Twilight of the Sultanate c18.6

c18.6

The advent of Islam could not but cast its influence on the Indian thinkers. The Muslim Sūfī orders (Silsilā) were a great asset to the people in general and to the Muslims in particular. The tolerance of the Sūfī saints and their pious life earned them universal respect and helped to bring Hindus and Muslims close to each other. Some of them kept close to the Sultans, but the majority of the great amongst them would have nothing to do with the government. Both Nizāmuddīn Auliyā and Shaikh Nāsiruddīn Chirāgh-i-Dehlī kept away from the government.² Their non-alignment with the State, and sometimes their open defiance of the Sultans, resulted in the rapid decline of the Chistiā-Nizāmiā Silsilā in the latter part of the fourteenth century. But their failure could not just leave a vacuum. It gave rise to a national religious movement in the fifteenth century throughout the country,—Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bengal, the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. The movement first gathered strength in Maharashtra where Nāmdēva³ in the thirteenth century declared that both Hindus and Muslims were blind in insisting upon worshipping in temples and mosques, while he for His worship needed neither temple nor mosque.⁴ Such courageous denunciations were infectious and