Beyond the Wujūd - Shuhūd Polemic: An Analysis of ‘Abd al-ʿAlī al-Lakhnawī’s Risāla-i-wahdat al-wujūd

The paper analyses ‘Abd al-ʿAlī al-Lakhnawī’s (d.1810) defence of waḥdat al- wujūd (oneness of being) in his Risāla-i-wahdat al-wujūd wa shuhūd al- ḥaqq fī kull mawjūd (Treatise on the Oneness of Being and the Witness of the Truth in Everything That Exists). The fault line between the doctrines of waḥdat al- wujūd (oneness of being) and waḥdat al-shuhūd (oneness of witnessing) has often been described as the most pressing theological and philosophical debate among Indian Sufi intellectuals after the sixteenth century. My paper challenges this long-standing narrative by making three interventions: a) demonstrates that Lakhnawī’s primary interlocutors were not partisans of waḥdat al-shuhūd, but Ashari theologians; b) argues that Lakhnawī defense of waḥdat al- wujūd is in close conversation with the criticisms advanced of the doctrine by al-Taftāzānī (d. 793/1390); c) reconstructs philosophical and theological currents in 18th-century South Asia that cannot be explained by the wujūd-shūhūd polemic.