Colours of love and hate in political and cultural traditions

Raziuddin Aquil

Green is the colour of love in ancient Hindu traditions, which medieval Sufis picked up to express their own love for God before it was passed on to or appropriated by various strands of modern Islam emerging from the Indian subcontinent since the early decades of the twentieth century. Much as Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Syria monopolize the limelight for matters Islamic, the crucial Indian connections to International Islamic movements – political and cultural practices – are often ignored. One such interesting link is the adoption from India of green as the predominant colour in Islamic societies in modern times. There has been a reverse flow from India of many things Islamic, which even the most experienced of the Islamologists in the West have not discerned and appreciated.

Drawing here from my ongoing research on colour symbolism in Islam and how modern politics often completely transforms and abuses older concepts and meanings embedded in them, green was the colour of sublime expression of love and attractions in ancient India’s cultural traditions. Of all the principle emotions or rasa, Shringara is recognized as the finest, while others like Rudra (furious) and Bhayanaka (horrendous) will be identified as abhorring or repulsive. Each of these rasas, nearly 11 of them, has a colour and a presiding deity associated with it. Shringara is celebrated in green with Vishnu as the deity, whereas the colours of terror and violence are red and black, with their own presiding deities prone to violence of the ultimate kind.

The association of green with Shringara rasa and Lord Vishnu provides an important clue to its later association with Islam. It leads one to think of the possibility of understanding the connection between the association of the colour green with Islam in modern times and its meaning in ancient Indian performing arts and stagecraft, including dance and music. Thus, as one of the most prominent colours deployed in the context of love, marriage and prosperity in ancient Indian traditions, green was possibly adapted by medieval Indian Sufis to express their own love for God. Sufis devoted their whole life desiring union with their beloved God and their death anniversaries, ‘urs, literally marriage, are celebrated with much fanfare. The Sufis went around flaunting their love wearing turbans and, often, even upper garments of green colour, or by just throwing a green scarf over their shoulders, even though the most recommended colour for the Sufis’ robe was blue – a colour associated with asceticism. Some sprinkling of saffron was also appropriated from Hindu mystics even by mainstream Sufis, often in skull-caps, though the more ‘liberated’ Muslim mystics did not hesitate wearing saffron clothes, asserting their own devotion to God in a "competitive spirituality" of medieval bhakti kind. Counterfactually, how interesting it would be if Vaishnava bhakti or other strands of devotional movements would express themselves in green, instead of saffron!

Just as saffron is now identified with various shades of Hindutva politics, the colour green has been appropriated from Sufi groups into modern political Islam. Despite being heirs to a tradition of religiosity which throve on shared and dialogic practices, modern Sufi masters have often sided with separatist Muslim groups, as in the case of the overwhelming support of Sufi pirs in colonial Punjab for the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan. The flags they carried were splashed with various shades of green, in the process completely transforming the older Indic connotations of the colour; of love as in the Sringara rasa or of fertility and prosperity as in the varna system, or the north-centric Vastu association of a cool green having calming effects. In course of time, the colour green was heavily used by Muslims not only in the subcontinent, but also in other parts of the world. Often, this has been at the cost of white, which is the colour of piety in Islam, though Saudi-inspired modern mosque buildings do emphasize the symbolism of white for Muslim religiosity of the fundamentalist kind.

Prior to the nineteenth century, the colour green is almost absent from all major mosques, tombs, gates, forts, palaces, and many other elegant structures. There is not even a single façade of green in the historic buildings of the Qutb Minar complex in Delhi. Imagine a smudged green Qutb Minar, or the Taj Mahal in polluted green; they would be eye-sores. Neither the Jama Masjid of Delhi of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (subsequently known as Qubbatul/Quwwatul Islam mosque, located in the Qutb complex) nor the Jama Masjid, built by Shah Jahan in Delhi, display the kind of green minarets and domes one comes across in Muslim localities in contemporary times.

The Quranic inscriptions, floral designs, and other forms of artistic expression shine in bright gold and attractive sprinklings of blue in most medieval monuments. Often, just simple engravings on plain marble would do. Not to forget, many religious decrees or fatwas were issued against Muslim rulers wearing silk in golden or yellow colours. If the rulers had listened to the guardians of Sunni Islamic traditions, they would have to give an austere image of themselves by turning out in white robes in coarse cotton; nothing could be more farcical, given the rulers’ self-expression of grandeur and magnificence channelled through various art forms, which were gracefully deployed for making statements of awe-inspiring power and resources they commanded. In this context, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s vibrant style statements can be contrasted with his son Aurangzeb’s politically calculated pretensions to piety and austerity.    

Further, the major medieval forts, built or appropriated and maintained by Muslim monarchs – Qila Rai Pithaura, Purana Qila, and Red Fort to name three well-known sites in Delhi – were made of red sandstone and other locally available construction material. The stylish finishing on these buildings will have the trappings of various colours other than green. Three colours, which actually attract attention, not only in medieval buildings, but also in vast repositories of extant paintings are the generous use of red, gold and blue. This is not only true of art and architecture in medieval India, but also for Central Asia, Iran and the Arab World through the middle-ages. Medieval Islamic monuments in major cities like Isfahan, Istanbul, Baghdad or Jerusalem represent a colourful and gorgeous world of Islamic architecture, and not a monotony of green. So is the case with the refined Islamic ‘artifacts’–including thrones and pulpits–now located in many International collections. Despite enduring violence involved in their re-locations, whether as gift items or as objects of loot, their polished designs glitter in gold, crimson, blue and several other pleasing combination of colours. Some of the most fascinating of Mughal miniature paintings reveal the predominant use of the combination of red, gold, yellow, white and blue. Only rarely a green-robed figure might be noticed in the miniatures and the person presented would, in all likelihood, be a mystic or religious figure devoted to God.  

In modern times, in Muslim public buildings in India and abroad, one can find a preponderance of green, bordering on a bizarre kind of obsession if not fanaticism, irritating the aesthetically inclined. This, as mentioned earlier, could be of ancient Indian origin; just check out the Natyashastra or even the Vastu-expert nearby, someone who is not yet saffronised in the modern sense. Still with the rampant association of green with Muslims in recent times, Hindus – of whatever caste, creed or denomination they might be – would prefer, even for occasions such as marriage, a colour other than green, though in several communities and in various regions Hindu brides do wear green saris in some parts of the country. Yet, even as a red sari might be generally considered more auspicious in Hindu weddings now, the green glass bangles traditionally symbolize the prospects of marital bliss.

Muslim women appearing in public in their black burqas might be an eye-sore for some, but it is mainly to ward off any ogling, if not the evil eye, though some are increasingly coming out in designer veils, both as fashion statement and new assertions of Islamic identity. Incidentally, black is the colour of mourning in Islam with the additional intention of revenge for any wrong-doing. Not connected to either of the symbolism, black has been the colour of the cloth used to cover the Ka’ba, a structure central to Islam with long pre-Islamic antecedents appropriated after a violent struggle.  Mercifully, no one is complaining about the Muslim adoption of green for their religious and political expressions of various shades, though violence being perpetrated in the name of Islam, or against it, is a matter of serious concern.

As we are dealing with a sensitive matter and most issues tend to become sensitive in these days of intolerance, one may as well add that Muslims might like to believe that the colour green has been a part of Islam from the time of Prophet Muhammad who had a green flag in his army and later his tomb at Medina was also painted in green, but it was probably an innovation introduced by the Ottomans Sultans as the holy cities of Mecca and Medina were controlled by them in the early modern era. It is unlikely that the tribal Arab sheikhs would paint the tomb green on their own. For different reasons perhaps, white robes for men in the desert must have been the preferred choice, as has been for the holy warriors and for our modern day politicians–expressed in a fine Urdu word with some tinge of sarcasm, safed-posh. Further, if we are to accept early association of green as historically valid, the near absence of green in medieval Islamic iconography, except in representations of Sufis’ turban or scarf, becomes inexplicable. In fact, the Prophet himself wore clothes of different colours, his banners were black when he fought against the infidels and he recommended praying in white garments; in peace-time, the black cloth used for the banner could double up as the turban.

We know that modern communal politics is often expressed in green or saffron. Despite polarization on religious lines, many people would like to go for a third option, which may not necessarily be red for now – politically or aesthetically – unfortunately. And, when one looks around at contemporary Islamic art and architecture, one is left thinking about the fate of shades of blue and turquoise, a predominant colour in medieval times which is conspicuously absent now. It could be that blue had a negative connotation, associated with blue eyes and their evil was warded off by putting blue as a decorative element just like the wearing of blue beads is supposed to repel the same. Significantly, the preferred colour for Sufis’ robes in medieval times was blue, but in the Indian environment they also got enchanted by green.

Nothing is impossible in politics; in this case a sublime language of love has been transformed almost as a symbol of Muslim political identity. One wonders how the father of Indian theatrical art forms, Bharata Muni would have responded to modern day political theatrics; for instance, can even the most accomplished of the politicians strike a reasonable balance between saffron and green? As the Quran would indicate, God, as a dyer (rangrez), could dye everything in his own colour of radiant light, which, He can splash on his sincere devotees such as Sufis and other divines. Splattered by God’s colouring, colour distinctions disappear for the Sufis enabling them to rise above distinctions of caste or creed. 

Politically, our apprehension is Delhi's Red Fort can be easily saffronised; and the Taj built by Shahjahan in white, and not green, can be vandalised and blackened by people who kill in the name of religion - people with no understanding of the cultural sophistication of their own ancient past. 

(Acknowledgements: previous versions of this work-in-progress have been published in the Bengal Post and Economic and Political Weekly).