ABSTRACT
Iran and India are civilisational twins separated by the towering Hindu Kush in the north-west and the wilderness of the Balochistan escarpment south of it up to the Arabian Sea. Even Alexander, having come till the Indus with exhausted troops finally sailed down the Indus and then back to the Persian Gulf by boat. Iran was the first to feel the impact of Islam, largely converted in the 7th century itself. India felt its major impact in north India only after the incursion of Mohammad of Ghazni in the 11th century. The Iranian mind espoused the Twelver Shiaism because Hussein, the son of Ali and the grandson of the Prophet, was married to the daughter of the last Sassanian ruler of Iran and through his progeny provided a union of the two streams, Arab and Persian as well as lay and religious. Or else, Shiaism is the window through which the Persian spirit submitted to the Prophet’s message. These are matters of debate. In India, Islam moulded and influenced but did not overpower the Vedic roots of Indian culture. What makes Iran a fascinating subject for Indians is precisely this shared but disparate experience of Islam. Any study of modern Iran would fail unless the duality in the Iranian character is understood — the struggle between the Islamic and the Persian traditions, and the inability of Iran to find a mean that makes them at peace with themselves and their external environment. The Safayids, consolidating their hold over the area traditionally seen as the Persian homeland, pronounced Shiaism as the official religion in 1501. Khomeini’s Islamic revolution in 1979 was not the first to impose on Iran a stricter religious orthodoxy. Many persecuted Sufis fled to India where the Mughal court, particularly under Akbar (1556–1605), was open to new ideas on philosophy and religion.
