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Indian Ethnicity and Religious Heritage
of dualism which is very ably explained by Prof. Mir Vali Uddin of Osmania University. The learned Prof. explains in his thesis given in "Philosophy Eastern and Westarn" (P.170) that before God made this material world, he first conceived its shape. So, God as the conceiver of the world was its knower and the world which He conceived was the object of His knowledge. Aknower and the object of his knowledge have always separate identities and therefore, they cannot be one as claimed by the Sufis. The Id. prof. proceeds to emphasise that while the knower God is Eternal and Unending, the object of His knowledge is limited by time and space. This is another reason why both can not be one. This line of thinking comes very near to Jain doctrine of duality of Jiva and Ajiva (things sentient and non-sentient), without any belief in the authority known as "God". Sufis thus deviated from the doctrine of duality and advocated the doctrine of pantheism perhaps being influenced by Upnishadic thinking which had already influenced the early Greeks. As Prof. Humayu Kabir puts in his book
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