“If you have visited a shrine or a Sufi hermitage, a guardian or custodian joins you at the time of visitation, he prays for you and later gives you a fistful of ‘Tabarak’ and offers it to you. Expects cash”.
This tradition has continued for centuries at shrines in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and some Central Asian Muslim countries, but the local Waqf Board of Indian-administered Kashmir has launched a regular campaign against it, preventing residents from collecting public offerings. .
The board says that the Majjars have erected walls between the devotees and a Sufi saint buried in the shrine and extort money from the people, but the Majjars say they have been treated unfairly by this new law.Muhammad Yasin Zahra, an 82-year-old neighbour of Srinagar’s oldest shrine, Khanqah-e-Maula,
“Why was the livelihood of hundreds of people taken away on the basis of the mistake of a few people?”
We have been here for many generations, people take our prayers with devotion and willingly give us some money, how this new campaign suddenly intervened in the middle of people’s devotion and centuries of tradition.
Dozens of neighbouring waqf boards associated with the monastery attributed to Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani, a Sufi saint who came to Kashmir from Iran in the early 14th century and preached Islam here, oppose the campaign.
It should be noted that immediately after the issuance of this decree by the Waqf Board in August, the authorities, with the help of the police, seized the boxes for collecting donations and offerings installed at dozens of shrines.
According to historical references, Mir Syed Ali Hamdani is known as the preacher who spread Islam in Kashmir because Islam did not exist here before his arrival here. He and later his son Mir Muhammad Hamdani bought hundreds of acres of land in Kashmir during the 14th and 15th centuries and dedicated it to Muslim institutions.
But the formal organization of Waqf was done in the year 1940 in ‘Muslim Awqaf Trust’ by the then popular leader Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah. He remained the Chairman of the Trust till his death in 1982. However, when Sheikh Abdullah’s rival Mufti Syed came to power in 2003, he changed its name to ‘Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board’ and announced to account for waqf property and make those responsible accountable.
Despite the official figures, despite the annual income of Rs 60 crores through endowments and assets worth billions of rupees, there has been no improvement in the condition of the Waqf Board.
In the year 2019, Narendra Modi’s government abolished the autonomy of Kashmir and imposed federal laws directly here, then the Waqf Board was also brought under the category of ‘Central Waqf Act’.
Dr Darakhshan Andrabi, a senior woman leader of the BJP in Kashmir, has been made the vice-chairperson of the board, who will be accountable only to the lieutenant governor.
‘We will purify the holy shrines from politics
Dr Darakhshan Andrabi says that not only the people were being exploited by the shrines, but all the shrines had become an easy source of nepotism and vote bank for the traditional politicians.
There is no account of the money taken from people. And then the shrines are not maintained, there are no facilities for the public, there is no renovation of the buildings, we want to reform all this and the people want the same.’
It is noteworthy that there are hundreds of shrines in Jammu and Kashmir in which Sufi sages from Iran, Bukhara, Samarkand, Balkh, Turkestan, Hamdan, and various regions of Central Asian countries are buried, who preached here from the 14th century to the 17th century. Keep coming in the series.In later centuries, hermitages were built on their shrines and they became centers of devotion for the people.
Dr Darakhshan says: ‘I am also from the Syed family, and a devotee too. But our shrines had become centers of politics and corruption. The Waqf Board will not allow this to happen.’
The Board currently has 68 shrines, 65 mosques, 2000 commercial buildings, 900 acres of forest land and over 300 acres of orchards under its supervision. Apart from this, there are twenty schools and three nursing colleges, while a well-known university is also located on the land of the waqf.
Does the government want direct control over shrines?
The harassment of devotees visiting the shrines by the neighbor’s has been a long-standing problem, but people have accepted it as a small ‘tax’ for visiting the shrines. Each shrine had two separate patties, one in which money was deposited by Waqf Board officials and the other in which money was deposited as an offering to the devotees without receipt.But this process continued for centuries and these neighbors used to run their houses with the same income from generation to generation.
Historian and social activist Zarif Ahmad Zarif says: ‘This campaign of the government is forced. First, a survey was conducted to find out who among the neighbors earns employment through this process. If one’s earnings were merely excessive, he would be evicted, those living on the same offering would be given a monthly salary or stipend by the waqf and then social and religious figures would be consulted on how to start the campaign.
She said that ‘if the government really wants to separate religion and politics, it should also remove those priests from the temples who take money from the devotees who go to the temple and take prasad.’
The very popular shrine of the famous Sheikh Nooruddin Wali in Charar village of Budgam district is thronged by devotees throughout the year. A resident there, on condition of anonymity, said: ‘Each shrine has a regular police post since the armed insurgency. There are also CCTVs in some places. Was it impossible that the Waqf Borar asked the police to keep watch and CCTVs were installed at every shrine and it was proved whether we really force anyone. Here people ask for vows. They pay obeisance and are satisfied by giving us a small gift. This is cruelty.
However, Waqf Board head Dr Darakhshan Says that his organizational commitment has no role in it. ‘We have a completely different way of thinking. I say politicians should not interfere. We want to free these symbols of Kashmir’s Sufi traditions and spiritual history from political exploitation.
She said, ‘I don’t have a problem with what people are talking about, I do this work without any salary and I want no third person to stand between a saint and a pilgrim who has faith with him at the shrine.’
Were the shrines really ‘political weapons’?
After the year 1950, when Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah launched a movement for secession from India, he made a memorial shrine built in the style of various shrines under the Muslim Awqaf Trust, especially the Masjid Nabawi located in Hazrat Bil, Srinagar, as his political center. Then for decades, Sheikh Abdullah or other leaders of his party National Conference used to address the people only at the shrines.
Many observers say that this is the reason why the BJP government wants to keep the traditional political leadership of Kashmir away from shrines or shrines.
Renowned historian and jurist Professor Sheikh Shaukat Hussain says that the Muslim Awqaf Trust was indeed used by Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah for decades for political purposes, but in 2003, Mufti Syed created a new Waqf Law and converted the trust into a government board. Government control was gained over it.
“Now the narrative that religious places used to be used politically has become irrelevant because those who rule India have come to power using religious places.