Presence and Absence of Females in the Silsilas: Tariqat and Female Agency in South Asian Sufism in the Delhi Sultanate

Presenter:

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Abstract

The paper seeks to study the curious case of simultaneous presence and absence of female participation in the organised Sufi spaces like the khanqah and its socio-cultural activities. Despite the language of patriarchy, in the ‘male’ sufi literature, women have historically enjoyed more space for expression of spirituality in the sufi circles than in the orthodox religion. Modern socio-anthropological studies on the sufi shrines have found inherent participation of womenfolk in devotional piety. And yet, women were not to be part of either khanqahs or silsilas, and could not carry forward the wilayat of a Sufi saint. Situating the theme in its Islamic and Sufi context to look at precedents of active female piety, the paper progresses to study instances of female participation and the strategies of negotiation of space resorted to by women. This analysis begins with a study of the normative attitudes on gender present in this literature. The paper argues that these women were active religious participants who were engaged in redefining their religious agency both in the public and private lives, and who sought to define their sainthood through techniques which both transgressed the normative social roles set for them, and empowered them in the realm of religion. Here the paper indulges with those techniques like refusal to marry, practice of extraordinary piety, miracles, creation of a sacred body, piety within the family, etc, which were resorted to by these female saints to create a space for expression of their religiosity. In this regard the paper also discusses the influence of intellectual currents, like the ideology of Ibn Arabi and Shihabuddin Suhrawardi.