Introduction
According to an oral Sufi tradition, when a pair of scissors was gifted to Baba Farid Shakar Ganj, he gave it back and said, 'I am not the divider but the weaver, give me thread.'

During Baba Farid's times the Indian subcontinent was at great crossroads. Qutub-ud-din Aibak, the Sultan of the time, tried to subdue people through force, but could only create a rift between different communities. However, the Sufi saints from Arabia and other Muslim areas settled in India to spread their message of love for Allah and promoted an atmosphere of tolerance and greater communal harmony. Kabir, instrumental to the Bhakti Movement, also uses similes of weaving:

'This body is like a garment which must wear out with use. So why be attached to it?'

The Bhakti Movement introduced the concept of communal harmony in India. It spawned into several different movements across North and South India. In North India, the movement was not different from a Sufi movement of the Muslims of Chisti fame. People of Muslim faith adopted it as Sufism, Hindus as Vaisanava Bhakti. The Sufi saints of Chisti order produced Baba Sheikh Farid Shakarganj, the first Punjabi Sufi saint who paved the way for Punjabi nationalism and promoted peace between Hindus and Muslims.

Even though there are many examples of communal harmony in the subcontinent, the deep-rooted centuries-old Hindu-Muslim hatred is emphasised and taken as a natural phenomenon. These interpretations form the basis of Indo-Pak rift but they are woefully inadequate and misguiding.

The picture of the inter-communal conflict in India and Pakistan is more complicated than its populist depiction. Unfortunately, simplifications can be politically influential, playing to the vested interests of the ruling few. The media and state governments -- to promote harmony -- will have to shift their attention from finding the roots of hatred to those of love, which are, in fact, far stronger than hatred.
The role of Bhakti Movement (800-1700) was integral in weaving the thread of communal harmony. The movement had far-reaching effects and is responsible for many rites and rituals associated with the worship of God by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs of the Indian subcontinent. For example, Kirtan at a Hindu temple, Qawwali at a Muslim Dargah (shrine), and singing of Gurbani at a Gurdwara (Sikh temple) are all derived from the Bhakti Movement. The Bhagats, like Kabir mirror the spiritual movement that relentlessly fought against simple-minded Hindu and Muslim ritualism, die-hard fanaticism, and religious, sectarian, class, and colour distinctions. Another important feature of the movement was the spiritual emancipation and enfranchisement of women.

There are few examples in Indian history demonstrating the grounds of hate philosophy. The Muslim rulers rarely committed acts of injustice against Hindus starting from the Sultanate to the Aurangzeb period, and limited to just a few rulers. Likewise, very few examples exist of Hindu rulers' atrocities against Muslims can be found (an example can be Shiva Ji Marhatta).

However, it was in the times of the British that when communal tension intensified. After losing the War of Independence in 1857, the Indian Muslims fell into a state of depression, receding into backwardness due to their mistrust of British education, and nostalgia for the past. While the Hindu elite took to western notions like secular nationalism, the Muslims remained locked up in their communal singularity. The British drew them into the political process, creating the Muslim League in 1906, in order to use them as a counterweight against the Indian National Congress.

By the 1920s, when the Hindu-Muslim street riots started, instead of discouraging them, the Muslim League took them as welcome help in instilling a separate communal identity in the mind of the ordinary Muslim, who would have preferred to coexist with his Hindu neighbours in peace. By creating riots and provoking retaliatory violence, the Hindu and Muslim leadership strengthened their electoral support. Consequently partition of the subcontinent resulted in extreme violence and one of the largest migrations in history. The number of people killed during partition was between 500,000 and one million, while some 10-12 million migrants moved across the new borders in Punjab and Bengal. In addition, tens of thousands of girls and women were raped and/or abducted. The responsibility for this ethnic genocide and disturbance lies squarely with the Hindu and Muslim leadership. Before the British rule in India, the narrow-mindedness of Hindus and Muslims and communal antagonism were very weak in the face of communal integrity.

Bhakti Movement
One of the most powerful characteristics of the medieval age in India was the Bhakti Movement, which began in the 6th/7th Centuries in the south and gradually spread throughout the country. It lasted till the 16th/17th Centuries. The Bhakti Movement in India was, by and large, marked by the rejection of the existing ritual hierarchy and Brahmanical superiority; the use of the vernacular in preference to Sanskrit, the language of the elite; and the emergence of low caste 'non-literate' persons like Ramanunj Dasar, Pillai Uranga Villi Dasar and Kanaka Dasar in the South and Kabir and Dadu in the North as great spiritual leaders1.

In Heritage of the Sikhs, Harbans Singh suggests that the word Bhakti is derived from Bhakta meaning to serve, honour, revere, love and adore. In the religious idiom, it is attachment or fervent devotion to God. It is defined as 'that particular affection which is generated by the knowledge of the attributes of the Adorable One.'

From the 14th Century onwards the Bhakti Movement became a dynamic force in the North Indian society and, up to a point, filled the vacuum created by the retreating Buddhists, since it attracted the professional castes. The movement had a deep effect on Indian life, culture and history. The Muslim Sufis attracted attention and people flocked to hear them. People's saints rose everywhere: in the Punjab, Guru Nanak (1469-1539); in Utter Pradesh, Ramanand (1400-1477) and Kabir (1440-1518); in Bengal, Chaitanya (1485-1533); in Rajputana, Dadu (1544-1603); in Maharashtra, Nama Deva (1400-1450), and others later. Kabir and Dadu preached a personal God, His kindness and mercy, condemned idol worship, and were against caste restrictions and other social prejudices. The result was that the regional culture was given a new life and a religious revival took place. The followers of these reformers organised themselves into brotherhoods (panths)2. The Bhakti Movement received more attention in Northern India initially because of greater Hindu-Muslim interaction as Muslim merchants and Sufis had settled in these areas3.

Historical Overview
The compilation of the Bhagavata Purana by some Bhagavata Brahman community in the Tamil country between 850 and 950 (AD), made Bhakti popular with both intellectuals and non-intellectuals. The translation of the Bhagavata Purana from Sanskrit to Indian regional languages (some 40 in Bengali alone) made the Bhakti Movement predominant in Hinduism. In short, the deification of Krishna, Rama, or Shiva and the devotional religion of the saints of the Bhakti Movement shook the foundation of Brahmanical dominance of Hinduism. Bhaktas (devotees) adopted gurus or spiritual directors, many from the lower castes, as their supreme authority. The 12th and 13th Century Hindu mystics, such as Madhva (1197-1276) and the Telegu Brahman Nimbarka (c. 1130-1200), also greatly influenced the Bhakti Movement4. Namdev (1270-1350), the tailor, composed the hymn:

Come, God, the Qalandar wearing the dress of an Abdal.
Nama's Lord is the searcher of all hearts,
And wandereth in every land.

Sufi terminologies such as ‘Qalandar’ and 'Abdal' in these verses suggest that even before the conquest of the region by Sultan Alauddin Khilji Sufi ideas were strongly entrenched there. The most remarkable feature of Namdev's leadership was his indomitable courage in abolishing class and caste distinctions. This was decidedly an Alvar legacy, but the Sufi traditions also contributed to the opening of the doors of devotion to the Lord of all classes5.

Jainism and Buddhism gradually gave way to a new form of religious worship, the devotional cults of the Tamil saints, which were among the early expressions of what later came to be called the Bhakti Movement6. The movement embodied the pattern of association of these two heterodox sects. Buddhism and Jainism had much in common. Both were started by members of the Kashatriya caste and were opposed to Brahmanical orthodoxy, denying the authority of the Vedas, and antagonistic to the practice of animal sacrifices, which had by then become a keystone of Brahmanical power. Both appealed to the socially downtrodden -- the Vaishyas -- who were economically powerful but were not granted corresponding social status, and the Sudras, who were obviously oppressed. Buddhism and Jainism, though not directly attacking the caste system, were, nevertheless, opposed to it and can, to that extent, be described as non-caste movements. This provided an opportunity for those of low caste to opt out of their caste by joining a non-caste sect. The lack of expenses involved in worship, as contrasted with Brahmanical worship, also attracted the same stratum in society.

The pattern of association of Buddhism and Jainism with urban centres and largely with the lower castes was repeated in later centuries with the various phases of what came to be called the Bhakti Movement. The formulators and leaders of reformist religious sects often drew their strength from lower caste urban groups. The social content of their teaching was an essential part of their religious doctrine7.

The coming of the Arabs, Turks, and Afghans brought a new religion to India -- Islam. Apart from the Muslim theologians, the initial impact of Islam in the religious sphere was the arrival of Muslim mystics from Persia. The Sufis, as they were called, first settled in Sindh and Punjab from where their teaching trickled into Gujarat, the Deccan, and Bengal. At first the Sufis in India were an extension of the Persian schools of mystics, but later the amalgamation of Indian and Islamic ideas produced an Indian school. The Sufis lived an isolated life, devoting themselves to the means of perceiving God. The Muslim theologians generally disapproved of Sufism and its methods and beliefs, finding them too unorthodox. But Sufi ideas attracted sympathy and interest in India, particularly among those who were inclined to mysticism and asceticism. In the following centuries, the impact of the Sufis on the devotional cult was considerable.8

The Sufis, saints and mystics had mystical doctrines of union with God, achieved through the love of God. Sometimes they formed an order under a pir or shaikh, the equivalent of the Hindu guru, and the members of the order were called faqirs (mendicants) or dervishes. Some of the orders evolved a special ritual, often hypnotic in character, such as dancing until a state of trance is experienced (jazb).

India, with its experience of asceticism, the philosophy of the Upanishads and the devotional cults, provided a sympathetic atmosphere for the Sufis. There were three chief orders of Sufis in India: Chishti, which included historian Al-Bairuni and poet Amir Khusrau among its followers and was popular in and around Delhi, and the Doab, that of Suhrawardi, whose following was mainly in Sindh, and Firdausi, whose order was popular in Bihar.

The existence of ascetics living apart from their fellows was familiar in India. The Sufis were thus a part of an established tradition. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Sufi pirs were as much revered by the Hindus as were the Hindu gurus and ascetics, all of them being regarded by the Hindus as being of the same mould.

The Islamic stress on equality was respected by the Sufis far more than by the Ulema. This brought the mystic orders into contact with the artisans and cultivators. Thus the Sufis became more effective religious leaders than the distant Ulema for the peasants. Sufi and Bhakti thought and practice coalesced at various points. But the mysticism of the Sufis was not encouraged by all the Bhakti saints9.

Philosophy
The fundamental premises of the Bhakti Movement may be formulated as follows: all men are equal before God, and the merits of each man's religious devotion are measured by the degree of bhakti, i.e., his personal dedication to God10.

Bhakti devotion was not confined to a simplistic, singular attitude, or the bhava to god or gods. It could assume the form of a servant's attitude to his master; that of a friend to a friend; a parent's attitude to his or her child; a child's attitude to his or her parent; a wife's attitude to her husband; the beloved's attitude to her lover; or even the attitude of hatred, such as that of an atheist or god-hater towards God. The overriding feature of the attitudes in the Bhakti Movement is self-abandonment to a personal God, and this tends to be highly emotional11.

Kabir equated Ram with Rahim (the Merciful), Hari with Hazrat, and Krishna with Karim, but it was his frequent identification of Ram with Rahim that went a long way to make the Bhakti Movement a unique religious experience in the Indian Subcontinent. Kabir's God transcends both Islamic monotheism and Hindu polytheism. He is Allah, Ram and more. Kabir asks12:

For Turks in mosques and for Hindus in temples
both Khuda and Ram are there;
Where mosque and temple is not
who rules supreme there?

Denouncing idolatry, Kabir wrote that if God were found worshipping stone, he would worship it in a hand-mill, which ground corn for the world to eat. To him, the prayers, pilgrimages, and fasting of the Muslims were equally mechanical. Essentially a Bhakta (devotee), Kabir was totally absorbed in his devotion to the Supreme. But he was also deeply upset by Hindu and Muslim intolerance and religious chauvinism. Ironically, after his death, his Hindu and Muslim disciples could not even agree on the disposal of his corpse. The Hindus wished to cremate him; the Muslims fought to bury him.13

The traditions relate that the Supreme Being appeared to Dadu in the character of an old ascetic and initiated him into divine truth. Dadu, born in 1544, was also called Dawud. His life was spent at Sambhar in Rajasthan. He was Kabir's disciple14. His growing fame in Rajasthan resulted in the Emperor Akbar's leading dignitary, Raja Bhagavan Das, becoming his disciple. The Raja introduced him to the emperor before Akbar's departure from Fatehpur-Sikri for Kabul in 1584. After a short stay at the capital, Dadu left for Rajasthan. In the last days of his life he left for Nara'ina in Rajasthan, where he died in 160315.

Dadu was deeply influenced by Kabir. In his hymns, Dadu reiterates that Ram, Govind, and Allah are his spiritual teachers and he occupies a distinctive place in the galaxy of the saints such as Namdev, Pipa, Sena, Raidas, and Kabir. Dadu's cosmology and the stages of the soul's pilgrimage are markedly Sufi. Like later Kabir Panthis, Dadu Panthis also became predominantly Hindu16.
It is as a social and ethical reformer that Kabir claims the attention of modern radicals inasmuch as he, like the Buddha, denounced the folly of social inequity and the injustice perpetrated in the name of caste. Kabir ridiculed the orthodoxy of both Hindus and Muslims and challenged them, like any later scientific rationalist, to justify their sham and hypocrisy. He denounced hoarding and show of wealth, and was against any kind of luxury and indulgence in intoxicants. He preached simplicity and contentment. He believed that everyone should do physical labour and stick to his own profession; no one should steal another person's property. He did not spare royal greed and political aggrandisement. Kabir bitterly criticised all kinds of sectarian and narrow creeds and outlooks. 'Neither the Brahmin is high caste, nor is the Sudra low. Why hate one another? Hatred is folly.' In those days when rationalism was rare and an attack on established religion, it was deemed the worst type of heresy. But Kabir did it so boldly and effectively that in the end the Hindus had no other option but to honour him as a saint and his way as Kabir-panth17. The leaders of the Bhakti Movement, who were to make a deeper impact on social rather than purely religious ideas, were influenced by Islam, and more particularly by the teachings of the Sufis18.

In the 15th Century the area which may be called 'the land of Hindi', saw a new turn in the Bhakti Movement under the influence of Ramananda (c. 1360-1470). He advocated devotion to the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of Rama and his consort Sita, and worshipped their close companion, the monkey god Hanuman. Ramananda firmly repudiated the injustices of caste, and among his twelve outstanding disciples were an outcaste, a woman, and a Muslim. Raidis, the chamar (shoemaker) disciple of Ramananda, wrote songs condemning Brahmanical rituals and caste prejudices.

With Kabir and Nanak (1469-1539) the Bhakti Movement took a new turn. Theirs was neither an attempt to reform institutionalised Hinduism by attacking the system of worship nor a means of escape through submerging consciousness in devotion. The new attitude can perhaps best be understood in the idea of God as described by Kabir and Nanak. Kabir either denied the Hindu and Muslim ideas of God or else equated them by stating that were identical.19 The ideas of Kabir and Nanak were drawn from both the existing and the Islamic traditions, and the inclusion of the latter makes them very different from the other leaders of the Bhakti Movement20.

Islam brought to the religious fund certain asceticism and the idea of grace associated with the first phase of the Sufi Movement. The objective of the saint-poets and preachers of the Pre-Nanak Age seems to have been to mix the various elements of Buddhism, Puranism, Upanishadism and Sufistic asceticism in due proportions so that the resultant compound may rightly and fully serve the needs of changed political and social situations21. This contribution of the Bhakti Movement was partly original and partly derived. Islam, with its externalisation, exotericism, mass-subordination, theocracy, institutionalism and uniformising could not have rendered any help here. Buddhism and the inner psychological reaction to external political and religions slavery and suffering supplied the yeast.

Writers on the Bhakti Movement have failed to notice its rise and spread among the Muslim population of India who were being acted upon by the same catalytic agents in the nascent state. The emotional satisfaction of the masses amid the intellectual satisfaction of the classes, particularly of the converts from among the locals, could not be achieved only through the Islamic theology and theocracy. The contact with Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Puranism produced in Islam results similar to those generated by them in mediaeval Hinduism. The same necessity and supremacy of love, practice of Shabad Yog, power of Grace, and the same mixture of intellectualism and emotionalism do we meet with in Daud, Burhan, Khusrau, Bu-Ali Qalandar and Baba Farid of the Panjab, Shah Latif of Sindh, Miranji Shah of the Deccan, and in other saints and poets whose propaganda was being carried on similarly through spiritual assemblies.

The only difference was that Muslim Bhagats all over India, like the Punjab Bhagats, were non-idolatrous, non-formalistic, disbelievers in the whole-hogger worship of orthodox prophets and leaders and stack to the two fundamentals, inwardness and individualism of teaching and learning, both of which became responsible for the vast system of hagiolatry dominating Indian Islam after the 12th Century. The leadership passed from the Brahman and the Mulla to the Guru or the Saint hailing often from a low caste. India has been throwing up these new leaders ever since the 12th Century. However, they were the real gift of the Bhakti Movement to the composite Indian civilisation22.

Trends
The spokesmen of Bhakti Movement and Sufis have expressed themselves in words and idioms of the people. Amir Khusrau (AD 1253-1325) was the first poet of a vernacular language who picked up local Indian images, rejecting consciously the idiom of the rulers. He discarded Persian references. He was, therefore, perhaps the first naturalist poet, using allegorical references to the nature around him and to customs indigenous to Indus and India. Indeed, in this sense, he was the first nationalist too23.

Mirabai, besides Hindi and Gujarati, has freely borrowed works and expressions from Braj, Avandhi, Marwari (and its dialects), Bhojpuri, Maithili, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian and even Punjabi24.

The Indo-Aryan dialects, such as Bhojpuri, Magadhi, and Maithili of modern Bihar, Oudhi, of the Oudh region, Braj Bhasha of the Mathura region, and Ra'asthini, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Gujarati, assumed new forms and meaning through Bhakti poetry. The love ballads on Radha and Krishna by Vidyapati (14th/15th Century), in Maithili, are a legacy from Chandidas. Their vigour and refined diction made them popular even in Bengal, Assam, and Nepal.

The languages -- Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Marathi -- were fully accepted and mature. Although most of the literature in these languages, excluding Tamil, consisted of adaptations from Sanskrit originals, particularly the Epics and the Puranas, they were becoming the media for cultural transmission, for which the Bhakti Movement was largely responsible. In northern Deccan, the Bahmanis had introduced Persian and Arabic, which made this region closer linguistically to the Sultanate. In Malabar, another language had acquired an independent status -- Malayalam -- spoken in the state of Kerala today. Originating as a dialect of Tamil, the political isolation of Malabar from Tamil and the infusion of linguistic forms brought by foreigners, led to it developing independently of Tamil. As was the case in Northern India, Sanskrit remained the language of learning in certain sections of society. The contribution of such writings to the advancement of social institutions was, however, small25.

The emergence of regional cultures within a common framework of similar institutions resulted in the growth of local loyalties and divisions; nevertheless, there was a common unifying bond in the general similarity of the various cultures. Those who spoke Bengali could not understand those whose language was Kannada, but the underlying circumstances, which had led to these separate vernacular languages, were everywhere quite similar. Moreover, on the religious side the Bhakti Movement had released the same sorts of forces in both the North and the South, even though in its aspect of social protest the Bhakti Movement was earlier exhausted in the South. The teachings of reformers such as Shankara had, in a sense, unified the whole of India through the general diffusion of common beliefs. To the pious Hindu, the seven sacred sites of pilgrimage included Badrinath in the Himalayas and Rameshvaram in the far South. Coastal trade encouraged the mobility of traders, so that Gujarati merchants were not debarred from entering into competition with those from Malabar. Despite local diversity there was a certain sense of similarity throughout the subcontinent, an atmosphere ripe for the establishment of an all-inclusive state26.

Two trends can be clearly traced in Bhakti: conservative and democratic. The adherents of the former demanded an unqualified return to Hinduism, complete with all its establishments; it was in essence a reaction of Hindu feudal rulers against Muslim domination. The democratic line, on the other hand, had absorbed some ideas of Islam and its sects, and voiced the people's longing for a unification of all anti-feudal forces. Modern scholars over-emphasise the Hindu aspect of Kabir and Nanak, but both sages mirror the spiritual movement that relentlessly fought against simple-minded Hindu and Muslim ritualism, die-hard fanaticism, and religious, sectarian, class, and colour distinctions. They were devotees of an omnipotent and omniscient God and intensely loved all living beings.27

The earliest Sufi traditions refer to Kabir as muwahhid (Unitarian, or a follower of the Wahdat-al-Wujud), who could not be called either an orthodox Hindu or an orthodox Muslim. According to the 17th Century Mir`atu'l-asrar, he was a Firdawsiyya Sufi, but the Iranian author of the Dabistan-I-Mazahib places Kabir against the background of the legend of the Vaishnavite viaragis (mendicants)28. Kabir's mysticism was of the same kind and degree as that of the Vedantin or the Sufi. For him, there was no dualism between the finite and the Infinite29.

Sikhism
Guru Nanak (1469-1539) initiated a new movement in Punjab, Sikhism, as the 15th Century approached its end. Nanak's teaching is one of the various manifestations of the Hindu-Muslim cultural synthesis. It intertwines all the most vigorous aspects of the trends opposing orthodox Hinduism and Islam. Without challenging the authority of vedas and puranas, he denied the existence of a personified deity and condemned idolatry, for there is but one divinity, he claimed, and this is truth embodied in the world's infinite manifoldness. All the gods of Hinduism, all its sacred writings, and those of Islam and other creeds too, are but separate manifestations of this all-embracing deit