The shrine and cult of Khwaja Muin al Din –
preserver of religion – Chisti, Gharib Nawaz, blesser of the poor, are central
to Sufism in India. In them are
displayed the characteristic elements of Indian Sufism: mystical, magical,
poetic and tolerant expression of faith
Muin al Din is believed to safeguard the
welfare of Muslims in India. For Muslims
he is “The Deputy of the Prophet in India’.
The fullest exposition of Muin al Din’s legend is contained in the
seventeenth – century Siyar al-aqtab of Ilahdiya Chisti, reprinted in 1889.
It is related that the Shaikh was 52 years
old when he received the gifts of his Pir (and set out for his mission). Everywhere he went he customarily lived in
cemeteries, and wherever his reputation spread he tarried no longer, but
secretly departed from there. After some
days he came to the House of the Ka’ba and stayed there for some days. Then he went to Madina the Illuminated, and
performed the pilgrimage to the Holy Tomb of the Lord of the World. He stayed there for a while, until one day
from inside the pure and blessed Tomb a cry came:
‘Send for Mu’in al-Din’.
The servitor of the Tomb called out the name,
and from several places heard the reply:
‘I am here for Thee!
The servitor went back and stood before the
door of the radiant and holy Tomb, and again the cry came forth:
The servitor came forward and told what he
had been ordered, and at that moment a strange ecstasy, such as cannot be
described, came over the Khwaja. Weeping
and crying and invoking blessings, he came to the door of the Tomb and stood
there.
The voice cried:
‘Enter, O Polestar (Qutb) of Shaikhs!’
Lost to self and intoxicated, the Khwaja went
in and was exalted by the sight of the world adorning beauty of the Presence;
and he beheld that Presence speak to him:
‘Mu’in al-Din, you are the essence of my
faith, yet you must go to Hindustan.
There is a place called Ajmer, to which one of my sons went for a holy
war. Now he has become a martyr and the
place has passed again into the hands of the infidels. By the grace of your footsteps Islam shall
once more be manifest there, and the infidels punished by God’s wrath’.
Then the Prophet – on whom be Blessings and
Peace – gave a pomegranate into the hands of the Khwaja and said:
Look
into this, so that you may see and know where you have to go.’ At his command
the Khwaja looked into the pomegranate, and he saw all that exists between the
east and the west: and he looked well at Ajmer and its hills. He humbly offered prayers and sought help
from the Dargah which is the envy of the heavens. Then he set out for Hindustan.
To
visit Ajmer is to obtain benediction.
The pure earth of the grave of this saint is medicine for the hearts of
those in pain. May (they) obtain the
good fortune of pilgrimage.
Ajmer,
in the heart of Rajputana, land of drought, famine and proud people, lives in
communal harmony in an India torn by ethnic and religious hate. The continuity of Muslim history in India for
the last 800 years, when Gharib Nawaz arrived, is reflected here. Gifts by emperors and queens are on display
and anecdotes about them abound. One of
the early Muslim conquerors, Ghori, after defeating Prithvi Raj in 1192, in one
of the most decisive battles of north India, sent envoys to pay homage to the
saint. Akbar made several pilgrimages on
foot to Ajmer between 1562 and 1579. He
donated a cauldron to cook 120 maunds of rice at a time for 5,000 people. His son, Jahangir, presented one which cooks
for exactly half the number. Both are in use.
Jahangir’s son, Shah Jahan constructed a mosque, as did his son
Aurangzeb. The homage paid by the rich
and powerful recorded. Presidents and
their families of Bangle Desh and Pakistan respectively, visited the shrine in
1983, the same year that I went.
The urs or festival of the anniversary of the death of Muin al Din is today the most important pilgrimage festival of South Asian Muslims with the annual number reaching 500,000. The majority of the devotees at the Ajmer shrine are Hindus, I was told by the Sayyeds who tend the shrine, some, 3000-4000 of the 4000-5000 who come daily. Hindu quwals – singers – like Shanakr Shambhu move congregation to tears. I heard miraculous stories of Gharib Nawaz’s powers from Muslims and Hindus of various social backgrounds. A senior Hindu civil servant recounted, fighting back tears, a personal miracle at Ajmer after being disappointed by doctors and failing to evoke a response from other shrines in India. There is an air of wonder and make believe in Ajmer.
Some
of the miracles are self induced by the devotees. My companion – a gentle, devout Muslim –
recollected a memory from his previous trip to Ajmer as a child with his fathe. A man had climbed to the top of a tree in the
courtyard and was crying loudly. He
demanded from Gharib Nawz 5,000 rupees, a great deal of money then. From the crowd stepped a Hindu Raja,
requested the man to climb down and paid him the sum on the spot. The miracle remained fresh in my friend’s
mind after so many years.
Invitations
to Ajmer and permission to leave it are given with the blessings of the saint,
it is believed. After completing our
visit we left for the railway station.
Berths had been booked days in advance and the tickets were with
us. Before the arrival of the train the
porters – Hindus, we learned later – enquired.
‘Have you asked Gharib Nawaz that you may leave? We smiled tolerantly. When the train arrived there was no booking for
us and in spite of spirited arguments we could not board it. The porters stood around with a quite air of
triumph. Chastened, we returned to the
shrine to obtain ‘permission’. We left
the next day. Bureaucratic inefficiency
or magic? - in Ajmer it was difficult to
tell.
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