On Ganga Jamuna Tehzeeb

What are its antecedents

Even the great Hindu figures of 16th cen like Tulsidas are relatively untouched by Muslim high culture

I think GJT is a recent thing. Mid 19th to mid 20th cen

Starting with Wajid Ali Shah, and ending with 70s Bollywood

Who are some of the key figures of GJT?

Wajid Ali Shah, Mirza Ghalib in 19th cen

Premchand

Then in 20th cen - Saadat Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander, Ismat Chughtai, Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Movie people like Rajinder Singh Bedi, Sahir Ludhianvi, Salim-Javed

One can also think of 20th cen Hindustani music as a GJT legacy in part.

But other than that, GJT seems to be v strongly associated with two things

1. Early and Mid 20th century Cultural marxism (Progressive writers movement)

2. Bollywood Movies from 40s to 70s

This is in sharp contrast to the popular understanding of GJT that is pushed by its votaries -

That GJT is the product of 800 years of H-M co-existence in the Indo-Gangetic plain

Somehow I don't see it that way

The cultural fusion appears to have generated some fruits only pretty late in Indian history

With the flowering of the Hindustani tongue and the Khariboli register in 19th century

And much of its great figures seem to belong to late 19th / early-mid 20th cen

While we should celebrate these figures and their contributions too, there is no reason to create a false mythology for GJT, making it seem like a characteristic of Indian civilization for 500+ years

It's more like 100-150 years.

I think the dominance of this culture has also a lot to do with the decline of Benares, and the rise of Lahore as the cultural "epicenter" of North India between late 19th and mid 20th cen

A tidbit -

In 1891 census, Benares with a population of 220K was significantly larger than Lahore at 175K

By 1941, Benares still stagnated at around 300K, while Lahore was close to 700K. Over 2 times larger!

This shift in cultural soft power from Eastern Gangetic plain to Punjab, sort of meant that GJT came into prominence in popular culture.

And attained a pre-eminence in high culture which lasted for half a century or so

But then this raises the question -

Lahore is not even in the Ganga Jamuna Doab!

Woh to Indus plain me hain (as @desipsmith points out)

Then why call it Ganga Jamuna Tehzeeb?

I think it is a form of cultural appropriation...

The way T20 claims the "cricket" label for respectability

A lot of this culture flowered in early 20th cen in the Indus basin.

But it positioned itself as a product of Ganga-Jamuna "syncretism" - a form of mythologizing

Post-script:

Some have commented I am mischaracterizing GJT

GJT is not just about a composite high culture in which both Muslims and Hindus participate

Rather it is about genuine H-M religious intermingling

In the latter context, hoary figures like Kabir, Raskhan are invoked

I reject that conventional understanding of GJT

Because people like Raskhan or even Akbar were just anomalous deviant muslims

You can think of Raskhan as a Heliodorus from the 16th cen

Sure, many such people must've existed. But GJT is not about them

I prefer to understand GJT as a high culture rooted in Khariboli / Hindustani literary medium

With its epicenter in Western Doab and Punjab. Among the elites

With equal participation of H and M.

So it's not about Ganga-Jamuna plain necessarily

The characterizing of GJT in religious terms, and the construction of a history for it that includes people like Akbar, Kabir, to my mind, is a retro-fitting exercise engaged by the secularized H-M elites of mid 20th cen