The alleged involvement of members of the Siddiq Deendar Channabasaveswara Anjuman in bomb attacks on Christian churches in south India has brought to light a hitherto little–known heterodox sect, which represents an interesting blend of Hindu and Muslim beliefs and practices. Leaders of the sect have rebutted charges of its being involved in the attacks, and other observers suspect a Hindutva hand in these allegations.

Several Muslim groups have dissociated themselves from the Anjuman, and have declared the followers of the cult as outside the pale of Islam for their peculiar beliefs, which include a syncretistic admixture of Hindu, Islamic and Ahmadi doctrines. The on–going controversy is particularly intriguing, given the fact that the sect is known for its ardent advocacy of communal harmony and inter–religious dialogue.

The Siddiq Deendar Channabasaveswara Anjuman was founded in the early twentieth century by a charismatic Sufi preacher, Sayyed Siddiq Hussain. Born in 1886 at Balampet in the Gulbarga district in a family of Qadri Sufis, Siddiq Hussain received his primary education first at Gulbarga and then at Hyderabad, where he learnt Arabic and the Quran from one Maulvi Abdul Nabi. Later, he enrolled at the Muhammadan Arts College, Madras and then at the Bursen College, Lahore for his higher education. He mastered several languages and also trained in medicine.

As a young man, he developed an interest in various religions, and received instruction in Sufism from several noted Sufis and Islamic scholars of his time. In 1914, he joined the heterodox Ahmadiyya community, considered as outside the pale of Islam by most Muslims, and took the oath of allegiance from the then head of the Ahmadis, Miyan Bashirduddin Mahmud Ahmad.

It is probably Siddiq Hussain’s association with the followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad which accounts for the curious mix of Hindu, Islamic and other doctrines that characterise the belief system of the Deendar Anjuman.

However, Hussain is said to have renounced membership of the sect in just a fortnight, accusing the Qadianis of being ‘kafirs’ for having accorded Mirza Ghulam Ahmad the status of a prophet. He even accused the founder of the sect, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani, of being a ‘kafir’, a ‘devil’ [dajjal] and a ‘liar’ [kazib] for claiming to be a prophet.

He is then believed to have moved closer to the rival Lahori branch of the Ahmadis, led by one Maulana Muhammad Ali, whom he is said to have been particularly close to at one time. The Lahori Ahmadis, so named because their centre was located at Lahore, believed, in contrast to the Qadiani Ahmadis, that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was not a prophet but was a ‘mujaddid’ or ‘renewer’ sent by God to revive Islam, in accordance with a tradition attributed to the Prophet that God would send a ‘mujaddid’ at the beginning of every century to renew His religion.

In the ‘A’ada–I–Islam’, an Urdu tract penned in the 1920s, Siddiq Hussain writes that since ‘anti–Islamic forces’ had now begun to raise their heads, particularly in the wake of the shuddhi movement of the Arya Samaj aimed at converting Indian Muslims to the Hindu fold, “God had sent him in the form of the biggest incarnation [avatar] of the Hindus to make the enemies of Islam Muslim by proving the truth of Islam by quoting from their own scriptures”.

This avatar, he claimed, was a form of Channabasaveswara, the twelfth century social reformer and nephew of the founder of the Shiva-worshipping Lingayat sect, Basaveshwara. He claimed to possess 56 bodily and 96 heavenly signs which he said had been predicated in the Lingayat scriptures in connection with the Second Coming of Channabasaveswara.

To the Muslims he presented himself as having been appointed by the Prophet Muhammad as the ‘leader of the people’ [imam–ul nas] and the ‘leader of all the peoples of the world’ [imam–i–aqwam ul alam], claiming that God had ‘elected’ him and his Anjuman to spread Islam.

He declared that his coming had been predicted in various earlier scriptures, including those of the Hindus, Lingayats as well as of the Muslims. He suggested that a tradition attributed to the Prophet, ‘I feel cool breeze coming from India’ actually referred to none but himself.

Seeking to win the support of the Nizam of Hyderabad in his project, he claimed that through heavenly signs [basharat] he had been informed that ‘Allah would appoint a king to assist him’, in the form of the then Nizam, Mir Usman Ali Khan Bahadur Asaf Jah. He announced a sum of Rs. 5000 to anyone who could prove his claim as false.

The Nizam, however, did not look favourably on him, and sentenced him to several spells in jail on the grounds that a book that he penned to prove his claims, ‘Deendar Channabasaveswara’ was prejudicial to public peace and communal harmony.

Noting that many Muslim Ulema had issued fatwas of infidelity [kufr] against him for his extravagant claims, Siddiq Hussain alleged a hidden Arya Samaji hand in the affair and even in the unsuccessful attempt of a Muslim youth to kill him. He declared that such fatwas could do him no harm as ‘Allah was with him’.

He claimed that his Anjuman was carrying on in the footsteps of the Prophet Mohammed’s companions [sahabis] and so ‘would, like them, cause the rain of God’s mercy to fall on the entire earth’. They would, like the Prophet’s companions, be forced to face extreme oppression, but, in the end, would emerge victorious, and ‘would conquer the lands of the kafirs’.

While the Prophet’s first followers were the ‘first party’ appointed by God to spread Islam [awwalin jamaat], his Anjuman, he asserted, had been destined to be the ‘last party’ [jamaat–i–akhireen]. He claimed that they were identical in almost every respect.

Siddiq Hussain’s grandiose claims did not end there. In the concluding portion of the ‘A’ada–i–Islam’ he suggested that his arrival would herald the end of the world as it was known, the Qayamat of the Muslims and the Kali Yug of the Hindus. Referring to his founding of the Deendar Anjuman at Gadag in north Karnataka in 1924 when he declared himself to be Channabasaveswara, he claimed that in that year ‘Shri Bhagwan’ [God, for the Hindus] had told him that he would be ‘appearing in the world in the form of the Kalki Avatar’ or the last incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu in order to end the ‘age of evil’ [Kali Yug] and to usher in the ‘age of truth’ [Sat Yug].

According to him, this would coincide with the arrival of the Day of Judgement [Qayamat] of the Muslims sometime in the second half of the fourteenth century of the Islamic calendar. The world would then be drowned in a series of terrible wars, stretching from 1937 to 1950, in which most Muslim governments would side with the British. Spain would be conquered by a Muslim king in 1969, and then in 1980 a war unprecedented in its ferocity would break out all over the world between Muslims and Christians. This would last for a period of six months, after which most of the world would convert to Islam.

Then, finally, the ‘Sat Yug’ would dawn and Channabasaveswara would go about ‘purifying the world from sin’, doing away with ‘the prejudices that divide the 101 castes’ and establishing ‘the one true religion’. And, Siddiq Hussain claimed, this would cause ‘the heavens in the skies to come down to earth’.

In the early 1920s, Siddiq Hussain began to take an active role in political affairs. He participated in the 1922 session of the Congress Party at Belgaum. According to an official Urdu publication of the sect, ‘Deendar Anjuman — Ajmali Ta’aruf ‘[‘The Deendar Association — An Introduction’], at this conference he presented to Gandhi what he saw as the “only formula” for Hindu–Muslim unity — that all of India should become Muslim.

In 1923, the Arya Samaj embarked on an aggressive campaign to convert thousands of Muslim Rajputs in north India to the Hindu fold. Siddiq Hussain played a leading role in trying to counter the Aryas. He joined hands with Sayyied Ghulam Bhik Nairang, a Lahore-based lawyer, in setting up the ‘Anjuman Tabligh–ul–Islam’, to bring back to the Muslim fold the Muslim Rajputs whom the Aryas had won over to their camp.

It was in the course of his involvement with efforts to resist the Aryas that Siddiq Hussain claimed a divine mission for himself, which resulted in attacks not just from the Aryas and the Hindus but also from sections of the orthodox Muslims.

In early 1924, Siddiq Hussain travelled to Gadag, in northern Karnataka, where he publicly declared to his followers that he had received a divine message [basharat] informing him that he had been appointed as the Kalki avatar of the Hindus, with a special mission for the Lingayats, and had been bestowed with the title of Deendar Channabasaveswara [‘The Holy True Slave of God’].

He penned a slim tract, titled ‘Deendar Channabasaveswara’, to assert his claims. This, so the hagiographic accounts say, attracted the wrath of the Aryas, who instigated some Lingayats to kill him. It is said that in 1924 alone some 25 attempts were made on his life, but that he escaped unharmed.

The next year, in order to put forward his new claims about himself, he wrote and published a book in Kannada titled ‘Jagad Guru’ [‘Preceptor of the World’], in which he declared that he had been appointed by God to spread the Truth. In this book he asserted that Rama and Krishna were also prophets of God.

He claimed that “God has sent prophets to various lands to establish the religion of Truth”, and that after Muhammad, this work had been taken up by various saints and sages, and that he had now been commanded by God to carry on the same mission.

The publication of the book created a storm in Hyderabad state which Siddiq Hussain had made the centre of his activities, and in 1927 the Nizam banned its circulation and had Siddiq Hussain put into jail. In 1934, after his release, he set up his own organisation, the ‘Tehrik Jami’at–i–Hizbullah’ [‘The Movement for the Community of the Army of God’] to give armed training to his followers, whom he dispatched to the Pathan borderlands in the North-West Frontier Province to begin an armed struggle against the British. At this time he penned two books, ‘The Practical Science of War’ and ‘The Principal Armies of Asia and Europe’, which were immediately banned by the government of India.

The hagiographic accounts of Siddiq Hussain present him and his followers as having been in the forefront of the struggle against the Police Action in 1948, in the course of which Hyderabad was annexed into the Indian Union. It is claimed that they fought the Indian armed forces on 27 fronts, setting up their operational headquarters at the sect’s centre at Asifnagar, Hyderabad, known to them as Jagadguru Ashram Sarwar–i–Alam Khanqah.

When the Indian armed forces surrounded the ashram, Siddiq Hussain ordered his followers to surrender. He himself was arrested and tried by a special tribunal, which later released him.

Siddiq Hussain lived for barely two months after his release, during which he prepared a blue–print for missionary work for his followers in the form of what he called the ‘panchshanti marga’ or ‘the path of the five principles for peace’. These five principles are: ‘eko jagadishwara’ [‘one God’]; ‘eko jagadguru’ [‘one world teacher’]; ‘sarva avatara satya’ [‘all prophets are true’]; ‘sarva dharma granth satya’ [‘all divine scriptures are true’] and ‘sammelana prarthana’ [‘common worship’].

He also wrote a tract titled ‘Jamia al-Bahrain’ or ‘The Union of the Oceans’, to highlight the similarities between Islamic Sufism and Hindu mysticism. In this booklet he writes that the several gods whom the Hindus worship are actually names of the various attributes of the one God, who has sent various scriptures to the Hindus through various prophets. He says that it is on the basis of the realisation that the mystical teachings of the Muslims and the Hindus is one and the same that true Hindu–Muslim unity can be established.

Shortly after preparing this manifesto, in early 1952, he died in Hyderabad, and was succeeded as head of the sect by his principal disciple, one Sayyed Amir Hussain.

The Deendar Anjuman today is a fringe group, with only a few thousand followers in India and Pakistan. They have their headquarters in Hyderabad, where they have their own little colony, including a mosque and a madrassa. The present head of the community is one Sayyed Imam, who presides over a team of some 100 missionaries or muballighs. The missionaries all wear a standard uniform which clearly point to the syncretistic beliefs of the sect — saffron kurtas, green turbans and white lungis.

Every year the sect organises an inter–religious conference in Hyderabad, a practice started by Siddiq Hussain in 1929, in which speakers from different communities get together to speak on beliefs that all religions have in common. At the sect’s madrassa, children are taught the Quran, the Hindu scriptures and the writings of Siddiq Hussain.