega-
tions for the observance of Shab-i-Mi'raj and Shab-i-Barat. For the
two 'Ids the entire male population of the village came together for
the congregational prayer. From there, they went back to their house-
holds for Qurban 'Id to prepare the sacrificed animal. At both 'Ids,
however, there was visiting, reinforcing old ties among the aayal,
others in the village, and with kinsmen in other villages. For Ramzan,
a man fasted alone. Or as the more SOphisticated Muslims of town would
point out, a man also fasted with the whole Muslim world. Regardless

of geographic or social position, fasting made all Muslims one in this

94

united endeavor. Even if unspoken, the villager also felt this unity

through common ordeal.

LOCAL RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS

The landscape of Shaheenpur was dotted with three mosques (masjid):
one in south neighborhood, one in west neighborhood, and one in east
neighborhood. Central neighborhood boasted a maktab, that is, a school
for teaching Arabic, the reading of the Qur'an, and the daily prayers
to small girls and a few small boys. The emphasis was on teaching
Arabic to the girls as they were considered less marriageable if unable
to read from the Qur'an. Women were expected to pray as men did, but
in the confines of their homes. They also sat for a short time each
day reading from the Qur'an. Reading Arabic did not necessarily imply
understanding. Indeed, men who had attended the madrasah, from which
one acquired one of the religious titles indicating how many years one
had studied,9 often did not read with understanding. Deriving from the
belief that the Qur'an contains the actual words of God as communicated
through Mohammed his PrOphet, the mere act of reading or reciting these
words was believed to give merit.

The man who taught at the maktab was also the EEEE: or leader of
the Friday (Jum'ah) prayers, at the west neighborhood mosque. He was
not originally from Shaheenpur, but moved there about sixteen years
previously from the southern part of the Comilla District. He had
attended a madrasah in Comilla town and said that he came because the
peOple of Shaheenpur needed someone to teach Arabic to their children.

The maktab teacher estimated that ninety-five children studied at the

95

maktab at that time. In the census of the village thirty-seven girls
(about twenty-five per cent of the girls from five to ten) and seven
boys were reported to be attending the maktab. The latter number need
not be considered any more accurate than the former as the question on
the census concerned whether the children attended school. The term
for secular school was $2321: The question was intended to mean secular
school. Some parents may have interpreted the question the way it was
meant and not reported some children attending the maktab. In any case,
even forty-five Students were never observed in the maktab at one time,
the few times I chanced to observe it. The maktab met in the morning
at about six o'clock. The teacher of the maktab said that the children
came from all over the village to attend the religious school.

The administrative committee for the maktab reflected this village-
wide concern. Members of the ten man committee were drawn from all
five neighborhoods. The president of the committee was a young man of
about thirty who was employed as a tahsildar (tax collector) in a
nearby Eaaaa (next administrative unit larger than a union). He was
educated, as would be apprOpriate for such a position, having passed
at the intermediate level, or two years of college. An unusual feature
of this young man, in such a position of leadership, was that he was
£223.12E21: living uxorilocally, in the home of his wife's father. The
position of a BREE jaaal was usually an unenviable one which left the
individual open to ridicule. With this young man, however, his
official position as a tahsildar may have relieved him of the ignominy
of his marital position. The man who donated the land on which the
maktab was built shared the position of secretary with the teacher of

the maktab. He was also the man who ranked highest on the lists of

96

village men who were the most 2259 and khhamota. Included among the
members of the committee were the former Union Council member and the
older brother of the incumbent Union Council member, who was also the
headmaster of a nearby secular school. The other members of the com-
mittee were all respected older men, men who were said to Speak well
at the 21223. The second ranked man on the list of important men was
among them. Except for the president, whose position was rather sur-
prising, one could not imagine a more prestigeful group than the maktab
committee members. To my knowledge, however, they met only once while
I was in the village, concerning the payment of the maktab teacher.
The teacher reported that his yearly payment for teaching was thirty
pounds of paddy rice from every homestead in the village.

The maktab represented the entire village. The 'Id prayers
brought the male population of the whole village together. Another
type of function was organized for the participation of the whole
village. These were large "prayer meetings" called mahfil. A well
known religious leader would be invited to conduct prayers, recite
from the Qur'an, and deliver sermons over a loud speaker to an assembled
crowd from about three o'clock in the afternoon until about three
o'clock in the morning. These sermons exhorted people to prOper beha-
vior. An excerpt from such a sermon, which I heard from a proper dis-
tance for a woman of the other side of a large tank, decried the behavior
of girls in town who went around unveiled and were allowed to meet with
boys. This mahfil was held at the 'Id prayer ground in Shaheenpur.

The whole village had been invited to attend, but though some of the
young boys from the east neighborhood came, the men did not. The

mahfil had been organized by some of the congregation of the west

97

neighborhood mosque. A few weeks later the east neighborhood organized
and held a mahfil near their mosque. Later they complained that it
was poorly attended.

Most of the religious activity was organized around the three
mosques in the village rather than on a village-wide basis. In the
census, the men were asked which mosque they attended. Of the two
hundred twenty-five Muslim heads of household interviewed, only two
stated that they did not attend any mosque. One of these two men
stated his reason that he was a Maijhbandari, or Sufi mystic. Though
many Sufis did attend mosques, Sufism was occasionally an excuse for
unorthodox behavior. Two or three men on the census said that they
might go to one or another mosque. All of the others appeared to have
firm allegiances to one of the neighborhood mosques. Whether they
attended regularly or not was not the question.

Two of the village mosques were constructed of puddled mud walls
with metal roofs. The third was a burnt brick building with a metal
roof. They consisted of one room with a mihrab, or niche, in the wall
facing west toward Mecca. In some areas of the Muslim world women
attend the mosque, and a room or partition is set up for their accommo-
dation. This was not true in eastern Bengal, where women did not
attend. All three mosques were situated next to tanks where the
worshippers could perform the required ablutions before entering the
mosque.

The burnt brick mosque was in the south neighborhood. The mosque
was reported to have been built by the present imam's grandfather, who
was also the 122E in his day. The father of the present.aaaa had also

served as imam, and he had given half an acre of land to the mosque

98

(gaaf). The proceeds from that land became the remuneration of the
EEEE of the mosque received for his services. The present iaaa.and his
predecessors belonged to the large Majumdar gusthi of south neighborhood.
The iaaa reported that there was no mosque committee. When something
was needed for the mosque, such as new straw prayer mats, the richer

men were simply informed of the need, and they supplied the needed
items. One of the imam's sons was studying at a madrasah. When asked
if he planned to become the $232 of south neighborhood mosque as his
father and father's father had before him, he replied, "Only God knows."

The mosque in west neighborhood was reported to have been built
about sixty-five years previously by a munshi. Munshi was a title
apprOpriate for a man who had read to one of the lower levels at the
madrasah. The 32am of south neighborhood mosque was a munshi, and the
imaa of west neighborhood mosque was a EEEA’ a slightly higher level.
The munshi who built the mosque in west neighborhood was apparently a
man of great reputation. When I asked if there had ever been any pig
in Shaheenpur this munshi's name was mentioned. A-RlE was a religious
teacher; a man of such reputation for holiness and religious learning
that many students came to learn from him, and people came to him for
help. Often their tombs became places of pilgrimage, or, at least,
people came to pray to the soul of the RAE for help. The tomb of the
munshi from west neighborhood never acquired that status.

The aagi'who was the laaa of west neighborhood mosque was the same
man who taught at the maktab. He reported that forty people attended
west neighborhood mosque. About one hundred ten heads of household
from west neighborhood, north neighborhood, and central neighborhood

stated in the census that they attended west neighborhood mosque. I

99

did not have the Opportunity to observe the attendance at that mosque.
The choice of mosque of the people in west and north neighborhoods was
unanimously the west neighborhood mosque. Central neighborhood was
divided between the east mosque and the west mosque. The long time
residents of central neighborhood chose the west neighborhood mosque,
and the fourteen homesteads of those who had recently come from India
chose the mosque in the east neighborhood. The unity of mosque choice
by the immigrants was not reflected in other aspects of their lives.
They divided on a number of other issues.

The west neighborhood mosque was administered by a ten man commit-
tee with representatives from west, north, and central neighborhoods.
The other tahsildar, resident in the village, was on the committee, and
was its only young member. The aaaa reported that he got from five to
ten pounds of paddy from each homestead per year depending on the
economic position of the homestead. In total he received about three
hundred thirty pounds of paddy for being the aaaa of the mosque. In
addition to collecting the imam's stipend, the committee met monthly to
take care of repairs needed on the mosque.

The mosque in east neighborhood was built about thirty-five years
previously. This was the mosque adjacent to Maulavi Bari (Figure 3).
The head of the homestead had donated the land, and the people of the
homestead had put up the mud walls. The head of the homestead des-
cribed the history of the mosque and its administration. He said that
a man from another village a few miles away had donated the metal roof
for the mosque. He had no connection with Shaheenpur, but was simply a
good man doing good work. I later learned that the roof donator's wife

had come from east neighborhood in Shaheenpur. The head of Maulavi

100

Bari said that before east neighborhood had had a mosque the people had
gone to west neighborhood mosque. East neighborhood mosque had no
mosque committee. Rather, the whole congregation met after each of the
two monsoon rice harvests and made their donations of paddy or money
for the wage of the iaam and the upkeep of the mosque. Contributions
were also made the night of Shab-i-Barat.

The mosques were organized in various ways. The mosque of south
neighborhood was attended only by the people of south neighborhood. As
the Majumdar gusthi dominated the neighborhood, so they dominated the
mosque. The pay of the aaam, a member of the dominant gusthi, had been
provided for, and no cooperation was necessary. In east neighborhood
the entire congregation met to make the decisions for the mosque and
their contributions for its continuance. The west neighborhood mosque
with the largest and most diverse congregation from different parts of
the village had the most complex organization with a committee for the

administration of the mosque.

MEN OF RELIGIOUS LEARNING

Any Muslim who had the required knowledge could conduct prayers
in the mosque. Usually a man had studied at least for a few years at a
madrasah before he became an iaaa, or prayer leader, at a mosque. An
'iaaa, however, was not a part of any priestly group. He was respected
for his learning. The aaaa was in no way a personal counselor or a
go between with God. PeOple might come to him to ask questions about
religious law, or "what does our religion say" on some subject. The

Qur'an was theoretically not Open to interpretation. Of course,

101

interpretations had been made, but that was a task for great scholars,
not humble villagers. The iaaaa were interpreting the religion, how-
ever, by the simple act of explaining to the best of their abilities
what their religion said to the villagers. For example, there was the
elderly aaaa who thought that God would punish a man for disinheriting
his grandsons after the death of their father. Islamic law states that
the inheritance should go to the remaining sons and daughters of a man
rather than his dead son's children.

The aaam had a number of other functions to perform in the lives
of the members of his congregation besides leading the Friday prayers.
But, again, a man did not need to be an.aaaa of a mosque to perform
these services, only a man of religious learning. Usually, however,
it was the local imam who was called when someone wanted 8.2il39
performed in his house. It was the local 122E who was called for the
celebration after a boy's circumcision, and to officiate at marriages
and funerals. On one occasion in Shaheenpur when a visiting older
kinsman died at a very poor homestead, the EEEE of west neighborhood
mosque went off to town to buy the shroud and did not return. He had
been called into another village where the young daughter of a very
wealthy homestead had died. Their aaaa was away from the village, and
they asked the Shaheenpur aaaa to officiate. He did so, and missed the
funeral in Shaheenpur for which another man had to be brought in. He
had sent the shroud back with the rickshaw puller. The peOple of the
Shaheenpur neighborhood were very angry, but understood that the wealth
of the homestead in the other village and the greater remuneration for
the aaaa there made the difference. Greater religious learning was

not necessarily expected to make a man any better than his fellows.

102

Religious learning did not cancel out greed.

The maulavi who gave the name to Maulavi Bari (Figure 3) was not
an.1aaa in Shaheenpur. He had been the igam for east neighborhood
mosque adjacent to his homestead for awhile, but then he was offered
more money by a mosque congregation in a nearby village. He became
their ifléfl: and another maulavi was brought in from another village to
be the iaaa for the mosque in east neighborhood. The $239 of east
neighborhood mosque, as a maulavi, had attended the madrasah for more
years and was more learned than either of the other two aa§a§_in Sha-
heenpur. He appeared to be greatly respected by all of the people of
Shaheenpur. He was the head of a large and prosperous looking home-
stead in his own village. At the two great 'Id festivals he was the
aaaa who led the services at the prayer ground to which most of the men
in Shaheenpur came.

When there was a dispute in the village involving a religious
question, it was usually the EEEE of east neighborhood mosque who was
called to give expert religious opinion. The north neighborhood
sardar claimant related an example, though he himself went to the west
neighborhood mosque. This case involved a young man who had, in a fit
of anger and in front of witnesses, pronounced the irretrievable words,
"I divorce you," three times to his wife. For a man, this was all that
was required to effect a divorce under Islamic law.

I heard that Lal Miya, son of Chand Miya, had divorced his
wife, Taju Bibi. When I went to see him he was no longer angry
with his wife. I was upset because there were two small boys by
this marriage, and besides Taju Bibi's people were bad people. I
was afraid they would take revenge on Lal Miya and his peOple. I
called the maulavi who is aaaa of east neighborhood mosque because
he is more learned than any of the others. I asked the maulavi,

"Can Lal Miya keep his wife?" The maulavi said, "Having divorced
his wife he cannot keep her in the house. Our religion forbids

103

it." Saying this, he left. Four or five days later I went to see

the maulavi and this time asked, ”How can Lal Miya keep his wife?"

Then the maulavi said, "Lal Miya must give his wife in marriage

to another man, and for three months and thirteen days she must

stay in the house of the other man. After this man divorces her,

Lal Miya can marry her again. This is what our religion says."

So I got Lal Miya's wife married to another man, and after three

months and thirteen days Lal Miya married her again.

The imam of east neighborhood mosque was respected in the whole
union as well as Shaheenpur. The imams of the union were organized
into a committee of which he was the secretary. There were approximate-
ly one hundred imams from all over the union on the committee. Mem-
bership on the committee was not based on educational qualifications,
or how far one had read at the madrasah, but on the moral character of
the imam. The incumbents on the committee decided on the qualifica-
tions of new members. The activities of the imam committee were limited
to social control within the union. When an imam committee member
heard of misbehavior on the part of a Muslim in his village, such as
not performing prayers or not fasting during the month of Ramzan, a
delegation of imams from the committee was sent to warn the offender.
If he did not mend his ways he would be boycotted by all imams. No
imam would come to his house for a wedding, a funeral, or a milad. The
secretary of the imam's committee described the non-performance of
of prayers and not fasting as the kinds of offenses with which the
committee was concerned. But though many people in Shaheenpur per-
formed these religious duties, some did not, and no delegation from
the imam's committee came to Shaheenpur while I was there. Perhaps if
someone had flaunted his non-compliance, however, the committee would

have come. I suspect, however, that it took a more serious infraction,

such as keeping a wife in the house whom one had divorced, to bring the

104

committee to one's door.

The other two imama in Shaheenpur were not accorded as much re-
spect as the non-resident imam of east neighborhood mosque. Neither of
them had the title, maulavi; they had not completed class ten at the
madrasah. The munshi in south neighborhood gave the least amount of
his time to his duties as an.iammy In fact, in the census he gave his
main occupation as a writer of amulets. He mentioned imam as only his
secondary occupation. The amulets contained Qur'anic passages believed
to be beneficial for certain illnesses. This occupation was respect-
able, it did not reduce his prestige in the eyes of the villagers, but
it took him out of the village on visits to patients. He was not
available all the time to keep an eye on his congregation and correct
their lapses. What apparently did reduce the south neighborhood imam's
prestige was that he was married to his third wife. His first wife had
died, but he had divorced the second wife. When he reported this fact
for the census the young men standing around started laughing and
shouting in derision. An imam was expected to be human, but too human
and his prestige suffered.

The imam of west neighborhood mosque took his duties as an imam
and the upholder of right behavior very seriously. One day, as I was
sitting in the shop in central neighborhood, some young men in front
of the shop were engaging in some rather loud horseplay. It wasn't
bothering any of the older men in the shop, nor did they appear to take
any notice of it. Suddenly the imam, who lived nearby, charged out of
his house in a rage, wielding a stick and thrashing the air, upbraiding
the young men for their behavior. The young men only laughed and ran.

The older men in the shop turned away to hide their smiles from the

105

imam. ”We pay no attention to him when he is like that." The status
of imam was not automatically accorded respect, except the respect for
education. The man had to deserve respect to be accorded any more than
the minimum. The two resident imama in Shaheenpur were not disdained,

but neither were they village leaders.

OUTWARD APPEARANCES

In Islam the community of believers is very important. Though it
is permissable to perform one's prayers in solitude, it is preferable
to perform them in congregation. At least a few of the men did not
join the rest of the village at the village prayer ground for the 'Id
services. They went into town where the largest number would be praying
together. They said that the larger the congregation in one place the
more merit accrued to the individual worshipper, and so they went. It
was significant that one of the men who went to town for 'Id was the
sardar claimant from north neighborhood. He was apparently politically
ambitious in the village, but did not see the need to attend the 'Id
prayers with the other villagers. This was one indication that the
act of coming together in congregation twice a year had little, if any,
significance for the integration of the village. If there had been, this
politically astute villager would have been there.

The duality of the outer and inner Muslim was best explained for
me in a conversation with an educated urban woman who had taken a
master's degree in religion at the university. She and her husband
were both adherents of a Sufi sect, and we were talking about how a

person would acquire a pir, or spiritual teacher. She explained that

106

she had never studied under a pip because it would be inappropriate,
though not unheard of, for a woman to do so. She said that a pig would
not take you if you had previously committed some grave sin, so, of
course, you would not tell him. I was confused, how could one hope to
get any benefit from his teachings if one were not perfectly honest
with him? She replied that he could be of no help to you if you did
tell him, only God could forgive. But the pig would not take you if
he knew of your sin, and he would prefer not to know. His teachings
might help you, and it would be better to become his student than not
to, even if you had to lie. There is no concept of confession to any-
one except God in Islam. No one can tell a person that he has been
absolved from his sin. The Muslim stands alone before God with no
intermediaries. In a religion which has been depicted as very practi-
cal, the Muslims are again practical. One can observe the performance
of one's fellow Muslims, but he can never know what is in another man's
heart. That is between him and his God. There is little prying into
the heart.

But it is the business of a Muslim to see to the outward conformity
of other Muslims. The imam's committee was concerned with the con-
formity of the inhabitants of the union. There were organizations
beyond the local level, also. One such organization, called Tabliga,
was described to me by some educated urban peOple. Members of Tabliga
were pious men who concerned themselves with ignorance of the proper
practice of Islam in the rural areas. Members of this missionary
group sometimes gave up lucrative secular positions to devote more time
to correcting wrong practices in the villages. As one might expect,

Muslim villagers did not always appreciate being shown the error of

107

their ways and told they were poor Muslims. The respected imam of east
neighborhood mosque said that he had heard of the Tabliga, but shrugged
them off as just a group of town people. To many pious villagers it
was the town people who were allowing Islam to be corrupted. It was in
town that women went around freely, and unveiled and had lost their
modesty. It was in town where men engaged in sharp business practices,
gambled, and sometimes drank alcoholic beverages. It was they, the

Muslims of the villages, who were preserving the true Islam.

CHAPTER IV

RI TES OF PASSAGE

The major points in an individual's life, that in most societies
are marked by some form of ritual activity, or rites of passage, are
birth, puberty, marriage, and death. The term rites of passage was
first used by Van Gennep (1960). He described how at these crisis
points in an individual's life the culture prescribed rituals which
marked 1) the chief participant's separation from the community in his
old role, 2) a period of marginality or liminality, and 3) his re-
joining with the community in a new role. Nevertheless, I shall not
limit the description of the rites of passage in a Bengali Muslim
village to the stages of separation, transition, and reincorporation,
but shall concentrate on the meaning of the Symbols and social relation-

ships involved.

BIRTH

To the best of my knowledge, little ritual activity and nothing
specifically Islamic attended the birth of a child in Shaheenpur.
There were only a few Special activities, and these were intended to
promote the health and well-being of the mother and child. The child's
umbilical cord was saved; it might later be used in preparations for

108

109

the curing of illnesses to which infants were prey, such as fevers and
digestional upsets. The mother and child were closed in their house
with a smoldering fire of rice chaff; this was believed to be good for
the health of the child. The mortality rate of newborn infants was
quite high, and the women did what they could without medical assis-
tance or knowledge to save the newborn.

There is, however, a naming ceremony prescribed in the books of
Islam for the seventh day after birth (Shorter Encyc10paedia of Islam
1953). This rite was observed by some of the people in the town, but
rarely on the seventh day. The one naming ceremony (aaiaa) that I
observed was held in town by a Fourth Class (lowest level) government
employee in honor of his two month old son. The man was very poor,
and the ceremony was modest; but he was an urban dweller and more
SOphisticated than many villagers. The occasion began with a meal of
both mutton and fish curries for seven guests and an imam. The house
consisted of a main room and a kitchen. The wife and a kinswoman
stayed in the kitchen; other children of the family brought the food
to the main room, where the father served. After the meal, 3.21129
was performed by the imam. Then, just before the final prayer, the
father of the infant called out to the kitchen to ask his wife what
name she wanted to give their son. She answered, "Mohammed Ishmael."
The father consulted the imam, the name was discussed, and the imam
gave his approval of Mohammed Ishmael as a proper Islamic name. After
the final prayer small patties of hardened molasses (gap) were served
to the participants. PeOple of the town said that these patties were

the apprOpriate thing to serve at a milad. I rarely saw this

110

particular type of sweet in the village. In the village, the imam

of south neighborhood had never heard of the naming ceremony, aaiaa;
but his son, who was attending a madrasah in Dacca, described it for
the two of us. The young man attributed the lack of its performance
in the village to the poverty of the villagers. As an anthrOpologist,
I would suppose that the natural act of birth was not a culturally

significant transition for the rural Muslim Bengalis.
ISLAM AND THE RITES OF PASSAGE

The imam had a part to play in all of the rites of passage cere-
monies in Shaheenpur. Yet, with the exception of the funeral ceremony,
his role was relatively small. In each of these ceremonies there were
prayers and recitations from the Qur'an. But many of the other
activities that took place cannot be found in any Islamic literature;
they were simply customary activities associated with these events by
the local peOple. The interpretation of these activities that will be
made here is that of the observer; the peOple would give no interpre-
tation. They ascribed all of these activities to custom, with no
meanings attached. What gives these rituals meaning is the social
setting in which they take place. Aspects of particular social roles
are emphasized and at times even satirized. Certain ritual items and
activities take on meaning for the observer from values that have been
eXpressed and conflicts that have been observed.

A few of the elements used in the ceremonies reminded one of
Hindu rituals. Up until a few years before, the people of Shaheenpur

had their Hindu neighbors whom they could observe. Moreover, it is

lll

probable that the majority of the ancestors of the people with whom I
worked were converted from some variety of what we now call Hinduism,
or were, like contemporary villagers, descendants of converts to Islam
and, in fact, possessors of a syncretic religion similar to that
described by Geertz (1960) in Java or as exists among the Hindu Vais-
navas of West Bengal. But of course the practice of any of the "world
religions” in a given area is partially syncretic as the religion takes
on local colorings and customs.

There was a conscious effort on the part of the imama and some
concerned citizens of Shaheenpur to purge their community of things
they considered unIslamic. Such things were only occasionally criti-
cized as specifically Hindu; rather, they acquired the more general
opprobrium of being unIslamic. In Shaheenpur, music, which in many
places was played on a phonograph at full volume over a loud-speaker,
was banned at the celebration of weddings by order of the imama. The
imama stated that such music was unIslamic, though they added that it
was also a frivolous expense that peOple could ill afford. A number
of the villagers commented that, although they enjoyed the music, they
were not sorry it was banned. It is difficult enough to accumulate
sufficient money to marry a child without the added expense of renting
the equipment for the music. Amplified recorded music was commonly
played at the marriages in West Bengal, but neither the content of the
music nor the practice of playing it was specifically Hindu. In what
were thought of as "traditional" marriage ceremonies of the Hindus,
Muslim musicians played the fiéfléi: an oboe-like instrument, near the

doorway through which the guests entered.

112

MARRIAGE

Marriage was the most elaborated rite of passage in rural Muslim
Bengali society. Events connected with the marriage usually went on
for a week. Marriage marked the entrance of an individual into most
of the responsibilities and privileges of adulthood. With marriage a
young man might even begin thinking of setting up his own economically
separate household. And, for the patrilineal kin group, marriage
usually meant establishing a new alliance or reinforcing an old one
with another such kin group. As described before, these alliances
were important for economic security and local level political organi-
zation.

For the arrangement of a marriage, the representatives of the
groom's family made a number of preliminary contacts with the father
or other male kinsmen of a prOSpective bride. If the marriage appeared
satisfactory to both parties, then the father of the young man and a
few of his male kinsmen paid a formal visit to the home of the prospec-
tive bride. The business of this pap-paai, as it was called, was to
set the date of the wedding, decide on the gifts to be given the bride
and groom, and set the amount of money (BEBE) to be pledged to the
bride at the time of the official registration of the marriage, in case
of divorce later on. As an indication of their sincerity at this first
formal meeting with the girl's kinsmen, the boy's kinsmen bring gifts.
These gifts should include a sari, a blouse, a petticoat, and a gold
nose ornament for the girl, plus sweets, milk, betel nut and betel
leaf. After the guests have been fed and agreement reached on the

business at hand, the representatives of the groom were given pan

113

(prepared betel leaf with betel nut) and paai (a flower); it was from
this presentation that the occasion derived its name. The pap and ppai
were taken back to the home of the groom where, the next day, his
mother added some unhusked rice--the primary food grain of the area--
and some aaipa, a variety of grass used as an element of Hindu sacri-
fice since Vedic times. All of these items she threw in the tank (man-
made pond). Almost every homestead had such a tank which supplied
water for drinking, cooking, washing, and often irrigation.

The night before the wedding the bride and the groom had their
hands dyed with henna in their respective households. Their young
kinsmen and neighbors often joined them in having their hands dyed to
participate in the festive mood. Then the bodies of the bride and the
groom were rubbed with a mixture of henna, tumeric, and mustard oil
which they would wear until they were bathed and dressed in their
wedding clothes. The use of the mixture was said to be for cosmetic
effect, to give the body a good skin tone. I know of no other use for
henna except as a cosmetic, but tumeric was also a very common Spice
and used in the cooking of almost all meat and vegetable dishes.
Mustard oil was commonly used as a lubricant for the hair and body,
but was also the most favored cooking medium. Also, on the day before
the wedding, the groom was given a Silver chain to wear around his
neck. I was told that formerly a silver rupee was tied to his wrist
in a handkerchief, but there were no longer any silver rupees avail-
able. The chain was a symbol rather than an ornament. As it was
silver, therefore, money, it symbolized the groom's future prosperity
and his family's present wealth. Only gold was worthy to be given as

an ornament at a wedding. Of course, the amount of gold given

114

demonstrated the wealth of the groom's family, but even the poorest
would give at least gold earrings to the bride.

The next day the wedding preparations began in earnest. The
barber was called to the groom's house in the afternoon to shave the
young man and cut his hair. The young man squatted on a small stool
for this Operation, while the women of the household held a sari over
his head as a canopy and sang marriage songs. One such song told of
how the bride could have anything she wanted at her father's house,
but would suffer at her husband's house. (When I later questioned men
about these songs, they were very disdainful and claimed to know
nothing about such women's songs and their content.) This was general-
ly a time of gaiety for the assembled women and children. Some of the
smaller girls might dance. Dancing was considered a lewd and lascivi-
ous act for sexually mature women, and they would not even dance when
only other women were present. The women and children teased the
groom, but here in his own home he answered back in kind. I was puzzled
about why the canopy was held over the groom's head. Here we may find
the answer in Van Gennep (1960:185-186).

Carrying and being carried is one of the practices which is
found more or less universally in the various ceremonies through
which a person passes in the course of a lifetime . . . . It is
intended to show that at the moment in question the individual
does not belong either to the sacred or to the profane world; or,
if he does belong to one of the two, it is desired that he be
properly reincorporated into the other, he is therefore isolated
and maintained in an intermediate position, held between heaven
and earth.

As the stool separated the young man from the earth, so the canopy

separated him from heaven. But why did the women hold the canopy? Was

it they who held him in a state of liminality? At this juncture in his

115

life he broke farther from their control, SO for a moment they held him
entirely in their power. Though he would bring the bride back to his
father's house to live, he would return as a householder, a husband,

in a higher status; no longer a boy.

The other man involved in this ritual was not safe from the women
either. As soon as the barber finished his work, the women grabbed
him and rubbed mustard oil on his face and in his eyes. MUstard oil
in the eyes stings painfully. For his trouble, the barber received a
prestation of mustard oil (here an ambivalent symbol, as it is the
instrument of his suffering but also a tool of his trade, the lubri-
cant he puts on faces before shaving them), a few pounds of uncooked
rice, aaipa grass, some coin money, betel nut, and betel leaf. The
women of the household, except for small daughters, were almost all
in-marrying affines. At the wedding they remembered their own mar-
riages, when they were taken, frightened, from the permissiveness of
the father's household to the continuing and unappreciated labor of
their husband's household. For them the wedding of a son of the house-
hold was a time of ambivalence; the groom was one's own son who was
growing up and taking on the responsibilities of a wife, but he was
also a man, one of those who must be obeyed and who was often a source
of abuse. A wedding was the one time the women could take ritual
license to express these conflicting emotions.

After the haircut and shave, the groom was carried by a kinsman
to the place where he was to be bathed. (Again we find the element
Van Gennep observed of the groom being held between heaven and earth.)
From that time on, for the rest of the week, the groom's feet should

not touch the ground unless shod. He was placed on another small stool,

116

and his mother held a corner of the end of her sari over his head. A
number of his kinswomen held onto the cloth, too. Then the cylindri-
cal stone (aii) used for grinding spices and other edible items was
held vertically over the cloth. Paddy, paipa grass, tumeric, betel
nut, and betel leaf were placed on the cloth under the stone, and the
mother simulated the grinding of the ingredients on her son's head.
Mustard oil was then poured over the stone and onto the sari cloth,
and the whole was passed three times down the front of the young man.
The grinding stone, which made a fine phallic symbol, was used to
transform "natural" items into "cultural" foodstuffs as marriage
transformed "natural" sexual intercourse into "cultural" wedlock.

As the first bath water was poured over the young man, the assem-
bled women splashed it around at one another and at any by-standers.

A water and mud fight among the women often accompanied such a bath.
Here the women's aggression was directed at one another, but usually
the younger first attacked the older, daughters-in-law against mothers-
in-law. The groom's own mother did not participate in bathing her son.
This was left to two or three kinswomen. The mother was in charge of
the pre-bath ritual, but then she relinquished him to other hands as
later she gave over the major responsibility for taking care of his
needs to his bride.

After his bath the groom was carried back into the house and
dressed in his wedding clothes. A meal was then served before the
wedding party left for the bride's house. The groom ate together with
close kinsmen and friends of his own age. The groom usually shared
his plate with friends of his own age group; but at one such meal I

observed, his mother's father and his own younger brother shared the

117

groom's plate with him. At first I was confused by the old man's
presence, but then I remembered that these two generations were equiv-
alent. Very affectionate behavior was appropriate between them, unlike
between father and son where relations were formal and distant. At
this meal the father of the groom fed the guests. The head of the
household always served male guests, but serving his own son indicated
the boy's elevated status.

The final course for the meal, after sweets, then pullao (a fancy
rice preparation) and gamma (a rather sweet meat dish), followed by
plain rice and curry (jpai), was milk and plain rice. At the bachelor
dinner I observed, the groom's mother's father took a handful of rice
from this last course, squeezed out the milk and laid the rice aside
on a cloth. The next day the mother of the groom threw this rice in
the tank, as she had done previously with the pap, the flower, the
paddy, and the aaipa grass after the pap-paai.

It was generally late in the evening by the time the groom's
party started on its way to the bride's house. From the moment the
groom left his own house he was supposed to cover his mouth with a
handkerchief, keep his eyes downcast, and not speak except in whis-
pered asides. This was a Show of modesty he was supposed to maintain
throughout the period of the wedding activities. As they proceeded
along the road they were usually stopped one or more times at a table
which appeared to be set up for a meal. The progress of the party was
obstructed, and the groom was lifted down from his rickshaw or other
conveyance and seated at the table. At the table he was given water to
wash his hand, a glass of sherbet (sweetened milk or water usually

flavored with mashed fruit) to drink, and a pan to chew, then more

118

water to wash his hand when he was finished.

In order to proceed on the journey, his false hosts, who had
taken advantage of his weak, transitional state, had to be paid for
this repast the large sum of Rs. 5 or Rs. 10. The table was set up
and the groom stopped in the Spirit of fun; but as with most practical
jokes, the recipient of the attention did not always see the humor.

It is not very amusing to part with Rs. 5 when one has spent all one
could borrow on the wedding requirements. I was with one groom's
party that was stopped at a table within his own village. The father
of the groom was beside himself, shouting in anger that the peOple of
one's own village were not supposed to do this, and he would give no
money. Members of his own party finally convinced him to come up with
RS. 2 for this pseudo feast.

At the entrance to the bride's house such a table was always set
up under an arch of banana plants. This exchange of refreshments for
money was expected and necessary for entrance into the homestead.
Therefore, the money came forth more readily from the groom's father.
If the homestead had a special building for accommodating male guests,
the groom's party was seated there. If not, one building in the house-
hold complex was given over to them. The inside walls of the building
were hung with draperies, nowadays normally rented for the occasion.
The floor was covered with straw mats over which cloth was Spread;
and pillows, on which the guests might lounge, were scattered around.
In a more elaborate set-up, the ceiling might even be draped with
cloth. The creation of an Arab nomad's tent in Bengal was perfect.
And, at least for the educated, this was a conscious image. When the

guests were all seated, water was supplied for them to wash their

119

hand, and sherbet was served.

After the guests had been properly greeted in this manner, the
groom's party laid out the wedding paraphernalia they had brought for
the scrutiny of the bride's kinsmen. Though all of these things had
been agreed upon at the pan-phul, and in some cases representatives of
the bride might even have accompanied the kinsmen of the groom to buy
the items; I have yet to see wholehearted approval of the gifts by the
bride's peOple. For the modestly situated village household, the
groom's party should have brought: a wedding sari to be worn when the
bride is on display after the wedding ceremony; a blouse and petticoat;
two less good, usually cotton, saris; a bed coverlet and straw sleeping
mat; plastic bracelets; a hair tassel; plastic shoes; a black cord to
be tied around the waist; gold ornaments; soap, hair oil, talcum pow-
der, a comb, and a mirror; sweets, betel nut and betel leaf. The
quality of these items was a matter determined at the pan-phul; the
last three items should be in sufficient quantity to serve all of the
guests. The most common additional items were clothing for the bride's
mother and Siblings.

The bride was supplied by her new husband's family with all the
things she would need to start life in her new home. She needed to
take nothing from her father's house with her. Later, however, when
she made visits to her father's house, he would, whenever possible,
give her a new sari and other gifts when she left to return to her
husband. The groom received gifts from the girl's family after the
wedding. An educated boy might receive a bicycle, a transistor radio,
or a wristwatch. To obtain a really promising husband for his daughter,

a father might even give some land or offer to finance the boy's

120

education. But most commonly the groom received an outfit of clothes
and perhaps a gold ring.

After the gifts to the bride had been evaluated, and if nothing
was seriously amiss, the imam proceeded with the ceremony (piaaa).

He went into the house where the bride was seated and veiled, surroun-
ded by her kinsmen. He asked her three times if she agreed to the
marriage. With much prodding by her kinsmen, she would give her assent
each time by saying, "Bismillah" (in Arabic, "with God's name").
According to Islamic law, two witnesses were required for the marriage.
And according to Comilla custom, one of the witnesses had a paa (the
prepared betel nut and betel leaf) provided by the groom. The
witnesses and the pap went with the imam into the presence of the

girl. After her consent had been given by the girl, the party went
out to ask the boy for his consent in the same manner. The imam then
led a prayer in the guest house, thus completing the Islamic require-
ments for the marriage. The imam consumed the "wedding pap," as it was
called. He received a few pounds of uncooked rice, some aappa grass,
and a monetary payment for his services and then joined the wedding
feast that was served at this time by the male members of the bride's
family to the groom's party.

The Islamic wedding is not a religious ceremony except as it
conforms to religious law. It is rather a contract between two parties
and between two families. For this reason, Muslims of the subcontinent
usually married their children at a later age than the Hindus. The
girl should theoretically be of an age when she could reasonably con-
sent to the marriage. The age of consent in the village might be as

young as ten years old, but it was usually between twelve and sixteen.

121

The girl had a representative, usually her father if he was living,
whose responsibility it was to see that she did marry and to take care
of the marriage arrangements, but he should have her consent. Her
reluctance to give her assent immediately when the imam asked her was
attributed to shyness.

As soon as the bride's kinswomen could get away from their cooking
duties, the bride's bath began. Her bath followed basically the pat-
tern of the groom's except that the barber had no part in it, and, in
addition to her kinswomen, female friends and neighbors participated.
Another difference was that the mood of the participants was subdued
compared to the mood of the groom's bath. The bride was not only
moving from one role to another, she was moving out of this household
to another. After her bath she was arrayed in the finery brought by
the groom's party and seated in her father's dwelling, with her sari
covering her head and face.

The groom was then led in and seated next to her on the coverlet
brought for the occasion. The mirror was placed on the ground in
front of the bride and groom to enable them to see one another for the
first time. One of the bride's young, unmarried female kin was assigned
the task of helping the bride and groom feed one another. She put some
sugar on the bride's little finger and led it to the groom's mouth.
This was done three times and repeated with the groom's finger to the
bride's mouth. The girl then similarly assisted the couple in feeding
each other a pap. This was a time of much hilarity among the assembled
women and children at the groom's expense. "Did he bite your finger?"
the bride might be asked. But unlike in his own home, the groom did

not answer back. He kept his head bowed in embarrassed silence. For

122

these women the groom was no son but only a young man whom they tried
to make as uncomfortable as possible. Finally, a new paddy winnowing
tray (kula) was placed in front of the couple. Some paddy and durba

grass (dhan-durba) was placed in the hand of the groom; he dropped it

 

onto the tray. The bride did the same. The dhan-durba was later
thrown in the tank, but the tray was kept by the couple. Beautifully
decorated wedding apia might be seen in some homes as wall decorations.
The groom paid a sum of money to the girl who had assisted them in the
ceremony.

There was immediately a great commotion, as the bride embraced all
of her kinsmen and bid them goodbye between sobs. She would return to
her home in a few days as a part of the ceremony. and in any case did
not go alone to her new husband's home this first time. One or two of
her kinsmen accompanied her and the groom's party to the groom's house.
But leave taking, especially among women, was usually a time of emotion-
al display. The wedding festivities went on for approximately a week.
The bride and groom were not expected to take up household or other
duties for that week. When she was at her husband's house during the
week the bride was on display for neighborhood women and closely related
men to come and see. They came out of curiosity and to pay their
respects to the family; a monetary gift to the bride was expected for
the privilege of seeing her. The day after the ceremony at the bride's
father's house another feast was held at the groom's father's house.
Tflne bride and groom returned to the bride's father's house one more
trime for one more feast. Their permanent residence was usually at the
glkaom's father's house, if not in his household at least in his home-

Stnead. To mark the end of the wedding period the bride cooked a meal

123

for her husband's household. After she had cooked in her husband's
house, she was no longer a "new bride" but an "old bride.” Then she
took up her household duties. The period of wedding visiting and
feasting might vary according to the distance between the two houses

and the economic position of the participants.

CIRCUMCISION

From the point of view of economic investment, numbers of people
involved, and extent of ritual activity, next in importance in Muslim
Bengali society after the wedding would be the funeral. Nevertheless,
the circumcision of boys will be considered next, because the ritual
activity bore closer resemblance to the wedding than did the funeral.
Circumcision was not mentioned in the Qur'an. It was the practice,
however, of Arabs in the time of Mohammed and became incorporated in
the religion. Some schools of Islamic law consider circumcision for
boys to be required, but for other schools it is merely commendable
(Levy 1957:251-252). The people of Shaheenpur considered that circum-
cision was required for a Muslim male. Some males, however, were not
circumcized because of the poverty or laxity of their families.
Generally boys were circumcized somewhere between the ages of four
through fourteen. A family with a number of sons, as far as possible,
had them all circumcized at the same time to save expense. This was
one reason one found the younger boys being circumcized; his older
brother was ready. A circumcision for only one individual usually
involved an older boy. Though circumcision might be considered a

puberty rite, in Shaheenpur economic considerations appeared to outweigh

124

10 The actual

the fact of whether a boy was physically mature or not.
circumcision involved little but the operation. Then one week hence,
after the wound theoretically had healed, a feast was held in honor of
the boy or boys, and they were given gifts of clothes and money. The
whole process was known as a musalmani (literally, "of a Muslim").

The position of the circumcisor (hajjam) was inherited, and each
circumcisor had a delimited geographical territory in which he worked.
After the circumcision operation he was paid in uncooked rice. At an
operation I observed, the twelve year old boy insisted that, in
addition to the rice, five pieces of turmeric, five pieces of aaipa
grass, and five paisa (the smallest denomination of Pakistani money)
also be given. I asked the significance of the number five, but no
one knew. This was not even custom (aiypm), but some people did it,
it was their wish (iaaaa). The circumcisor said that some peOple did
not give all these things; others added betel nut and betel leaf to
the list. In addition to this payment after the operation, the circum-
cisor received a monetary fee when he returned in one week to see that
the wound had healed prOperly and to participate in the feast. After
the Operation, the severed foreskin was tied on a string and hung from
the rafters of the house over the cooking fire. As the foreskin dried,
so dried the wound. All of the blood from the operation was caught on
a piece of cloth, wrapped in a piece of banana leaf, and thrown in the
tank.

One week later on the day of the feast, the circumcized boy was
given a bath similar to that given the groom. The boy's hands were
dyed with henna, and the barber was summoned to give him a haircut.

The women of the household held a sari as a canopy over the boy's head

125

during the haircut, singing songs appropriate for circumcisions. On
the canopy were placed turmeric and five paisa. The barber received

some uncooked rice and durba grass (dhan-durba) for his services.

 

Then, as with the groom, EHEE'EEEPE: tumeric, betel nut, and betel leaf
were placed on the end of the mother's sari, as if being ground on the
boy's head with the grinding stone; mustard oil added, and all drawn
down in front of the boy three times; water poured over the whole
thing; and the bathing with women other than the mother doing the
washing. After the bath the boy was dressed in some of the new clothes
he received as gifts that day. Much of what has been said about the
groom's bath held true for the bath of the circumcised boy, except that
the women tended to be more subdued. Though the ritual might not
coincide with actual physical maturity, this was approximately the time
when women lost much of their control over their sons. The boys
started to take more part in the man's world Of their fathers. At
about the age of ten or twelve boys were given agricultural duties more
complicated than merely keeping grazing animals out of the rice fields,

as the younger children did.

DEATH

There was, of course, a much different mood at a funeral than at a
wedding or circumcision, which were joyous events. Consequently,
there are few parallels to be drawn between the rituals of marriage
and circumcision and that of a funeral. My curiosity was aroused by
the repeated use of dhan-durba, betel nut and betal leaf, tumeric,

henna, and mustard oil at the first two rites. These elements were

126

completely lacking at a funeral. Nevertheless, the two elements,
Islamic recitation by a religious leader and the feeding of guests,
were present at all three. And a third element that was constant was
the bath.

For the death of a male, the imam directed the washing of the

corpse with the assistance of the kinsmen of the deceased. At the

 

death of a female, a woman called a dhowyani beti was summoned to wash
the corpse. She was usually a widow, as were midwives, and this was
her regular occupation. The kinswomen of the deceased assisted her.

I was able to observe the funeral of one woman while I was in the
field. A kind of raft was made by peeling layers from a banana plant.
The body was laid on this in front of the house in which the woman had
died, with bamboo doors set up as a screen to cut off the general

view. The dhowyani beti was allotted a portion of the new white cloth

 

bought for the shroud. This she tore into a number of small squares.
The first wash water was boiled with two kinds of leaves (aim and papai)
and a piece of thatch from each of the four corners of the house. The
hair of the corpse was washed thoroughly with soap and water and was
parted into three sections.11 Each portion of the body received an
application of soap and water two or more times. This was no mere
ceremonious splashing on of water. After the final washing of each
portion, the dhowyani beti took a clean square of white cloth and
rubbed it vigorously on the skin of the corpse. Then she Showed the
cloth to the assembled women so they could see that there was no dirt
remaining. The women explained to me that this was the deceased's
final bath before she entered heaven, and she must be clean for that.

On the other hand, I had been told that one should strive to be clean at

127

all times because one never knew when he might die. And if a person
died dirty, he would meet God in that condition. I cannot rationalize
these two statements except to say that there was an emphasis on
cleanliness in the culture. The shroud in which the corpse was wrapped
was also clean, as it had to be newly bought cloth. For her work the

dhowyani beti received a monetary payment and the clothing the dead

 

woman was wearing.

One might be tempted to look for the origins of the emphasis on
bathing in the Hindu traditions. The use of water and bathing are
important in Hindu rituals. But bathing also figures strongly in
Islamic tradition. The ablution before each of the five daily prayers
is almost as important as the prayers themselves. A deletion in the
ablution cancels out the effect of the prayer. The funeral is not
mentioned in the Qur'an, but the Hadith, books of customary religious

law, go into detail on bathing the corpse (Shorter Encyclppaedia of

 

iaiam 1953:89-90). On marriage, the religious books are mainly con-
cerned with the contractual duties of the two parties. But Granqvist
(1931) mentions the bath as a part of the marriage ceremony for
Palestinian Muslims. Certainly the form of the bath would be different
in riverine Bengal from that performed in the desert areas of the
Middle East. One might say that the former Hindu neighbors of the
Muslims in Shaheenpur reinforced the emphasis on the bath and influ-
enced its form. Marriage, circumcision, and funerals are all rites of
passage, at the completion of which one acquires a new status. There-
fore, before one can embark in this new role a very Special bath is

required.

128

The cosmetics of the wedding and the circumcision were the red
of henna and the yellow of tumeric, but at the funeral it was the black
of kohl (aaima). The eyes of the corpse were ringed with kohl, and a
line was drawn down the middle of the forehead. Camphor (karpfir) was
sprinkled in the folds of the shroud. Just before the departure for
the burial ground, rose water was sprinkled on the corpse and on the
assembled mourners. The corpse was placed on a form of wooden cot
enclosed on three sides by a railing. The women stayed behind in the
homestead while the men carried the cot with the corpse on their
shoulders toward the burial ground.

It was somewhere along on this last trip that the men put the cot

down, lined up behind it facing west, and the janaz namaj, or funeral

 

prayers, were said. Usually this was done in front of a mosque. The
male mourners then proceeded to the burial site, where the body was
placed in a grave with its head to the north and its face turned
toward Mecca in the west. Pieces of bamboo were placed across the body;
upon these, Straw mats were spread before the grave was filled in with
earth. I observed a woman's funeral and was told that though a man's
grave need only be chest deep, for a woman it should come to the
shoulders, a protection for her. Another example of the protection of
women, even in death, was an attempt to keep her shrouded corpse from
the eyes of strange men on the way to the burying ground. On the
fourth, fourteenth, and fortieth days after a death prayers were held

for the soul of the departed as described in the previous chapter.

129

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

A theme which ran through the wedding activities was that of
throwing certain items in the tank. In two instances this seemed to
symbolize the uniting of two families or two individuals from these
families. The EEETEHEA came from the bride's father's house, the

groom's mother added the dhan-durba (paddy and grass); then she threw

 

all the ingredients in the tank. Also, there was the dhan-durba

 

from the bride's hand and dhan-durba from the groom's hand dropped on

 

the winnowing tray and thrown in the tank after the first meeting of
the bride and groom. The third instance concerned only the groom's
family. Food from the common plate at the bachelor dinner was put
aside to be thrown in the tank. This last symbolized the unity,
eating together, of the groom's kin group or at least those who ate
from the same plate with him.

Does throwing something in the tank suggest an offering? An
offering could also be equated with a sacrifice. In Islamic ritual,
the animal sacrificed to commemorate Abraham's near sacrifice of Issac
is consumed by the people. Another offering, common at least locally,
was the sweets brought to the shrine of a deceased holy man when a
previous request had been granted, such as recovery from an illness.
The sweets were consumed by poor people who frequented the shrine for
this purpose. Prasad, the food offering at a Hindu ritual, is also
consumed, but this food then contains some of the "grace" of the god

to whom it had been offered. To the best of my knowledge, for the

130

Muslim, the food did not change in any way or become sacred after it
had been offered at the shrine.

So what kind of Offering was that which was thrown in the tanks
by the local MuSlims? There were tales current of fantastic beings or
things which lived in tanks. They were primarily blamed for pulling
people under and drowning them. But these tank-dwelling beings were a
rare topic of conversation. One had to ask about supernatural beings
to hear of them. And these creatures were generally said to be found
in the huge tanks, not the friendly little household tanks into which
the ceremonial items were thrown. It is unlikely that offerings were
being made in this way to the creatures believed to be in the tanks.
Another possible consideration might be in relation to the immersion
of Hindu images. The image is immersed in a tank after its worship
ceremony (paja) and subsequently dissolved, but the deity symbolized
by the image lives on. Perhaps the unity of the individuals and
groups, which I have suggested these ingredients symbolized, lived on
after and because of their immersion in the tank. The affinal ties
which they symbolized were extremely important to the strength and
continuity of the family and the patrilineal kin group.

A number of items were repeatedly used in the wedding and circum-

cision ceremonies: rice and grass (dhan-durba), betel nut and betel

 

leaf (pap, when prepared together for chewing), mustard Oil, turmeric,
and henna. Henna was introduced to the sub-continent as a cosmetic by
the Muslims. Rubbing the mixture of henna, turmeric, and mustard oil

on the body was said to give the skin a good tone. But the use of

the other items and why they were given, exchanged, or applied was

almost universally simply ascribed to "custom" by the informants. The

131

local imam with the highest level of attainment in religious education
told me with disgust that these were all Hindu practices. "These vil-
lagers are all ignorant and don't know they are doing Hindu things."

At one point after I had gotten the answer, "oh, just custom,"
from yet another lay person, I tried leading the informant by suggest-
ing that the use of betel nut and betel leaf symbolized respect,
hospitality and unity. He would not be led, however, and insisted
that it was only a matter of custom. Regardless of the informant's
negative answer, I believe that betel nut and betel leaf did symbolize
respect, hospitality and unity when used in the ceremonies. Every
visitor to a rural Bengali home, for whom there was any amount of
respect or good feeling, was offered a prepared betel leaf with betel
nut. If there happened to be none in the house, a child was sent out
to get some. A saying was current in the area that though a man was
served the finest foods, he was not properly honored if his host
omitted the betel nut and betel leaf.

The rice and grass used in the ceremonies were referred to as

dhan-durba, as though one word. When the durba grass appeared in a

 

ceremony it always accompanied uncooked rice. The rice, however, might
very well be husked rice (pai) rather than the unhusked paddy (apaa).
It did not appear to make any difference whether aai or apap were used,
except when rice was given as payment for ritual service, pai was

always given. The expression used, however, was still dhan-durba.

 

The durba grass was a particular variety of grass with small, delicate
branched stalks, which was used extensively in Hindu rituals. When

translating a local song of great popularity, I thought I had found an

historical Islamic reference to grass used in a symbolic manner. I

132

took this reference to the learned imam for an Opinion. The story

was that when Hajrat Ali first met Waz Koroni, the former gave the
latter a handful of grass. The lyric said gaaa (the general Bengali
word for all kinds of grass), not £2523. The imam agreed that Hajrat
(holy) Ali (son-in-law of the PrOphet Mohammed) and Waz Koroni were
historical persons, but they lived in the Middle East at the time of
the PrOphet, never came to India, and one never gave the other a hand-
ful of grass. This was just a local song with Muslim characters, but
using local, Bengali images.

Rice and pap were important items in Bengali life. Rice, in
addition to being the staple food, symbolized productivity and perhaps
fertility. These items were used for the marriage and circumcision
ceremonies. These ceremonies concern young people coming into their
productive lives. Levi Stauss (1966) has written much on universal
mental categories, especially dyads contrasting cultural and natural
things. In dhan-durba is found the domesticated plant, rice, with or
Opposed to the wild plant, grass. Though I have not written much about
sweets and sugar, they also were used as a symbolic greeting, similar
to pap. The groom was Stopped on the way to the bride's house at
tables where he was served sweet sherbet and pap. On one hand was the
processed sweet, and on the other was the unprocessed betel nut and
betel 1eaf--cu1ture and nature. For the ritual bath, oil was poured
first and then water. The oil was processed from mustard, and the
water was unprocessed or natural. In the circumcision and marriage
rites of passage ceremonies, the individuals were passing from more

"natural" states to positions of more responsibility in their society

and of more significance in their culture. Every Muslim male should

133

be circumcized, and marriage was the proper state for all adult males
and females. The natural and cultural items used in the ceremonies
symbolized this passage.

What we find is a symbolic pattern using many items and images
from the local environment interwoven with Islamic symbols. To know
that these people professed Islam helps us understand much of their
behavior. Prayers and Qur'anic recitations had a part in every cere-
mony. But to know that the people were primarily rice farmers in a
deltaic land where pOpulation was dense and land was scarce helps to
complete the picture. Items of food played a large part in the cere-
monies. And when food was not being used symbolically, it was exchanged
in the form of feasts to cement the social ties which facilitated sur-

vival.

CHAPTER V

SHRINES AND THEIR ADHERENTS

A Muslim grave in eastern Bengal was usually unmarked. Graves
proliferated on raised ground among the paddy fields and even on some
wide shoulders along the roadways. One had to be careful not to walk
on this holy ground shod, and often the only indication of a graveyard
was where the earth had fallen in on some of the graves. Here and
there, however, an edifice was built over a grave. The basic con-
struction was a wall of about two to two and a half feet high outlining
the grave with slightly raised pillars at each of the four corners.
Often one saw trees growing from the ground inside the walls of the
grave, since in this small area the sapling was protected from the
foraging of cows and goats. The edifice was built of brick and plas-
tered with cement. A more elaborate tomb might not be left open, but
covered over with brick and cement. These marked burial sites were
usually the graves of wealthy or important men of the area.

Similar tombs might also be built for men who were believed to
have had some mystical religious power in their lifetimes, generally a
iaaii, in the local idiom. A fakir might simply be a religious beggar,
but miraculous cures might also be attributed to him. When a iaaii
engaged in curing by using certain articles or chants and rituals, he

might alternately be called a kobi raj ("king of poets, a Bengali

134

135

title for physician). Or when he took students and instructed them in
the arts of mysticism, he might be called a pig.

The mystic element in Islam is called Sufism. The term Sufi was
first applied to one group of mystics in Arabia because of their cus-
tom of wearing woolen robes, aai; the term was later applied to all
mystics. Though mysticism and the abstinence and self-mortification
of mystics was condemned in the Qur'an, this element in society was
evidenced in the days of the Prophet and has continued in popularity
to the present day throughout Islamic countries. Rahim (1965:136),
writing of the important Sufis who came to preach in Bengal, referred
to them as pipa. When he turned to write of the Qalandar sect of
Sufis, however, who were usually eccentric wandering mendicants, he
used the term iaaii. He defined the word pii as simply meaning "old"
in Persian or Urdu, however, in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent, it
came to mean "mystic guide" or refer to one who initiated disciples
into the mystic orders. Rahim also differentiated a Sufi, as anyone
who practiced mysticism, from a pip, who was a teacher in mysticism.
Sufi adherents in the Comilla area referred to their living teacher in
mysticism as their pip. We shall see that some of the men buried at
the shrines in Comilla appear to have been pipa in their lifetimes,

but are now referred to as fakirs.

FAKIRS

There were no fakirs resident in Shaheenpur, but there were many
who lived in and around Comilla town. The fakir was supposed to gain

his supernatural powers by faith, abstinence, and meditation. He might

136

be recognized as he wandered around by his disheveled appearance; his
unconcern for his body indicating his disdain for worldly things. In
the initial stages of my field investigation, I was concerned to differ-
entiate the holy personage of the iaaii from that of the mentally
deranged person. Later I was told my informants, "The iaaii is

Slightly insane," then in a voice soft with awe, ”He would have to be."
One person explained that to attempt to communicate with Allah, to come
close to Allah, was a terrible thing; it caused one to lose his mind.

It is my impression that certain manifestations of insanity by
themselves suggested holiness. On my first trip to eastern Bengal, I
observed an emaciated young man always lying by the Side of the road at
the main intersection of Comilla town. He never bestirred himself to
get any sustenance. PeOple told me he was crazy. At times, however, I
saw peOple crouched talking to him, with a few dishes of food they had
brought on the ground. It was then further explained to me that since
he did not provide for himself, but still survived, it must be God
who took care of him. Since God was looking after him, he must be a
holy man; and people came to ask things of him. But when I returned to
the same area five years later, no one remembered him. He either got
up and walked away or lies buried somewhere in an unmarked grave; his
holy status did not outlive him.

Of those called iaaii whom I knew, one did not appear to be in any
way mentally deranged. He had a thriving business in curing and an
establishment set up by the tomb of an earlier iaaii. Another iaaii
with flowing, long white hair had a beatific smile and continued an
apparently happy babble. This iaaip was the subject of the conversation

when it was explained to me that attempting to communicate with God

137

caused one to become deranged. It was said, however, that I would be
amazed at the miraculous things this man could do. I never had the
opportunity to observe any of his miracles. A third iaaii was the
father of a close friend of mine. This iaaii continued to live with
his wife and family, but no longer contributed to their support. My
friend had to take over the support of his mother and younger siblings
at a young age when his father gave up worldly things to become a iaaii.
The father went about begging for alms, but gave all the money he
received to mosques and religious shrines. When I saw the old gentle-
man at home, he was always absorbed in reading the Qur'an. I was with
the man's son one day when someone asked him, "I hear your father is
crazy?" The young man answered, "My father is a £251£°n He did not
say, "No, he is not crazy, he is a iaaii.” A fourth iaaii, whom I
never met, but saw often, wandered around the countryside completely
naked. He was labeled a "crazy fakir."

Insanity, however, did not always connote holiness. One cause of
insanity was believed to be spirit possession, something of which to
divest a person. An exorcism ceremony was performed for the person;
but if the person did not recover, then it was explained that spirit
possession had not been the cause of his derangement. One could be
possessed by a Spirit, or jipp, possessed by the love of God, or some-

thing might simply be "wrong with the head (math; khSrap). One man in

 

Shaheenpur was convinced that he was seriously ill and that no one
would help him. He came from a middle income family which could have
afforded medical assistance for him. He wandered around begging for
help and interrupted village meetings shouting for someone to give him

the money to see a doctor. People told me to ignore him, that there

138

was merely something wrong with his head. His particular derangement,

however, did not seem to confer any holiness of him.

THE HISTORY OF LOCAL SHRINES

When a iaaip died his tomb was usually built by contributions
from the peOple. Consequently, if a iaaip had been successful in
granting the requests of supplicants, he was more likely to have
enough of a following to have a tomb built for him from their contri-
butions. Especially miraculous occurrences connected with a iaaip
brought even more adherents. The tombs or shrines were called aaiga
or majai. Sometimes these shrines were built where the fakir had
merely sat, the whereabouts of his body being unknown. He had wandered
off, but his works were remembered. The shrine continued to have the
miraculous power attributed to the iaaii.

There was a shrine a few miles outside Comilla town dedicated to a
very famous saint from Sylhet, Shah Jalal.12 It was said that the
saint was making a journey from Sylhet in the north to Chittagong in
the south. He stOpped and rested on a hill overlooking the Gumpti
River. While he was resting, he had his hair cut and his nails pared.
According to the keeper of the shrine, the Shrine was built about six
hundred years ago by the Maharaja of Agartala over the place where the
saint's hair and nails were buried. Shah Jalal's shrine was more elab-
orate than the tombs of wealthy villagers. Two concentric six foot
walls enclosed the central tomb structure; the inner wall had arched
entrances on all sides, and the outer wall, with one entrance from the

outside, had niches which held religious reading material, candles, etc.

139

A number of the more important shrines in the vicinity were
enclosed by a roofed building. One such shrine was in a room at the
end of one of the mosques in town, called Darogabari mosque; darOga
indicated the rank of a police officer and was the name of a large
house near the mosque. This was the tomb of Al Haj Maulana Hafij Kari
Sufi Shah Abdullah of Gazipur, Uttar Pradesh, according to the keeper
of the shrine. Shah Abdullah was apparently a pip rather than a.iaaii,
as I have described the two roles. But it was not certain if he was a
mystic from what information I could gather. He was a teacher at a
local madrasah and lived at Daroga Bari. He was a learned Arabic
scholar, and people came to learn religion from him. He took no money,
even for his services at the madrasah. The people at the shrine ex-
plained that there were two kinds of fakirs: majpp and £§l§§° The
majap had no students (maiia); the aaiaa did have students. Shah
Abdullah was a EEAEE’ according to the people at the shrine; conse-
quently, as has been explained above, he may have been called a pip
during his lifetime. Though Shah Abdullah apparently did not engage in
curing practices, after his death his shrine became a pilgrimage spot
for the afflicted.

One of the smaller but important shrines in Comilla town was the
tomb of Majnu Baba. ‘gapa means father and is often attached to the
names of fakirs. majpa or majnun is an Arabic word meaning crazed.

Any night one might travel down the main street of Comilla town, one
could see the shrine of Majnu Baba alight with flickering candles,
candles being one possible offering at such a shrine. The shrine of

Majnu Baba consisted of only the tomb and a low outer wall. There was

no regular caretaker for this shrine, but an old man in a nearby tea

140

shop told us the story of Majnu Baba as he knew it.

Majnu Baba died about twenty-five years ago, and the people
of the neighborhood immediately built this shrine. In his life,
he spent his days lying in the dust by the Side of the road at
this spot, with his hands clasped and staring at the sun. He
did not give peOple anything to cure them of their illnesses, but
simply stared at them as a cure. One time in a village miles
away many peOple were afflicted with small pox. One hundred fifty
peOple died of the disease in that village alone. Majnu Baba

made one visit there, and after that there were no more cases of
small pox in the village.

The old man had a personal story to tell of Majnu Baba involving the
man's own family.
My younger brother worked in the hills about five or six
miles to the east. He would come home from work at about two
o'clock in the morning. One night Majnu Baba came to our house
about that time. My brother offered the fakir a mattress and a
quilt on which to sleep. But the fakir did not eat or sleep. At
our house was a large fruit tree. The fakir just sat under this
tree and stared at my brother for a long time. Then the fakir
left our house. A short time later my brother hanged himself
from that tree. My mother came and found him hanging there dead.
Did the fakir's stare cause the young man to hang himself? Or did the
fakir's stare simply indicate that he knew what was going to happen? I
could not ascertain from the old man. This was simply an amazing
incident connected with the fakir. During my field experience I
heard a number of such stories which left many questions in my mind or
were without a point from my cultural point of view. And the Story
teller could not, or would not, answer my questions. This was such a
case.

On the north side of the town on the edge of a large graveyard was
another shrine, this one consisted of five graves surrounded by a low
wall. These were the graves of four fakirs and the keeper of the

shrine who had died recently. The keeper's widow and son could tell me

little about two of the fakirs except their names. The name of one was

141

Sylheti Baba because he came from Sylhet. The other was Nawab Shah
because he had stayed at the Nawab's house in his lifetime. A third
grave belonged to Aman Shah Baba, who always sat on the veranda of one
of the local courts. As claimants in a case went by the iaaip on their
way into the court, they might ask him to pray for their success (also
giving a gratuity) and then they would win their case. (My informants
did not know what would happen if both sides in a case asked him to
pray for them). But one day a district judge threw the fakir's bedding
and other things off the veranda and told him to go. That night the
judge's bowels and urine both stopped. The next day the judge and his
wife got in their automobile and drove until they found Aman Shah Baba
on the road. After they brought the iaaii back, the judge recovered
his health. When Aman Shah Baba died he was first buried in another
place. When his body was exhumed to be reburied at the shrine, they
found that it had suffered no decomposition.

The fourth fakir buried at the shrine by the graveyard was Phuk
(ppaa), insect) Shah Baba. It was said that his hair was alive with
insects. He was also known as Pagli (crazy) Baba. The two names could
conceivably be connected. The informants said that during World War
II, when there was bombing by the Germans (aip,), Phuk Shah Baba called
all of the bombs on his own head to save the people. (There was a
military airport at Comilla, and Japanese bombs fell there. Phuk Shah
Bab, however, may very well have been able to deflect all of the German
bombs.) All of these men had been noted for their curing abilities
during their lifetimes, and the shrine had maintained this reputation.

Near the shrine of the four fakirs was another more elaborate

shrine with multiple tombs. The area of the town, Kaliyajuri, gave the

142

shrine its name. The central, main tomb belonged to Ainuddin Baba Shah.

Ainuddin Baba Shah came to the area from far to the west:
maybe Arabia, maybe Iran. He wandered around the Comilla area and
worked for a time at the home of a local zamindar (land owner),
Babri Miya. While he was working there a cow died. Ainuddin Baba
hit the cow on the foot with a stick, and the cow came back to
life. From this, the peOple knew he was a fakir. Ainuddin Baba
continued to wander from place to place until he came to this
place in Kaliyajuri which was then a jungle. He sat here for
three days and three nights, and then he died. On the day he
died, he was reported to have appeared near the police Station
at Daudkandi, a town about forty miles to the west. He had his
hair cut at the place. There was also a shrine built at Daudkandi,
therefore, containing his hair. With money from Babri Miya's son
and contributions from other people this shrine was built. To the
right of Ainuddin Baba, Babri Miya Zamindar was buried. And to
the left was buried Golap Shah Baba. Golap Shah came and sat at
this place after the death of Ainuddin Baba. He was famous for
his curing ability. The shrine was built one hundred fifty years
ago. At first, a panther visited this shrine every Thursday
evening.13 One only comes occasionally now. (Panthers were not
uncommon in the area even twenty years ago, but there had been no
recent reported sightings.)

About twelve miles south of Comilla town on the road to Chitta-
gong, there was a very attractive shrine to which panthers were also
reported to have come. Not only panthers, but elephants were reported
to have come to this shrine in the past. The shrine contained the
tomb of Bajlur Rahman Khandakar. It was topped by a whitewashed and
decorated dome and a veranda surrounded the building on all sides.

This shrine was reported by many peOple to be very gaiam (warm or hot),
which meant that it was very effective for curing illness. Bajlur Rah-
man was born in the village of Candsri, a few hundred yards to the east
of the shrine, according to the keeper of the shrine; the shrine took
its name from the village. The keeper told me very little about Bajlur
Rahman, except that he had died seventy years ago. He added, however,
that at first a two story corrugated metal shrine was built. About

twenty years ago the brick building had replaced it. When I visited

143

the Shrine, many people came out from the village to see me. I asked
if any of them could tell me more stories about the fakir. They
apologized that they could not because the fakir had died seventy
years ago, and none of them were alive at that time. They said that
they had heard stories, but could not attest to their validity. It
would be wrong, they said, to tell falsehoods about the fakir.

On the way back to the road, a man with a fishing net caught up
with me. He said that though he was on his way fishing he would tell
me a few things about Bajlur Rahman.

When Bajlur Rahman was quite young a fakir came to talk to
him. The other fakir asked Bajlur Rahman what he wanted. Bajlur
Rahman replied that he wanted no gifts or wealth. So the fakir
said that he would return on Thursday night. When he returned
he brought cooked rice (bhat or cooked rice is also the general
term used to mean food). When Bajlur Rahman had finished eating
the rice, the other fakir told him to eat the tip of a gourd (lau)
he had brought. After eating the tip of the gourd, Bajlur Rahman

went out of his mind. A few days later and still in a crazed
condition, Bajlur Rahman wandered off into the jungle, where he

stayed for twelve years. One day a panther came up and bit Bajlur

Rahman on the hand. After his encounter with the panther, Bajlur
Rahman came back to the village; from that time on he sat under a
mango tree staring into the sun all day. From this, people said
that he was a fakir. One day a man came to Bajlur Rahman as he

was sitting under the mango tree. Bajlur Rahman hit the man with a

bamboo stick and also cut his body in many places. But when
Bajlur Rahman poured water on the man, he walked away unhurt.
From this, peOple said that he was a fakir.

Here we have another enigmatic story. This is the one case, however,

of a local boy who became a fakir. The others apparently just wandered

in one day. The other iaaii in this story, if he did not give Bajlur
Rahman the ability to experience God or the supernatural, at least

started him on the way to becoming a holy man or iaaii. I am tempted
to say that the panther was a sign to Bajlur Rahman to return to the

world of man. The villagers, however, would probably say that this

144

convinced Bajlur Rahman that the jungle was no place to live, and he
would be better off at home. The other parts of the story simply
indicated that Bajlur Rahman could and did do miraculous things that
other men were incapable of doing.

One of the newest shrines in the area was dedicated to Noor Sha-
hinshah Baba, which translated loosely as Light of the King of Kings
Father. This was certainly an impressive name, but from my point of
view cast doubt on the credibility of this fakir's existance. The
shrine had only been there for about ten months when I first visited
it. The story of this shrine began when the owner of the land was
plowing one day and decided to cut down a mound of earth in his field
and cultivate it. That night it came to him in a dream that this
mound was a fakir's grave, and he must not disturb it. The next day
he cut into the mound of earth in spite of the dream, and that night
his wife and child died. After that, he did not touch the grave again.
Two years before the shrine was built a woman from Sylhet came to the
place and built herself a little house by the side of the road. She
put four flags in the field where the grave of the iaaii was supposed
to be. She had come to Comilla thirteen years before that and had
stayed at the shrine of Shah Jalal already mentioned. She died soon
after the shrine of Noor Shahinshah Baba was built. After that, a
woman of the area became the keeper of the shrine. Many people knew
of this shrine as the "woman's shrine" (bedir majar), not that it was
dedicated to a woman or that women particularly came here, but it was
unusual for a woman to be the keeper of a shrine. She and her family

lived in the little house built by the Sylheti woman.

145

Stories of holy men who did such miraculous things as stare at the
sun all day, injure peOple only to cure them of their wounds, suddenly
appear at another place at the moment of their death, or whose shrines
were visited by wild animals were not original with the fakirs buried
in and around Comilla town. One can find in the literature similar

accounts from other places in the subcontinent far from eastern Bengal.14

ACTIVITIES AT SHRINES

Except for the ”woman's shrine" all of the foregoing shrines were
referred to me by peOple who had visited them previously with a request
or knew of someone who had. In other words, they were shrines in whose
power some people had faith. This is not to say that no one bad

faith in the "woman's shrine,‘ merely that I did not personally meet
one. I went there because it was on the road which I traveled every
day. The "woman's shrine" was very new. Crooke (1893:224) mentioned
shrines that were built where people had dreamed that a holy man was
buried. He added, however, that these shrines existed under some
suspicion unless, or until, sufficient curing or other miracles occurred
in connection with them to give them legitimacy. Some educated town
peOple informed me that the "women's shrine" was bogus. Monetary con-
tributions were connected with these shrines so that it was conceivable
that a person might set one up given nothing more than a profit motive.
It would be interesting to follow the fortunes of such a new shrine

over an extended period of time.

The keeper of the shrine, or kademdar, received money for saying a

jeyarat for a petitioner. Properly, a jeyarat was a prayer one said

146

to God for the peace of a deceased person's soul. The kademdar, how-
ever, for the payment, said a jeyarat to the soul of the iaaii to
intercede with God on behalf of the petitioner, to grant the petition-
er's request. Another form of petition to a shrine was called manusi.
The petitioner went to the shrine and promised that if his request was
granted, he would perform manusi, or bring a thank offering of sweets
to the shrine. Though peOple might request material benefits, such as
success in an economic venture, it was my impression that the requests
usually concerned recovery from an illness. When, and if, the request
was granted, sweets were prepared at home, or occasionally bought, and
brought to the shrine. The petitioner and the recovered person knelt
and prayed at the shrine while the kademdar distributed the sweets to
the poor. I participated in one such manusi for a child who had
successfully recovered from an operation. Surgical Operations were
very rare and relatively dangerous in the rural area, and the parents
were terrified. We stopped at the shrine with the child on the way
home from the hospital. Little children came running from all direc-
tions with pans and banana leaves in which to collect the sweets to
take home. Later that day the father of the recovered child lit can-
dles in thanksgiving in most of the shrines and some of the mosques of
the area.

Many of the shrines commemorated the death anniversary of the
iaaii buried at the site with a function called an.pia. PeOple came
from long distances for the aia at the more famous shrines. To the
shrine of Muinuddin Chisti, the founder of the Chistiya sect of Sufis,
at Ajmer in India, peOple came from all over the subcontinent. The

Indian Government made special arrangements for Pakistanis who wanted

147

to make the pilgrimage. People came from all over the province of East
Pakistan for the pia_at the major Maijhbandari Shrine near Chittagong
city. None of the shrines in the Comilla area, however, were so very
famous. For an EEE, a large meal was cooked to feed all of the
visitors. In the evening, there were prayers and Qur'anic recitations,
and religious songs were sung by individuals practiced in the art.
Most of the Comilla shrines had an.pia, their size relative to the
fame of the shrine and the iaaip buried there. The Shah Jalal shrine,
east of Comilla town, had no aia as the saint was not buried there.
Large crowds from the surrounding area, however, came there the night
of Shab-i-Barat to pray.

The pig was the practice most universally condemned by the Muslim
reformers of the mid-nineteenth century in Bengal, as mentioned in
chapter three. There was criticism of the whole institution of pipa
and their students, as it had develOped in South Asia. The main
criticism was that the pip often became an intermediary between the
student and God. The Fara'idis condemned the institution 0f.21£§ when
they believed it had taken on this intermediary aspect. Shari'at
Allah, the founder of the Fara'idis, was himself initiated in the
Qadiriyah Sufi order; yet, as long as the pip-maiia relationship was
limited to one of a teacher and his student, this was not believed to
be counter to the true Islam. Performing an annual pia_at the death
anniversary of a pip, however, raised him above mortal men and was not
in the traditions of the PrOphet; it was a sinful innovation. Despite
the efforts of Shari'at Allah, Maulana Karamat Ali, and other such
reformers, however, the apa continued to be celebrated in Comilla as

well as many other areas of the subcontinent.

148

SUFI SHRINES AND ACTIVITIES

One man in Shaheenpur reported that he attended no mosque because
he was a Maijhbandari. The Maijhbandari were a particular sect of
Sufis, seemingly an eastern Bengali sect. I have been able to find no
references to them in the literature. Among the villagers and less
educated of the Comilla area, the term Sufi seemed to be unknown;
though the Maijhbandari were a particular sect, the people apparently
used the term Maijhbandari to mean Sufi. The Maijhbandari sect had
their major shrine in a village near Chittagong city. When I asked the
meaning or derivation of the name Maijhbandari, I was told that it
was simply the name of the village where the major shrine was located.

Bandar can mean port, but I was not able to trace any meaning for

"maijh.

The organization of the Sufis consisted of a man-to-man relation-
ship between teacher and student, pip and mppia, The Sufi pip
appointed his successor from among his students, perhaps his own son.
He might also send others of his good students out to minister to stu-
dents in another area. All of the students or adherents of Sufism,
however, were not, or did not aSpire to be, full time mystics. That
is, they did not aspire to attain the status of a pip; they had ordi-
nary occupations but depended for their religious guidance on their
pip, One might hear a man defend his apparently unorthodox behavior
with the excuse that his pip had instructed him to behave in this
manner. For example, on the subject of not fasting, I heard this
excuse: "My pip told me not to fast until I am over thirty." There

was also the example of the man in Shaheenpur who did not attend any

149

mosque. One cannot generalize such unorthodoxy, however, to all those
who claimed some adherence to Sufism (Maijhbandari). Sufis could also
be strict adherents to all the forms of Islam. An educated Maijhbandari
explained his belief that although one might faithfully perform all

the rituals of Islam, this meant little without the love of Allah in
one's heart. Being a Maijhbandari helped him to experience this love.
Though for some Sufism might merely be a cover for deviant behavior,

for most it provided an emotional outlet not available in the daily
round of Islamic ritual.

Two of the shrines in the area were said to be Maijhbandari
shrines. The fakirs buried there had belonged to the Maijhbandari
sect. These were Kaliyajuri and one which has not been described yet.
The latter shrine was in a village which I shall call Tintala.

Tintala was less than a quarter of a mile from Comilla town. The
shrine was built much like a mosque structure, with a full veranda on
the eastern side. Inside was one long room and another small room at
the north end in which the tomb was located. At the north end of the
long room was a bedstead covered with a white cloth, a number of pil-
lows, and decorated with paper flowers. This was where the iaaip to
whom the shrine was dedicated sat in his lifetime. Rather than the
tomb, this bedstead seemed to be the object of veneration. I had been
to quite a few other shrines before I came here, so I started asking
what miracles this iaaip had performed. "He had a lamp which never
needed more oil." But the main things the peOple around the shrine
emphasized were that the iaaip could play the harmonium, the flute, the
.Eflhlé (two small drums which were set on the ground when played), the

dal (a double headed drum), and the dutara (stringed instrument). The

150

Maijhbandari rites were usually associated with music. Whether the
people thought it was especially significant that the iaaip could play
all of these musical instruments, or whether they were Simply stating
a fact, I do not know.

Behind the shrine was a labyrinth of houses built one right next
to the other, with winding little alleyways leading between them. The
manner in which the dwellings were crowded made one think of a very
poor neighborhood in a large city, but this cluster was set out in the
open countryside. Land was scarce in the countryside, too, but in no
other place were houses to be seen so closely clustered. Here many of
the Maijhbandari adherents of the shrine lived, some of them descen-
dents of the iaaip buried there. Of course, peOple from outside the
village also came to the shrine. To the south of the main shrine was
another long building. This was the establishment of a living iakip
who engaged in curing practices. He was not a local man, but had come
a few years previously. When I first met him there were four ill
people waiting to see him. One man had walked eight miles to get there.

At Tintala there were prayers, music, and dancing every night in
the building of the living papip, Abdul Rashid. At two other places
in Comilla town, groups of Maijhbandaris met for prayers and music
every Thursday evening. At the meetings in town, prayers were per-
formed, and then someone read from the Qur'an. At one such meeting I
attended, a portion of the Qur'an was read in Arabic and then explained
in Bengali. The people who attended the town meetings came from a
wide spectrum of the society in terms of their education, wealth, and
occupation. Here the equality which was supposed to exemplify Islam

was practiced. The poorest landless laborer was welcomed as a brother

151

Maijhbandari by the educated government service holder. Men of musical
ability were especially welcome. In town one might hear beautiful
plaintive songs about the founder of the Chistiya sect of Sufis,
Muinuddin Chisti, or the martyrs, Hasan and Hussain. The songs were
usually accompanied by a stringed instrument and drums. The non-
musicians kept up a continual chant of Allah's name and swayed slight-
ly. The music, the chant, and the body motion were all calculated to
induce trance, to facilitate a communion with or knowledge of the
Almighty. Occasionally one of the simpler men went into a more vio-
lent trance, shouting, falling to the floor, and shaking.

The music and participants at Tintala were much less sophisti-
cated. The accompaniment consisted of three drums, a metal gong, and
a set of cymbals, effectively, for me, drowning out the lyrices of the
songs. Here the participants were mostly on their feet dancing, though
there were observers sitting to the side of the dancers, and occasional-
ly a dancer became exhausted and sat down. The dancing consisted
mostly of jumping back and forth from one foot to the other with head
lolled back and eyes half closed. All of this activity faced Abdul
Rashid where he sat on his bed. He occasionally arose and danced on
his bed. Then he would fall down as if in a trance and remain prone
for a period of time. When peOple came in from outside or dropped out
of the dancing to leave, they came to Abdul Rashid and placed their
foreheads on the edge of his bed. He might grasp their forehead with
his hand, strike them on the head, or strike them on the back. A few
he even stomped on the back with his foot. In addition to leading

these "worship" services, Abdul Rashid practiced curing, so I was not

152

certain if this treatment was for the good of the peoples' souls or
their physical bodies.

As the readers may ascertain from the fact that I attended these
meetings, the Maijhbandaris were more liberal in their attitude toward
the participation of women in religious functions than were most other
Muslims. It was said that at the main shrine in Maijhbandar, Chitta-
gong one could see many women dancing, playing musical instruments,
and singing, as well as in attendance at the shrine. On one occasion
at Tintala, two women danced in front of Abdul Rashid with the men.
The men, however, were careful to give the women a Space of their own
in which to dance, so that there was no physical contact between men
and women. One of the women appeared to have quite a bit of freedom
and perhaps some importance at the shrine. When she was not dancing
she ministered to the.£é§i£: bringing more incense and candles, a new
paper flower garland for his neck, and even some rose water to sprinkle

on him. At all times there was someone fanning him.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

A variety of activities and attitudes surrounded the many shrines
in the Comilla area. A few had a faithful group of regular adherents.
Some were relatively well known locally for successful cures attributed
to them. Ill health and the lack of sufficient medical services were
serious problems in eastern Bengal. The place of shrines in the system
of disease causation beliefs and curing practices will be explored
further in the succeeding chapter. The percentage of the population

which resorted to shrines either for worship or for the granting of a

153

request would be difficult to determine. One criterion on which to
judge, however, might be the fact that only slightly more mosques than
shrines could be seen dotting the countryside.

The majority of the population, except in times of great personal
crisis, were satisfied to attend the mosque occasionally and perform
the rituals of Islam more or less regularly. There were some people,
even at a time of personal crisis, who would not resort to attendance
at a shrine. The approved role in Islam for the individual with a
greater interest in religion than the ordinary person was to attend
the madrasah and become a man of religious learning. Actually, it
was usually a father who decided that it would be meritorious to have a
son who attended the religious school and became a religious leader.
But for some the pedestrian performance of religious ritual was not
enough. Nor was the memorization of a foreign language (Arabic) and
further memorization of the Qur'an inspiring as the way to religious
fulfillment. The role of the iaaip, and in some cases even the pip,
provided the unstable but creative person a significant place in so-
ciety. Whereas the imam could only tell the troubled worshipper what
the rules of the religion were, not whether God would forgive him or
even if God accepted his prayers and fasting, the iaaip or pip could,
and would, tell a man exactly what to do to gain grace. For those
people who needed an intermediary with God, who needed peace of mind,
the iaaip or pip provided this function.

The mosque functioned on a neighborhood level. PeOple who lived
in the vicinity of the mosque usually attended that mosque. A shrine
drew a more cosmopolitan clientele. It was true that sons of Maijhban-

dari fathers themselves were often Maijhbandaris. At Tintala all of

154

the members of a number of patrilineal kin groups who lived there were
all Maijhbandaris. In any case, most of the adherents of the sects or

shrines were individuals who had felt this need for a personal religi-

ous experience.

CHAPTER VI

DISEASE AND CURING

Life in the villages of eastern Bengal could be very uncertain.
Disease was a constant threat, and modern medical curative assistance
was almost non-existent. Cholera was endemic to the area; it and small
pox were seasonal and struck every year. The government had programs
for the control of these two diseases and malaria. Young men from the
health departments of the government made regular visits to the vil-
lages. There was a maSs innoculation program for the children against
small pox. Upon occasion, to disperse a band of persistant children,
someone would call out that I had come to give innoculations. The
children would then disperse in all directions, not waiting for a
demonstration. I wondered how the innoculator went about his work.
Then one day I saw him cheerfully prying screaming toddlers out from
under bushes to innoculate them. The man from the malaria section also
came periodically to take blood samples from anyone in the household
who had had a fever since his last visit. I do not know, however, if
free medication was forthcoming when he found a case of malaria. The
shots for cholera were neither very effective nor universally given.

A cure for cholera was being developed by another government program
with apparent success.

In the 1961 Census of Pakistan for Comilla District, the statis-
tics showed one hOSpital bed for 12,575 people. About one hundred of

155

156

these 325 beds were not open to the public. Most of the beds were in
Comilla town, a great distance from much of the population in the dis-
trict. The situation had improved somewhat since the compilation of
the 1961 census. An important clinic concerned with cholera research
was set up at Matlab Bazar on the eastern edge of the district.

Though primarily concerned with developing a feasible cure for cholera,
it took the patients who could be moved there.

Cholera, small pox, and malaria were the most infamous, but not
necessarily the most bothersome, diseases that bedeviled the Bengalis.
There were hundreds of internal disorders, skin diseases, and fevers
which laid them low. Fever was described by the people of Shaheenpur
as being of three types. A mild fever of short duration was influenza.
A medium severe, recurring fever was malaria. And a severe fever,
especially if the patient died, was typhoid. The woman whose funeral
I attended was said to have died of typhoid. She had a fever which
gradually got worse over a period of about a month. It was only in
the last week before her death that the fever became severe. In the
first stages of her fever the neighbors suggested various herbal
medicines for her. In the last week, a local, slightly trained doctor
came to see her and prescribed some kind of inexpensive medicine or
tonic, but to no avail. Her family was poor, but they were doing the
best they could for her, and what they thought necessary. The last day
before her death, they talked of taking her to a fully trained modern

medical practitioner in town, but it was too late.

157

THE DOCTOR

The problem was twofold. People in the village were continually
having fevers, stomach and bowel upsets, and various pains. Most of
them recovered with no assistance at all. Some seemed to be cured with
herbal remedies and charms. And some worsened almost overnight, and
the person died. It was difficult to judge the seriousness of an ill-
ness. I saw peOple almost out of their minds with fear over an ill-
ness. The example was given in the previous chapter of the deranged
man in Shaheenpur who continually begged people for money to see a
doctor. The other side of the problem was the variety of types of
"medicine" from which one could choose. Since Shaheenpur was less
than two miles from town, people could go to trained physicians. These
physicians were extremely overworked with too many patients, but often
did not charge the poor for their services. The medicines they pre-
scribed, however, such as antibiotics, etc., were much more expensive
than the kinds of medicines the villagers were accustomed to, such as
herbal concoctions and tonics.

Modern medicine as it is known in the west was given the name
allopathy in eastern Bengal. The name derived from its comparison with
another system of medicine, homeOpathy. HomeOpathy was developed in
Europe, and there are still schools of homeOpathy in Europe and at
least one in the United States. The system gained great pOpularity in
South Asia. HomeOpathy was based on the proposition of administering
drugs which produced a similar reaction in the body to that of the
disease. Also, homeOpathic drugs were given in minute quantities. The

homeopathic practitioners contrasted their system to allopathic (modern,

158

western) medicine in which counteractants were given. Their claim was
that the allopathic medicines were actually poisons that could kill
given in the wrong dosage or for the wrong illness. Even many urban
people who saw trained modern medical doctors (allopaths) for their own
illnesses took their infants only to a homeopath. They said, "The
medicine of an allopathic doctor is too strong for a baby.”

There were three men in Shaheenpur with homeopathic training. One
practiced and had his dispensary in a rural bazar about a mile from
Shaheenpur. Another was one of the recent migrants from India, and he
closed his shop near the village while I was there. He said that the
owner of the building he was renting evicted him, as another business
was going in there. I suspected that he had not gained the confidence
of the local villagers and lacked patients. The third man with some
training in homeopathic medicine did not have a regular practice, he

was a farmer, but treated other villagers at their request.

THE KOBI RAJ

Many people had some knowledge of herbal medicines. Children
might be seen on the village paths collecting this or that flower or
root or leaf. Neighbors willingly exchanged advice on what they had
heard was good for a particular pain or upset. The village midwife
knew of only one thing to do if the baby did not come in its regular
course. She gathered a particular leaf and soaked it for a time in a
glass of water. Over this glass of water and leaf she said a mantra,
i.e., she said a few phrases from the Qur'an in Arabic and blew on the

water. The water was then poured on the expectant mother's head and

159

rubbed down across her face and belly. Then she drank the rest of the
water. The midwife said that his medicine was so powerful that she
had been able to save the life of a cow whose calf had died inside
her. The midwife applied the medicine to the cow in the same way she
would for a woman, and the cow expelled the dead calf. Often people
who knew of more than one or two such herbal remedies were called
.5221.£§i by their neighbors. One of the homesteads in Shaheenpur was
called Kobi Raj Bari. The head of that homestead was a practicing
kppi_paj, but for animals.

In the literature, to be a appi paj means to be a practitioner
of Ayurvedic medicine, the ancient philosophy and science of medicine
developed by the Hindus and a part of their religious tradition. There
is little likelihood, however, that any of these Muslim, so called,
.522i.£§i had any knowledge of Hindu Ayurvedic literature, except what
they might have picked up by word of mouth. The practice of using
herbal medicine, however, need not be of Hindu origin. The Arabs had
a system of medicine which was followed by the Muslims and their
converts. ,Their system was called Unani, which means Greek. It was
adopted from the science of medicine developed by the Greeks. It was
then further embellished by the Muslims. Unani also made extensive
use of natural herbal medicines. The practitioner of Unani was called
a.HéElE° I knew of no one, however, practicing in the area who was
referred to 35.22EEE- Those peOple called doctor generally practiced
allopathic or homeOpathic medicine. All others, regardless of their
accoutrements, were called E221.£§i- Many of the 52p; pal in Comilla
had nothing to do with prescribing herbal medicines. Some practiced

various forms of faith healing.

160

FAITH HEALING AND CHARMS

Islam has a tradition of faith healing. Mohammed the Prophet was
said to have healed people by laying on of the hands and prayer. One
of his prescriptions for illness was reading the first chapter of the
Qur'an (Elgood 1951:64-65). In this tradition, one older man in
Shaheenpur, speaking Specifically of his disdain for innoculations,
said that he believed that proper Islamic practice and strong faith in
Allah were all that were needed for good health. On another occasion,
I heard an old woman comment on a man who was dying slowly and pain-
fully of blood poisoning, "He doesn't have enough faith" (otherwise he
would be getting well).

Probably the most extensive healing practice was written charms.
The patient wore the charm to effect the cure. The charms consisted
_of an Arabic passage from the Qur'an written on a piece of paper and
contained in a metal cartridge sealed with wax. Books of instruction
for writing such charms, called papij, could be purchased in the bazar.
These books also explained which Qur'anic passages were good for which
illnesses. Consequently, anyone who could read and write could also
write papij. But there was the matter of the patient having faith in
the papij writer (also called a 522$.Efli): so that not just anyone
wrote his own papij or could take up the practice easily. The words
of the Qur'an were believed to be the actual words of Allah, only
communicated through Mohammed his Prophet. Consequently, these words
had a special power of their own, sufficient to cure a person of ill-

HESS.

161

The imam of south neighborhood in Shaheenpur received the major
portion of his income from writing and selling papij. One usually saw
him on the road on his way to deliver a papij or in his house or in
the mosque writing papij. He explained that to write some of the
more powerful papij it was necessary to pray first and get in the
proper state of mind. Though he was an imam and supposedly knew the
Qur'an relatively well, he also used a papij-writing book to write
5:211. I observed him give a papij for dizziness to a man. The imam
(appi_paj) and the patient went into the mosque and knelt facing one
another. The imam grasped the man's forehead and pressed his eyelids.
At the same time he repeated some Arabic phrases and blew in the
patient's face (blowing a mantra). Then, gesturing with his hand in
the air, the imam crossed the patient's forehead, drew imaginary lines
down his arms, and circled the patient's forehead. Then the patient
received the papij to wear on a cord around his upper arm. Where the
patient wore the papij was part of the prescription. The papij could
be worn on a cord around the neck, the waist, the arm, and occasionally
for headaches and mental derangement it might be attached to the hair.

When asked what diseases he could cure with a papij, the imam of
south neighborhood immediately mentioned cholera, small pox, and
malaria. I asked about Eél§.£ié£ (black fever), a disease which had
killed many people in the early part of the century. His reply was,
"No, there is an injection for that now." So to some extent, tradi-
tional curing practices stepped in where modern medicine had not yet
been able to completely take care of a disease. Though children were
fairly well covered by small pox innoculations, this was not true for

adults. Also people did not differentiate between small pox, chicken

162

pox, and measles. There was simply terror when the pox came. It

was called basanto because it was most prevalent in the spring. Since
small pox and cholera were quite contagious, there was usually more
than one case at a time in a village. The south neighborhood imam
told of another method of cure he used for these two diseases when a
village was attacked by one of them. He kept a vigil, sitting outside
all night in the village reading from the Qur'an. PeOple expressed
admiration for the old man staying out all night all alone performing
this service. There was a common belief that evil spirits (jipp)
attacked at night. He explained that he was not afraid because he had
strong faith in God. For this service he received Rs. 50 per night,
collected from the entire village.

The imam did not say so himself, but while talking to him about
‘papij the women of his household interjected from the kitchen where
they were gathered listening that he could also write love papij.

That is, if a boy and girl who had been married to each other did not
like one another, a papij could be written to change their minds. Or
if a young man caught a glimpse of a girl he thought he would like to
marry, but his father objected, a.papij could be written to change the
father's mind. The imam chuckled and denied that he wrote that kind of
papij. I also heard from less conservative papij writers that one
could write a papij so strong that it would make a woman rise up in

her house and come to the man who desired her. But no one would expect

the imam of a mosque to have anything to do with writing that kind of

tabij.

163

JINN

The existance of jipa, or spirits, was sanctioned in the Qur'an.
As Allah made man out of clay, so he made the jipa from fire. The
village peOple explained that Allah made two japi: man and limp. .JEEl
is translated variously in English as caste, race, nation, kind, etc.
When the peOple of Shaheenpur spoke of japi they usually meant the
various religious persuasions. And they also Spoke of jipp as being
of various religions, just like man. There were Muslim, Hindu, Chris-
tian, and Buddhist limp. ‘iipa were believed to populate the world,
they were simply unseen by man. In fact, there were many more jipp
than men, and they lived quite a bit longer, but they did die event-
ually. Also like men, there were good and bad jipp, gimp could give
men a lot of trouble; they very occasionally helped. They took pos-
session of human beings, and this always caused misfortune to the
host.. The most commonly related cause for a jipp to attack or take
possession of a human being was that a limp of the opposite sex was
attracted to a person. One should be very careful of going out at
night wearing a pleasant smelling scent. Perfumes attracted jipp.
Only once was I told that someone was attacked by jipp because he had
sinned or done something bad. Usually no fault attached to the victim
except that he or she had been unwary.

There was confusion in the terminology involving jipp. One often
heard reference to paap. ‘apap was the word the Hindus used for ghost.
The Muslim informants, however, defined ppap as bad jipa. "They are all

jinn, but we call the good jinn, jinn and the bad jinn, bhut." There

 

 

may have been further mixing of these two ideas beyond terminology,

164

because jinnfnnni‘were said to live in trees. Hindu nnni (ghosts)
lived in trees. From general descriptions of jinn, however, they were
everywhere, not only in trees. Everyone I talked to on the subject
assured me that they did not believe that souls wandered after death.
The soul stayed in the grave with the body until the day of judgement.
As a check, I asked if they were afraid to go to the graveyard at
night. They said that they were. Why? Because jinn also liked to
frequent graveyards at night. I shall continue to use the term jinn
throughout, although my informants when telling about the bad effects
of jinn usually said nnni.

When a person was attacked by a jinn he might go out of his mind,
he might become ill, someone in his family might become ill, or there
might simply be general misfortune. Babies that cried excessively and
would not drink their milk were said to be bothered by a jinn. One
old and childless widow in Shaheenpur was attacked periodically by a
.jinn. When in the possession of the.jinn she would argue with people
continually and refuse to keep her clothes on. The south neighborhood
imam (kobi raj) claimed that he had exorcised the-jinn from her on a
number of occasions. His description of the exorcism involved putting
mustard oil on a plate and blowing the proper Qur'anic phrases (a
mantra) onto the oil. The oil was then rubbed on the eyelids of the
patient. Holding the little finger of the patient while reading from
the Qur'an, the imam-kobi raj then blew on the patient's forehead and
asked the jinn where he lived. The jinn replied, telling where his
tree was, and the innn said, "Go." The jinn replied, ”I go," and went.
After that the patient was unconscious for a short time, but then

regained her senses and was all right, for awhile.

165

A SEARCH FOR A CAUSE

As mentioned before, a person attacked by a jinn did not neces-
sarily lose his mind or, indeed, always appear to suffer any ill
effects himself. This is the story of a family whose infant son died
of diphtheria. The newest arrival in a Muslim Bengali family usually
was much fondled and doted on by his parents. The infant son of Lal
Miya and Safia Khatun was not only the last born, but fat and healthy
looking and much lighter complexioned than his older brother and sis-
ter. Lal Miya liked to boast that people often guessed that his nine
month old son was three years old. The baby had what appeared to be a
slight cold for about a week. Then his cough became much more severe.
In three days the child was dead from diphtheria. Lal Miya borrowed
some money to buy some especially large bamboo to lay over his son's
body in the grave so that the jackals could not get the boy. Infants
were buried in shallow graves, and jackals almost always devoured
the body. Then the daughter, about five years old, developed a hacking
cough. The cough proved not to be diphtheria, but it was enough to
drive the parents to try to do something about the misfortune that had
befallen them. All four remaining members of the family got new innij.
One night soon after the death of the son, a jackal crept into the
cow shed and bit the leg of a new calf. This clinched the case, some-
thing was wrong. A-EEEE.£§J.Wh° lived nearby was called.

The 522$.Eéi came in, sat down, and began to chant softly in
Arabic while staring into a mirror. He asked Safia Khatun to come and
sit Opposite him. She held the mirror and gazed into it. He continued

chanting and at intervals blew in her direction. As he chanted he

166

tapped the ground with one knuckle. Soon Safia Khatun began to shake.
She appeared to be quite distraught by the whole affair. Just before
he finished, the £221.3éi pressed two fingers on her eyelids and
grasped her right forearm. The chanting and blowing was repeated with
the two children, but not with Lal Miya. Then the.§2§i.£§i announced
that Safia Khatun had been attacked by a jinn. This was why their son
had died. He told the couple that if they had only brought the baby to
him, he could have saved the child. But there was a second element
here. The house was also contaminated by the jinn. There was bad air
here. The £223.£§1‘WOU1d have to treat the house as well as the woman.
Lal Miya agreed, he had been considering moving the house. Their
house faced west so that it did not get the prevailing winds which for
most of the year moved from south to north. It was very hot in the
house. But the.§22£.£fli said no, that it would not be necessary to
move the house. He was not interested in how hot it was inside the
house. He would cleanse it. The 522$.Eéi ordered a glass of water
and a dish of mustard oil brought. He said some mantra over the oil
and water. Then he instructed Safia Khatun to rub the oil on her body
and in the evening sprinkle some of the water in the house and circle
the outside of the house sprinkling the rest of the water.

After these instructions had been carried out, however, Lal Miya's
mind was still not at ease. He didn't seem to believe that anything
had been changed. Other villagers came over in the evening and sat
around agreeing that there definitely was bad air in the place. They
talked about this and that powerful £223.£§i of whom they had heard,
some from distant places. They Spoke of Ghalib Miya who was said to

have control of jinn who worked for him. Ghalib and his jinn could do

167

many amazing things. Lal Miya, however, could not afford Ghalib's
price. So Lal Miya decided to go out and see Abdul Rashid, the inkii
at Tintala. He went in the evening and told this fakir-kobi raj about
the death of his son and other misfortunes. Abdul Rashid told Lal
Miya to come back the next day and bring his family.

The next afternoon Lal Miya and his family arrived at Tintals.

The family went in and seated themselves on mats in front of the fakir's
bed. Abdul Rashid first asked Lal Miya if he read from the Qur'an.

Lal Miya admitted that he was not able to. Then the.£é&i£ asked Safia
Khatun if she read from the Qur'an. She said that she did. As stated
previously, more emphasis was given to teaching girls to read Arabic
than was given to teaching boys.

Lal Miya was sent to the tank to bathe in the manner one bathes
before saying prayers (nannj). Safia Khatun said that she had done so
before leaving home. Everyone, including the children, was taken in
to the shrine of the dead inkii. There they knelt down and placed
first their finger tips and then their foreheads on the bed of the
dead inkii. After this brief ceremony they all returned to Abdul
Rashid's building and again seated themselves in front of his bed. Lal
Miya had brought a bottle of water and a bottle of mustard oil which
he handed to the inkii. Abdul Rashid in turn put the mouth of each of
these two bottles over his big toe and made sounds as if simultaneously
injesting air and liquid; one might say gulping sounds. Then he
returned the two bottles to Lal Miya. The water was to be drunk by
Safia Khatun, and the oil rubbed on her body. It was apparently still
the mother who was judged to be in need of the cure. After this,

Abdul Rashid took a small commercially made biscuit from a package and

168

touched it to his own tongue. He gave one such sanctified biscuit to
each member of the family to eat. Rather than using mantra, it seemed
that Abdul Rasid imparted power to his medicine by putting it in con-
tact with his own body. The oil and water touched his big toe, and the
biscuit his tongue. With the eating of the biscuit, the session was
over for the day, but Lal Miya was told to return alone in one week and
to bring three ingi. A.ingi was a black cord which many peOple wore
around their waists. It might also be used to hang a innij on the
body.

The next week Lal Miya brought the iagi plus an offering of
incense, candles and biscuits. Abdul Rashid blessed the nagi and
returned them to Lal Miya for his family to wear. Then Abdul Rashid
spoke softly with Lal Miya, and Lal Miya began to cry. When I asked
Lal Miya later what the inkii had said to him or asked him, he declined
to say. But he mentioned a couple of times later that he had not been
as good as he could have been in his life. It is my belief that the
‘iakin asked Lal Miya if he had not committed some sin which contribu-
ted to this misfortune. And this struck home with Lal Miya who had
some real or imagined sin on his conscience. A bad conscience might
have helped to explain Lal Miya's frenzied search for a cause and cure
for his son's death and other misfortunes. He loved his son very much,
as did his wife, but even she mentioned with a bit of surprise the
extent of his grief. She had had to hide all of the things which had
belonged to the infant so that Lal Miya would not see them. Anything
that reminded him of his son sent him into the depths of despair. His
behavior was in contrast to a few men I observed, who barely seemed to

notice the wailing of their wives over the death of an infant. Perhaps

169

the continuing efforts to exorcise a jinn helped to exorcise the grief

and perhaps the guilt of Lal Miya.

THE CONTROL OF JINN

Lal Miya had thought of going to Ghalib Miya for help in his
troubles, but knew he could never find the money to pay this man.
Other kobi raj charged a few rupees, or even five or ten. Ghalib Miya,
however, had a reputation for charging exorbitant sums. His avarice
and, perhaps, his life style got him in trouble on occasion. Jealousy
was a factor. Though I had met the man previously, I first heard of
his unusual powers while listening to a conversation among some people
from his village. An old man of some substance and a number of younger
men were sitting around chatting. The old man began:

Fifteen days ago a man came from another union to Ghalib's
house. The man told Ghalib that his son was lost, and he was
unable to find the boy. Ghalib told the man that a jinn had
taken his son. If the man would give Ghalib Rs. 100, his son
would be returned in three days. The man gave Ghalib Rs. 50 as a
down payment, but returned in three days to say that his son had
not returned. So Ghalib told him to wait seven more days. After
a lapse of seven days, the man returned and demanded his money
back. Ghalib gave the man Rs. 25 and said he would return the
other Rs. 25 in a week.

At this point, a man from another village blurted out, "Why don't the
people of your village do something about this devil?" The old man
replied, ”We tried, we had a meeting of the village elders (bicar), and
we gave him a good beating. But the man has no shame, he won't stop."
Then a young man diffidently interjected, "Once a man came to Ghalib

and asked for help because his son was not yet married. Ghalib told

him to go home and within one month his son would be married. Exactly

170

one month later the son was married. That time Ghalib told the truth."
But the old man went on to grumble, "I have twice as much land as
Ghalib, but he has more money than I have. He has such a big house,
compared to my small house." Many peOple of his village distrusted,
envied, and disliked Ghalib, but he had his own small following in his
neighborhood. These were not, however, the influential people in the
village.

When in the right mood, Ghalib liked to talk about his work as a
E221.£21° He willingly described to me the herbal cures for small pox,
cholera, diarrhea, uterine tumors, kidney stones, menstrual problems,
sterility and impotency. He was more reluctant, however, to give out
his specific remedies for snake bite or the bite of a rabid dog.15
This led me to doubt his belief in the prescriptions he so readily
gave out. Here was a sophisticated man who could see that it might be
useful to have the anthropologist as a friend, but had no intention of
being used himself by the anthropologist. In any case, his reputation
was not as an herbalist, but as a 522$.Eéi for whom jinn worked.

One day Ghalib showed me a letter he had. The contents of the
letter, dated August 1959, stated that, "This man, Ghalib Miya, is
possessed by a jinn named Maulavi Abdur Rab. The jinn uses the man to
give medicines to the people, and from this the man receives no prof-
it." The letter went on to say something about assisting this man and
not hindering his work. There were some hand written endorsements in
the margin of the letter. One was from a local civil administrator to
the effect that, "This man does no harm and actually seems to help some
people." The letter and endorsements were all in English. The letter

was probably meant to keep him out of trouble with local officials and

171

perhaps influence an educated, urban clientele. The part about receiv-
ing no profit, however, was either very out of date or else quite mis-

taken. He wanted me to get an updated version of this letter for him.

He was disappointed to learn that I was not a close friend of the

local civil administrators and had not even met most of them.

I had only one opportunity to observe Ghalib with patients. Two
women came to his house from a residential village north of town. They
said that they knew of someone in their village with a problem similar
to theirs who had been helped by Ghalib. One of the women was the
second wife in a polygynous marriage, whose husband no longer paid any
attention to her. She wanted Ghalib to help her regain her husband's
interest. He was very sympathetic and said that this was a very bad
thing. He talked to the woman for quite awhile, but then said that
there was nothing he could do for her. This rejection may have
resulted from my close observation of the whole conversation. He was
afraid of my reaction.

I asked Ghalib many times to let me observe the jinn who helped
him to help people. I wanted to observe them in action with a patient,
but that was denied me. The jinn performed for me alone just before I
left Comilla. Ghalib and I sat in a room.with all the doors and
windows shut at about eleven o'clock one night. It was completely dark
inside the room. We were seated on grass mats facing a small rug on
the floor and one hung on the wall. The rugs probably were there for
the effect they had on the sound phenomenon. As we sat there in
silence, I first heard some knocking on the metal roof of the building,
then some small bits of earth fell on me from above. Finally a voice

said, "Salam alaikum, I am Maulavi Abdur Rab." Then I heard the voice

172

of Ghalib next to me tell me to ask some questions of the maulavi. I
asked where he came from and about his work. Then a higher pitched
voice joined us. She introduced herself as Mariam Bibi. She told us
that Karim (another jinn) was busy elsewhere and would not be able to
come this evening. This was a very convincing performance which I'm
certain would have fooled anyone who had never heard of the ability to
throw one's voice. I inquired of some educated Bengalis, and they
were not familiar with this phenomenon. After the jinn had departed,
Ghalib went on to tell of other jinn who had previously or still worked
for him. A Hindu jinn had died recently at the age of seventy.
Another maulavi came occasionally, and at one time a deaf-mute jinn
had worked for Ghalib. He said that he knew when the deaf-mute jinn
was around by what he did.

Of all those whom I met who claimed to have some extraordinary
power, Ghalib was the one whom I judged to be fully aware of his decep-
tion of his clients. It was quite likely that the others believed as
fully in their own powers or the powers they used as did the peeple who
came to them for help. When asked his occupation, Ghalib said that he
was primarily a grihasta (householder), but he did not cultivate his
two acres of land himself. His two secondary occupations were cloth
middleman and contractor. The cloth middleman bought the cloth from
wholesalers and resold it to itinerant merchants who sold in the local
bazars. To say that a man was a contractor was almost as damning as to
say he was a money lender (mahajan). The profits were good in con-
tracting, and the opportunities to increase those profits by using
shoddy materials and receiving kickbacks from the laborers were equally

good. I never saw Ghalib, however, engaged in either of these

173

secondary occupations. I knew him only as a.§2§$.£§i and a man about
the village. But these secondary occupations give some idea of the
entreprenurial character of the man. His was a polygynous household
with two wives and six children, three by each wife. This in a society
which no longer considered polygyny prestigious. He took delight in
threatening pretty little neighbor girls with marriage. Here was a
man who did not care for the good opinion of the influential elders of
his village. He had at least the sneaking admiration of the teenage
boys and the open admiration of his immediate neighbors. He flaunted
village norms, and though it was said he was beaten once, generally got
away with it. Though the peOple of his own village called him a
charlatan and a man of bad character, he apparently never lacked for

clients.

BLACK MAGIC?

In many parts of the world disease is commonly attributed to the
enmity of other members of the society. A particular group of people
in the society, such as wives or affinal kin, are constantly suspected
of witchcraft or sorcery. This was not a common phenomenon in eastern
Bengal. Disease was blamed on jinn, relatively anonymous entities with
no relation to the social structure. Or the blame was turned inward,
and illness was said to be caused by sin or an individual's lack of
faith in God. Or God might even be blamed; that is, illness was simply
a matter of fate. On only one occasion did I observe illness blamed

on another person.

174

A young man of Shaheenpur had been suffering from continuous
stomach problems. He had seen every possible type of practitioner with
no satisfaction. A neighbor suggested that about ten years ago he had
had similar problems, and a 522$.Eii from about twelve miles away had
discovered evil charms secreted in his house. The charms had caused
the illness, but someone with a grudge must have had these charms
written and hidden them in the house.

This E221.£§i2 a Buddhist, was called to try to help the young
man. First, the.§2§i.£§i got a large pot of water over which he said
mantras (in this case, perhaps not in Arabic, but in Pali, the language
of the Buddhist religion). Some of this water was sprinkled on the
£223.£§ia who then fell into a trance. He began to worm his way along
on his belly with one hand stretched out in front, as if searching.

In his manner, he proceeded into the house of the patient. There he
found a charm under one leg of the patient's bed and another under the
front door stoop. These charms only needed to be covered with a little
soil, and it was believed that they gradually worked their way down
into the earth over time. After finding the charms, the E221.£21
wormed his way back out of the house and rolled over on his back,
mumbling and still in a trance. When some more of the water was
sprinkled on him, he came out of the trance. PeOple said that if the
water were accidently spilled while he was in the trance, he would
stay in that trance forever. After the 522$.Efli had revived, he put
the two charms in the water remaining in the pot. One charm was a
small piece of burnt brick with some marks on it, and the other looked
like a innij. According to the informants, the paper in the innij was

supposed to have the image of the intended victim on it, some written

175

charm, and a spot of red. The water had obliterated much of what was
on the paper, but one could see what might have once been the outline
of a face, and there was some blurred red coloring on the paper. After
the two charms were defaced, they were thrown into the tank.
The.§2§i.£§i said that the charms had been placed in the house by
a women of the homestead, but he would not name anyone. He told the
patient to take some of the water over which mantras had been said,
put it on his head, rub it down his face, and call out the name of
Shah Jalal of Sylhet. The patient was told to repeat this procedure
again after one week. His mother, wife, and sister should cleanse the
house with this water, also. No other women should come near this
water, however, especially no woman in her menses. I left the area too
soon after this event to know if the patient was satisfied with his

cure by this method.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

The use of traditional herbal medicines need not be predicated on
any particular theory of disease causation. One's mother and father
told him about the remedy or a friend told him, and it worked, so it
was used. There was no need to know why. The exorcism of jinn, how-
ever, is based on the assumption that jinn cause disease and misfor-
tune. The use 0f.£2231 is a little more complicated. The power of the
innij is the power of the words written on the paper, words from the
Qur'an. The reading of the Qur'an, even without understanding, is
considered beneficial because these are the words of God. So, wearing

the words of God may also benefit a person in a similar way, only in

176

this case curing him. Or it may be that the words of God keep away

evil forces, as holding the Christian cross in front of one is a
protection against vampires and the like.

The rural people also have some inkling of the scientific ideas of
disease causation. No one resisted the innoculation of children for
small pox, though some had their doubts. Most of the peOple who had
the money for the medicines went to modern, western (allopathic) doc-
tors, though the allopathic doctor might be one of a number of prac-
titioners consulted. The question was whether the illness was serious
enough to merit the expense of an allOpathic doctor. The man who was
dying of blood poisoning was finally taken to an allopathic doctor when
it became evident that he was seriously ill. He and his family, how-
ever, rebelled at the diagnosis and projected treatment: amputation
of the affected leg. When they finally agreed to amputation, even that
was too late. Allopathic doctors probably had as many failures as any
kind of practitioner, given the uncertainty about the seriousness of a
person's illness and the body's ability to heal itself.

There was one type of curing based on a specific theory of
disease causation not discussed so far. In the winter season, the
women of a gypsy-like group of peOple made the rounds of the villages
offering to cure "bugs" (nnka) of the hair, eyes, teeth, and finger-
nails. Certainly hair may have "real bugs" in it, but what are the
bugs which attack the eyes, teeth, and fingernails? The people were
unable to describe these diseases with any precision, but assured me
that they were bothered by such "bugs.” My surmise was that these
"bugs" may have been based on a misunderstood explanation of the germ

theory of disease, germs described as little bugs causing disease.

177

Though peOple were occasionally open to the suggestion that they
were ill because someone wished them ill, the suggestion was seldom
made. The hostility engendered by day to day social contact was not
often covered over with accusations of blame for disease. Conflict
was open, limited only by the generally accepted definitions of role

behavior among kin and public opinion.

CHAPTER VII

CONCLUSION

I have tried to describe the religious beliefs and practices of
one particular village in eastern Bengal and the interaction between
the religion and the social structure. The village as a unit was only
a loose structure. It was seldom an interacting social group as a
whole body, or even representationally. Religious ritual was performed
on a village-wide basis twice a year at the 'Id celebrations. That
the greatest prOportion of the village males met together for the
prayer was not significant, however, for the village as such. The men
came as individuals and prayed as individuals. If a section of the
village men had decided to go to an 'Id prayer in another locality,
the only difference this would have made would have been to lessen the
number at the Shaheenpur prayer ground. It was believed that the lar-
ger the group of 'Id worshippers with whom one prayed, the more merit
accrued to the individual. The particular group with whom one prayed
mattered little.

Nicholas (1967) has described a village in West Bengal where
eighty-six per cent of the Villagers were equal in caste rank. While
dwelling in a relatively equalitarian society, the villagers attempted
to replicate what they conceived of as the hierarchy of castes appropri-

ate to the great tradition of Hinduism in their community. Though

178

179

Shaheenpur was also a village of the Bengal Delta, the great tradition
which these people were trying to emulate was quite different. Their
problem was rather to create and maintain a society of complete equal-
ity among believers.

Shaheenpur was even less economically differentiated than many of
the other villages of the locality. There were no very large land-
owners. Though the difference between twelve acres and landlessness
made a big difference in the standard of living which could be main-
tained, the major gap was between those men who had enough land to
maintain their independence (approximately two acres) and those who
were dependent on others at various times. No man had enough land to
have a large group of tenants or sharecrOppers. The equalitarian
nature of the village was reflected in the fact that no powerful,
hereditary sardars existed. Quite a number of men were considered
qualified to sit on the local adjudication, or mediation, councils
(ninai). It was not so much wealth as reason which determined whose
opinion would be heard at these councils. There were leadership roles
in the village: the union council member and the informal role of men
called often to sit on the adjudication councils. With a few excep-
tions, the advice of these men was usually heeded. The ideology of
Islam called for a universal brotherhood of Muslims, an ideology
closely paralleled by the social system in Shaheenpur.

On the sub-village level, the igyai was an interacting social
group, described in chapter two. There was an exchange of food among
the members, mainly in the form of feasts. The exception was at
Qurban 'Id when meat from the sacrificial animal was given by those

reyai households that could afford the purchase of an animal to those

180

inyni households too impoverished to perform the sacrifice. At other
times invitations were sent to all the members of the inyai for any
feast held to mark the rite of passage for a inyni household member.
Invitations to the entire inyai was the ideal behavior. Even on this
sub-village level, however, inyni boundaries were ill-defined, with
conflicting testimony on the membership of a given inyai. The rule of
inviting all inyni members and only inyai members to a feast was hon-
ored mainly in the breach. Some peOple denied the rule; others made
excuses of extenuating circumstances. It certainly must have been
difficult to invite inyai members when few people could agree on who
the members were.

The area of society in which real social relations came closest
to the ideal was within the ghanistha (close) atmiya, bilateral and
affinal kin. Within the atmiya, proper relations were maintained,
invitations were extended and accepted, or a serious breach resulted.
Individuals broke the rules, as in any area of society, but there was
much less ambiguity about the rules, and breaking the rules was not
ignored as it might be among members of a inyni. There was a reaction
to improper behavior, and relations usually became strained. It was
only at this level of society that integrative ritual had a part to
play. Atmiya were invited to rites of passage and participated in the
rituals. For example, at marriages, kinsmen participated in making the
arrangements, and kinswomen had roles in the performance of some of the
rituals. As shown in chapter four, the symbolism of these rituals
emphasized and reinforced the important ties among the atmiya.

Gluckman (1962:33-34) has described how the simple act of ritual

is believed mystically to transform an individual from one role to

181

another in tribal societies. In such a society, a boy could never be

a man without participating in the initiation. There is believed to

be an actual change which takes place because of the ritual and only

by means of this ritual. This was not true in Shaheenpur. A Muslim
male with poor or careless parents could still take on the responsi-
bilities and privileges of adulthood without the circumcision ceremony.
The only exception was the funeral. The lack of a funeral, funeral
prayers, and proper burial would have a negative mystical effect on

the progress of the soul. After death there is little that can be done
to or for a person except through the supernatural.

Etiquette, or proper behavior, was also found to take on mystical
aspects in tribal society according to Gluckman. It is difficult to
say when an act takes on mystical importance. Certainly proper be-
havior, especially toward kinsmen, was highly valued in Shaheenpur.
Proper behavior toward other guests was also to be desired, but its
lack was attributed to ignorance. One would not be ignorant of how to
behave toward kinsmen. The son who spoke out in the presence of his
father or showed disrespect in some other flagrant manner was more
than just disrespectful or a bad boy. There was a strong revulsion at
such behavior. To illustrate, I was continually warned about a par-
ticular area of the village: they were a bad group (kharap samaj),
and I should avoid them. People were reluctant, however, to tell me
what was bad about them. Finally someone explained, as an example of
how bad they were, that in one homestead, the oldest son of the head
of the homestead had run off at the age of eighteen and deserted his
family. And this was not the first time--the same thing had happened

in the previous generation. In another part of the village a murder

182

had taken place some time previously. I have already mentioned that

there was a band of thieves in yet another part of the village. But I
was never warned about those peOple or those parts of the village. An
individual, however, who cut all ties, rejected the values of the vil-
lage, and ran away; this could not be dealt with and was horrifying.
This was only one example and perhaps should not be generalized too
far, but it gives an idea of the importance to the villagers of main-
taining kinship ties through proper behavior toward kinsmen.
Occasionally when trying to discover the meaning and origins of
elements of ritual such as surrounded various rites of passage, I
asked people if they thought that this or that act was "Islamic.”
The answer was often some variation of, "Our parents did it this way,
and they were good Muslims, so it must be a Muslim thing to do." This
conforms to what Weber (1946:296) called "traditionalism," or the merit
which accrues to the performance of everyday routine. The best model
for understanding the religion of the people of Shaheenpur, however,
remains the definition of religion by Geertz (l966:4). Religion,
according to Geertz, is a "system of symbols which acts to establish
powerful, pervasive and long lasting moods and motivations in men by
formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing
these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and
motivations seem uniquely realistic." "Motivations," Geertz (1966:9-
ll) explains, are favorable dispositions toward action; they are not
actions, but encourage the believer to conform to the values of the
religion and society. "Moods" refers to a state of mind that is con-
scious when the believer is involved in a worshipful act. Outside the

religious act, the mood still influences the attitudes of society.

183

These moods may be awe, reverence, or fear, or, for the Sufi, ecstacy.
The symbol system for the Muslims of eastern Bengal consists not only
of the obvious prayer cap on the head, the neighborhood mosque, the
Qur'an, the rhythm of the prayer, and the periods of special commemora-
tion, but also of the social institutions and the behavior prescribed
within the institutions. This system of symbols produces in most of
the inhabitants of Shaheenpur the "moods and motivations" of living in
a society which is striving to fulfill the injunctions of their religion,
the result of which will be a vaguely conceived, but good, Islamic
society. It is believed that God himself has set forth the rules for
society. It is the duty of society to teach or convince man to conform.
In an earlier work, Geertz (1957:32-54) cited a situation in Java
where the moods and motivations produced by the symbol system no
longer meshed with the reality of the society. A segment of the popu-
lation rejected Islam, but found themselves at a loss as to how to
bury a person without Islamic ritual and the ritual specialist. There
were potential conflicts in Shaheenpur between the concept of an
Islamic society on the local level and laws passed on the national
level for what was then Pakistan. The law which gave orphaned sons
the right to inherit from their paternal grandfathers apparently
coincided with much of the existing sentiment in the community. The
law fixing for marriage a higher age than was the custom was ignored
and unenforced, though it conflicted with no religious injunction. The
laws of Islam state only that the individuals to be married should be
at an age of consent. The age of consent was defined as being lower
in the village than it was in the national law. Laws, for example, the

new divorce law, giving greater rights to women, however, faced

184

opposition from the village men. This was the situation in Pakistan
when I was doing my field work. The new state of Bangladesh may be
more sensitive to the desires of the people, rural as well as urban.
On the other hand, the trend may be toward greater secularization,
overriding traditional village sentiments.

Geertz (1968:13-19) recently has tried to compare Islam in Java
and Morocco in their respective historical and environmental settings.
One of his conclusions about Islam in the modern world is that Muslims
are engaging in self deception in trying to make a fit between the
revealed world according to Islamic teaching and the modern world in
which they must live. To argue this point is beyond the scope of this
thesis. In his statement about self deception, however, Geertz has
considered mainly the urban, educated Muslim. The Muslims of Shaheen-
pur did not need to engage in self deception. Their religion explained
quite well the world in which they lived. The problems and misfor-
tunes experienced were the result of living in a society which did not
conform in all ways to the teaching of the Qur'an.

They were aware that life was easier for some peOple, both Muslims
and non-Muslims, than it was for them, especially in material wealth.
There were varying levels of sophistication in the conception of the
rest of the world. Some few people had traveled outside eastern Bengal
during World War II. More had been as far as the provincial capital
of Dacca. The simplest idea of the world that I came across was a
woman who divided the world into Bengalis and Panjabis (an ethnic group
in West Pakistan and northwestern India). Even the relatively isolated
Bengali villager came in contact with Panjabis as they were the people

who predominated in the civil administration and the military. Ideas

185

about the life of other peoples were minimally available in the schools
and in the mass media. Also, life was apparently easier or more
prosperous formerly, within the memory of the older inhabitants of the
village. One must be careful of taking the nostalgic statements of

the elderly at face value, but most explanations of the inyni included
statements about how much more feasting used to take place within the
inyai before people became so poor. The last devastating famine took
place in Bengal in the early forties, and the epidemics of cholera and
smallpox have become less severe with preventive measures. The recent
decrease in famine and disease has added to the natural increase of the
population. There are more mouths to feed from the increasingly
fractioned land holdings.

One need not go far to find the reason for the difficulties
according to the villagers. Men were not behaving as good Muslims.
There was lying, cheating, stealing, and improper behavior between the
sexes. The lie was not, saying what you believed someone wanted to
hear rather than what you believed to be the truth; such untruths were
accepted and right. The lie that was condemned was a claim to a certain
plot of land which was clearly not that of the claimant, who ordinarily
paid an official a sum of money to decide in his favor. He had lied;
he had cheated the other man and had stolen the other man's land. This
was not to say that one side was always clearly in the wrong in such a
dispute. Both sides might equally be convinced of the legitimacy of
their claims. But depending on which side one was, the other side was
composed of liars, cheats, and thieves. It was this behavior which was
ruining society, so the villagers said; men did not say their prayers

regularly or keep the Ramzan fast; the wealthy (in town) did not give

186

a fair share to the poor. The blame was not fixed on the individual,
as no one could hOpe to be a good Muslim in an un-Islamic society.
The argument was circular. It was difficult, if not impossible, to
be a good Muslim in an un-Islamic society, and the good Islamic society
would never be achieved as long as people did not conform to the rules.
For some of the radical Islamic political parties the argument
was not circular. They fixed the blame squarely on the national govern-
ment that was not set up according to the rules outlined by Mohammed
for society in seventh century Arabia, although members of those par-
ties favored the Government of Pakistan against the Awami League and
Bengali nationalists during the national liberation struggle in Bangla-
desh. The argument of these parties was of little interest to the
villagers. They directed the blame closer to home. They were critical
of what they understood urban life to be. There was also diffuse
criticism of other villages and other neighborhoods within one's own
village, coupled with the apparent assurance that life would be much
better if only everyone obeyed the rules. Each person, according to
his understanding, could pick out the institution or practice he
believed to be most detrimental to society. "Female education is
destroying the modesty of women.” "The venality of local officials who
take bribes is destroying society." God had laid out the plan as to
how man should arrange his society. If man chose to ignore these
words, he would suffer. There was one area, however, in which respon-
sibility was fixed. Each man was responsible for the salvation of his
own soul. He tried to conform for his own good. If other men tried

harder, it might not be so difficult.

187

Buddhism is primarily an ethical system directed toward other-
worldly goals. Spiro (1967:264-27l) has studied Buddhism in Burma and
described how the accompanying spirit worship concerns worldly desires
and goals not covered by Buddhism. As has been shown, the Muslim by
conforming to the same set of rules was striving both for advancement
in his world and for a place in the other. Islam is concerned with
the proper order of life in this world. In Islam it is difficult to
separate the secular and sacred spheres. The Prophet of Islam lived to
see the beginning of an Islamic state, and rules were set up for here-
tofore secular institutions, making the institutions and society it-
self sacred. No priestly roles were set aside to be elevated above
those of other believers. One man might become a religious scholar
and another a merchant. One was not more "holy" or "sacred" than the
other--ideally. Society needed both. Of course, in the ”real" condi-
tion, some men were accorded more prestige than others, and where
religion was important the religious scholar was honored. All society,
however, was equally sacred. No aspect of the society was more or
less sacred. Marriage was not thought of as a "mystical" rite, or
sacrament, where that which was two was somehow transformed into one.
There were simply rules to be followed if the marriage was to be con-
sidered proper and legitimate. The rules concerned a contract to be
entered into, a contract which like all contracts could be broken.
There were Islamic prescriptions for social roles and institutions,
but little that was specifically set apart as particularly religious.

If Buddhism is too quietistic and otherworldly, Islam may be said
to be too pedestrian or mundane. It was even difficult to separate

time into secular and sacred. Friday, the day of the congregational

188

prayers, was not considered a day of rest in the village. Men simply
took an hour from their work at noon to participate in the congrega-
tional prayers. In a religion which concerns itself with every aSpect
of life, the people tend to be deprived of the momentary flights of
exaltation associated with the particularly sacred. For most people a
crisis came sometime in their lives; when their needs were beyond the
ordinary. It was then of little comfort to go to a man who could only
tell one what the rules were. Often at such times, Bengali Muslims
resorted to men believed to have special access to God--fakirs and
inii§--and to their belief in Spirits (jinn). Others who were drawn

to the periodic exaltation from the mundane attended the saint cults
regularly.

Islam puts no man above any other. Each man must make his own
peace with God. In Islam the layman is denied any dependence on a
priest. The only authority is the Qur'an and the Traditions of the
Prophet. Religious scholars have interpreted these writings, but this
does not remove individual responsibility. Some men cannot stand such
emotional loneliness; they need assurances and they go to shrines,
ping, and fakirs. In one sense, given the philosophy is Islam, this
is a legitimate path. There is no human authority to tell them they
are wrong. The needs of most men most of the time, however, are
sufficiently satisfied by the "moods and motivation" produced by living

an Islamic life in an Islamic society, however poorly realized.

FOOTNOTES

1
One example is a book by Hafeez Zaidi (1970) on village moderniza-

tion. Nazmul Karim (1956) has written an article specifically dealing
with some of these supernatural creatures. There are also the writings
of the British civil administrators in the censuses and gazateers.
These included some of the beliefs of villagers as observed in the

late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

2 The transliteration of Bengali words follows the system proposed by
Inden and Dimock (1970). These words are spelled as found in Dev
(1961) or, when not found in the dictionary, as spelled by literate
Bengalis in the Comilla area. Words of Arabic or Persian origin, not
found in Dev, are recorded as found in such works on Islam as Levy's
The Social Structure of Islam (1969).

3 In 1969 some of the East Pakistan Water and Power Development
Authority (EPWAPDA) employees in Comilla gheraoed some of the high
officials of EPWAPDA in the EPWAPDA guest house. To gherao means to
force management to stay in their offices or other such places without
food and amenities until they agree to certain demands. By this
forceable tactic the EPWAPDA employees won an agreement to take all
temporary employees on a permanent basis and to give a general increase
in wages. After the change of government a short time later, however,
when General Yahya Khan reinstituted martial law, those concessions,
gained through force, were not allowed.

4 This homestead of Hindu fishermen had originally come from a village
a short walk north of Shaheenpur. In 1963 they had gone to Tripura,
India, in a general exchange of populations that took place at that
time. But they could find no work or land in India, so they returned.
They could not return to their old village, however, as their former
homesteads had been taken over by others. The head of one of the
homesteads in north neighborhood gave them land on which to build their
houses for a nominal yearly rent of Rs. 1. He also bought them a large
net with which to fish very large tanks (man-made ponds). When they
fished a tank, fishermen got one-third of the catch. They paid back
the cost of their net in one year. The other villagers said that it
was good to have fishermen around. Most homesteads could not afford

to own a large fish net exclusively for their own use. And they said
that Muslims preferred not to do that work.

5 Often homesteads were given names. These names might Simply describe

some attribute of the homestead such as new (Notun Bari) or big (Boro
Bari). A number of other names were titles acquired by an ancestor or

189

190

living inhabitant of the homestead, such as Maulavi Bari, Munshi Bari
(titles earned by studying at a religious school), Fakir Bari (a
religious beggar), or Haji Bari (one who had been on the pilgrimage to
Mecca). Some of the smaller homesteads in which no one had any particu-
lar title were Simply referred to as the homestead of someone who lived
there, usually the head of the homestead or former head. Occasionally,
when I asked the name of the homestead in my census of the village, a
quick conference was held by the men present to come up with a suitable
name for their homestead. It became obvious that the names were some-
times made up for my benefit when people were later mystified when I
tried to refer to the homestead by its new name. The brothers in this
homestead decided to honor their deceased father by giving the home-
stead his name. This was a new name as far as the other villagers were
concerned.

6 Rs. is the abbreviation for the rupee (thaka), the unit of Pakistani
currency. At that time, one rupee was wofth about U.S. $ .21.

7 The problem of peOple and groups of peOple having hinsa for one
another was a common tOpic of conversation and concern. English speak-
ing Bengalis always translated the word as hate. I never felt that
hate quite conveyed the meaning. The dictionary says malice and envy.
These words get closer to the meaning, but do not exhaust the meanings.
Very poor peOple feel hinsa for those better off-envy. But the wealthy
also have hinsa for the poor, dirty peasants--contempt and disdain.
Sometimes when I would come into a very poor house and sit on a Straw
mat, I would hear the peOple whisPer, "She has no hinsa." The word
appears to go along with a hierarchical system. Not to accept an
invitation or proffered food indicates hinsa. "So he thinks he's too
good to come to our house or eat our food."

8 G. E. Von Grunebaum (1951:72-77) described the origin of the maulid
in Iraq and Egypt in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries A.D. It

was originally performed on the twelfth of Rabi, the date of Mbhammed's
death. As the birth date was unknown, the birth and death were com-
memorated together. Von Grunebaum saw it as an attempt by the Muslims
of that time to compete with the Christians who placed such importance
on the person of Jesus and his miracles. Islamic leaders of the time
and region denounced the maulid as an innovation. The performance of
the maulid was limited to the twelfth of Rabi, except in Mecca where
it became the custom to hold a maulid on the seventh day after the
death of a kinsman. The current practice in Bengal is to hold a

milad (maulid) on any occasion of thanksgiving.

 

9 The Islamic schools of religion are called madrasah. Usually there
are ten grades in a madrasah. When a man passes class ten he is given
the title maulavi. Some madrasah have twelve grades, and passing the
twelfth class entitles one to be called maulana. There were no maulana
in Shaheenpur. Men who had only studied to some of the lower grades
had other titles. These titles included mollah, munshi, and kari.

10 Hilma Granqvist (1947) observed a similar age Span for the circum-
cision of boys in Palestinian Muslim villages, but also noted that

191

previously circumcision had been followed closely by marriage and was
considered a preparation for marriage. At the other extreme, in the
Shorter Encyclgpaedia of Islam (1953:254-255) it was reported that in
some Muslim areas circumcision took place at the seventh day naming
ceremonies for boys. I had thought that circumcision might be also a
kind of confirmation. But when I asked if the circumcision took place
after the boys had learned their prayers, the informant looked startled
and replied that this sounded like a good idea, but was not true.

11 It was from the Shorter Encyc10paedia of Islam (1953:89-90) that I
discovered that the parting of the hair into three sections was signif-
icant, and, indeed, prescribed by Islam. Though I had noticed at the
bath of the corpse that the hair on the top of the head was divided
from the hair on each Side, this had made no impression on me at the
time.

12 M. A. Rahim (1963:100-103) states that there is no authentic account
of the life and career of Shah Jalal. He has recounted, however, some
stories which he says were based on local traditions. In one story,
Shah Jalal was the warrior-saint who with his followers defeated the
Hindu ruler of Sylhet. In the other story, he and his followers simply
joined with the invading Muslim forces and lent their moral support to
the army in the defeat of the Hindu ruler, Gaur Govinda. The informants
in Comilla repeated the former account and made Shah Jalal the invading
warrior who defeated the Hindu forces. '

13 For the Muslim the day begins at sundown. For example, the month
of fasting, Ramzan, begins with the sighting of the 'Id moon. The
last day of fasting has ended, and the first day of the next month has
begun. Friday is the most holy day of the week for Muslims. Though
it is good to perform any and all of one's daily prayers in the
mosque, it is most important for men to attend the mosque for Friday
noon prayers. At that time a ”sermon" is also presented by the imam.
Sundown on Thursday is the beginning of Friday. Commemorations at
shrines occurred and Sufi groups met Thursday evenings. In the stories
about fakirs, the things which happened to them often happened on
Thursday.

14 Two works in which similar tales may be found are The Popular
Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India by William Crooke, originally
published in 1896 and reprinted in 1968 by M. Manoharalal, Delhi and
Islam in India and Pakistan by Murray T. Titus, Calcutta, Y.M.C.A.
Publishing House, 1959.

15 Many informants described the effects of being bitten by a rabid
dog. After being bitten, a person would have puppies grow in his
stomach, and he would die. PeOple were quite frightened of this, and
many seemed to think it would result from the bite of a dog, rabid or
not. Another belief was that dogs, especially puppies which tend to
chew on anything, including peOple, would Stop biting peOple once
they had tasted human milk. In an experiment, we were able to prove
this belief to be untrue.

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bailey, F. G.
1957 Caste and the economic frontier. Manchester University
Press.

Bertocci, Peter J.
1970 Elusive villages: social structure and community organiza-
tion in rural East Pakistan. Unpublished Ph.D. disserta-
tion. Michigan State University.

Dev, Ashu Tosh
1962 Students' favorite dictionary, Bengali to English. 18th
ed. Calcutta: S. C. Mazumdar.

Elgood, Charles
1951 A medical history of Persia and the Eastern Caliphate from
earliest times until the year A.D. 1932. Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.

Geertz, Clifford
1957 Ritual and social change: a Javanese example. American
Anthropologists 59:32-54.

1960 The religion of Java. New York: Free Press.

1966 Religion as a cultural system. ian. Banton, ed., Anthro-
pological approaches to the study of religion. London:
Tavistock. (A.S.A. monographs, 3) pp. 1-46.

1968 Islam observed. Yale University Press.

Gluckman, Max
1962 Les rites de passage. ian. Gluckman, ed., Essays on the
ritual of social relations. Manchester University Press.

Granqvist, Hilma
1939 Marriage conditions in a Palestinian village. Helsinki.

Karim, A. K. Nazmul
1956 Some aspects of popular beliefs among Muslims in Bengal
Eastern Anthropologist 9:29-41.

192

193

Khan, Muin-ud-Din Ahmad
1965 History of the Fara'idi movement in Bengal, 1818-1906.
Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society.

Kolenda, Pauline
1968 Region, caste and family structure: a comparative Study of
the Indian "joint" family. in M. Singer and B. Cohn, eds.,
Structure and change in Indian society Chicago: Aldine.
pp. 339-396.

Levi-Straus, Claude
1966 The savage mind. University of Chicago Press.

Levy, Reuben
1969 The social Structure of Islam. Cambridge University Press.
(2d ed. of The sociology of Islam.).

Lewis, Bernard
1966 The Arabs in history. New York: Harper and Row.

Mulla, Sir Dinshah Fardunji
1968 Principles of Mahomedan law. 16th ed. by M. Hidayatullah.
Bombay: N.M. Tripathi.

Nicholas, Ralph W.
1967 Ritual hierarchy and social relations in rural Bengal.
Contributions to Indian Sociology, new series. 1:56-83.

Pakistan. Office of the Census Commissioner.
1961 Population census of Pakistan: district census reports,
Comilla. Parts I-V. Karachi: Manager of Publications.

Rahim, Muhammad Abdur
1963-67 Social and cultural history of Bengal, 1201-1576 and
1576-1757. 2 volumes. Karachi: Pakistan Historical

Society.

Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. by H. A. R. Gibb and J. H.
1953 Kramers. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Sprio, Melford E.
1967 Burmese supernaturalism. Prentice-Hall.

Titus, Murray T.
1959 Islam in India and Pakistan. Calcutta: Y.M.C.A. Publishing
House.

Turner, Victor W.
1957 Schism and continuity in an Africa society. Manchester
University Press.

194

Van Gennep, Arnold
1960 The rites of passage. University of Chicago Press.

Von Grunebaum, Gustave E.
1951 Muhammadan festivals. New York: Schuman.

Weber, Max
1946 The social psychology of world religions. .in H. H. Gerth
and C. W. Mills, eds., From Max Weber: essays in sociology.
Oxford University Press. pp. 267-301.

Zaidi, S. M. Hafeez
1970 The village culture in transition; a study of East Pakistan
rural society. Honolulu: East-West Press.

ICHIGQN STRTE UNIV. LIBRRRIES
lllVIWIII"HmHIWIIWIIHillMHIHIUIIWIWI
31293103961862