Authenticity and Authority on the Margins: The Muslim Jogis (Yogis) as Tantric Healers, Bards, and Islamic Practitioners

This presentation explores the complex interplay of Yoga Darśana (philosophical viewpoint) and Yoga Sādhana (practical discipline) within the unique community of the Muslim Jogis of North India. It addresses the conference's central concerns of authenticity, authority, and adaptation by examining a group that defies simplistic religious and categorical boundaries. Muslim Jogis self-identify as a caste of Yogis (Jogis), hold devotional belief in the Hindu god Shiva, and yet maintain a Muslim religious identity. Traditionally serving as healers, bards, managers of locusts and other ritual specialists in village society by using mantras, their authority is derived not from orthodox religious lineages but from their demonstrated yogic skills, particularly the ability to cure ailments—a potent form of practical yogic powers generationally inherited from fathers and garandfathers who also acted as their gurus. Their practices represent a profound adaptation, drawing from a shared pool of yogic culture, popular magico-Tantric beliefs, and Islamic identity to form a cohesive, ‘localized' spiritual system.

This paper argues that the Muslim Jogi community complicates the imagined authenticities of “Hindu Yoga” and “Tantric Practice”, and “Islam”. Their very existence challenges us to ask: What is “authentic” yoga or “authentic” in yoga? For the Muslim Jogi, it is a pragmatic way for worldly service and healing, seamlessly integrated into an Islamic worldview. Their authority is vested in their efficacy and their recognized role within the social fabric, not in rigid dogmatic adherence.

By analysing the lived religious practices of Muslim Jogis, this presentation demonstrates that the history of yoga is not one of isolated traditions but of dynamic and shared exchanges. It concludes that the Muslim Jogi stands as a powerful testament to the enduring and complex ways in which yoga's philosophical viewpoints (Darśana) and practical disciplines (Sādhana) are continuously adapted to consciously and unconsiously create and challenege “authentic” paths of authority within specific cultural contexts.