Sufism- was it spiritual or politics?
Contrary to the spiritual mission of Sufism,the cult was primarily introduced in India for spread of Islam with a view to help the Muslim rulers for political domination. By and large the spiritual successors of mystic Islamic saints enjoyed the royal favour of Muslim rulers and gave moral support to the atrocious Muslim invaders and looked other way to ignore the growing social conflict. They also guided the State in political affairs with their experience of regular interaction with common people.
The way Sufis' tombs emerged as a place of pilgrimage suggests that the missionary objective of the Islamic mystics was formulated mainly for conversion and to establish the Perso-Arabian cultural domination in South Asia. Even though the Sufi saints got convinced with non-Islamic worldview on metaphysics in course of their interaction with non-Muslim saints, they did not allow their followers to accommodate it in the straight jacket of Islamic theology. Sufi saints commonly viewed as symbol of secularism however, never opposed Jejiya (Tax imposed on non-believers) levied on Hindus in Islamic India.
General religious state of Muslim rulers of India
Passion to the essential spirituality of life was hardly found in any Muslim ruler or Prince except Dara Shikoh (1615-1659). He was perhaps the only sincere Muslim prince, whose "effort was to find a common ground between Hindu and Muslim religious thought"(Islamic Mysticism in India by Nagendra Kumar Singh, Page 179). For this he was accused of heresy.
Under the patronage of the State under Muslim rulers, the Sufi mystics while offering spiritual guidance and support to the Hindu subjects allured them for adoption of Muslim identity, superiority of Arbo-Persian-Turkish tradition and accordingly transplanted them in the cultural tradition of India. "The establishment of Sufi orders in India coincided with the rising political power of Muslims (Muslim-Almanac edited by Azim A.Nanji, 1996, Page 61).
So far the argument for objective of Sufism to promote foreign culture, I don't think it was the main objective of sufis, because they adopted more of local culture then promoting the foreign culture.
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