Another urs. Another blast.
The spirit of devotion. The spirit of surrender. The spirit of elation. The spirit of defeat. All come to one within Sufi thought.
These core Sufi values came true, gruesomely, at the Sakhi Sarwar shrine on Sunday.
'40 dead and counting,' were the news tickers that day. It is not the first attack on shrines. It is likely not going to be the last.
It all began in a shrine unknown to the public - Fatehpur. March 20 2005. 50 died. Police speculated it was the result of a feud over the shrine's possession. Maybe, it was.
But what followed were more shrine attacks. Rehman Baba in Peshawar, Data Gunj Baksh in Lahore, Baba Farid in Pakpattan, Abdullah Shah Ghazi in Karachi, Sakhi Sarwar in DG Khan have all had their legacies attack.
The shrine: contested catharsis
The shrine (theoretically) is the living soul of the saint buried within it.
The life of the saint is given value by devotees in the practices around the shrine. And they take from the saint a catarsis of their lives dilemmas (though religion itself is an attempt at catharsis).
The practices at a shrine like any other social site remain contested at two levels: internally and externally. At this node in history the external contestation is gaining strength.
Strange as it appears, Pakistan’s settled landscape is marked by shrines; ranging from single room to multi-layered complexes.
Within the shrine saints is a multi-layered construction of the possibilities within the muslim faith. The contest around shrines remains centred on a set of five tenants: (I) the worship of shrines (II) the mingling of males and females (III) the dhamaal (or dance) (IV) the presence of deviant groups (transgenders, prostitutes, drug addicts and the homeless) (V) the malamati (rebellious) tradition.
Each of these appears to offer a significant threat to what has become State-backed Islamic hegemony in Pakistan. And yet the traditions and practices being offered at the shrines have continued to bring together communities – and remain at the locus of the living culture of Pakistan.
Sakhi Sarwar: A bit too deviant – or a bit too close to reality
March to April, in Southern Punjab’s rural socio-economy, is festival season. This is a function of the end of the wheat planting and the wait for the harvest. The hallmark of the festivals in Punjab is the sakhi sarwar urs.
Known to be host to thousands of devotees, the peculiar history of Sakhi Sarwar, the saint around which the area was said to have been settled, is worth contemplating. There appears a weak faith-linkage with Sakhi’s persona. The sakhi shrine was frequented by muslims, hindus and Sikhs before the partition. The area of Sakhi Sarwar itself host to a Hindu majority population – and monuments in tribute to Shiv reported to be present at the shrine complex till some five to seven years ago.
The mela is known as the second largest after the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar urs in Sindh. It is known for the dhamaal (spiritual dance). The dhamaal is offered as catharsis by both women and men. The presence of hindus itself has remained a feature of the urs. To those who preach spaces of equal religious relations, the Sakhi Sarwar shrine has served as a living example to a dynamic religious understanding.
The Shrine – and it’s OTHER:
This year was the third year in a row that the urs received threats from the Taliban. The Taliban itself operates as a strange – almost mythial entity – to those of us to sit and digest English newspaper. But the Taliban claim of cause (a reference to the new army operation in Waziristan) and the choice of target (a popular shrine perceived to be host to practices outside the now-bizarre ‘fold of Islam’) both need to be considered.
In fact, let us summarize this:
CAUSE: Operation in Waziristan
EFFECT: Attack shrine host to ‘deviant’ practices
The suicide bombers at the shrine were no more than children. Of the two child suicide bombers caught; one, a sixth-grade student, said he would do it again if he was let go.
The formation of hatred within an exclusive religious identity is key to producing such an imagination within a mere child.
The Shrine: Amidst a challenge to their essence:
The first challenge to the shrines – and saints – of the side of the subcontinent that fell to the Pakistani state came from the State itself.
During Zia’s era, the celebration of an urs was banned in the Islamisation regime of the period. The control of the Auqaf department over the shrines was itself extended during this period. An example is the mela charaagan (festival of lights) in Lahore celebrated at the shrine of Madhoo Lal Hussain, which was banned for the good part of a decade.
When it re-emerged after Zia had been through with it, the festival was never the same. The new festival emerged as an intensely masculinised space. Since then it is slowly attempting to recovering its old essence.
Another incident in recent memory, is Shahbaz Sharif’s attempt to become the patron to the patron saint of Lahore (Data Gunj Bahksh) by making an elaborate complex around the Data Darbar. This increased interference of the State – and State-actors – in the shrine translated into the segregation of gender spaces within the Data Darbar on the grounds of claimed immorality. This reached its logical end after the unfortunate suicide attacks on the Darbar in 2010, after which it became an intensely monitored and scrutinized environment – no longer the home to the homeless of its recent past.
To this one may add, the very recent, islamisation of the Bullah Shah shrine when the shrine was given a mosque after creating a similar building complex around it.
The essence of the shrine has itself begun to undergo a transformation under State, security and immorality regimes. The shrine as a comfort to destitutes is beginning to unravel itself in the more urban and famous shrines.
They are too important to not have their essence attacked by either the State or non-State actors.
But then it is from here that the hope for keeping them alive emerges.
Keeping the soul alive: re-integrating the Other/cultural catharsis
While there may be no stopping the attacks on shrine, it is the soul that the saints have offered us that must be kept alive. This soul has two tenants: opening up to those different from us and the tools to begin a cultural catharsis.
A cultural catharsis that is most essential.
Everyone of us, in response to the attacks on our saints, needs to immerse himself in dhamaal. A cultural dhamaal (that those familiar with more abstract forms of theatre) that shall bring about a way to keep the saints alive outside the shrines.
A attack on a physical space is an attack on a space of imagination.
The devotees of Sakhi Sarwar had the festival restarted five hours after the attack on the shrine. It was a spirit to not let the attack on the physical space close down imaginative space.
It is the spirit of the devotees of Sakhi Sarwar that we must adopt.
- The article was printed with The Review in Pakistan Today on April 10, 2011.
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