Ranjit Devraj

The realm of the spirit world is very much alive in South Asia. Blessings are much sought after for good luck — something that was not lost on Pakistan President 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

in the Rajasthan town of Ajmer. The saint is also popularly known in India and Pakistan as Gharib Nawaz or ‘Patron of the Poor’. 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’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. The 2001 summit in Agra 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. Sufism 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. 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.

Sufism received a setback under Aurangzeb whose 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. 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. Little wonder that Sufi practices and shrines have been a special target of militants who support Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan and who have ruthlessly burned down many important Sufi shrines in the valley. 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.’’ — IPS