Sufi Shrines and the Pakistani State : The End of Religious Pluralism 9781788311816, 9781786725479, 9781786735478

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Sufi Shrines and the Pakistani State : The End of Religious Pluralism
 9781788311816, 9781786725479, 9781786735478

Table of contents :
Front
Cover
Author Biography
Editorial
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Colonial State and Shrines
2. Double-Reterritorialisation: Drifting Towards the Nationalisation of Shrines
3. Legality, Judicial Processes and Waqf: A Transition from Moral to Total Control of Shrines
4. The Post-Colonial State, Shrines and the Auqaf Department
5. Developing and Redefining Shrines in the Post-Zia Period
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Umber Bin Ibad is Associate Professor in the History Department at Forman Christian College University, Lahore, and was previously an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester. He is Associate Editor for The Pakistan Journal of Historical Studies and has published in The Historian and the Pakistan Journal of Islamic Research.

‘This is the first study to directly address the relationship between the state and Sufi shrines in Pakistan. It makes an original contribution to the field of Sufism Studies and, by examining the relationship between the state and religion, is relevant far beyond the cases of both of Islam and Pakistan.’ – Michel Boivin, Director Elect of the Centre for South Asian Studies, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS)

Islamic South Asia Series Series Editor Ruby Lal, Emory University

Advisory Board Iftikhar Dadi, Cornell University Stephen F. Dale, Ohio State University Rukhsana David, Kinnaird College for Women Michael Fisher, Oberlin College Marcus Fraser, Fitzwilliam Museum Ebba Koch, University of Vienna David Lewis, London School of Economics Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of London Ron Sela, Indiana University Bloomington Willem van Schendel, University of Amsterdam

Titles Sexual and Gender Diversity in the Muslim World: History, Law and Vernacular Knowledge, Vanja Hamzic The Architecture of a Deccan Sultanate: Courtly Practice and Royal Authority in Late Medieval India, Pushkar Sohoni

SUFI SHRINES AND THE PAKISTANI STATE The End of Religious Pluralism

UMBER BIN IBAD

Published in 2019 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright q 2019 Umber Bin Ibad The right Umber Bin Ibad to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. Library of Islamic South Asia 3 ISBN: 978 1 78831 181 6 eISBN: 978 1 78672 547 9 ePDF: 978 1 78673 547 8 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by T.J. International, Padstow, Cornwall

To my family and friends

CONTENTS

List of Tables Acknowledgements Introduction 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

x xii 1

The Colonial State and Shrines 15 Double-Reterritorialisation: Drifting Towards the Nationalisation of Shrines 38 Legality, Judicial Processes and Waqf: A Transition from Moral to Total Control of Shrines 69 The Post-Colonial State, Shrines and the Auqaf Department 104 Developing and Redefining Shrines in the Post-Zia Period 130

Conclusion

162

Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

168 186 231 243

LIST OF TABLES

Table 5.1 Decade-wise income, expenditures and surplus relationship

140

Table 5.2 Income from major headings in 1996

143

Table 5.3 Income from major headings in 1986

144

Table 5.4 Zone-wise income in major headings in 1986

144

Table 5.5 Zone-wise income for 1986

145

Table 5.6 Income of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib

146

Table 5.7 Income increase in volume

148

Table 5.8 Zone-wise breakdown of income 1996 and 2006

150

Table 5.9 Expenditure on Data Sahib hospital in ratio with the income of Data Sahib shrine

150

Table 5.10 Expenditure on Data Sahib hospital in ratio with the income of Data Sahib shrine

151

Table 5.11 Badshahi Mosque

151

Table 5.12 Zone-wise breakdown of expenditure of 1996 and 2006

153

Table 5.13 Expenses of main headings, 1996 and 2006

155

Table 5.14 Zone-wise breakdown of religious affairs expenditures, 1996 and 2006

156

LIST

OF

TABLES

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Table 5.15 Percentage of social welfare expenditure

159

Table A.1 Punjab Religious Affairs 1 (mosques and shrines)

168

Table A.2 Punjab Religious Affairs 2 (academies and religious institutes)

170

Table A.3 Shrines taken over in the first year of 1960 in Lahore and Gujranwala zones

172

Table A.4 Property details of the shrine of H. Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib taken over by Auqaf Department

175

Table A.5 Details of zones and sectors of Punjab Auqaf in the 1970s and 1980s

176

Table A.6 Zones and circles under Punjab Auqaf Department after 1993

176

Table A.7 Income and Expenditure of Lahore Zone of 1996 and 2006

178

Table A.8 Income and Expenditure of Gujranwala Zone of 1996 and 2006

179

Table A.9 Income and Expenditure of Bahawalpur Zone of 1996 and 2006

180

Table A.10 Income and Expenditure of D.G Khan Zone of 1996 and 2006

181

Table A.11 Income and Expenditure of Faisalabad Zone of 1996 and 2006

182

Table A.12 Income and Expenditure of Multan Zone of 1996 and 2006

183

Table A.13 Income and Expenditure of Pakpattan of 1996 and 2006

184

Table A.14 Income and Expenditure of Sargodha Zone of 1996 and 2006

185

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book became possible because of the support of many individuals and institutions. Starting as a PhD thesis, the work gradually took its present shape. Without the support and guidance of Dr Tahir Kamran, the Professor of History at Government College University, I could not have carried out my work. The idea itself came out of a discussion that took place in his office, along with Dr Virinder Kalra of Manchester University. I was lucky to spend six months at Manchester University with Dr Kalra. His wonderful hospitality and intellectually stimulating company made my stay not only enjoyable but also productive. Several ideas discussed in this work are the outcome of our conversations. His emphasis on shrines as pluralistic and syncretic spaces, often transcending articulated religious boundaries, made me aware of the need for caution when finding my way towards understanding the site of shrine. He was never reluctant to engage in discussion and was always there to push me to improve my position. He was also kind enough to read my drafts and critique them to help me improve. My friend, Dr Hussain Ahmed Khan encouraged me to shape my thesis into its present form. His diligence and editing skills caused me to revise and edit the work many times. His book, Artisans, Sufis and Colonial Art Institutions in Nineteenth Century Punjab, remained a guide to me. I could not have created a presentable work without his patience and help. Equally, my friend Ghulam Ali Shair read the chapters many times and helped me improve them further. His many long, sometimes latenight, sessions helping me work on the text afforded me much-needed

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

xiii

moral assistance. Further, the professional efforts of Sophie Rudland, Kavita Bhanot and Pat FitzGerald made this work publishable. It is not easy to extract information from a state department in Pakistan. For facilitating this task I am thankful to the staff of the relevant state departments, especially those in the Auqaf Department, Punjab Public Library and Punjab Secretariat Library. The staff not only bore my presence patiently, but some also guided me to important information. I am thankful to Tariq Mahmood Pasha, the Secretary of the Auqaf Department, Qazi Abdur Razzak, a kind-hearted officer from Auqaf head office, Ghafir Shahzad, Deputy Director Projects, the managers of the shrines and the staff of Data Darbar library and Ulema Academy. I must also not forget the hospitality of Dr Babar, who not only provided me with important data but also facilitated my visit to Data Darbar hospital. I am thankful to the many unseen hands that have made it easier for me to complete my work. I am grateful to my colleagues and friends, Dr Farzand Masih, Khizar Jawad, Dr Syeda Arifa Zehra, Saadia Sumbal, Dr Yaqoob Bangish, Dr Ryan Brasher, Asim Shaukat, Dr Ali Qasmi and Dr Sikandar Hayat. I am also thankful to the Rector, Dr James Tebbe of Forman Christian College. Finally, I am deeply indebted to my family, especially my mother, wife and daughters. Without the constant encouragement of my wife, Nadia, and her patience and trust in me, I could not have carried out the lengthy task of working on this book.

INTRODUCTION

In the context of politico-religious extremism and the prevalence of militant Islam1 in Pakistan, there has been a search within the political space for alternative Islamic ideologies.2 Pakistan has been under attack for the last decade or so from a unique form of militancy.3 Islamic militants have attacked Sufi pir shrines, which they consider un-Islamic. Since 2005, militants have targeted more than 25 shrines across the country, including the most famous and venerated shrines of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib (1009– 72/77) of Lahore, Baba Farid (1173–1265) in Pakpattan and Abdullah Shah Ghazi (720–73) in Karachi.4 These attacks have uncovered the religious leanings of the militants and further highlighted shrine-based practices as a hurdle to the growth of a militant mode of Islam.5 Even the state, which controls almost all of these significant shrines, has found it necessary to highlight shrines and Sufism as a peaceful remnant of Islam.6 However, such a state position ignores the complex but overlapping relations throughout history between Sufism7 and shrine-based practices,8 on the one hand, and the colonial/post-colonial state, on the other. Shrines were the sacred territorialised site for Sufism and provided embodied spiritual space for Sufistic practices. Sufism has a long history and, during the colonial period, branched off into multiple reformist tendencies in response to colonial and religious encounters. The reformist Sufistic tendencies played an important role not only in reshaping popular Muslim religion but also in redefining the otherwise customary pluralistic shrine-based practices. There was a complex relationship between the state and shrines as well. Before 1959, shrines were not under state control and there was no

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state department for auqaf responsible for managing shrines. Even during the colonial period, the state did not try to control shrines directly through its bureaucracy. In order to make the ‘backward’ Pakistan modern,9 the state took over the customary sites of shrines and associated Sufistic practices as soon as Ayub Khan’s rule started in 1959. After taking over the shrines, the state not only controlled their functions, it also started managing religious ceremonies through its officials.10 This state activity encoded a new sort of relationship between religious and political authorities at the site of the shrine.11 It is necessary to trace the politico-religious formulation of the state that introduces a new form of relationship between shrines and the postcolonial state. This book shows how the state of Pakistan engaged – be it ideologically, legally, politically or administratively – with the site of the shrine. Such an engagement with shrines by the state was carried out in a projective framework associated with various historical developments. These developments unfolded during the colonial period and culminated gradually in a larger framework in the post-colonial context. Therefore, the colonial/post-colonial amounts to a historically continuous structure. There are innumerable Muslim shrines in Pakistan; in particular, the provinces of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtun Khwa (KPK) and Sindh are famous for shrines attracting a large number of devotees.12 The provincial Auqaf Departments13 also extract a large income from these shrines. The shrines are dispersed in both rural and urban centres of the provinces. Karachi, the capital city of Sindh, among many others, has a large shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi (d. 773 AD ), along with the shrines of Laal Shahbaz Qalandar (d. 1275) in Sehwand and Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (d. 1752) in another small town of Sindh. Peshawar, the capital city of KPK, has the shrine of Mazar Ashab Baba. Punjab is no exception and shrines are found everywhere in the thriving cities and the rural areas. Lahore, the capital of Punjab is famous as ‘Data ke Nagri’, or the abode of Data Ganj Bakhsh Ali Hajvery and his is the most famous shrine not only of the Punjab but also of the whole country. Contrary to those scholars who consider shrines a part of rural life, there are ample reasons to study shrines in the urban setting. It is in the urban area that the modernising spirit of the state reaches at length and, paradoxically, where it gives space to traditional/customary localised religious sites to let them grow exponentially.14 However, the focus of

INTRODUCTION

3

the Pakistani state has remained discreet and discontinuous for the different cities: due to a variety of reasons the most famous shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi in Karachi remained neglected right up until 2005,15 and same is the case with another famous shrine of Mangu Pir; only one shrine has been taken over by KPK Auqaf in Peshaswar,16 even the most famous shrine of Rehman Baba is not controlled by this department and there has not been a single shrine taken over by Balochistan Auqaf until 2017. On the other hand, having a long cultural and mystical tradition, Lahore, along with many of its adjacent cities (the area is popularly termed Central Punjab and is the fastest growing urban region after Karachi), is famous for bustling pre-colonial shrines such as that of Data Ganj Bakhsh (1009–72/77), Bibian Pak Daman, Madhu Laal Hussain (1538– 99), Mian Mir (1550– 1635), Shah Jamal (1588– 1671), Baba Farid (1173– 1265) in Pakpattan, Bullai Shah (1680– 1757) in Kasur and Shah Daula (1581–1675) of Gujrat. There are also famous shrines of the colonial or post-colonial period, such as that of Mian Sher Muhammad Sharaqpuri (1865–1928), Jamat Ali Shah Saani and Jamat Ali Shah Ameer e Millat (1834–1951) in the semi-urban areas of Narowal, and Sufi Barkat Ali’s (1911– 97) shrine in Faisalabad. All these shrines were taken over by the Auqaf Department at the earliest opportunity, for both ideological and monetary reasons; the urban areas of the Central Punjab have been the focus of most of the developmental works at shrines and have been the most profitable sector of the Punjab Auqaf Department.17 The bustling region of the Central Punjab therefore demands to be looked at closely, to measure the character of the state’s policies and their implementation towards shrines.18 The demand intensifies further with the fact that it is largely in and around this region that the communal or Islamic ideological foundations for Pakistan, which have tended to be either antithetical or reformative towards shrine-based practices, were laid, with efforts made for their implementation. The most significant ideologues, such as Allama Iqbal and Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, religious political parties such as Ahrar and Jamat Islami, Sufi pirs such as Jamat Ali Shah Amir e Millat and Mian Muhammad Sharaqpuri, religious seminaries such as a Deobandi Jamia Ashrafia and a Brelwi Jamia Naeemia, played a significant role in reshaping the religion of the newly built state.

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Notwithstanding the religious position of the scriptural urban Islamic thought19 that declares shrines as idolatrously innovative and religiously deviant,20 a large number of people in Pakistan associate with Muslim Sufi saints21 and consider them ‘sacred’.22 In popular belief, these Sufi saints buried at the sites of shrines still possess the power to help their devotees.23 Interestingly enough, shrines are also considered to be a popular expression of religiosity,24 embedded in the spirit and practice of Islamic Sufism and pluralistic mystic practices around the tombs of Sufi saints. Islamic Sufism has a long tradition that stretches as far back as the early years of the emergence of Islam. The tradition of Sufism has a well-articulated form, including its own metaphysics and organisational structure divided into orders (silsilai) and sub-orders. The tradition carries a continuous development, but also continues to manifest in new and multiple organisational forms.25 The State of Pakistan treated this strong spiritual tradition of Islamic Sufism as a singular phenomenon26 in order to re-imagine the site of the shrine, refusing to give importance to customary local traditions.27 When the post-colonial state appropriated the site of the shrine, it articulated it as deviant, embedded in an ‘un-Islamic’ or pluralistic ethos. It was certain ideological developments during the late colonial period that facilitated the taking over of shrines by the post-colonial state. Since the 1930s the major ideological development within the reformist rural-Sufi tradition and urban religious scholarship has converged on a singular conception of Islam, in order to redefine Muslim identity. We can term it a reterritorialisation process that deterritorialised or disconnected its ties by the customary practices and connected identity with non-pluralistic Islamic teachings and symbolic ethos.28 The reterritorialisation process highlighted the unique features of Sufistic ideas, centred on Muslim identity attached to the objectification of early religious history and prophet Muhammad while denigrating all those practices embedded within pluralistic customary traditions. The reforming process even started imagining the site of the shrine through the gaze of the mosque, the puritan Muslim symbol. The beginning of the 1940s witnessed a new phase of the reterritorialisation process, when the politics of the Muslim League employed the ideology of Islam for safeguarding the rights of Muslim minority and for creating a separate homeland for Indian Muslims in India.29 The politics of the League were aimed at creating a uniform

INTRODUCTION

5

Muslim identity, a universal and non-sectarian version of Islam, a Singular Islam, fit for the needs of the modern society and state.30 The Muslim League was able to make Muslims completely distinct from Hindu identity and open up the way for a separate state for the Muslim minority. In 1947, having gained sovereign control over a piece of land, Pakistan, the politics of the Muslim League renewed the process of reterritorialisation, a double-reterritorialisation unfurling perpetually because of a complete break from the previous soil of (British) India. Now in control of a land, the Muslim identity had to redefine itself in order to maintain the majoritarian rule.31 The process of this redefinition (a double-reterritorialisation) took place on multiple levels and the delinked identity opened up a new horizon for a re-emphasised linkage with religion on a newly acquired land – a land purified of all other religious groups.32 The process of a double-reterritorialising process initiated a consistent engagement of the state with varied Islamic ideologies, leading to a new form of politics by opening up the possibility of adopting a Singular Islam as the state’s religion.33 The new form of politics of Islam34 began a process of ‘disputative negotiation’ amongst contrasting revivalist religious articulations, ‘sectional interests’ and ‘politico-religious worldviews’, to prepare the post-colonial elite to enforce/project their own version of an Islamic state.35 This interplay of interests and politico-discursive engagements not only kept the question of the role and character of a Singular Islam alive but also kept the grounds for the deep-seated urge to search for an identity, in the form of double-reterritorialisation, intact in post-colonial Pakistan. However, the struggle for such political goals contrasted with the inherited colonial state structures, as the latter would not accommodate the former to its organisational makeup. Leonard Binder concludes, in a detailed analysis of religion and politics between 1949 and 1956, that, other than giving emphasis to zakat and waqf (endowment) matters and making it mandatory that the head of the state be a Muslim, the whole process of Islamisation ended up as suggestive clauses within the constitution of 1956.36 The State of Pakistan did not move away from its emphasis on making its identity Islamic but still could not institutionalise substantial elements of any form of revivalist, traditionalist or fundamentalist Islam.37 However, the colonial/post-colonial political elite refused to associate itself with the soil-based identities of the acquired land and insisted

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on maintaining its identification with ummah or universal common religious group. In this way, the double-reterritorialising stood upon deterritorialising the pluralistic traces embedded within soil and customs.38 For the post-colonial state, the process of doublereterritorialisation was also linked with a process of excluding deviant and un-Islamic remnants completely from the context of Singular Muslim identity. One of the results of the re-identifying process was the Objectives Resolution passed by the Constituent Assembly in 1949. The Objectives Resolution divided the citizens into Muslim and nonMuslim, while at the same time making it mandatory for Pakistan to identify as an Islamic state. At another level, the process resulted in establishing both non-state and, a little later, state institutionalisation of the Anti-Ahmadiyya movement. More significantly, the process of double-reterritorialisation redefined and institutionalised the concept of shrines and Sufism by excluding deviant mystic and spiritual practices and identifying these sites with an Islamic concept of waqf.39 Soon after assuming power, the Chief Martial Law Administrator, General Ayub Khan (1958– 69), took over shrines through a hastily adopted ordinance in early 1959.40 The West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance (1959) was to ‘consolidate and amend the law relating to the management of Waqf properties in the province of West Pakistan’.41 The apparently secular and modern rule of Ayub Khan42 promulgated the West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance in order to implement the Islamic ideology of Pakistan. Javed Iqbal, the major thinker behind the Ordinance and the son of Allama Iqbal, provided a justification for such an Ordinance through his unique interpretation of the (later) ideas of Allama Iqbal in a book published in the same year.43 He meticulously re-invoked the ideology of a Singular Islam, earlier employed by the Muslim League in the 1940s, and criticised at length the pluralistic traditions in Sufistic ideas. Ayub Khan, by providing a foreword to the book, also explained his own version of Islam and supported the efforts for taking over shrines from the control of traditional and customary caretakers through the promulgation of a legal ordinance. The universal legalisation regarding taking over the shrines that started in 1959 reduced the pluralistic traditions at Muslim shrines and turned them into a space representing a Singular Islam. The legalisation process began not only through ordinances but also through the judicial process. This process assumed two contradictory positions regarding

INTRODUCTION

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shrines: on the one hand, shrines were considered Islamic waqf property, the property permanently dedicated for the religious and common welfare; on the other hand, shrines were seen as spaces that deviated from the right path envisioned by the propagators of Islam, the Sufi saints. The legalisation process authorised the state to correct their deviant path by introducing Islamic reforms. The judicial process further reduced the ambiguities and contradictions regarding the nationalisation of shrines through its unique interpretation of many important concepts such as shrine, religion and waqf: thus paving the way for the ‘justified’ prevalence of state control. Along with religious identity, the monetary reason was also significant for prompting the post-colonial state to take over shrines. The state started its operations through a legal ordinance, terming these sites ‘waqf property’.44 The ordinance reduced their sacred position to a religious monetary entity already developed, in another sense, through colonial legal-judicial processes. Although the colonial legal-judicial processes had homogenised the religious tradition, they did not try to demystify the sacred nature of these sites altogether. The post-colonial state moved further than the colonial rulers in the sense that it colonised the hitherto local sacred sites exhaustively through its unique politicoreligious ideology. The selectivity with which the state took over waqf properties, with an emphasis on the monetary aspect, reflected its projective directions. The state introduced different developmental projects in order to change the character of the shrines. At the same time, it started supporting its preferred ideological sites, like mosques, from the money collected from the shrines. As it took over significant shrines, the state not only employed the inherited structure of the colonial state along with its universalising religious ideology, but it also interfered in the organisational structure of the shrines. State managers replaced the traditional caretakers, such as the sajjada nashins or mujawarans, in many present-day shrines. These traditional caretakers of shrines increasingly found their positions deprived of appropriating the monetary gains coming out of shrines. Ensuring the distancing of the traditional caretakers from the shrine, the state managers also started interfering with the customary religious practices. Gradually, the managing of religious activities would overshadow all other administrative aspects of the Auqaf Department. With the growth of the Religious Affairs section within the Auqaf

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Department, many other activities traditionally considered to be a dominant part of a shrine, such as langar-khana (a space within a shrine where visitors are served free food) and customary supportive social activities, lost their importance. Focusing on the relationship between the post-colonial state and Sufi saint shrines, this book lies in the domain of political history. However, taking an interdisciplinary approach, I have consulted anthropological, sociological, religious, legal and judicial studies. The work intends to throw light on the structure of the colonial and post-colonial state, in order to understand the historical transition of controls on localised religious practices, along with explicating the religio-political history of the late colonial period, making sense of the heated communal tensions of 1940s British India. There are many important texts available45 that explore the relationship between shrine-based practices and the colonial/postcolonial state. The works of Sarah Ansari and David Gilmartin examine the relationship between Sufi pirs and the colonial state. Ansari highlights the role of the influential sajjada nashins or the pirs of Sindh as collaborators with colonial rule. Gilmartin remains focused on Punjab and elaborates in detail the relationship between politics and localised religious leadership. Other than these authors, the works of Nile Green and Arjun Appadurai are also important to understand the relationship between a sacred site and the colonial state.46 The works of Gregory Kozlowski, Nicholas Dirk and Erik Stokes are important for understanding the colonial judicial process and colonial legal development.47 This book depends heavily on Kozlowski’s understanding of colonial auqaf, early colonial judicial processes and the emergence of Singular Muslim or Shariat law. However, it moves further, to link itself with the development in the post-colonial period. In order to understand and analyse the political-communal situation of twentieth-century Punjab, within which communal segregation and communally segregated sites of devotion had taken place, the book finds the works of Ayesha Jalal, Younis Samad, David Gilmartin, Ian Talbot, Gail Minault, K.B. Saeed and Faisal Devji48 important. Jalal provides an incisive analysis of the decades of the 1920s and 1930s to highlight the communal politics in Punjab. The political analyses of Samad and Gilmartin show that in the context of tension between centrifugal and centripetal political forces, a brief moment of consensual singular

INTRODUCTION

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Muslim identity in opposition to Hindu identity appeared during the 1940s in India. However, amidst the continuity of centrifugal and centripetal political tension in the post-colonial state, this brief period of singular identity began to disappear. The possibility of the continuity of a unique Muslim identity, even in the post-colonial state, as a selfimposed project of the state, seems missing in Younis’ analysis. For the post-colonial period, and in particular, the politics of Islam,49 the works of Leonard Binder, Aziz Ahmad, Vali Nasr, Ali Usman Qasmi and Tanzil ur Rehman are significant.50 Binder, Ahmed, and Rehman are important in highlighting the politics of Islamisation during the first two decades of the post-colonial state of Pakistan. Binder and Rehman focus on this politics with an emphasis on the tension between religious and modernist groups. Qasmi, however, considers the politics of Islam to be a continuous process without any break. For him, the concept is important because it denotes the: disputative negotiation of contrasting religious traditions, sectional interests and ideological worldview of key actors, and the imperatives of populist decision-making. It is the interplay of such variables and their relative strengths and weakness during different sets of socio-political, economic and, even, geostrategic compulsions that have determined the course of Islam’s role in the state of Pakistan.51 Following Qasmi’s analysis, this book tries to understand the Islamic character of the state as always in the making amidst the tension of multiple religious groups and the state’s lack of interest in absorbing anything other than what is unavoidable. The works of Jamal Malik, Katherine Ewing and Linus Strothmann examine the relationship of the post-colonial state and the changes that have taken place in the shrine-based life-form because of the state’s pervasive ideological implementation. Strothmann shows the way in which the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh in Lahore has changed since it has been controlled by the Auqaf Department. He provides valuable details of the organisational structure of the Auqaf Department at the shrine. Apart from his anthropological insights, his findings rely on the works of Jamal Malik and Katherine Ewing, who showed the impact, in her opinion, of the policies of the colonial and post-colonial state on traditional religious

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spaces. For Malik, the post-colonial state, a secular project, integrated the autochthonous religious-cultural spaces into its own framework to enjoy monetary gains, and developed these spaces within colonialbureaucratised control.52 The work of Jamal Malik, though depending on a modernist reading of religion and culture, is an interesting reflection on the extension of the colonial state into the post-colonial situation. He shows how the state remained successful in absorbing ‘Islamic’ institutions while, however, reducing the number of devotees visiting shrines. He shows that the state policies remained selective; they dissolved the traditional organisational structures without completely absorbing them. Malik thinks that the post-colonial state ‘enriches itself, pushes through its ideology and legitimizes it religiously’.53 While Malik and Strothmann employ most of their historical explanatory categories unreflectively, Ewing goes back to colonial times to bring out the already concealed character of a Sufi saint and a mystic. She maintains that the idea of a saint has been redefined in the postcolonial world and that the process started during the colonial period.54 She shows the way colonial policies intervened in the local spiritual structure and threw a whole group of faqir, mazjub or malang out of fashion. Her insights bring to the fore a certain lack or split in the local spiritual identity that she finds further problematised in the postcolonial world. She also shows the changes in the ideas of significant scholars, such as Allama Iqbal, that give space to a critical engagement with the Sufis and later on, pave the way for ideological justification for state control of shrines. She embarks, too, on the reasons, emphases and shifts of different governments regarding Sufis and mysticism. The work of Malik and Ewing opened up the possibility of understanding the relationship between traditional religion and the state from another perspective. With a focus on shrines, this book develops and elaborates this perspective to understand localised religious life. Unlike Malik, the book understands Islam as a non-homogenous idea, emerging out of shrine-based life-forms, and unleashed for contestation amongst multiple Muslim groups. In order to understand concepts such as shrines and waqf, this book traces their pluralistic ethos in the context of colonial-post-colonial political practices. Meanwhile, Ewing’s work leaves open the space to apply her insights regarding colonial insertions in religious life to the way Muslim groups reacted and developed in the given rational order. As she focuses more on the

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character of the post-colonial subject, this book takes her reflective insights into the workings of colonial-post-colonial state structures that shape legally the core concepts of religion, waqf and shrine. It shows the way the post-colonial state stretches its control by prevailing its ideological apparatus on the ‘income generating’ shrines. Further, it shows the manner in which the otherwise ‘modern’ post-colonial state, which took over shrines because of their deviant and archaic character, ends up as a ‘reformist’ agency determined to increase the size of shrines along with visits to them, by considering them a part of ‘Islamic heritage’. In order to understand the politics of different Muslim groups who owned and developed a reterritorialised identity, this work brings forward the nineteenth century Muslim reformism that emerged out of customary shrine-based life. The reformism was fuelled with a new rationality that had a distaste for the customary life, especially the life-forms embedded in pluralistic practices. As the newly emerging middle class led the reformism, the contesting politics gradually turned towards an over-lapping consensus. The developing of the overlapping communal consensus was similar to what Devji understands as reliving the early Enlightenment period, which was at the same time a ‘distancing from the late Enlightenment’s ideal of one race-one soil of a nation-state’55 in the larger colonial Indian politics. Distancing itself from Devji, this book understands a new overlapping consensus around Muslim identity as Singular Islam, a unique phenomenon that emerges, however, as dominating pluralistic localised religious positions. It is one of the reasons, therefore, that the Muslim League found it easier to mobilise the otherwise segregated British Indian Muslims. While going along with Jalal to understand the birth of Pakistan as an unprepared and unexpected moment, the work shows that the consensual ideology, already related to the deterritorialised identity, was there in the idea of Pakistan. Therefore, by moving away from writers such as Samad,56 who shows that the universal Muslim identity lost its hold after the birth of Pakistan, the book puts forward the idea that a renewed, doublereterritorialised identity has a place in the post-colonial state structure. The post-colonial condition of the Pakistani state was unique, as Hamza Alvi shows:57 it was a harbinger of colonial modernity, but as a ‘periphery’, within the compulsions of the world economy; Alvi identifies classes developed uniquely, though under the logic of peripheral

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capitalism, in the post-colonial world. His analysis of the post-colonial state moves him away from conventional Marxist analysis and highlights the structure of the post-colonial state as a kind of autonomous organism with a mediatory role for the propertied classes. The organism of the state, during the explicit domination of military-bureaucratic oligarchy, remained focused on developing a peculiar authoritarian order, showing the continuity of colonial authority. Following writers such as Alvi and Malik, whose historical analysis establishes the continuity of colonial rule by carrying forward the past in the structure of the post-colonial state, this book focuses on the religious streams within the ‘secular’ state of Pakistan. The mediating ground of the post-colonial state gradually finds itself supporting religious ideologies for balancing inter-class tensions. This mediational role, it emerges, could be coercive and appropriative, as in the case of shrines, where the state takes them under control in order to negate the prevalent immoral practices. It is interesting to see that the post-colonial state throws the entrepreneurs of the cultural sites of shrines, that is, mutwallis or sajjada nashins, out of its customary productive functions. The economy in the post-colonial state is not only the opening up of possibilities for already established economic groups; rather, the gradual infusion of religious streams also directs the mode of investment that necessitates the use of force. Instead of becoming their voice, the post-colonial state launches its inherent religio-political agenda on the sites of shrines and lets the supported ideologies prevail upon the sites. The post-colonial state develops and propagates its symbolic religious ideology from the income of shrines while at the same time it manipulates, controls and manages them through gradually evolving bureaucratic institutions. The promulgation of the ordinance of 1959 remains the historical moment that is a point of departure in different directions, back into both colonial and post colonial history. The Waqf Ordinance of 1959 in a sense made a break in the history of shrines, mosques and waqf. The moment brought out the merging of many different streams into one whole. The Waqf Ordinance was not only a legal act, it was also an amalgamation of a historically developed legal position with a religious conception for imagining shrines and other sacred spaces of Muslims. The ordinance also advanced a political position that not only provided justification for but also furthered a unique political agenda. All these

INTRODUCTION

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positions, however, merged together to form an institutional setting, a department for a post-colonial state with the authority to take over shrines, mosques and other sacred spaces in order to implement a unique form of religio-political ideology. The moment, therefore, becomes unique, and translates into the possibility of historical tracing in multiple directions. The first direction shows the ideological formulations developed within the colonial state and provided the Muslim community with a unique form of identity, or a reterritorialised space, having a unique conception of shrine-based practices. The reterritorialised space faced a renewed attempt at forming Muslim identity in the post-colonial state and developed a rigidified coding for shrine-based practices. It showed further the attempt of the post-colonial state to claim legitimacy for the promulgation of the Waqf Ordinance. The second direction is to trace legal history in a way that highlights the development of laws related to waqf properties and shrines in both the colonial and post-colonial period. The third direction is to show the working of the Auqaf Department to explain the nature of state institutions and their selective focus on shrines. While accepting that the post-colonial state has been secular in many ways and has remained engaged in a kind of politics of Islam58 without institutionalising religion, the post-colonial state lost its secular character through appropriating and institutionalising unique religious ideologies. It seems to have its own distinctive character, with a blending of secular and religious streams. The book is divided into five chapters: the first chapter shows the working of the colonial state and its relationship with practices around shrines in Punjab. It highlights the interference of the colonial state in many aspects of social life, whilst arguing that the state largely ignored urban shrine-based practices. It concludes that the colonial policies and the social context made customary shrine-based practices alien even to the traditional followers. The second chapter identifies the common ground in the singular religious identity that began to emerge from the work of different streams of Muslim groups after the 1920s, including a unique disposition towards the spiritual world. Singular Islam developed its identity by transcending the soil, finding its position by dominating the voices attached to the soil or customs. A process of double-reterritorialisation took place when this singular identity found itself with a separate land to administer. The process generated puritan

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politico-religious streams and the total exclusion of pluralistic shrinebased practices. The third chapter traces the legal development and judicial process that defined and justified the waqf laws. In the colonial period legal acts, such as the Mussalman Waqf Act (MWA) of 1923 and the Female Dancing Act of 1943, were passed. However, the MWA of 1923 seemed to be a legislative effort distanced from the community’s struggle. A change can be seen by analysing the structure and context of two other acts, the Female Dancing Act of 1943 (FDA) and the Auqaf Board Act (ABA) of 1952. Standing upon the reterritorialised identity, both of the acts highlight the urge of the colonial and post-colonial elite to identify the site of the shrine only in the reformative mood. With little differences in their emphasis, these legalising efforts show the urge of the members of the legislative council to have moral control over the site of the shrine. The chapter shows the way in which moral control changes into total control of the shrines, by promulgating and extending the waqf laws after 1959. The chapter further brings forward the judicial interpretive activity that provides justification to the apparently nonconvincing legislations. The fourth chapter explores the working of the Auqaf Department since 1959, with the department responsible for introducing reforms on local sites of devotion. The chapter starts its discussion with the Ayub period and discusses the emphases of different governments as they have steered the department’s direction. The chapter ends with the rule of Zia ul-Haq and his religious policies for extending shrines. The fifth chapter moves further and explores the working of the state and the Auqaf Department within the changed political situation. The chapter highlights that the changed political situation is simply a continuity of existing ideological policies. It further discusses the department’s budgets and accounts, to show the nature of income and expenditures. The accounts show that the direction of the department is towards making huge spending on secular and religious administrative heads, while there has been only scarce spending on social welfare.

CHAPTER 1 THE COLONIAL STATE AND SHRINES

This chapter explores the workings of the colonial state and its relationship with the practices around shrines in the urban areas of Punjab. It accepts the position of writers such as David Gilmartin and Sarah Ansari, who maintain that the colonial administration established its rule through objective rule-following bureaucratisation on the one hand,1 and, on the other hand, by stretching co-opting policies such as patronising the influential sajjada nashin (the spiritual inheritor and caretaker of shrines).2 However, the focus here remains on the urban areas of Punjab, where colonial authorities scarcely extended their policy of co-opting the sajjada nashins of such areas. The colonial state operated in urban areas through its reformative tendencies, and it also made changes, directly or indirectly, at the socio-religious level. The implementation of these policies produced a unique conception of religious-spiritual understanding and the practices around shrines. The colonial gaze kept the emerging religious and intellectual elites at a distance from shrines, especially from pluralistic shrine-based practices: thus, the shrines were cut off from larger religious-spiritual life. Not only religious revivalists but also Sufi reformers felt the need to purify religious practices from archaic and non-religious impurities. Amidst such transforming socio-religious conditions, as this chapter highlights, some of the pluralistic forms of shrine-based practices decreased, while some others, having an affinity with the reterritorialised identity,3 continued to develop in their own ways.

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Shrines, British rule and Central Punjab When the British army marched into the Punjab in 1849 and wrested power from the Sikh rulers,4 they found shrines and connected Sufi-pir practices all around. The Punjab appeared to be a place where three dominant religions, although there were many others,5 coexisted with each other, apparently with minimum antipathy,6 and shared world views that respected an ascetic and altruistic living. The religious life of Muslims and non-Muslims revolved around shrines, and Punjab was ‘dotted with shrines, tombs of the sainted dead . . . and to the shrines of the saints, thousands upon thousands of devotees resort in the hopes of gaining something on the sacred soil’.7 To the pragmatic and protestant mind of the contemporary British authority, anxious to take up its ‘White man’s burden’, to enact a universal civilising mission through rules and laws and increased bureaucratisation,8 these Sufistic shrine-based practices were religious expressions of primitive indigenous people.9 The British authorities decided to stay away from local religious groups.10 This decision was not only a continuation of their previous policy – staying aloof from local religious communities and not interfering with local religions11 – but it was also a pragmatic administrative decision. However, this policy of non-interference could not last long, and administrative compulsions made them incorporate into their administrative system not only the religious elites but also the shrine-based Sufistic ethos.12 In most of the areas of Punjab, religion meant little more than ‘going to feasts without fasts’ and was intricately attached to the need for a spiritual intermediary.13 Often, for a Muslim, it was enough to know and read Kalma: there is no god but God and Muhammad was his prophet. For the colonial administrators, Punjab appeared as a land where ‘political power was almost exclusively the prerogative of those who owned land, and society was organised around social groups whose cohesion was based on kinship and their control of land – the tribe, the village community, and the family’.14 The rural population, divided along castes, had their own ways of constituting lives and customary laws.15 Major Aubrey O’Brien imagined the system of religious belief in this way: it was as if the Deity, like a sovereign was a busy person, and that his hall of audience is of limited capacity, only a certain proportion of mankind can hope to attain

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to the presence of God; but when individuals have got there, they may have opportunities of representing the wishes and desires of other members of the human race. Thus, all human beings require an intervener between them and God.16 The need for an intervener was intricately attached to the shrine-based Sufistic life world. For the early colonial administrators, all the ‘religious nations’ populating Punjab could be considered one big nation, divided into small nations. ‘They live side by side as peaceful cultivators, in happy indifference to the petty jealousies which superior knowledge stirs up in the hearts of their Hindu and Mussalman brethren in the towns.’17 However, the colonial authority imagined that because of prevailing superior religious knowledge, especially in towns, Muslims were disposed towards a puritan movement. Reference can be found to two such movements in the reports of the colonial administrators in the second half of the nineteenth century. One is the Faraizi movement and the other, Wahabbism.18 The Faraizi Tehreek had a comparatively insignificant impact on Punjab: however, Wahabbism or its variant Ahl-e-Hadith had an impact and a good number of sympathisers in the towns of Central Punjab. As a report by the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar shows, ‘Wahabis are notoriously numerous, and increasingly so in Amritsar city, and I should estimate their numbers at present at between six and seven thousand. They themselves claim to be even still more numerous.’19 The puritan movement was also prevalent in the other areas of Punjab as there were a considerable number of Wahabis in the cities of Delhi, Ambala, Jehlam and Hoshiarpur. With their critical emphasis upon the ‘saints, angels and spirits’, as the census report of 1881 mentions further, the movement was antithetical to shrine-based practices. The colonial authorities found it ‘unsuited to the Musalmans of these parts, who have the greatest belief in saints and shrines, and in the efficacy of pilgrimage to groves and high places’.20 The need to collect data about oriental cultures grew stronger as the administrative focus turned towards formulating and promulgating customary laws and rural management. ‘Orientalist empiricism’ attained its intellectual apogee in the 1870s and 1880s with a series of settlement reports, the codification of customary law and census reports by such

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scholar-administrators as S.S. Thorburn (1844–1924), Sir Charles Louis Tupper (1848– 1910) and Sir Denzil Charles Jelf Ibbetson (1848– 1908).21 The rural population was seen as divided into castes and the urban into biraderies (patrilineage/caste-communes), whilst both could be divided into religious categories. However, the division was quite neat, and enumeration into religious categories of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh was to be completed for administrative purposes despite all odds. ‘Every native who was unable to define his creed’, stated Denzil Ibbetson, who supervised the 1881 enumeration in the Punjab, ‘or described it by any name other than that of some recognized religion, was held to be classed as a Hindu’.22 Interestingly, as Talbot mentions, whilst the British in India essentialised religion for enumeration purposes, it was omitted as a category in the census they conducted back at home. And further, he adds, whether or not the Indian census was as much a political exercise as a scientific survey, its consequences for self-identity and its politicisation were immense.23 Along with segregating religious communities, the British authorities also considered Punjab as mainly an agrarian society with no strong urban centres.24 Meanwhile, the authorities found themselves compelled to develop a political relationship with the large shrines and influential Muslim sajjada nashins in the ‘rural’ areas of Southern and Western Punjab,25 yet it was not the case in the areas that comprised the Central Punjab. Engagement with the sajjada nashins was very rare, as there were no large Muslim shrines in the area.26 As Central Punjab had been dominated politically by Sikhs,27 the initial Oriental writings highlighted only Sikh shrines. In 1858, while describing the conditions and biography of the chiefs of Central Punjab, Lepel Griffin discusses, under the category of shrines, only ‘Sikh shrines’, stretching out across the whole of Central Punjab. Reading Griffin, it appears that Central Punjab did not have large or elite Muslim shrines, although there were a few popular Sikh shrines commemorating shared religious experiences. For example, Mozang’s Sikh shrine was famous for being a meeting point of Guru Arjun with Mian Mir and Chhajju Bhagat in Lahore.28 Griffin writes, . . . in the Punjab are numerous shrines consecrated to the memory of the Sikh Gurus. These are known by the name of Gurdwara, Darbar Sahib or Derah, and generally, have been built at places

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associated in some way with the Guru, and commemorating some incident in his life. At all these shrines, the several Granths or Sikh Scriptures are daily read aloud by the priests or Granthis, and many of them support a large number of attendants, musicians, and worshippers.29 Most of these shrines were controlled by Udasis, Sodhis, Bedis or other Sikh or Hindu families, many of whom ‘possess(ed) great wealth and large estates’. The colonial rulers, in the absence of significant shrines and influential sajjada nashins, kept up a mixed relationship with Muslim shrines. A large number of shrines were ignored and the authorities did not confiscate the property at some others,30 such as the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib (Data Sahib), Lahore, popular among Rajput tribesmen of Lahore – the shrine was awarded maafi (endowment) for the land customarily dedicated to its name. However, with some others, such as the shrine of Shah Daula, popular among the Gujjar tribe in Gujrat, suspicious relations emerged because of their quaint practices. For the colonial authorities, the shrine of Shah Daula became significant because it gave shelter to and used Chuhas (rat children or children with microcephaly) for deviant purposes.31 Authorities virtually ignored the activities of Pirzadgan, the sajjada nashin of the shrine, and highlighted the alms-collecting activities of Chuhas by the beggars of the shrine.32 The authorities did not hesitate to take over the land attached to shrines whenever they could; for example, they took over the land attached to the shrines of Mian Mir, Anarkali, Mir Qasim and Shah Chiragh, in order to set up cantonment and administrative facilities there.33 As Central Punjab was comprised of urban areas such as Lahore,34 the area became the zone of remapping and remodelling for projected developmental activities.35 The new ‘civil’ centre began developing outside the old city area. From the official secretariat to Government House, and from the cantonment area to the railway station, most of the new buildings and constructions were erected on land already attached to shrines.36 The urban revamping developed a new mode of thinking and cultural perception arising out of new colonial constructions, transportation systems, educational systems and increased economic opportunities. The development corresponded with the belief of the

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British governance that attachment to ‘immemorial habits’ was the reason that Indians were stuck in the quagmire of primitiveness. Education would create new ‘dispositions’ and ‘knowledge’ necessary for Indians to improve their material conditions, not least by cultivating a taste for the products of British industry.37 This mingling of secular selfinterest and religious fervour provided a lasting motivation for liberal reform in India, where ‘the passionate conviction that the ideals of altruism and the strongest claims of self-interest coincided’.38

Languages and Sufi-spiritual writings Persian and Punjabi were the dominant languages (the former as the official and the latter as the language of the people)39 when the British began ruling Punjab. However, the British authorities soon found it more rational to introduce English as a primary language, with Urdu as a secondary official language. Following the efforts that had already been made in North India for promoting the learning of Urdu,40 the Punjab administration welcomed reports maintaining that locals understood Urdu quite well. Even in areas ‘where people don’t speak Urdu, they however do understand it’.41 Due to this administrative understanding, Urdu was introduced in the province as a second official language. Although the administration found it convenient to promote Urdu through its own efforts, they remained keen to disentangle this new language from non-purposive usage already prevalent in the history of the Urdu literary tradition. The promotion of Urdu therefore soon turned into an effort to promote a purposive usage of the language. The Anjuman e Punjab or Punjab Association was an association that included British officials (including the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab from 1865–1870, Sir Donald Mcleod) as well by many important members of the Punjabi elite drawn from the three major religious communities of the Punjab – Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh. With this diverse membership, the Anjuman became a centre for debates about educational and social reform at the time.42 Along with the efforts to promote Urdu in a purposive mode, we find texts discussing the localised sacred spaces of shrine life in Urdu during

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that period: together with such works as Tehqiqat e Chishti by Maulvi Noor Ahmed Chishti (1864), Mukhzan e Punjab by Mufti Ghulam Sarwar (1873) and Hazrat Ali Bin Usman Hujviri Al-Maruf Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh: Savanih Hayat (1914) by Mohammad Afaq. The organisation Anjuman Khaddam al Sufiya (1901), founded by the efforts of Jamat Ali Shah (Ameer e Millat),43 began publishing a magazine, Risalay al Anwar Al Sufiya, in 1904, for promoting the cause of Tasawwuf or Tariqat. The main purposes of the Anjuman, other than promoting the cause of Tariqat and Tasawwuf, were to develop unity among the orders of Tasawwuf, the rejection of accusations against Islam and Tasawwuf and the rejection of false religion.44 The magazine Anwar al Sufiya was intended to fulfil the objectives of the organisation and for a long time was sold at a very economical price. Jamat Ali Shah and the Anjuman not only remained active for this journal, the former also supported some other journals on Tasawwuf, almost all of them published in Urdu, like Al-Irfan, Al-Faqih, Al-Jihad, al-Muballagh and al-Lama from Kasur and As Sufiyya from Sialkot.45 The old tradition of scholarly writing in the Persian language for higher state officials gradually started dying out and gave way to writing in Urdu or English. Maulvi Noor Ahmed Chishti, before producing his work in Urdu, had written some of his earlier works in Persian. The same was the case with Mufti Ghulam Sarwar, who also assisted Chishti in his research work. Although both of them belonged to families deeply immersed in Sufistic orders, their interest in Urdu writing emerged because of their close links with state officials. Some of the initial British administrators became students of Chishti in order to learn Urdu. Leaving aside his earlier interest in Persian, it was the increasing interest of the administrators that made Chishti write in Urdu. Almost in the same vein, and working closely with Chishti, Mufti Ghulam Sarwar, wrote a history of Punjab, Mukhzan e Punjab, in Urdu. However, he wrote Tazkira (a biographical history of the four Sufi orders, in four volumes)46 in Persian: this might be considered one of the last texts coming out in the Persian language in Punjab. Later on, texts continued to appear either in Urdu or English; for example, Muhammad Fauq (1887 – 1945) wrote in Urdu, and John A. Subhan (1899 – 1977) wrote the biographical histories of Sufis and Sufi orders in the English language. Interestingly, Subhan’s book was an attempt to understand the shrines and saints of Islam, and his project was to

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inform British scholars about the spiritual and shrine-based practices of Islam.47 The prevalence of Urdu made Punjabi a subversive language that carried with it the Sufistic tradition of local spiritual characters and poetic wisdom. Though for Mir, the tradition of writing in the Punjabi language did not die out and showed resilience, she accepts that it gradually lost prominence.48 Mian Muhammad Bakhsh, a famous Punjabi poet writing at almost the same time as Chishti and Sarwar, did not shy away from expressing his mystical experiences in the Punjabi language; however, he complained of being ignored in the changed colonial times. The poetry of Khawaja Ghulam Fareed Mitthan Koti and Pir Mehr Ali Shah of Golra Sharif was also still popular.49 The changed colonial times, however, produced a schism between narration and poetry on the one hand, and purposive urban Urdu poetry and altruistic rural Punjabi folk-poetry on the other. The most famous poet of early twentieth-century Lahore, Allama Iqbal, despite Punjabi being his mother tongue, did not write in the Punjabi language nor did he engage with the altruistic rural Punjabi folk-poetry tradition.50 Further, in 1938, when Subhan wrote his history of shrines and Sufi orders, he did not forget to discuss the Punjabi poetic tradition. At the end of his book he discussed two famous musical songs, Dholla and Heer, sung by faqirs (mendicants) on the roads of the cities in Punjab. It seems that the traditional character of spiritual folk wisdom, so intricately linked with the shrine culture, began to be alienated from the sensibility of the urban Muslim population. The shrines and Sufis associated with the tradition of Punjabi poetry and stories started losing their popularity in the first half of the twentieth century. On the other hand, shrines such as Data Ganj Bakhsh, which easily became associated with the new dominant languages, Urdu and English, increased in popularity.51 Muhammad Fauq’s biography of the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh in Urdu and the translation of Kashf ul Mahjub52 by Reynold A. Nicholson into the first official language of English, initiated a new form of writing in remembering this Sufi saint, with the emphasis on his Islamic teachings and lamenting the conditions of the shrine. A Kashmiri journalist and close associate of Allama Iqbal, Muhammad Fauq intended to highlight the greatness of the Sufi saint because of his services for the Muslim community in proselytising Islam. This way of seeing a Sufi saint was, in a sense, a new effort to situate him within the contemporary situation.53

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Local historical imagination: remembering and forgetting pluralistic shrine-based life forms Along with the changes in society and the re-hierarchisation of languages, the historical texts of that period indicated a new way to understand and remember local socio-spiritual traditions. In order to highlight the trend, this following section will take three texts, Tehqiqat e Chishti (1864), Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and Antiquities (1892) and Asar al Sanadid (1848 and 1854)54 of the later half of the nineteenth century. Maulvi Noor Ahmed Chishti and Syed Latif, the authors of first two texts, carried out their research in Lahore. However, it was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan who wrote Asar al Sanadid from Delhi. What Maulvi Noor Ahmed Chishti did in Tehqiqat e Chishti in Lahore, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan had already done in Asar al Sanadid in Delhi, the dying centre of Muslim rule in India. Both writers wrote, almost at the same time, the history of their respective cities, with overlapping intentions. These texts describe the conditions of their respective areas, and through remembering their cities, led to a shift in their imagination. Although different in their emphasis, style and even content,55 these texts initiated a new way of writing history: a way of writing not found in the Persian and Urdu traditions of history writing.56 Leaving aside a few biographical attempts, the tradition of writing the history of one’s own city with the emphasis on buildings, sites and important personalities did not exist. Asar Al Sanadid as well as Tehqiqat e Chishti and Lahore: History, Architectural Remains, and Antiquities emerged out of new needs and expectations. Since they were making great changes in the urban setting, the colonial administration developed a need for developing a sense of the urban area. Studying the city would reveal the intangible qualities of the present – its centres of excellence and disrepute, its promises and pitfalls, and the shape of society’s relationship to both its future and past. This was a new mode of imagining the city in Indian literature, one that grew out of the practices of urban restructuring that accompanied British rule.57 The new mode, however, brings into relief the tension between the contemporary spiritual world and the emerging new world.

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There were huge differences between the two editions of the texts of Asar al Sanadid (The Remnant Signs of Ancient Heroes), the first written in 1847 and the next in 1854.58 The first edition of Asar al Sanadid (AS 1) remained a joyful remembering of the remnants of an earlier life world. Sir Syed still considered his city, Delhi, to be the best in the world, although shorn of many of its jewels. However, after giving details of the buildings of his city, people and their manners, he also gave details of 117 biographies of those he held ‘in the highest regard and whom he had either personally met or seen’. It is interesting to note the categories within which he places his favourite personalities: The nine categories, and the number of people mentioned in each, are as follows: (1) twenty-one Sufi masters (masha’ikh); (2) nine ‘men of ecstasy’ (majazib); (3) twelve physicians (hukama); (4) twenty-nine religious scholars (‘ulama); (5) five reciters and preservers of the Qur’an (qura aur haffaz); (6) seventeen poets (‘nightingales’, bulbul-nawayan); (7) eleven calligraphers (khushnawisan); (8) four artists (musawwiran); and (9) nine musicians (arbab-i-musiqi).59 The world of Sir Syed seems to be filled with poets and musicians; at the same time, he is not shy of mentioning Majzub. Interestingly, the text discusses ‘Sufis’ and ‘Majzub’ before ‘Ulama’, with the description of significant Sufis of his own time.60 However, the later edition of Asar al Sanadid (AS 2) shows a different emphasis, style and epistemological direction to AS 1. Written in 1854, under the guiding influence of British officials in Delhi and with more willingness to participate in the literary circles of the British Royal Asiatic Society, the AS 2 turned out to be a different book, rather than a new edition of an old book.61 Syed Ahmed Khan’s acknowledgement of British scholars and his urge to find readership within the British scholarship led him to write the book in both Urdu and English. His emphasis on writing history, as he explains in the preface, makes him consciously engage in the chronological narration and exclusion of any moment of ‘participant observer’. The joy with which he wrote his first book gave place to the distanced position of a writer interested only in explaining facts. The playfulness of both the writer and the characters of the text within AS 1 had given way to

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writing about an alien land through primary sources.62 The details regarding Sufis and Majzub, however, found their place, even in AS 2, although with little mention of locals. It seems that Sir Syed had willingly accepted the epistemological order of British scholarship and had distanced himself from his old city. Setting out upon almost the same task as that of Sir Syed – writing better history63 – Chishti wrote his history of Lahore as a ‘Command Performance’.64 Chishti, as he mentions in his preface to Tehqiqat e Chishti (1864), started his venture under the command of William Coldstream, Assistant Commissioner Lahore. He described the history of the rulers, tombs, Sufi saints, gardens and buildings of Lahore. However, two thirds of his text concerned the study of shrines, Sufi saints and practices in shrines. Although he extracted his primary data from many original texts, he made use of interviews and participant observation in abundance.65 It seems he could not follow the strict standard of objective and chronological historical writing.66 The British administration also criticised him for giving unnecessarily detailed information regarding ‘descriptions of very unimportant places, such as tombs of persons long forgotten by most people and insignificant little takias (stands or platforms occupied by a holy person)’.67 Syed Muhammad Latif, the author of Lahore: History, Architectural Remains, and Antiquities, was an extra-judicial Assistant Commissioner of Gurdaspur when he wrote his work. He also gave special attention to the fact that his writing might find a favourable response from his British employer, and in this he succeeded. Far more exquisitely than the previous writers, he gave special attention to the changes and the healthy imprint of the colonial administrative order.68 In his work he contended that, apart from precipitating economic activities and prosperity, colonial rule had contributed to peace and harmony by promoting social coexistence. However, his special focus on the benefits of the British administrative order69 did not completely prevent him from writing history from the local perspective. He maintained that Punjab had always acted as a bulwark against invading armies, contrary to the popular narrative of its non-defiance.70 He was able to show the importance of the sacred teachings of Guru Nanak and other Gurus along with the Sufi saints.71 Contrary to histories such as Khazinat ul Asfiyah and Sakinat ul Aulya,72 he was determined to give a less exaggerated view of the saints and Sufis. For this he tried to go as close as

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possible to the common-sense life hidden in tazkiras (memoirs) or malfuzat (biographies) and ethnographic reporting of the shrines. Comparing Tehqiqat e Chishti and Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and Antiquities reveals interesting commonalities as well as important differences. Both local texts, in their historical imagination, saw their city being ruled by different religious dynasties and, at the same time, animated with the mystical spirit of all three religions, although largely with the Muslims then, later, Sikhs and Hindus. The two texts did not try to exaggerate the differences among religious positions and even mentioned conflicts in a non-violent tone.73 They trace the architectural remains with reference to the permanence that is embedded in the spiritual ambiance. Despite the changed emphasis, the texts did not try to minimise the role of shrines in remembering Lahore. However, their differences are significant enough to reveal a few important developments and emphases. The Tehqiqat e Chishti developed its narrative not only from tazkiras but also from interviews and from the prevailing oral stories. The emphasis remained on unearthing the dominant spirit of Lahore. In his love for Lahore, Chishti does not hesitate to praise a sajjada nashin (custodian of the shrine) of the shrine of Madhu Laal Hussain for saving Lahore from the wrath of Ahmed Shah Abdali.74 The text not only provided historical accounts of the shrines, its treatment of shrine life was also animated. Although it did not like some of the shrine-based activities, such as tactics for earning money at the shrine of Bibi Pak Daman and Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, it considered the majawars or sajjada nashins of these shrines to be among the noblility.75 Chishti takes pains to highlight the activities of the saints and spiritual life of the then differentiated mystical forms such as sant, sadhu, faqir, majawar, mutwalli, sajjada nashin and pir. Even karamat (miracles) found a living place in and around shrine-based practices. For Latif, social sensibility started taking a new turn in the 1890s. He still showed an interest in Sufistic views, yet attraction for the shrinebased life had already been lost. Throughout his narrative sajjada nashin, mutwalli or faqir are absent; he mentions them perhaps two or three times in his work. In order to write good history, he did not follow Chishti’s methodology but focused more closely upon the original and contemporary tazkiras and malfuzat. By giving importance to origins, his methodological shift leads to a better history but at the cost of his

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own life world. Although he narrated the story of shrines to his own times, he remained content to provide a biographical narrative of the saint of the tombs and did not try to give a glimpse of shrine-based practices.76 His treatment of the shrines depicted them as having historical importance due to their architectural remains. Further, unlike Chishti, who provided lengthy detail, his accounts of Sikh shrines remained brief, although he did not hold back from giving reverence to Guru Nanak and other Sikh gurus. His treatment of saints exemplified the methodology of a distanced researcher who stays aloof from prioritising the data. As Chishti gives priority to the historical lineage, Latif gives importance to the geographical situation of his city. His narrative of shrines started with the description of the shrine of Madhu Laal/Shah Hussain, suggesting it to be the most important shrine.77

Negating shrine-based practices: Muslim revivalist movements and spiritual space The shift in historical imagination also correlated with the larger ideologies giving birth to Muslim revivalism at that time. Two such movements are Aligarh educational reformism and Deoband religious revivalism; these movements remained very important in developing and defining the context of shrine-based practices within the larger Muslim life-world in British India. It took these movements some time to influence Punjab; however, they spread quite widely in different directions in the first half of the twentieth century. Whilst the colonial state seemed to be aligning with and supporting the reformist ideas of Sir Syed, the urban areas of the Punjab had already experienced the communal reformist movements.78 Arya Samaj, a Hindu reformist movement, was an irritant for Sikhs, while Singh Sabha was taking its own route towards engendering Sikh identity. The Wahhabis, within Muslims, were experiencing a decrease in their popularity similar to that of the militant Sikh Namdhari movement. Largely, the Muslim elite was following the direction of the colonial order and resettling in the major urban centres of Punjab. In order to develop closer relations with urban Muslims, the colonial authorities handed over the control of their important sacred sites, such as Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, to local Muslims.79 In that context, the appearance of Sir Syed’s reformist movement did not come out alien to the educated local elites; however, it

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took this movement some time to prevail within the larger Muslim public sphere. The early reception of this movement in urban Punjab was not enthusiastic, and in some senses, was rather discouraging. Despite the warm hospitality given by some of the local Muslim elites to Sir Syed, the founder of the Aligarh movement, during his visit to Lahore in the second last decade of the nineteenth century, Sir Syed found more Hindu groups disposed towards his mission than the Muslims. He faced a cautious local audience, fearful of losing their customary family traditions if they pursued modern (British) education. When he had to give a lecture on his religious views, he spoke in an exclusive closed-door session, fearing that his modern religious interpretation might create uproar amongst the public.80 The movement provided a new dream, imbued with the forsaking of customary traditions. However, for the local audience, it was impossible to buy into a dream that would displace their traditions.81 A response from a local writer, Mufti Ghulam Sarwar, who refused to write Islamic history in the way Sir Syed supported, might be helpful in understanding the movement. For Sarwar, Sufistic traditions were the real traditions and Muslim identity could not be imagined without a link to the father figures (buzarg).82 For Sarwar, emphasising religious identity might generate the contesting of historical writings, to which he was averse.83 Sarwar’s criticism may appear a little conservative; however, it made sense in the context. His criticism was not of Sir Syed, whom he held in high esteem; rather it emerged out of a fear of producing contesting religious identities at the cost of homeland-based rootedness. His fears, ignited by the projected understanding of Sir Syed’s message, showed many signs of being gripped by a new mode of instrumental rationality.84 Even such a liberal position as Sir Syed’s had to put forward a programme in the context of competing for universal religious identities.85 Here lay Sarwar’s dilemma: he earned his living from official sources but remained unable to celebrate the colonial reimagination of his city.86 He refused to re-identify with the idealist and universal identity. At the same time, the religiously centred Deoband movement emerged with a clear agenda of reforming religious culture embedded within deviant cultural practices and rebuilding identity on scriptural authorities. In 1866 Rashid Ahmed Gangohi and Qasim Nanotvi laid

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the foundation of Dar Ul Alum in the small town of Deoband, in order to revive Islam through the teachings of Shah Wali Ullah, an eighteenthcentury Delhi-based Muslim scholar. The movement, though started as an educational activity, soon brought out its sectarian, social reformative and revivalist political agenda through putting forward its own version of Islam. It had a broader mission of establishing an Islamic state in the region. Under British rule, however, and because of financial constraints, the movement turned towards the ‘condemnation of the values and practices of mainstream Muslim society’87 in order to reduce innovations in religion. Later on, it engendered active politics along with reforming cultural values, without losing its sectarian roots. Both the Aligarh and Deoband movements emerged in opposition to British administrative revamping in urban areas: at the same time they aimed to relocate Muslim identity. While the Aligarh movement distanced itself from traditions and customs, with an emphasis on modern education, the Deoband seminary went back to basic scriptures of religion as the most authentic way to achieve true Muslim identity. In order to ‘challenge’ customary values and British administrative changes, both movements tried to push the ‘irrational’ remnants of shrine-based practices into a deliberate oblivion. The Deobandi leaders had their roots in Sufi orders and they retained their connection with the revivalist aspects of that tradition.88 However, their acquired rational articulation and organisational subjectivity gradually allowed them conceal this rootedness and helped them to criticise the archaic practices at all shrines.89 In a certain sense the same was the case with the movements that followed the lead of the Aligarh movement.90 Although the Aligarh movement was aimed more at developing colonial educated elites or a colonial urban sector,91 a large number of scholars who emerged under the influence of this movement kept their interest in Sufistic tradition, even if it meant criticising that tradition.92 Both the Aligarh and Deoband movements followed their own critical and reformist paths. However Jamat Ahmadiyya, or Qadianis, developed a strange mixture of both.93 It is hard to place this movement within a certain category: as a reformist Sufistic order or as a revivalist proselytising movement. It can be seen as a Sufistic order because of its emphasis on the mystical side of human existence, the centrality of the leader as a mujaddid (revivalist), second Messiah or Mehdi, the possibility of prophesies and its owning of practices such as ba’ait.94 Even the

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position that made this movement controversial for a large number of Muslims, that is, the question of revelation and its appropriation by the movement’s leader, fall easily within the Sufistic tradition. Meanwhile, the rationalistic approaches of both the Aligarh and Deoband movements tackled the question of revelation through textual interpretation and by employing modern rationality. However, the leader of the Ahmadiyya movement, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835– 1908), remained critical of these rationalistic modes of thought.95 From the very beginning the movement did not shy away from criticising both modernists and orthodox because of its wish to be considered the only true interpreter of Islam.96 It criticised modern rationalists for ‘throwing doubt on Quran’ and repudiated ‘the abolition of Purdah, and staunchly defended the Islamic law of divorce and polygamy’.97 On the other hand, it criticised the ‘orthodox’ or Ahl e Sunnat Mulla and superstitions attached to shrine-based practices. The movement, with its claims of mahdiat, miracles and buruzi (shadow) prophethood, had to embed itself within the Sufistic tradition; however, the emphasis on the universal appeal of the Qur’an and on the significance of understanding text created a schism between scripturebased Islam and mystical revivalism. The result was not unexpected and the movement faced severe criticism from the very orthodoxy it intended to reform.

Islamised Sufistic spirits and shrine-based practices Despite all the criticisms and changes in society, shrine-based practices grew during the colonial period. At the very beginning of colonial rule, Sufistic practices in shrines were already held firmly within an elaborate doctrinaire condition associated with a saint cult and becoming routinised and popularised.98 Not only did the practices attached with shrine-based Sufistic cultures such as Melad, Khatam Sharif and the Urs of Ghauspak become prevalent in society at large, the struggle of individualised Sufistic souls to chart their own ways had not died out completely.99 The reformist and revivalist movements during British rule emerged partially from the old streams; these streams not only emerged out of but also remained closely attached to shrines. Meanwhile some new streams, such as Ahmed Riza Khan’s Brelwism and the activism of the Bugwi family in Punjab, emerged out of scholarly

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activities. However, these positions promulgated conservative traditions of Islamic thought, and remained distant from shrine-based practices, linking themselves more with mosques and madrasas (seminaries). These positions grew in the fashion of other larger religious movements such as Deoband, in order to participate in a sectarian/communal contesting ambiance. The development around shrine-based practices can be seen to have taken shape in four directions during the colonial period: Chishti revivalism,100 Naqshbandi revivalism, emotional revivalism and urban Shari-Sufism.101 Largely, revivalism around shrine-based practices was the scholarly articulation of Sunni orthodoxy, closely linked to localised shrines. Amongst Naqshbandi and Chishti pirs, a revivalist movement brought forward the decreased emphasis on localised spiritual practices and the increased importance of scripture-centred universal Islam. In fact, most of these pirs proclaimed ba’ait (allegiance) in all of the four salasil (orders)102 of Sufism. According to Arthur F. Buehler, this revivalism may be understood as giving prominence to mediating-Sufis instead of the directing-Sufis who became popular at the end of the second half of the nineteenth century.103 More than that, the mediatingSufis became closer to pedagogic-Sufis and became scholars, embedded within orthodox Sunnism, already closely attached to shrine-based practices. Already from the 1920s onwards, Brelwis predominantly connected with the Qadri Order, started showing its influence in urban centres.104 This version of Islam, however, largely remained nonpolitical in urban areas, yet influenced politics in quite a different way: the incidence of Ghazi Ilm-Ud-Din Shaheed in 1929 cannot be separated from the influence of the preaching of orthodox Sunni Sufis.105 The other two forms of revivalism around shrines were connected to developments around customary shrine-based practices; the first, emotional revivalism, was a kind of re-affiliation with traditional devotional practices connected to shrines. The ceremonies attached with this type of shrine-based practice, such as the ecstatic movements of haal (ecstatic condition) and chilla makoos (inverted exercises for mystical advancements), came closest to what most of the revivalist and reformist movements criticised as deviant. The second form of revivalism, urban Shari-Sufism, was linked with the changes that had started taking place at the site of shrines in order to absorb and adapt to the changed social environment. Among the emergent urban Muslim elite, a new sort of

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affiliation with shrines such as Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib of Lahore started developing. The shrine began to lose its customary shrine-based practices, while the religiously mediating character of the dead saint became the predominant reason for the affiliation. Chishti and Naqshbandi revivalist movements in Punjab and Khaibar Pakhtun Khwa (KPK) struggled to revive the lost spirit of Islam and unleashed the orthodox potential of the time. Focusing closely on Muslim identity to try to penetrate deeper into the remote areas of Punjab, both the movements created an impulse for ethical revivalism. Chishti revivalism impressed a large number of Sufis and triggered the development of important monasteries such as that of Sial Sharif (Shahpur), Taunsa Sharif (Taunsa) and Golra Sharif (Rawalpindi). However, this movement could not penetrate Central Punjab. There were only a few Sufi Chishti personalities of significance in Central Punjab in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of them was Maulana Ghulam Qadir Bhairwi (d. 1908), who also taught Arabic at Oriental College, Lahore, and later settled as a caretaker at Baigam Shahi mosque in the Walled City. He kept his emphasis on Hanafi Shariat and held such a strict attitude towards non-Hanafis that he often fought with them. Once he even slapped an Ahl-e-Hadith on someone who did not put his hands where he thought they should have been during the prayer. On his grave is written: ‘As per Anjuman e Hanafia and on the order of Shara Sharif, it is declared that no Wahhabi, Rafzi, Naturi or Mirzai should come within the mosque and they should not do anything against Hanafia religion.’106 Where the Chishti revivalist spirit could not penetrate, Naqshbandi revivalism filled the vacuum. Emerging out of rural or semi-urban areas of Punjab, the Naqshbandi revivalist spirit soon succeeded in developing khankahs around the major urban centres of Central Punjab, especially that of Lahore. From Pir Syedaan, a famous village near Narowal where a Sherazi Sufi family founded a settlement in the sixteenth century, two very influential personalities emerged, with their khankahs having the same name of Pir Syed Jamat Ali Shah Ameer e Millat and Pir Syed Jamat Ali Shah Lasani. Both took their ba’ait (allegiance) from a Naqshbandi Sufi of a remote area of KPK and enhanced orthodox religious revivalism. Both were influenced by the Naqshbandi order; however, they took different paths to develop their Sufistic inclinations. Pir Syed Jamat Ali Shah Lasani followed traditional Sufistic ways and

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spent most of his time in rural areas. He seldom performed the role of a pedagogue and rarely participated in the colonial urban sphere.107 He also showed less inclination for participating in the formation of a new exclusive religious identity and remained quite open to other religious approaches. Pir Syed Jamat Ali Shah (Ameer e Millat), on the other hand, opted for urban centres and fully participated in the colonial public sphere. He not only founded new madrasas (religious schools) and religious associations,108 he also developed new mosques. He was quite exclusivist in his approach and liked to see Muslim identity in its purity. In the early twentieth century another Naqshbandi khankah developed in the suburban area of Lahore and soon turned into a famous shrine, after the demise of the Master Sufi saint. Mian Sher Muhammad Sharakpuri (d. 1928) founded his khankah in Sharaqpur and soon attracted a large following. Besides his spiritual karamat, he became famous for his emphasis on Shariat and for following the Prophet’s way of life. His stress on the love of the Prophet was exceptional and he seemed to be happy acting as the mediator between the Prophet and His followers. He was a cousin of Sir Muhammad Shafi, the president of the Punjab Muslim League. He also gained popularity when Allama Iqbal went to meet him. Although he respected Iqbal for his poetry and scholarship, that did not stop him from criticising him for not following Shariati ways and ‘point[ing] out that his (Iqbal’s) not having a beard is not a right thing for a true Muslim’.109 Mian Sher Muhammad was quite vocal in his stance that Shariat was an essential element for creating Muslim identity. He was adamant that if one is Muslim then one needs to look so in full attire.110 He often compared Muslims with other religious communities, such as Sikhs, whom he praised for not abandoning their practice of having long hair and beards. However, at the same time, he also wanted to convert them. ‘Once he was on a railway station and he saw a very beautiful Sikh lad. The saint kept on looking at him for long and later on said “ah, what a beautiful boy. It’s good if he were a Muslim”.’111

Urban shrines and Shari revivalism The urban centres were influenced by the Naqshbandi revivalist spirit, yet a large number of shrines either carried forward the spirit of emotional and traditional-mediational belonging or moved towards urban Shari mediational practices. Tehqiqat e Chishti (TC) describes many

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Sufistic cults like Naushahi, Rasul Shahi, Madari and Jalali, along with Majzub and Faqir, as belonging to the shrine-based traditions. The Naushahi Sufi cult, a Qadri sub-order, originated in the teachings of Sheikh Haji Muhammad Nausha Ganj (d. 1692 AD ) in a small village near the bank of Chinab in Gujranwala district. Spearheading the emotional revivalism of that time,112 this sub-order prevailed through a lot of small groups and shrines in nineteenth-century113 urban centres of Punjab. The Naushahi Sufi cult was associated in its emotional overtones with the Malamati or Qalandri disposition, very similar to the frenzied activities displayed at Mela Chiragha (Festival of Lights) at Madhu Lal Hussain’s shrine or Kadam Mela (Foot Festival) at Sakhi Sarwar’s abode in Anarkali, Lahore. Even Subhan, writing in 1938, though terming these sub-orders and shrines as be-Shari (without Shariat),114 showed them as widely prevalent practices. The practices at the shrine of Madhu Laal Hussain and that of many of its affiliated shrines were quite prevalent in Lahore. There were numerous faqirs, majzubs and even sajjada nashins attached with those shrines and takias (a dwelling of a faqir) in Lahore, most of which remained engaged in pluralistic religious practices. The sajjada nashin of the shrine, even in the time of TC, drank and accepted liquor as nazrana (offerings) and put a red turban on the urs days.115 Two great fairs of Lahore, called Basant and Chiraghan, were held annually at that shrine. Lahore was emptied of people during Mela Chiragha and Shalamar Bagh and all the areas adjacent to the shrine of Lal Hussain were so crowded it was difficult to walk on that day. The shrine of Lal Hussain kept its pluralistic tradition alive due to the famous biographical narrative of the love of Lal Hussain (the Muslim Saint) for Madhu Lal (the Hindu boy) and the supporting political conditions. Even for Latif, the shrine of Madhu Lal stands as one of the most important shrines of Lahore despite being connected closely with Sikh rulers: The people still retain a recollection of the festivities and gaities that took place at this spot during the time of Ranjit Singh in honor of the Basant, which simply means spring, when the luxurious Maharaja, all his chiefs and troops and everybody else was dressed in yellow attire. The Maharaja when paying his respect to the shrine made an offer of Rs 1100 and a pair of shawls of yellow color.116

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Irrespective of their religion people would participate in the mela (festivity) and celebrate with liquor and other drugs. Chishti observed in the late nineteenth century that the Muslim elite avoided visiting Lal Hussain’s shrine at urs or on mela days.117 While, Subhan, writing in 1938, bracketed this shrine under be-Shari shrines. As pluralistic practices continued at some shrines, at some others the environment gradually became favourable for singular Islamised voices. More than anywhere else, it was the shrine of Makhdoom Ali Hajvery, popularly known as Data Darbar of Lahore, that started attracting a large number of increasingly urbanised Muslim elites, along with the revivalist Sufis, during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Although it did not own as large an area of land as the shrine of Baba Farid at Pakpattan and did not relate to a Sufi order, the shrine was still able to attract a large number of followers from all Sufi orders in the nineteenth century. Many significant Sufis, especially the revivalist Naqshbandi Sufis, had already made it the centre for seeking spiritual blessings.118 The oral account of the shrine’s attachment with the first Chishti Sufi saint, Muin ud Din Ajmeri, and the continuous practice of Gyarwi Shareef, for at least the previous 200 years, made the shrine popular among the followers of the Chishti and Qadri orders.119 The historical perception of the Sufi saint, as the first Sufi who propagated Islam in this area, further strengthened his appeal. Religious gifts, such as a handwritten Qur’an presented by the previous rulers, added to its spiritual attraction for the new urban elites in general, and revivalist Sufis in particular.120 Until 1930, the mujawars of the shrine declared that in matters of alienation of ancestral property it followed Mohammedan or Personal Law121 instead of customary traditions.122 The mujawar of the shrine, however, belonged to the Rajput agricultural tribe and had elaborate customs of distributing income earned from the shrine among multiple inheritors. They preferred to be considered within the Islamic ambiance by owning Sheikh as their family name.123 Earlier in the mid-nineteenth century, Maulvi Noor Ahmed Chishti considered the mujawar of the shrine among the religious elites of the city.124 In the wake of Nicholson’s translations and Fauq’s biographical description of the Sufi and his shrine, the shrine of Data Darbar attracted international focus. Two British brothers embraced Islam after reading Nicholson’s translation of Kashf al Mahjoob in 1936. Both came to India

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and became attached to the Sufis’ teachings, to the point that they never returned to their homeland. One of them died quite young, after staying eight years, and was buried at the shrine of Data Darbar of Makhdoom Ali Hajvery. The other brother, with the Muslim name of Shaheed Ullah, died in 1978. He also published a translation of Kashf al Mahjoob. Shaheed Ullah writes in the preface that only a few had read Kashf al Mahjoob and the real reason for the popularity of the shrine was its spiritual power. He contends that the appealing factor for the religious elites, however, is the Islamic or Shariati character of the teachings of the Sufi. Shaheed Ullah contested Nicholson’s translation and refused to accept that the teachings of Makhdoom Ali Hajvery in any sense conflicted with the Shariati position. Shaheed Ullah maintained that Nicholson understood Hajvery’s position as ruling out the need of outward prayers once the real meanings of each prayer are revealed. For Shaheed Ullah, Nicholson could not see that the Sufi only emphasised the need to understand the real meaning before offering the outward prayers.125 Amid the many stories of receiving respect from almost every Muslim or Sikh ruler, the shrine, however, remained in a poor position, even as late as the second decade of the twentieth century, when Fauq was writing a tazkara of the saint and the shrine. He regretted that, despite its being the most sacred shrine, the shrine keepers had not had the proper response from the public. He requested that people pay more attention to the shrine and give more money to rebuild it.126 However, it was another ten years before anything concrete took place. A local Muslim building contractor and devotee of the shrine provided funds for reconstructing the already existing small mosque. This mosque at the shrine was built in the early part of the nineteenth century, along with the renovations at the tomb.127 The new mosque was built again in 1924128 and at the same place. It was a Hindu judge who made efforts to provide electricity to the shrine. The construction of the new mosque, however, helped to attract a large number of Muslim elites to pay a visit and offer nazranai (monetary rewards) to the saint’s shrine.

Conclusion Largely because of the colonial administrative policies social and cultural changes created deep fissures in the spiritual life world intricately

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embedded around shrine-based practices of Punjab. Although the colonial policy of co-opting elite sajjada nashins continued in rural areas, urban shrines received very little direct attention. However, colonial policies spread out projective rationality and made locals grow within their defined developmental framework. Religious-communal rational voices, emerging out of urban areas, moved away from their customary origins. They created a universal idealistic understanding, with little space for pluralistic shrine-based religious life forms. Pluralistic shrine-based practices found themselves caught within increasingly defined religious boundaries, owned and appropriated by modern Muslim articulations. The change in socio-linguistic mapping, and the re-imagining of the past through standard historical writings, provided a new space for the prevalence of modern movements, standing upon the lack of awareness of their own customary rootedness. These changes began to put emphasis on origin instead of customs, and Sufi saints instead of shrines. The change was oblivious to overlapping pluralistic spaces and not only increased the tension among communal religious identities but also threw customary pluralistic shrine-based practices into disrepute. The spirit of development and the prevalence of colonial modern rationality also started transforming shrine-based practices and life. In order to pursue Muslim identity most of the sajjada nashins had to follow the universal imagination. In that way, they found themselves aligned with the already prevailing spirit of Brelwism that developed as contesting articulations for the conservative religious tradition of Ahl e Sunnat. Although inverted – that is, largely non-political – these contesting articulations helped to define the Muslim communal identity against other religious communal groups. However, even within the changed environment, most shrines continued to develop in different ways. The shrines of the saints that inclined towards Shari-Sufism received more development than those embedded within pluralistic shrine-based practices. For example, the shrine of Data Darbar in Lahore, while continuing to attract non-Muslim devotees, started to gain a central position, among many other reasons because of its Sufi saint’s disposition towards Shari-Islam.

CHAPTER 2 DOUBLERETERRITORIALISATION: DRIFTING TOWARDS THE NATIONALISATION OF SHRINES

This chapter explores the religio-political streams that made possible the promulgation of the West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance of 1959 and enabled the nationalisation of the shrines. By examining the activities and engagement of the post-colonial state with religious activities, it suggests that the State of Pakistan supported and institutionalised a unique conception of Islam, not only in the political but also in the cultural sphere. Largely, the state appropriated the unique themes of Islamic principles, such as the primacy of the Prophet Muhammad and abhorrence of shrine-based practices, emerging out of a consensual understanding of the various religious/communal groups. The consensual basis was built on a unique sense of identification, a process that had its roots in colonial communal politics. The chapter is divided into two sections. In the first, the development of religio-politics within the later colonial period is traced by discussing the development of the conception of shrines and mystical practices, embedded within the formulation of Muslim religio-politics since the 1920s in the Punjab. The formulation engendered a unique Muslim identity, a kind of reterritorialised Muslim identity, unlinked from nonMuslim communities, pluralistic shrine-based positions and the land itself. The proponents of this identity included personalities such as

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Allama Iqbal, Zafar Ali Khan; religious-political groups such as Ahrar and the Deoband religious-political party; and puritan Sufi pirs – a loose group of reformist/revivalist Sufis and sajjada nashins of Ahl e Sunnat. These proponents located the territoriality of this Muslim identity through the mosque and through a concept of the finality of prophethood. By contrasting a sole voice in the assembly of colonial Punjab for pluralistic shrine-based practices against the Muslim members of the Unionist party, this section argues that the Singular Muslim identity was trans-political and not confined to the Muslim League. The section concludes that this reterritorialised identity provided a non-territorial ground for Jinnah’s Muslim League politics for a separate homeland in India. The second section argues that the newly established State of Pakistan, while appropriating soil-based territory, was determined to build its soil-less identity on a universal Muslim ummah (nation), as popularised by the All India Muslim League during the politics of the 1940s. The contradiction between having a soil and non-soil based ideological identity necessitated a process of re-identification, or in other words, it initiated a process of double-reterritorialisation. This process involved exclusion on multiple levels: at the political level, the process excluded all religious ‘others’ as minorities; at a puritan religious level, the process resulted in making Ahmadis non-Muslim; and on a spiritual level, the process negated pluralistic mystical practices and devised techniques to take over and control shrines. The religious morality of new urban elites also supported the efforts of the state to extend its control over shrines: modern religious scholars, while re-appropriating the ideas of Allama Iqbal, remained disposed towards excluding completely pluralistic mystic forms and supported the state to develop by appropriating shrine-based practices.

Communal politics and emergence of reterritorialised Muslim identity The second decade of the twentieth century opened up the horizon for nationalistic themes and an effort towards a harmonious political coexistence.1 At the same time, the conditions for constant communal strife were also created, especially in colonial Punjab. This communal discord soon closed down the possibility of nationally harmonious

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themes and consolidated communal voices. The otherwise differentiated positions of orthodox Sunni streams2 found their integrating moment in simmering communal conflicts. The efforts of revivalist Hindu movements such as Shuddhi and Sangathan led Muslim maulvis to react strongly, mostly on symbolic differences, such as the mode of tabligh (preaching) and tanzeem (organisation). Incidents like the ‘trumped-up’ conversion of Muslim Malkana Rajput increased the anxieties and fears of many Muslim maulvis in Punjab.3 The communal conflicts generated an interplay of ‘obscene and abusive language . . . to denigrate the social customs and religious beliefs’4 of other communities. The claims began to emerge in abundance, to convert each other into one’s own religious fold. Along with the puritan Sufistic figure of Jamat Ali Shah, who vowed to convert ‘thirty-two crore Hindus to Islam’, even the soft Sufistic figure of Khwaja Hasan Nizami, from Delhi, invited Gandhi to embrace Islam.5 Against the backdrop of the increased religio-political tension, the voices of Shah and Nizami represented the pressure felt among Muslims of different persuasions. To promote and contest communal issues, modern forms of publication, association and advertisement came into play.6 Ahl e Sunnat Associations emerged, such as Anjuman Hizb ul Ahnaf-eHind, which was established in the 1910s in Lahore. The association actively participated in communal conflicts and tried to advance symbolic issues as forcefully as possible. The organisation, however, started in a humble way; it was linked with a large unorganised, semiurban, shrine-based following. Maulvi Deedar Ali, the Khateeb and Imam of Masjid Wazir Khan was the first president of Anjuman Hizb ul Ahnaf e Hind. Jamat Ali Shah assisted in rebuilding a mosque and a madrasa in Lohari Gate, Lahore, to where the association shifted and centred its activities. The organisation, while becoming a central point in Punjab for orthodox Sunni voices, took an active part in various communal conflicts during the 1920s in Lahore, such as Khatam e Nabuwwat – the incident of a Hindu girl being teased (1923) – or the issue of Ghazi Ilm ud Din Shaheed, in which a young man killed a publisher who published a book against the Prophet Muhammad, and the Child Marriage Restraint Act (the Sarda Act) (1929), passed by the British government increasing the age at which women could get married. Newspapers such as Inqilab and Zamindar and Deoband organisations such as Jamiat Ulema I-Hind showed their

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anger towards the act, by calling it ‘a flagrant interference within the Muhammadan Religion’.7 The interesting thing about the workings of the Anjuman and scholarly Sunni orthodoxy was that most of their leaders, though justifying shrine traditions, tried to move away from customary pluralistic shrine-based practices. Embedded in traditionalist religious scholarship, most of them were never hesitant to label other groups such as Naturi (the followers of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan), Deobandi, Ahl e Hadeeth, Qadiani, Wahhabi, Shia, etc., kafir (infidel). In the early 1920s, a few Sunni ulema, such as Maulvi Deedar Ali, Imam of Masjid Wazir Khan, termed even Allama Iqbal and Zafar Ali Khan kafir on different grounds; the former for his anti-Sufistic positions and the latter for his engagement with the Khilafat movement. However, Sunni orthodoxy aligned itself with communal issues in order clearly to distinguish the Muslim identity from other religious groups.8 Contemporarily with the Gurdwara Reform movement and the Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925, the Sunni or Ahl e Sunnat position turned towards a kind of reterritorialisation process for re-establishing the contours of Muslim identity. Instead of owning shrines as Sikhs did for their identity, the position linked itself largely with the mosque. Along with mosques, the Sunni ulema also focused on a particular way of offering prayer, beards, food, dress and other customs derived from sunnah (tradition of Muslim Prophet) as an integral part of the Muslim identity.9 They stressed the establishment of mosques and madrasa, engaged in organised activities around the concept of shariat-based Tasawwuf, emphasised preaching through visiting different places, focused on converting other religious communities and were disposed towards clearing Muslim sacred sites of the remnants of a pluralistic ethos, which they interpreted as un-Islamic practices. The focus of Sunni orthodoxy, or Ahl e Sunnat, was also on emphasising the distinct and clear difference between Muslims and other religious communities. Once, in Faisalabad in the 1920s, Jamat Ali Shah resisted those who insisted on mentioning the name of Guru Har Gobind, a Sikh guru, along with Allah, on the wall of the local mosque. He ensured forcefully that it would not take place, and only the name of Muhammad would appear along with Allah on the face of the mosque.10 He ensured that the purity of Muslim identity would not be polluted by pluralistic overlapping religious streams. Along with Jamat Ali Shah,

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other Sufistic figures such as the Bugwis, a family of Sunni scholars from the city of Bhera, Punjab, who became famous in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Mian Sher Muhammad Sharakpuri (d. 1926), advanced a similar concept of Muslim and Islamic identity. The concept of an Islamic identity became more popular when the disciples arriving from Brelwi schools secured the position of an imam in the mosques attached with shrines, opening up or being attached to the madaris (religious schools) and religious practices in Central Punjab.11

Ahrar, Iqbal and anti-Ahmadiyya politics: consolidating Muslim identity through exclusion With the rise of communal conflict in Punjab, the old nationalists in the cadre of Khilafists, formed their own political group, Ahrar, after throwing the Nehru Report into the River Ravi. With the emergence of Ahrar some very interesting changes took place, including the awareness of the force of religious ideas for public mobilisation, the usage of common idioms, sometimes quite vulgar ones, during political speeches and clarity of Muslim identity when considering ‘Ahmedis’, a politically non-Muslim entity. The politics of Ahrar took the Deobandi theological debates onto the streets and encountered theological opponents politically. From theologically-linked socialistic stress and emphasis on the rights of small peasants and depressed classes, to anti-British efforts, standing up for the rights of the Muslims of Kashmir and at the same time vocal against traditional customs and the shrine-based practices, Ahrar remained active and antagonistic on all sides. Ahrar’s politics jolted the land-based elites in Punjab, at least for some years, and its politics also resulted in the development of a platform for the later Muslim League politics, after the promulgation of the 1935 constitution and the communal franchising. The politics of Ahrar revolved around two main positions: being antiBritish and being anti-Qadiani or anti-mystical. To liberate oppressed Muslims, they developed a strategy to capture the Kashmir cause and negate the most deviant of mystical expressions of Mirza Ghulam Ahmed Qadiani (1835– 1908) and his sect, Ahmadism or Qadianism. Incidentally, the Kashmir Committee that was formed earlier in 1930 in Lahore was headed by Ahmadi leader, Mirza Bashir ud Din Mahmud (1889– 1965). Along with many other prominent local Muslim leaders,

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the famous poet, politician and religious scholar of Lahore Allama Iqbal (1877– 1938) was also part of the committee.12 Ahrar negotiated with Iqbal and waged a ‘war’ against Ahmadis, along with developing a fullyfledged political campaign against the Kashmir government.13 Iqbal promised to rethink his position. After a few months, he resigned from the presidency of the Kashmir Committee and started distancing himself from the Ahmadi or Qadiani positions. He published essays and articles declaring Ahmadis to be non-Muslims after 1934, almost at the same time as Unionists were supporting Sir Zafar Ullah Khan14 for the Muslim seat of the Central Legislative Assembly against Allama Iqbal. Initially challenging the Qadiani presence within Kashmir’s politics, Ahrar considered the penetration of Qadianis as not only dangerous but also ominous.15 Ahrar kept their religio-political voice against Ahmadis strong and took the conflict to such a high pitch that national politics also became engaged within this conflict. At the height of the Qadiani controversy in 1934 Jawaharlal Nehru, the leader of the Indian National Congress, wrote three articles from the perspective of a liberal Indian, in support of Qadianis and criticising Muslims for their exclusionist orthodox position. Iqbal counter-argued that, even, from the Western Muslim scholarly position, Qadianis were not part of a larger Muslim community.16 Iqbal founded his counterargument on historical and political grounds and declared that a sect arising from the bosom of Islam, which claims a new prophethood for its basis, and declares all Muslims who did not recognise the truth of its alleged revelation as Kafirs, must therefore be regarded by every Muslim as a serious danger to the solidarity of Islam.17 Although he was equating ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islam’, for Iqbal, the danger that views such as Qadianism posed to the political existence of Muslim society within British India, where politics were based on religiocommunal lines, was a grave threat to the collective political power of Muslims in India. Almost aligning his views with Ahrar’s standpoint, saving mullah-ridden and Orthodox Muslims from the liberal criticism of both Orientalists and non-Muslim politicians like Jawaharlal Nehru and becoming a precursor of the later politics, Iqbal seems to be opening up the possibilities of a new form of political development around the identity of the ‘Unitary Muslim’ and ‘Singular Islam’.

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Elsewhere, in a postscript to his essay ‘Qadianis and Orthodox Muslims’, Iqbal clarified his position further by applying his argument to the complete exclusion of Qadianis from the larger Muslim polity in India. He even suggested that the colonial Indian government use force to suppress Qadianis. To him, the policy of non-interference was a bad one, and as long as the British-Indian government carried on using this policy, every religious community would have the right to resort to safeguarding their interests, using suitable means.18 In his enthusiasm, Iqbal appreciated the Orthodox Hindus’ demand for protection against religious reformers in the new constitution.19 He further maintained that the demand ought to have been first made by Muslims, who, unlike Hindus, had entirely eliminated the idea of race from their social structure.20 Iqbal advised the British government to declare Qadianis a separate community within British India.21

Allama Iqbal’s articulation of the Singular Muslim identity and Sufism Before distancing himself from Qadianis, Allama Iqbal had already developed a concept of a unique identity for Indian Muslims.22 His conception was a sort of deterritorialisation: an unlinking from customs and soil identity and providing an idealist unity for the Muslims of India. His conception of Muslim identity was ideal as well as simple.23 He not only ignored the relationship with the soil but also ignored internal religious differences. As Iqbal unlinked Muslim identity from territory, he criticised those cultural and religious streams locating identity in the customary manners and habits. His effort was to deterritorialise in a way that, without introducing a lot of changes in the traditional Muslim religious articulations, one could find a singular moment to reterritorialise.24 For him, the singular moment was the personality of the Prophet Muhammad with which every Muslim had to link themselves. His intention, though, was to find an identity that would transcend colonial-sovereignty and that at the same time could open up dream imageries for possible territorialising through transgeographical boundaries. Iqbal’s criticism of Ahmadis not only highlights his political understanding but also his Sufistic approach. Earlier in his works, he followed a Sufistic line, such as studying the works of Maulana Rumi

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(d. 1273) and Naqshbandi saint Mujaddad Alif Saani (d. 1624) in order to develop his thought.25 However, in his later writings, especially after the 1930s, Iqbal became critical of a certain form of tasawwuf, that may be termed as wahdat ul wajud (unity of being), along with a prevailing form of shrine-based culture and sajjada nashins attached to such places.26 In his poem ‘Punjab kai Pirzado Sai’ (To the Sons of the Pirs of Punjab), Iqbal emphasised that sajjada nashins in Punjab were not Sufi faqir because of their close relationships with the colonial state. This relationship made sajjada nashins compromise the responsibility of mystical pursuits in favour of worldly powers. Similarly, in another poem, ‘Punjabi Musalman’ (A Muslim from Punjab), he presented a Punjabi Muslim with the natural orientation of becoming the murid of a pir, but is not aware of his concrete situation.27 Through his spiritual meeting with Mujaddad Alif Sani, Iqbal idealised a Sufi figure as the one who has the ‘passion for Rightfulness (Kalmai Haq)’. As Iqbal was unable to find it within the sajjada nashins of Punjab, the spiritual voice of Mujaddad Alif Sani condemned the death of the Sufistic spirit in the land of Punjab. Iqbal’s position shows his dislike of the sajjada nashins of Punjab but also his admiration for the spirit of Mujaddad Alif Sani who, as he says in his poem, did not surrender before Jahangir, the Mughal king. Iqbal’s critique of shrine-based practices, however, was selective. He disapproved of what was taking place in Punjab28 but he eulogised medieval Sufis (such as Nizam Ud Din Aulya, Khwaja Muin Ud Din of Ajmer Sharif and Syed Ali Hajvery Data Ganj Bakhsh) and regularly visited their shrines.29 In addition to such visits, he also composed verses in praise of these Sufi saints and shrines.30 Some of Iqbal’s biographers suggest that he remained in search of a Pir e Kamil (the perfect pir). Even in his criticism of Qadianis, he seems to be perplexed by the question of the ‘spiritual elevation’ of the movement’s founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmed of Qadian. Iqbal thinks the founder’s psychological level during his spiritual experience was good enough, but the possibility of having such an experience was not questioned. As long as the experience did not violate the supreme principle of the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad (PBUH), such spiritual elevation remains the most significant aspect of the Sufistic world. He provided the spiritual teaching of Mujaddad Alif Saani as a model for the same account.31

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The prevalence of reterritoriality The religio-politics around a Singular Muslim identity prevailed further and started shaping the perception of Muslim elites during the 1930s and 1940s. The debates of the Punjab Legislative Assembly, after the elections of 1937, especially the discussion on the Music in Muslim Shrines Act, 1942, reflect the changing attitude of Muslim elites regarding Islam and shrines. The members of the legislative assembly viewed the local site of the shrine in the image of a mosque. The mosque seems to have become the standard image for the territoriality of the religion of Islam. The discussion makes it clear that all those religious sites that customarily allowed pluralistic practices should be transformed into Islamic sites. It seems that the concept of territoriality that had already been attached to the mosque pushed all other religious sites to approach the greater morality of the site of an Islamic mosque more closely. A discussion on placing a restriction on the singing and dancing of females at the site of the shrine took place, and began to focus around a sole voice supporting the pluralistic practices at the site of shrines. The sole voice, however, soon found itself in unfavourable conditions and opted for silence. The Music in Muslim Shrines Act, 1942, which, among other things, prohibited the singing and dancing of women and girls in shrines, was moved to introduce social reform within society in general32 and Muslim society in particular.33 However, for this purpose, the act chose the site of the shrine, where it was found that the ‘immoral practices’ of dancing and the singing of female singers often took place.34 Although the act was not intended to take control of the site of the shrine, the effort can be seen as linked with similar earlier attempts in 1924 and 1937 of the Unionist government.35 However, that effort seems to have been more to remove the pressure on government to curb archaic and ‘non-religious’ practices in Muslim society in order to realign the policies of the Punjab government with the already introduced Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act (1937). The Muslim Personal Law (1937) had already created pressure on the Punjab government to reform family, inheritance, customs and marriage affairs, along with waqf, according to the rules of the Muslim community.36 The pressure found its release through the introduction of bills such as the Muslim Musawat Bill, 1939, the Anti-Dowry Bill, 1942 and the Music in Muslim Shrines Act, 1942, promulgated to prevent

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female singing and dancing at shrine sites, while avoiding promulgating Muslim personal law (1937).37 The members from the ruling benches38 saw this bill largely as an implementation of Shariat and Islamic principles in order to purify religious practices. Their emphasis remained on its being the right of the state to act as a purifier, to correct degraded and immoral practices. Singing and dancing were considered to be immoral acts that should not have been allowed to take place at the shrines of Sufi saints who remained active during their lifetime to preach Islam. Interestingly, the mela and festivities at urs were denied their cultural and traditional existence. Instead, the activities, such as the mela and urs of the Sufi saint, were seen as immoral remnants of old puritan practices. As Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan maintained, at the various shrines of Muslim saints, for instance, Dargah Data Ganj Bakhsh, Dargah Ajmer Sharif and Dargah Kaliar Sharif where on the occasion of urs sermons were preached openly and religious speeches were made in public gathering with a view to improving the morals of the people. But later on the celebration of these anniversaries went on demoralising gradually and now they have degenerated into ‘melas’ which are lacking all those good things of good olden days.39 Amidst the Punjab government’s desire to introduce social reforms on Muslim religious sites and of the revivalist consciousness of the ruling benches to introduce Shariat, there was the lone voice of a member, Pir Akbar Ali, from Fazilka, who opposed the bill on quite the opposite grounds. Pir Akbar Ali considered it to be an interference in religious matters. Though he could not differentiate between the puritan religious stream and those who took cultural practices as significant, yet he insisted that one stream of ideas dominating another might generate strange results. He questioned what would happen if another government came to power and placed a restriction on Azan. He held that mutwallis controlled the shrines and should handle this matter too (interestingly, at least until that time there is no evidence of any objection to mutwallis as the legitimate caretakers of the shrines). ‘It is up to the mutwalli of that shrine to permit or prohibit her from doing so, but you want to take upon yourself the duties of a mutwalli and want to

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prohibit such singing.’40 For Pir Akbar Ali, this bill ‘attempt[ed] to apply a corrective to the morals of the people by compulsion which in itself is an effort of very doubtful value’.41 To the surprise of many ruling members, Pir Akbar Ali quoted a Hadith: ‘He who does not recite the Qur’an with ghana (in melodious voice) is not from among us’, in order to put forward his case, which asked: ‘if a female singer were to recite the Holy Quran with ghana would you permit her to do so?’42 He also stated that ‘even a prostitute can have an idea of salvation and may go to the places where she finds her peace’.43 For many members, it was unimaginable to perceive that even a prostitute could have a religious idea of salvation and could go to the shrine to find her peace. Putting forward the question of ghana, coupled with permission for the prostitute to go to the shrine, invited strong opposition. For many members, it was as immoral to think that way as to permit female singers to sing at shrines. However, when one member claimed that Pir Akbar Ali was saying that ‘to sing hymns of Holy Qur’an, God forbid me is zina (adultery)’, and even after repeating that Pir Akbar Ali was saying ghana not zina (adultery), the member could not understand the meaning of ghana, as he again understood this word as ‘gunah (sin)’. For Pir Akbar Ali it was enough to stop putting his argument forward, as he comprehended the religious understanding of the members who were so ready to give fatwas against immoral practices and to implement Shariat at the site of shrines. However, they did not understand the meaning of an Arabic word. The bill prohibiting female singers from singing and dancing at the site of the shrine, however, was established in 1942 and it paved the way for the implementation of the high-morality reformation agenda of the colonial urban elite embedded in the Singular Muslim identity.

Prevalence of Singular Muslim politics and Jinnah’s Muslim League As Unionists worked to make laws in order to gain moral control of sacred sites, another political force, the Muslim League, started gaining popularity after 1940 with the intention of achieving direct control of ‘what is precious in Islam’.44 It was Muhammad Ali Jinnah who gave a new life to the Muslim League and made it a considerable force, despite not winning convincingly in the elections of 1937. After failing to make

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a coalition with the Congress, he and his party issued a white paper against Congress and maintained that Congress did not take decisions favouring the Muslims of India. As World War II began, his party took another step that became a breakthrough in colonial politics, by claiming a separate homeland for the Muslims of India. Jinnah presented his case for two-nations-in-India in Lahore in 1940;45 it was the most forceful articulation of the politics of a Singular Muslim and reterritorialised identity.46 Jinnah positioned his arguments around the impossibility of living in a united Indian federation where the Hindu majority could interfere in the affairs of a permanent Muslim minority. His ideas reflected the contours of a prevailing colonial Singular Muslim identity, and dissenting voices such as that of Pir Akbar Ali’s seemed to be fading away. Jinnah proclaimed himself to be a Muslim,47 and asked Gandhi and Congress not to deny their Hindu identity.48 He presented a case for a distinct Muslim nation, different from a Hindu nation not only because of religion but also because of law and culture. He showed resolve in not accepting a democratic programme as envisaged by the Government of India Act of 1935. Internationalising the situation in India, Jinnah looked for the political division of something like ‘Muslim India’ and ‘Hindu India’ within the regional unity of India. Jinnah based his arguments on the antagonism – which, he suggested, could even turn into a civil war – between Muslim and Hindu communities for the ownership of the various cultural and sacred sites. Jinnah mentioned the incident of Mosque Manzilgah as evidence for the possible civil war while citing the example of Gandhi who had in this incident even supported the violent means for the minority Hindu community.49 Jinnah’s idea of making Muslim India was a possible mediation between the already-contesting Muslim and Hindu communities and, in the absence of any central or provincial authority for deciding waqf or communal sacred endowments, a solution for attaining mutual peace. Jinnah’s Muslim League was able to attract various Muslim leaders and associations already engaged in the communal contestations of sacred sites, which merged with the League after 1940.50 One of them was Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, a graduate from Aligarh University, a working journalist and owner of the newspaper Zamindar, from Lahore. He was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly and his

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newly-formed party, Majlis-i-Ittihad-Millat,51 won two seats in Lahore, Punjab in 1937. For most of his early life, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan was a zealous nationalist Congressite, working for the freedom of larger India. However, at the same time, he was the leading ideologue for the Muslim community, using print media as his tool. His newspaper Zamindar gained popularity among the emerging urban Muslim middle class who could read Urdu, and became an important source for increasing nationalist political consciousness, at least until 1930. His political change came along with the Ahrars’ entrance into Punjab politics and he was not shy in promoting religious issues in his politics. However, instead of maintaining a dislike for Ahmadis and orthodox Sufi shrines, he settled for communal contestation of cultural sites by shaking hands with Jamat Ali Shah, the reformist and puritan Sufi.52 It was the crisis of Masjid Shahid Ganj in Lahore that gave his politics a decisive turn, when the Muslim and Sikh communities contested the ownership of a local sacred site in Lahore. As the Ahrar did not press the issue, for fear of losing Sikh voters,53 there was an opportunity to form a political-religious group, Majlis-i-Ittihad-Millat, in order to mobilise Muslims to push to take back the mosque from the Sikh community. The crisis did not end successfully for the Majlis-iIttihad-Millat, as the courts decided in favour of the Sikh community. However, Khan gained considerable popularity in the process, availing him of three seats in the legislative assembly. When Maulana Zafar Ali Khan decided to merge his party with the Muslim League in 1940 his politics had already become indistinguishable from that of the Muslim League. His Majlis-i-Ittihad-Millat already promoted the cause of Singular Indian Islam, in readiness to contest other religious groups for hegemony on cultural sites. With other SufiSunni orthodoxy he had already successfully supported the Muslim community of Sukkur in taking back the Mazilgah mosque in 1937–9, against the efforts of the Hindu community, in order to ‘fulfil religious obligation and duty’.54 The crisis not only became an opportunity for the Muslim League to overthrow Allah Bakhsh Soomro’s government in Sindh, it also became a convincing point for Muhammad Ali Jinnah on which to internationalise the Hindu–Muslim crises and move away from any constitutional effort resulting in the permanent majority of a communal group in 1940.55

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Gilmartin shows that, at least in Punjab, such clashes and contestations had already made the Unionist government seriously consider setting up the Waqf Board in order to have an institution for managing such conflicts. Rather, the efforts to establish the Muslim Auqaf Bill, resembling the Sikh Gurdwara Act began in 1924. Another serious effort was made in the aftermath of the Shaheed Ganj incident. The Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee56 played a very active role in the crisis and promoted the Sikh cause. The Unionist government therefore wanted to introduce Muslim Auqaf in order to reduce conflicts emerging among different religious communities. The bill was developed by an MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly), who was a disciple of a famous Sufi saint and scholar, Jamat Ali Shah of Alipur Sayyedan, Sialkot. However, it attracted severe criticism from within the Unionist party, especially from the pir members of Southern Punjab, who considered it more of an effort to control their activities than to make peace with other communal groups. Along with the Majlis-i-Ittihad-Millat party, the Muslim League found the support of the reformist/revivalist pirs, sajjada nashins and Ahl e Sunnat, who were engaged in similar contestations and promoted reterritorialised identity. The association Jamat Ahl e Sunnat’s57 religious ideal of a distinct Muslim identity was closer to the political ideal of Jinnah’s Muslim League. The workers of the organisation, such as Abdu Sattar Niazi, who was president of the Muslim Student Federation and, after 1947, became a prominent figure of JUP (Jamiat Ulema e Pakistan, a political organisation of the Brelwi school of thought),58 worked hard in the hope of building a new state based on the concept of Singular Islam. These efforts found it very convenient to use Allama Iqbal’s poetry of religious revivalism in rural areas, aligning it with the tradition of those reformist Sufi personalities who struggled to make Islam prevail in the region, in order to stir up hope for its dominance.59 As the struggle over the elections intensified, some other influential pirs and sajjada nashins who had previously been supporting the politics and policies of the Unionist Party, and providing support to the ruling system devised by the British authorities, also started shifting to the cause of the Muslim League.60 A large number of Sufi pirs began to favour the struggle for Pakistan, thus taking the cause of a Muslim independent state to their villages.61 In 1946, the League itself made an organisation of mahsaikh and ulema as the Mashaikh Committee, in

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which reformist figures such as Jamat Ali Shah and the Pir of Manki Sharif were prominent. However, interestingly, some famous politicians like Khan Iftikhar Husain Khan of Mamdot, Sirdar Shaukat Hayat Khan, Malik Feroz Khan Noon and Nawab Muhammad Hayat Qureshi, who were not much known for their religiosity till then, were also included in this Committee with assigned religious designations.62 The appointment of politicians within the Mashaikh Committee combined ‘important political leaders of the province with religious leaders of recognised status and [held] them out as spokesmen of religion so that if occasion arose they could sway the masses more easily’.63 The policy of the Muslim League – to have a close relationship with the pirs and the sajjada nashins – was a continuation of the Unionist Party’s strategy. But the Muslim League completely appropriated the religious space of reformist popular devotion, a step ahead of the Unionists, who only developed a working relationship with those pirs and mashaikhs who were embedded in customary traditions.64 Gilmartin shows the anxiety of many Unionist candidates during the 1945–6 elections about the political preaching of reformist Sufis, such as M. Hussain Shah, the son of Jamat Ali Shah, who assured the rural community that voting for any non-Muslim League candidate would lead to infidelity (kufr).65 In the same vein, Jamat Ali Shah termed Jinnah as wali (friend of God), thus aligning him with the long tradition of Sufi saints, and saved him from the destructive criticism of religious leaders from Ahrar and Jamiat Ulema I Hind.66 It seems that the ability of the Muslim League to reframe urban religious ideology within the Sufistic Muslim identity consolidated the position of the Muslim League and provided the very political weight needed to win the separatist centripetal politics. The Muslim League won Muslim seats in the 1945 –6 elections67 with the support of colonial urban middle-class reformist Sufis, and by aligning with a reterritorialised identity. It is significant that Jinnah accepted the cabinet mission plan ‘for a three-tier federal constitutional arrangement covering the whole of India’ after refusing the mission’s offer of a ‘sovereign Pakistan carved out of the Muslim Majority provinces in the north-west and the Muslim-majority districts of

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partitioned Punjab and Bengal’.68 On the other hand, the mobilised Muslim League supporters and second and third tier leaders had already developed a distinct idea of a separate and sovereign state embedded in Islamic ideology.69 However, it is clear that both sides held to their own modes of identities: Jinnah did not want to leave the reterritorialised identity and the lower tiers had developed another wish, that of a separate Islamic state, a kind of double-reterritorialised identity. The creation of Pakistan, as a partitioned and sovereign state completely independent of the rest of India, emerged, catching Jinnah unprepared for the popular mindset.70 The Muslim League stood for a modern religious ideology, proclaiming that it would transform otherwise backward life by opening up developmental possibilities, especially, and only, for Singular Islam in India. This religious ideology promised the development of Muslims of India by engendering rational-scriptural formations and giving priority to all sort of articulations linked with the conception of a Singular Muslim identity. Through this process the singular identity turned into a kind of ultra flexible idea that could connect with any articulation claiming to have a Muslim identity amongst other religious identities. Therefore it was possible for Jinnah to hold together the reformist Sufistic strands and Deoband scholars at the same time. However, this flexible idea had a very clear bias against pluralistic spaces and shrine-based practices devoid of modern rationality and part of rural and non-Islamic life.71 The success of the creation of Pakistan, despite the loss of millions of lives, provided new strength to the political and moral position of the urban elite to celebrate their mode of rationality through purifying the archaic sites and practices.

Double-reterritorialising: a renewed search for identity on a new land Soon after independence from British rule, a search to redefine identity re-emerged in the colonial sector.72 Earlier, during British rule, the mainstream of religious ideologies developed overlapping consensuses and formed the space for reterritorialising a singular identity. This reterritorialised space was acquired among multiple religious communities. Deterritorialising from the customary traditions and soil had already provided a sense of detachment in the spaces built on overlapping

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multi-religious memories. Unitary Muslimness, without the need to belong to the land,73 however, became enigmatic in the post-colonial world. Muslim political elites could not hide the inherent contradiction of its ideology. On one hand, the elites found themselves in a situation where they were the overwhelming political majority and the rulers and inheritors of the colonial ruling structure. On the other hand, they were part of a liberated religious community, bound to restructure its life according to the acclaimed religious principles. An urge to resolve this contradiction led to another process of identity forming – a kind of double-reterritorialising and deterritorialising process that completely unlinked belonging from the ‘others’.74 The process of redefining as double-reterritorialising took place at multiple levels with the common theme of re-reterritorialising and de-deterritorialising. The process of a double or re-reterritorialising process initiated a kind of consistent engagement with Islamic principles and opened up the possibility of implementing Shariat during the process of relocating in the new geographical boundaries.75 The process provided grounds for multiple negotiated perspectives to play on the common ground of locating Muslim identity while refusing to be rooted in the soil. The process engendered a new kind of politics of Islam.76 This politics remained grounded in the search for a new identity in the post-colonial state, while retaining the identity largely shaped from the 1920s onwards. However, this politics was not such a smooth process and contrasted severely with inherited colonial state structures. It opened up the process of ‘disputative negotiation’ among contrasting revivalist religious articulations, ‘sectional interests’ and ‘politico-religious worldviews’.77 These interplays of interests and politico-discursive engagements not only kept the question of the role of Islam alive but also maintained the deep-seated urge to search for identity, in the form of double-reterritorialisation, intact in the postcolonial state of Pakistan. For the post-colonial state, the process of double-reterritorialisation soon turned into a process of excluding ‘others’ completely from the idea of a Singular Muslim identity. As the political elite refused to relate to the soil of the acquired land and insisted on maintaining its identification with ummah or universal common religious group, the double-reterritorialising rested on deterritorialising the pluralistic traces embedded within soil and customs.78 Within the circles of the political

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elite, the effort of the re-identifying process concluded in the creation of the Objectives Resolution in 1949. At another level, the process resulted in establishing non-state and, a little later, state institutionalisation of the Anti-Ahmadiyya Movement. However, more than any other level, the process of double-reterritorialisation redefined the concept of shrines and Sufism through excluding deviant mystic and spiritual practices and identifying these sites with Shariat-centred Islamised practices.79

Objectives resolutions: the politics of double-reterritorialisation The creation of Pakistan brought out the need to make the nascent state Islamic, albeit in an unusual way. The ‘great leader’ (Quaid e Azam) of the newly independent nation, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, remained throughout his life more disposed towards liberal ways, and in his speeches and acts seldom tried to present views suggesting theocracy for developing the idea of Pakistan. However, especially after the 1940s, his close connection with religious figures and his political articulations about making Muslim identity distinct enough as a nation to claim a separate homeland, made it hard for some to find his direction clear.80 A large number of intellectual and political elites of the nascent state pushed forward a religious, if not theological, agenda for the new state, as they also found it quite sensible when dealing with the political situation of the nascent country. The ideological basis of the Muslim League compelled it to include revivalist ulema, which was already disposed towards law making instead of engaging in theory,81 in the constituent assembly to form an Islamic constitution.82 The presentation of the Objectives Resolution, after the death of Jinnah,83 ensured that any future constitution would have to deal with the question of Islamic principles. The Objectives Resolution triggered the political exclusion of nonMuslims and also showed the near impossibility of forming a theological state, because of the differences among the political elites regarding the idea of Islam.84 However, it also made clear that neither would the State of Pakistan avoid a certain form of Islam. Liaquat Ali Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan and part of the modernist political elite, whilst accepting the resolution, showed his unique sense of a forward-looking Islamic society, free from sectarian dissension, along with a clear distaste for theocracy.85 His idea of Islam in the affairs of the state was to introduce spiritual and ethical elements into otherwise indifferent

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political affairs, not only locally but also in an international context that had been divided between capitalism and socialism.86 He refuted clearly as mischievous propaganda the assertion that ulema made the position of the head of the state available only to a Muslim.87 On the other hand, for Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, a Deoband scholar and member of the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan,88 the best models of democracy lay in the early history of Sunni past. He accepted the idea of democracy, but by qualifying that the best democracy was the first Islamic State of Muslim Khalifa, because it took ‘a lead in all other democracies of the World’, and that it was ‘the first political institution in the world which abolished imperialism, enunciated the principle of referendum and installed a caliph elected by the people in place of the king’.89 He referred to Jinnah’s letter to Gandhi in 1944 and Jinnah’s speech in 1945 to maintain that the Muslim League’s struggle was a struggle for a separate Islamic state.90 Interestingly, Sir Zafar Ullah Khan, who was severely criticised by Ahrar and other religious groups from the 1930s because of his Qadiani persuasion,91 accepted the resolution with the hope of drafting a constitution based on individualistic principles. His speech, in defence of the resolution, highlighted his conception of an Islamic state and society as having the highest standards of morality, freedom and equality. Whereas Liaquat Ali Khan elaborated the general feature of Islamic ideology in a rather loose totalitarian way, Zafar Ullah Khan stressed the idea of personal freedom and the ideal principles of Islam. Highlighting the Islamic economic system, he showed that Islam would give personal economic freedom and engender ‘co-partnership and profit sharing, rather than upon the lending of money on interest’.92 He was among those in the Constituent Assembly who strongly stressed the moral purity of Islamic society and rationally articulated the ban on the use of gambling and intoxicants.93 Going against the minority members, Zafar Ullah Khan emphasised that the sphere of politics and religion could not be considered separate and that ‘the Resolution does go further and require that the Constitution to be framed should be such by virtue of which the Muslims shall be enabled so to order their lives’.94 Standing with the varied and disparate ideas of Islam, the majority of Muslim members voted in favour, while non-Muslim members unanimously voted against the resolution, stressing the ‘principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice, as enunciated by Islam’.95

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In 1950 the government established a Talimat e Islami Board to collect and draft suggestions for including Islamic principles in the new constitution. An eminent religious scholar, Allama Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, who belonged to Deoband and Nadwa seminaries, became its president, after Dr Hamid Ullah’s short stay as the board’s head.96 After one year of consultation, the board proposed 22 points for the constitution. The crux of the proposal was to make Pakistan an Islamic state based on ideology instead of locality, geography or ethnic identity. Different schools of thought agreed to respect the freedom and rights of other sects to propagate their own version of Islam. The proposals considered Muslim Personal Law or Shariat Law (1937), which was re-enacted by the Provincial Assembly of Punjab in 1948, as a legislative arbitrator among multiple interpretations. The proposals maintained that ‘matters coming under the purview of personal law shall be administered in accordance with their respective codes of jurisprudence ( fiqh)’.97 The proposals also provided a solution for conflicting matters as ‘it will be desirable to make provision for the administration of such matters by judges belonging to their respective schools of thought’.98 The proposals, however, were not incorporated into the first constitution of Pakistan in 1956, which otherwise claimed to be an Islamic constitution.

Preparing for the double-deterritorialisation of pluralistic spaces: moral control and auqaf Excluding non-Muslims completely from the idea of Muslim politics also entailed the process of redefining pluralistic traces and practices at popular sacred sites. After promulgating the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act in 1948, and after the elections, the Punjab Legislative Assembly’s foremost task was to extend Islamisation to give control over Muslim shrines. The Auqaf Bill of 1951–2, however, came as a surprise to many of the members of the assembly, as there was no mention of such a bill during the elections that had taken place only a few months before.99 However, the ruling benches claimed that the idea of the bill was not new and earlier, in 1924 and 1937, similar efforts had already been made.100 The ruling benches maintained that earlier efforts to introduce such a bill had failed because of the fear of having nonreligious figures as members of the Muslim Auqaf Board. However, in the same way that, after partition, such fears had been shown to be

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groundless, this bill, which called for supervision of the shrines and their properties, remained in place.101 The ruling benches, though, maintained that there was clear evidence of the misappropriation of waqf property. However, they made it clear that the intention was to make the working of waqf transparent. The bill was not introduced to take complete control of waqf properties from the traditional caretakers, rather it restrained itself to the purpose of overseeing and registering waqf property. The ruling benches made it evident that, as the Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925 had had very good results for the Sikh community, the Auqaf Bill had to be introduced in order to eradicate social ills and redirect the flow of wealth otherwise being wasted by mutwallis. In this sense, the bill was presented as redressing a missed opportunity in history to bring shrines and other sacred sites under community control. Although many of the opposition members severely criticised the bill in some instances, the whole debate remained a discursive activity wrapped within the discourse of Shariat, during which both opposition and Treasury benches did their best to present their point of view according to religious texts. Voices like that of Pir Akbar Ali, as they appeared during the debates of 1942, about restricting the dancing of women in shrines, were not heard at all during these discussions. It seemed that, even to speak in favour of the mutwallis appeared taboo, because of the almost unanimous acceptance of mutwallis as ‘cheaters, usurpers, and fraudulent’ and ‘those who have been consuming the Waqf property without any right and legality’.102 This criticism also remained based on the implementation of Shariat; differences arose regarding the right or wrong way of achieving it. The criticism maintained that the newly developed state intended to take a mediatory position between devotees and shrines while considering Islamic Shariat as its ideal and equating the Waqf Board with Islamic Shariat.103 One of the major efforts of the bill remained that of defining the difference between public and private waqf property. Acknowledging the efforts of Muhammad Ali Jinnah in creating the Waqf Validating Act 1913 in order to legalise private waqf property, the Auqaf Bill was to define public waqf. As there was no longer colonial rule in the newly liberated Islamic state, the benefits of waqf had to reach the public. Opposition benches tried their best to convince Treasury benches to restrict the understanding of ‘public’ to ‘common people’. However, the

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Treasury benches defied all their efforts and found ways to create the possibility of taking waqf property under the direct control of the state. In this way, the Treasury benches equated public and state, in the absence of private waqf, and justified taking control of the use of the income. As in the case of waqf where a clear beneficiary was not present and family was not there, ‘only the state is to decide what should be religious, charitable and beneficial for the public’.104 The state benches made it clear that the bill was for the greater benefit of the public. The Treasury benches ensured that the waqf funds could not be used for any purpose other than that defined by waqf. Funds reserved (waqf) for a mosque could not be used on the mosque other than for that purpose, not even on another mosque.105 The opposition suggested to the Treasury benches the use of the word ‘poor’ instead of ‘public’, as Shariat ordered Muslims to give waqf income to the poor or to faqir. The opposition cited religious texts in order to validate its position. The Treasury benches were not slow to reply by alluding to such religious texts as Fatawa-e-Alamgiri etc., to put forward the claim that waqf was for God and for the welfare of its common people; hence the word ‘public’ could be used instead of ‘poor’.106 The Treasury benches maintained that waqf, once made, became the property of God. The profit from the waqf property could only be used for the welfare of the common people. Such a property could not be inherited or gifted and could not be sold. From there, it was not difficult to deduce that the state worked for God and therefore it was the duty of the state to take control of properties attached to the waqf and let the public, in general, take benefit from them. The opposition benches tried to reduce the chances of the state taking over waqf property; however, the Treasury benches convinced the opposition by condemning them as lawyers for mutwallis. For the opposition, this appeared to be a form of abuse, and an opposition member clarified that he was not a lawyer for mutwallis, instead he was only trying to work for Islamic Shariat in the Islamic Republic.107 The bill created a changed mood and a drift in the perception amongst colonial-urban elites regarding the site of shrines. Instead of taking shrines, or takia or astana, as customary sacred sites, the provincial assemblies’ debates remained focused on private or public waqf property. Members from both opposition and Treasury showed their unwillingness to take the side of the mutwallis or sajjada nashins and demonstrated a kind of a universal necessity to take action against

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the immoral activities of mutwallis. The opposition made it clear that the effort of the state was to appropriate the vulnerable property attached to the sacred spaces and the state intended to take that position.

Post-colonial politics, shrine-based practices and high morality The post-colonial state kept revivalist or puritan Muslim scholars only at a dialogical distance in the politics of Islam,108 and showed a profound wish to reshape laws that followed the religious interpretation of modern religious scholars,109 while institutionalising some of the ritualistic religious practices of its old allies, that is, of reformist Ahl e Sunnat Sufis. The post-colonial state began celebrating Eid Milad Un Nabi (the birth of the Prophet (PBUH))110 unofficially almost from the very start.111 However, the Punjab government seemed to take the lead and officially organised a large function in January 1950 when for the first time the Governor of Punjab, in the absence of the Provincial Assembly,112 had organised a programme in Shahi Qila (Fort), Lahore. Around 250,000 people gathered on that occasion.113 The day was celebrated through reading Naat and the eulogising (salam) of the Prophet Muhammad. While ensuring the day was officially celebrated, the state used its departments to decorate important buildings with lights and facilitate processions and other similar activities.114 It also supported the procession of Eid Milad Un Nabi in Lahore. The procession became a customary practice during the 1950s that used to end at Dalgiran Mosque, near Lahore railway station.115 However, in 1959, the procession appeared to end at the shrine of Data Sahib.116 On the other hand, the expectations of modern elites and the press in general were heightened regarding the ethics of possible religious expressions. During the period between 1950 and 1958 many instances of immoral or criminal acts at the site of a shrine or about shrine-based practices in general, and failed expectations of the Auqaf Board were reported.117 It is difficult to find a difference drawn between eccentric practices and criminality attached to pirs and pir parasti (devotion for the pir) in the newspaper reports and editorials published after the creation of Pakistan.118 An editorial report published in a newspaper in 1955 reported that the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) in Daska had caught a group of fraudulent men, disguised in the form of pirs, who were active in looting sadaloh (simpleton) rural women; the newspaper opines that this is not the first example of its kind; similar news was reported in newspapers

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almost daily after the creation of Pakistan.119 The editorial further opined that to be a pir seemed to be the easiest way to earn money, because of the superstitious beliefs of the rural people.120 On another occasion, a letter to the editor described how sorcerers in the guise of pirs came to the villages and, by performing karamats (miracles), stayed in villagers’ houses for many days. Further, these pirs made the women and girls of the villages dance to the melody of the dhol for many days. The letter suggests that these are not only immoral practices but also against Islamic Shariat and must be stopped.121 However, occasionally one also finds a suggestion from a newspaper that differentiated between criminals and the beliefs of the people, and suggested that police should do their task properly and politicians must participate actively in reforming activities in rural and backward areas to avoid such incidences.122 The reports did not save even the most venerated of the shrines; that is, the shrine of Data Sahib of Lahore. Amongst all the shrines, it was this shrine that was considered to be the one urban elites most preferred to visit. Even earlier than the official holiday given by the state on this day, most of the local markets and offices seemed to be closing down for a day on the urs of Data Sahib. However, an incident regarding the abduction of two women, only a few days after the urs in September 1958, by some of the mujawarins or mutwallis of the shrine of Data Darbar, Lahore, shook the followers. The incident took place when two women from Wazirabad came to pray at Data Darbar and a few mujawarins lured them in, apparently in order to show them sacred ziaratai (sacred belongings). Allegedly, the mujawarins abducted them and held them captive for two days. Later on, when one of the women succeeded in escaping from the cell where she had been kept, she approached the police and reported the incident. After searching for three or four days, police were able to arrest the runaway mujawarin.123 The incident took place only a few weeks before the imposition of the martial law of Ayub Khan in October 1958, and for some, became the immediate reasons for taking over shrines, especially that of Data Darbar Lahore.124

Islamic ideology and the ground for the Auqaf Ordinance 1959 By the time Ayub Khan came to power modern Muslim thinking had moved away from sectarian to translocal political Islam in its search for

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the conception of an Islamic state. The modern thought had stemmed from Iqbal’s ideas, which prevailed in the post-colonial state as universal political terms. Interestingly, at the same time, Iqbal maintained affectionate relations with as fundamentalist a figure as that of Maulana Abul Maududi and controversial Ahl e Quran scholars, such as Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz. It was Iqbal who nominated Maulana Maududi for the headship of the Islamic school, Dar ul Islam, opened at Pathankot and later on transferred to Mansura, Lahore.125 Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz also enjoyed Iqbal’s company126 and actually also worked alongside Maududi. Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz was part of Jamat e Islami until at least 1944. However, afterwards both of these religious scholars went their separate ways, and after another few years both were almost at daggers drawn with each other: Maududi became the champion of fundamentalist ideological teachings of Islam and Pervaiz became the head figure of modern Islam, after the creation of Pakistan. Both personalities, however, adopted the modern spirit of their time, which reflected more than anything in their respective conceptions of the modern Islamic state. Both of them employed economic systems – ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism without interest’ – as the ground on which their respective conceptions of state grew. Maulana Maududi, who also became a leader of Jamat e Islami in 1942, one of the most influential religious political parties in post-colonial Punjab, Pakistan, put forward his conception of an Islamic state as an all-pervasive ideology without any need for geography. For him, instead of having Pakistan for the Muslims of India, the whole of India should have been Islamised, and once it had happened, the whole of India would have become Pakistan. Further, for Maududi, a localised view of ideology was untenable. On the one hand we have to imbibe exactly the Quranic Spirit and identify our outlook with the Islamic tenets while on the other, we have to access thoroughly the developments in the field of knowledge and changes in conditions of life that have been brought during the last eight hundred years; and third, we have to arrange these ideas and laws of life on genuine Islamic lines so that Islam should once again become a dynamic force; the leader of the world rather than its followers.127

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However, for Pervaiz, the idea of a separate state, interpreting Iqbal through the development of events in the 1940s, was not only necessary at the time but also essential for the ideals of Islam to materialise.128 It was only within an Islamic state, that is, a-Din, that a complete ethicalreligious code for all aspects of the nation state could be realised.129 Interestingly, for him, the state shouldered all the responsibility for the growth and development of its citizens. Indeed, further, he considered that this responsibility resembled that of a socialist state, where ownership of most of the business enterprises belong to the state. His socialist bearing led him to consider Islamic teachings an all-pervasive political ideology, like a Leninist communist ideology, requiring a state to show its truth, triggering the development of its citizens.130 His emphasis on development made him abhor all those modes of thoughts and practice that stood in its way. He not only reduced the evidential position of Hadith for interpreting Qur’anic text, he emphasised the interpretation of the Qur’an through modern knowledge systems and broader history. However, he believed that whenever the human mind reached true understanding or ideology, that understanding would be the reflection of the Qur’an. His onslaught on superstitions was quite comprehensive, and he even reinterpreted such concepts as jinn and ghaib (unknown), etc., in his own unique way, and, like Feuerbach and Sir Syed, considered these phenomena as a human projection.131 Maududi and Pervaiz fought bitterly with each other for the dominance of their religious articulations and conceptions, never refraining from terming each other kafir or traitor, a new and increasingly popular form of religious-political abuse in Pakistan. However, both remained almost unanimous in their conception and criticism of shrine-based practices and their efforts to negotiate Islam within translocal or transnational discursive environments.132 With great emphasis on differentiating din (a term used in Islam for denoting its ability to provide guidance in all fields of life) from religion, Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz made religion a subjective experience with no objective validity for verifying the truth of human actions. In this way, he declined to accept any role of traditional-deviant spiritual practices in the development of the modern person.133 For him, Sufistic ethos was one such remnant of the country’s cultural tradition. It was essential to liberate oneself from the shackles of this tradition in order to grow stronger. Maulana Maududi held almost similar views regarding shrines

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and the pir-murid relationship as those of the Deobandi school of thought. His disposition towards owning the revivalist worldview of Islam made him abhor local customs and traditions.134 In his worldview, there was no place for shrine-based culture, ascetic life or sacredness attached to a dead saint.135 Unlike Maududi and Pervaiz, who retained an idealist position, Javed Iqbal’s religious interpretation was more pragmatic within the new political reality of Pakistan. After the imposition of Ayub Khan’s martial law, he published a book titled The Ideology of Pakistan and its Implementation. The book is an attempt to relocate Islamic ideology within the confines of the new post-colonial geographical boundaries. It did not dwell upon the contradictions of transregional Muslim identity and regionally confined Islamic ideology, but developed its contention ignoring these contradictions and simplifying the matter with an urge to implementing Islamic ideology in Pakistan. The book sought answers to the questions posed by President and Field Marshal General Ayub Khan.136 In order to retain nationalism without territory, Khan felt Islamic ideology was necessary for the ‘conditions of life in Pakistan’.137 However, though acknowledging the need to implement the ideology of Islam, he seemed confused, and questioned the author to provide concise answers for the implementing of Islamic ideology. Ayub Khan’s questions sought answers for strategies embedded within the ideology for an Islamic society that gave no place to national territorialism. He seemed to be quite disturbed that in the conditions of life in Pakistan it was very hard to transcend localities. He added his apprehension regarding conditions of life in Pakistan as ‘a collection of many races with different history’ and his urge was to define an ideology that could weld these discrete identities together. However, while reflecting on his global fears, he insisted that such an ideology must also combat the offensives of communism and Hinduism.138 Javed Iqbal came up with an answer that claimed to be embedded within the understanding of Islam and at the same time had the form of a ‘modern’ religious ideology that could easily be appropriated by the martial law government. His position equated Islamic ideology with Pakistani ideology and then linked it with the state in a manner in which Islam became an organ within the larger machinery of the state. However, Islam could not be understood other than as an animated force, and there would be no place for those, the thesis maintained, who

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enervated this organ – that is, both mulla and pir. He delineated the duty of the state as providing a guarantee of fundamental rights. In reciprocity, the state demands total submission and loyalty from its citizens. The thesis further explains the nature of fundamental rights and links it with Thomas Jefferson’s theory of fundamental rights.139 He further put forward the characteristic of an ideal citizen and equated this idea with the Islamic ideal of being a Momin,140 who can find the realisation of themselves within the post-colonial State of Pakistan. His position seemed to be making an effort to sketch an ideology that could create modern enlightenment and democratic culture with some sort of merging with an Islamic conception. His position criticised the Munir Commission Report, which had shown the impossibility of defining Islam and a Muslim because of sectarian differences of religious leaders in Pakistan.141 He made a serious effort to clear mullahs from the allegations in the report by claiming that only if Justice Munir deduced common elements from his findings could a definition of ‘Muslim’ be inferred.142 He opted for a simple position in his definition of Islam and satisfied his readers with the definition of a Muslim as one who believes that ‘[t]here is no God but God and Muhammad is the Prophet of God’.143 However, he made sure to complement his position with an emphasis on a Muslim’s need to grow further, saying that ‘unless and until actions and behavior of a person conform to his inner belief and conviction (iman) he lacks the necessary qualifications for being regarded as a Muslim in the full and the strict sense of the term’.144 For him, a Muslim had to develop to become an ideal Muslim, that is, Momin, through absorbing characteristics of love, freedom, disinterestedness ( faqr), courage, creative ability and historical context. For Javed Iqbal, though the character of a Muslim had previously been moulded by the institution of mysticism and forward-looking theologians, in the post-colonial society both could only be seen as dead forces. For him, leaving the early phase of Islam, the Muslim mystic renounced the world of matter by considering it to be profane, and became completely introverted. ‘If the idea of God is reduced to merely an Omnipotent Will which inculcates fatalism and encourages renunciation’145 the Muslim cannot develop into a forward-looking, courageous and powerful person. Similarly, if religious scholars relished closing down the doors of Ijtihad and ‘slavishly surrendering their ego

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to the dictates of the past authority . . . and thus ma[king] the entire religious thought in Islam practically stationary’, the religion could not engender the ideal and perfect human being. For the development of a Muslim, Javed Iqbal finds both customary mysticism or spiritualism and conservative religious scholarship to be unhealthy, unable to sit within the modern environment. However, for conservative religious scholars or mullahs, Javed Iqbal presents a training programme for them to improve themselves. The suggestions were given to grant special powers of the qazi to mullahs. In this fashion, the book elaborated the position of the mullah within society. It further maintained that in each mosque the office of imam should be established and these imams must be ‘graduates of Theology from our state recognised universities’. The book suggested that the imam must be given the training to be transformed into a social worker. The book maintains that: In their spare time, they should teach children and adults in the villages, assist in building clean and hygienic houses, wells, roads, etc. They should work in the fields and assist in the programmes of medical relief or other development programs.146 It charts a detailed programme for improving the condition of the mullah and giving him back his rightful, though lost, status in society. On the other hand, for sajjada nashins, khadmins, gaddi nashins or mujawars, there is no suggestion of such a training programme. Instead, for all connected with the monasteries, there are two options: ‘either be reformed’ as suggested by Allama Iqbal or be ‘removed from their selfcreated spiritual positions’.147 The suggestion by Allama Iqbal, to be reformed, as reinterpreted by Javed Iqbal, is to acquire again the highest position from which mysticism has fallen. ‘Islam has had too much of renunciation’,148 and Iqbal maintains that the mysticism enwrapped within renunciation gradually and invisibly unnerved the will of Islam and softened it to the extent of seeking relief from the religious discipline of the law of Islam. The nineteenth-century Muslim reformers rose in revolt against this mysticism and called Muslims to the broad daylight of the modern world.149

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In the modern world there is no place for ‘medieval mysticism’. Therefore there is no place in modern Pakistan for localised practices, until and unless these practices embrace the puritan spirit of the nineteenth-century mystic revolutionaries or religious revivalists, and abandon renunciation. Thus, Javed Iqbal provided ideological justification for taking over the control of shrines and shrine-based practices and transforming them into a new regimented form.

Conclusion In the context of the re-identifying process in colonial India, a reterritorialised identity, as an idea of Singular Islam amongst a colonial Muslim elite, prevailed in the first few decades of the twentieth century. The development of a Singular Muslim identity emerged as an overlapping consensual process; a handy ideology not only for competing with others, especially Hindus, but also for dominating the customary voices situated at the pluralistic sites of shrines. The ideology provided the platform for the politics of Muslim groups, especially the Muslim League, which steered through colonial politics aimed at creating a new Muslim state in India. However, the development opened up the possibility of another reterritorialisation process, a kind of doublereterritorialisation. The Muslim League and the colonial urban sector refused to locate themselves within the newly acquired land. Instead, the elite opted to re-own the ideology that already remained supportive for gaining new land and that already defined itself, amongst other contesting religious communities, by excluding other communities. The new situation opened up another kind of linking and unlinking process. For example, at the political level, the process ended up in defining, in the Objectives Resolutions, a clear demarcation of the difference between Muslims and non-Muslims, while outlining foundational principles for any future constitution. On a religious puritan level, the process led to an Anti-Ahmadiyya Movement to purify Muslim identity; the process also extended to the spiritual practices and the elites of the post-colonial state, in order to implement Islamisation, making efforts to begin the exclusion of deviant pluralistic practices from shrines. The process to Islamise sacred spaces, through waqf laws, started with creating a supervising and surveying board. However, dissatisfaction soon surfaced because of the perceived immoral practices of pirs

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constantly reported in newspapers. Whilst the post-colonial state kept puritan-revivalist religious groups at a dialogical level, it also started institutionalising some religious forms, closely associated with the consensual symbolic structure of the Singular Muslim identity. The post-colonial state found it convenient to institutionalise the forms of religion that did not threaten the structure and working of the inherited state. The political instability of the post-colonial state pushed it to develop more clearly and visibly the relationship with unique religious forms. The inability of the initial period of the post-colonial state to achieve political stability contributed to autocratic governments taking over the reins of Pakistan. In order to implement an Islamic ideology in Pakistan, Javed Iqbal, while re-appropriating the thoughts of Allama Iqbal, guided the autocratic government of Ayub Khan to completely take over sacred sites from traditional caretakers. He provided a doubleedged programme for Islamisation that on the one hand would start a process of implementing true reformative Islam, whilst on the other hand gave complete control of traditional spiritual sites to the autocratic state. This Islamisation was to initiate reforms in the Islamic mode of teaching, for the development of the caretaker of the mosque and at the site of a mosque. However, for shrines and shrine-based practices, there was no option but to leave their traditional positions and let Islamised spirituality, as conceived by Iqbal and the other thinkers, prevail.

CHAPTER 3 LEGALITY, JUDICIAL PROCESSES AND WAQF: A TRANSITION FROM MORAL TO TOTAL CONTROL OF SHRINES

The Waqf Ordinance of 1959 provided the post-colonial state, for the very first time, with legal justification and a framework to take direct control of shrines. The moment put unprecedented emphasis on direct and total control of shrines and remained an essential element for all the later similar legal acts. However, the ordinance, though unprecedented, was one in a continuous line of legal acts aimed at taking care of shrines and waqf, with an evident difference of emphasis. This chapter tries to unearth that difference through analysing the structure of legal acts and their link with the ground of identity. The chapter shows that earlier legislative initiatives, emerging amidst the process of reterritorialising identity, were directed more towards moral control than claiming total control of shrines. These legislative activities, such as the bill for the creation of the Auqaf Board in 1952 and the prohibition on female singers in 1943, gave the framework for policing, moral control and surveying the local sacred sites. However, since 1959 there has been a clear continuity of emphasis on direct control of the sacred sites. This continuity of emphasis became possible because double-reterritorialised identity started imagining the localised spaces of devotion as deviant. The chapter is divided into three sections analysing legislative activities, laws and judicial processes. In the first section, the chapter

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discusses the legal acts, such as the Mussalman Waqf Act of 1923 (MWA-1923), the Music in Muslim Shrines Act, 1942, which prohibited the singing and dancing of women and girls in shrines (Female Singers’ Prohibition Act (FSP-1943)) and Auqaf Board Act of 1952 (ABA-1952). The MWA-1923 was a centralised legislative effort,1 embedded in the tension between the prevalence of private property and endowed or waqf property.2 A change can be seen by analysing the structure and context of two other Acts, the Music in Muslim Shrines Act, 1942 and the Auqaf Board Act of 1952. Standing on reterritorialised identity, both acts highlight the urge of the colonial and post-colonial elite to identify the site of shrine only in the reformative mood. With a little difference of emphasis, the former legislative effort shows the urge of the members of the legislative council to have moral control of the site of the shrine. However, the latter legislative activity presented itself to have a better control of the income and the site of the shrine; the discussions in the Punjab legislative assembly during endorsing the bill expressed the readiness of the members to take shrines under state’s direct control in 1952 – 3. The second section traces the legal activities with and after the Waqf Ordinance of 1959. The ordinance, instead of leaving control of the local space of a shrine to local communities, takes complete control of those spaces through the lego-religious concept of waqf property. The section shows that this conceptualisation enables the state to take control of all those sacred sites that are profitable, especially shrines. This section examines the changes in the ordinance by later governments and shows that, though there are differences and similarities among many revisions, such as the Federal Waqf Properties Act, 1976 and Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1979, no change moved away decisively from the spirit of the Ordinance of 1959. Further, in order to support state policies, the unique judicial interpretation paved the way by unearthing the legal confusions and contradictions inherent in the legal ordinances. The third section, therefore, examines the way the judicial process resolves the tensions emerging out of controlling techniques and vagueness of concepts used for taking control of shrines. The section shows that the post-colonial judiciary reinterprets the religious concepts like Shariat, shrine, waqf, private property, etc., to relocate their meaning within the changed politico-legal context. The section shows that through re-interpretative activity, the judiciary not only brings out its unique

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religious interpretations but also provides legitimacy to the working of the post-colonial state.

Muslim waqf acts, communal identity and moral control The promulgation of the Mussalman Waqf Act of 1923 was a universal legal moment for enumerating and registering the Muslim Auqaf (endowments) in British India. The need arose because of the already promulgated Mussalman Waqf Validating Act of 1913 that made it possible for a Muslim elite to declare the property in perpetuity for its children as a family waqf (endowment).3 The Waqf Validating Act of 1913 was the partial invocation of the traditional Muslim concept of waqf that makes a certain property permanently dedicated for the family, public and even religious purposes at the same time; a customary practice in precolonial Muslim India.4 As the British rule began introducing permanent settlement and laws connected with land ownership in north and east India, the numbers of waqf property increased exponentially; waqf appeared as a solution to keep large immovable property permanently intact, along with keeping the status of the family high, and in some cases saving tax.5 However, the permanent dedication of waqf property collided with the new environment and concluded by preventing the application of waqf for family (private waqf), although it was carried on as religious and charitable (public) waqf by British judicial authorities in the late nineteenth century. The restrictions on dedicating property as family waqf generated a struggle within the Muslim elite to regain permission; the result was the promulgation of the Waqf Validating Act in 1913. The Muslim elite won legislative rights for family (private) waqf while unsettling the status of religious and charitable (public) waqf at the same time.6 Family waqf for the Muslim elite found its special place in the Mussalman Waqf Act of 1923: Wakf means the permanent dedication by a person professing the Mussalman faith of any property for any purpose recognised by the Mussalman Law as religious, pious or charitable, but does not include any Wakf, such as is described in section 3 of the Mussalman Wakf Validating Act, 1913, under which any benefit is for the time being claimable for himself by the person by whom the Wakf was created or by any of his family or descendants.7

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By making purposes of dedication compatible with the Mussalman Law, the Waqf Act provided a different space for public waqf – a specific religious (public) space. The act made a clear distinction between two types of waqf and, after giving legal acknowledgement to the family space, made the rest of the ‘unregistered’ and ‘undefined’ public waqf accountable.8 The Waqf Acts and the colonial judicial discussions did not make clear the conditions for qualifying a property or a sacred site as waqf. The British judicial decisions provided some clarity by maintaining that a religious and charitable (public endowments) site should be understood as waqf. The decisions also always required the condition of the presence of a clear written deed for legally endorsing any property as waqf. However, the British administrative decisions to interfere at some of the sacred sites created confusion on the limits of considering the sacred sites and the property attached to them as waqf.9 Further, the legal permissibility of family waqf created the need for registering public waqf in the whole of India, largely to satisfy British administration but also partially to reform them.10 The confusion prevailed, however, and when the Mussalman Waqf Act of 1923 was promulgated it did not clarify the definition of public waqf, but showed its intent to ‘manage’ waqf property properly so that the property that was ‘being wasted or misappropriated’11 could be saved. The act differentiates between the benefits coming out of the working of waqf and benefits taken by the mutwalli (caretaker) in their position of being the caretaker of the shrine or mosque.12 The division remained important for saving mutwallis from acquiring a benefit for the personal use, but at the same time, this definition bracketed mutwallis within a category of beneficiary. The division did not make the local community or the followers of the sacred site beneficiaries.13 The act binds each mutwalli to furnish before the court the monetary details of the previous five years and of the property attached to the sacred site. The mutwalli was to submit not only the gross annual income from the waqf property attached with the sacred site and ‘a description of the wakf property sufficient for the identification thereof’,14 but also the income record of the previous five years. The act also made it compulsory for the mutwalli to furnish before the court the amount of the ‘Government revenue and cesses, and of all rents annually payable in respect of the Waqf Property’.15

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The act reduced the justification of those shrines, being already run through the force of custom, where a mutwalli was appointed through progeny. It made this position redundant by matching it with the emphasis on the waqf created through family or descendants of the family for personal benefits. Though the act permitted personal benefits for the mutwallis, at the same time it highlighted their fluid and almost redundant existence. Further, as most of the shrines of the Muslim Sufi saints grew without any declared form of trust or any defined origin, the existence of a caretaker at any such shrine started losing its meaning. The act abstracted the position of mutwalli and made it accountable not only to the community but also to the state. It triggered the disenchantment process with the customary pluralistic spaces and provided the justification for the already-existing criticism by religious revivalists and reformists of shrine-based practices. During the rule of the Unionists in Punjab, another act prohibiting the singing by females at shrines, with the clear intent of reformation, was promulgated in 1943. The act came after the promulgation of the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937 (Shariat Act), which had already created a desire in the Muslim community for them to devise their own rules to take control of their auqaf. The impact of the Shariat Act paved the way for the Muslim members of the Unionist Party to devise a strategy, if not for controlling and surveying Muslim waqf, at least for demonstrating the implementation of reformative principles. FSP-1943 believed shrines to be potential sites for implementing reformative principle; it was an attempt to replicate the moral standards of a mosque at shrines. Before mentioning the main clause, the act gives a definition of a Muslim shrine as ‘a shrine of a recognised Muslim saint and shall include the premises of the shrine and the premises owned by and attached to the shrine’.16 It is interesting that a Muslim shrine is understood as being of ‘a recognised Muslim saint’. It seems the act differentiates between recognised and non-recognised Muslim saints. In another sense, the act singled out shrines of Muslim saints from the multiple unrecognised shrines of saints, not popular as Muslim in the sense understood by the colonial urban elite; an effort to distinguish recognised Muslim saints from the pluralistic customary sacred spaces. However, the main clause of the act, that provides details for the punishment for singing or dancing at Muslim shrines says:

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If any woman or girl sings to the accompaniment of a musical instrument or dances with or without a musical instrument in a Muslim Shrine, she shall be guilty of an offence under this Act and shall be liable on conviction to be punished with fine not exceeding five hundred rupees or with imprisonment of either description for a term not exceeding six months or with both such fine and imprisonment.17 From a gender perspective the punishment can be considered as an attempt to control a woman’s body and agency in the space of shrines, as Purewal and Kalra show.18 Important though the gender perspective is, it misses the point that this clause represents continuity in controlling the space of shrines – a site in need of reform. The shrines themselves turned into a female space and thus complemented the generalised control on woman’s bodies and agency; the domination of patriarchal Muslim elite morality upon the immoral, deviant and archaic sites of shrine.

Punjab Auqaf Act and the Auqaf Board of 1952: a re-emphasised moral control on shrines Although the constitutional development started quite early, almost with the creation of the new state of Pakistan,19 the process had also to face hurdles due to the conflicting political directions. The Dominion or State of Pakistan, as it emerged out of the struggle of minority Muslims in colonial India, was soon caught up in the ideological debates around the politics of Islam. As most of the religious political parties found renewed life in the new context, standing on the already reterritorialised Muslim identity that was also instrumental in acquiring new land, they started a full-throttled struggle to make the new constitution of Pakistan completely Islamic. The state found itself caught up in a kind of tension between reterritorialisation and the double reterritorialisation identity-making process. The state itself developed a kind of doubleterritorialised identity through the Objectives Resolution to devise a fundamental principle for any future constitution, while excluding all other religious communities as minorities. The post-colonial state showed its willingness to include religious symbolism within its legal framework, as the details of the politics of Islam remained outside the state institutions. Although the

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re-promulgation of the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937 in 1948 was considered an unconvincing effort for extending Sharia-based Islamisation,20 for the ruling benches the act was a step towards extending Sharia in the largest province of West Pakistan. The act states that: Notwithstanding any rule of custom or usage, in all question regarding succession (whether testate or intestate), special property of females, betrothal, marriage, divorce, dower, adoption, guardianship, minority, legitimacy or bastardy, family relations, wills, legacies, gifts, religious usages or institutions including Waqfs, trusts and trust property, the rule of decision shall be the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) in cases where the parties are Muslims. The act paved the way for taking care of waqf properties and brought them under the Muslim Personal Law, that is, Shariat. Pursuing his legal duty, the Governor General ordered the Governor of Punjab to enact the Punjab Muslim Auqaf Survey (Amendment) Act in 1950 as the Punjab Act XXXVI,21 after the Punjab Assembly had already been dissolved.22 The purpose of the act was to make a survey of waqf properties in the province.23 Through this act, the state bound the mutwalli (caretaker) to register its waqf through nazim or nazim e aala to be appointed in his area.24 The Act provides the authority for nazim to enter upon any property which he believes to be a Waqf Property; to call for and inspect documents relating to the said property; to call for and inspect accounts of income from the said property, and its expenditure; and, summon and record the statement of any person in possession of any such property in any capacity or believed to be in possession of information relating to it.25 However, as the new Punjab Assembly started its business in 1951,26 the bill had to receive legislative permission, and for this a revised Muslim Auqaf Bill was presented in the Assembly. The Minister of Education, the Honourable Abdul Hameed Khan Dasti, presented the bill in the Punjab Assembly.27 Interestingly, the bill presented was a mixture of the Punjab Muslim Auqaf Bill of 1923 and the unsuccessfully presented

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bill of Mian Maqbool Ahmed, a minister in the Unionist government in 1937. While presenting the bill in the Assembly he did not forget to mention the background and the previous efforts to present this ‘much needed bill’. His justification was that it should have been approved and enforced since 1924. For the minister, it had been Muslims’ deepest wish to introduce such a bill that could make the waqf properties attached to the sacred sites accountable.28 The minister maintained that the condition of auqaf at a certain moment in time shows the manners and culture of a nation and reflects its effectiveness. Auqaf also shows the inner spiritual condition of a nation, he opined. And as far as the Haquq ul Ibad, or rights for the people, are concerned, the waqf laws demonstrate how fairly the nation uses the waqf properties. He believed that auqaf is based on two types of principles found within Shariat and religion, accordingly: one type of principle links all types of waqf with God and in this way takes it away from private ownership and places it in the hands of God;29 the second type of principle is that the benefit of any such property must be for the general public. He was of the opinion that his views were undeniably religious, though a little later he mentioned that he had already received dozens of letters against the bill. Not finding the religious position sufficient, the minister mixed his ideas with political wisdom by saying that his government felt this burden and decided to make income out of the properties of auqaf. Afterwards, he defined his version of history by locating origins of all auqaf as initiated by the saints (buzarg) for righteousness. These auqaf were the sources from which people of a nation gained spiritual and physical nourishment. He went on to insist that all these waqf and the attached properties, originated by saints for righteous purposes, were being used for bad purposes. To prove his case, he provided examples of the shrines of Hazrat Shah Abul Muali, Bibi Pak Daman and Miani Sahib. He said that the properties attached with these shrines had been sold in the recent past and the nation still had tears in its eyes from the pain these incidences inflicted. Therefore, he introduced the bill to stop these ‘innovations’ and to provide benefits to the common public out of the income of these auqaf.30 Despite heated debate on the bill and opposition’s severe criticism of the intentions of the ruling party,31 parliament finally approved the Auqaf Board Bill and the Auqaf Act, 1952.32 The Auqaf Board was to

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work as an overseer and an auditor of the monetary benefits coming out of waqf properties. The board was to ‘maintain a complete and authentic record of rights, containing full information relating to the origin, income, object and beneficiaries of every Waqf’. The board was also to work closely with mutwallis (the traditional caretakers) of the waqf, meeting them whenever necessary and giving them ‘directions for the proper administration of Waqf and to institute inquiries when necessary, relating to the administration of any Waqf’.33 The board was to ensure that mutwallis must specify the object to which the income from the created waqf should be applied. The board was also to work out whether the income was being used to the best benefit of the Muslim community and not against the tenets of Islam. It was also to see better use of surplus income and should invest that income, in the beneficial sector. Though the board was to supervise the working of waqf, the provisions of the rules did not allow direct control of any waqf or the replacing of already working mutwalli. The act says that: the general supervision of every Waqf shall vest in the Board which shall do all things considered by it to be necessary, control and administration of such Waqf and for the application of the funds to purposes for which it exists. However, control here does not mean direct control of the shrine or any other sacred place, until and unless some such situation arose. The act maintained that ‘such supervision shall not authorize the removal of a duly appointed Mutwalli except under the other provisions of this Act’.34 The possibility of changing the mutwalli or taking a waqf property into direct control, therefore, was concealed but not intended. The act operated through subtle but tactical differences between waqf and waqf property. Although it defined mutwalli and waqf, however, the earlier Muslim Auqaf Act of 1923 did not specify waqf property. This act not only links waqf with the tenets of Islam or Muslim Personal Law (Shariat Law) but also clearly defines the concept of waqf property and thereby gives this concept a separate and distinct enumerable value. The act understands a waqf property as: all property or interest of whatever nature in property, lawfully dedicated, granted or used so as to constitute a Waqf, and includes

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the property or interest acquired with the sale proceeds or in exchange of or from the income arising out of the property or interest so dedicated, granted or used.35 The act also clearly defines the meaning of ‘family’ and thereby provides a limitation on the use of private waqf as well as taking away the legitimation of public waqf started without any specified origin. The act limits the benefits of private waqf or the Waqf Validating Act 1913 by clearly defining the progeny of ‘great grandparents’ or ‘descendants of the children’.36 This defining of family also had an indirect impact on the legitimacy of the shrines like Bibi Pak Daman or Data Sahib, Lahore, that did not have a specified origin for tracing the start of the auqaf, and the mutwallis or mujawars of these waqf claimed their ownership or legitimacy to run these auqaf from the customary continuity of the progeny. The act defines public waqf as that which starts as private waqf ‘but the ultimate benefit whereof has become available for the public in general . . . by the reason of the death of the Waqif (Waqf maker) . . . or . . . the extinction of the line of his family or descendants, or otherwise’.37 Public waqf without any specified origin seems to be losing its legitimacy.

Controlling shrines through Auqaf Ordinances: post-colonial coloniality or double re-territorialisation With the introduction of One Unit by Major General Iskandar Mirza, the provinces of West Pakistan were merged with each other to have a single West Pakistan legislative assembly. The political upheavals, however, paved the way for Iskandar Mirza to step down and hand over the supreme powers of the country to the Chief Martial Law Administrator, General Ayub Khan. Putting the Constitution of 1956 to one side, Ayub Khan started his own programme of reforming Pakistan society. He redirected the movement of the post-colonial state towards developmental concerns, in a sense moving away ‘from the question from why Pakistan was created to where Pakistan was heading’.38 On the one hand he introduced such drastic changes as that of land reforms for introducing economic reforms and on the other hand he allowed making such activities as family laws to ‘establish greater consistency between the legally permissible and morally acceptable in

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matters affecting Muslim marriage, divorce, the age of consent and inheritance’.39 On the more religious side, he kept away from the impact of revivalist mullahs, at least for the few initial years, moved closer to the modern religious intelligentsia and favoured the introduction of many religious-social reforms. Following the re-appropriation of Iqbal, by both Javed Iqbal and the modernist scholars, and moving on the ground of double re-territorialisation, he took sacred sites into direct state control as waqf properties. On 17 April 1959, the martial law government of Ayub Khan promulgated an ordinance, the West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance (WPWPO),40 ‘in pursuance of the Presidential Proclamation of the 7th day of October 1958 and in the exercise of all the powers enabling him in this behalf’.41 The martial law authorities were not bound by previous legal developments in the legislative history of Punjab. Though the ordinance was to ‘consolidate and amend the laws relating to the management of Waqf properties in the Province of West Pakistan’,42 this ordinance superseded all the laws regarding waqf made after and before the independence of Pakistan and was directly linked with the Religious Endowment Act of 1863.43 The ordinance made it clear that government could repeal all the previous legal enactments made so far. However, the ordinance pronounced that everything done, action taken, obligation, liability, penalty or punishment incurred, inquiry or proceedings commenced . . . rule made and order issued under any of the provisions of the . . . enactments’ shall remain continued ‘if not inconsistent with the provisions of this Ordinance’.44 The ordinance made its intent quite clear that it was an operational device to nationalise waqf properties and that any obstacles to it would not be tolerated. Moving away from the Punjab Muslim Auqaf Survey Act, 1950, the West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance (WPWPO) 1959 ordinance made waqf property a central concept for defining and remembering sacred spaces. In this way, the ordinance not only made waqf property equivalent to waqf but also reduced the designation of sacred sites as waqf property. The ordinance defined waqf property as ‘of any kind permanently dedicated to by a person professing Islam for any purpose

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recognised by Islam as religious pious or charitable’, whereas earlier the Punjab Muslim Auqaf Survey Act, 1950 and the Auqaf Board Act, 1952 had kept the distinction between waqf and waqf property. The acts of 1950 and 1952 gave almost the same definition of waqf that the ordinance gave to waqf property, with the difference that the acts of 1950 and 1952 were cautious about using the words ‘religion’ or ‘Islam’ and instead used Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) to define waqf dedicated by a Muslim. The acts of 1950 and 1952 also did not say ‘person professing Islam’ but, rather, restrained themselves from using the word Muslim and linked it with the recognition of Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) as religious, pious or charitable. The intelligentsia behind the creation of the ordinance, having already owned double-reterritorialised identity, had taken Islam as the singular defining concept and, therefore, made the word ‘Muslim’ synonymous with ‘Islam’ in their minds.45 In its intention to take over control of waqf sites, the ordinance defined waqf property at considerable length, and also included charitable purposes within the definition of property. Directly invoking the Charitable Endowment Act, 1863 enabled the ordinance to ignore the difference between the charitable and religious. The ordinance defined waqf property in detail and included almost all the possible means for religious auqaf to earn income within the definition of waqf property. It considered all those properties ‘used from time immemorial for any purpose recognised by “Islam” as religious, pious or charitable’, even where no evidence of dedication is found, ‘property allotted in exchange of property left in India’, ‘property of any kind acquired through the sale proceeds of income arising out of Waqf Property’, ‘the income from boxes placed at a shrine and offerings and offerings or subscriptions for charitable purposes’, and all those charitable purposes as ‘relief of the poor, education, worship, medical relief, maintenance of shrines or the advancement of any other object of charitable, religious or pious nature’. The ordinance left no space within the rules to allow the donated income to go to the traditional caretaker or mutwalli and closed down all avenues for the mutwalli to collect money. The ordinance initiated an office of administrator, later on terming this office Chief Administrator of Auqaf,46 and authorised the office not only with the authority of sole corporation but also Chief Mutwalli, merging both colonial and traditional responsibilities in the OFFICE appointed by the government. The administrator was to take control of

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the waqf properties and take their control under his own office. The office of administrator was to prepare and maintain accounts for the record of all properties and income arising from waqf properties. The ordinance created an Auqaf fund for keeping ‘all money received or realized by the Administrator in respect of properties under his control and management’. However, it not only made the administrator responsible for creating a record of the monetary transactions but also for providing authority to sell waqf property, if the administrator thought it appropriate. In contradiction to many previous Muslim Auqaf Acts and with a majority of Muslim opinion against the selling of waqf property, the ordinance gave the right to sell waqf properties to the office of the Chief Administrator. Although the ordinance gave authority to the courts to listen to decisions against the acts of Chief Administrator, it made sure that ‘no suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall be instituted against any person for anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done under this ordinance’.47 The ordinance authorised the direct control of properties attached to waqf, but remained vague regarding the administration and management of the religious activities in the waqf spaces. Customarily, at the sacred spaces of shrines mutwallis or mujawars perform the religious practices, i.e. bathing the grave of the saint or dua (prayer) ceremonies, thereby spreading the blessings from the saint to the pilgrim. The ordinance, however, by initiating new offices of administrators under the direct control of the government. authorised the administrators to ‘take over, and assume the administration, control, management and maintenance’ of a waqf property whenever they found it feasible, only issuing a notification for their act.48 Through this act, the administrator would have the authority to prepare schemes for the maintenance and administration of waqf properties. The administrator ‘shall give effect to such wishes of the person dedicating as can be ascertained, and to which effect can be reasonably given’. However, for all those waqf properties where it was not clear that any ‘dedication’ had been made and/or was not available at all, the administrator would be free to take action on his own. Throughout Ayub Khan’s rule, the basic structure and spirit of the West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1959, remained unchanged; rather, its intent to take over waqf properties was strengthened through the legislative and Chief Administrator’s enactments, issued regularly

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through amendments. In the first of this long line of amendments, and only two days before taking over the first ever waqf property of the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib in Lahore, an amendment issued by the Governor of West Pakistan repealed the Punjab Muslim Auqaf Act, 1951 (Punjab Act XXXVI of 1952).49 In April, after taking over a dozen shrines, the WPWPO (Amendment), 1960, was enforced by the Governor of West Pakistan. This ordinance (amendment) further increased the authority of the Chief Administrator Auqaf, providing him with more control on rental or leasing issues involved in taking over waqf property and giving him powers to enforce his acts through strict penal actions. The Chief Administrator also provided authority to take mutwallis under his direct control and to extract information from any person regarding waqf property. In the following year, September 1961, another WPWPO (Amendment), 1961, came into force, which further increased the authority of the Office of Administrator. Now waqf included also the property permanently dedicated for the purposes of a mosque, Takia, Khankah, Dargah or other shrines. Article 225 of the constitution of 1962 gave permanent effect to the WPWPO, 1961, within the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (1962).50 After the separation of East Pakistan in December 1971 and the dissolution of one unit of West Pakistan into provinces, the WPWPO, 1961, came under the provincial matter and became Punjab West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance. Even with this devolution, the Waqf Ordinances faced no more significant changes51 until the last years of the Bhutto government. The initial few years of that government emphasised socialistic reforms and a popular engagement with Sufi shrines;52 however, the last few years saw a swing towards increased Islamising effort, as it helped the government to engage with opposition gathering around the slogan of ‘Nizam e Mustafa’ (the system of the Prophet PBUH).53 In 1975– 6 the Bhutto government started to feel the need to revisit WPWPO, 1961.54 To fulfil this purpose, a new revised bill regarding auqaf was devised by the Ministry of Religion and presented to the Senate for its approval. The Auqaf Federal Act Bill, for centralising the management of waqf properties, was presented in the Senate by the Minister of Religious and Minorities Affairs, Maulana Kausar Niazi, in 1976. The bill was presented with the main objective of promoting Islamic values through better organisation of properties attached to shrines and

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mosques. The minister maintained that through this bill, government would appoint a chief administrator in each province under the Central Administrator General, Auqaf Department. The minister claimed that because the provinces had their own auqaf policies, they did not have good coordination among themselves. He claimed that even opposition had demanded better control of auqaf matters and therefore he hoped that the opposition would support the bill. The minister claimed further that through this bill the government would be able to take complete control from all the illegal occupants of the properties attached to shrines. He maintained further that this bill was completely Islamic and was put forward to completely reform the shrines and mosques through taking over their control.55 The bill introduced a hierarchy of administrators and at the same time increased their authority, while giving further clarity to the rules for keeping accounts of the waqf property. It created a post of Administrator General under the federal government and linked it with an administrator in each province. The bill gave the Administrator General responsibility for a federal auqaf fund, liable to be audited yearly, for monetary transactions. It also increased the authority of the administrator to plan and seek the development of projects on shrines and waqf property costing more than 5,000 rupees.56 The bill kept the previous authority of the administrator to sell waqf property but defined more clearly the reasons for selling: to secure maximum economic benefits, to serve the best public interest, to effect the wishes of the person dedicating the property, to enable the property to be used for the purpose recognised by Islam as religious, pious or charitable, to provide maintenance to the unemployed, to provide education, medical aid, housing, public facilities and services such as roads, sewerage, gas and electric power and, finally, to prevent danger to life.57 At the end of the published bill, the Minister of Religious Affairs, under the signatory of member-in-charge, clearly defined the objectives of and reasons for the bill. The statement says: In pursuance of the Principles of State Policy laid down in the Constitution it is imperative that steps be taken to enable the Muslims of Pakistan to order their lives in accordance with the fundamental principles of Islam, to provide them facilities to understand the meaning of life as laid down in the Holy Quran

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and Sunnah to promote unity in the observance of Islamic moral standards and to secure proper organisation of Auqaf and mosques. In order to achieve the above objectives and to ensure uniformity and coordination throughout the country, it has been found expedient to provide for the proper management and administration of Auqaf under Federal control.58 The emphasis on Islam and morality seem to be a clear shift from the underlying policies of Ayub Khan, who introduced the Waqf Property Ordinance in order to introduce social reforms at the sacred religious sites. However, it seems that the Bhutto government’s Minister of Religion was quite anxious to convince people that the new Auqaf Bill would introduce changes in the environment for ordering their lives according to the Islamic principles for Pakistani Muslims. The 1976 Act not only increased the state’s centralised authority, it also authorised the auqaf administrators to take control of even religious activities at shrines. However, although previously every attempt to control the shrines had shown its intention to control the means of income of the waqf property as thoroughly as possible, it had never demonstrated the intention to control the religious activities through state bureaucracy as clearly as was shown here. The act clearly states that ‘ [c]ontrol and management shall include control over the performance and management of religious and spiritual, cultural and other services and ceremonies (Rasoomat) at or in a Waqf Property’.59 In this sense, the act reduced the existing vagueness in the WPWPO of 1960. Rather, moving ahead, the Act extended its authority to prescribing the syllabus and curricula for the proper education and training of Imams and Khatibs and of the other employees of the Auqaf institutions in Pakistan; and prescribing and regulating the standards syllabi and curricula of institutions providing Islamic religious education.60 The act extended its control from waqf seminaries to general religious education in all those educational institutes providing religious education, whether waqf or not. However, after another year of the enforcement of the Auqaf Federal Act, 1976, the Bhutto government was overthrown by the army Chief of

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Staff, General Zia ul Haq and the post-colonial state faced its third period of martial law. The martial law authorities came forward to free public life from the tensions created by the democratic regime. The regime claimed it would ease political tension and introduce elections within 90 days. However, as the days passed the martial law authorities increased their grip on the state structure and unleashed their own reformist agenda. Their political strategy was to defer the election and deny the rights of political parties to form party-based government. The regime focused on two aspects: to introduce some form of civilian government in the provinces;61 and to introduce Islamic reforms. For the first focus, the regime announced the creation of civilian government in the provinces. For the second, multiple Islamic rules were introduced. As auqaf was quite important even for this regime, the authorities introduced a new ordinance, the Punjab Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1979, and merged both of their focuses within the newly enforced ordinance. Although the Punjab Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1979, included almost all the previous developments that had been included in previous auqaf laws, it also introduced changes in major directions. The ordinance changed the federal character of the 1976 Federal Act and, in alignment with its policy to introduce civilian governments within provinces, decentralised the Auqaf Act. The ordinance reads: ‘[the] Government shall appoint a Chief Administrator of Auqaf for the Province of the Punjab and may by order, vest in him, the Waqf properties situated in the Province including all rights, assets, debts, liabilities and obligations relating thereto’.62 In this way, it reintroduced colonial divisions of subjects, as through the dyarchy of 1924 and later on through the constitution of 1935. However, despite its making auqaf a provincial matter, the ordinance kept the Auqaf Federal Control Act, 1976 in force, unless it was inconsistent with the provisions of the newly enforced Ordinance of 1979. The ordinance could not continue to be an exception to the increasing Islamisation and subsequent policies. As the earlier ordinances made it incumbent on the head of the auqaf department to be Muslim, even the Auqaf Bill of 1951– 2 made it necessary for the president and the members of the Auqaf Board to be Muslims, the ordinance of 1979, with the amendment of 1984, even made it necessary for the deputy administrators to be Muslim, along with the Muslim Chief

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Administrator. The ordinance maintains: ‘provided that no person be appointed as Deputy Administrator unless he is a Muslim’.63 Going even further, the ordinance barred the appointment of a non-Muslim as an officer, stating that ‘no person shall be appointed as an Officer unless he is a Muslim’.64 The ordinance (amendment, 1984) also links selling of waqf properties with the ‘main purpose’, as it is according to the Islamic teaching, for which the waqif (waqf maker) dedicated the waqf. As the rules for waqf properties since 1959 provided authority at the discretion of Chief Administrator Auqaf to sell waqf property for reasons he considered befitting, the Ordinance (Amendment, 1984), 1979, introduced a ‘religious’ obligation to follow the intent of the waqif.65 Even where the Chief Administrator considered it necessary to sell waqf property, the ordinance binds the authority as ‘subject to the provisions of subsection (2) of section 15 where it should be satisfied that circumstances exist which make it necessary to sell or otherwise dispose of any Waqf Property in order’.66 And even where the auqaf authority finds it necessary to sell out waqf property the authorities should see first that the ‘sale-proceeds shall first be applied for satisfying the main purpose of the Waqf’.67 The Punjab Waqf Properties Ordinance (PWPO), 1979, has acquired a permanent legal position since its enforcement and no government since has felt the need to make any significant change to it. The death of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had already deflated the socialist philosophy of nationalisation of business corporations. Zia ul Haq himself started dismantling the national-socialist acts of the Bhutto government. The privatisation policies were resumed forcefully under ensuing governments. Although Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and leader of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), continued a few socialist ideas, she put forward the idea of public/private partnerships and showed a positive leaning towards privatisation, while the other ruling political group, led by the Muslim League and headed by Nawaz Sharif, never hesitated to support increased privatisation. However, the intention of these governments could not change the nationalisation assumptions of waqf properties. During the post-Zia period, especially in the Musharraf government, the emphasis was on reforming institutions and creating better administration. Instead of changing the fundamental principles of the Waqf Ordinance, the state focused on improving the functioning of the

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department. To pursue this policy, detailed rules were devised for managing shrines, mosques and waqf property.68 The rules dealt mainly with the appointment of managers, a scheme for the management of waqf property, the appointment of a Religious Purposes Committee and the leasing of waqf properties. Instead of taking waqf properties as a singular concept, these rules clearly define distinct management for the shrines and mosques. The rules lay down that, in the case of the mosque, the manager of a waqf is responsible for ensuring that ‘religious services and other functions performed therein are continued’.69 The rules also make it binding that in the case of the shrine ‘the conduct and regulation of the established rites and ceremonies [should be performed] in accordance with the tenets of the saint or sect concerned’.70 The rules, while keeping mutwallis out of shrines, make the auqaf manager, a representative of the national bank and district khateeb, responsible for keeping the keys of the locked income boxes placed at shrines.71 The Punjab Waqf Properties (Administration) Rules, 2002, categorise shrines and mosques in terms of their income and define rules for appointing a Religious Purposes Committee to manage their affairs. The 2002 rules place shrines into three categories: seven to ten members, where the shrine has an annual income of 10 lac rupees72 or above; five to seven members, where the shrine has an annual income of 5 to 10 lac rupees; and five members, where the shrine has an annual income of less than 5 lac rupees.73 However, for mosques there are only two income divisions, corresponding to the two lower-income brackets of shrines. The 2002 rules maintain that: where the Waqf Property is a mosque, the Religious Purposes Committee shall consist of: five to seven members, where the mosque has an annual income more than one lac rupees; and five members where the mosque has an annual income less than one lac rupees.74 The rules suggested that shrines have such a clear income advantage that there was no need to introduce a higher income bracket for managing the mosques. The emphasis of the Musharraf period on developmental concerns also correlates with a slightly different but related legislative process that gives a new meaning to waqf property. The legal acts from 1959 to 1979

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provided a colonial re-appropriation of a Muslim law of waqf; however, in the first decade of the new millennium, waqf property was also understood as heritage. The Auqaf Department had already been working in collaboration with the archaeology department. At different times the state also portrayed shrines as religious sites for visitation. During the Musharraf period, a renewed interest in cultural heritage and tourism emerged because of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) initiatives with the Government of Pakistan to attract investment for conserving old sites in the country. The State of Pakistan capitalised on this opportunity and extended its operations to cultural heritage sites. Two pilot projects were initiated: one in Lahore and the other in Peshawar. The Lahore project was named the Tajdeed e Lahore (Reviving Lahore) Program by the government. A board was instituted to oversee the programme through an ordinance in 2002, though the work on the project was initiated as early as 2000, with the reconstruction of the shrine of Shah Chiragh. The purpose of the board was to relocate the cultural heritage sites, make plans to improve those sites, protect them from damage and control unnecessary advertising material posted on any such site. The ordinance, however, was repealed by another legal enforcement of the Punjab Heritage Act of 2005, which the Punjab Assembly approved on 13 January 2005 and the Governor assented to on 19 January 2005.75 The scope of the initial programme, which was meant to revive the heritage sites of Lahore only under this act, now extended to the whole of Punjab. The act’s purposes were almost the same as those of the earlier Tajdeed e Lahore Program: ‘to conserve, maintain, rehabilitate and develop the Punjab Heritage and make provisions for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto’. The act was to make efforts to locate and conserve the sites of cultural heritage in the whole of the Punjab. As there had been many other departments doing similar work, the act creating a board comprising secretaries or controllers of different state departments.76 The 2005 Act opened up the possibility of considering waqf, so far understood only as religious sacred sites, as cultural heritage. Instead of considering shrines as embedded within customary traditions, all the previous legal efforts, from 1959 to 1984, had conceived of these sites as religious spaces. The legal efforts were concerned with controlling and

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managing these sites in order to provide a better environment for religious practices. However, the legal efforts did not differentiate between mosque- and shrine-based practices. In order to control and manage all the sites, the legal efforts broke the link between the site of a shrine and the customary traditions within which the shrine-based ethos had been embedded. In order to regenerate the cultural heritage in Punjab the 2005 Act redirected the thinking of the governing elite consider some of the shrines, if not all, as part of their cultural heritage, an Islamic heritage.77

Defining auqaf laws through judicial decisions The auqaf laws provided the structure or frames within which the postcolonial state defined not only waqf and waqf properties but also waqf property as a religious site and its relation with the public. The judicial process also links shrines with universal Islamic theology and the history of Muslims in India in order to give them Islamised identity. The activity, which remained largely redefining and re-interpreting the hidden and vague meanings of Waqf Acts, also provided viable answers to the complex question of waqf property and its justified usage by the state. Although district courts sometimes gave decisions in favour of customary mujawarins (traditional caretakers of the shrines), the judicial process seldom moved against the policies and legislative processes of the government and worked as an interpreter of decisions already taken. The judicial process started as soon as the aggrieved parties, mostly customary mutwallis or sajjada nashins of different shrines from which the post-colonial state had taken control, began approaching courts to seek justice. In response to cases filed by the mutwallis, the courts started giving their rulings, after defining in detail not only the position of the appellants but also defining such concepts as religion, public, nation state, sajjada nashin and shrines. The following section will try to establish the judicial definitions through the decisions of some significant rulings of the Supreme Court, as those of Pir Rashid ud Daula, pirzadgan of Shah Daula shrine, and Haji Ghulam Rasul, representing the mujawarin of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, Lahore, against the auqaf administrator. Although the sajjada nashins of the shrine of Shah Daula were not the first to go to the courts, the detailed decision on the case between Pir Rashid ud Daula versus the Chief Administrator of Auqaf provided

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answers to many of the conceptual confusions regarding the Waqf Properties Ordinance of 1959. Before coming to the Supreme Court, the appellants, in this case, pirzadgans of the shrine of Shah Daula had already won their case at the district court. In another case, that of Sain Karam Ilahi v. Auqaf, the same district court had already held that the Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1959, could not be considered valid as the governor did not have the powers to promulgate such laws. However, the Auqaf Administrator refused to accept the decision and the then Martial Law Administrator, Zone B, issued Martial Law Order No. 82: Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any order, injunction or judgment of any Court, the West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1959, will stand valid in all respects and will not be called in question on any ground or in any manner, in any court, including the High Court and Supreme Court.78 The District Judge, in the presence of the martial law order, considered that it was not within the power of the court to decide on the ordinance, but still pronounced that the shrine of Shah Daula could not be considered as a waqf property. However, the Office of Auqaf went to the High Court and received a favourable decision. The High Court not only considered the ordinance as not ultra vires but also maintained that a shrine, even that of Shah Daula of Gujrat, and the income thereof should be considered as waqf property. The appellants, therefore, had to resort to the Supreme Court, where a bench comprising Chief Justice Hamood ur Rehman, Justice Muhammad Yaqub Ali, Justice M.R. Khan and Justice Waheed ud Din Ahmad heard the case and issued a detailed decision.79 When the appellants approached the courts, they tried to challenge the concept of religion and tried to uncover its different meanings in order to show that the concept could be changed with relation to the sites; that is, religion does not have an equally unequivocal meaning for the site of mosque and the site of shrine. As the definition of waqf property, the Auqaf Ordinance of 1959 considers all those dedicated properties as waqf that are religiously dedicated.80 Without naming them, the ordinance considered all the shrines as waqf property and made them susceptible to be taken over by the post-colonial state. However, there were problems tackling this question. For the courts, there was no single definitive text to be followed, nor any single constitution upon

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which a decision could be based. The courts avoided aligning themselves with the constitution of 1962 but considered the Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1959, should be read with the already abrogated Constitution of 1956.81 During the judicial process, the courts not only took colonial cases as a precedent but also took laws like the Punjab Muslim Shariat Bill (1948) as a framework within which to consider their decision. However, whenever the argument suited their purpose they made references to the texts of the constitution. For example, in order to equate waqf with a religious position, the court cited the clauses of the 1956 Constitution where waqf and mosque are placed together.82 During the discussion for the case Pir Rashid ud Daula v. The Chief Administrator of Auqaf, the appellants or pirzadgans made the point that shrines are not religious institutions at all. They referred to Wilayat Shah v. Sardara and others,83 in which the single judge of the Lahore High Court gave a ruling that a khankah was essentially private property and should not be considered a religious institution. In his decision, the learned judge, Cornelius J., considered khankah as though evolving out of a small tomb or pucca grave, and developing into a larger devotional site. It should be considered a private institution in the sense of an institution which is managed by members of the family of the founder so that the right of managing the property, the right of receiving offerings, the right of initiating and instructing disciples, the right of holding an urs, etc. devolve upon particular persons.84 The judge therefore seems to have given more weight and importance to the possession of and running the business, instead of the acquisition of the property as a necessary condition for considering it private property. However, the Bench of the Supreme Court in the 1960s diverged from the earlier ruling and, to justify the ordinance, explained the difference between khankah and dargah. As its textual authority for the matter, the court took the writings of Syed Amir Ali as the standard text and based its decision on the reading of the text. In this way, the court was able not only to differentiate between khankah and dargah but also to bracket khankah as ‘public and quasi-public waqfs’,85 ignoring the historical understanding of the concept ‘public’, where it seems to mean ‘open for all people’. The court referred to Amir Ali’s historical

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narration, already cited in an earlier case,86 as the only true narration. The narration runs: A Darwesh or a person who, by leading a pious life, has won the esteem and veneration of the neighborhood, or a sufi of a particular sanctity has settled down in some locality. So long as he has not attained sufficient eminence, it is designated as Astana. His pious life and religious ministrations attract public notice, disciples gather round him, and a place is constructed for their lodgment. And the humble Takia grows into a khankah. After the death of the holy personage the spot where he is buried becomes a shrine and an object of pilgrimage not only for his disciples but for people of distant parts, both Muhammadans and Hindus, and is designated either as Dargah or Astana or Rouza. In this sense, the court understood shrines as the continuity of khankah and equated dargah, astana or rouza with different forms of a single shrine similarly displaying single shrine-based practices. The court concluded further that not only should all the different mystical forms be considered as shrine-based practices but also all of the different forms are religious in nature. The court’s interpretation of Amir Ali’s text could not locate it in its historico-cultural situation and placed history in a kind of eternal presence. The text presented the linear growth of shrine-based practices as half Sufistic and half pluralistic. The text ignored the possibility of the cotemporal existence of many of the shrine-based forms as it ignored the impossibility of having khankah, astana and darbar at the same time. Following the text, therefore, the court could not see that there may be differences within dargah, astana, rouza and darbar. Ignoring the difference among different forms and abstracting the narration from the concrete historical situation brings out another dimension: it ignores the role of living forms and living figures on these sites – in short, customary practices. The reading of the text, in the way the court constructed the narration, seems to assume further that there is no need to accept the presence of living dervesh or Sufi. The text only highlighted the existence of one living spiritual being, and even that spiritual being appears in the earlier part of the text in the khankah when common people started visiting the place – whatever comes later appeared only as remembering focused around the

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dead saint. The text refused, further, the possibility of sajjada nashin, the spiritual inheritor of the dead-saint, as a dervesh Sufi saint. Ignoring the historical situatedness, the court was also unable to perceive the form of non-puritan religion. The court could not see that the religion in the above story was presented in the non-communal and non-Shariat form, within non-Singular Islamic space and having multiple religious communities living side by side. Space and the site where both Muhammadans and Hindus visited as devotees could not be considered religious in the post-colonial state standing upon the Singular Muslim identity. Amir Ali’s text presumed the spaces of overlapping devotions as a historical and existential fact. However, within the postcolonial state, such sites can only be considered as deviant sites and the practices at them as deviant forms.87 In the presence of the process of Islamisation, the sense of religion could not be understood as the site where both Hindus and Muslims could participate together. However, the court ignored the distinction and considered these sites as religious because devotees used to come for praying fatiha, ‘participate in Urs, ceremonies of the saint, celebrate the birthday of the Holy prophet (PBUH), perform other rites and ceremonies, have recitations from the holy Quran’.88 Also because ‘a Khankah is a place where religious devotees are lodged and fed during the period they are congregated there for religious instructions’.89 The court also observed that because Shah Daula was himself very benevolent and many Muslim texts mention him as a saint, his shrine could be understood as a religious shrine. The court, while following Amir Ali, not only considered all forms of shrine-based spaces as religious but also envisioned these spaces in the imagery of a mosque. For the court, Amir Ali includes khankah ‘as well as Rouzahs and Dargahs in the same category of subjects of Waqf as Mosques and Imambaras’.90 The court then provided the reason for Amir Ali to consider khankahs, dargahs, etc., as waqf and under the same category along with mosques.91 For the court, it was because in these spaces ‘the rich and the poor, the rich and the indigent, are equally entitled to participate’.92 Therefore the court maintained that: if such an institution is intended to be visited by any member of the public, who feels attracted towards joining in the instructions or devotional exercises, or to perform pilgrimage to such a place, then the institution would become a public Waqf, in the same way

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as a mosque would become a public Waqf, if once it is established that prayers are habitually offered therein by the public with Azan and Ikamat.93 From there, it was not difficult for the court to see the shrine of Shah Daula in the light of an already developed textual interpretation and to maintain that the shrine is a religious institution and, therefore, waqf property. Even going beyond that, it maintained that the shrine of Shah Daula and the similar shrines can be valid objects of Waqf even according to the Shariat Law and the manner of their user . . . in the present case, from time immemorial would seem to indicate that they were treated as religious institutions to which the members of the public at large, rich or poor, affluent or indigent, had equal access without any restriction whatsoever, in the same manner, they would have access to any other place of public worship or pilgrimage.94 Interestingly, taking support from Shariat law, in its decision the court held offerings as waqf property. Accepting that there have been many cases in the previous judicial decisions confirming rights of sajjada nashins on the offerings (nazranai) at the shrine, the court still found a text negating all precedents. The court even refused to accept the fatawas of the 55 ulemas from Ahl e Sunnat wal Jamaat submitted by the appellants, to show that ‘all nazar and niaz (offerings) which is daily offered at Dargah, is to be divided between the descendants of the saint enshrined there and the khadim (servitors) of the shrine’. The court accepted the authority of the text of Tayyib Ji,95 a judge and a lawyer during the colonial period, and appropriated the basic principle that ‘the offering is made to the holy saint buried at the shrine’ [emphasis mine]. The court took the word of Tayyab Ji as resonating with the clauses of the Auqaf Ordinance: Nazrana or offerings given at a shrine or dargah either in a Ghalla (offering box) or otherwise, may become consecrated to God, or impressed with a trust, in which case they must be used for religious or pious purposes. The reason given in support of this view is that the offerings are often made in the belief that there is

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religious [emphasis mine] merit in making them and that they are generally invited by representations (expressed or implied) that they will be utilised for religious or charitable purposes.96 The court therefore accepted even the offering of cash as waqf property and denied the right of sajjada nashins over the monetary nazranas (offerings) and ghalla (cash box), and maintained that if the sajjada nashin had been appropriating the cash and offerings, this could only be considered as mischief.97 The court provided justification for the Administrator Auqaf Department to take over all the offered income because offerings would be given to the buried saint. If a Waqf could under the Shariat Law be made of property of this nature . . . then we can see no valid objection to the Legislature impressing them with such a character and depriving those who were hithertofore appropriating them as their personal income or property . . . particularly, where the intention of the donor was not clear although basically [emphasis mine] the offerings were made for a religious or charitable purpose.98 While making its decision against sajjada nahsins the court displayed a different attitude towards khadims (servitors) of the shrines and permitted them to carry on earning income at the site of the shrine. Considering them as those who work at the shrines and take their reward against their work, the court thought that taking away their reward was not justified. It seems that it placed the post-colonial state in a mediatory position, the position customarily enjoyed by sajjada nashins at the site of the shrine. The invisible nature of the work values of the gradually expanding market economy gave enough reasons for the courts to think in favour of those who worked – that is khadim – against those who did not work – sajjada nahsins. It seems the court opened up the possibility for a new world, within which the post-colonial state would be taking the position of those who did not work.

Difference between possessory rights and private ownership In another case, the Supreme Court further defined the concept of khadims in order to bring forward the right of the traditional caretaker for possessing waqf property. After the shrine was taken over by the

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Auqaf Administrator, and after moving through the lower courts, the traditional caretakers of the shrine of Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib went to the Supreme Court, where the case was heard by the same judges who had heard the previous case of Pir Rashid ud Daula v. Auqaf. The court accepted the case for the hearing because the khadim or mujawarin filed the case as customarily possessing property at the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, instead of the sajjada nashin. However, as the previous ruling has already decided that the Waqf Ordinance could not be challenged, the appellants emphasised the regaining of their dispossessed property, without going into the fight for control of the shrine. The discussion during the case continued defining the concept of possessory rights and their relation to private property, along with the nature of mujawars and/or khadims of the shrine. The court made a difference between acquired property as a basic element of the concept of private property and gifted property, not necessarily private property and therefore susceptible to public control. The court, though, did not lend its support to accepting mujawars as sajjada nashins, as the appellants tried to present them, yet considered it better to see them as equivalent to align its position with the previous decision. The court supported the position of the respondent council and considered that it was not possible for the mujawar, as servitor, to own property of the shrine. For this, the court followed the decision of J. Tayyab Ji in the case of Mahommad Oosman and others v. Razaq Saleem Ahmed Vanjara and others.99 The court maintained that Tayyab Ji had given his decision, after a detailed examination of the Qur’an and texts of Muslim jurisprudence, and found that only sajjada nashins could claim an intermediary position between a devotee and God. The serving positions, such as mujawar and khadim, are servants and cannot claim to have the intermediary position along with a share in the offerings and property. However, the court found it prudent not to expand on this position, as even Tayyab Ji maintained that in cases where the time period is very long, the position of the mujawar might be considered differently. The court, therefore, maintained that for present purposes mujawars could be considered equivalent to sajjada nashins, as they performed similar functions for a similar length of time.100 The court maintained that because of the evidence of using the property for many decades, it accepted their rights to possess property as acquired but not as an owner. The court accepted the plea of mujawarins

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to acknowledge their possession, at best, as joint ownership. In tracing the record of revenue, the court maintained that the records for the years of 1856 and 1868 showed that the land taken over by the Auqaf Administrator was in control of the ‘Mujawaran of Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib’ as ‘Maqbooza Malikan (owners as in possession)’. However, it did not see this evidence as establishing the property as being owned by mujawarans and, therefore, it should not be treated as waqf. The court further maintained that the property of ‘Maqboozan Malikan’ had been divided into three patties (lines); namely Patti Khairdin, Patti Alauddin and Patti Qutub Din.101 The court accepted the position that the revenue record showed that the property had also been divided respectively among all of these patties. It also accepted the fact that individual mujawars had also sold, mortgaged or leased out the property in the past. However, the court was surprised that, given all these facts, it could be proved that the property under the discussion was the property of mujawarins and not a possessory right; that is, how could mujawarins prove that it was not because of their role as caretakers that they had acquired the possession of their lands? In order to refute the position of mujawarin, the judges highlighted the basic characteristic of private property, that is, the ownership of the property can only be claimed if the property becomes a self-acquired property. The judges maintained that they could not find any entry in any of the revenue records that showed that the heirs of any of the mujawarin ‘were brought on to the record as the owners’.102 They maintained further that the ‘owner’s column has all along shown that only a floating body of the persons, known as the Mujawaran of the shrine of Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, were owners of these lands’.103 The court acknowledged that there were many altered entries suggesting gifts to the shrines; however, the judges could not find any entry regarding the personal ownership of the land. The court highlighted that during the land settlement of 1892, three of the mujawar, acting as general attorneys of the mujawarins: made a declaration that all the lands recorded in the three patties were not lands owned by the respective patties in possession thereof but that, in fact, all the lands were owned by the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib and, therefore, all these lands should be recorded in the ownership of the shrine.104

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Once the judges of the Supreme Court reached the position that the lands under the possession of the mujawarins could not be considered their private property and must be considered the property of shrine, it was not difficult to deduce further that all such property must also be considered waqf property. As a final move the court reminded the mujawarins that as they had already declared that they were the possessors of the property during the colonial period it was not possible to move away from this position in post-colonial times. The court stated that since the mujawarins with full knowledge of the facts requested the revenue authorities to correct the records by entering therein the true position and have since allowed that position to remain unchanged for nearly 80 years they are now debarred from setting up a different case and should, at any rate, not be believed when they say that this is not the true position.105 From that point onwards the court decided quite clearly that the properties in question were waqf properties and ‘since the shrines in this case, was a public institution, its properties also were public Waqf’.106

Public as common people and/or community, or public as a state Since Supreme Court judges defined the concept of waqf property in the light of private property, at the same time they equated ‘public’ with the state. Equating ‘public’ with the state is not uncommon and has been used in many rulings and seldom criticised. The post-colonial state appears, at least during its first few decades, as the public embodied, unable to see any local community playing any role within larger Muslim life. The state stretched universal Muslim ideology to such a point that no difference of locality is recognised. This difference never appeared during the judicial decisions and the debates on the Auqaf Board nor during the legislative processes on waqf properties. If it appears anywhere, or if any criticism appears in some form, it remains in such a weak position that instead of deconstructing the assumed symmetry, it helps instantly to strengthen the assumptions. It is interesting that the nation state emerged on the concept of religious ideology, and the universal commonality of religious dispositions understood ‘public’ as necessarily linked with the state.

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If, as the ruling of the Supreme Court suggests, a waqf is valid ‘public waqf’ then it can be taken over by the state. The decision suggests that ‘public’ was understood as ‘open to the public’ or ‘accessible for the use of the public’ but necessarily controlled by the state. This is contrary to previous rulings of colonial courts where judges, while defining Shariat and creating a difference between public and private waqf, did not relate to the ‘public’ as a connected necessity through which the state had the power to control such public waqf. The colonial judges restrained themselves only to defining ‘public’ and ‘private’ in order to simplify matters and in order to save the gradual prevalence of the ‘private ownership’ of the property, while at the same time giving privilege to the local customs. However, the later judiciary of Pakistan not only had Shariat available as a codified law, without being troubled by a difference of interpretation but also, interestingly, the text of Syed Amir Ali, defining most Muhammadan laws as Shariat laws. The judges therefore found it convenient to take decisions by employing and connecting these apparently distinct concepts, thus validating state control over waqf property and also expressing the ‘socialistic reformist’ streak embedded within the eclectic ideas of the modern intellectual elite.

Rasoomat (customary ceremonies), state and traditional caretakers For many years, the confusion over the possibility of holding rasoomats (customary practices) at the site of a shrine remained unclear between the Auqaf Department and mujawarins or mutwallis. However, the confusion continued only for mujawarins and judiciary, while the bureaucracy of the Auqaf Department was quite clear on the issue. Even given the fear of going against judicial decisions, the Auqaf Administrator, with the support of larger state machinery, never gave up control, at least over the most significant shrine, that of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib. Even during the period when the judiciary gave decisions in favour of its mutwallis or mujawarins, he continued to make things difficult for them. The confusion was highlighted when, after winning through all the lower courts, mujawarins also won a favourable decision from the Supreme Court to retain their rights to perform religious practices at the shrine. The Supreme Court gave a decision in favour of the mujawarins of the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib in 1971, granting the following reliefs to the mujawarins:

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(i) That the Mujawarin acquired the right by immemorial user of performing the ‘Rasoomat’ and other religious ceremonies connected with the shrine provided that performance of such functions does not amount to misuse of the Waqf Properties. (ii) That under the Waqf Properties Ordinance the Chief Administrator of Auqaf had no right to deprive them of this privilege of performing such Rasoomat and other religious ceremonies although he had the discretion to contribute or not to contribute towards the expenses thereof and the right to recover the same. (iii) That the taking over of the amount of Rs 12,561.50 in cash found in a Potla or bag was illegal, as it was a part of pre-Notification offerings which have already been appropriated by the Mujawarin. This amount should be returned to the Mujawarin. (iv) That if the ornaments are in the shape of utensils such as Atar Daan (scent bottle), Gulab Posh (rose cover), etc., or articles such as Gilafs, Pabor Yosh Canopies, etc., they should be treated as Waqf Properties belonging to the shrine and not as the personal properties of the Mujawarin but if there be any item of purely personal use presented to the shrine by way of offerings then they should be returned to the Mujawarin.107 However, the Chief Administrator Auqaf refused to accept the decision of the Supreme Court. As soon as the mujawarins requested him to comply with the Supreme Court orders, the Governor of West Pakistan issued an ordinance making amendments to the West Pakistan Waqf Properties, 1961.108 Through Ordinance XVI of 1971, section 6 of the West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1961, was substituted, increasing the powers of the Chief Administrator. The new Ordinance states: Section 6 (1) ‘Notwithstanding anything to the Contrary contained in section 22 of the Religious Endowments Act, 1863, or any other law for the time being in force, or in any custom or usage, or in any decree, judgment or order of any Court or other authority, or in any proceeding pending before any Court or other authority, the chief Administrator may, by notification, take over and assume the administration, control, management and maintenance of a Waqf Property.

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(2) No person shall perform services or ceremonies (Rasoomat) referred to in subsection (1) except with the prior permission of the Chief Administrator and in accordance with such directions as may be given by him.’109 The amendments to the Waqf Properties Ordinance of 1961 authorised the Chief Administrator Auqaf to refuse to comply with the direction of the Supreme Court orders allowing mujawarins to perform religious rasoomat within the shrine. The mujawarins again went to the High Court, requesting the court to give direction to the Chief Administrator Auqaf to perform the legal obligations in compliance with the orders of the Supreme Court.110 The single judge of the Lahore High Court instructed the Chief Administrator to comply with the Supreme Court orders and take a favourable decision with regard to the mujawarins. However, the Chief Administrator Auqaf, instead of following the High Court decision given on 24 May 1974, challenged the decision in Letters Patent Appeal before a Division Bench of High Court on 5 July 1974. The Division Bench accepted the filing of the case by the Chief Administrator Auqaf and set aside the judgment of the single judge of the Lahore High Court.111 The mujawarins, however, again filed the case in the Supreme Court. The case remained in the court for 16 years, at which time the Supreme Court decided against the mujawarin of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib and made it clear that the permission of the Chief Administrator was necessary for the performance of any religious ceremony.112

Conclusion Until Ayub Khan’s ordinance regarding taking over complete control of shrines, the post-colonial state, although it extended its control, kept its lego-religious thinking grounded in reterritorialised identity. The earlier emphases to exclude deviant customary practices could not produce the desired results because of the incapacity of the post-colonial state and gave way to complete control through the autocratic rule of Ayub Khan. The underpinning of all legal activities since 1959 remained embedded within the emphasis on the continuity of the reterritorialisation, a kind of double-reterritorialisation. The opening up of the possibility of controlling the traditionally deviant sites through

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universal laws, initiated and enforced through Ayub Khan’s reformist agenda, never allowed the local traditional caretakers to control the sacred sites. The Bhutto government only tried to keep the universal impact of these laws through introducing centralised activities, upon which, interestingly, stood the Ordinance of 1979. It is interesting that no democratic government ever felt the need to change the universal legalisation process, nor did the fact that such legalisation was initiated under martial law regimes embarrass these governments. The process of double-reterritorialisation or extending Islamic territoriality for the local sacred sites was prevalent that each government felt it incumbent on them to carry on with the fundamental principles of legalities. The colonial period, despite opening up the universal legalising process and providing grounds for imagining reterritorialised identity, left the sites of worship to the local communities. However, within the post-colonial State of Pakistan, there is no local community within the ambit of Islamised Muslims that can be legally considered free to control ways of religious worshipping on its own. The legalisation process connected localities and the local sites of worship with the universal religious ideologue. The localised religious practices could not secure a place within this universalising locality except to appear as ‘deviant’. The legalised framework left a place, however, only for those sacred sites unable to grow economically. It is interesting that the legalisation within the post-Ayub period kept its thinking on shrines linked closely with the profitability of the sacred space – the legalisation ensures that only those shrines that would not become a financial burden on the government itself can come under the control of the Auqaf Department. The legislation-cum-legalisation process, though universal, however, remained flaw-ridden; its ambiguities and vagueness requiring judicial interpretive activities for clarification before the implementation. Unlike the colonial judicial process, which created rules for reducing the multiplicity of life forms, the post-colonial judicial process, especially after the Ordinance of 1959, opened up a process of clarification of flaws and vagueness of the already-defined legal rules. The post-colonial judicial process redefined concepts of shrines, waqf and public and private property. Where the process could not define clearly it gives, in a concealed way, domination of one form over the other, as the judicial process made religion synonymous with Islam and

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enforced it even on pluralistic historical manifestations. The changed circumstances within which the post-colonial judiciary found itself put them on the path of owning and manifesting double-reterritorialised identity in their decisions. The post-colonial judicial process, following the spirit of the colonial judiciary, pushed forward a similar agenda of devising a universal legalisation process in order to extend and control the locality.

CHAPTER 4 THE POST-COLONIAL STATE, SHRINES AND THE AUQAF DEPARTMENT

This chapter examines the development and working of the Auqaf Department in relation to the politico-religious policies of the postcolonial state, starting from the rule of General Ayub Khan to General Musharraf. The chapter shows that the policies and emphases of each government had their unique character; some continuity could also be witnessed after the Auqaf Department started its work. Following Jamal Malik’s position, the chapter demonstrates that the colonial urban sector, through the department, extended its control on shrines. However, it is also to understand that the gradual extending of the colonial sector was also the accomplishment of the revivalist religious strands, which remained concealed beneath the policies of the Auqaf Department. The chapter will show that the Auqaf Department gradually shifted its policies from an emphasis on the reformist position to religious prevalence, and later on, to an emphasis on performance; hence absorbing both reformist and revivalist religious positions. The policies created the possibility of dominating customary shrine life more completely through the revivalist agenda that had been in place from its colonial origin. Interestingly, the revivalist religious focus also became the reason to enlarge the sites of shrines.

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The Auqaf Department and the rule of Ayub Khan: initiating control for reforms Auqaf as a separate state department came into being after the promulgation of the West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance (WPWPO), 1959, and from then on acted on shrines to have them transformed as sites with modern facilities.1 The Auqaf Department was set up in order to take control of the waqf properties attached to shrines and translate the income deriving from these properties into welfare for the common people (the public). The socialist nationalisation of shrines – taking them over in order to distribute their surplus income to the people – correlated with the government’s other policies of social reform.2 Almost at the same time, the government had introduced its intention to undertake a survey and redistribute large land holdings in the country. Ayub Khan considered that large landholding hampered ‘the free exercise of political rights and stifle the growth of political institutions’.3 He intended that land reforms should entail the emergence of a strong middle class that could engender leadership that would in turn reform rural life.4 However, the taking over of shrines and waqf properties that went along with these intentions was also linked with the ideological strands of high morality and ‘revivalist’ religious practices. The intelligentsia behind the operations and launching of the Auqaf Department even intended to transform the shrine practices through creating a propaganda campaign that would expose the fraudulent character of mutwallis or sajjada nashins of shrines. The intention was to show the common people that, because of their naivety, they lost their precious belongings by giving them to shrines.5 Along with initiating the operations of the Auqaf Administrator, the government also created a commission to eradicate social evils. The committee, headed by Maulvi Ghulam Muhayyuddin, while giving many other reasons, also considered the worshipping of graves and tombs a major social evil and recommended taking the necessary steps to eradicate worshipping at the graves. The recommendation of the committee, coupled with the policies of the Auqaf Department already carried out, provided the government with the justification not only to carry forward the process of taking over shrines but also enhanced the criticism against mujawars and mutwallis (the caretakers of shrines). In order to pursue this

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intention, the department, as well as taking over the shrine, also began a propaganda campaign that spread such messages as ‘do not to give nazranas (offerings) to the mujawar’ and ‘shrine-going is a remnant of a simple and archaic rural life’.6 Following the policy of taking over shrines, the Auqaf Department started its operations with meagre resources but at a fast pace. It started working as A.H. Qureshi, a Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) officer in the Government of Pakistan, who held the title of an officer of the Administrator of Waqfs and Secretary to the Government of West Pakistan, became the first administrator of the department. The administrator issued the first notification to repeal the previous act of 1952 and enforce the ordinance of 1959 on 9 January 1960.7 The administrator’s first head office was in Karachi. During his visits, he held the status of commissioner and was therefore able to accept the help of the staff of the Commissioner’s Office and officers of the Revenue Department, such as the Tehsildar (Tehsil Administrator), the Naib Tehsildar (Deputy Tehsil Administrator), etc. Because of the authority of the Revenue Department, the Auqaf Administrator gained access to the revenue record that provided the department with the ability to undertake quick surveys to take control of the shrines. Except for a few major shrines, the Tehsildar or Naib Tehsildar acted on the orders of the Auqaf Administrator to take control of shrines and property attached therewith. Although the Auqaf Department started operation almost nine months after the promulgation of the WPWPO, 1959, the department was quick to take control of some significant shrines in Lahore in the following few months. Starting in March with taking over the shrine of Hazrat Ali Hajvery Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib,8 Lahore, the department was able to take over more than 30 waqf properties by October.9 At the same time it was in a position to take over another dozen waqf properties, within which a large amount of land attached with Bibian Pak Daman, Lahore was also included.10 Other than Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, the department was able to take over around 10 shrines, including the shrines of Mian Mir, Shah Jamal, Madhu Lal Hussain and Shah Kamal in Lahore, a shrine of Bullai Shah in Kasur, two shrines including Mian Muhammad Sharaqpuri in Sheikhupura, one shrine of Pak Shah Rehman in Gujranwala and the shrine of Imam Ali ul Haq in Sialkot, up to the end of 1960. The department also took over

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around eight waqf properties of Takia (the temporary abode of a saint and a form of the shrine), and 34 mosques, in Lahore, in the same period.11 The shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib did not possess the largest attached property but its popularity and centrality, along with its ability to earn a considerable amount of cash income, drew the Auqaf Department’s attention initially. The shrine had a history of almost 900 years; however, its centrality emerged in correlation with the prevalence of Muslim revivalist movements in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Punjab. Many decades before the division of British India, the shrine had already attracted a lot of attention as well as the focus of local European scholars. Its popularity became the reason for the construction of a new mosque in 1924. However, its popularity and the pilgrims grew at such a fast pace that from thousands of pilgrims in 1850 the estimated number grew to more than 250,000 pilgrims in the 1950s on urs days. The large increase in pilgrims also entailed large donations. The increase in popularity place considerable stress on the caretakers of the shrine to manage and control the site better. However, the slowness and inability of the mujawars to extend the site of the shrine not only earned them a bad name but also provided justification for the Auqaf Department to take it over. As soon as the department took over the shrine, the administrator appointed a committee to manage and maintain the waqf properties. Comprising three administrative staff, the committee was headed by Deputy Commissioner Lahore (member and chairman), with the Senior Superintendent of Police, Lahore, as a member and a Pakistan Civil Service (PCS) city magistrate as Secretary of the Committee.12 After a few weeks, the administrator replaced the magistrate with another, Abdul Waheed and also gave him the authority of ‘Manager of the said Darbar (shrine) in addition to his own duties as Magistrate, First Class Lahore, with effect from the 15th of February, 1960’.13 However, after another two weeks, the Administrator once again modified the managing committee of the Darbar of Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, Lahore. This time the administrator enlarged the committee from four to seven members and included four significant devoted elites. The new members of the committee were: Amir Ud Din, from Barood Khana; Sheikh Muhammad Din, the proprietor of National Fans, Lahore; Haji

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Muhammad Amin, Proprietor Ahmed Bakhsh and Bros., Brandreth Road, Lahore; and Dr Abdul Waheed, Ferozsons, Lahore.14 The inclusion of members from non-administrative bureaucratic positions not only changed the composition of the managing committee but also reforged the link between religiously and emotionally motivated believers with the Darbar (shrine). The proprietor of the National Fans Company, Haji Sheikh Muhammad Din, only after a few months becoming a member of the managing committee, announced the building of a new mosque for Data Darbar. He claimed he would bear all the expenses of the mosque himself.15 Sheikh Muhammad Din announced that the new mosque would resemble the mosque of Madina and it would be named after the name of Prophet Muhammad. He also claimed that the map of the mosque was under preparation and its construction would cost around 400,000 rupees. However, the construction of the mosque was only a part of reconstructuring the whole shrine, at a total cost of 1,200,000 rupees.16 The changes and development at the shrine became more visible on the first urs of Data Sahib after it had been taken over, on 13 October 1960, which had been delayed for a few weeks because of the spread of an epidemic of cholera in the city.17 The preparation for the urs started quite early and the new managing committee expected to have as many numbers of devotees as before the take-over. An editorial in a newspaper not only thought that the number of devotees would be as large as it had been but also considered the new development in a positive manner and appreciated the working of the new Managing Committee. The editorial complained that before, the mosque of Data Darbar had not even had a loudspeaker and proper lighting system. However, the editorial praised the activities of the new managing committee for not only providing basic infrastructural facilities but also introducing many other things, like a separate entrance facility for women, a better and organised traffic system and a clean environment. For the first time, the tomb and the buildings around were lit throughout the night. The unusual and pleasant difference, according to the report, was the absence of mujawars and the beggars who used to snatch even the clothes of the pilgrims. The report maintained that even the dark roads behind the Darbar, which were otherwise rife with criminals, were populated by groups of rural pilgrims and devotees. Though the urs of the Data Sahib turned out in a way as expected by the managing committee and seemed to generate a large income, it did

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not prevent the elite devotees from pouring large sums of money into welfare activities.18 At the end of the first year some of the facilities had already been provided in both the shrine and the mosque, such as constructing separate gates for male and female, purchasing a loudspeaker for the mosque, facilities for cleanliness, providing fans, etc., by Sheikh Muhammad Din and Syed Maratb Ali, another Lahore’s elite. Bearing most of the expenses of these purchases between them, Sheikh Muhammad Din gave Rs 20,000 and Syed Maratb Ali Rs 50,000. Out of this money, the new managing committee announced pensions for the orphans and widows of the previous mujawar of the shrine. Also, the committee set up a free dispensary that was to become the first step towards a fully-fledged hospital, nearby Data Sahib Shrine.19 Another devotee and a member of the managing committee, Dr Abdul Waheed, the proprietor of Ferozsons, donated Rs 10,000 per month for the next ten years to support the dispensary. Another famous shoe company, Bata, gave a donation of Rs 30,00020 and the Chief Electric Company provided a free electric facility on urs day. The committee not only took care of the infrastructural facilities at the shrine but also performed the religious ceremonies, including the ceremony of Dastar Bandi (putting a turban on the heads of the significant devotees).21 Traditionally, it was mujawars who performed these ceremonies, along with other related activities like saying prayers. However, on this urs, the ceremony of Dastar Bandi was inaugurated by putting a dastar (turban) on the head of the Administrator Auqaf, A.H. Qureshi, who was also supervising the whole ceremony. Later on, some 200 notables were given dastars. Both naat (the eulogy of the Prophet Muhammad) and qawwali (a style of Muslim devotional music now associated particularly with Sufis) were performed in the urs and devotees had taken more interest in qawwali than any other activity.22 Religious scholars were invited and provided a platform for making speeches on the personality of the saint and his understanding of Islam. For the first time, the shrine was decorated with lights in a way that is usually associated with the day of Eid Milad Un Nabi (the celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad). This year the shrine had already become the final point for the processions of Eid Milad Un Nabi.23 The interest that the Auqaf Department showed in organising, managing and controlling the shrine and religious practices of Data Sahib was extended to other shrines, but with less enthusiasm. In the

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same year, the Auqaf Department had already taken over other significant shrines, such as those of Mian Mir and Bullai Shah in Lahore and Kasur. However, these shrines did not have similar support and passion for reconstructing and developing facilities, despite having the presence of similar elite devotees. The focus of the Auqaf Department seemed to be on appropriating the income and the property attached to the shrines instead of initiating development projects. The Auqaf Administrator, after taking them and their attached waqf property, appointed a magistrate or Tehsildar (Tehsil Administrator) as their manager.24 The administrator, however, felt no need to appoint the any senior state official as head of the managing committee, as was the case of Data Darbar Sahib. The Auqaf Department took over the shrine of Mian Mir on 9 July 1960, only six months after initiating its activities.25 The department took control of the shrine from the then sajjada nashin, Noor ul Hussain Shah. The Managing Committee was formed after a few weeks of departmental control and Chaudhry Eid Muhammad Malik, the proprietor of the Ratan Cinema, was nominated as its president. As the urs was in October, the managing committee started preparing for the occasion and the president took on the burden of arranging all the electric and lighting facilities. After the announcement of the date by the Auqaf Administrator, the managing committee, with the help of the manager of the shrine, organised the first urs, from 17 – 20 October. The Auqaf Department took possession of a total of 74 kanals of land, on which, later on, 314 shops were constructed around the shrine. Along with this land, around 425 kanals and seven marlas of agricultural land were also taken over by the department. After another six years, the Auqaf Department extended its control on the landed property attached with the shrine again and annexed another four kanals of land, taking control of around another 139 acres of agricultural land attached to the Mian Mir shrine in Gujranwala District.26 Property in the Anarkali market of Lahore of around two kanals was also annexed. However, the Auqaf Department sold out all the previously acquired waqf property in the 1980s.27 At almost the same time, on 6 October 1960, the Tehsildar (Tehsil Administrator) of Kasur District took control of the shrine of Baba Bullai Shah, on the orders of the Auqaf Administrator. Bullai Shah was considered to be a famous Punjabi Sufi poet and the fame of his shrine

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and the property attached to it attracted the Auqaf Department to take this shrine over. The Tehsildar of Tehsil Kasur, Akbar Kazmi, entered the premises of (Dargah) shrine on the orders of the Auqaf Administrator on 5 October and took the income box (sandukchi) into his possession. The Tehsildar recovered eight rupees and one paisa from the box, an amount that a newspaper claimed had been collected within a few hours, and later on sealed the box. The Tehsildar told the mujawar of the Dargah to pay rent for the houses attached to the shrines or vacate them. He also told the tenants to pay the rents of the shops attached to the shrine or face consequences.28 In the first ten years, the Auqaf Department kept its focus on taking over and controlling the significant shrines as much as possible. Even during the first two or three years, the department had already taken over a number of significant shrines. However, some other significant shrines, like Bibian Pak Daman, Lahore and Waris Shah (a Punjabi poet famous for writing the Hir tale), Sheikhupura, remained out of its control for the early years of its first decade. In total, the Auqaf Department was able to take control of 52 shrines in the Lahore and Gujranwala zones in its first decade of operation. The department took control of 36 shrines in the five sectors of Lahore, while from the other sectors of Lahore, as from Sheikhupura, it took control of four shrines, and from Kasur it took control of a shrine of Baba Bullai Shah. From Gujranwala, the department took control of seven shrines, along with three shrines from Gujrat and two from Sialkot. It seems the Auqaf Department kept its emphasis on taking control of shrines from large cities or the area around them.29 Even in that early period, an ideological tilt was discernible in the working of the Auqaf Department, as the taking over of the shrines of Bibian Pak Daman and Waris Shah suggests. The department started receiving complaints against the mujawars of Bibian Pak Daman as early as the first few months of the 1960s. The complaints claimed that eight mujawars of the shrine were in the process of selling land of the graveyard attached to the shrine and had already sold a large piece of land.30 Although the department began an inquiry and undertook a survey of the land, it took many years to take control of the shrine. The Auqaf Administrator, Masood Khaddarposh, who was famous for his leftist and Punjabi leanings, took control of the shrine from mujawars in September 1967. The Auqaf Department not only took over the shrine

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and 24 kanals of land attached therewith but also 62 kanals of the land of the graveyard attached to the shrine.31 However, the department had to withdraw its control of almost all the land attached to the shrine after a few years because of the court decision. The court decided in favour of the mujawar, who filed a case against the Auqaf Department on the basis that the land acquired by the department, except that of the shrine, was registered in the name of the mujawar. As the revenue record was in his favour, the Auqaf Department withdrew its control of the land32 and had to be content with just the shrine and three shops.33 The Auqaf Department took control of the waqf properties not only from the ‘possession’ of mujawars or mutwallis but also from the Islamic associations like that of Anjuman e Islamia. The Anjuman was the oldest association of its kind in Lahore. It came into existence in 1869, mainly to control the affairs of Badshahi mosque.34 However, the association gradually gained control of around 13 important mosques in Lahore, including Badshahi Mosque, Sunahri (Golden) Mosque35 and Shah Chiragh Mosque.36 The mosque of Shah Chiragh was interesting in the manner that – although part of the shrine of Shah Chiragh, constructed by Aurangzeb Alamgir37 – it came into the hands of Muslims after the incident at Shaheed Ganj Mosque, to appease them.38 Until the nineteenth century, the shrine of Shah Chiragh was quite famous and still attracted a good number of devotees on urs days.39 The British government occupied some part of this waqf land and erected a large building for the office and the residence of the Principal Assistant to the Deputy Commissioner. A little later, the Accountant General’s office occupied the building and, along with it, some land was taken over by the High Court, in the second to the last decade of the nineteenth century.40 With the increase of commercial and social life on Mall Road, the site of the shrine of Shah Chiragh became a central place. The Shah Chiragh Mosque not only began attracting a large number of worshippers for Juma prayers but also became a significant place for the preaching of Islam. In 1960, the mosque already had three different departments for the dissemination of religious teachings. The departments included the Tameer e Millat Library (Developing Nation Library), the Islamic Centre and the Idara Islah e Nafs (Institute of SelfReform). There was a hall for the Tameer e Millat Library, called a dar ul mutala (study room). A variety of preaching activities used to take place through the Islamic Centre, such as lectures on Islam, especially in the

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month of Ramzan (the Muslim month of fasting). At the Idara Islah e Nafs, lectures on Rumi or on the hidden meanings of remembering God took place. However, the activities were largely run by the department of Islamiat at the Punjab University, and Professor Alaud Din Siddiqui and Professor Yousaf Saleem Chishti were active in running these undertakings. As the mosque and the activities around it were quite popular, the shrine-based practices at the shrine of Shah Chiragh were insignificant until the 1960s. Acting on the instructions of the Chief Administrator of Auqaf, the Auqaf Department started surveying the waqf properties under the control of Anjuman e Islamia. The Anjuman had a total of 13 mosques and large waqf properties attached therewith under its control. The department took control of the Shah Chiragh building, mosque and shrine in October 1960. The control, however, remained loose until 1973, when the whole Auqaf Department took over the buildings of the shrine of Shah Chiragh. Interestingly enough, the take-over of Shah Chiragh was appreciated by the locals, as a letter published in the editorial pages of a newspaper suggests. The letter congratulated the Auqaf Department on taking over the Shah Chiragh Mosque and hoped that it meant an end to the continuous embezzlement of the mosque funds. The letter complained that, though the Anjuman managed to collect around Rs 1,000 as rent money from the tenants of the building, yet the khateeb (speaker at the mosque) and muazzan (the person who calls to prayer) of the mosque did not receive even the equivalent amount given to the janitor of the Lahore Municipal Committee. The letter further maintained that the recent reconstruction of the mosque had only taken place because of collected funds received many years before. In the last two years of the first decade of controlling shrines and waqf properties, the Auqaf Department systematised the rules and regulations for the imam (who leads prayer in a mosque) and khateeb positions within the overall scheme. The focus on imam and khateeb positions correlated with other similar activities, such as a re-emphasis on providing modern Islamic education. Although the Auqaf Department had nationalised more than 200 madrasas (religious seminaries)41 along with the nationalisation of the Islamic University of Bahawalpur (Jamia Bahawalpur) in the early years of the 1960s,42 a re-emphasis appeared even in the last two years of Ayub Khan’s rule on controlling religious

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educational activities.43 Similarly, the department took over mosques with shrines both attached and non-attached in the early years of its first decade, although it did not focus on religious employees. The hopes among employees attached to the mosques of benefiting from a better pay scale and stable position within the nationalised mosques were high. However, for the first few years of its working, the department showed less interest in improving the condition of religious employees and even failed to pay the salaries of many imams and khateebs for many months.44 The department could not make the time to take decisions on the pay structure for imam and khateeb positions and so kept them on a waged basis. As the emphasis on Islamic teaching prevailed, the Auqaf Department made an effort to systematise the pay structure of these positions, and enforced the rules in 1968.45 Although the Auqaf Department made efforts to introduce changes at the site of the shrine in order to modernise the facilities during Ayub’s rule, these efforts remained selective and unsustainable. The focus on the shrine of Data Sahib, and to a lesser extent on some other shrines of Lahore, remained considerable; however, the department soon lost interest in the latter case. For example, at the shrine of Imam Ali al Haq in Sialkot, taken over in 1960, after introducing some initial developments46 the department failed to make satisfactory improvements. The facilities at the mosque, such as urinals, a water tank, waterspouts, etc., though installed, often failed to work properly. Cleanliness standards were also neglected. The department also opened up a dispensary in the late 1960s but without a qualified doctor in attendance.47 The salaried imam and khateeb often asked for funds in Juma prayers, though there was no record keeping.48

Yahya Khan: modernising Islamic traditions As the rule of Ayub Khan ended on 25 March 1969 and gave way to the then Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan army Yahya Khan, the emphasis on religious development did not change significantly. From the very start Yahya Khan’s regime faced a leftist political surge, largely shrouded within Islamic symbolism. To counter the leftist surge, the regime carried on using Islamic modernism. ‘The generals believed that Islam was the only ideology that could confront the Left and provide a basis for keeping Pakistan together.’49 Interestingly, the military

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establishment showed its wish to modernise orthodox maulvi through training processes. With the emergence of the Ulema Academy, this wish was made reality as it furthered the state’s interest that Islamic thought should prevail as a central unifying ideological thread to bind together political groups already identifying themselves through provincialism, socialism and ethnicity.50 As Yahya Khan dissolved the One Unit scheme in 1970, the provinces of West Pakistan found a legislative rebirth, enabling them to enact and enforce rules regarding provincial subjects. The Auqaf Department, which until then had acted as the West Pakistan Auqaf Department, was dissolved into four different Auqaf Departments of West Pakistan. Hamid Mukhtar became the first Chief of Punjab Auqaf.51 The department, however, carried on taking over operations and controlling activities through ordinances. It took over around 12 shrines in the Lahore and Gujranwala zones in three years during Yahya Khan’s regime. Out of these shrines, six were taken over in 1969, the remainder in the next two years. The regime gave more emphasis to modernising religious teachings and introducing developmental projects at the site of the shrine. Furthering religious teaching reforms, the Punjab Auqaf Department inaugurated an Ulema Academy with the intention of teaching the understanding of ulema and khateeb according to the fast-paced modern world. The governor of Punjab, Lieutenant-General Attiq ur Rehman, inaugurated the academy in Hazuri Bagh, Lahore, and stressed the necessity to adapt traditional religious views to modern scientific advances. The governor maintained that it was the responsibility of the ulema of the country to upgrade their knowledge in order to reintegrate the force of iman (faith) against the disenchantment engendered by modern knowledge systems. The governor feared that modern education was taking the youth of Pakistan away from God and religion; it was, therefore, incumbent upon religious ulema to learn new disciplines in order to save youth from un-Islamic ideas. The speeches of Chief Administrator Auqaf, Punjab, Hamid Mukhtar, and the Principal of Ulema Academy, Dr Rashid Ahmed, an Al Azhar and Cambridge graduate, reassured the governor regarding the efforts made by the Auqaf Department for improving the understanding of Islam according to the contemporary requirements for both ulema and the syllabi of religious schools.52 They maintained that the academy would connect

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religious scholars with the world of knowledge and, for this purpose, the academy had already established a library of 4,000 books. Further, to link religious scholars with literary activities, he said, the academy had also begun publishing a quarterly magazine Din o Danish [Religion and Intellect].53 To further the developmental works, the department emphasised the extending of the network of dispensaries at shrines already taken over. The dispensary at Data Darbar could not be extended into a larger health complex as had been envisaged almost ten years earlier, and the proclaimed objectives of establishing modern facilities were not provided either at this dispensary or anywhere else. However, things began to change when Dr Colonel Ibad ullah Sheikh (1967– 72), the first non-civilian doctor, became medical superintendent of the dispensary. Until the start of Yahya Khan’s rule, the colonel could do nothing. With the change in government, a re-emphasis on extending developmental activities became feasible. Within three years the Auqaf Department not only extended the dispensary of Data Sahib into an eye hospital54 but also extended the network of dispensaries in eight important shrines of Lahore and another six outside Lahore.

Dispensaries Established during (1969–72) Dispensaries in Lahore (headed by medical officer/dispenser) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Data Shifakhana at Data Shifakhana at Data Shifakhana at Data Shifakhana at Data Shifakhana at Data Shifakhana at Data Shifakhana at Data Shifakhana at

Darbar Hazrat Madhu Lal Hussain Sahib. Darbar Hazrat Bibi Pak Daman. Darbar Hazrat Miran Hussain Zinjani Sahib. Darbar Hazrat Takia Lehri Shah, Ichhra. Darbar Hazrat Shah Abdul Maali. Masjid Wazir Khan. Shahdara Town (Takia Kakay Zais). Shah Kamal Colony (Auqaf).

Dispensaries outside Lahore (headed by medical officer/dispenser) 1. Darbar Hazrat Baba Farid-ud-Din, Pakpattan, headed by a medical officer.

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2. Darbar Hazrat Bahaud-din Zikria, Multan, headed by a medical officer. 3. Darbar Hazrat Kh. Ghulam Farid, Kot Mithan, headed by a dispenser. 4. Darbar Hazrat Ali-ul-Haque, Sialkot, headed by a dispenser. 5. Mauza Bahanwala, Liaqatpur, headed by a dispenser. 6. Model Mosque, Company Bagh, Sargodha, headed by a dispenser. The dispensaries proved to be a minor step in giving medical relief; instead of giving a semblance of modern facilities, they were transformed into a sacred site within the larger complex of the shrine. The dispensaries were established largely to provide health services for devotees coming to the shrine of the saint. Many of the visitors started taking medicine from the dispensary as extended healing symbols (barakat) of the saint. For the Auqaf Department, however, this meant fewer serious visitors to the dispensaries and therefore less significance for a medical relief centre. The reduced importance of a dispensary for health purposes, coupled with the chronic lethargic malfunctioning of the government institutions, fell quite short of expected results. The dispensaries were reduced to providing only a few sulpha medicines, at the most, and even those medicines often remained unavailable.55

The Bhutto government and the working of the Auqaf Department After the fall of Dhaka in 1971, the military handed over rule to a civilian, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, in the capacity of Civil Martial Law Administrator. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, which had emerged as the largest political party in West Pakistan after the elections of 1970. Within a truncated Pakistan, he distilled hopes through his slogan of ‘Roti, Kapra aur Makan’ [bread, clothing and housing], wrapped up in the larger concept of Islamic socialism.56 Bhutto found popular support through claims of taking wealth from the elites and redistributing it within the plebeian or common masses.57 His left-of-centre leaning provided him with a great deal of support from popular and socialistic groups. For the initial few years of his rule, his policies remained aligned with the intention of popular support that led him to nationalise the large industries and agricultural lands while providing a renewed basis for regional religious identity.58 His party in

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the Punjab government, as in Sindh,59 pursued the common will of his spirit and, while rediscovering Punjabi identity through Punjabi cultural memories, started strengthening the pluralistic religious ethos. The Bhutto government showed a general inclination to consider a Sufi figure as deeply embedded within socialist ideas. During the initial few years, the efforts to promote a shrine of a Sufi saint that remained attached to pluralistic tradition and Punjabi Sufi poetry remained clear. Inaugurating the urs of Madhu Lal Hussain in Lahore, the Minister for Auqaf, Information and Broadcasting proclaimed that in future this would be the biggest urs in the country. He said that this urs remained attached to mela (fair), a tradition that should be revived. He said, further, that in the past this urs and mela had been the second largest in the country, after the urs of Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh. However, he hoped that in future the urs and mela of Madhu Lal Hussain would surpass any other shrine-based activity, as it would be celebrated on a Pakistan-wide level.60 The Bhutto government not only demonstrated its priorities regarding certain Sufi figures, it also recast the images of Sufi saints, in general, in a socialist and egalitarian spirit. Even Data Ganj Bakhsh was considered a preacher of egalitarianism and seen as providing an image of a classless society ‘based on the concept of Musawat e Muhammadi which Allama Iqbal and Quaid e Azam later termed as “Islamic Socialism”’.61 Along with envisaging Sufi saints as socialist and egalitarian figures, the early Bhutto rule also considered shrines as cultural reminiscences of poetic and spiritual expressions. Hanif Ramay became a voice for promoting this idea when he was given a central place in the Punjab government.62 Thanks to his efforts, the Punjab Auqaf Department began to give importance to the shrines of Punjabi Sufi poets. As early as in 1971 he was maintaining during his speeches that Sufi shrines should be understood as cultural artifacts and seen as sites of potential rebirth of hidden cultural voices. For Ramay, who was inherently an artist more than a politician, the sites of shrine should also be built in a way that would show and reanimate the literary remnants of Pakistan’s culture. To achieve this, Ramay had a plan to develop theatres at the sites of shrines, at least on such sites as those of Bullai Shah63 and Waris Shah.64 For Ramay, theatre would revive the poetical expressions of the Sufi poets and reconnect audiences with their life-world.

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To implement his ideas, Ramay planned a committee composed of Munnu Bhai, a famous leftist journalist and a playwright, Shafqat Tanveer Mirza, a leftist scholar, B.A. Qureshi, then Chief Secretary of Punjab and famous for having a deep literary aesthetic, and Baba Sadiq, a former bank manager and a devotee of Baba Waris Shah, to reconstruct the site of the shrine of Waris Shah. The committee also included some members of Lahore Arts Council. Ramay was himself a member, but it was Qureshi who headed the committee. In an interview, Sadiq mentioned that the condition of the shrine at that time was ‘pathetic’. Even on urs days, barely 200 people visited the shrine of this great personality. As the shrine was not attached to a large waqf property, the focus of the Auqaf Department, which had already taken over the control of this shrine many years before, was also minimal and the shrine was in poor condition.65 The committee started its work in 1974 – 5 and finalised a plan for redesigning and reconstructing the shrine of Baba Waris Shah in a few months. The first phase of the project took three more years, and the shrine of Baba Waris Shah achieved a new face in 1978. The second phase was delayed because of the change of government and the expenditure of a large part of the funds allocated to the shrine on a nearby road. With the help of the Lahore Arts Council, however, the reconstructed shrine began to attract a large number of devotees and pilgrims on urs days. Gradually, the Lahore Arts Council introduced international Punjabi poetry and a Hir reading competition on urs days. However, as the Lahore Arts Council supported the building and running of this shrine, they later took almost 75 per cent of the income of the shrine. In the same ratio, the Lahore Arts Council became responsible for meeting the incurred expenses on maintaining and controlling the shrine of Waris Shah. The figures showed the growth in the cash box income at the shrine. They show that, along with the persona of Waris Shah as a poet, his appeal as a Sufi figure also grew gradually and began to attract a large number of devotees and donors. The record shows that the cash boxes at the shrine of Waris Shah in 1996–7 collected Rs 272,000 against expenses of Rs 35,100. However, the total amount collected from the shrine was Rs 1,088,000, out of which the Lahore Arts Council took Rs 816,000. In comparison, in 2006–7, the Auqaf Department collected around Rs 2,129,600, out of which 25 per cent – Rs 532,400 – was taken by the Auqaf Department, with the rest going to the council.

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Along with working on the shrine of Waris Shah, the Bhutto government carried on giving occasional donations to the shrines and tried to make plans to improve the sites of shrines without implementing any significant plan. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto gave a donation of golden gates to the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, Lahore, and started the precedent of visiting popular shrines. The Auqaf Department also launched a clean water facility at the Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib mosque, shrine and at the hospital.66 The Bhutto government also started planning to redesign and extend the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, the most popular with devotees. Almost 900,000 people visited the shrine in 1974 during the three days of urs. Interestingly, the days for urs had already increased from two to three due to the increase of people at the shrine. The government therefore started planning to extend the site of the shrine. Such plans already existed but had not yet been realised. The government also started planning to reconstruct the shrine of Bullai Shah, to turn it into an amphitheatre where plays on the themes of the message of Bullai Shah could be staged. However, nothing concrete took place. Though none of its plans were implemented, the government was at least able to give the Auqaf Department a proper space for its administrative working, organising its material in offices and giving staff a suitable place to work. The Auqaf Department, while taking over another seven kanals of land attached to the shrine of Shah Chiragh, moved into the building of the Shah Chiragh complex and, after some adjustments and renovations, made their head office there in 1973. Up to that time, however, the department had already structured its working in a systematic way and already appeared as a separate and distinct department. The department came under a provincial ministry attached to the Jail Khana Jaat, yet it had already acquired the structure of a separate department. The working of the Auqaf Department was already divided into sub-departments, zones and sectors. There were five zones in total, within which the department had organised its operations, and these continued until 1994, when the organisational structure was revised. Consolidating itself through having a proper head office, the Punjab Auqaf Department continued taking over shrines throughout the Bhutto period and throughout the 1970s. The department took control of around 59 shrines in that decade. However, six of these shrines had

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already been taken over by the department during the Yahya regime. From 1972 until 1977, the last year of the Bhutto government, the Auqaf Department took over a total of 51 shrines. During this period, the department focused more on taking over and controlling shrines from the area outside of Lahore. Out of these 51 shrines, the Auqaf Department took control of 29 shrines in Gujranwala Zone, including five from Sialkot, 13 from Gujrat and 11 from Gujranwala Zone. From Lahore Zone, the department took over around 20 shrines, including three from Kasur, four from Sheikhupura, and the rest of the 15 from the environs of Lahore. These shrines included such significant shrines as that of Baba Ghulam Haider Sain, Badami Bagh in Lahore, the shrine of H. Kamal Chishti, Kasur and the shrine of Nausha Ganj Pak, Wazirabad. The shrine of Kamal Chishti is the oldest shrine in Kasur, and the shrine of Nausha Ganj Pak is the father figure of a sub-Sufi sect, Naushahi of the Qadri order. However, the shrine of Baba Haider Sain was important largely because of its ability to attract travellers who wanted to ensure a safe journey by donating money before starting their journey from the nearby largest bus station in Lahore. Largely, as the Bhutto government brought in folk shrines under bureaucratic controls and helped to disenchant the ‘traditional’ Sufistic practices, a renewed but critical interest in them started to appear.67 Severe criticism emerged in the last years of the government about the inability of the Auqaf Department to take care of the shrines. Among many of the reports, some hit at the very heart of the whole control and management of the affairs of the Auqaf Department. These reports showed the extremely poor condition of even the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, so far the central site at which bureaucratic controls had implemented a modern reformation agenda. One such report described in detail the condition of and around the shrine of Data Sahib. The report questioned the need for security persons or police standing at the door of the shrine to safeguard the golden door donated by the prime minister,68 complaining that because of the police at the door, devotees found it difficult to go freely into the shrine. The report maintained that around the shrine the streets were polluted and the water from gutters pooled on the already damaged roads. Addicts and criminals were quite common around the shrine, along with suspected foreign nationals without a passport or national identity card. The area around the shrine had sheds for cows and buffaloes and often they moved along the roads while

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splashing their excretions around. The area had a bad sewerage system and often the polluted water coming from the gutters entered the houses. Even after complaining many times, the area’s residents’ complaints went unheeded by the authorities.69 In the last two years of the Bhutto government, contrary to its earlier leftist leaning, a clear shift and re-emphasis on Islamisation became obvious. The government was eager to demonstrate activities for increasing Islamisation, amidst demands that even the activities on 1 May, Labour Day, should be organised in an Islamic way.70 The early leftist approach towards Sufistic expressions as cultural embodiments changed towards a version that highlighted Sufi figures as those who promoted efforts to preach and propagate Islam in the region. Even while visiting the shrine of Madhu Lal on its urs day, a provincial minister stressed the relationship between a Sufi and the preaching of Islam.71 The speaker of the Punjab Assembly seemed quite eager to inaugurate the procession of Bari Gyarwi Sharif in 1976, which had been started by Malik Ata Ullah Qadri, a local religious scholar, only a few years before in Lahore. While all ghair Shari (non-Shari) actions were banned in the procession, a large group of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) stalwarts, including the Provincial Minister for Parliament affairs, the President of Lahore and many other important members of the PPP government and party, walked alongside the procession that was to end at the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib.72 For the first time the Bhutto government not only took direct control of the Badshahi mosque through the Auqaf Department but also started building the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad. The idea of the Shah Faisal Mosque was initiated as early as in 1966; however, due to the delays in designing, finalised in 1969, delays in funding and the murder of Shah Faisal of Saudi Arabia,73 ensured that the work did not begin until 1976.74 Until June 1976 the work on the mosque was often delayed due to contracting issues.75 On the other hand, the Ministry of Religious Affairs made serious efforts to project the image of the state as Islamic. Kausar Niazi, the Federal Minister for Religious Affairs, wrote many articles highlighting the mosque as the central symbolic element of Islam.76 Further, in order to show its seriousness regarding Islamisation, the government created a central/federal auqaf body and placed all provincial Auqaf Departments under its control through a bill passed through the senate. The minister intended to move further towards what was considered

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proper Islamisation by controlling waqf property in a more effective way through national-level policy. The government, however, did not allow the Auqaf Bill to go to the Islamic Ideological Council (IIC) as it included permission for the Auqaf Administrator to sell waqf property. An opposition senator who suggested sending the Auqaf Bill to the IIC thought the clause giving authority to the Auqaf Administrator to sell waqf property was un-Islamic. The government opposed the suggestion on the grounds that it was a proponent of the Islamic cause; therefore nothing against Islam could possibly be included in the bill.77 In addition to the centralisation of auqaf in Islamabad, the government also showed its seriousness about Islamisation to improve the condition of aima (plural of imam) and khutaba (plural of khateeb) through improving their pay scales. The government improved the salary packages and announced the minimum pay scale for muazzans (prayer callers) as PS-4 and for imam/khateeb as PS-9. The Provincial Minister for Auqaf, Rana Iqbal Ahmed Khan, also announced the increase of monetary assistance by the state for non-auqaf religious seminaries and the assistance increased from Rs 100,000 per annum to Rs 300,000 per annum. In addition, the Federal Minister, Maulana Kausar Niazi, was also concerned about the condition of shrines and intended to change the non-Islamic perception of shrines and the practices at them. In order to show his sincerity, in 1976 the minister ordered the Auqaf Department to give attention to the shrine of Ghazi Alam Ud Din Shahid of Lahore. Ghazi Alam Ud Din was executed by the British colonial authorities for murdering a Hindu publisher who had allegedly published a blasphemous book. The minister ordered the immediate reconstruction of the shrine of ‘the lover of Prophet (PBUH)’, and reiterated that ‘it is our religious responsibility to take care all those figures who gave their lives for Islam, and no self-conscious nation remained oblivious for this task’.78

Zia ul-Haq’s regime and auqaf When General Zia ul-Haq toppled the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1977, the martial law regime showed that it intended to retain the already existing legal framework, at least for the first two years. It maintained the centralised Ministry of Religious Affairs, under which the Auqaf Department had started working after the passing of

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the federal Auqaf Bill. The military regime changed the Minister of Religious Affairs but did not change Auqaf Administrators in the provinces.79 Muhammad Ashraf, who was in charge of the Auqaf Department Punjab after being appointed only a month before the military coup, that is, in June 1977, remained in his post for another two years, when Aftab Ahmed Khan was again appointed Chief Administrator Auqaf of Punjab.80 However, the Auqaf Department could not give its attention to the shrines during those years and was occupied with arranging reports on religious schools. The focus on shrines was revived after the promulgation of the Auqaf Waqf Properties Ordinance (AWPO) of 1979, which relinked auqaf policies with colonial legacy and decentralised the structure of the Auqaf Department. As the emphasis of the Zia regime remained on promoting Islam to justify the extension of its military rule, it ensured the propagation of the uniform teaching and truths of Islam. To achieve this, although initiated as early as 1979, after concerted efforts had been made to enumerate and support religious schools,81 the most visible effort took place in 1984 when the regime made it mandatory for all auqaf mosques to recite Juma Khutba as provided by the state officials.82 Along with that, the mushirs (consultants) and administrator of auqaf kept their focus on explaining the necessity for Islamic teachings and practices at shrines and their madrasas attached. Their portrayal of Sufis as preachers and propagators of Islam became the established truth. Later, in 1993–4, when Hanif Ramay returned from exile and became the speaker of the Punjab Assembly in the Benazir government, he was unable to return to his original leftist position. With a little sarcasm, he understood Sufis as preachers of Islam, though he labelled all contemporary ulema as those ‘who make people kaafir’.83 The policy of Islamisation propagated through auqaf made it essential to preach the teachings of Islam through different techniques at the site of the shrine. The Auqaf Department remained active in organising a competition for reciting the Qur’an, naat and religious debates at different urs events, especially on the urs of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib and at educational institutions, like schools. The state officials also carried on the previous state’s policies to support and strengthen the religious position of Ahl e Sunnat by promoting processions on important occasions like Eid Milad un Nabi, Giyarwi Sharif and Akhri Chahar Shamba (the last Wednesday of the month of Safar, and

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considered as the day the Prophet Muhammad felt well enough to walk after serious illness).84 The shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib had a central place in all these processions, as almost all such processions in which local and provincial officials participated ended there.85 The Auqaf Department restarted operations to take control of shrines after the promulgation of the Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1979. In the whole of the 1980s the department had taken over a total of 52 shrines, almost equivalent to the number achieved during the 1960s. The department took control of 26 shrines from the five sectors of Lahore District. From Kasur District, it took over four more shrines, while from Sheikhupura District the department was able to take over five more shrines. From the three sectors of Gujranwala, that is Gujranwala, Gujrat, and Sialkot, the department was able to take over six, seven and four shrines respectively. Out of these total 52 shrines, however, only two shrines were taken over in 1989, after the end of Zia ul-Haq’s rule. Thus, during his entire rule, the Auqaf Department took over a total of 52 shrines, and in the last nine years took over 50 shrines. It shows that during Zia ul-Haq’s rule, the maximum number of shrines were taken over by the Auqaf Department. Control of some significant shrines was taken during this decade, including the shrine of Shah Inayat Qadri, Lahore, teacher and pir of famous Sufi poet Baba Bullai Shah, the shrine of H. Ghoray Shah, Lahore and the shrine of H. Jamat Ali Shah, Narowal. The emphasis of the Zia regime, however, was on the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib and, therefore, the shrine was expanded and gained a renewed Islamised outlook during the period. Though the idea to extend the space of the shrine had been under consideration by almost all of the previous governments since Ayub Khan,86 it was Zia ul-Haq’s personal interest that made the renovation of the shrine possible. Even before the promulgation of the 1979 Waqf Properties Ordinance, and only one year after taking over the reins of the state, in 1978, Zia ul-Haq had placed the foundation stone for the construction of a mosque and the extension of the shrine.87 To hasten the process of designing and constructing the mosque and the shrine, he formed a committee, which presented final designs in 1979. After being selected and approved by Zia ul-Haq, and boasting minarets resembling Turkey’s Bayazid Mosque, the model of the mosque and shrine was placed for public viewing on the urs of Data Sahib on 7– 10 January 1980.88 The mosque was to be built on 14 kanals

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and with the capacity for 2,000 namazis (worshippers) to pray at the same time. In that way the mosque would be the third largest mosque in the country after the Badshahi and Faisal mosques. The Auqaf Department was to bear all the expenses of the construction of the new mosque and shrine. However, to achieve a quick start, Zia ul-Haq gave a special loan of Rs 5,000,000 to the Auqaf Department. The construction of the new mosque and shrine with the special loan from Zia ul-Haq also showed another side of the Islamising effort during his era: appropriating sacred sites and placing them into the market economy to earn profits. The state’s wish to reconstruct shrines and keep them in good condition started to become clear. This urge demonstrates more than what Jamal Malik terms an ‘integrationist process’ of the state. Malik supports his point of view by citing the publication of a booklet from the Pakistan tourism authority listing ‘137 shrines, 79 out of which are elaborately described’. He infers that the ‘condition for listing the shrines in the booklet is [that] they would be in a reasonable condition and accessible to foreign tourists’. He further maintains that this ‘presupposes an effective administration, which in turn means that those shrines must be well integrated’.89 However, for most of the shrines, the presupposition of being in reasonable condition was only illusory. At best the urge of the state to reconstruct the dilapidated shrines through the very income these shrines had been earning because of devotees can be seen. Other than the ‘integrationist approach’, the loan from Zia ul-Haq and the state’s desire for the shrines to be in good condition showed its willingness to participate in the controlled market economy to earn profits. However, the state department was not prepared to initiate this process effectively. The Auqaf Department was severely criticised throughout the 1980s for the selective, non-effective and lethargic approach of the state towards shrines. With the growing centrality and stature of the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, the Auqaf Department came under criticism for remaining to ignore other shrines. The Musheer (Adviser) Auqaf, however, claimed to have initiated the reconstruction and revamping of shrines in Punjab as early as 1980, but until 1985 the situation was negligible. As the shrine of Data Sahib became more impressive, the other shrines remained in a dilapidated condition. The criticism maintained that many other shrines collected at least as much money and their condition could be improved by investing what they collected. Critics maintained that the Auqaf

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Department did not invest the money collected through donations at the shrines and its staff were involved in corruption.90 Even as famous a shrine as that of Baba Fareed, Pakpattan, remained in a poor condition, with fallen hujras (rooms for worship). In a report published in 1985 the local population maintained that the department had collected around Rs 3,300,000 a year but no reconstruction work had taken place. Another report, in the same year, on the famous shrine of Bullai Shah, Kasur, criticised the Auqaf Department severely for ignoring the condition of the shrine. The report maintained that with the collection of hundreds of thousands of rupees each year, although the department had developed its offices and its employees residences nothing had been spent to improve the shrine and its environment. According to the report, almost 1 million people came to visit this shrine on urs days alone, but found no facilities. The report appealed to the authorities to improve the environment of the shrine, along with making the Auqaf Department accountable.91 The initiation of the construction of the mosque and the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib and the military regime’s emphasis on Islamisation also led to increased tensions between Ahl e Sunnat and Deobandi Muslim sects around shrines. Ahl e Sunnat, or the orthodox section of Muslims, favoured tackling shrines with a soft reforming emphasis at the site of shrines in order to link them more closely with Islamic rituals.92 Deobandi, on the other hand, though it did not object to tombs being built, did not approve of grand structures and cults at and around shrines. One such conflict emerged when a new centre for publication, Markaz e Tahqeeq e Auliya (Centre for Research on Saints), was created by the Auqaf Department. Jamal Malik explains that conflict erupted because of a book previously published by Gauraya, then in charge of Ulema Academy. For Malik the conflict highlighted the traditional tension between sects and the personal manipulation used to preserve the positions of the authorities.93 The conflict shows that the Ahl e Sunnat orthodoxy, so far relegated to the back benches, had found the courage and enough support to fight against the dominant revivalist positions that had been directing the literary activities of and within the Auqaf Department. At the time, when millions of rupees were being spent on the shrine and the mosque of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, the Ahl e Sunnat orthodoxy found a suitable environment to show some strength. When the civilian government gained power in the provinces and centre in the non-party elections of 1985, while Zia ul-Haq remained as

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president, the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib was already in the middle of its construction. The newly elected Chief Minister Nawaz Sharif made his first public move after becoming Chief Minister (CM) of Punjab to visit the shrine. He visited the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib along with the shrine of Allama Iqbal and Minar-e-Pakistan, the symbol of independence, in Lahore. His visit was in line with the previous rulers, both military and civilian, who had been ready to appropriate the localised sacred sites in order to share the common national identity. The CM not only visited the shrine but also inaugurated the urs of Data Sahib every year of his time as CM of Punjab. Meanwhile, however, the activities at the shrine were gradually organised through subcommittees and associations. The urs had now translated into a quasistate controlled religious and educational site where more emphasis was given to speeches and conferences. The emphasis most of the time, during and after urs days, remained on condemning Ghair Shari (non-Shariat) activities that prevailed at the shrine, not only by Deoband scholars but also by Ahl e Sunnat scholars.94

Conclusion All the four governments – of Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Bhutto and Zia – placed more emphasis on infusing their own mode of religious ideologies than developmental tasks at the site of shrines. Each government tried to create its own defining frame embedded in its own brand of Islam in order to control the site of the shrine. With the brief exception of the early Bhutto period, the religious ideology kept any pluralistic imagery of the site of the shrine at bay. Each government emphasised taking over shrines with a view to redefining them; however, the development remained selective. In the case of both right and left wing political rulers, the focus of development could not extend beyond selected shrines. The martial law regimes showed a sense of continuity and overlapping dispositions despite being directed towards varied religious interests. All three regimes retained the colonial policy of keeping auqaf as a provincial matter, as opposed to a brief period of the Bhutto regime that made an effort for centralisation. Martial law regimes remained more focused on introducing their policies. With its more modern understanding of Islam, Ayub Khan’s regime focused on introducing

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updated facilities at the site of the shrine. Yahya Khan’s regime emphasised not only developmental activities but also the introduction of educational activities. The emphasis of the regime was to change the mode of religious thinking through its emphasis on Ulema Academy and to merge religious tradition with the modern world. On the other hand, the Zia ul-Haq government reintroduced the concerns of both the previous martial law regimes, but through its own version of Islamic understanding. With the focus on developing a huge mosque at the site of the shrine, Zia’s martial law government also emphasised madrasas (religious seminaries). The focus on madrasas, however, entails the effort of relinking these seminaries with their traditional sources of learning. The martial law government also ensured funding for the upkeep of madrasas. However, the government pressed for shrines to be placed within controlled capitalistic economics under which they might attract large income.

CHAPTER 5 DEVELOPING AND REDEFINING SHRINES IN THE POST-ZIA PERIOD

This chapter discusses the working of the Auqaf Department during the democratic decade, that is of the 1990s, and the Musharraf period. Without changing the framework of waqf ordinance, both these periods focused on the institutional working of the Auqaf Department. Underlying religious and economic concerns, complementing each other in a balanced way, characterised the institutional progress of the department during this period. During the democratic decade, both the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League, having alternate periods in power, reflected their own politico-religious leanings, though they never challenged the existing framework for managing shrines. However, with the beginning of the Musharraf period, efforts were made to project the sites of shrines as Islamic cultural heritage. Starting with the United Nations’ project, government efforts were further focused on engaging and convincing international monetary agencies of its ability to develop and run such projects. The chapter highlights how this development translated into the revamping and reconstruction of shrines. The chapter also describes the economics of the Auqaf Department and analyses its income and expenditure ratio during that period. The chapter matches the incomegenerating zones of the department against the mode of expenditures in order to show the administrative expenditures institutionalised spending on Islamised activities, at the expense of shrines.

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The democratic decade, Auqaf Department and shrines The emphasis on the development and the centrality of the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib was the major concern during Zia ul-Haq’s period in power. The shrine was transformed into a grand complex with the second largest mosque in Lahore. Such an out-of-proportion focus on the shrine at the cost of others produced discontent and criticism against the working of the state and the department. In order to allay this discontent, in the last year of his rule Zia ul-Haq expressed a wish to build as large a complex as that of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, Lahore at the site of Baba Fareed, Pakpattan. His wish, however, was out of step with the developmental restrictions of the Auqaf Department. He died in a plane crash in 1988,1 and the transition period that ended with elections for a new government meant that new developmental activities in the department came to a halt. The elections of 1988 brought a new power structure in Pakistan with sharp political conflict that was also manifested in the administrative structure in the rift between the centre and the province of the Punjab. The election gave a simple majority to the government of Benazir Bhutto in the centre, with the opposition, headed by Nawaz Sharif, gaining a majority in Punjab and being able to form a government in the province.2 The rift between province and centre became one of the major reasons for the fall of the government of Benazir Bhutto in 1990, giving way to the rule of Nawaz Sharif.3 The whole democratic decade later witnessed political tensions and the change of the elected governments of the PPP of Benazir Bhutto and the Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif, one after another. Both the political parties came to power twice in the 1990s, after being toppled by nondemocratic forces. Politically antagonistic to each other, both of the political groups had different religious leanings. Both of these parties had a different political lineage and links with political traditions. Benazir Bhutto claimed to have the ideational inheritance of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party.4 She represented a ‘novelty of being an urbane, eloquent, and liberal woman, grown in the unlikely soil of the decadent East and polished in the West’.5 Public hopes were high that she would revive the popular spirit associated with her father. On the other hand, Nawaz Sharif acknowledged his roots in the religio-political policies of

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Zia ul-Haq. He did not hesitate to rally his party around an assembly of revivalist Islamic political forces. His party assured the Pakistan military that Islamic concerns would be well taken care of and presented itself as a vehicle for Islamisation in liaison with the military.6 These two political parties demonstrated a variety of concerns regarding shrines and saints during the decade. The Muslim League seemed to be following the footsteps of Zia ul-Haq. Their main focus was on the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib and they seldom developed other shrines. Nawaz Sharif kept up his practice of visiting the shrine after he was elected, as he had in 1985 when he was elected and became Chief Minister (CM) of Punjab for the first time.7 He further supported the work at the shrine of Data Sahib and ensured the allocation of funds for the purpose. He inaugurated the first phase of the Data Sahib complex in 1989. Only a few days after the inauguration ceremony, he also ordered the start of the second phase of the complex.8 Following the policies of Zia ul-Haq, Nawaz Sharif showed an interest in the shrine of Baba Fareed of Pakpattan.9 Visiting the shrine of 1991, he ordered work on the shrine to restart to realise the promise of his political mentor Zia ul-Haq.10 However, the work could not move ahead as a conflict emerged on the question of destroying the old mosque and hujras (small rooms) at the shrine. The Archaeology Department of Pakistan advised that the old constructions at the shrine were many centuries old and should be preserved. The project designers could not understand these views and firmly maintained the position that a new complex was needed similar to that of the shrine of Data Sahib. The conflict continued until 1999, the last months of Nawaz Sharif’s second tenure, when the government decided to dismantle the old constructions and erect a new one in its place.11 The Benazir PPP, following the policy of participating in popular practices, did not align itself with either the shrine of Data Sahib of Lahore or that of Baba Fareed of Pakpattan. The Benazir government not only facilitated the construction of the shrine of Baba Fareed12 but also showed reverence for the shrine of Data Sahib of Lahore. During its briefly held period of power in collaboration with the Pakistan Muslim League (J) from 1993 to 199513 in Punjab, the PPP ensured participation and celebration during urs days with as much enthusiasm as that of the other political parties. The emphasis on practices, however, was the pivotal point that differentiated the religio-political leaning.

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The PPP’s Governor Punjab proactively participated in popularising the rituals such as drinking and donating milk during urs. The politics of participation demonstrated an effort to mix with the rural population and lower-middle class. An underlying tension between the two political parties and their religious disposition also resulted into a conflict during the 950th urs of Data Sahib. The conflict emerged on the issue of holding Sama in the vicinity of the shrine. The basement at the shrine was under construction and there was no room available to hold Sama. The Provincial Minister for Auqaf, Shah Nawaz Cheema, claimed that the function of Sama should take place on the roof of the basement under construction in front of the tomb. However, the bureaucracy of the Auqaf Department refused to follow the minister’s order and threw debris on the roof. The head of the Mahfil Sama Committee then asked permission to organise Sama in a nearby school from the Secretary for Education who, however, refused. The minister threatened to bulldoze the school if the secretary did not provide permission to hold Sama. Albeit without formal approval, the committee organised Sama in the school by force.14 The PPP government showed its interest in shrines other than that of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib. On the 370th urs of Mian Mir, famous personalities of the PPP government such as Mohammad Hanif Ramay, Speaker Punjab Assembly, Chaudhry Shah Nawaz Cheema, Provincial Minister of Auqaf, Senator Sheikh Rafiq, Jahangir Badar, Aitazaz Ahsan and Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo, then the Chief Minister of Punjab, participated in the urs activities.15 Highlighting a shrine other than that of Data Sahib, Benazir Bhutto turned the government’s focus to the shrine of Bibian Pak Daman, a shrine of sacred women in Lahore. She not only visited the shrine on 2 May 1994 but she also ordered the expansion of the structure of the shrine.16 With little leftist leanings, and as a woman herself, her interest in the shrine of Bibian Pak Daman seems quite natural. However, the alignment of the shrine with the Shia community provided another aspect of the interest in the shrine. The shrine of Bibian Pak Daman, although taken over by the Auqaf Department as a Brelwi or Sunni shrine, had already acquired an overwhelming Shia image in the 1960s. The conflict between sects erupted as early as in 1971, only a few years after it had been taken over by the Auqaf Department. After revamping the site of the shrine, the management committee wrote names of panj tan paks (five sacred bodies/

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personalities) and of 12 Shia imams inside the tomb. However, Sunni devotees also wrote the names of four khalifa rashidins (first four pious khalifas of the Muslim state in Madina) on the face of the shrine. To resolve the conflict, the Chief Administrator Auqaf had to intervene and make rules for both Shia and Sunni devotees. The devised rules failed to pacify the devotees and it took two more arbitrative sessions to resolve the issue. The final decision specified the sections within which both Shia and Sunni devotees could hold their respective meetings. The Auqaf Administrator decided the matter while considering the tradition of the sect of mujawars of the shrine, who happened to have been Sunni for the previous 150 years. It is interesting that the Auqaf Administration used this position of ‘custom’ and ‘history’ as the ground of decision, instead of taking into consideration the views and affiliations of the saint himself that were the grounds for constructing the whole portrayal of waqf properties and of taking the control of shrines away from mujawars and sajjada nashins. The mujawars, who themselves were Sunni, never hesitated to own the Shia history of the shrine.17

General Musharraf and the working of the Auqaf Department In October 1999, General Musharraf and his aides overthrew the government of Nawaz Sharif and began the process of guiding the state into the fast-changing twenty-first century.18 After the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2011 (9/11) the situation changed considerably and, while the incident allowed foreign troops to use Pakistan’s resources, at the same time it opened up opportunities to reform Pakistan’s institutions and rebuild its cultural environment.19 The conflicting demands and opportunities provided legitimacy to the ideological justification of the idea of Moderate Enlightenment, a strange mixture of two apparently different streams of thought in the context of the history of Pakistan. The emphasis on unfolding this idea remains on promoting and unearthing the hidden potential of Sufistic teachings and presenting them to the world as the other side of a militant Pakistan. Within heightened terrorism and militancy, the other side helped to show the peaceful image of Pakistan to the international community. The emphasis on Sufistic messages unearthed the importance of such poets as Bullai Shah and Waris Shah and their

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shrines, and later on even that of Madhu Laal, along with other Sufi shrines like Nausha Ganj and Shah Chiragh. Interestingly, many delayed auqaf projects were resumed. The Musharraf period also coincided with the activities initiated by the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) for improving the cultural heritage and tourism programme in Pakistan. Though the programme had started as early as in 1972,20 it was reinforced by the Punjab Special Premises (Preservation) Ordinance, 1985.21 It was only given attention and had life breathed into it in the late 1990s. The report ‘Cultural Tourism in Lahore and Peshawar’ was ‘the result of an initiative by the Government of Pakistan, UNDP and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)’.22 The project’s final form included strategic and legal details, developmental recommendations and funding plans in a report published in 2000 by UNESCO. The report focused on the cities of Lahore and Peshawar, with the emphasis on conservation and promoting and maintaining the cultural heritage sites of the cities. The report also linked the cultural heritage project with suggestions on how to acquire funding to improve cultural heritage sites and placed emphasis on improving performance and executing developmental projects. The report suggested that improving cultural tourism would alleviate poverty and increase employment opportunities, and provided a detailed programme to run the project. In order to execute the UNDP programme to conserve, develop and market cultural heritage tourism, the Governor of Punjab launched the ‘Tajdeed e Lahore Programme’ (Revive Lahore Programme), under the supervision of a board in 2002, through an ordinance.23 The legal position of the ordinance, however, was covered through a broad based act, the Punjab Heritage Foundation Act, 2005.24 The act brought together many different departments of the Government of Punjab, including Archaeology, PHA (Pakistan Horticultural Authority) and the Auqaf Department. The act established a Board of Governors and a fund for its operations and projects that would be carried out through the creation of committees of specialists again from different departments of Punjab government. As the framework was enlarged through legal enactment, the work of Tajdeed e Lahore was merged with the Fund for Punjab Heritage in the form of a special committee.25 Other than the historical sites in Lahore, like Fort, Shalamar Bagh and Toulington Market, the Heritage Fund also gave weight to the development of the sites of shrines.

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As the emphasis on heritage and cultural tourism grew, the shrines started to receive funding for their reconstruction through programmes like Tajdeed e Lahore Programme. The first of such funding was for the shrine of Shah Chiragh and its adjacent building and mosque. The shrine was renovated by a team headed by an architect from the Auqaf Department after the Archaeology Department refused to comply with the orders of the Governor of Punjab to complete the project in a few weeks.26 The project, though not a very large one as its total cost was only Rs 70 million, became significant enough to attract even the President of Pakistan, General Musharraf, to visit Lahore to inaugurate it on 28 October 2000. It is interesting that the project coincided with the efforts of the government at that time to win the confidence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) through demonstrating that internal development programmes were being undertaken. The IMF became disillusioned with the economic policies of democratic governments of the 1990s and lost trust in the ability of the State of Pakistan either to keep its promises or to restructure the economy.27 During the pivotal time, the Auqaf Fund and the emphasis on improving cultural heritage programmes provided opportunities to improve Pakistan’s credibility during 2000 and 2001, and paved the way for Pakistan to gain the promise of IMF funding that was released a year later.28 This fortuitous development was carried on at many other shrines that were reconstructed during the Musharraf period other than the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib. In 2003 the government released funds for the reconstruction of the shrine of Bullai Shah, and the project got under way in the same year. The federal government took a special interest and provided the funds on the special directives of the Prime Minister, Mir Zafar Ullah Khan Jamali, who also inaugurated the completed mosque beside the shrine.29 The reconstruction was a twophase programme: in the first phase the mosque and 20 shops were constructed; in the second, the complex at the shrine was to be constructed. Other than the shrine of Bullai Shah, the construction work at the complex of the shrine of Baba Fareed was also started. It began at the end of 1999 and finished in 2003. The construction projects on shrines like those of the shrine of Nausha Ganj Bakhsh in Gujranwala and Waris Shah in Jandiala Sher Khan, Sheikhupura began after 2000. At the shrine of Shah Jamal, in 2007, the Auqaf Department revamped

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the shrine’s flooring and constructed shops outside the shrine.30 At the shrine of Jamat Ali Shah Lasani in Narowal, the Auqaf Department made small improvements, like putting in a motor for the water supply and improved flooring. Even one of the most neglected shrines of Madhu Laal Hussain in Lahore received attention, though it took many more years for any significant activity to take place.31 Amidst all this work being carried on at the other shrines, the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib was not ignored; rather, the shrine gained more importance. The first phase of the complex of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib had been completed in the late 1980s and the work on the next phase was already under way during the 1990s, yet the second phase was completed by the end of the 1990s. During the Musharraf period a few activities were proposed at the newly built second section of the shrine. The Auqaf Department opened up a centre for ‘Maarif ul Aulya’ (knowing Sufi saints), with two sections: teaching and publication. The already operational religious school, Jamia al Hajvairy, was relaunched in the basement of the shrine of Data Sahib. In the next few years the school was able to enrol around 200 students, providing facilities for board and lodging, a few spacious classrooms, a large library and administrative rooms, with an annual budget of Rs 6 million. At the end of Musharraf’s rule, the school was already able to start an eight-year programme of Dars e Nizami, equivalent to an MA (Masters of Arts). The other section of the centre took care of publishing and began publishing a quarterly journal with the same name from 2002. A little later, the centre started publishing a monthly newsletter, ‘Auqaf News’. Until the completion of the second phase of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, the shrine had been attracting almost as many visitors weekly as it had been on the urs days during the early years of the 1950s. The shrine not only became a religious complex with the largest mosque, only smaller than the Badshahi Mosque, and a centre for dozens of religious activities but also became a large social welfare complex, with a 100-bed free hospital and sizable food services.32 The hospital, which had started as a small room and remained so until the 1990s, grew into a few buildings, yet remained poor in its performance. It was many years later that it turned into a well-organised hospital. Out of the seven different departments of the hospital,33 only one, the paediatric ward, was built during the Musharraf period. By the end of Musharraf’s rule, the performance of the department had reached a satisfactory point. The

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Medical Superintendent of the hospital was also in charge of nine dispensaries in and seven dispensaries outside Lahore. MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) doctors were in charge at the shrines of Baba Farid and of Baha uddin Zakariya Multan. At the rest of the dispensaries senior dispensers managed the sites. On the other hand, Langar Khana (the free food service) at the shrine grew into huge food providing services. With the growth of the shrine of Data Sahib, as the shrine became a separate zone with a PCS (Pakistan Civil Service) officer in charge, its perception within departmental-religious circles underwent a change. The shrine now became a strong centre for state controlled Brelwi teachings, conferences, assemblies and literary expressions. The literary circles around the shrine now started considering the shrine as a khankah, a space built by and for a living saint. The principal of Jamia al Hajvairy wrote in the preface of its prospectus that the relaunching of the school re-animated the dying tendencies that had been attached to the khankah. He maintained that since the very beginning, the religious school had remained a central element of the khankah. Through these khankahs, students emerged who propagated the two-nation theory that became the basis for the creation of Pakistan. However, after independence, the teaching and publication practices at khankahs started deteriorating and that had been the reason for the increased social evils, militancy and violence in society. He appreciated the efforts of the Director General Religious Affairs and the Secretary Auqaf in recreating the environment of khankahs at the shrine of Data Sahib and hoped that the effort would give rebirth to those who would serve the nation and religion in the best possible way.34

The economics of the Auqaf Department: income and expenditure The Auqaf Department started with meagre resources and fewer staff than the customary custodians had had in order to provide better management and control of waqf property. The beginning was marked with the hope that through state bureaucracy the waste of the income generated through public offerings, land contracts, rents from commercial shops and residential places and many related businesses attached to the shrines would be stopped. There were further hopes that

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state officials would stop selling the endowed property and the traditional caretakers would no longer be able to benefit from the capricious use of the property. The state intended to use the income generated through the shrines for the general welfare of the people as well as to transform the site of shrines into modern facilities. However, with each new government, the emphasis changed. Gradually, the department grew from its small beginnings into a large organisation with permanent employees and large buildings. The change of government also brought with it a change of emphasis on religious policies. The Auqaf Department internalised religious policies into welldefined Islamised activities through a fully-fledged directorate. The nationalisation that had begun with taking care of waqf sites gradually evolved into the prevailing of Islamised practices. Sustaining these practices required a lot of income from the shrines. The emphasis on religious prevalence did not stop the Auqaf Department from earning money. One of the important ways to earn money was to increase the number of sacred sites within the department’s control. Gradually, the department took hundreds of sacred sites under its control. For the Auqaf Department, only profit-making shrines were worth taking over – that is, those shrines generating more money than the expenditure they incurred.35 The overall working of the department remained very below standard for quite a long period and the department started re-investing on shrines quite late on after its inception, almost with the start of the rule of the democratic period. It was within Musharraf’s period that the development projects started and emphasis on performance increased. This also coincided with the internal restructuring of the department. For the first time the department tried to organise itself through organising its data.36 However, it is noteworthy that visits and offerings seemed to exceed the conditions set out by the Auqaf Department. The analysis of the economy of shrines reveals some interesting facts. This section analyses the economic activity through the department’s budgets. In the first decade, although the department only took over 52 shrines it showed a better profit ratio because of less spending on administrative expenses. Table 5.1 shows that although the income in 1966 is less than all other amounts, because of less expenditure on administrative structure the department could have earned 60 per cent surplus or profit from its received incomes. The department spent only 39.04 per cent of

Income

1,550,045 4,697,594 12,993,226 40,990,700

Expenditure without development (in Rs) 2,419,880 4,116,690 3,385,108 13,031,100

Surplus (in Rs) 60.96% 46.07% 20.77% 23.84%

Surplus and income (SI) ratio (in Rs)

Decade-wise income, expenditures and surplus relationship

1966 3,969,925 1970 8,814,284 1976 16,378,334 1986 54,649,400

Year

Table 5.1

39.04% 53.02% 79.33% 76.16%

Expenditure and income (EI) ratio

412.56 333.66

Volume increase in a decade

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its income on maintaining its administration in 1966. The situation changed, however, and in 1970 administrative expenses were already higher than the previous year, with 53.02 per cent of income being spent on them. The situation changed further with the increase of bureaucracy and administrative structures in the next few years. In 1976, profits fell to 20.77 per cent, the lowest ever, and at the same time the expenditure to income ratio reached its highest. Expenditure reached an unprecedented level of around 80 per cent of total income, which shows that the administrative structure of the organisation had grown a great deal. Jamal Malik and Ernest Ewing observed this fall of real profits. Malik matched the profit to the high inflation figures and calculated that real profits decreased. For both, the increase of integrationist policies of the post-colonial secular administration and the decreasing interest of people in archaic and traditional shrine-based practices also caused a decrease in shrine-based visits. We can also suggest that an increased administrative burden and lack of development at the site of shrines might be another reason for the fall in profits. However, there is a significant increase of volume of income in the mid-1970s – more than 400 per cent of the income generated in 1966. This also suggests that more than the decrease in the number of visitors, there was a surge in offerings that meant, indirectly, visits by devotees.37 In the following decades, we can see that a balance was achieved between income, expenditure and surplus ratios, despite the increase in the volume of the income. In each decade there is a kind of stable increase in income: comparing 1976 to 1986, the volume of income increased by around 333.43 per cent; from 1986 to 1996 the volume increased by 384.9 per cent; and from 1996 to 2006 the volume increased by 323.03 per cent, the lowest of the previous four decades. The increase in the volume in income from 1986 to 1996 suggests that the reconstruction works, especially at the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh, had increased the number of donations. It seems that devotees themselves supported and participated in the construction works.38 Further, Table 5.1 shows that surplus and income (SI) ratio and expenditure and income (EI) ratios remained almost stable during the three decades, as in 1986, 1996 and 2006 the EI ratio remained at around 76 per cent and SI at around 23 per cent. It means that after the mid-1970s, and especially after the mid1980s, the department achieved economic balance. From then on, with a

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few changes, expenditure grew in a similar ratio as did the volume of income.

Major income heads and accounts of the Auqaf Department The income of the Auqaf Department comes largely from shrines and is divided under nine headings.39 Out of these nine, cash boxes, land contracts and rents collected the bulk of the amount. Interestingly, however, since the mid-1990s the contract money from shoe handling at shrines gained significance. Shoe-contracting income increased around five times from Rs 1,643,000 in 1996 to Rs 79,00,000 in 2006 in the Lahore zone. In Gujranwala Zone too, shoe-contracting income increased exponentially, almost seven times, from Rs 194,000, in 1996 to Rs 1,355,000 in 2006. In both zones the income from flower contracting also increased a good deal. The income from flower contracting in 1996 was Rs 650,000 and increased to Rs 2,100,000 in 2006, an increase of around 3.3 times in Lahore zone. Although in Gujranwala Zone the income collected from flower contracting is not significant, the again increase shows a significant change. From an almost insignificant Rs 44,000 in 1996, income increased to Rs 235,000 in 2006, which is an increase of more than five times. The increase under the lease income heading from contracting land is normal and increased by around three times from 1996 to 2006. Income from rents of property, however, did not increase much and showed an increase of little more than two times in Lahore Zone. The Gujranwala zone shows a large increase in the income from leasing land; from Rs 2,817,000 in 1996 income increased to Rs 13,643,900 in 2006, almost five times more, while the increase from income in rents shows an increase of three times, from Rs 2,154,300 in 1996 to Rs 6,621,000 in 2006 (See Appendix). However, the most important heading for receiving income remained that from cash boxes that are normally placed at the shrines into which visiting devotees put donations. Tables 2 and 3 suggest that, aside from 1986,40 the cash box category received more than 50 per cent of the total collected income in 1996 and 2006. In 1986, however, the percentage of cash box income remained quite low, at around 35 per cent (see Table 5.4). The reasons included that from some zones, such as Bahawalpur only 18.9 per cent and from Sargodha only 23.4 per cent income was collected under that heading. However, in Central Punjab, even in 1986, cash box income stands at around 50 per cent.41 The situation seems have changed in 1996 when Bahawalpur Zone generated

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

No.

Income from major headings in 1996 Income (in Rs)

Rents (Karaya jaat) 28,178,896 Agricultural land contracts (Zar patta Arazyat) 27,529,903 Cash boxes 125,223,205 Contracts for shoe keeping (Thaika hifazat paposh) 14,003,263 Contracts for flower selling (Thaika gulfroshi) 1,249,600 Miscellaneous income 12,130,373 Darbar Hospital voucher ( parchi) fees 979,093 Recovery of advances and income from investments Sales of Auqaf Department publications Receipts in assets building account Total 210,344,593

Table 5.2

13.39 13.08 59.53 6.65 0.59 5.76 0.46

Percentage of total income 87,197,000 86,084,000 347,470,000 41,642,000 3,973,000 49,225,000 3,046,000 2,150,000 265,000 17,149,000 657,551,000

Amount (in Rs) 13.26 13.09 52.84 6.33 0.60 7.48 0.46

3.09 3.12 2.77 2.97 3.17 4.05 3.11

Percentage of Times total income increase

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Table 5.3

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PAKISTANI STATE

Income from major headings in 1986

No.

Income heads

Amount (in Rs)

%

1 2 3

Cash box Land contract Rents

19,083,570.48 11,716,831.36 18,427,777.00

34.92 21.44 33.72

around 25 per cent, D.G. Khan around 49 per cent and Faisalabad around 42 per cent of their total income in cash box.42 As the situation in Central Punjab zones remained almost the same, the cash box income seems to have stayed at more than 50 per cent in both 1996 and 2006 (See Appendix). The growth of cash box income shows a relationship between the emphasis of the developmental concern of the Auqaf Department, growth of shrine visitors and the growth of their donations from 1986 to 1996 and from 1996 to 2006.

Zones and income-expenditure details The Auqaf Department organised its working from the very beginning within zones and sectors, although after undergoing restructuring, the Table 5.4

Zone-wise income in major headings in 1986

No.

Zone

Major heads

Percentage of zone income

1

Bahawalpur Zone

2

Sargodha Zone

3

Multan Zone

4

Central Punjab

5

Rawalpindi

Cash box Land contract Rents Cash box Leasing Rents Cash box Leasing Rents Cash box Leasing Rents Cash box Leasing Rents

18.9 42 27.5 23.9 26.9 43.3 39.2 18.8 30 47.6 12.6 31.8 45 6.9 24

DEVELOPING AND REDEFINING SHRINES Table 5.5

Zone-wise income for 1986

No.

Zones

1 2 3 4 5

Bahawalpur Sargodha Rawalpindi Multan Zone Central Punjab Zone

145

Income (in Rs)

Percentage

9,727,593 6,743,664 2,076,677 8,494,565 27,606,900

17.79 12.33 4.1 15.54 50.51

department revised the number of zones and increased its number from five to 11 in 1993– 4. As Table 5.4 shows, in 1986 the number of zones was five. Out of these, Faisalabad Zone emerged out of Sargodha, D.G. Khan Zone emerged out of Bahawalpur and Pakpattan Zone emerged out of Multan, while the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib and Badshahi Mosque were carved out as independent zones from Central Punjab Zone. The restructuring was undertaken largely to manage the waqf properties better and, as Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib had already grown to the point that it was earning more income than any other zone, its creation into a separate zone made sense. However, the decision to make Badshahi Mosque a separate zone in 1993– 4 makes less sense according to the income column in Table 5.11. In 1996, instead of earning a profit the Badshahi Mosque lost Rs 954,662. The Data Sahib Hospital was also in loss, as it was also made a separate zone. However, as a hospital should be considered a social welfare activity, the reason to make it a separate zone, despite its being in deficit, seems justified. However, the decision to turn Badshahi Mosque into a separate zone can only be considered as one more effort to give priority to the state’s religious ideology on shrine culture. Among all the zones of Punjab, the emphasis on and centrality of the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib turned it into the largest incomeearning zone for the Auqaf Department. Table 5.6 shows that the shrine of Data Sahib earned a considerable amount from as early as 1986, totalling around 35 per cent of the total earned income of the department, while in 1996 and 2006 the Data Sahib was able to collect around 31 and 25 per cent respectively of the total income earned by the department. The increase in the volume of income of the shrine seems to be highest during 1966 and 1976, but it showed a gradual decline of surplus income if we compare the figures of 1986, 1996 and

35

5,464,940

36

Note: PTIY ¼ percentage of income to total Income that year.

1,366,235

19,127,290

35

65,233,790

31.01 169,130,000 25.72

1966 (in Rs) PTIY 1976 (in Rs) PTIY 1986 (in Rs) PTIY 1996 (in Rs) PTIY 2006 (in Rs) PTIY

Income of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib

1 Data Sahib

Shrine

Table 5.6

DEVELOPING AND REDEFINING SHRINES

147

2006. The decrease in surplus volume, however, reflects the increase in the size of overall income generated by the shrine; an increase of more than Rs 1 million to Rs 160 million shows the unfolding of the shrine’s potential. The figures also showed that the focus of the various governments also helped to increase the shrine’s income. As development works were carried on at the shrine from the very beginning up to 1996, the volume of income continued to increase impressively. A decline in 2006 can be understood as the stabilising of the shrine after it had reached saturation point after the development work had finished. However, the income from the shrine of Data Sahib retained quite a high surplus volume, as in 1996 the shrine earned 341.05 times more than in 1985 and in 2006 around 260 times more than the income earned in 1996 (see Table 5.6). However, its percentage within total income of Auqaf earnings shows a gradual decrease. We can see that from as high as around 36 per cent it decreased to around 25 per cent of the total income generated by the Auqaf Department in 2006. It seems that some other shrines and other zones also started generating more income in those years. The centrality of the shrine of Data Sahib, though still a major contributor, shows a decrease within the overall income situation. We can see an increase in income in Lahore, Gujranwala, Faisalabad and Pakpattan zones. The development at some important shrines in these zones, especially in Lahore, Gujranwala and Pakpattan, suggests the reasons behind the improvement in income. The shrine of Bibian Pak Daman earned Rs 2,747,200 in 1996; however, in 2006 the income had increased by almost 440 per cent from 1996, amounting to Rs 12,092,900. However, at the shrines of Mian Mir and Baba Bullai Shah the volume of income increased by around 300 per cent, as in 1996 the shrines earned Rs 2,207,100 and Rs 2,079,000 and in 2006, Rs 6,466,100 and Rs 6,754,700 respectively. At both of these shrines the development work either could not gain momentum or started quite late. At the Mian Mir shrine, the building for the langarkhana (free food services) and Sama (qawwali) hall was developed before 2006. However, it remained closed for most of the time and only opened on special days; thus, it could not attract visitors. Other development work in the form of a hospital started in 2007 outside the area of Mian Mir but hardly found a satisfactory pace. At the shrine of Bullai Shah, although the first phase of mosque was completed quite early, the second phase took much

1 Data Sahib

Shrine

Table 5.7

1976 (in Rs)

1,366,235 5,464,940

1966 (in Rs)

400

Volume income increase %

Income increase in volume

19,127,290

1986 (in Rs) 350

Volume income increase % 65,233,790

1996 (in Rs)

341.05

Volume income increase %

169,130,000

2006 (in Rs)

259.26

Volume income increase %

DEVELOPING AND REDEFINING SHRINES

149

longer and in 2006 – 7 the development work was still under way.43 Another factor also appears to be that even though the development of a shrine may help to increase the volume of income, the development of a mosque at the site of a shrine does not seem to make a significant difference. Before the restructuring of zones, the highest income-generating zone for the Auqaf Department was that of Central Punjab. This zone earned more than 50 per cent of the total income generated by auqaf in 1986 (see Table 5.4). Later on, this zone was divided into the four zones of Data Sahib, Lahore, Gujranwala and Badshahi Mosque. Taken together, these zones still generated more than 50 per cent of the total income. However, looked at separately, two of the zones are higher income-generating zones. Data Sahib generated income of around 31 per cent in 1996 and around 25 per cent of the total auqaf income in 2006. Lahore Zone earned around 17 per cent in 1996 and around 18 per cent of the total income in 2006. However, Gujranwala Zone lagged behind with, around 6 per cent in 1996 and around 7 per cent in 2006. What is significant is that both Lahore and Gujranwala zones show a trend of increasing income. From other zones, Faisalabad shows a significant shift from around 5 per cent in 1996 to around 9 per cent in 2006. Pakpattan Zone also shows little increase, of around 1 per cent in 2006, as the income stood at around 8 per cent showing a rise to around 9 per cent in 2006. However, Multan, Sargodha, D.G. Khan and Bahawalpur, continued to show an increase in income, although showing a decrease with respect to the overall income from auqaf (see Table 5.8).

Data Sahib Hospital and income-expenditure analysis The shrine of Data Sahib, however, remained a consistently high incomegenerating zone, and showed a large surplus, yet a large amount of its income was spent on the hospital attached with the shrine. The hospital, which began from a small dispensary and later operated as an eye ward, grew to become a hospital with seven departments by 2000. Although before 2000 working conditions were poor, later on it grew into a wellorganised hospital. The hospital, considered to be free, takes a nominal amount for providing different services, such as X-ray, laboratory facilities, eye testing, etc. and therefore also generates some income.44 This income, however, remains a nominal contribution within the overall auqaf

150

SUFI SHRINES

Table 5.8

PAKISTANI STATE

Zone-wise breakdown of income 1996 and 2006

No. Zone 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

AND THE

Income (1996) (in Rs)

Data Sahib 65,233,790 Lahore Zone 35,852,921 Gujranwala 13,151,217 Rawalpindi 7,655,324 Faisalabad 12,349,353 Sargodha 9,796,559 Multan 14,373,392 Pakpattan 17,784,105 Dera Ghazi Khan 8,842,785 Bahawalpur 21,111,856 Badshahi Mosque 2,164,138 Data Sahib Hospital 979,093 Head office 1,050,260 Total 210,344,593

% of total income

Income (2006) (in Rs)

% of total income

31.01 17.04 6.25 3.63 5.87 4.65 6.83 8.45 4.20 10.03 1.02 0.46

169,130,000 121,200,000 48,750,000 25,480,000 55,802,000 29,485,000 38,192,000 61,396,000 24,767,000 49,682,000 7,910,000 2,705,000

25.72 18.43 7.41 3.87 8.48 4.48 5.80 9.33 3.76 7.55 1.20 0.41

657,551,000

income, as the income stays at around 0.4 per cent against the total generated income, as Table 5.8 shows. The hospital appears to have been taking up around 38.10 per cent of total income of the shrine of Data Sahib in 1986, 35.33 per cent in 1996 and 41.85 per cent in 2006 (see Table 5.9). If we compare the expenses of Data Sahib hospital with the total expenditure of the Auqaf Department, we find that the expenditure on the hospital is around 14.3 per cent in 1996 and 9.9 per cent in 2006 (see Table 5.10). The gradual increase of the expenditures at the hospital Table 5.9 Expenditure on Data Sahib hospital in ratio with the income of Data Sahib shrine

1

Data Sahib

2

Data Sahib Hospital Percentage

Income (in Rs) Expenditures (in Rs)

1986

1996

2006

19,127,290

65,233,790

169,130,000

7,288,400

23,050,400

70,797,600

38.10

35.33

41.85

Table 5.10 Expenditure on Data Sahib Hospital in ratio with the income of Data Sahib shrine Details

Estimates (in Rs)

Income Expenditure

2,705,000 70,797,600

Details of Income X-ray Chit fee Laboratory charges Admission fee Eye testing fee Misc. Total income

1,140,000 630,000 180,000 265,000 80,000 410,000 2,705,000

Details of Expenditure Expenditure on health Total expenditure

Table 5.11

70,797,600 70,797,600

Badshahi Mosque Estimates (in Rs)

Details

1996

2006

Income Expenditure

2,316,000 3,292,300

79,100,00 6,027,000

Details of Income Cash box Shoe contract Tabrrakat muqaddasa Misc. Total income

250,000 750,000 1,298,000 3,000 2,316,000

1,450,000 2,650,000 2,010,000 1,800,000 7,910,000

Details of Expenditure Religious Affairs including Tableegh 994,100 Department and mosque Allowances 450,400 Contingent 1,744,800 Talai Quran Pak 3,000 New expenditure 100,000 Total expenditure 3,292,300

5,493,700 (Religious Affairs) 533,300 (Administration)

6,027,000

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correlated with the gradual growth of the departments in the hospital. However, the rise in expenditure in 2006 correlates with the existence of the fully-fledged hospital with seven different departments and more than 50 MBBSs or other highly skilled employees.

Head office, administration and non-development spending Though Data Sahib Hospital was a high consumer of the income of the Auqaf Department, it was the head office, as a separate zone, that remained at the top of the expenditure table. Interestingly, the Auqaf Department divides its administration under two main headings: administration and religious affairs. Administration is further divided into two main headings: head office and zonal administration. ‘Head office’ is that of the Auqaf Department, Punjab, situated within Shah Chiragh Building Lahore. We can see from Table 5.12 that the head office consumed around 25 per cent of the total expenditure in 1996, and around 16 per cent in 2006. Head office also earns some income for the department that remains 2.5 per cent of the incurred expenditure. However, head office as an administrative unit comes under a separate heading within expenditure and income tables, other zones having their own administrative offices and thus expenditure. Out of these, Lahore Zone has the highest administrative expenses at Rs 13,017,600, followed by Faisalabad at Rs 7,784,100, Gujranwala at Rs 7,624,200, Multan at Rs 7,542,000, Data Sahib at Rs 7,310,200, Pakpattan at 6,789,100, Sargodha at Rs 5,350,200 and Rawalpindi at Rs 5,192,600, with Badshahi Mosque coming last at Rs 5,33,300 in 2006. Badshahi Mosque The most interesting zone, and one of the primary concerns of the Religious Affairs Department of the Auqaf Department, is the site of Badshahi Mosque. It is a historical mosque; before being taken over by the Auqaf Department it was under the control of Anjuman Islamia, British authorities having given it to the local Muslims through Anjuman in the late nineteenth century. Despite severe criticism of Anjuman, and even after taking over some other sacred sites, the department could not take control of the mosque in the first decade of its operations. With the Bhutto period in the offing, and with the high tide of common Islamic ideology in the international world, the

Zone

Data Sahib Lahore Zone Gujranwala Rawalpindi Faisalabad Sargodha Multan Pakpattan Dera Ghazi Khan Bahawalpur Badshahi Mosque Data Sahib Hospital Head office Development Total

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

65,233,790 35,852,921 13,151,217 7,655,324 12,349,353 9,796,559 14,373,392 17,784,105 8,842,785 21,111,856 2,164,138 979,093 1,050,260 210,344,593

161,929,550

Income

14,453,200 20,994,800 6,266,000 6,328,800 8,433,300 5,894,000 9,840,400 8,121,900 4,381,200 10,114,680 3,118,800 23,050,400 41,727,000

Expenditure

1996 (in Rs)

22.15 58.55 47.64 82.67 68.28 60.16 68.46 45.66 49.54 47.90 144.11 2354.26 3973.01

Percentage

Zone-wise breakdown of expenditure of 1996 and 2006

No.

Table 5.12

30,623,500 72,903,100 23,509,500 20,615,600 26,993,025 20,336,100 29,369,000 28,470,500 15,271,500 30,466,000 6,027,000 70,797,600 11,388,7700 239,215,000 711,795,000

Expenditure

657,551,000

169,130,000 121,200,000 48,750,000 25,480,000 55,802,000 29,485,000 38,192,000 61,396,000 24,767,000 49,682,000 7,910,000 2,705,000

Income

2006 (in Rs)

18.01 60.15 48.22 80.90 48.37 68.97 76.89 46.37 61.66 61.32 76.19 2617.28

Percentage

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Auqaf Department felt encouraged to take over the mosque. However, expenditure remained quite high at the mosque and Table 5.12 shows it to be in loss in 1996 and barely manageable in 2006. The income from the mosque in 1996 was Rs 2,164,138 against a high expenditure of Rs 3,118,800, with the loss of Rs 954,662. However, in 2006 the mosque earned Rs 7,910,000 against expenditure of Rs 6,027,000, with the surplus income of 19 lacs. The Badshahi Mosque can be seen as an ideal type of the extended religious ideology underlying the whole working of the Religious Affairs Department. Even after many years, in 1996 the mosque was still incurring a loss. Despite this, the vast administrative expenditure found them thriving on the mosque. It is interesting that this mosque shows a pattern of increase in cash box income because of the sacred sites of visits, a pattern one normally finds at shrines. The collection through the cash box, however, is lower than the standard at shrines, as the cash box collected around Rs 250,000 in 1996, while in 2006 it collected around Rs 1,450,000. Even after another decade or so, the mosque earnings barely kept its functioning. Comparing it with Data Sahib, the ideal type of shrine, we can instantly see that from the very first day the shrine was able to earn sufficient income. In fact, it is hard to find a single shrine in loss within the control of the Auqaf Department.

Zones and expenditure Other than Data Sahib Hospital, head office and, partly, the Badshahi Mosque, the expenditure on all other zones remained less than the income generated through them in both 1996 and 2006. However, Table 5.12 shows that the expenditure incurred was on the rise. Rawalpindi and Multan zones seem to have been leading in the percentage of expenditure, as even in 2006 it stood at around 80 per cent and 76 per cent respectively. However, in Lahore and Gujranwala zones the percentage seems to have been increasing. The expenditure at Lahore reached around 60 per cent of the total income, that is Rs 72,903,100, out of which Rs 121,200,000 was expenditure. Gujranwala also follows the pattern of Lahore – with the increase in expenditure the possibility of surplus income decreases. It is interesting, however, that Data Sahib shows a decline in expenditure, as the expenditure-income ratio decreased from 22.15 per cent in 1996 to 18.01 per cent in 2006.

DEVELOPING AND REDEFINING SHRINES

155

Religious Affairs: administrative appropriation of shrines through religious disguise Other than non-religious administration, the Auqaf Department has a full grown Department of Religious Affairs and it is included as a separate income heading within its budget. This heading does not earn any income and exists as a pure liability within the Auqaf Department’s budget. We can see some major subheadings in the Fig. A145 that show all sorts of religious employees, mostly placed within the newly developed, revived or old mosques attached to the shrines. It also has employees in newly developed educational seminaries, attached or sometimes non-attached seminaries such as Ulema Academy. We can see from Table 5.13 that expenditure under the heading of Religious Affairs is almost as high as the Administration Department’s expenses. In 1996, the expenditure on Religious Affairs stood at 32.69 per cent, while in 2006 it showed a small decrease of 29.71 per cent of the total expenditure of the year. The figures suggest that the expenditure on Religious Affairs is almost equivalent to, if not more than, all the income generated by the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib. It seems that the post-colonial state not only tried to integrate shrines within its administrative structure but also restructured them through a unique way of expanding the Religious Affairs Department. Religious Affairs does not only cover all the sacred sites throughout the Punjab Auqaf Department, but is also one of the expenditure headings that shows a constant increase in many zones. Compared with Table 5.13

Expenses of main headings, 1996 and 2006

No. Major headings 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1996 (in Rs)

Administrative 66,042,000 expenses Religious affairs 65,714,380 Social welfare 25,075,200 Reconstruction 5,098,000 Development Purchases 4,512,700 Health 24,215,800 Total 201,009,495

Percentage

2006 (in Rs millions) Percentage

32.85

180.512

25.36

32.69 12.47 2.53

211.485 15.9444

29.71 2.24

239.25 12.372 70.620 711.795

33.61 1.73 9.9

2.24 12.04

Zone

Data Sahib Lahore Zone Gujranwala Rawalpindi Faisalabad Sargodha Multan Pakpattan Dera Ghazi Khan Bahawalpur Badshahi Mosque Data Sahib Hospital Head office Total

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

10,096,600 15,495,600 6,536,200 5,583,600 2,192,000 6,195,480 3,574,000 4,119,600 5,184,900 3,617,600 3,118,800 65,714,380

Expenditures 1996 (in Rs)

210,344,593

65,233,790 35,852,921 13,151,217 7,655,324 12,349,353 9,796,559 14,373,392 17,784,105 8,842,785 21,111,856 2,164,138

Income (in Rs) 15.47 43.21 49.7 72.93 17.77 63.24 24.86 23.16 58.63 17.13 144.14 31.24

Percentage of total

211,485,000

20,388,000 58,639,000 14,596,900 14,561,400 18,608,925 14,373,900 19,563,000 19,143,800 9,125,200 21,298,600 5,493,700

Expenditures 2006 (in Rs)

Zone-wise breakdown of religious affairs expenditures, 1996 and 2006

No.

Table 5.14

657,551,000

169,130,000 121,200,000 48,750,000 25,480,000 55,802,000 29,485,000 38,192,000 61,396,000 24,767,000 49,682,000 7,910,000

Income (in Rs)

31.09

12.05 48.38 29.94 57.01 33.34 48.74 51.22 31.18 36.84 42.86 69.45

Percentage of total

DEVELOPING AND REDEFINING SHRINES

157

other administrative headings, expenditure by Religious Affairs seems to be increasing without causing any concern. Interestingly, in some of the zones the expenditure on religious affairs makes up almost 50 per cent of their total income. We can see in Table 5.14 that in Lahore the expenditure on religious affairs stood at 43 per cent in 1996 while in 2006 is was 48.38 per cent of its total income. In Multan it was around 25 per cent in 1996; however in 2006 it reached 51 per cent. In Pakpattan it was 23.16 per cent in 1996 and in 2006, 31.18 per cent. However, in some zones the expenditure seems to be going down, as in Rawalpindi Zone, where it was around 72 per cent in 1996 while in 2006 it decreased to 57.1 per cent. This reduction is illusory and should not be understood as a decrease in the expenditure of the Religious Affairs Department. Instead, it must be seen as an increase in the income of Rawalpindi Zone. We can also see that out of the total expenditure, expenses on religious affairs, that is, Rs 14,561,400, in Rawalpindi Zone in 2006 was still around 70 per cent of its total expenditure, that is, Rs 20,615,600. The increased spending on religious affairs also hindered spending on health, development and social welfare. There are many zones within which no health services are provided and in others the facilities are in a poor condition. In Faisalabad and Sargodha zones, though both earn a reasonable amount, there are still no health services provided by the Auqaf Department, while in Bahawalpur, Pakpattan, D.G. Khan and Gujranwala zones a mere Rs 380,200, Rs 365,300, Rs 607,900 and Rs 448,000 respectively is spent on health services. Similarly, we can see that spending on social welfare stood at 12.47 per cent in 1996 and barely 2.24 per cent in 2006. The lowest point in 2006 might be balanced a little by around 33 per cent spending on development and reconstruction projects at shrines. However, this is next to nothing compared with the Administrative and Religious Affairs expenditure. It is not only that a very large amount is spent on religious affairs, which is exploitative in itself, but it also keeps focus away from the very spirit of shrine culture. A visit to a shrine, even one such as Data Sahib, the most central of all the shrines, can provide evidence that a flood of uncouth and ill-mannered behaviour emerges when food is distributed. There is very little effort on the part of the administration to treat the poor and needy in a better and well-organised way. However, on religious days we can see a clear difference, as on the days

158

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PAKISTANI STATE

of Ramzan, when food services take place in a well-ordered and wellmannered way.

Social welfare and accounts The whole debate about taking control of sacred sites has been connected to the conception of social welfare. For many forms of shrine, social welfare seems to be the central point around which the shrine-based life forms move. On the basis of ethnographic work, modern scholars even started considering faith-based organisations to be an important component in providing social services.46 However, the emphasis of the Auqaf Department remained on varied sides, yet increased the distance of shrines from their traditional social welfare practices. At Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, the total spending on social welfare remained at Rs 1,115,000 and Rs 29, 25,300 in 1996 and 2006 respectively and in Lahore Zone in the same years, the total spending on social welfare was Rs 1,173,000 and Rs 1,246,500 (see Table 5.15). Out of total expenditure at Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, expenditure on social welfare stayed at only 7.7 per cent and 9.55 per cent of the total expenditure 1996 and 2006 respectively. Similarly for Lahore Zone, the percentage remained at only 5.5 and 1.70 per cent of the total expenditure of the zone. The situation in Gujranwala Zone is similar, where the percentage stayed at 9.9 and 3.58 per cent of total expenditure. It seems the pattern for spending on social welfare decreases even at the most significant shrines and zones of the Auqaf Department (see Table 5.15).

Conclusion Although there was no legislative development regarding the controlling framework in the 1990s a renewed relationship between state and shrine was founded, on a rather institutional footing. The state, in a sense, took ownership of shrines as sites of Islamic heritage, and focused on the Auqaf Department’s internal restructuring. The attention was now on improving operational and bureaucratic rules and procedures in order to consolidate and grow the Auqaf Department as an organisation seeking profitability. For the first time in its history, at the end of 1990s an internal report was published in order to organise details of property. It is strange that the condition of the department was so bad,

Zone

Data Sahib Lahore Zone Gujranwala

1 2 3

1,115,000 1,173,000 625,300

Social welfare expenditure 1996 (in Rs) 14,476,700 20,951,400 6,266,000

Total expenditure (in Rs)

Percentage of social welfare expenditure

No.

Table 5.15

7.7 5.5 9.9

% 2,925,300 1,246,500 843,600

Social welfare expenditure 2006 (in Rs)

30,623,500 72,903,100 23,509,500

Total expenditure (in Rs)

9.55 1.70 3.58

%

160

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AND THE

PAKISTANI STATE

and its working was in such disarray that, earlier than that report, only fragmentary zone-related data was available. There was no master list compiled in a tabulated form.47 In 1999 the Secretary Auqaf made one such list that started ‘making the process of leases, rents, cash-box collections and other modes of income, more transparent’.48 As the department interacted with the public at high level, the ‘data would thus contribute towards a more responsible and responsive, a more efficient and effective and public friendly Auqaf organisation’.49 With the start of the Musharraf period, the effort of the secretary coincided with a general emphasis of the regime on performance and reformation. However, the condition of the department remained unacceptable to the Public Accounts Committee, which showed its dissatisfaction with many financial transactions in 2005.50 The Auqaf Department’s accounts show a pattern of increases and decreases in income, emphasising points of expenditure and ignoring some sectors. The striking feature of the accounts is that they bring out the significant position of the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib among all the zones. As the income of some other zones also started to increase, the shrine experienced a small decrease in its traditional centrality. Some of the shrines within Lahore Zone, like Bibian Pak Daman, also showed signs of a considerable increase in income. However, although the increase reflected a surge in visits, the difference in earned income was still unable to affect the centrality of the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib. Overall, it seems that what was previously termed the zone of Central Punjab and later divided into the five zones of Lahore, Gujranwala, Data Sahib, Data Sahib Hospital and Badshahi mosque was the leading income generating zone for the Auqaf Department. Though Data Sahib Hospital was consistently in loss, the shrine’s overall income comprised more than 50 per cent of the department’s total income. The most interesting feature of the accounts is the heavy expenditure incurred by the Religious Affairs section. The Religious Affairs department pursued the process of official Islamisation at the site of shrines, viewing them in the light of mosques to fulfil their purpose. The huge spending on religious affairs also shows the desire for state ideology to dominate the sites of shrines. Overall, spending on religious affairs stood at around 30 per cent, and if it is coupled with expenditure on administration, it amounted to more than 50 per cent of the total expenditure of the Auqaf Department in the period under discussion.

DEVELOPING AND REDEFINING SHRINES

161

It is quite strange that the taking over of the shrines from traditional caretakers resulted, on the one hand, in providing jobs for thousands of state employees, and on the other, the prevalence of the appropriated ideology on the sites of shrines. It is not clear what justification the Auqaf Department has for such spending of the income given by the devotees to the Sufi saint of the shrine. The high spending on religioadministrative affairs came at the cost of customary functions such as social welfare and the well-being of the common people, traditionally considered as the most significant role of shrines.

CONCLUSION

This book has examined the relationship between the post-colonial state and shrines with its focus upon Central Punjab. The book has traced the relationship in historical mode and tried to show the development of the relationship both analytically and descriptively. It holds that, for the post-colonial state, 1959 was the critical moment for the relationship. At that time, the post-colonial state decided to take over shrines and other sacred sites through an ordinance claiming to manage waqf properties. The timing is important because since then the underlying principle of the ordinance – that the post-colonial state had the right to take over shrines to overthrow the customary caretakers and to manage their affairs through a state department did not change with any later change of government. Although making small changes and placing different emphases, no government since then has changed the framework of the Auqaf Department and its legitimacy to control and manage waqf properties. The moment of the passing of the 1959 Ordinance, therefore, still lives even in the second decade of twenty-first century. Understanding it as a critical moment for the relationship between the state and shrines, this book has tried to move back and forth from that moment in order to highlight its character and potential. Moving backwards, the moment of the ordinance stood on the appropriation of a certain kind of religio-political ideology. Interestingly, that ideology was not owned only by the state authorities; rather, was accepted by a large range of religo-political streams through an overlapping consensus. Embarking on an identity-making process, the varied religio-political streams had to compete amidst communal

CONCLUSION

163

tensions in the third decade of twentieth-century colonial rule. All of this ushered in a kind of reterritorialised process that was already linked with the deterritorialising of soil-based identity. Following these religio-political streams and bringing forward their reterritorialising process, it appeared that these streams developed a unique perspective regarding pluralistic shrine-based practices. The position developed a kind of consensus against the pluralistic practices and suggested reforming all such forms through the religio-moral principles. The development, which was not only theological but also highly political, merged with the spirit of the reformist colonial urban elite and started reforming all those practices considered deviant. The religio-political process correlated with the colonial legal developments that engendered a segregated identity for Muslims without letting them engage in any kind of struggle. The Religious Endowment Act, 1920 and Muslim Waqf Act of 1923 initiated the process of the surveying and enumeration of sacred sites, while emphasising the nature of segregated religious Muslim waqf. The process also complemented the reterritorialised process of identity formation for the Muslim community. Defining Muslim waqf legally can be contrasted with the violent struggle of the Sikh community to gain their identity through taking control of their shrines. The Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925 segregated Sikh sacred sites from other communities and set an example, at the same time, for other communities to own their own shrines reciprocally. As the legislative legalisation had defined ways for identifying Muslim sacred spaces and the religious elite had started identifying itself with the mosque more than shrines, the pluralistic shrine-based practices appeared deviant. The colonial Muslim elite tried to take control of shrines because of their potential to engender conflicts and political tensions, and at the same time, its potential to exert moral and political influence upon the local population. However, the elite had to remain content with initiating moral reformative acts, such as the Music in Muslim Shrines Act of 1942, before the creation of Pakistan. The emergence of the post-colonial State of Pakistan marked the beginning of a process of double-reterritorialisation, or relocating Muslim identity on the already reterritorialised identity. The Muslim League and the larger colonial urban sector elite, especially in Punjab, refused to identify themselves with the newly acquired soil. Instead, the elite opted to re-own the ideology that already remained supportive in

164

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gaining new land and had defined itself among other contesting religious communities by excluding them. The new situation opened up another kind of linking and delinking process. At the political level, the process engendered the Objectives Resolution, which demarcated the difference between Muslims and non-Muslims clearly while laying down foundational principles for any future constitution. On a religiouspuritan level, the process opened up the anti-Ahmadi movement to purify Muslim identity. The process also extended to the spiritual practices and the elite of post-colonial state, in order to implement Islamisation, making efforts to exclude deviant practices, the remnant of pluralistic shrine-based practices, from the sites of sacred spaces. Before the promulgation of Ayub Khan’s ordinance for taking over total control of shrines, the post-colonial state had already started extending its control though keeping its lego-religious thinking grounded in reterritorialised identity. The emphasis on excluding deviant customary traditions continued to emerge during the whole of the 1950s; however, it could not produce the desired results because of the incapacity of the post-colonial state and still lingering acceptance of the customary sacred sites. It is with the autocratic rule of Ayub Khan that the state moved on to a complete takeover. The underpinning of all legal activities since 1959 remained embedded within the emphasis on the continuity of extending the reterritorialisation, a kind of double-reterritorialisation of Islamisation. The opening up of the possibility of controlling the customary deviant sites through universal laws, initiated and enforced through Ayub Khan’s reformist agenda, never allowed the local customary caretakers to control the sacred sites. In the wake of realising the impact of universal laws, the Yahya regime and Bhutto government tried to introduce the centralised activities upon which, later on, interestingly, General Zia ul-Haq’s decentralised Ordinance of 1979 was based. The legalisation process connected localities and local sites of worship with the universal religious ideologue. The universalising-locality left no place for localised worshipping to appear as anything but a deviant form. It is interesting that the legalisation within the post-Ayub period regarding shrines could not help imagining the profitability of the sacred space. Only those shrines that would not become a financial burden on the government itself, the legalisation maintains, could come under the control of the Auqaf Department.

CONCLUSION

165

In the 1990s, when the state had stopped revising the controlling framework, the Auqaf Department witnessed an institutional restructuring. It started operating on rules and structure in quite a new way; consolidating itself as an organisation, it improved through generating more and more internalised rules. For the first time in its history, at the end of the 1990s an internal report was published in order to organise details of property. It is strange that the condition of the department was so bad and its working in such disarray, that, earlier than that report, only fragmentary zone-related data was available, and no master list had been compiled in a tabulated form.1 In 1999 the Secretary Auqaf made one such list that started ‘making the process of leases, rents, cash-box collections and other modes of income, more transparent’.2 As the department had to interact with the public at a greater level, the ‘data would thus contribute towards a more responsible and responsive, a more efficient and effective and public friendly Auqaf organization’. However, with the beginning of the Musharraf period, efforts were made to project the sites of shrines as Islamic cultural heritage. Starting with the United Nations’ project, the government’s efforts were further focused on engaging and convincing international monetary agencies of its ability to develop and run such projects. The efforts concluded in securing funds for revamping and reconstructing some of the significant shrines. In addition to these developments, the Musharraf regime focused on performance and reformation within the Auqaf Department. The changes at the shrine supported the facilitation of visitors and thus increased the volume of income generated through shrines and related businesses. However, these efforts did not translate into swift institutional procedures and proper recordkeeping. That is why the condition of the department remained unacceptable to the Public Accounts Committee, which showed its dissatisfaction over malfunctioning of financial transactions in 2005. It is quite challenging to gauge the pattern of income, expenditure and investment from the available accounts data of the department because of the poor recordkeeping and the malfunctioning of financial transactions mentioned above. However, this book has made an effort to analyse the available data as meticulously as possible in order to show the pattern of increase and decrease in income, the points of expenditure that had been emphasised and the sectors where investment had been

166

SUFI SHRINES

AND THE

PAKISTANI STATE

ignored; this effort provides complementary information to the theoretical contentions already formulated regarding the relationship between the post-colonial state and shrines. The striking feature of the accounts is the significant position acquired by the shrine of Data Darbar among all the zones. As the income of other zones also started to increase, the shrine of Data Sahib maintained its traditional centrality. Overall, it seems that the earlier zone of Central Punjab, which was divided into the five zones of Lahore, Gujranwala, Data Darbar, Data Darbar Hospital and Badshahi Mosque, led the income-generating zones for Auqaf Department in the period under consideration. Though Data Darbar Hospital was consistently in loss, and Badshahi Mosque more or less breaking even, the overall income of the Central Punjab zone comprised more than 50 per cent of the total income of the Auqaf Department. The most interesting feature of the accounts is the heavy expenditure incurred by the Religious Affairs Department. The Religious Affairs Department pursued the process of official Islamisation at the site of shrines, viewing them in the light of mosques to fulfil their purpose. The huge spending on religious affairs also shows the desire for state ideology to dominate the sites of shrines. Overall, spending on religious affairs stood at around 30 per cent, and if it is coupled with expenditure on administration, it amounted to more than 50 per cent of the total expenditure of the Auqaf Department in the period under discussion. It is quite strange that the taking over of the shrines from traditional caretakers resulted, on the one hand, in providing jobs for thousands of state employees, and on the other, the prevalence of the appropriated ideology on the sites of shrines. It is not clear what justification the Auqaf Department has for such spending of the income given by the devotees to the Sufi saint of the shrine. The high spending on religioadministrative affairs came at the cost of customary functions such as social welfare and the well-being of the common people, traditionally considered as the most significant role of shrines. This book has shown that the post-colonial state acted as a dominating and excluding entity. The process of dominating, however, did not result in a complete eradication of the customary caretakers of the shrines. There has been resistance, both passive and active, reflected through different social behaviour. Many of the traditional caretakers went to the courts and challenged the action of the martial law government. Many of these traditional caretakers carried on providing

CONCLUSION

167

some marginalised functions within shrines, and some left the site of their shrine altogether. At shrines like Data Darbar, Mian Mir and Shah Daula, there is some sort of presence of previous traditional caretakers as well. At the shrine of Data Darbar, mujawars continued reading daily dua (pray) at the shrine. At the shrine of Mian Mir, the traditional caretaker used to sit outside the mosque on every Thursday to meet the visiting devotees. At the site of the shrine of Shah Daula, the previous caretaker can be found either sitting on the stairs or standing nearby to provide spiritual solace to the devotees. It is not the case that the Auqaf Department always worked at a distance from the traditional caretakers. At some shrines, there has been a little less conflict than at others. This form of relationship represents another related direction not discussed in the present research, that is, where both Auqaf Department officials and traditional caretakers worked together. There was also a form of relationship in which shrines kept on resisting the control of the state and a constant tension continued between the two entities. This book, however, is an attempt to open up the horizon to view and study other multiple modes of relationship. Any future study in this direction might go one step ahead by building on the present attempt.

APPENDIX

Table A.1

Punjab Religious Affairs 1 (mosques and shrines)

No.

Title

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Executive officer Khatib data Darbar Khatib Badshahi Mosque Research officer Zonal khatib Naib khatib/imam (Badshahi Mosque) Rais ul Tabligh District khatib Research associate Research fellow Research assistant Computer operator Store keeper/senior clerk Senior khatib Sound system operator Computer progammer Junior clerk Khatib/imam Mudarris Research assistant Naib khatib/imam Mudarris Muazzan

No. of posts 1 1 1 1 9 1 2 25 1 2 2 1 1 80 1 1 4 118 1 2 228 1 143

Scale 18 18 18 17 17 17 17 16 16 16 16 14 14 12 11 11 11 9 9 7 6/7 6 5

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Generator operator Assistant sound operator Electrician Langer supervisor Plumber Tube well operator Turbine operator/electrician Driver Generator operator/electrician Muazzan/khadim Muhafiz tabarrakat Khadim Babsahi Masjid Khadim for zonal and district khatib Supervisor Data Darbar Head sweeper Data Darbar Supervisor data Darbar Head sweeper data Darbar Caretaker Khadim Khadim data Darbar Female caretaker Female khadima data Darbar Langri/nanbaee Security guard Chowkidar Mali Waterman/mashki Naib qasid Sweeper Sweeper data Darbar Surplus pool Total

2 1 11 2 3 6 1 1 1 74 3 9 33 4 4 4 2 266 243 22 4 9 3 5 51 7 3 6 27 20 23 1,477

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Table A.2

Punjab Religious Affairs 2 (academies and religious institutes)

No.

Title

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Deputy director Research officer Librarian Headmistress Lecturer Administrative officer Head mudarris Sadar mudarris tajweed o qirat Sadar mudarris Senior subject teacher Senior scale stenographer Accountant Superintendent Dar ul Aman Female teacher Mudarris English teacher Computer operator Proofreader Mudarris Senior khateeb Headmaster Supervisor tajweed o qirat Assistant librarian Junior clerk Library clerk Store keeper Mudarris Mudarris hifz o qirat Mudarris Female teacher Teacher Mudarris Mudarris Kitchen supervisor Electrician Driver Library attendant

No. of posts

Scale

1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 3 1 1 1 7 1 1 1 4 7 3 1 19 3 14 7 3 54 1 1 1 1 10

18 17 17 17 17 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 15 14 14 14 13 12 12 12 12 12 11 11 11 9 9 7 9 9 6/7 5 5 5 5 3

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Daftaro Naib qasid Female naib qasid Cook Chowkidar Mali Water man/mashki Khadim Hostel Sweeper Total

1 13 3 4 6 1 1 2 4 195

3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Darabar H. Data Ganj Bakhsh H. Shah Jamal

H. Shah Kamal

H. Shah Wali, Abbott Road

H. Hakim Shah (Cooper Road)

1

3

4

5

2

Name

21 July 1960

5 June 1960

1960



Date of takeover

Muhammad Shafi Baba Sardar Shah Malik Muhammad DinPresident anjuman Mutwalli darbar

Taken over from:

05-16-27

03-05-87

85-15-116

06-10-00

Residential unit with area

-

-

-

Agri. land

-

Res. & Commercial -

Commercial

147-3-8

Urban area

Detail of attached property

Shrines taken over in the first year of 1960 in Lahore and Gujranwala zones

Sr.

Table A.3

-

Katchi-abadi99 yrs. lease (LDA)

Brelwi-Katchiabadi-99 yrs. lease (LDA)

-

14 þ 5 33

-

-

Remarks

03

288

No. of units on rent

H. Chohar Shah Bandagi Mcleaod Rd. H. Mian MIr, Infantry Road Daras Barrai Mian

8

11

10

H. Madhu Lal Hussain Akbar Shaheed, Baghbanpura

H. Shah Ali Rangrez (Railway Headquarters)

7

9

H. Mauj Darya Bukhari, Edward Rd.

6

Fateh Muhammad, Mutwalli darbar Tasawwar yamin, Mutwalli Nur ul Hassan Shah Mian Muhammad Nazir Mubarak Ali Shah

6 September 1960

20 March 1960

13 August 1960

14 July 1960

16 July 1960

Mutwalli Darbar

25 July 1960

-

-

11-02-00

-

-

23-06-55

01-00-07

-

05-09-112

-

-

05-11-213

-

-

-

-

-

-

01

09

314

-

A mosque, hujra, a graveyard, residential house, workshop and two open plots 15

Brelwi

Brelwi

Brelwi

Brelwi

Deobandi

-

H. Shah Noori Attari

12

Sialkot 1. H. Imam Ali ul Haq

Gujranwala 1. Shah Abdul Rehman

Sheikhupura 1. H. Pir Bahar Shah, near G. Bus Stand 2. H. Gulab Shah

Kasur 1 H. Bullay Shah

Name

Sr.

Table A.3 Continued

30 April 1960

Mutwalli

Mian Ghulam Muhammad

30 November 1960

16 November 1960

Imtiaz Ali Shah

Ex Mutwalli Lal Shah (Late)

Muhammad Din

Taken over from:

23 April 1960

26 October 1960

1961

Date of takeover

54-00-00

25-07-00

00-06-00

-

-

01-02-16

08-07-05

101-7-15

Agri. land

-

68-02-00

815-14-00

Residential unit with area

1 thra, 1 room and 22 plots

-

-

Mela ground-03

-

Agri

Urban area

Detail of attached property

11

-

-

03

19

-

No. of units on rent

-

Brelwi

-

Brelwi

-

-

Remarks

No. 3(1)Auqaf-60-I

No. 8584Auqaf-60-I (Amendment)

No. 3(1)Auqaf-60-I (Amendment)

1

2

3

Dated: 28 November 1961

Dated: 31 October 1960

Dated: 11 January 1960

13

12 79

15

18 18

469

16

2 15

31 268

46

18

Marlas

76

Kanal

246

41

205

Sq. ft.

64

12

52

Shops

93

46 þ 12 One double storeyed

34

Houses

Within this property also included the amount of cash box ( potla or bag), that is, Rs 12,561.8.0/Source: APLD SC Vol. XXIII, pp. 379– 81.

Total

Notifications

1

1

Mosque



Rasulpur “

Awan Dhaiwala

Lahore Khas Tibbi bazar

Shish Mahal

Village

Property details of the shrine of H. Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib taken over by Auqaf Department

Sr.

Table A.4



Sheikhupuˆra “

Lahore

Do Do

Lahore

District

Table A.5 1980s

Details of zones and sectors of Punjab Auqaf in the 1970s and

Sr.

Zones

Important Sectors

1 2 3 4

Bahawalpur Multan Sargodha Central Punjab

5

Rawalpindi

Rahim Yar khan, Bahawalpur Multan, Muzaffar Garh, Dera Ghazi Khan Sargodha, Faisalbad, Jhang, Chiniot Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura, Gujranwala, Sialkot and Okara Rawalpindi, Jehlum and Gujrat

Table A.6

Zones and circles under Punjab Auqaf Department after 1993

Sr.

Zones

1

Bahawalpur

2

3

4

5.

6

Sr.

Circles

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

Bahawalpur Chishtiya Rahim Yar Khan Uch Sharif

(i) (ii) (iii)

Dera Ghazi Khan Kot Mitthan Muzaffar Garh

(i) (ii) (iii)

Faisalabad Jhang Shahkot

(i) (ii) (iii)

Gujranwala Gujrat Sialkot

(i-v) (vi) (vii)

Lahore (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) Kasur Sheikhupura

(i-iii) (iv)

Multan (I, II, III) Jahanian/ Khanewal

Dera Ghazi Khan

Faisalabad

Gujranwala

Lahore

Multan

7

8

9

10 11

Pakpattan Sharif (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

Pakpattan Sharif Burewala Okara Sahiwal

(i) (ii) (iii)

Rawalpindi Attock Jehlum

(i) (ii) (iii)

Chiniot Khushab Sargodha

Rawalpindi

Sargodha

Data Darbar, Lahore Badshahi Mosque, Lahore

3.86 1.04

3.47

72903100

15188800 1189000 207000 784000 20951400

13017600 54887200 3751800 58639000 12,46,500

3582600

2.26 3.25 2.85 4.8 3.23 4.56 2.84

2,80,00,000 78,10,000 6,85,40,000 79,00,000 2100000 68,50,000 12,12,00,000

12348000 2400000 24000000 1643000 650000 1500000 42541000

2.84 3.47

Times Increase

12,1200,000 7,29,03,100

Estimates 2006 (in Rs)

42541000 20951400

Estimates 1996 (in Rs)

Income and Expenditure of Lahore Zone of 1996 and 2006

Income Expenditure Details of Income Rent Lease Money Cash Boxes Shoe keeping Flower Contract Misc. Total Income Details of Expenditure Administration i-Religious Affairs ii-Religious Affairs Total Expenditure on Religious Affairs Expenditure on Social Welfare New Expenditure Reconstruction Total Expenditure

Details

Table A.7

29 5.64 56.4 3.86 1.52 3.52

Percentage of total Income (1996)

23 8.25 56.5 6.5 1.73 5.65

Percentage of total Income (2006)

76,24,200 1,40,80,500 5,16,400 1,45,96,900 8,43,600 4,44,800 -

2092000

278000 6449400

2,35,09,500

6621000 13643900 22807000 1355000 235000 4359600 4,87,50,000

2154300 2817000 7833000 194000 44000 1200000 14242300

3757400 322000

48750000 23509500

Estimates 2006 (in Rs)

14242300 6449400

Estimates 1996 (in Rs)

3.64

3.64

3.07 4.84 2.91 6.98 5.34 3.63 3.42

3.42 3.64

Times Increase

Income and Expenditure of Gujranwala Zone of 1996 and 2006

Income Expenditure Details of Income Rent Lease Money Cash Boxes Shoe keeping Flower Contract Misc. Total Income Details of Expenditure Administration i-Religious Affairs ii-Religious Affairs Total Expenditure on Religious Affairs Expenditure on Social Welfare Expenditure on Health New Expenditure Reconstruction Total Expenditure

Details

Table A.8

15.12 19.77 54.99 1.36 0.30 8.42

Percentage of total Income (1996)

13.58 27.98 46.78 2.77 0.48 8.94

Percentage of total Income (2006)

Table A.9 Income and Expenditure of Bahawalpur Zone of 1996 and 2006 Details Income Expenditure Details of Income Rent Lease Money Cash Boxes Shoe keeping Flower Contract Misc. Total Income Details of Expenditure Administration i-Religious Affairs ii-Religious Affairs Total Expenditure on Religious Affairs Expenditure on Social Welfare Expenditure on Health New Expenditure Reconstruction and Development Total Expenditure

Estimates (in Rs) 1996

Estimates (in Rs) 2006

22396000 10457280

49682000 30466000

477000 11000000 5600000 115000 1504000 22396000

9793000 24455000 12377000 246000 2811000 49682000

2830600

7942600 19662600 1636000 21298600

6174680 694200 297800 460000 10457280

916800 380200

30466000

Table A.10 Income and Expenditure of D.G Khan Zone of 1996 and 2006 Details Income Expenditure Details of Income Rent Lease Money Cash Boxes Shoe keeping Flower Contract Misc. Total Income Details of Expenditure Administration i-Religious Affairs ii-Religious Affairs Total Expenditure on Religious Affairs Expenditure on Social Welfare Expenditure on Health New Expenditure Reconstruction Total Expenditure

Estimates (in Rs) 1996

Estimates (in Rs) 2006

10244000 4634500

24767000 15271500

431000 2600000 5000000 138000 75000 2000000 10244000

1212000 6161000 11700000 319000 175000 5200000 24767000

1770600

5121000 8465100 660200 9125200

2397600 186300 80000 200000 4634500

660000 365300 15271500

Table A.11

Income and Expenditure of Faisalabad Zone of 1996 and 2006

Details Income Expenditure Details of Income Rent Lease Money Cash Boxes Shoe keeping Flower Contract Misc. Total Income Details of Expenditure Administration i-Religious Affairs ii-Religious Affairs Total Expenditure on Religious Affairs Expenditure on Social Welfare Expenditure on Health New Expenditure Reconstruction Total Expenditure

Estimates (in Rs) 1996

Estimates (in Rs) 2006

13545500 8874000

55802000 26993025

3345500 3000000 6000000 400000 150000 650000 13545500

9580000 22950000 16500000 907000 265000 5600000 55802000

2382200

5368900

7784100 16171925 2437000 18608925

703900

600000

147000 272000 8874000

26993025

Table A.12

Income and Expenditure of Multan Zone of 1996 and 2006

Details Income Expenditure Details of Income Rent Lease Money Cash Boxes Shoe keeping Flower Contract Misc. Total Income Details of Expenditure Administration i-Religious Affairs ii-Religious Affairs Total Expenditure on Religious Affairs Expenditure on Social Welfare Expenditure on Health New Expenditure Reconstruction Total Expenditure

Estimates (in Rs) 1996

Estimates (in Rs) 2006

16092000 10477300

38192000 29369000

2842000 3200000 6550000 910000 590000 2000000 16092000

9250000 5570000 15260000 2405000 1675000 4050000 38192000

2374300

6601300

7542000 18693000 870000 19563000

612700

1052000

349000 340000 10477300

1212000 -

Table A.13

Income and Expenditure of Pakpattan of 1996 and 2006

Details Income Expenditure Details of Income Rent Lease Money Cash Boxes Shoe keeping Flower Contract Misc. Total Income Details of Expenditure Administration i-Religious Affairs ii-Religious Affairs Total Expenditure on Religious Affairs Expenditure on Social Welfare Expenditure on Health New Expenditure Reconstruction Total Expenditure

Estimates (in Rs) 1996

Estimates (in Rs) 2006

20802000 8352700

61396000 28470500

2513000 2689000 13300000 1500000

6880000 6661000 40555000 4200000

800000 20802000

3100000 61396000

1926300

5588500

6789100 18037800 1106000 19143800

40000

1929700

2000 40000

607900 28470500

Table A.14

Income and Expenditure of Sargodha Zone of 1996 and 2006

Details Income Expenditure Details of Income Rent Lease Money Cash Boxes Shoe keeping Flower Contract Misc. Total Income Details of Expenditure Administration i-Religious Affairs ii-Religious Affairs Total Expenditure on Religious Affairs Expenditure on Social Welfare Expenditure on Health New Expenditure Reconstruction Total Expenditure

Estimates (in Rs) 1996

Estimates (in Rs) 2006

10646200 5833200

29485000 20336100

5540000 2500000 2300000 6200 300000 10646200

14000000 8100000 6430000 25000 930000 29485000

1638000

3467100

5350200 12681100 1692800 14373900

509100

612000

35000 184000 5833200

20336100

NOTES

Introduction 1. The current wave of terrorism, especially in Pakistan, has brought the varied forms of practising Islam to the surface. The extremist groups follow militant Islam, which might broadly be seen as associated with the revivalist Muslim schools of thought such as Deoband and Ahl e Hadith. At many levels, the state and the political elite show their dissatisfaction with the extremist religious groups and propose their own version/s of legitimate Islam. 2. Since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Western analysts have looked at Sufism more closely as a counterweight to militant Islam. The RAND Corporation recommended ‘encouraging Sufism, since it is an “open”, intellectual interpretation of Islam’: Amitabh Pal, Islam Means Peace: Understanding The Muslim Principle of Nonviolence Today (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publications, 2011), p. 60; Ron Geaves, ‘Who defines moderate Islam “post”-September 11?’, in Ron Geaves, Theodore Gabriel, Yvonne Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith (eds), Islam and the West: Post 9/11 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004), pp. 62–75, p. 67. 3. ‘Ideology is an instance of imposing a pattern – some form of structure or organization – on how we read (and misread) political facts, events, occurrences, actions, on how we see images and hear voices.’ In this way, ideology is a ‘set of beliefs characteristic of a social group or individual’. See Michael Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 3. See also ‘Ideology’, Oxford Dictionaries. Available at http:// oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ideology (accessed 27 November 2012). 4. Zia Ur Rehman, ‘Attacks on Sufi shrines signify new conflict in Pashtun lands’, Friday Times, 23/50 (3 February 2012). Available at http://www.the fridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue¼ 20120203&page¼3 (accessed 20 November 2017).

NOTES

TO PAGES

1–2

187

5. One of the banned militant organisations, Lashkar e Tayyiba (LT) criticises Sufism because of its ability to dampen the jihad spirit. Hassan Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2005), p. 215. 6. Ever since Ayub Khan’s first speech at the shrine of Bhattai, Sufi pir can be found portrayed as emblems of peace and humanity. The Musharraf government emphasised Sufistic ideas as a pacifist version of Islam, against the increasing militancy. More recently, government officials have denounced attacks on shrines, emphasising that terrorist activities cannot reduce the popularity of peace-loving devotees of Sufi shrines. 7. Sufism may be differentiated from the scholarly and judicial tradition. In this sense, it is understood as the Islamic emotional discourse, as opposed to the ‘cold’ and ‘technical’ constructions put forward by theologians and judicial scholars (Annemarie Schimmel, The Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), pp. 130–48, 287). However, for Ewing, Sufism as a colonial construct becomes equivalent to religion through colonial Oriental studies and administrative policies. Ewing considers not only Sufism to be a colonial construct but also the term ‘Sufi pir’ (Katherine Pratt Ewing, Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and Islam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 41–64). However, the term Sufism has a long history and a long tradition, with Muslim saints identifying themselves with this tradition. The term can be traced as far back as the writings of Ali Hajweri (CE 1009–72/77) in India. Even Carl Ernst, however, makes no distinction between a Sufi tradition and a Muslim saint. Yet he writes: ‘There is no Sufism in general. All that we describe as Sufism is firmly rooted in particular local contexts, often anchored to the very tangible tombs of deceased saints, and it is deployed in relation to lineages and personalities with a distinctively local sacrality. Individual Sufi groups or traditions in one place may be completely oblivious of what Sufis do or say in other regions.’ Carl W. Ernst, ‘Situating Sufism and yoga’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, 15/1 (2005), pp. 15–43, p. 22. 8. Geertz’s study moves away from Trimingham’s research and disassociates Sufistic practices from the organisational aspects. This delinking brings out, on the one hand, the possibility of seeing Sufism in multiple forms, while on the other hand it makes shrines separate from the necessary connection with Sufi mysticism. Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 18 – 9. 9. The rule of Ayub Khan, at least for its initial period, was antithetical to superstition, irrationality and corrupt and backward traditional social practices. Ewing writes that ‘this effort to redefine the Sufi saints and shrines . . . was one strategy for attempting to put some positive content into the empty vessel that was Islam as it had been articulated secular, post-colonial Western educated political elite’. Ewing, Arguing Sainthood, p. 89. 10. It is quite common to see state officials go to Data Darbar and make chadar charrhai (cover the tomb with chadar).

188

NOTES

TO PAGES

2 –4

11. See Katherine Pratt Ewing, ‘The politics of Sufism: redefining the saints of Pakistan’, The Journal of Asian Studies 42/2 (February 1983), pp. 251 – 68. Available at http://jstor.org/stable/2055113 (accessed 13 May 2010). 12. Balochistan has very few shrines. The Balochistan Auqaf Department claims that it has never taken over any shrine from where it earns an income of any sort. 13. The Auqaf Department started working in 1959 after the promulgation of the West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance. After three years, another East Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance established the East Pakistan Auqaf Department. After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the West Pakistan Auqaf became a provincial subject, except for a brief period in 1976–9. 14. The state itself supports these customary sites, as the developmental works of the Auqaf Department suggest. 15. Similarly, Karachi has not only the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi but also of Mangu Pir, another famous but neglected shrine. 16. The KPK Auqaf Department controls no more than five shrines in the whole province. 17. Punjab Auqaf Department is the largest of all the provincial departments and controls more than 500 shrines. It had to restructure in 1993– 4 and, because of the huge growth of the sites of and income from shrines, split the zone of Central Punjab into five further zones of Lahore, Gujranwala, Data Darbar Ganj Bakhsh, Badshahi Mosque and Data Darbar Hospital, Lahore. 18. The difference of identity construction in the distant shrines can be seen from the state’s ideological implementation of those under its direct control. Uzma Rehman’s study shows that the constructed identity at the shrines of Waris Shah in Punjab and of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai in Sindh, both in rural areas, relies little on categories such as Muslim, Hindu and Sikh. Instead, the identity is linked more closely to the saints and their poetry. Uzma Rehman, Sufi Shrines and Identity Construction in Pakistan: The Mazars of Pir Waris Shah and Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (Saarbru¨cken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011), p. 5. However, Strothmann shows that the identity at the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh relies heavily on the difference between Hindu and Muslim. Linus Strothmann, Managing Piety: The Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 22. 19. Modern scholars have the tendency to locate different forms of religious type in rural and urban regions. Both Francis and Gilmartin, while making a difference between Sufi and Ulema, locate Ulema in urban areas and Sufi in rural regions. Francis Robinson, Islam, South Asia and the West (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 59–98; David Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 52–6. 20. Richard Kurin, ‘The structure of blessedness at a Muslim shrine in Pakistan’, Middle Eastern Studies 19/3 (July 1983), pp. 312– 25. Available at http://www. jstor.org/stable/4282949 (accessed 23 June 2010).

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21. This book will use the term Sufi-saint in order to foreground the plurality of the spiritual life-forms. The word Sufi relates to a long tradition of Islamic spiritual life, and is sometimes even used as synonymous with Sufism. However, saint, though an English word, is only used here for the lack of any other word for connoting multiple variations of similar vernacular life-phenomena. One can find words like darvesh, baba jee, saain, faqir, etc. in local imaginings, especially in nineteenth-century works like that of Maulvi Noor Ahmed. See Noor Ahmed Chishti, Tehqiqat e Chishti (Lahore: Al Faisal Publishers 2006). However, for non-pluralistic usage, Sufi saint would be used. 22. This term may be aligned with the loose usage of Muslim, Hindu or Sikh where identities are not clearly demarcated through well-defined religious ideology. Scholars such as Cohen, Dirk, Kozlowski, Jalal and Ewing emphasise that colonial rule generated a competing and entrenched phenomenon of communal identities. 23. Ewing’s field study reveals that even disliking living pir does not stop people visiting shrines. Ewing, Arguing Sainthood, pp. 112– 6. 24. David Gilmartin, ‘Tribe, land and religion in the Punjab: Muslim politics and the making of Pakistan’, PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley (1979). 25. The works of Trimingham and Malik bring this development to light. J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); Jamil Malik, ‘Introduction’, in Jamal Malik and John Hinnells (eds), Sufism in the West (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 1 – 27. 26. ‘Muslim shrines and tombs of Sufi Saints represent Muslim Culture and Traditions . . . These Sufi Saints still rule over the hearts of Pakistanis and Muslims of other countries. With the passage of time the number of devotees has increased. The visit to shrines by millions of people every year is an abiding testimony of their absolute and undisputed sway over their followers and of their divine blessings emanating from their hallowed graves.’ Pakistan Tourism Development Brochure, 1985. 27. The strong version of Sufism maintains that it has not been influenced by any mystical tradition of the sub-continent. 28. Although the concepts of reterritorialisation and deterritorialisation were defined in the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (Anti-Œdipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane (London and New York: Continuum, 2004)), I am using them in the sense of Arjun Appadurai (‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’, Theory Culture and Society 7/2 – 3 (1990), pp. 295– 310), who considers the process of reterritorialisation as, ‘regaining identity in a peculiar way’, not necessarily linked with the connection with soil: ‘soil needs to be distinguished from territory . . . where soil is a matter of a spatialised and originary discourse of belonging, territory is concerned with integrity, survey-ability, policing, and subsistence’. Anne Murphy, The Materiality of the Past: History and Representation in Sikh Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, p. 17.).

190

29.

30.

31.

32. 33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

NOTES TO PAGES 4 –5 Further, the process of reterritorialisation cannot take place without deterritorialisation, that is, the disjuncture between feelings of belonging and place of residence. ‘It may be all but impossible to distinguish deterritorialisation from reterritorialisation, since they are mutually enmeshed, or like opposite faces of one and the same process.’ Deleuze and Guattari, AntiŒdipus, p. 258. In the second chapter this book shows that the politics of the Muslim League further developed the already-developing consensus of Muslim identity that prevailed even in other Muslim political groups such as the Unionist Party of Punjab. Faisal Devji understands this as being similar to the term Zion that ‘serves to name a political form in which nationality is defined by the rejection of an old land for a new, thus attenuating the historical role that blood and soil play in the language of Old World nationalism’. Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 3. Jinnah kept the idea of Pakistan generalised and without any geographical moorings. Pakistan, as a separate nation state, emerged in quite a surprising way. Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 36 –8. For Devji it was ‘the desire to both join and reject the world of nation states’. Ibid., p. 11. During debates on first constitution in early part of 1950s in Pakistan, Binder writes that: ‘Most of the members from Bengal used up a large part of their time in excusing the long delay in constitution making, in recalling the struggle for Pakistan, in thanking God that an agreed formula had been worked out, in hailing the millenium when all the ideals of Islam would be realized through an Islamic constitution, and in praising the virtues of Islam. But when all this was said only six members specifically demanded that the Head of the State be a Muslim, only two specifically demanded that Islam be declared the state religion, and only eight specifically demanded that Pakistan be declared an Islamic republic.’ Leonard Binder, Religion and Politics in Pakistan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1961), p. 323. Ali Usman Qasmi considers the advantage of using this phrase is that we can discuss at the same time the ‘disputative negotiation of contrasting religious traditions, sectional interests and ideological worldview of key actors, and the imperatives of populist decision-making. It is the interplay of such variables and their relative strengths and weakness during different sets of sociopolitical, economic and, even, geostrategic compulsions, that has determined the course of Islam’s role in the State of Pakistan.’ Ali Usman Qasmi, ‘God’s kingdom on earth? Politics of Islam in Pakistan, 1947– 1969’, Modern Asian Studies 44/6 (20 November 2010), pp. 1197– 253. Ibid. Binder, Religion and Politics in Pakistan, pp. 350– 61. Ibid.

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38. From the speeches of the objectives resolution, to both revivalists and modern intelligentsia, and from sajjada nahsin to the modern elite, one can hear an echo of such a process of identification. On one level, such conception even went on to create a larger Islamised block, including all Muslim worlds, on which Khaliq uz Zaman, the president of Muslim League, even started working seriously. Daily Imroze, Lahore, 11 January 1950. 39. The usage of Islamic concept of waqf in the context of taking over shrines was an unprecedented extension of how local sacred sites were perceived. 40. The Ordinance of West Pakistan Waqf Properties was promulgated by the Governor of West Pakistan on 15 April 1959, and was published for general information in the Gazette. Ordinance XXI of 1959. PLD Vol. XI– 1959, p. 202. 41. Ibid. 42. Writers such as Malik and Nasr considered the policies of Ayub Khan to be an extension of the colonial state structure through secular policies. Jamal Malik, Colonialization of Islam: Dissolution of Traditional Institutions in Pakistan (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1996), p. 35; Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 64. 43. Javed Iqbal, The Ideology of Pakistan and its Implementation (Lahore: Sheikh Ghulam Ali and Sons, 1959). 44. West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance of 1959 conceives shrines as waqf property. 45. Gilmartin, Empire and Islam; Gilmartin, ‘Tribe, land and religion in the Punjab’; Sarah F.D. Ansari, Sufi Saints and State Power: The Pirs of Sind 1843– 1947 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Jurgen Wasim Frembgen, Journey to God: Sufis and Dervishes in Islam, trans. Jane Ripken (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2009); Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu (eds), Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults (London: Routledge, 1998); Christian W. Troll (ed.), Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, History and Significance (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989); Ewing, ‘The politics of Sufism’; Ewing, Arguing Sainthood; Robert Rozehnal, Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-first Century Pakistan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 46. Arjun Appadurai, Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule: A South Indian Case (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Nile Green, The Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840– 1915 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 47. Gregory C. Kozlowski, Muslim Endowments and Society in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Nicholas B. Dirks, ‘From little king to landlord: property, law, and the gift under the Madras Permanent Settlement’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 28/2 (April 1986), pp. 307– 33; Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (London: Oxford University Press, 1959).

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48. Devji, Muslim Zion; Younas Samad, A Nation in Turmoil: Nationalism and Ethnicity in Pakistan, 1937– 1958 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1995); K.B. Saeed, Pakistan: The Formative Phase, 1857– 1948 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968; Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 49. Qasmi, ‘God’s kingdom on earth?’. 50. Aziz Ahmad, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857– 1964 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967); Tanzil ur Rehman, Objectives Resolution and Its Impact on Pakistan Constitution and Law (Karachi: Royal Book Company, 1996); Nasr, Islamic Leviathan. 51. Qasmi, ‘God’s kingdom on earth?’, p. 1202. 52. Jamal Malik, ‘Waqf in Pakistan: change in traditional institution’, Die Welt des Islams 30/1– 4 (1990), pp. 63– 97. 53. Ibid. 54. Ewing, ‘The politics of Sufism’. 55. Farzana Shaikh, review of Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, n.d. Available at http://samaj. revues.org/3846 (accessed 2 July 2017); Devji, Muslim Zion. 56. Samad, A Nation in Turmoil. 57. See Hamza Alavi, ‘Pakistan and Islam: ethnicity and ideology’, in Fred Halliday and Hamza Alavi (eds), State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan (London: Monthly Review Press, 1988), pp. 64– 111; ‘Kinship in West Punjabi villages’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 14/1 – 27 (1972), pp. 1 – 27; ‘Authoritarianism and legitimation of state power in Pakistan’, in Subrata Kumar Mitra (ed.), The Post-Colonial State in Asia (Lahore: Sang-eMeel Publications, 1998), pp. 19–71; and ‘India: transition from feudalism to colonial capitalism’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 10/4 (1980), pp. 359 – 99. 58. Qasmi, ‘God’s kingdom on earth?’.

Chapter 1 The Colonial State and Shrines 1. Writers such as Malik, Appadurai and Dirk bring out the uniqueness of the colonial administration, as an extension of Weberian ideas of disenchanted, objective, rule-bound bureaucratisation (see, e.g., Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978). 2. See David Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988) and Sarah F.D. Ansari, Sufi Saints and State Power: The Pirs of Sind 1843– 1947 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 3. The ‘reterritorialised identity’ will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters. However, this phrase is meant to denote the changed Muslim identity, emerging during the first half of twentieth-century Punjab.

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4. Imperial Gazetteer of India – Punjab 1908 (Vol. 2), p. 4. Also Tan Tai Yong, The Garrison State: The Military Government and Society in Colonial Punjab, 1849– 1947 (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2005), p. 33. 5. ‘It is often exceedingly difficult for a native to say, or for anybody else to discover, what his religion really is.’ Sir Denzil Charles Jelf Ibbetson, Punjab Census, 1881. 6. It is interesting that the earlier history, which witnessed violent conflicts between religious classes, also showed instances of the intertwining of religions and of helping each other. For instance, Malerkotla, a Muslim majority state, remained a sacred state throughout Sikh rule and even later on for Sikhs. Not a single incidence of violence took place there, even when bloody violent clashes were going on between warring communities during partition in 1947. One of the reasons was the blessings of Sikh Guru Gobind Singh to this state, whose Muslim Raja stood in defence of Guru’s captive sons in the eighteenth century. See Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, vol. 2: 1839–2004 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 131–2. For another writer, the reason is a constant social effort to keep alive a collective moral past, embedded in the pluralistic ethos of the town. See Anna Bigelow, Sharing the Sacred: Practicing Pluralism in Muslim North India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 7. Aubrey O’Brien, ‘The Mohammedan saints of the Western Punjab’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 41 (1911), pp. 509 –20, p. 519. 8. Ian Talbot, India and Pakistan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 10. 9. Henry Maine reflected the Victorian approach to progress when he put forward his theory of stages of development of societies through their ability to own the form of law. Societies who did not even have a code of law written on tablets as the Romans had remained very primitive. See Karuna Mantena, ‘Law and “tradition”: Henry Maine and the theoretical origins of indirect rule’, in Andrew Lewis and Michael Lobban (eds), Law and History, vol. 6: Current Legal Issues 2003 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 159– 88. 10. Shah Mahmood, the caretaker of the shrine of Baha ud Din Zakrya, helped British forces to defeat Multan in 1849– 50. The bombardment on the city also damaged the shrine. The British authorities refused to pay any amount for these damages, on the grounds that it was not appropriate to grant help on a religious basis. See David Gilmartin, ‘Tribe, land and religion in the Punjab: Muslim politics and the making of Pakistan’, PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley (1979), p. 63. 11. Both Warren Hastings’ Regulations of 1772 and Victoria’s proclamation of 1858 maintained that the British rulers of India were bound to respect the ‘religious usages’ of Muslims. 12. It is interesting that for the administrative scholars of Punjab, the shrines became important not only because of sajjada nashins and their influence, but also the general Sufistic ethos, as one can find many commendable comments

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16. 17. 18.

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in Ibbetson’s report of the 1881 Punjab census for maintaining peace. However, this interest collided with the developmental interest in urban areas, which necessitated a more projective understanding through modern economic and educational institutions. Septimus Smet Thorburn, Mussalmans and Money-Lenders in Punjab (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1883) p. 2. Gilmartin, ‘Tribe, land and religion in the Punjab’, p. iii. Orientalist writers like Ibbetson and Maclagan can be discovered through such writings as Denzil Ibbetson, Edward Mclagan and H.A. Rose, A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North West Frontier Province, 3 vols (Lahore: Superintendent, Government Printing Punjab, 1919). O’Brien, ‘The Mohammedan saints of the Western Punjab’, p. 511. William Chichele Plowden, Report on the Census of British India taken on the 17th February 1881 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1883), p. 166. Both of these movements carried with them jihadi and militant sentiments, with an emphasis on the revival of an austere political Muslim state. However, after action taken by the British government, both of these movements reduced their emphasis on militancy and also lost their increasing influence. About the Faraizi movement, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal writes that in the census of 1881 ‘no persons are returned as Ferazis, although provision was made in the instructions to enumerators for showing them if found. The explanation seems to be that this name is not one which members of the sect use when speaking of themselves, but is an entirely exotic epithet, and the Mahammedan of Eastern Bengal would no more call himself a Ferazi than a Puritan of the Commonwealth would have called himself a Roundhead. The birth-place of the sect is the Furreedpore district, where its founder – an honour which is disputed between one Hadji Sharitulla and his more famous son Dudu Miyan – was a small landowner; thence the tenets of the sect spread throughout the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra and into the metropolitan districts of the 24-Pergunnahs and Nuddea. Like the Wahabis, the Ferazis insist on the unity of God, and the uselessness of intercession by all saints, angels, and spirits. Like them also they claim the right of private interpretation of the Koran, and reject all glosses or commentaries by doctors, however learned. They preach the heinousness of infidelity and the allimportance of strictness in life and ritual. Practical considerations have induced them of late to abandon the doctrine of the divinely ordained obligation of religious war; but time was when the Ferazis of Eastern Bengal furnished a continuous stream of money and recruits to the rebel camp on our North-West Frontier. Personally the Ferazi is known by certain tricks of clothing and gesture, and by the ostentatious austerity of his demeanour. They are as a class intensely bigoted, turbulent, and litigious, and with a few exceptions they are as ignorant and intolerant as fanatics have mostly been in the history of the world.’ See Plowden, Report on the Census of British India, p. 166.

NOTES 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

TO PAGES

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Ibid., p. 28. Ibid. Talbot, India and Pakistan, p. 13. Plowden, Report on the Census of British India, vol. 1, p. 19. Talbot, India and Pakistan, p. 14. Lahore was an exception. However, even Lahore was taken as a ‘pristine city in some distant past’, though in its existing condition, the filthy and desolate urban centre needs to be rebuilt like writing on a plain paper, a palimpsest. See William J. Glover, ‘Introduction’, in Making Lahore Modern (London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), pp. xi–xxvii. The caretakers (sajjada nashins) of the powerful shrines became important for the authorities; thus a British official noted: ‘The Sajjada Nashin’s mere presence in our court convinced the people that the most influential man of their own faith is on the side of the order.’ Subsequently, the then Lieutenant Governor suggested evading the religious policy of non-interference in the interests of political expediency. The Lieutenant Governor while citing the situation in Multan, put forward his general political strategy as ‘in no division are there so few chiefs as in that of Mooltan. There is scarcely an individual of territorial influence between the Government officials and a population almost exclusively pastoral and agricultural, and as shown by recent experience very liable to be moved to insurrection by sudden and inadequate causes.’ He maintained further that it was in the interest of the British authorities to support the local influential men irrespective of their religious background. As for the British authorities, the foremost and the most influential person in Multan was Shah Mahmood, sajjada nashin of the shrine of Baha ud Din Zakrya (1170 – 1262) and Shah Rukn e Alam in Multan. The authorities ensured that Shah Mahmood joined the court of the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab. Gilmartin discusses this situation in ‘Tribe, land and religion in the Punjab’, p. 63. See also Copy of Letter from Secretary, Board of Administration, Punjab to Secretary, Government of India, Foreign Department, 13 September 1860, Punjab Board of Revenue, File 131/1575. Jamat Ali Shah, a pir and sajjada nashin of a shrine at Ali pur Syyeda, Narowal, a district near Lahore, was probably one of those influential elite who had a sort of collaborative relationship with the colonial authorities. Six out of 104 local chiefs were Muslims, and even among them most were Shias. Chishti mentions the same site as ‘Chhati Badhshahi’ of Sikhs. For him the site became famous as the temporary dwelling of Guru Har Gobind Singh when he came back to Lahore after staying for some time in the Darbar (court) of Jahangir. Noor Ahmed Chishti, Tehqiqat e Chishti [1864] (Lahore: Al-Faisal Publishers, 2006), pp. 137– 8. Lepel H. Griffin, The Punjab Chiefs [1865], 3 vols (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 1993), vol. 1, p. 607.

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30. By and large the colonial authorities left the traditional maafian and/or waqf property in the control of traditional claimants in order to maintain a balance between directly and indirectly administered land. ‘The maafi or rent-free holdings are numerous in this district. The great majority are held on life tenures, and will probably lapse before another settlement is undertaken; but there are large number of such holdings that are dependent on the preservation and continuance, for their purposes, of various religious buildings or hospices. The total number of rent-free holders (or mafidars) is 2,226 holding 25,521 acres, representing a rent-roll of Rs. 19,211. The number of rent-free holdings for life is 1451 with an acreage of 19782, representing an annual revenue of Rs. 13,838. This dependent on the existence of buildings, temples, &c., are 164, of 1464 acres amounting in value to Rs. 1,256; and those held in perpetuity area 263 in number, of 2649 acres, value Rs. 3002; while those held at the pleasure of Government are 362 in number of 1607 acres of land of an annual value of Rs. 1100.’ See, Leslie S. Saunders, Report on the Revised Land Revenue Settlement of the Lahore District, in the Lahore Division of the Punjab, 1865– 69 (Lahore: Central Jail Press, 1873), p. 36. 31. The unique characteristic of the shrine of Shah Daula intrigued the authorities to the point that a special report was written by Lepel Griffin, for giving shelter to Chuha or a small child born with small head and long ears. ‘It is said that the first child of any woman who asked him to pray for a child for her is born an idiot with a small head and long ears. Such children are offered to the shrine by the parents. They can eat and lie down but are absolute idiots. The custom of offering these children still prevails; they are called Shah Daula’s rats, and one or two are presented every year.’ ‘Shah Daula Chuhas’, No. 1382, Lahore, 19 April 1879, Home Department File, Proceedings of the Government of the Punjab (Lahore: Punjab Government Press: 1879), p. 186. 32. The report maintained further that ‘[t]he faqirs of the shrine trade on them, taking them to different towns and collecting alms by exhibiting them. The ignorant people of the country consider them supernatural beings.’ Ibid. (italics mine). 33. H.R. Goulding, Old Lahore: Reminiscences of a Resident (Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press, 1924), p. 1. 34. The term Central Punjab became popular with the British administration. The area comprises Lahore and Amritsar division, as the map of early twentieth-century Punjab shows. See Ian Talbot, Punjab and the Raj, 1849–1947 (New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1988). 35. For the British authorities, Lahore became the most important city in Punjab, where they headquartered their activities and kept it as their provincial capital. 36. As mentioned earlier, at the land attached with Shah Chiragh and Mian Mir (1550 – 1635), the colonial administrators created residences and cantonments. Further, the Lahore secretariat and government houses were situated at the shrines of Anarkali and of Qasim Khan. 37. Glover, Making Lahore Modern, p. xxii.

NOTES TO PAGES 20 –22

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38. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 46. 39. There were multiple different dialects and in some cases languages other than Punjabi, such as Multani, Riasti, Derawali, Kohistani, Potohari, Jangli, etc. However, in Central Punjab, Punjabi largely remained the dominant language. 40. Francis Robinson’s study shows the way that, after 1800, ulema emphasised Urdu even as a scholarly language. Francis Robinson, Islam, South Asia and the West (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 59 – 98. 41. Tahir Kamran, ‘Urdu migrant literati and Lahore’s culture’, Journal of Punjab Studies 19/2 (2012), pp. 173– 94, p. 192. 42. Jeffrey M. Diamond, ‘Narratives of reform and displacement in colonial Lahore: the intikaal of Muhammad Hussain Azad’, Journal of Punjab Studies 16/2 (2009), pp. 155– 72, p. 161. 43. For many years, the head office of Anjuman Khaddam al Sufia remained in Lahore. See the biography of Sayyid Jamat Ali Shah by Sayyid Akhtar Hussain and Muhammad Tahir Faruqi, Sirat e Amir e Millat (Karachi: Wahid Press, 1974), p. 350. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., p. 360. Publishing journals on the issue of Tasawwaf was in line with the similar contemporary activities started around the figure of Khwaja Hasan Nizami (1876– 1955) in Delhi. He not only published a similar journal himself, but also supported many such activities. Rafiuddin Hashmi (ed.), Khatut e Iqbal (Lahore: Maqtaba e Khyaban e Adab, 1976). 46. Mahmood Alam Hashmi, ‘Mufti Ghulam Sarwar Lahori: a biographical sketch’, in Ghulam Sarwar Lahori, Khazinat ul Asfia: Qadria, vol. 1 (Lahore: Maktaba i Nabwiya, 1986), pp. 1 – 18. 47. See Preface in John A. Subhan, Sufism its Saints and Shrines (Lucknow: Lucknow Publishers, 1926). 48. Farina Mir, The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010). 49. He was famous for his lectures on Ibn e Arabi. His Manqabat (a poetic eulogy for Murshid or the Sufi Master) ‘Kithai Mahar Ali Kithai Tairi Sana’ (Who am I (Mahar Ali) to praise you) was also very popular. 50. Iqbal’s position was critical of the pirs of Punjab. His poems, ‘Punjabi Musalman’ and ‘Punjab ke Perzado Sai’, were critical of customary shrinebased practices. 51. Even in the later nineteenth century, Maulvi Noor Ahmed Chishti had already described the elites of the city as going to the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh, instead of the fair of Madhu Lal Hussain, although at the same time he did not seem reluctant to tell his readers that during the fair of Madhu Lal Hussain, the streets of Lahore were emptied and many more also came from outside Lahore to participate in the fair. The religious composition, however, remained mixed and it shows that, as social changes made their impact, the shrine of

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52.

53.

54.

55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63.

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Madhu Lal Hussain must have been losing its attraction, especially for elite Muslims. Kashf ul Mahjub is a famous text, the only extant work of Hazrat Ali Hajveri (Data Ganj Bakhsh) written in his own lifetime. Of the many editions, see, for example, ‘Ali ibn ‘Usman (Hazrat Ali Hajveri/Data Ganj Bakhsh), Kashf ul Mahjub, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (Leiden: Brill, 1911). Available at https:// archive.org/details/kashfalmahjub00usmauoft (accessed 20 August 2011). For Orientalists the interest in Indian Sufis correlated with the question of the high level of Muslim conversion. Those who were unable to find an answer for such conversion through forcible means turned towards local saints as the significant factor behind it. For C.M. Naim, the two editions of Asar al Sanadid must be seen as the publication of two different books with the same name. The first edition was published in 1847, the other in 1854. C.M. Naim, ‘Syed Ahmad and his two books called “Asar-al-Sanadid”’, Modern Asian Asian Studies 45/3 (2010), pp. 1–40. Chishti, Tehqiqat e Chishti and Muhammad Latif, Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and Antiquities, with an Account of its Modern Institutions, Inhabitants, their Trade, Customs, & c. [1892] (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 1994) are concerned with the history of Lahore while Syed Ahmad’s Asar-al-Sanadid (1847 and 1854) sets out to explore the history of Dehli. Irfan Habib, ‘Sar Sayyad Ahmad Khan aur Tarikh-Nawisi’, Fikr-o-Agahi (Delhi), Aligarh Number (2000), p. 123. Glover, Making Lahore Modern, p. 185. Scholars like C.M. Naim, Irfan Habeeb, Shahms ur Rehman Faruqi and Christian W. Troll have similar views about Asar al Sanadid. Naim, ‘Syed Ahmad’, pp. 6 – 7. Ibid. Ibid. Arshad Ali, Asaral-Sanadid: Tahqiqi wa Tanqidi Mutala’a (Jehlum, Pakistan: Awaz-i-Alamgir Educational Publishers, 1998). Ali thinks that the two editions should be regarded as separate books. He also points out that while earlier books about important places – he calls them asariyat (antiquarian) – contain some mention of the local people, it is not the case with books on religious sites. As Ashish Nandy puts it: ‘History, as a discipline and form of consciousness, came handy in this exercise. It flattened the pasts of all societies, so that they began to look like so many edited versions of European paganism and/or feudalism. The triumph of the idea of history in the southern world – over other forms of construction or invocation of the past – was ultimately a European triumph. This conquest was not merely over the selves of other societies, but often over Europe’s own earlier selves that had stealthily survived into the present, either in Europe or in analogous or parallel forms within other cultures. Europe truly became Europe as we know it today only after it foregrounded the experiences of Colonialism and a crypto-Hegelian idea of

NOTES

64. 65.

66.

67.

68.

69.

70.

71.

72. 73.

74.

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history within its self-definition. It also then ensured that these became parts of the self-definitions of all defeated civilizations.’ Ashis Nandy, An Ambiguous Journey to the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 2. Naim used the phrase ‘command performance’ to differentiate AS 1 from AS 2. Naim, ‘Syed Ahmad’, p. 37. ‘Chishti often prefaced a description with the clause “it is said that” or “I have heard it told”, substantiating his British reviewer’s suspicion that he compiled many entries by interviewing local residents or the caretakers of shrines.’ Glover, Making Lahore Modern, p. 190. There is much in Tehqiqat e Chishti that suggests Chishti wrote it with an awareness of the kind of criticism Sayyid Khan’s earlier work had received. There is also much in it that retains some of the earlier work’s ‘haphazard’ features, that sense of not being able to see the wood for the trees. Government of Punjab, ‘Report on Vernacular Books Registered in the Punjab during the year 1867,’Home Department Proceedings (General), no. 131 (September 1870), n.p., from Glover, Making Lahore Modern, p. 189. ‘What a marvellous change has the comparatively short period brought about! . . . An age of violence and rapine has given place to one of peace and harmony.’ Latif, Lahore, Preface VIII. Overall, Latif did not criticise other religious communities; very rarely, he criticised when he had to compare the previous rule of Ranjit Singh with the British authorities, and here one can feel the origin of a new form of ‘communal conflict’: ‘Ranjeet Singh . . . converted all mosques and places of Muhammadan worship in the Sikh capital into powder-magazines, or workshops for the manufacture of fire-arms and ammunitions. The British Government have most generously and justly restored all such places to their Muhammadan subjects, and thus won their heart-felt gratitude.’ Ibid., p. xi. ‘It [Punjab] is aptly termed the steel-head of the spear of this great empire, the guard room of India on the north . . . It is pre-eminently the soldier’s land, the sword in hands of India.’ Ibid., p. ii. About Nanak, Latif wrote: ‘When the reflecting mind of the pious Nanak conceived the amelioration condition and the combination of conflicting creeds . . .’, he termed Ranjeet Singh ‘the lion of the Punjab’. Ibid. Khazinat ul Asfiya was written in late nineteenth century by Ghulam Sarwar. Sakinat ul Aulya was written by Dara Shikoh in the seventeenth century. For Chishti there are very few conflicts between Muslims and Sikhs. This history even contradicts other narratives, such as the killing of Guru Arjun Singh at the hands of Jahangir. Instead, this history describes a Hindu governor of Lahore who intended to marry his daughter to the son of the Guru but could not get the Guru’s agreement. As a result, he inflicted pain and agony upon the Guru, and ultimately the Guru died. Chishti, Tehqiqat e Chishti, pp. 130– 8. Ibid., p. 887.

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75. Ibid., pp. 170– 1, which explains in detail the shajra (list of pedigree) of majawar of Data Ganj Bakhsh. 76. Partly because he made a conscious effort to write proper history, without interviews and ‘participatory observation’. 77. Or it may be because he was not sure of his priority and so resisted having a priority, treating the matter only topographically. 78. The Aligarh Movement was officially supported by the colonial authorities and also received with the personal approval of many Muslim officials, who considered that it offered the potential for the increase of Muslim empowerment. S.M. Ikram, Indian Muslims and Partitions of India (Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 1992), p. 206. 79. The control of the mosque was given by the colonial authorities to Anjuman e Islamiya, formed solely for this purpose in 1887. 80. Ali Syed Iqbal, Syed Ahmad Khan ka safarnama-e-Punjab (Aligarh: Aligarh Institute Gazette Press, 1884), pp. 88 – 9. 81. Until at least 1905 a magazine opposing the ideas of Sir Syed and his movement was published regularly. Arthur F. Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the Mediating Sufi Shaykh (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), p. 197. 82. Hashmi, ‘Mufti Ghulam Sarwar Lahori, p. 17. 83. Ibid. 84. That tradition was already in tatters; however, its love affair with the city never lessened. A poetic genre, ‘Shahr e Ashoob’, became popular in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, displaying the sense of alienation and selfestrangement in a world in which old city centres were eroding. There is a verse by Zauq (d. 1854), ‘In dino garchai Dakkan mai hai bari qadr e Sukhan – Kaun Jai Zauq par Dilli ke Galliyan Chor kar’ (There is a great value in Dakkan for the verses, however who would leave the streets of Delhi). The love for the city is characteristic of his identity and love for his homeland. 85. During his visit to Punjab, especially Lahore, the local Hindus asked Sir Syed to initiate a similar project for Hindu students as well. Sir Syed replied that he would be quite happy to do this. He was not happy to be taken as a Muslim representative. It was only because of financial constraints and specialised focus that he started his programme for Muslim students. See Iqbal, Syed Ahmad Khan, p. 102. 86. Glover showed that the colonial authorities did not like the early efforts of local historians to bring out the history of their respective cities. However, as soon as the writings started celebrating the constructions and reforms developed by the colonial authorities, they were taken as accepted academic works. Glover, ‘Thinking with the city: urban writing in colonial Lahore’, ch. 6 in his Making Lahore Modern, pp. 185–202. 87. Muhammad Moj, The Deoband Madrassah Movement: Countercultural Trends and Tendencies (London: Anthem Press, 2015), p. 196.

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88. At least until the generation of Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, Maulana Saulaiman Nadvi and Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madni, the tradition of pirimuridi was in vogue. Each of them was initiated into a certain spiritual order; Maulana Ahsan Madni was initiated into the Chishti-Sabri order by Rasheed Ahmed Gangohi; Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi was initiated by Imdad ullah Muhajir Makki into the Naqshbandi order; and Maulana Saulaiman Nadvi by Maulan Hussain Ahmed Madni into the Chishti-Sabri order. For a discussion of the similar position, see Brannon Ingram, ‘Sufis, scholars and scapegoats: Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (d. 1905) and the Deobandi critique of Sufism’, The Muslim World 99/3 (2009), pp. 478– 501. 89. Even many of the scholars who emerged out of the seminary kept the pirimuridi tradition alive and propagated their own version of the tradition. Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi made a name for himself giving life to his own style of the piri-muridi relationship. 90. The Aligarh movement impressed a large number of the intelligentsia, ranging from poets to journalists, and reformists to businessmen. Allama Iqbal, one of the most important scholars of the first four decades of the twentieth century, considered the death of Sufism through shrine-based cultural practices, though he himself remained immersed in Sufistic ethos throughout his life. Unlike Syed Ahmad, he puts the ‘Ulama before the Sufis, and subsequently also includes four non-Muslim men of learning – something that Syed Ahmad does not do’. See Naim, ‘Syed Ahmad’, p. 1. 91. Khilafat Movement in the 1920s is understood to have emerged directly out of the Aligarh Movement. As the graduates of Aligarh University, Ali Brothers, Shaukat Ali Jauhar and Muhammad Ali Jauhar, along with their classmate, Zafar Ali Khan, the editor of Zamindar, remained the main proponents of the movement. Regarding the movement itself, Gail Minault writes: ‘This was the age of the emergence of the professional politician in India, part journalist, part orator, part holy man.’ Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 3. 92. Zafar Ali Khan, Allama Iqbal and Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz are examples of scholars who kept constant engagement with Sufistic practices, though they maintained a critical attitude. 93. The movement was started in 1901 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who had been preaching his thoughts for the previous 20 years. ‘He belonged to a respectable Mughal family, which traces its migration into India from the time of Babur, in the sixteenth century. He received a good education in Muslim language and sciences, and sometime, before the year 1880, he evidently came to the conclusion that he was called to undertake a special divine mission. However, it was not until 1889 that he announced that he had been the recipient of a divine revelation, which made it lawful for him formally to initiate followers or disciples.’ Murray T. Titus, The Religious Quest of India: Indian Islam: A Religious History of Islam in India (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), pp. 217–8.

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94. Hervey D. Griswold, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad: The Mehdi Messiah of Qadian (Lodiana, IN: American Tract Society, 1902), p. 12. 95. ‘If the ignorant Muhammadans are to be blamed for an excessive reverence for tombs and miracles of saints, the advanced Muhammadans have a blind admiration for everything Western.’ Howard A. Walter, The Ahmadiyya Movement (London: Oxford University Press, 1918), p. 67. 96. ‘The Mirza Sahib claims . . . that he is divinely appointed Umpire (Al-Hakam) to arbitrate among the warring sects and jangling creeds, and the divinity sent Mahdi to wage, with the weapons of second reasoning and clear demonstration, a spiritual Jihad against all enemies of the truth as Aryas, Christians and Mullah-guided Muhammadans, and especially to destroy from off the earth the mischievous doctrine of the Gross.’ Ibid., p. 14. 97. Titus, The Religious Quest of India, p. 223. 98. J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 173. 99. These movements did not try to deny their connection with the religious/ Sufistic tradition. 100. From late eighteenth century, the internal development of Tasawwuf was showing signs of change. Within the order of Chishtis, a revivalist movement emerged through the teachings of Shah Kalim Ullah of Dehli (1650– 1729). This movement remained orthodox, though, helping direct Tasawwuf towards recreating Muslim identity and ethical revivalism. Figures like Khwaja Suleman of Taunsa (1770 – 1850), Khwaja Shamsud Din Sialwi (1799 – 1883) and Syed Mahr Ali Shah of Golra Sharif (1856– 1937) owned and pursued this movement. For details see, Gilmartin, Empire and Islam. 101. Emotional revivalism emerged through the teachings of Mohammad Nausha and were popularised in Lahore through the Faqir family. The emergence of Naqshbandi and Qadri revivals gradually produced urban Shari-based Sufistic practices within or around the urban areas. 102. Pir Jamat Ali Shah, one of the famous Sufi-pir personalities of first half of the twentieth century, though famous as a Naqshbandi saint, also proclaimed to have ba’ait in all of the four salasil (orders), that is, Naqshbandi, Chishti, Qadri and Suharwardi. 103. For Buehler, the Naqshbandi Sufistic tradition took three forms: teaching Shaykh, directing Shaykh and mediating Shaykh. By mediational Shaykh he means ‘a perspective which posits Shaykhs, both living and deceased who mediate between individual Muslims and God (via Muhammad), the existence of a spiritual hierarchy which is a function of how one is connected to Muhammad, and a variegated religious topography of tomb-shrines which are potent places to contact God.’ See, Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet, pp. 168– 9. 104. In Lahore, the Masjid Wazir Khan mosque became a centre for the prevalence of Sunni orthodoxy or Brelwism. 105. A young man named Ilm-ud-din killed a publisher and allegedly the writer of a book, Rangila Rasul, in Lahore in 1929. Some prominent Muslims such as

NOTES

106. 107.

108.

109.

110. 111. 112.

113.

114.

115. 116.

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Allama Iqbal and Sir Muhammad Shafi were united with the conservative religious sections to describe the book as an act of blasphemy. The killing of the alleged writer was celebrated and the young man, who was later sentenced to death, was given the title of ghazi (holy warrior). Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850 (London: Routledge Publications, 2000), pp. 295– 6. Mahmood Ahmed Saqi, Qutub e Lahore (Lahore: Idara Ahl e Sunnat Wa Jamaat, 1990). Buehler may place Pir Syed Jamat Ali Shah Lasani between the ‘directing’ and ‘mediational’ Naqshbandi Sufi space. However, he considers Pir Syed Jamat Ali Shah Ameer e Millat as a mediating Sufi. He was the founding figure of Anjuma al Khaddamia Soophia and Anjuma e Naumania, Lahore. He also laid the foundation of madrasas in Ali Pir Syyedan in Lahore. See Syed Akhtar Hussain Shah and Muhammad Tahir Farooqi, Amir e Millat (Karachi: Wahid Press, 2009), pp. 350– 64. Muhammad Nazeer Ranjha, Tareekh wa Tazkara Khankah Naqshbandia Mujaddadia Sharakpur Sharif (Islamabad: Purab Academy, 2007), pp. 98 – 9. Pir Mian Mohammad Sher Rabbani, though, did not remain vocal in political matters, as he died nine years before the birth of Pakistan. However, during his meetings with Sir Mohammad Shafi (who was also his cousin) and Iqbal, he emphasised Muslim identity. In both those meetings, he criticised them for not having beards. His son, the Sajjada Nashin of the Khankah Naqshbandia Mujaddadia, Mian Mohammad Sher Rabbani, however, took an active part in politics. He successfully arranged the first public meeting of the Muslim League in his town and advised Muslims to take the side of Jinnah in opposition to the Unionist Party. Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet, p. 186. Ibid. ‘When subject to religious frenzy they hang themselves on trees head downwards and sway their bodies violently backward and forwards shouting Illa llah till they faint from exhaustion. They explain this custom with a story about Pak Rehman ascending to heaven, and on being recalled by Naushah, thinking it respectful to his tutor to descend with his head foremost.’ Denzil, Mclagan and Rose, A Glossary, vol. 3, p. 199. In Lahore, near Masti Gate, a Naushahi shrine of Fazal Shah (d. 1854 AD ) was famous. In Gujranwala the shrine of Pak Rahman (d. 1740) attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors at urs. Chishti, Tehqiqat e Chishti, pp. 476– 8. John A. Subhan differentiated between Shari and Be-Shari Sufi saints while narrating the history of Sufis, especially discussing the Lal Shahbazi and Rasul Shahi sections of Suhrawardi order. Subhan, Sufism its Saints and Shrines, pp. 236 –53. Chishti, Tehqiqat e Chishti, p. 325. Latif, Lahore, p. 146.

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117. Noor Ahmed Chishti, Yadgar-e-Chishti [1859] (Lahore: Nigarashat Publishers, 2007), pp. 130– 2. 118. The biographical sources of these Sufis suggest that they had already made the shrine a leading spiritual centre. Although he did not much like travelling, Mian Muhammad Sharaqpuri often found time to visit the shrine. There is a similar position in Jamat Ali Shah Lasani. 119. Denzil, Mclagan and Rose included the shrine of Data Darbar, during the first decade of twentieth century, within the Chishti order because of the close association between Khwaja Muin ud Din Chishti, the father figure of the Chishti Sufi order and the shrine. 120. Chishti mentions around seven Qur’ans gifted to the shrine during the previous 300 years or so, including gifts from Ranjeet Singh, the ruler of Punjab in the early nineteenth century, and Sheikh Ghulam Muhayyud Din, the Subaidar of Kashmir in the eighteenth century. Chishti, Tehqiqat e Chishti, p. 821. 121. At the same time, however, there were other shrines, such as the shrine of Hazrat Khwaja Khawind Mahmud of Lahore, that preferred customary ways for the succession of the office of Mutwalli or Sajjada Nashin. ‘The succession to the office of mutwalli or sujjada-nashin of the mausoleum known as the shrine of Hazrat Khwaja Khawind Mahmud of Lahore, is governed by customs and not by Muhammadan Law, and by that custom the existing sujjada-nashin nominates his successor in his life-time, and, on his death, the murids and worshippers of the shrine and other mutaqds (believers) assemble and formally recognise the new mutwalli and duly install him into the office in accordance with the wishes of the last sujjada-nashin . . .’. William H. Rattigan, A Digest of Civil Law for the Punjab Chiefly based on the Customary Law (Lahore: University Book Agency, 1881). Available at http://punjabrevenue.nic.in/fm anu.htm (accessed 12 Nov 2012). 122. ‘In matters of alienation of ancestral property, Majawars of the shrine of Data Gunj Bukhsh at Lahore, who described themselves as Rajput Sheikhs, but whose principal source of livelihood was earnings from service at the shrine, and who had nothing to do with plough or with village communities, are governed by the Mohammedan Law and not by custom. In this case the parties were no doubt Rajputs, which is one of dominant agricultural tribes in the villages of Lahore district, but it was not established that the Majawars had anything in common with Mohammedan Rajputs living in rural areas and following agricultural pursuits . . . .’. Ibid. Available at http://punjabrevenue. nic.in/cust9.htm (accessed 14 Nov 2012). 123. Neither Maulvi Noor Ahmed Chishti nor any other writer of the nineteenth century mentioned the linking of their name with any family name other than Sheikh. Chishti, Tehqiqat e Chishti, pp. 170– 2. 124. Ibid. 125. Sayyid Ali Hajveri, Sharah Kashf ul Mahjoob, trans. Wahid Bakhsh Siyal (Lahore: Al-Faisal Publishers, 2009), p. 27 and pp. 33 – 5.

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126. Mohammad Din Fauq, Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh (Lahore: Gauhar Publications, 2008), pp. 136– 7. 127. Latif mentions the date 1861 for renovations at the shrine. See Latif, Lahore, p. 181, and Fauq, Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh, p. 140. 128. Ghafir Shahzad, Data Darbar Complex: Tameer sai Takmeel Tak (Lahore: Book Home, 2004), p. 27.

Chapter 2

Double-Reterritorialisation: Drifting towards the Nationalisation of Shrines

1. The second decade saw the emergence of Hindu-Muslim unity through the Khilafat Movement of Muslims and Mahatma Gandhi’s Swadeshi Movement. The collaboration of Muslim groups with Hindu Congress leaders was founded in anti-colonialism. 2. To describe it as a single stream is quite difficult, at least during the early part of twentieth century. However, it started merging with the Brelwi movement, emerging out of the teachings of Ahmed Riza Brelwi (d. 1926), who became famous during the early years of the twentieth century. In its general emphasis it relates to the many similar variants and emphases that emerged within orthodox Islam or Jamat Ahl e Sunnat during the first half of the twentieth century in Punjab, including many sajjada nashins and Islamised pirs. However, Sunni orthodoxy gained wider popularity as Brelwi Islam in Pakistan. 3. Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850 (London: Routledge Publications, 2000), p. 251. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., p. 259. 6. Francis Robinson, ‘Technology and religious change: Islam and the impact of print’, Modern Asian Studies 27/1 (February 1993), pp. 229 – 52. Available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/312883 (accessed 13 May 2010). 7. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 312. 8. Jafar Baloch, Iqbal aur Zafar Ali Khan (Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 1995), pp. 35 – 6. 9. Mohammad Sadiq Kasuri, Tareekh e Mashaikh Qadria Rizwia (Lahore: Zavia Publishers, 2004), p. 327. 10. Syed Akhtar Hussain Shah and Muhammad Tahir Farooqi, Amir e Millat (Karachi: Wahid Press, 2009), pp. 450– 1. 11. The mosque of Data Darbar was reconstructed around 1923 –4. Syedana Shah Abul Barkat Syed Ahmed Lahori (1901– 78), a disciple and khalifa (a spiritual disciple) of Imam Ahmed Riza Khan, arrived there as a khateeb and imam masjid around 1923. After a few years, he also joined the madrasa of Masjid Wazir Khan but soon had to leave it because of the conflict between him and the caretaker of the mosque, Mirza Zafar Ali Judge, over the mode of teaching. Kasuri, Tareekh e Mashaikh Qadria Rizwia, p. 314.

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12. Allama Iqbal was part of the Kashmir cause from as early as 1909, when he became a general secretary of the already existing Kashmir Anjuman, renamed the Muslim Conference. This was formed to show solidarity with Kashmiris, and Muhammad Fauq, the famous Kashmiri historian, was also part of that committee. See, Rattan Lal Hanglo, ‘Mohammad-ud-din Fauq: remembering the first journalist of Kashmir’, Kashmir Dispatch, 5 July 2012. Available at http://www.kashmirdispatch.com/others/05078557-mohammad-ud-dinfauq-remembering-the-first-journalist-of-kashmir.htm (accessed accessed 13 May 2010). See also Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 352. 13. Janbaz Mirza, Karwan e Ahrar, vol. 1 (Lahore: Idara Maktaba Tabsara, 1975), p. 347. 14. Sir Zafar Ullah Khan also became president of All India Muslim League in 1931. Ahrar protested against the decision. Ibid., p. 238. 15. In a speech by Sheikh Abdullah published in 1933 in Inqilab, he said, ‘I don’t have the right to stop them because of their religious views. Because this is the age of Ahmadism’. Ibid. (italics mine). 16. Allama Iqbal’s response was published by many organisations. It may be found in ‘Shamloo’ (Latif Ahmad Sherwani) (ed.), Speeches and Statements of Iqbal (Lahore: Al-manar Academy, 1944), pp. 93–111. and Abdur Rahman Tariq (ed.), Speeches and Statements of Iqbal (Lahore: Sheikh Ghulam Ali, 1973), pp. 109–39. 17. ‘Shamloo’, Speeches and Statements of Iqbal, p. 94. 18. Ibid. 19. Iqbal wrote these essays in 1934 when the new constitution of 1935 was about to be put into operation. The constitution had already accepted the issue of a separate electorate and hoped to incorporate the Communal Award, already in operation since 1932. 20. ‘Shamloo’, Speeches and Statements of Iqbal, p. 59. 21. His theorising, however, seems to provide sufficient justification for many later events in the post-colonial state. His recommendations to the British state were taken over by the post-colonial state, which termed this community nonMuslim in 1974. It is interesting that the publisher of the essay, in the rejoinder, considers it necessary to publish the decision of the Legislative Assembly of Pakistan, in 1974, terming Qadianis non-Muslims, while republishing these writings of Iqbal. Muhammad Iqbal, Islam and Ahmadism (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, Ashraf Printing Press, 1980), pp. 67 – 8. 22. Allama Iqbal’s articulated ideas appeared most clearly in his lectures delivered in the late 1920s, published later as The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. In order to set out the identity of Muslim culture, Iqbal emphasised the concept of the ‘finality of the institution of prophethood’. Allama Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf, 2007), p. 129. 23. David Gilmartin, ‘The Shahid Ganj Mosque incident: a prelude to Pakistan’, in Edmund Burke III and Ira M. Lapidus (eds), Islam, Politics, and Social Movement (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 146 – 68.

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24. Iqbal’s speeches and statements gave space to the colonial urban Muslim elite in the company of the traditional religious groups. On the one hand, his suggestions made Islam a necessity of the modern age, with the underlying urge to consider ritualistic practices less important than the need for unity. On the other hand, the essays put forward a generalised but concrete definition of Islam in India. ‘I suggest the formation of an assembly of ulema which must include Muslim lawyers who have received education in modern jurisprudence. The idea is to protect, expand and if necessary, to reinterpret the law of Islam in the light of modern conditions, while keeping close to the spirit embodied in its fundamental principles.’ Allama Iqbal, ‘Presidential Address Delivered at the annual session of the All India Muslim Conference at Lahore on the 21st March 1932’, p. 61, in ‘Shamloo’, Speeches and Statements of Iqbal, pp. 37–61. 25. In Allama Iqbal’s philosophical writings in prose, published as The Reconstruction of Religious Thought In Islam, he clearly positioned his Sufistic thoughts and his sympathies with a specific spiritual tradition, especially those of Mujaddad Alif Sani. 26. Allama Iqbal severely criticised the form of Tasawwuf that dwells on and promotes the idea of Wahdat al Wajud (Unity of Being). For him, this form, as an Ajami (Persian) idea, creeps into the otherwise Arabic Islamic teachings. His efforts to disentangle Ajami influences on the original Arabic teachings in order to revive and liberate the true spirit of Islamic teachings continued. See Ijaz ul Haq Qaddusi, Iqbal Kai Mahboob Soofia (Iqbal Academy Pakistan: Lahore, 1976), Preface, and Abul Lais Siddiqi, Iqbal Aur maslak e Tasawwaf (Iqbal Academy Pakistan: Lahore, 1977). 27. His poems were published in a collection titled Zarb e Kaleem in 1936 (various editions, e.g., Zarb-e-Kaleem: Armagan-e-Hijaz (Lahore: Al Faisal, 1997)). 28. In a letter to Akbar Ala Abadi, Iqbal says: ‘Yaha Lahore mai zaruriat e Islami sai aik mutnaffas bhe agah nahi . . . sufiia ke dukanai hai magar waha seerat e Islami ke mata nahi bikti.’ [Here in Lahore, not a single person is acquainted with the necessities of Islam. There are shops of Sufis but no one sells there the mannerism of Islamic life.] Qaddusi, Iqbal Kai Mahboob Soofia. 29. See ibid. for verses written in his praise, pp. 52, 119, 242– 5. 30. Allama Iqbal seemed to communicate with Sufis more intimately than can be inferred from many of his published works. Once, when his brother was suffering with a severe problem, Allama Iqbal sent a written poem to the shrine of Nizam ud Din Aulya. See ibid., p. 245. 31. Not only does his poem, ‘Punjab kai Pirzado Sai’, but also his essays, compiled in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, display his interest in Mujaddad Alif Sani and in an essay ‘Culture’ he discusses Sani as the spiritual figure who can be considered as the model for spiritual experiences. 32. The Unionists continued to make efforts to take control of shrines and waqf, yet the pressure to curb archaic practices in Muslim society in general, and within Muslim shrines, increased with the prevalence of state policies introducing Muslim Personal Law or Shariat Bill (1937) and the gradually

208

33.

34. 35.

36.

37.

38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

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prevailing ideology of the Muslim League. The pressure found its release through the introduction of bills such as the Muslim Musawat Bill, 1939, the Anti Dowry Bill, 1942 and the Music in Muslim Shrines Act, 1942. ‘The Bill does not seek to interfere with religion at all. It is merely a Social Reform measure.’ Malik Khizar Hyat Tiwana, the Minister for Public Works, concluded at the end of debate on the bill. Punjab Legislative Assembly (PLA) Debates, Vol. XIV, 1940 (Lahore: Superintendent Government Printing Punjab, 1942), p. 789. Ibid. The Unionist government made two significant efforts to control shrines earlier, in 1924 and 1937. David Gilmartin, ‘Tribe, land and religion in the Punjab: Muslim politics and the making of Pakistan’, PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley (1979), p. 230. The Muslim Personal Law (MPL) was also a transition from the emphasis on customary traditions to communal laws during colonial period. The law was promulgated through the centre and created a pressure on provinces, making them transform their laws accordingly. However Shariat law could not become provincial law until quite late, in 1948. The Unionist government seemed to be avoiding implementing this law in the province, most probably because of the fear of introducing Muslim inheritance laws. See discussion of the members, such as Malik Feroz Khan Noon and Begum Shahnawaz, in the Punjab Legislative Assembly. PLA Debates, Vol. XIV, p. 789. Also for the avoidance of introducing MPL, see ibid., p. 789. Some of the significant members who participated in the discussions were Malik Khizar Hayat Khan Tiwana, Syed Mohy-ud Din Lal Badshah, Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan, Mian Abdul Rab, Sheikh Faiz Muhammad and Pir Akbar Ali. Ibid., pp. 782– 9. Ibid., p. 786. Ibid., p. 784. It is also interesting that the reply from a member of the ruling bench did not say that he was in favour of taking the role of the mutwalli; instead he said that people on the day of urs do not remain in control of a mutwalli. Ibid., p. 787. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Until 1940, through the Jamat Ahl e Sunnat, Allama Iqbal and Maulana Zafar Ali Khan had already shown the way to save what was precious in Islam in urban areas. They rallied against such bills as the Sarda Bill, which made the minimum age of marriage 14 for a girl and 18 for a boy, in order to save Shariat. Almost at the same time these organisations made their case against the Hindu writer, whose book vilified the prophet and created the grounds for the blasphemy crisis, concluding in the execution of Alam Din as a martyr (shaheed). The same organisations protested against Masjid Shahid Ganj, a case of shared ownership of an endowment or waqf.

NOTES TO PAGES 49 –50

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45. ‘This will lead further to a friendly settlement all the more easily with regard to minorities, by reciprocal arrangements and adjustments between Muslim India and Hindu India, which will far more adequately and effectively safeguard the rights and interests of Muslim and various other minorities.’ Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, address at Lahore Session of Muslim League, March 1940 (Islamabad: Directorate of Films and Publishing, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, 1983), pp. 5– 23. 46. It is the reason that Jinnah was able to situate his idea of the Muslim nation in India on constitutional grounds instead of ‘. . . being tied to a language of historical and territorial integrity.’ Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 105. 47. ‘Why does not Mr Gandhi honestly now acknowledge that the Congress is a Hindu Congress, that he does not represent anybody except the solid body of Hindu people? Why should not Mr Gandhi be proud to say, “I am a Hindu. Congress has solid Hindu backing?” I am not ashamed of saying that I am a Mussalman.’ Ibid. 48. ‘Why not come as a Hindu leader proudly representing your people, and let me meet you proudly representing the Mussalmans? [“Hear, hear” and applause] This is all that I have to say so far as the Congress is concerned.’ Ibid. 49. Ibid. For the details of Manzilgah incident see, http://gulhayat.com/ MasjidManzilgahpFull.asp (accessed 20 July 2016). 50. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 260 – 87. 51. Younas Samad, A Nation in Turmoil: Nationalism and Ethnicity in Pakistan, 1937– 1958 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 43. A little later, even Shias and Ahl e Hadith, two other Muslim sects, showed their political unity, though for opposite reasons. In 1934, the Shia Conference decided and appealed to all Shias to vote only for those candidates standing upon joint electorate. In 1934, Ahl e Hadith League appealed the Governor General to reserve special seats for them. Mirza, Karwan e Ahrar, pp. 466 – 7. 52. David Gilmartin, ‘Religious leadership and the Pakistan Movement in the Punjab’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 13/3 (1979), pp. 485 – 517, pp. 501–3. Available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/312311?seq¼1#page_scan_ tab_contents (accessed 13 May 2010). 53. Denying the criticism, Janbaz Mirza claims that Ahrar did take part in agitation in line with its past actions against provocations. Within four years of its creation, Ahrar was already engaged with multiple mosquerelated issues. From ‘throwing the meat of pig’ in the state of Junaid Rohtak to the Babri mosque agitation, and from Shahjahan Mosque, Alor to Kapurthalla sit-in, the politics of Ahrar never lost an opportunity to represent the territorially-sacred site of Muslim identity. Mirza, Karwan e Ahrar, pp. 286, pp. 436 – 7.

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54. Munir Inquiry Commission Report or Report of the Court of Inquiry constituted under Punjab Act II of 1954 to Enquire into the Punjab Disturbances (hereafter Munir Commission Report) (Lahore: Superintendent Government Printing Punjab, 1954). 55. ‘We have had ample experience of the working of the provincial constitutions during the last two and a half years, and any repetition of such a government must lead to civil war and the raising of private armies, as recommended by Mr Gandhi to the Hindus of Sukkur when he said that they must defend themselves violently or non-violently, blow for blow, and if they could not they must emigrate. Jinnah, ‘Address’, pp. 5– 23. 56. On 20 November 1920, at a meeting held at Akal Takht, Amratsar, a Committee, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (Central Gurdwara Management Committee, SGPC) was formed to manage all Sikh shrines. Sunder Singh Majithia, Harbans Singh Attari and Bhai Jodh Singh were elected president, vice-president and secretary respectively. Mohinder Singh, The Akali Struggle: A Retrospect, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 1988), p. 20. 57. Ibid., p. 15. 58. Abdus Sattar Khan Niazi was member of Punjab Muslim Students Federation that accepted the idea of Paksitan as early as in 1939. Samad, A Nation in Turmoil, p. 64. 59. Gilmartin highlights the text of Niazi and Shafi: ‘The flag of Islam . . . which Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh planted in Lahore in the eleventh century, with which Khwaja Muin ud din Chishti encompassed the corners of India, and which Khwaja Bakhtiyar Kaki, Baba Farid Shakkarganj, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, and Khwaja Nasiruddin Mahmud Chiragh e Delhi had in their own times raised high, has by the misfortune of India for the last two hundred and fifty years awaited a standard bearer.’ David Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), p. 210. 60. Ibid., pp. 505– 8. 61. Ian Talbot, Punjab and the Raj, 1849 – 1947 (New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1988), pp. 214– 5. 62. Khan Iftikhar Husain Khan of Mamdot was described as Pir Mamdot Sharif, Sirdar Shaukat Hayat Khan as Sajjada Nashin of Wah Sharif, Malik Feroz Khan Noon of Darbar Sargodha Sharif and Nawab Muhammad Hayat Qureshi as Sajjada Nashin of Sargodha Sharif and finally, the Secretary of this committee, Ibrahim Ali Chishti, was designated Fazil-i-Hind Sajjada Nashin of Paisa Akhbar Sharif. Munir Commission Report, p. 254. 63. Ibid. 64. For Unionists it was enough to have a close relationship with pirs and sajjada nashins of rural areas. They intended to have their cooperation, and if it was not forthcoming, they had to be satisfied to see them indifferent to the politics. Gilmartin, ‘Tribe, land and religion in the Punjab’, pp. 169–70.

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65. Ibid., p. 218. 66. Ibid., p. 216. 67. The Muslim League won 460 of the 533 Muslim seats in the central and provincial assembly elections. Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, p. 172. 68. Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 16. 69. Venkit Dhulipala has shown in detail that the way, especially leaders from UP, had developed the idea of Pakistan as a new state of Medina where Islamic practices would find unhindered life. Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India (Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 70. Ayesha Jalal maintains further that ‘Jinnah and the Muslim League made a strong, but ineffectual, protests that there could be no political India bereft of territories inhabited by Muslim majorities’. Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia, p. 16. 71. It is interesting that the religio-moral principles of the colonial urban elite remained against the pluralistic shrine-based practices and the alignment of Sufi pir with Muslim League politics, though their revivalist spirit strengthened yet also reduced the justification for their traditional existence. 72. Jamal Malik has employed the concept ‘sector’ for showing paradigm shifts in Indian society after colonisation. He analyses this sector in two forms, the colonial agricultural sector and colonial urban sector in order to highlight the section of society aligning with the colonial developmental paradigm. Jamal Malik, Colonialization of Islam: Dissolution of Traditional Institutions in Pakistan (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1996), pp. 17 – 9. 73. For Appadurai, the concept of reterritorialisation means regaining identity in a peculiar way, not necessarily linked to with the connection with the soil: ‘soil needs to be distinguished from territory . . . where soil is a matter of a spatialized and originary discourse of belonging, territory is concerned with integrity, surveyability, policing, and subsistence’. Further, for him: ‘Deterritorialization expresses the disjuncture between feelings of belonging and place of residence.’ Arjun Appadurai, ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’, Theory Culture and Society 7/2– 3 (1990), pp. 295– 310. However, the process of deterritorialisation necessarily gives birth to the process of reterritorialisation. 74. The Muslim political rulers found themselves in a majority and, having a singular identity and a land to rule, they devised a technique to reduce all other communities to the status of minorities. The religious elite found itself in the position of majority rule, reterritorialising itself through excluding Ahmadis. In the new land, all of the political, intellectual and religious elite excluded traditional pluralistic mystical practices. 75. During debates around the first constitution in the early part of 1950s in Pakistan, Binder writes that: ‘Most of the members from Bengal used up a large part of their time in excusing the long delay in constitution making, in

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77. 78.

79. 80.

81. 82. 83.

84.

85.

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recalling the struggle for Pakistan, in thanking God that an agreed formula had been worked out, in hailing the millennium when all the ideals of Islam would be realized through an Islamic constitution, and in praising the virtues of Islam. But when all this was said only six members specifically demanded that the Head of the State be a Muslim, only two specifically demanded that Islam be declared the state religion, and only eight specifically demanded that Pakistan be declared an Islamic republic.’ Leonard Binder, Religion and Politics in Pakistan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1961), p. 323. Ali Usman Qasmi argues that the advantage of using this phrase is that at the very same time we can discuss the ‘disputative negotiation of contrasting religious traditions, sectional interests and ideological worldview of key actors, and the imperatives of populist decision-making. It is the interplay of such variables and their relative strengths and weakness during different sets of socio-political, economic and, even, geostrategic compulsions, that has determined the course of Islam’s role in the State of Pakistan.’ Ali Usman Qasmi, ‘God’s kingdom on earth? Politics of Islam in Pakistan, 1947– 1969’, Modern Asian Studies 44/6 (November 2010), pp. 1197– 253. Ibid. From the speeches of the Objectives Resolution one can see in both revivalists and modern intelligentsia, from sajjada nashins to modern elites, such a process of identification. Such a conception went on to create a larger Islamised block that included all Muslim worlds, on which Khaliq uz Zaman, the president of Muslim League, began serious work. Daily Imroze, Lahore, 11 January 1950. Ayub Khan, ‘Foreword’, in Javed Iqbal, The Ideology of Pakistan and its Implementation (Lahore: Sh. Ghulam Ali and Sons, 1959), pp. xi –xii. While putting forward his views in favour of the Objectives Resolution of 1949, Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Uthmani presented the conversation between Jinnah and Gandhi that emphasised the separate and distinct identity of the Muslim nation. Hamid Khan, Constitutional and Political History of Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 61. Binder, Religion and Politics in Pakistan, pp. 11 –3. Ibid., pp. 29 – 31. For some, Jinnah himself accepted the formation of a new state as somewhere between a theological and a secular state. Aziz Ahmad, Islamic Modernity in Sub-continent: from 1857 to 1964 (Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 340. The dominant political elite, led by Liaquat Ali Khan, showed a clear distaste for theocracy and a very clear sense of Islam as pro-democratic religion. Liaquat Ali Khan distanced himself from ritualistic Islam and made it clear that ‘Islam is not merely a relationship between the individual and his God, which should not, in any way affect the working of the State’. M. Rafique Afzal, Speeches and Statements of Quaid e Millat Liaquat Ali Khan (1941 – 51) (Lahore: Research Society of Pakistan, University of the Panjab, 1967), p. 232. The state would not curb the ‘freedom of any section of the Muslims . . . No sect . . . will be permitted to dictate to the others’. Ibid., p. 233 ‘I have said

NOTES

86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108.

109.

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enough to show that we want to build up a truly liberal Government where the greatest amount of freedom will be given to all its members.’ Ibid., p. 234. Ibid., pp. 232– 3. Ibid., pp. 239– 40. Binder, Religion and Politics in Pakistan, p. 29. Tanzil ur Rehman, Objectives Resolution and Its Impact on Pakistan Constitution and Law (Karachi: Royal Book Company, 1996), p. 14. Ibid., p. 16. Mirza, Karwan e Ahrar, p. 239. Rehman, Objectives, p. 20. Ibid. This point is also highlighted by Rehman, ibid., p. 19. The third clause of the Objectives Resolution. Golam W. Choudhury, Documents and Speeches on the Constitution of Pakistan (Dacca: Green Book House, 1967). Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 200. Ibid., pp. 200– 1. PLA Debates (Lahore: Superintendent Government Printing Punjab, 1955), p. 282. Ibid., p. 282. David Gilmartin has already shown that Unionists had made an effort to control the activities of shrines in order to reduce communal conflicts. David Gilmartin, ‘Tribe, land and religion in the Punjab: Muslim politics and the making of Pakistan,’ pp. 231– 236. PLA Debates, 1955. Ibid., p. 339. Ibid., p. 288. Ibid., p. 297. Ibid., p. 286. Ibid., p. 337. Ibid., p. 340. The post-colonial state not only ignored the collective suggestions of ulema for the constitution but also took a secular position during the 1953 Khatam e Nabuwwat Movement. Religious scholars such as Maulana Maududi and Abd us Sattar Niazi had to face strict sentences. However, the politics around the first constitution during 1955–6 restored the importance of religious figures such as Maududi. Governor General Sikandar Mirza ensured the support of Maulana to stamp the constitution as Islamic. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 44. S.A. Rehman, the serving judge for the Supreme Court of West Pakistan in 1958, stated ‘that the field of fresh legislation is wide open and that the classical jurisprudential compendiums need to be updated, albeit in line with the “permanent values” specified by the Quran, so as to make them compatible with the challenges and demands of the modern world’. With the fierce

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111.

112.

113.

114.

115. 116.

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response of Maududi, Rehman’s position seemed to be the prevailing voice of the state machinery, ready to reinterpret religious teachings according to the changed situation. Maududi retorted with the argument that ‘the Prophet was not simply a priest who dictated certain permanent values but was mandated with the certain task of setting up an Islamic order, based wholly on Divine principles. The laws introduced for this purpose, and the mode of their practice, interpretation and implementation has come down to the Muslims in the form of Hadith and the Sunnat.’ Qasmi, ‘God’s kingdom on earth?’, p. 1219. There is a severe conflict about celebrating Eid Milad un Nabi between Deobandi revivalists and Brelwi scholars. Deobandi revivalists do not consider it religiously right to celebrate the birth of the Prophet and consider it a biddat (innovation). However, Brelwi scholars favour this celebration and are against all those opposing it. Sajid Khan Naqshbandi, Roidad e Manazra Kohat: Mrawwaja Jashan e Eid Milad un Nabi (Kohat: Anjuman Dawa Ahl as-Sunnah, 2011). Even earlier, just after independence, state authorities started participating in activities for Eid Milad Un Nabi. However, in Punjab the celebrations were officially organised for the first time in 1950. Daily Imroz, 27 December 1949. The Punjab Provincial Assembly was dissolved in January 1949 by Liaquat Ali Khan, after the uncontrolled dispute between the premiership of Iftikhar Mandot and Mian Mumtaz Doltana. Tahir Kamran, ‘Early phase of electoral politics in Pakistan: 1950s’, South Asian Studies 24/2 (July – December 2009), pp. 257 –82, pp. 261–2. The Punjab government advertised the programme for celebrating Eid Milad Un Nabi in newspapers. One of these advertisements that was published in the Daily Imroz on 1 January 1950 says that police, scouts, paasban and national volunteers would give a salute (salami) to the Honourable Malik Muhammad Anwar and later, on meeting him, would begin under the presidency of His Excellency Governor Bahadur. Abul Hafeez Jalandhry and Saqib Zahrwi would present Naat and Salam, and Mr Dinsha, C.E. Gibbon, Reverend Najm ud Din, Vir Sanan Sahni, Allama Ala ud Din Siddiqui, the Honourable Malik Muhammad Anwar and His Excellency Sardar Abd ur Rab Nishtar would make speeches. It is interesting that some of the speakers seem to be either Christians or Hindus. Daily Imroz, 1 January 1950. The post-colonial state, especially after Major General Sikandar Mirza came to power, started promoting such activities further. One can find a visible difference between news reports published under his rule. The newspapers started giving the activities a very prominent place and the role of state in providing support for organising these activities became quite visible. This continued after Ayub Khan came to power and took over shrines. Daily Nawai Waqt, 18 October 1956, Lahore. In 1960 the state encouraged the route of the procession of Eid Milad Un Nabi to end at the shrine of Data Sahib for the first time, connecting the tradition of

NOTES

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118.

119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126.

127. 128. 129. 130.

131.

132.

133. 134.

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celebrating Eid Milad Un Nabi with the shrine of Data Sahib, a tradition which continued from then on. Daily Nawai Waqt, 16 September 1959. One can find such reports in Urdu daily newspapers, for example, in Imroz and Nawai Waqt. However, more often, it was Nawai Waqt that carried such reports and editorial responses on them. For example, in a report published in the Daily Imroz, police from the Criminal Investigations Department arrested a religious pir for proclaiming to be Imam Mahdi in Karachi. Daily Imroz, 9 November 1950, Lahore. Daily Nawai Waqt, August 1 1955, Lahore. Ibid. ‘Shaubda Baz Darwesh’ (sorcerer Darwesh), Letter to the Editor, Daily Nawai Waqt, 26 October 1955, Lahore. Daily Nawai Waqt, Lahore, 1 August 1955. Daily Nawai Wakt, Lahore, 24 September 1958. This also became a moral justification for taking over shrines in order to reform them. Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism, pp. 36 –7. Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz was part of the scholarly activity, Tolu e Islam, organised around Allama Iqbal in 1930, and one of the key figures of Ahl e Quran. See Ali Usman Qasmi, Questioning the Authority of the Past: The Ahl al Qur’an Movements in Punjab (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011). Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism, p. 51. Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz, Islami Muashrat (Lahore: Idara Tulu e Islam, 1979), pp. 180 –6. Ibid., pp. 13 – 4. For his detailed ideas regarding the nature of an economic system in an Islamic state, see Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz, Nizam e Rabubiat (Lahore: Tulu e Islam, 1954). One can find such interpretations in many of his texts. For example see, Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz, Iblees wa Adam [Devil and Adam] (Lahore: Idara e Tulu e Islam, 1983 [1945]). For Pervaiz the socio-religious teachings of Islam emphasise system building and a socialist economic system. For the Jamat-e-Islami the observation of the Justice Munir Committee Report can be noted: ‘It (Jamat-e-Islami) aims at the establishment of the sovereignty of Allah throughout the world which, in other words, means the establishment of a religio-political system which the Jama’at calls Islam.’ Report of the Court of Inquiry Constituted under Punjab Act II of 1954 to Enquire into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953 (Munir Commission Report), Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing Punjab, 1954, p. 243. For an understanding of the ideas of Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz, see his books Iblees wa Aadam and Insan nai kya socha. Maulana Maududi remained determined to revive the true essence of Islamic civilisation. Thus he rejected all other elements of civilisation and tried to

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135. 136.

137. 138. 139.

140.

141.

142.

143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149.

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connect cultural practices with the scriptural principles to become the foundation of Islamic civilisation. Abul Ala Maududi, Islami Tahzeeb aur us kai Asul e Mubaadi (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 1986), pp. 7 – 12. Ibid., p. 36. Ayub Khan’s own ideological position and the questions regarding Islam can be found in the Foreword of Iqbal, The Ideology of Pakistan and its Implementation. Ibid., p. xi. Ibid., p. xii. Thomas Jefferson said: ‘We must hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.’ Ibid., p. 43. ‘The ideal citizen of Pakistan, however, is the Momin, i.e. any person who truly, sincerely, honestly and steadfastly believes in the God of Islam and everything which He enjoins.’ Ibid., p. 86. Against the backdrop of the Anti-Ahmadiyya, violence erupted in 1953. The Governor of Punjab promulgated an ordinance, later called the Punjab Disturbances (Public Inquiry) Act, 1953, directing the setting up of a court to hold a public inquiry into the disturbances. Justice M. Munir and Justice M.R. Kayani were the members of the Court of Inquiry and submitted their report on 10 April 1954 to the Home Secretary Government of Punjab. Later on, the report – popularly known as the Munir Commission Report – concluded that the violence took place because law and order had been subordinate to political ends. The report also showed the impossibility of having a singular definition of Islam because of sectarian differences. Munir Commission Report. Javed Iqbal ignored the point that the Munir Commission Report was not a theological exercise but an investigative report. Iqbal, The Ideology of Pakistan and its Implementation. Ibid., p. 100. Ibid. Ibid., p. 89. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 29.

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Chapter 3 Legality, Judicial Processes and Waqf: A Transition from Moral to Total Control of Shrines 1. See Gregory C. Kozlowski, Muslim Endowments and Society in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 106– 7. 2. For details, see Umber Bin Ibad, ‘Waqf or law for Muslim endowments: constructing religious singularity for appropriating shrines’, Pakistan Journal of Islamic Research 12 (June 2013), pp. 15 – 35. 3. The colonial judicial process prevented the application of waqf for the Muslim elite in the late nineteenth century, and they could not continue dedicating property through waqf law. 4. Kozlowski, Muslim Endowments and Society in British India, pp. 20 – 1. 5. Ibid., pp. 33 – 6. 6. Ibid., p. 174. 7. Ibid., clause b. 8. See Ibad, ‘Waqf or law for Muslim endowments’. 9. British authorities did not in general interfere in the affairs of the sacred sites. There were cases when the shrines and Imambarahs were termed as waqf, but in the presence of clear deed, most of them were created in the nineteenth century. Kozlowski shows that the British administration interfered in at least two important sacred sites: Imambarah of Hooghli and Darbar of Mian Sahib. Kozlowski, Muslim Endowments and Society in British India, p. 174. 10. The reasons were many, but as Kozlowski shows, the Muslim elite wanted to change the direction of income from public waqf towards modern institutions such as education and health facilities. Ibid., p. 177. 11. Introduction, ‘The Mussalman Waqf Act, 1923’, Muslim Laws (New Delhi: Universal Law Publishing, 2011), p. 25. 12. Ibid., clause (a): ‘“Benefit” does not include any benefit which a mutwalli is entitled to claim solely by reason of his being such mutwalli.’ 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. section 3, clause (a). 15. Ibid., section 3, clause (d). 16. Abdul Wahid Chaudhry, Manual of Auqaf Laws (Lahore: National Law Book House, 2012), p. 204. 17. Purewal and Singh understood this bill as giving control in a generalised way over women’s bodies. This chapter, however, looks at this position as moral control over the generalised conception of shrines itself. Navtej Purewal and Virinder S. Kalra, ‘Women’s “popular” practices as critique: Vernacular religion in Indian and Pakistani Punjab’, Women’s Studies International Forum 33 (2010), pp. 383– 9, p. 388. 18. Ibid. 19. The independence of the new state itself resulted through an act, the Indian Independent Act 1947. See Indian Independent Act 1947, Original Statute

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

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from the UK Statute Law Database, Office of Public Sector Information, National Archives, Richmond, Surrey (retrieved 6 April 2013). In 1948 the Punjab Assembly passed a bill into law as the Punjab Muslim Personal Law (Shariat Act) 1948, with the enthusiastic support of the members. For most of the members, passing the act represented a convincing step in favour of Islamisation. However, as the object of the act was not to override statute but abrogate customs wherever there is a clash between a custom and Muslim Personal Law, the act was to remain a symbolic exercise only to be used for reforming personal and familial matters along with customary practices. All-Pakistan Legal Decisions (PLD), Vol. III, 1951, p. 12. The Punjab Assembly was dissolved in January 1949 and new elections took place in March 1951. Ibid. Punjab Gazette, Legislative Department, Notification No. 639– Leg, 5 April 1951, p. 231. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 15. The act also provided powers of civil court to the nazim under the Code of a Civil Procedure, 1908. Tahir Kamran, ‘Early phase of electoral politics in Pakistan: 1950s’, South Asian Studies 24/2 (July– December 2009), pp. 257– 82, p. 257. Punjab Legislative Assembly (PLA) debates from 16 December 1951 to 15 January 1952 (Lahore: Superintendent Government Printing Punjab, 1955), p. 276. Ibid., pp. 276– 9. It is quite interesting that the honourable minister did not hesitate to act like a religious figure or mufti to award fatwa. He even maintained at the end of his speech that almost all of the members of that parliament were religious, pious and spiritually enlightened persons. Ibid., p. 279. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., p. 477. Ibid. The speaker of the Punjab Assembly, Dr Khalifa Shuja ud Din, announced the submission of nomination papers for qualifying for the membership of the Auqaf Board. The Board was to be comprised of 12 members of the Provincial Assembly through voting, out of which at least two had to be Shias. However, few members of parliament showed interest in joining the Auqaf Board and only 11 members asked to join. As Khalifa Shuja ud Din was the speaker of the assembly, he himself became a member and the condition of 12 members was fulfilled. Therefore, ‘the election of the Muslim Members of the Punjab Muslim Auqaf Board fixed for Wednesday the 17th December, 1952, at 9 o’clock at the Assembly Chamber, Charing Cross, Lahore, under the Muslim Auqaf Rules, 1952’ did not take place. The elected candidates were: Dr Khalifa Shuja ud Din, Maulana Ahmed Ali, Mufti Muhammad Hassan, Maulana Ghulam Murshid, Maulana Syed Nazir Ahmed Kher Ullah Puri, Maulana Syed Mirak Shah, Khawaja Khan Muhammad,

NOTES

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49.

50.

51.

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76 –82

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Maulvi Muhammad Ilyas, Syed Manzoor Ahmed, Chaudhary Abdul Karim, Mian Noor Ahmed Lalika and Sheikh Noor Muhammad. Punjab Gazette (Extraordinary), 4 February 1952, p. 65. Ibid., pp. 64 – 5. Ibid., p. 63. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., p. 63. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 61. Farzana Shaikh, Making Sense of Pakistan (London: Hurst and Co., 2009), p. 90. This ordinance of 1959 was repealed by Ordinance X of 1960, West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1960. However, with the amendment of few terms, the whole ordinance remained in almost the same condition. PLD, Vol. XII, 1960, Ordinance X of 1960, West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1960, p. 116. PLD, Vol. XI, 1959, Ordinance XXI of 1959, West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1959, p. 202. Ibid., p. 202. For Talbot there is a general tendency in Ayub Khan’s paternalistic disposition, which was closely linked with the handbook of Punjab School of Administration, to re-introduce nineteenth-century ideas of tutelage. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History (London: Hurst and Co., 1998), p. 153. Ibid., p. 205. This position also coincides with writers like Mohammad Waseem, who think that the Islamisation of Ayub Khan marked a break with the earlier religiopolitical position, especially that of Jinnah. Whereas for Jinnah, it is very difficult to find reference to Islam in abstraction from the communitarian politics of India, within which Muslims as a community found their identity together so as to achieve their rights within colonial India. An amendment in 1960 replaced the term of Administrator with Chief Administrator of Auqaf, West Pakistan. PLD, Vol. XII, 1960, Ordinance X of 1960, West Pakistan Waqf Properties (Amendment) Ordinance, 1960, p. 116. PLD, Vol. XI, 1959, p. 204 (italics original). Ibid., p. 203. Notification, No. 1 (1), Auqaf, 60, Extra Ordinary issue, The Gazette of West Pakistan, 9 January 1960, Office of the Administrator of Waqfs and Secretary to Government of West Pakistan. Punjab Laws Online, ‘The Punjab Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1961’, last modified July 201. Available at http://ns-1.pap.gov.pk/laws/797.html (accessed 10 March 2013). Meanwhile, the governments kept introducing ordinances for making rules and regulations regarding management and control of waqf properties and the Auqaf Department, such as the West Pakistan Auqaf Department (Delegation of

220

52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68.

69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

NOTES

TO PAGES

82 –88

Powers) Rules (Amendments), in 1969. Chaudhry, Manual of Auqaf Laws, pp. 187–90. Bhutto’s pro-Sufi pir policies correlated with his extended reforms in rural sectors and nationalisation of large industries. Talbot, Pakistan, p. 230. Two religious parties, Jamat e Islami and Jamiat Ulema i Islam Pakistan (JUI (P)) spearheaded an alliance, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), that adopted as its slogan ‘Nizam e Mustafa’ [Social Order of the Prophet]. Later on, the PNA movement became famous with this name. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (London: I.B.Tauris, 2002), p. 100. Daily Nawai Waqt, 28 June 1976, Lahore. Ibid. Ibid., p. 679. Ibid. Senate Bill No. 2 of 1976, The Gazette of Pakistan (Extraordinary), Part III, Islamabad, 28 June 1976. Ibid., p. 677. Ibid., p. 681. Daily Nawai Waqt,, Rawalpindi, 22 October 1979. The Governor of the Punjab promulgated this ordinance on 11 April 1979 and published it in the Punjab Gazette (Extraordinary). The Punjab Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1979, Punjab Gazette (Extraordinary), 14 April 1979, pp. 521-A – K. Ibid., section 4 (amended). Ibid., section 5 (amended). Ibid., subsection (2) of section 15. ‘In the settlement of a scheme the Chief Administrator shall give effect to such wishes of the person dedicating as can be ascertained, and to which effect can be reasonably given.’ Ibid., section 16 (amendment). Ibid. On 13 June 2002, through a notification, the Governor of the Punjab issued rules for managing and administering waqf properties as the Punjab Waqf Properties (PWP) (Administration) Rules, 2002, and at the same time repealed the earlier WPWPO (Administration) of 1960. Notification No. US (G) 3- 82/A/93, section 4, subsection 2, Secretary to Government of the Punjab, Religious Affairs and Auqaf Department, 13 June 2002. Ibid., section 4, subsection 3(i). Ibid., section 4, subsection 3(ii). A lac (lakh) is equivalent to 100,000 rupees (e.g. 10 lac ¼1 million rupees). Notification No. US (G) 3-82/A/93, section 6, subsection 1(i), (ii), (iii). Ibid., section 6, subsection 2. Punjab Gazette (Extraordinary), 25 January 2005, pp. 2559– 63. Along with the secretary of the Religious Affairs and Auqaf Department, the secretaries of Local Government, Culture and Youth Affairs and the Finance

NOTES

77.

78. 79. 80. 81.

82.

83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90.

TO PAGES

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221

Department, Director General, Archaeology, Punjab and Director Lahore Museum were also made members of the board. The board was to be headed by a chief minister (CM), three members from treasury benches and one from the opposition. Ibid. Almost at the same time, the Punjab government also continued extending the religious affairs of Auqaf Department through such acts as the creation of the Qur’an Board. The cultural emphasis could only bring in investments to abolishing the sites of shrines. However, the government initiated the creation of the Qur’an Board not through an Act but through notification by the chief minister. The purpose of establishing the Qur’an Board was to ensure the standard printing, save the sacred pages of the Qur’an and to distribute the Qur’an to needy persons and institutions. The board, headed by CM Punjab and with both Deobandi and Brelwi as its members, would have its administrative office within the Head Office of Auqaf Department. It was also to manage pages of the Qur’an by ensuring that boxes were provided for saving old and martyred pages of Qur’an. The board was also to work for the establishment of a Qur’an Museum and a Library. Notification, No. SO (IBM)4-67-A-2003, published in the Report on Punjab Quran Board, July 2005. The Martial Law order was issued on 16 February 1961. PLD, SC 1971, Vol. XXIII, p. 410. PLD, Vol. XXIII, 1971 Supreme Court, p. 376. See section 2 from (a) to (c), West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1959, Appendix. The court maintained that the Waqf Properties Ordinance, 1959, was not affected by the provisions of Articles 102 and 110 of Constitution (1956), SC 1971, p. 405. The court gave reference from the constitution of 1956 that shows that the constitution was permitted to make laws about the provincial legislatures through items, 65 and 69 of the Provincial List in the Fifth Schedule, as: Clause 65: Charities and Charitable institutions; Charitable and Religious Endowments, and Clause 69: Waqfs and Mosques. PLD, 1949, Lahore 1949. PLD, Vol. XXIII, 422 SC. The title of Chapter 10 in Vol. 1, Ameer Ali, Principles of Mahommedan Law (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, 1912). Khwaja Md. Hamid v. Mian Mahmud and Others, AIR 1922 PC 384 ¼ 50 IA 92. This is reminiscent of the discussion during Music in Muslim Shrines Act, 1942 and the Auqaf Board Bill, 1952. During the discussion members of parliament remained eager to show that the sites of shrines remained sites for a prevailing Islamic ethos, and all the rest were deviant forms. SC 1971, p. 423. Ibid. Ibid.

222

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93 –105

91. The court’s understanding of shrines in the image of mosques not only found support from the reading the text of Ameer Ali, but also the Muslim Personal Law or Shariat Bill 1948, and the Constitution of 1956 gave impetus to understanding shrines in the same way. Muslim Personal Law or the Shariat Bill though enacted earlier in 1937 was re-enacted in 1948 by the Punjab Assembly. The Shariat Bill, 1948, makes waqfs to be dealt with under Muslim personal laws. The constitution of 1956, through items 65 and 69 of the Provincial List in the fifth schedule, placed waqfs and mosques together. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid., p. 424. 95. Faiz Badruddin Tyabji and Muhsin Tayyibji, Muslim Law; The Personal Law of Muslims in India and Pakistan, 4th edn (Bombay: N. M. Tripathi, 1968), p. 541. 96. PLD, SC 1971, p. 427. 97. Ibid., pp. 426– 7. 98. Ibid., p. 429. 99. LR 1938 Bom. 184. 100. PLD, SC, Vol. XXIII, p. 385. 101. PLD, SC, 1971, Vol. XXIII, p. 388. 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid., p. 391. 106. Ibid. 107. The decision came on 24 June 1971. PLD, 1971, SC 376. 108. Ghulam Rasul v. Government of the Punjab, SCMR 2003, p. 1821. 109. Ibid., p. 1826. 110. Ibid. 111. Ibid., pp. 1815– 29. 112. ‘The appellants (Mujawarin, the care takers of the shrines) had to move the Chief Administrator under section 6(2) for the purpose of such rights and unless such permission is granted, they could not perform any religious ceremony.’ Ibid., p. 1829.

Chapter 4 The Post-Colonial State, Shrines and the Auqaf Department 1. Javed Iqbal, The Ideology of Pakistan and its Implementation (Lahore: Sheikh Ghulam Ali and Sons, 1959), pp. 28 – 9. 2. In Political Order in Changing Societies Samuel Huntington maintains that: ‘More than any other political leader in a modernising country after the World War II, Ayub came close to filling the role of a Solon or Lycurgus, or Great Legislator on the Platonic or Rousseauian model.’ Samuel P. Huntington,

NOTES

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

TO PAGES

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Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 250–1. For Talbot, Ayub was not only an ‘innovator’, but also paternalistic in the tradition of the Raj’s non-regulation provinces. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History (London: Hurst and Co., 1998), p. 153. Mohammad Ayub Khan, Speeches and Statements, vol. I (Karachi: Pakistan Publications, 1967), pp. 48 – 9. Mohammad Ayub Khan, Friends not Masters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 88. ‘Mohakma Auqaf ke Nai Scheme’, editorial, Daily Nawai Waqt, 8 December 1960, Lahore. ‘Auqaf department appealed the public to avoid giving Nazranas to the previous Mutwalli of the shrine of Hazrat Mauj Darya Bukhari’. Ibid., 26 October 1960. Notification No. 1(1), Auqaf 60, Lahore, 9 Saturday 1960, published in The Gazette of West Pakistan, p. 9. Notification No. 3(1), Auqaf-60, Lahore, 11 January 1960, published ibid., pp. 37 – 8. Daily Nawai Waqt, 7 October 1959, Lahore. Ibid. Ibid. Notification No. 3(1), Auqaf-60, Lahore, 11 January 1960, published in The Gazette of West Pakistan, p. 38. Notification No. 3(1), Auqaf-60, Lahore, 13 February 1960, published ibid., p. 64. Notification No. 3(1), Auqaf-60, Lahore, 24 February 1960, published ibid. The idea of reconstructing or enlarging the mosque was not new, as it had already been brought up in the previous decade or so but had not been realised. Daily Nawai Waqt, 16 December 1960, Lahore. Urs was to take place in the middle of August 1960. Ibid., 3 October 1960. Reports on urs maintained quite positively that the crowd at urs did not lessen after the shrine was taken over by the Auqaf Department. The Governor of West Pakistan, Malik Amir Muhammad Khan inaugurated the newly built dispensary on 17 February 1961. Editorial, Daily Nawai Waqt, 15 October 1960, Lahore. One of the important religious ceremonies, that is, to recite Khatam Sharif, had already taken place on 15 August 1960, on the date of urs. Ibid. Ibid. The first of its kind procession of Eid Milad Un Nabi began in the city around 1933. However, the procession started from the Mochi gate and ended at Dalgirah Chowk in the city of Lahore. It is interesting that most of the properties traditionally attached to the shrine were already occupied by the colonial cantonment when the colonial armies entered Lahore and situated one of their main garrisons in the village already

224

25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40.

41.

NOTES

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110 –113

attached to the shrine. Even after independence, the cantonment continued in the same place. No. 3(14), Auqaf 60-I, A.H. Qureshi, CSP Notifications, Office of the Chief Administrator of Auqaf, West Pakistan, Lahore, 12 March 1968. No. VI(36), Auqaf 68, Notifications, Office of the Chief Administrator of Auqaf, West Pakistan, Lahore, 12 March 1968. On this issue, Nighat Sheikh, a member of the Provincial Assembly, also moved a motion that was accepted in the Punjab Assembly and an inquiry was ordered into the matter. Daily Lohkot, 26 March 2012. It is interesting that the Dargah of Baba Bullai Shah was developed initially by a prostitute devotee who donated the land for the shrine. Later on, nonMuslims also donated (waqf) a large amount of land to the shrine, as the record of revenue department showed. Also, as 1969 was under the rule of Yahya Khan, the Auqaf Department took control of five shrines out of these total 52 shrines. During Ayub Khan’s period, the department was able to take control of 47 shrines. M. Athar Tahir, Internal Report of Auqaf Department, 1999. Daily Nawai Waqt, 7 October 1960, Lahore. Notification No. 1 (71) A/63, published in The Gazette of West Pakistan. Ghafir Shahzad, Punjab Mai Khankahi Culture (Lahore: Fiction House, 2007), p. 146. M. Athar Tahir, Internal Report of Auqaf Department, 1999, p. 150. S.M. Ikram, Indian Muslims and Partitions of India (Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 1992), p. 203. Ibid. Ibid. Mufti Ghulam Sarwar Quraishi, Tareekh-e Makhzan Punjab (Lahore: Dost Associates, 1996), p. 523. Janbaz Mirza, Karwan e Ahrar, vol. 2 (Lahore: Idara Maktaba Tabsara, 1977), pp. 234 –5. The shrine continued to attract many devotees until Anjuman took over the mosque and shrine. Aman ullah Khan Arman Sarhadi, Urs aur Mailai (Lahore, Kitab Manzil, 1958), p.76. However, after the Auqaf Department took over the shrine, the number of devotees reduced considerably. ‘The only building on the plain now occupied by the High Court was the shrine of Shah Chiragh, in which the Accountant General’s office was housed for many long years, until its removal to its present quarters. It appears, however, from some very old records that, before its occupation by the Accountant General’s office, this shrine was the residence of the ‘Principal Assistant to the Deputy Commissioner.’ Colonel H.R. Goulding, Old Lahore: Reminiscences of a Resident (Lahore: Sang e mil Publications, 1998). Around 247 religious schools were nationalised up to 1962. See Jamal Malik, ‘Waqf in Pakistan: change in traditional institution’, Die Welt des Islams 30/1–4

NOTES

42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63.

TO PAGES

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(1990), pp. 63–97, p. 85. Available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/1571046 (accessed 13 October 2008). In 1963, Jamia Abbasiya or Jamia Bahawalpur (Islamic University of Bahawalpur) was taken over by the Auqaf Administrator in order to harmonise traditional and modern education. See ibid., pp. 84– 6. Ibid., p. 86. Daily Nawai Waqt, 15 October 1960, Lahore. The West Pakistan Auqaf Department (Khateebs and Imams) Service Rules, 1968. Some significant developments were: taking over control from previous mujawars; placing salaried imam and khateeb in the mosque attached to the shrine; opening a library in an already-existing hall, etc. A. Latif, ‘Sialkot Shrine’, letter to the editor, Pakistan Times, 7 October 1970. Ibid. Ibid. Vali Nasr thinks that the Yahya Khan regime turned to Islam in order to face ‘a strong leftist challenge to state authority in both wings of Pakistan’ . . . The generals believed that Islam was the only ideology that could confront the Left and provide a basis for keeping Pakistan together.’ Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 74. Ibid. Pakistan Times, 20 October 1970. Pakistan Times, 19 October 1970. Ibid. In 1970, the building of eye wards, a kitchen block and an administration block was inaugurated by the administrator. The building was built with a grant of around Rs 600,000 from the Matruka Waqf Imlak Board, Govt. of Pakistan. A. Latif, ‘Sialkot Shrine’. Ibid. Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, pp. 75– 6. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A New History (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2012), pp. 96–7. Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, pp. 75– 6. ‘Kindly hearts with divine splendour: Madho Lal’s urs begins’, Pakistan Times, 31 March 1974. Katherine Pratt Ewing, Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and Islam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 72. Hanif Ramay was elected as a member of the Provincial Assembly on a PPP ticket in 1970. He was Punjab Finance Minister from 1972– 3, Punjab governor from February 1973 to March 1974 and was appointed Chief Minister of Punjab from 15 March 1974 to 15 July 1975. Ramay had intended to develop the amphitheatre at the shrine of Baba Bullai Shah. A plan was devised but was never realised.

226

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64. The debate to give primacy to the Punjabi language found its culturalreligious expression during the early years of Bhutto rule. With Hanif Ramay as Chief Minister of Punjab, a re-emphasis on Punjabi poets and their poetry as a cultural Sufi expression began to become visible. The poetry and shrines of Waris Shah, at Jandiala Sherkhan in Sheikhupura, Madhu Lal of Lahore and Bullai Shah, of Kasur, acquired a prominent place, if not in the projected operations of the Auqaf Department, at least in the dreams of the new left democrats. The renewed emphasis, however, was a continuity of interest in the Punjabi language. One of the famous bureaucrats of the Ayub period was Masood Khaddarposh, who was quite committed to this linguistic-socialistic trend. Interestingly, during his period as Chief Administrator Auqaf, the most important shrine of Punjabi poetry, Waris Shah, which had still not been taken over, most probably because of its economic nonviability, was nationalised in 1968. 65. Interview with Baba Sadiq, 2010. 66. The project, to make arrangements for supplying 50,000 gallons of water through a tube well, was inaugurated by Aftab Ahmed Khan, Secretary Auqaf, in 1976. However, the project was not completed until 1979. 67. Ewing’s ethnographic work suggests the prevalence of similar conditions. Ewing, Arguing Sainthood, pp. 156– 7. 68. ‘Darbar Data Ganj Bakhsh ke Galio mai: Basti Basti Nagar Nagar’, Daily Nawai Waqt, 13 April 1976, Lahore. 69. Ibid. 70. ‘Yaum e May kai Jaloos mai Islami Nazryat Kai Mutabiq Naarai Lagai Jai’, ibid., 25 April 1976. 71. ‘Sufiai Karam nai Islam ke Ishaat mai Numaya Kirdar ada Kya hai’, ibid., 14 April 1976. 72. ‘Bari Gyarhwi Shareef ka Jaloos Aaj Dehli Gate sai niklai ga’, ibid., 11 April 1976. 73. The mosque was to be inaugurated in 1975; however, it was delayed when Shah Faisal was murdered in March 1975. 74. Daily Nawai Waqt, 12 June 1976, Lahore. 75. J. Gordon Melton and Martin Baumann (eds), Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, 2nd edn (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010), p. 2596. 76. Maulana Kausar Niazi, who was also the Federal Minister for Religious Affairs, was quite prolific and often wrote articles for newspapers. One such article is ‘Hamara Nizam e Masjid (Our system of mosque)’, published in Daily Nawai Waqt, 24 May 1976, Lahore. 77. Ibid., 5 July 1976. 78. Ibid., 27 June 1976, Islamabad. 79. On the order of Zia ul-Haq, the president of Pakistan, a report on the National Committee for Religious Schools, Pakistan was compiled in 1979. The report was organised by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Report of National

NOTES

80. 81.

82. 83. 84.

85.

86.

87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

TO PAGES

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Committee for religious schools of Pakistan, published by Idara Tahqiqat e Islami, Islamabad, 1979. Aftab Ahmed Khan had already served as Chief Administrator Auqaf from 10 March 1975 to 9 September 1976. The purpose of the National Committee not only entailed the enumeration process but also to work out ‘the financial requirements of all Deeni Madrassahs in order to assist them within the country’s overall available resources’. Ibid., p. 116. Daily Jang, 17 January 1984. Ibid., 28 July 1994. In Ahl e Sunnat tradition this day is very significant as it is the day on which people are likely to have illness visited on them divinely. It is therefore recommended that the day should be remembered with religious devotion. The procession of Akhri Chahar Shamba on 4 January 1980 started from Masjid Wazir Khan and finished at the shrine of Data Darbar. The newspaper also reports that this was the first occasion this day had been remembered by organising a procession on this grand level. Earlier in the history of Pakistan, one does not find the tradition of making procession to remember and celebrate the day. Daily Nawai Waqt, 4 January 1980, Lahore. Even during the Bhutto period, an idea to expand the shrine of Data sahib was already being reconsidered. However, after many serious attempts the project did not materialise. See Ghafir Shahzad, Data Darbar Complex: Taamir sai Taamir tak (Lahore: Idrak Publications, 2004), pp. 33 – 42. Daily Nawai Waqt, 19 February 1980, Lahore. Ibid., 7 January 1980, Lahore. Malik, ‘Waqf in Pakistan’, p. 80. A number of such reports can be found in newspapers of the 1980s. Kasur, Daily Nawai Waqt, 17 March 1985, Lahore. For example, Maulana Tahir ul Qadri, was quite active in making the site of shrine free of Ghair Shari practices. Nawai Waqt, 4 November, 1984. Malik, ‘Waqf in Pakistan’, pp. 88 – 9. Statements of Tahir ul Qadri, an Ahl e Sunnat orthodox scholar are significant in this regard. For a similar position see, Daily Nawai Waqt, 4 November 1984, Lahore.

Chapter 5 Developing and Redefining Shrines in the Post-Zia Period 1. Hasan Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2005), p. 136. 2. Ibid., p. 137. 3. Nawaz Sharif, heading IJI (Islami Jamhuri Ittehad) was elected Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1990. Ibid. 4. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History (London: Hurst and Co., 1998), p. 293.

228

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131 –135

5. Ibid., p. 136. 6. Vali Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 153. 7. Nawaz Sharif took the oath to become the first Chief Minister of Punjab on 8 April 1985. Daily Nawai Waqt, 8 April 1985. On the very next day, Nawaz Sharif visited the shrine of Data Sahib in a large procession. Daily Nawai Waqt, 9 April 1985. 8. Ghafir Shahzad, Punjab Mai Khankahi Culture (Lahore: Fiction House, 2007), p. 150. 9. During his visit in 1988 Zia ul-Haq expressed the wish to reconstruct the shrine of Baba Fareed in almost the same fashion as that of Data Sahib. Ibid., p. 189. 10. Ibid., p. 190. 11. Ibid., pp. 190– 6. 12. Ibid., p. 150. 13. S.L. Kaushik and Rama Patnayak (eds), Modern Governments and Political Systems, vol. 3: Government and Politics in South Asia (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1995), p. 144. 14. Daily Urdu Jang, 3 July 1994. 15. Daily Urdu Jang, 16 August 1994. 16. Shahzad, Punjab Mai Khankahi Culture, p. 156. 17. There has been active conflict over the origin of the shrine. The Sunni version presents a narrative in which the noble daughters of a Sunni saint committed suicide in the fourteenth century. However, the Shia version believes in the history of Noor Ahmed Chishti, who gave historical details of the way the daughters of Hazrat Ali came to Lahore after the incident of Karbala. Maulana Noor Ahmed Chishti, Tehqiqat e Chishti [1864] (Lahore: Al-Faisal Publishers, 2006), pp. 159– 162. 18. Farzana Shaikh, Making Sense of Pakistan (London: Hurst and Co., 2009), p. 139. 19. Robert Looney, ‘The Musharraf paradox: the failure of an economic success story’, The Open Area Studies Journal 1 (2008), pp. 1 – 15, p. 3. 20. The Government of Pakistan ratified UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention in 1972. 21. This ordinance was promulgated by the Governor of the Punjab on 25 February 1985 and published in the Punjab Gazette (Extraordinary), 27 February 1985. 22. UNESCO and UNDP, Cultural tourism in Lahore and Peshawar (Islamabad: UNESCO Office, 2004), p. 16. Available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/ 0013/001357/135776eo.pdf (accessed 13 May 2010). 23. The ordinance for the Tajdeed e Lahore Board was published in the Punjab Gazette (Extraordinary), 3 October 2002, pp. 2997– 3005. 24. The Punjab Heritage Foundation Act, 2005. This act was passed by the Punjab Assembly on 13 January 2005; assented to by the Governor of the

NOTES

25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

TO PAGES

135 –142

229

Punjab on 19 January 2005; and published in the Punjab Gazette (Extraordinary), 25 January 2005, pp. 2559– 63. Clause 9 of the act runs: ‘There shall be a separate Committee with functions as may be specified by the Board for preservation of cultural heritage within the revenue limits of Lahore District. (2) Such Committee may include persons nominated by the Board, provided that the Board may, from time to time, change the composition of the Committee.’ Ghafir Shahzad, ‘Lahore Shah Chiragh complex’, 28 March 2008. Available at http://www.urbanpk.com/forums/index.php/topic/11950-lahore-shah-charagcomplex/ (accessed 13 May 2010). Looney, ‘The Musharraf paradox’, p. 3. Ibid. Associated Press of Pakistan, 3 June 2004, Lahore. The work at the shrine of Shah Jamal finished around 2009. Interview with Deputy Director Projects Auqaf. The work at the mosque of the shrine started in 2010 and on the buildings such as hotels, toilets, etc. started as late as 2012. Ibid. Linus Strothmann, ‘Giving comfort, dispelling fear: social welfare at the shrine Of Data Ganj Bukhsh in Lahore, Pakistan’, Erdkunde 67/1 (2013), pp. 49 – 61. At the end of the Musharraf period, the Data Sahib Hospital had seven different departments: 1) gynaecological/obstetrics; 2) eye; 3) medical; 4) dental; 5) paediatric; 6) X-ray and ultrasonographic; and 7) pathology. M.S. Hospital, ‘Performance report of Data Sahib Hospital and allied dispensaries’, Internal Report, 2010. Prospectus Jamia Hajveria Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh, published by the department of Religious Affairs and Auqaf, 2005. Interview from zonal administrator, Auqaf Department, Lahore, October 2011. The first internal report for recording all the land and its details was only prepared in 1999. After Malik’s analyses, which matches income with inflation and calculates the real profit position, it becomes easy to infer the visitation pattern. However, this chapter contends that it is possible for real profits to fall but visitation rates stay the same or even grow further. It is possible for more people to offer donations but, because of inflation, the value of their income is reduced. There is no direct relationship between the offering and decrease and increase of real profits. During an interview with a Deputy Director of Projects Directorate of Auqaf Department, a similar perception was shared by the official, who remained engaged in construction matters and who also observed the change in the psyche of devotees. See Table 2. Malik concluded that the trend for fewer visits to the shrine is the reason for the decreasing collection. Jamal Malik, ‘Waqf in Pakistan: change in traditional institution’, Die Welt des Islams 30/1– 4 (1990), pp. 63 – 97.

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41. Development at the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib was already underway. ‘The shrine donations suggest a rise whenever construction starts taking place.’ Interview with a Deputy Director of Projects Directorate of Auqaf Department, Lahore, October, 2011. 42. After 1993– 4 the restructuring of the zones created new zones. For comparison, see Appendix. 43. The shrine of Bullai Shah, it seems, is also still able to attract many devotees who remain able to distance themselves from the religious ideology of the state. It appears that ideology is easily aligned at the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib in Lahore. 44. See Table 10. 45. See Fig. A1 in Appendix. 46. Strothman, ‘Giving comfort, dispelling fear’. 47. M. Athar Tahir, Waqf Properties, Auqaf Department Internal Report, 1999. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Report of Public Accounts Committee II (Punjab Government: Secretariat of the Provincial Assembly of the Punjab Lahore, 2007).

Conclusion 1. M. Athar Tahir, ‘Waqf properties’, Auqaf Department Internal Report, 1999. 2. Ibid.

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Samad, Younas, A Nation in Turmoil: Nationalism and Ethnicity in Pakistan, 1937– 1958 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1995). Saqi, Mahmud Ahmad, Qutub e Lahore (Lahore: Idara Ahl e Sunnat Wa Jamaat, 1990). Schimmel, Annemarie, The Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975). Shahzad, Ghafir, Data Darbar Complex: Tameer sai Takmeel Tak (Lahore: Book Home, 2004). ———, Punjab Mai Khankahi Culture (Lahore: Fiction House, 2007). ———, ‘Lahore Shah Chiragh complex’, 28 March 2008. Available at http://www. urbanpk.com/forums/index.php/topic/11950-lahore-shah-charag-complex/ (accessed 13 May 2010). Shaikh, Farzana. Making Sense of Pakistan (London: Hurst and Co., 2009). ‘Shamloo’ (Latif Ahmad Sherwani) (ed.), Speeches and Statements of Iqbal (Lahore: Al-manar Academy, 1944). Sharda, S.R., Sufi Thought: Its Development in Punjab and Its Impact on Punjabi Literature (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1974). Siddiqi, Abul Lais, Iqbal Aur maslak e Tasawwaf (Iqbal Academy Pakistan: Lahore, 1977). Singh, Gurdit, Mera Pind (Chandigarh: Sahit Prakashan, 1965). Singh, Khushwant, A History of the Sikhs, vol. 2: 1839– 2004 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India (London: Oxford University Press, 1959). Strothmann, Linus, ‘Giving comfort, dispelling fear: social welfare at the shrine Of Data Ganj Bukhsh in Lahore, Pakistan’, Erdkunde 67/1 (2013), pp. 49 –61. ———, Managing Piety: The Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Subhan, John A., Sufism: Its Saints and Shrine (Lucknow: Lucknow Publishing House, 1938). Talbot, Ian, Punjab and the Raj, 1849– 1947 (New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1988). ———, Pakistan: A Modern History (London: Hurst and Co., 1998). ———, India and Pakistan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). ———, Pakistan: A New History (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2012). Tariq, Abdur Rahman (ed.), Speeches and Statements of Iqbal (Lahore: Sheikh Ghulam Ali, 1973). Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Sufi Orders in Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971). Troll, Christian W. (ed.), Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, History and Significance (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). Yong, Tan Tai, The Garrison State: The Military Government and Society in Colonial Punjab, 1849– 1947 (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2005). Waseem, Muhammad, Politics and State in Pakistan (Lahore: Sange-Meel Publications, 1989). Weber, Max, Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978). Werbner, Pnina and Helene Basu (eds), Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults (London: Routledge, 1998).

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INDEX

Abdali, Ahmed Shah, 26 Ahl e Sunna, 30, 37, 39, 40, 41, 51, 60, 94, 124, 127, 128, 203, 205, 208, 214, 227 Akhri Chahar Shamba (the last Wednesday of the Arabic month of Safar), 124, 227 Ahl-e-Hadith, 17, 32 Ahrar, 3, 39, 42, 43, 50, 52, 56 Ali, Sufi Barkat, 3 Anarkali, 19, 34, 110 Anjuman e Punjab or Punjab Association, 20 Anti-Ahmadiyya, 6, 29, 30, 42, 55, 67 Asar al Sanadid, 23, 24 Arjun, Guru, 18 Auqaf Administrator, 84, 89, 90, 96, 97, 99, 105, 110, 111, 123, 124, 134, 225 Auqaf Department, xi, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 51, 57, 58, 60, 61, 69, 70, 71, 73 – 87 Auqaf Board Act (ABA) of 1952, 14, 70, 80 Auqaf Ordinance, 61, 78, 90, 94 Autochthonous religious-cultural spaces, 10

Baba, Rehman, 3 Baba, Mazar Ashab, 2 Badshahi Mosque, 27, 112, 137, 145, 149–54, 156, 160, 166 Baba Farid, 1, 3, 35, 116, 117, 138, Bakhsh, Mian Muhammad, 22 Bhagat, Chhajju, 18 Bhittai, Shah Abdul Latif, 2 Bhutto, Benazir, 86, 131, 133 Bhutto, Zulfiqar Ali, 86, 117, 120, 123, 131 Bibi Pak Daman, 26, 76, 78, 116 Binder, Leonard, 5, 9 Biraderies, 18 Brelwi, 3, 30, 31, 37, 42, 51, 133, 138 British Royal Asiatic Society, 24 Capitalism, 12, 56, 62 census reports, 17 Central Punjab, 18, 19, 32, 42, 142, 144, 145, 149, 160, 162, 166 Charitable Endowment Act 1863, 80 Chiragh, Shah, 19, 88, 112, 113, 120, 135, 136, 152 Civil Service of Pakistan, 106 Chishti, 21 –3, 25– 7, 31 – 3, 35, 113, 121 Customary law, 16, 17

244

SUFI SHRINES

AND THE

Data Ganj Bakhsh Sahib, 1, 19, 26, 32, 82, 89, 96, 97, 99, 101, 106, 107, 120– 2, 124– 8, 131–3, 136, 137, 145, 146, 155, 158, 160 Daula, Shah, 3, 29, 89, 90, 93, 94, 167 Delhi, 23, 24, 29, 40 Deoband, 3, 27, 29, 30, 31, 39 – 42, 53, 56, 57, 64, 127, 128 Dholla, 22 Double-reterritorialisation, 5, 6, 13, 39, 54, 55, 74, 101, 102, 163, 164 Faqirs (mendicants), 22, 34 Faisalabad, 3, 144, 145, 147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 156, 157 Faqir, 10, 22, 26, 34, 45, 59 Faraizi movement, 17 Fareed, Khawaja Ghulam Mitthan Koti, 22 Fauq, 21, 22, 35, 36 Female Dancing Act of 1943, 14 Ghazi, Abdullah Shah, 1 – 3 Government of Pakistan, 88, 106, 135, 209, 228, 234 Giyarwi Sharif, 124 Gujrat, 3, 19, 90, 111, 121, 125 Haq, Zia ul, 14, 123, 125, 126, 127, 129, 131, 132, 164 Heer, 22 Haq, Imam Ali ul, 106 Hussain, Madhu Laal Hussain, 3, 26, 34, 137 Ideological apparatus, 11 Iqbal, Allama, 3, 6, 10, 22, 33, 39, 41, 43, 44, 51, 66, 68, 118, 128 Iqbal, Javed, 6, 64 – 8, 79 Islamic heritage, 11, 89, 158 Islamic socialism, 117, 118 Islamic Ideological Council, 123 Islamic ideologies, 1, 5

PAKISTANI STATE

India, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 18, 20, 23, 27, 35, 39, 43, 44, 49, 50, 52, 53, 62, 67, 71, 72, 74, 80, 89, 107 Jamia al Hajvairy, 137, 138 Jamia Ashrafia, 3 Jamia Naeemia, 3 Ji, Tayyab, 94, 96 Kamal, Shah, 106, 116, Karachi, 1 – 3, 106, 188, 191, 192, 197, 203, 205, 209, 212, 213, 215, 223, 235, 237– 41 Kashf ul Mahjub, 22 Khan, Maulana Zafar Ali, 3, 49, 50 Khateeb, 40, 87, 113, 114, 115, 123, 205, 225 Lahore Arts Council, 119 Mahfil Sama Committee, 133 Malang, 10 Mangu Pir, 3 Markaz e Tahqeeq e Auliya, 127 Marxist analysis, 12 Majzub, 10 Mir, Mian, 3, 18, 19, 106, 110, 133, 147, 167, 196, 233 Muslim Auqaf Act of 1923, 77, 81, 82 Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act 1937, 46, 47, 57, 73, 75, 77, 80, 207, 208, 218, 222 Mutwallis or Sajjada Nashins, 12, 47, 58, 59, 60, 61, 72, 73, 77 78, 81 82, 87, 89, 99, 105, 112 Mussalman Waqf Act (MWA) of 1923, 14 Mukhzan e Punjab, 21 Malfuzat (biographies), 26 Mujawarans, 7, 97 Naqshbandi, 31 – 33, 35, 45 Narowal, 3, 32, 125, 137 Nazrana, 34, 36, 94, 95, 106, 223

INDEX Objectives Resolution, 6, 55, 67, 164 Orientalist empiricism, 17 Pakistan Peoples Party, 117, 130, 131 Rehman, Pak Shah, 106 Pak, Nausha Ganj, 121 Panj Tan Pak (five sacred bodies/ persons), 136 Peshawar, 2, 88, 135, 228, 233 Pirzadgan, 19, 89, 90, 91 Pluralistic traditions, 6 Post-colonial state, 54, 60, 62, 64, 65, 67 – 71, 74, 78, 85, 89, 90, 93, 95, 98, 101– 04, 141, 155, 162– 4, 166 Punjab Assembly, 75, 88, 122, 124, 133, 218, 222, 224, 228 Punjab Heritage Foundation Act 2005, 135, 228 Punjab Muslim Auqaf Survey (Amendment) Act in 1950, 75, 79, 80 Punjab Special Premises (Preservation) Ordinance 1985, 135 Punjab Waqf Properties (Administration) Rules 2002, 85, 86, 87, 219, 220

245

Shah, Jamal, 3, 106, 136 Shah, Bullai, 3, 106, 110, 111, 118, 120, 125, 127, 134, 136, 147 Shah, Jamat Ali Amir e Millat, 3, 21, 32, 33, 40, 41, 50 – 2, 125 Shah, Jamat Ali Saani, 3, 32, 137 Shah, Pir Mehr Ali, 22 Shah, Waris, 111, 118, 119, 120, 134, 136, 188, 226, 233, 241, 242 Shahid, Ghazi Alam Ud Din, 123 Sharaqpuri, Mian Sher Muhammad, 3 Shariat Law, 8, 57, 77, 94, 95, 99, 208 Sharif, Nawaz, 86, 128, 131, 132, 134, 227, 228 Shia, 41, 133, 134, 195, 209, 218, 228 Singular Islam, 5, 6, 11, 13, 35, 43, 51, 53, 67, 93 Sufism, 4, 6, 31, 37, 44, 55 Sunni, 31, 40 –2, 50, 56, 133, 134, 202, 205, 228 Tajdeed e Lahore, 88, 135, 136, 228 Tehqiqat e Chishti, 21, 23, 25, 26, 33 The Archaeology Department of Pakistan, 132

Qadri, 31, 34, 35, 121, 122, 125, 197, 202, 205, 227, 234, 235 Qalandar, Laal Shahbaz, 2 Qasur, 3, 21

Ulema Academy, xi, 115, 127, 129, 155 Unionists, 43, 48, 52, 73, 207, 210, 213

Reterritorialisation, 4–6, 13, 38, 39, 41, 54, 55, 67, 74, 101, 102, 163, 164 Religious Endowment Act of 1863, 79, 163 Religious Purposes Committee, 87

Wahabbism, 17 Waqf Property, 7, 58, 59, 70, 71, 72, 75, 77, 79, 80 – 4, 86 – 90, 94, 95, 98, 99, 100, 110, 119, 123, 138, 191, 196 West Pakistan Waqf Properties Ordinance (1959), 6, 38, 79, 81, 82, 90, 100, 105

Sarwar, 21, 22, 28, 34 Sehwand, 2