It is not uncommon to hear laments about the gradual decline of the much cherished “Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb”, a syncretic Hindu-Muslim culture, manifest across the festivities, literature, aesthetics, crafts, music, dance, spiritual practices and culinary traditions of the people of northern and central Indian plains. This shared culture is understood to have evolved over centuries of co-existence and interdependence, and came to epitomise the Indian ethos of 'unity-in-diversity'.
However in recent years many have begun to question whether such a culture did ever exist? They claim it to be a myth concocted by the urban and feudal elites. Interestingly there does not seem to be much agreement among the dissenters on the motivations behind this alleged myth-crafting. For some it was an attempt to cover up centuries of oppression of the subjugated Hindu majority by the elite Muslim minority, and for others it still serves as a way to cover up the disenfranchisement of the present Muslims, who themselves naively cling on to this notion seduced by the false sense of security it promises.
Communal perspectives aside, even some scholars are sceptical and tend to dismiss it as romanticised nostalgia of the ‘old elite’, with little basis in actual history where inter-communal tensions have always lurked beneath the surface and sporadic violent conflicts have been a norm going back centuries.
So is the much famed Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb or Hindu-Muslim Unity really just a myth?
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