Conclusion

Summary

Muharram 1395 (January/February 1975). P. Renganathan Nathan (b. 1947) was accepted as a student by his first guru, a Sufi master from the island of Bawean in Java and a sea captain known as Zafir. Nathan was from a Tamil Hindu background. As a sailor, he had spent a decade serving with his captain in the waters and ports of the Malay Archipelago. In November 2017, I first heard Nathan tell how he had been enthralled as a teenager by Zafir’s seafaring ‘ilmu and his ability to negotiate with prophets, Sufi saints and spirits from various religious traditions to ensure safe journeys. Nathan was also in awe of Zafir’s healing ‘ilmu and his spectacular powers of cultivating his ‘corporeous body’ (jasad), which allowed him to remain physically in one part of the world while teleporting himself across the Indian Ocean to assist other sailors (and even air travellers) facing dangerous situations. When he was twenty-three years old, Nathan asked Zafir to impart his ‘ilmu, but the captain insisted that he first devote several years to practising extraordinary ascetic discipline, maintaining dietary restrictions and following the Shari‘a. After these years of asceticism had passed, Zafir initiated Nathan as his student (murid), then guided him along the bomoh path for three years. He advised Nathan to acquire more ‘ilmu from a senior bomoh and Sufi master named Hajji Hussein ‘al-Malabari’ (d. 1999). Hajji Hussein was based in Masai (Johor) and, as his name attests, was of Malayali origin; he belonged to the paideia of bomohs that Zafir belonged to, and such tariqa bonds were fomented through marriage alliances between the bomohs’ families. Nathan remembered Hajji Hussein as being a peripatetic bomoh and Qadiri Sufi master, and especially active in Kerala, Johor, Perak, Melaka, Aceh and East Java in the 1970s and 1980s. At the feet of Hajji Hussein, Nathan attained an education in techniques for disciplining the body and inner self and acquired the ‘ilmu and methods for entering the ‘alam ghaib and communicating with the ever-living Sufi master, ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani. Nathan studied with Hajji Hussein at his Sufi lodge (zawiya) for seven years before returning to his first guru, Zafir, to serve as his lieutenant and as a ‘lesser bomoh’ until 1991. While serving as Zafir’s deputy, Nathan began serving as a semi-professional bomoh and initiated his first batch of students with the permission of his senior gurus and under the boundaries laid by their fatwas. Like many of the pawangs discussed in the preceding chapters, Nathan was thus inducted into a hierarchical network of miracle workers and Sufis. He would remain bound by their instructions and fatwas for the rest of his life, even when speaking to commoners like me. Nathan stated unequivocally that deference to a senior guru, bodily discipline and refinement of his soul and self were processes of an ‘inner alchemy’ (mujahada) that he must undergo throughout his life if he wished to acquire more ‘ilmu and access the ‘alam ghaib.