THE BAULS AND THEIR HERETIC TRADITION 81 stretching over five hundred years from the middle of the thriteenth century till the mid-eighteenth century. During this mediaeval period, the Sahajiya tradition manifested itself in two interconnected streams: the Saguna Bhakti movement of the Vaisnavas led by Chaitanyadeva and the nirguna Sahajiya movement of the Bauls who were enriched by the interplay of the Sufi philosophy of unorthodox Islam and the mysticism of Kabir and other sant poets of northern India. After the introduction of the British colonial rule in the second half of the eighteenth century, the Sahajiyas in Bengal began to face special problems. The Bengal Renaissance of the nineteenth century, inspite of its rational heights and firm commitment against religious orthodoxy and fundamentalism, had an urban Hindu elitist bias which could not always appreciate the deep-rooted rural moorings of religious syncretism so long nurtured by the Bauls and other Sahajiyas. The recent research investigations26 have brought to light the findings that from the middle of the ninetenth century, a large number of people, belonging to both the Hindu low castes and the lower ranks of the Muslim community, began to come out of the domination of Brahmanic Hinduism and Shariati Islam and join the ranks of the Bauls and the Sufi fakirs. The Sahajiya leaders like Lalan Shah, by virtue of their egalitarian approach and pious life style, turned out to be an alternative focus of attraction as opposed to the oppressive brahmins and mullahs. Meanwhile the suppression of the great Sepoy Revolt of 1857-58 was accompanied with the assumption of direct control over the Indian affairs by the British Crown-in-Parliament. As a part of the new comprehensive policy of domination, the colonial rulers decided to initiate moves to divide the united forces of opposition in order to forestall any repetition of the experience of the Sepoy Revolt. Consequently, the British Viceroys and Provincial Governors embarked upon a cynical policy of playing with the Hindu-Muslim religious diversities among the Indians, pitting one community against the other. It was against this general background that the Bauls of Bengal began to experience organised onslaughts from the orthodox Shariati Islamic leaders in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. The maulanas and mullahs concentrated their offensive against the presentation of syncretistic philosophical songs by the Bauls as well as the Sufi fakirs. The Islamic clerics and their armed supporters used to provoke communal tension during the Baul musical performances and occasionally resorted to arson and even murder. The Bengali tract, written by Maulana Riyajuddin Ahmad of Rangpur, was later published under the title of Baul Dhangsher Fatwa towards the beginning of the twentieth century (second edition reprinted in 1925). The tract contained explicit instructions given by the Maulana to his orthodox followers to organise militant committees in each district of