Introduction
A remarkable feature of popular religion in India is the widespread popularity in large parts of the country, of shared religious traditions which bring together people who are otherwise defined as belonging to different religions in common worship and ritual participation. These traditions are, by nature, ambiguous in terms of clearly defined communal categories, defying the logic of neatly separated and demarcated communities defined on the basis of a reified and scripturalist understanding of religious identity. Faced with religious movements for 'reform' and 'orthodoxy', however, such traditions have increasingly come in for attack as powerful organisations seek to redefine their identities. Increasingly, 'fuzzy' identities are sought to be replaced by clearly demarcated boundaries, resulting in these traditions gradually being identified as unambiguously 'Hindu' or 'Muslim' or other, as the case might be. While the origins of this process may be traced to colonial times, in particular to the introduction of the census as a tool to map and categorise religious communities and to the politics of competing communalisms, it has, in the post-Independence period, received added impetus by the intervention of communal organisations seeking to 'purify' these traditions and their followers of what is seen as their tainted association with the religious beliefs and practices of other communities. In the process, many of these traditions have today emerged as arenas of sharp inter-communal contestation.

This paper analyses this process of transformation of one such shared religious shrine in contemporary Karnataka, the Baba Budhan Giri dargah, located in the Chikmagalur district of the state. My particular concern is to trace how representations of this shrine and the tradition associated with it have changed over time, so much so that today they are now the epicentre of a raging 'communal' controversy. I argue that this must be seen in the context of the introduction and growing acceptance of the notion of community based on a reified, textual understanding of religion, each community being neatly marked off from other similarly constructed communities. In addition, I seek to show that a complex interplay of economic and political forces is leading to conflicting claims about the specifically 'Hindu' or 'Muslim' identity of the Baba Budhan shrine and the cult centred around it.

Shared Hindu-Muslim Traditions
One out of eleven people in the state of Karnataka in south India is Muslim, and various Muslim dynasties have ruled this region for centuries. Islam made its advent in the region as early as the tenth century, when Arab traders had set up settlements all along the Malabar and Konkan coasts. It was principally through the agency of the Sufis that Islam spread in Karnataka. Using local motifs and idioms, the Sufis were able to exercise a powerful appeal, making numerous converts to a form of Islam heavily coloured by local influences. In addition, they attracted a large numbers of Hindus as well, owing principally to their charisma and the widespread belief in their powers as intermediaries with God. Consequently, the traditions that developed around the figures of many of these Sufis came to be shared by Hindus and Muslims alike, although this did not rule out differences in the ways in which they were seen and regarded by Hindus and Muslims respectively.

Living together for centuries, many Hindus and Muslims in northern Karnataka came to share, to a considerable extent, a common cultural world. At the level of the political elite, a shared Indo-Persian culture emerged, to which both Hindus and Muslims both made rich contributions. At the local level, although they maintained a strong sense of a separate identity, Hindus and Muslims often worshipped together at the shrines of Sufi saints (dargahs). Many Muslims were but nominal and recent converts to Islam, and as such continued to practice several customs associated with their pre-Islamic past which they shared with their Hindu neighbours, particularly in matters of domestic rituals.

One of the most intriguing features of this popular religious tradition is the large number of shared religious figures, mostly of undoubtedly Muslim origin, who are venerated by Hindus and Muslims alike, and on whom both communities today make claims of their own. These figures and the shrines and cults associated with them represent a powerful popular tradition that harks back to an age when notions of monolithic 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' communities were still non-existent, and the boundaries setting apart one community from the other were still fuzzy and unclear. These figures seem to have played a central role in bringing people of various castes, Hindus as well as Muslims, together in common worship in a shared cultural universe, and, as such, also played an important role in the conversion of non-Muslim communities to Islam. Today, these figures still command a widespread popularity in certain parts of the state.

The widespread veneration of Muslim holy figures among Hindus is a phenomenon that is common to almost all parts of India, and so the Karnataka case must not be seen as, in any way, exceptional or unique. Sufi saints, seen as powerful beings capable of performing miracles, are widely propitiated as devtas or gods by Hindus, who see them as part of their vast pantheon of deities. The cults of the Muslim saints are particularly popular among 'low' caste Hindus in rural areas. Historically, and even today in several places, 'untouchables' and other 'low' caste people were denied access to Hindu temples, and the shrines of Muslim saints were often the only places of worship which they could freely enter. Stories are told of how these Muslim figures fraternised with the 'low' castes and won them over with their love and compassion. Till this day, 'low' caste Hindus vastly outnumber Muslims at many dargahs (shrines).

For many Hindus, these Muslim figures are incarnations (avatar) of one or the other Hindu god, and hence, they are often called by Hindu names and incorporated as Hindu religious figures into the local set of deities. Thus, for instance, the Qalandar Dada Hayat, with whom the Baba Budhan dargah is associated, is popular among his Hindu devotees as Dattatreya Avatar, an incarnation of the Hindu deity Dattatreya, himself a combination of Vishnu and Shiva. Muslim followers of these figures would see these figures differently, as 'friends' of God (auliya), powerful beings, capable of interceding with God to have one's desires met. It appears that the Muslim custodians of the shrines of these figures freely welcomed Hindus to worship therein, and some even popularised stories of their association with Hindu deities in order to win local support and even possibly as a means to preach Islam to them in an idiom and language with which they were familiar. Hence, as a result of Hindus and Muslims worshipping at common shrines and venerating common religious figures, local traditions evolved centred on what were undoubtedly Muslim figures, but who, with the passage of time, became transformed into figures with a dual identity, seen in different ways by their Hindu and Muslim followers.

While in the past, such shared traditions served to bring Hindus and Muslims together in common worship, as well as facilitating the gradual Islamisation of local non-Muslim communities, today many of them have emerged as centres of inter-communal contestation and conflict. Boundaries between 'Hindus' and 'Muslims', between 'Islam' and 'Hinduism', have been sharply drawn, and shared shrines and their followers are being increasingly defined as unambiguously 'Hindu' or 'Muslim', their ambiguous identity being, as we seek to show, suitably reinterpreted to serve contemporary purposes and agendas.

The Baba Budhan Dargah Controversy:
The Baba Budhan dargah is said to be the oldest Sufi shrine in Karnataka, the hagiographic works describing Baba Budhan, also known as Hazrat 'Abdul 'Aziz Makki, as one of the companions (sahabi) of the Prophet Muhammad. Baba Budhan is said to have fought against the powerful landlords (palegars) of the area and to have crusaded against their oppression of the poor, putting an end to the practice of human sacrifice, whose victims were largely from among the 'low' castes. Owing to the stories of his miraculous powers as well as his having fought for the rights of the downtrodden, he gained a large following in the area. Many people converted to Islam at his hands, it is said, while several others, while remaining Hindus, began venerating him as a powerful spiritual being, an incarnation of their own principal deity, Dattatreya.

The historical records tell us that the shrine of Baba Budhan was patronised by both Hindu as well as Muslim kings, both of whom endowed it with large land grants. In edicts issued by the Hindu rulers of Mysore the shrine was referred to as the Sri Dattatreya Swami Baba Budhan Peetha ('The Monastery of the Revered Lord Dattatreya Baba Budhan'), while the Muslim custodians of the shrine were granted the honorific title of jagad guru or 'Teachers of the World'. They were, in addition, the only Muslim religious heads to be exempted from personal appearance in the civil courts of the state.

It appears that through the centuries Hindus and Muslims freely worshipped at the shrine of Baba Budhan, each approaching him in their own way, as an incarnation of Dattatreya for the Hindus or as a 'friend' of Allah for the Muslims. There is, moreover, no record of any conflict over the shrine or about its Muslim custodians. In the mid-1960s, for the first time a dispute arose over the control of the shrine, setting in motion a process of conflicting claims and counter-claims that has now turned into a major political controversy, causing a sharp deterioration in relations between Hindus and Muslims in the area. The immediate cause for the emergence of the dispute was the claim put forward sometime in the mid-1960s by the Waqf Board, a statutory body set up to administer Muslim shrines and endowed properties in the state, that the Baba Budhan shrine, being a Muslim dargah, should be brought under its jurisdiction. This claim was disputed by the Muzrai Department, in-charge of Hindu endowments in the state, which argued that the shrine was not an exclusively Muslim place of worship since it was held in great regard by the local Hindus as well. In 1975, the government of Karnataka directed that the shrine be vested with the Waqf Board, but five years later this order was struck down by the Chikmagalur District Court, which was later challenged by the Waqf Board. In 1989, the Court of the Commissioner for Religious and Charitable Endowments restored the shrine to the Muzrai Department and upheld the status of the Muslim custodian (sajjada nashin) as its sole administrator.

Although the conflict was between two administrative bodies, one Muslim and the other Hindu, it did not, at this time, take the form of a Hindu-Muslim communal controversy. Indeed, the Muslim sajjada nashin of the shrine actually supported the stand of the Muzrai Department and challenged the claims of the Waqf Board, arguing that the shrine was not an exclusively Muslim one. What is clear from the claims of both the Waqf Board and the Muzrai Department was their inability to deal with the fact of the shrine's liminality, and the difficulty that they faced in categorising the shrine as belonging to one religious community or the other. For both it had to be clearly defined as either 'Hindu' or 'Muslim', and, hence, the controversy soon took on the form of a 'Hindu' versus 'Muslim' dispute.

With the case lingering in the courts, politicians were quick to take up the issue, seeing in it a means to garner political support. From the mid-1980s onwards, militant Hindu groups, encouraged by the mass movement launched to destroy a mosque at the town of Ayodhya in north India and build a temple in its place, grew increasingly active throughout Karnataka. Chikmagalur soon emerged as a powerful base of extreme right-wing Hindu organisations. Some time in the late 1980s, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an all-India organisation of Hindu religious leaders allied to the militant and fiercely anti-Muslim Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, launched what they called a campaign to 'liberate' the 'temple' of Dattatreya from Muslim control. VHP activists now put forward the claim that the shrine was actually a temple of the Hindu deity Dattatreya and that the Muslims had falsely claimed it to be the dargah of Baba Budhan in order to lay control over its vast properties and income. Accordingly, the VHP set up what it called the Datta Peetha Samrakshana Samiti ('The Committee for the Liberation of Datta Peetha'). In 1989, amidst tight security and in the face of strong Muslim protest, for the first time a Brahminical puja was conducted outside the shrine of Baba Budhan by a group of Brahmins affiliated to the VHP. Following the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya in 1992, the VHP, now further emboldened, began celebrating an annual three-day festival dedicated to Dattatreya at the dargah, in complete violation of the court's orders that the traditional rituals associated with the dargah be left unchanged.

In order to further galvanise public support for the 'liberation' of the 'temple' from Muslim control, the VHP and its allied private militia, the Bajrang Dal, organised a massive campaign all over Karnataka in late 1998. Some Hindu leaders involved in this campaign publicly announced that they would dispatch 'suicide squads' if need be to 'rescue' the 'temple'. Others predicted that 'a blood bath was certain' if the government failed to 'deliver' the shrine to the Hindus. Passions ran high, and in some places violence between Hindus and Muslims was reported, in which Muslims suffered considerably greater loss of life and property. A massive crowd of Hindutva activists, mostly brought in from outside, gathered at the dargah in early December 1998. They tore down the green flags decorated with Islamic motifs at the entrance to the shrine and replaced them with saffron Hindu flags. A three-headed idol, purporting to be that of Dattatreya, was forcibly taken inside the shrine and worshipped. After the puja was over, a public rally was held outside, where militant Hindu leaders demanded that the shrine be handed over to the Hindus, that the Muslim custodian be replaced by a Hindu priest, that Hindu-style puja be conducted at the shrine and that the Sufi urs festival be stopped forthwith. They also insisted that the shrine must be converted into a 'purely Hindu place of worship'.

The intervention of the VHP and allied groups in the controversy only added to the pressure, set in motion by the earlier dispute between the Waqf Board and the Muzrai Commissioner, to clearly identify the shrine as either 'Muslim' or 'Hindu'. To the VHP, like to the Muzrai Commissioner and the Waqf Board, a situation of liminality was one that directly challenged their own understanding of community, religion and identity. The construction of the notion of the 'Hindu community' in Hindutva discourse, and, indeed, in dominant varieties of Indian nationalist discourse as well, is premised on a distinction from the Muslim 'other', who is generally characterised in terms befitting an inveterate foe. Quite naturally, then, a situation of religious syncretism and liminality, where boundaries between 'Hindus' and 'Muslims' are blurred, if not completely invisiblised, forcefully questions the very basis of Hindutva as an ideology. It is thus not surprising that the VHP has been actively seeking to take control of several dargahs in various other parts of India, in addition to the Baba Budhan shrine, where Hindus worship along with Muslims, and turning them into temples, seeking to actively discourage Muslim-derived practices among Hindus.

What is particularly significant about the VHP's intervention in the controversy over the Baba Budhan dargah is the Brahminisation of the Dattatreya tradition that it aggressively promotes, in line with the sternly Brahminical Hinduism that it represents. The Dattatreya image associated with popular Hindu religiosity in the Deccan is one that is clearly non-Brahminical, if not distinctly anti-Brahminical, in its origins. Phadke, in his Sri Dattachintan, writes that the avadhutas, considered to be incarnations of Dattatreya, were believed to be 'beyond caste, cult and social conventions'. In the Markandeya Purana, Dattatreya appears in the form of an antinomian yogi, defying the rituals and rules of purity and pollution so central to Brahminical Hinduism. He is depicted as consorting with women and drinking wine. A subsidiary shrine associated with the Baba Budhan dargah, the shrine of Biru at Palang Talab, is looked after by a Dalit priest, thus clearly suggesting the non-Brahminic association of the Dattatreya cult in the region. Many 'low' caste followers of Baba Budhan/Dattatreya see him as having bravely fought against the oppression of their ancestors at the hands of the 'upper' caste palegars and Brahmins. In contrast, however, the image of Dattatreya in VHP discourse seeks to place him firmly within the boundaries of Brahminical Hinduism. Thus, for instance, the pujas held by the VHP at the Baba Budhan shrine, in violation of the court's orders, were conducted by Brahmin priests and in Brahminical fashion, which would be equally alien for Muslims as it would for the 'low' castes who have their own ways of worship. In other words, the VHP's efforts to 'liberate' the dargah of Baba Budhan seem directed equally at the Muslims as it is at the 'low' castes, challenging both Muslim as well as Dalit representations of Baba Budhan/Dattatreya.

Conclusion
Today, the little cave-shrine of Baba Budhan atop a thickly forested hill, has become a 'national' issue, prompting some observers to liken it to Ayodhya, suggesting that the controversy about the shrine might soon turn it into a second Babri Masjid, with all the dreadful consequences that might have for Hindu-Muslim relations in Karnataka. As the case of the Baba Budhan dargah controversy suggests, religious liminality or shared religious spaces and traditions do not necessarily promote inter-communal harmony and understanding. Rather, because of their ambiguous character, many shared shrines can emerge as arenas of inter-community contestation and rivalry, as indeed many already have. In the Baba Budhan dargah case a host of factors have combined to undermine and challenge the centuries-old popular tradition associated with it. Clearly, modern government bureaucracies, in this case the Waqf Board and the Muzrai Department, used to dealing with 'Hindus' and 'Muslims' as two neatly demarcated communities, and with 'Islam' and 'Hinduism' as two rigidly separated religions, fail to understand and appreciate traditions and shrines associated with religious liminality or syncretism. Militant communal organisations, in this case the VHP, too, cannot recognise fluid religious identities that defy any neat categorisation, for they forcefully challenge their understanding of 'Hindus' and 'Muslims' as two monolithic blocs permanently at war with each other. The Indian state, now increasingly Hindu in character, has, in some cases, assisted groups like the VHP to take over syncretic shrines and convert them into Hindu temples. In addition, the state as well as groups like the VHP have actively sought to promote a Brahminisation of 'low' caste shrines and traditions, absorbing them into the broader Brahminical fold. Consequently, 'low' caste traditions associated with Muslim figures are reinterpreted in purely Brahminical terms that serves to rigidly set 'low' castes and other 'Hindus' against Muslims. In this manner, many shared religious traditions in contemporary India, as the Baba Budhan case shows, are now being transformed in order to serve contemporary political purposes, shaped largely by the growing challenge of Brahminical Hinduism and moulded by modern, reified understandings of religious and community identity.

(Yoginder Sikand is of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World in Leiden, Netherlands).