Can a Hindu Utopia be a Moslem Utopia? Examples from 12th Century India and Beyond

The present paper compares two Utopian social movements that occurred in medieval India under Moslem rule: the Hindu Kānphatā Panth sect and the Moslem Qalandar sect. While similar in outward behavior, they differ in terms of their conceptual, operational, and historical impact on their respective cultures. It is argued that this difference can be explained by the ways in which each movement addresses the central problems of their respective cultural contexts, the acceptability of their respective cultural contexts, the acceptability of their alternative solutions to established ones, and the historical circumstances in which they developed.