RELIGION: South Asia Turns to Sufi Saint to Solve Kashmir Conflict

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Apr 18 2005 (IPS) - The realm of the spirit world is very much alive in South Asia, and few would ever dare offend their spiritual masters for fear that evil would befall them. Blessings are much sought after for good luck – something that was not lost on Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf during his historic visit to India over the weekend.

Indeed, Musharraf took care to set the right tone for peace by first paying obeisance at the mausoleum of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti (1141-1235) in the Rajasthan town of Ajmer. The saint is also popularly known in India and Pakistan as Gharib Nawaz or ‘Patron of the Poor’.

”I prayed for peace, harmony and amity between Pakistan and India. I hope the almighty will answer our prayers and bring prosperity to the people of both countries,” said the former army commando as he stepped out of the famous domed mausoleum in Ajmer built by Moghul emperor Humayun in the 16th century.

Sufism is a mystical branch of Islam that emphasises personal experience over organised religion and sustains itself on a teacher-pupil relationship that is similar to the ‘guru- shishya’ system in Hinduism that avoids temple worship.

Sufi adherents also follow asceticism and use meditation techniques that are similar to Buddhist and Hindu methods and for these reasons have often run up against Islamic orthodoxy. Indeed there are those who see Sufism as an antidote to fundamentalism.

Musharraf’s solemn averment made at one of the most sacred pilgrim sites on the sub- continent carried more credibility in the eyes of the public than any other proclamations made by previous Pakistani leaders.

For Musharraf, Saturday’s visit to Ajmer was the first, though it was not his first attempt to make the pilgrimage to the mausoleum of a saint whose school of Sufism incorporates both Muslim and Hindu tenets and has for long served as a spiritual bridge between both major religions.

When he came to India in 2001 for a highly charged bilateral summit, the Pakistani president included Ajmer as the last item in his itinerary. But he spent so much time wrangling over Kashmir with the Indians that he failed to keep his date with the saint.

In fact, that summit in Agra city, home of the Taj Mahal, turned out to be a colossal diplomatic fiasco and in the following year the nuclear-armed neighbours came close enough to war for many diplomatic missions to evacuate their staff from both New Delhi and Islamabad.

However, this time around the general got his priorities right. He prayed fervently at Ajmer first before entering into talks with his Indian counterparts – a tradition followed by rulers on the sub-continent for more than eight centuries.

Leading historians like Mushirul Hasan, vice-chancellor of the prestigious Jamia Milia Islamia University in the Indian capital say that Sufism, which originated in Persia, has a long history in northern Indian preceding the Muslim conquest of the sub-continent.

”Sufism in India was always eclectic, although it retains the basic tenets of Islam freely adopted from Hindu spiritualism especially that found in the Upanishads and in Vedantism,” Hasan told IPS in an interview.

Though born in Persia, Gharib Nawaz was known to have been well versed in the Sanskrit language and Hindu culture before he settled down in Ajmer where he died in 1236 leaving behind a following which included the spiritual-minded from among both Hindus and Muslims.

Sufims, held enormous sway over the Moghul rulers of India who saw practical wisdom in keeping harmony between the Muslim minority and the Hindu majority in their vast realms and also between themselves and the wives they took from Hindu royal families.

But the Sufi mystics were also popular for the miraculous favours they granted to those who approached them directly or after their passing at the ‘dargahs’ (shrines) that grew around the often magnificent mausoleums built for them by grateful beneficiaries.

Akbar, considered the greatest of the Moghul emperors despaired for years that he had no male heir until he received the blessing of the Sufi mystic Salim Chishti resulting in the birth of Jehangir to his Hindu wife Jodha Bai.

Today, Salim Chishti’s marble mausoleum, built by Akbar in his capital of Fatehpur Sikri near Agra is a major pilgrim site as well as an important item on tourist maps.

But Sufism received a setback under Aurangzeb who, after imprisoning his father, Shah Jehan (builder of the Taj Mahal), put to death his elder brother and real heir to the throne Dara Shikoh on charges of heresy and apostasy. As evidence, the many Sufi texts that the scholarly Dara Shikoh had written, were brought up against him.

Aurangzeb’s intolerance and bigotry, a precursor of modern-day fundamentalism, destroyed the syncretic religious approach of his forebears. The divisiveness that ensued between Hindus and Muslims led to the liquidation of the Moghul empire and its replacement by British colonial rule in the 17th century.

On decolonisation in August 1947, the sub-continent had to be partitioned into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu majority India. But the plan left out the princely state of Kashmir that remained independent until October 1947 when war broke out between India and Pakistan over the Muslim-majority territory whose Hindu ruler had acceded to India.

Since 1947, Kashmir has remained divided with the Line of Control (LoC) -marking the point where the armies of India and Pakistan had fought each other to a standstill – serving as de facto border and remaining unchanged by the several inconclusive wars fought over the territory by the two countries.

According to Saifuddin Soz, a prominent Kashmiri political leader, one of the reasons why Kashmiris have opted to stay out of Pakistan is the fact they have always resisted fundamentalist Islam – being followers of a particularly benign brand of Sufism founded by Mir Syed Hamadani, a mystic who came to Kashmir from Persia in 1374.

”Mir Syed Ali Hamadani’s special prayer and praises of God are recited loudly and melodiously in the mosques of Kashmir and this is considered alien by puritanical Islamists, who have dubbed it as ‘bida’ (innovation) and, therefore, not acceptable,” Soz pointed out.

Little wonder that Sufi practices and shrines have been a special target of fundamentalist militants who support Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan and who have ruthlessly burned down many important Sufi shrines in the valley held in reverence by both Hindus and Muslims.

”Most Kashmiri Muslims, have continued to follow the liberal interpretation of Islam associated with Sufism and this manifests in a spirit of togetherness, mutual respect, piety, concern for guests, service and an attitude of tolerance,” Soz said.

Said Qamar Agha, columnist and commentator on Middle Eastern affairs: ”It is a piece of irony that the shrine of Moinuddin Chishti that is most revered by all Muslims on the sub- continent happens to be in India rather than Pakistan and half-a-century after partition, continues to serve as a bridge between the two rival countries.”