Piya Haji Ali…Piya Haji Ali… Piya Ho

Few Pirs or Sufi saints in South Asia can match the popularity of the 14th century Pir Haji Ali Shah Bukhari, or simply Haji Ali. I have been to the doors of this sacred soul umpteenth times. I went there again last week.

The latest visit was more as a journalist than an ardent devotee. I was cautious while I covered a news feature. And I was respectful to the sensitivities of the people. While I tried not to allow my personal faith to come between professional duty as a reporter and a faithful, I resisted the temptations to sensationalise some issues.

To any casual visitor who doesn’t dig much, at present, the Haji Ali Dargah complex doesn’t give a pretty picture. The over 550-year-old Haji Ali Dargah is currently under renovation. A high-ceilinged shed robs you of the full view of the monument. The shed has been erected to protect visitors from the harsh sun and soon-to-come heavy rains.

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Piled on the Dargah premises are marble slabs from the mines of Makrana (Rajasthan).  The supplier claims his ancestors had given marbles to the Taj Mahal, that wonder of wonders Mughal emperor Shah Jahan got built for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal on the banks of the Yamuna in Agra.

As I stood there watching the Western horizon bathed in a golden hue while the sea waters lashed against the naked black rocks acting as protective arms to the shrine, a thought came to my mind. Shah Jahan was badshah of India which was bigger in territory than what we have today. He could order the best and the costliest marble available on the planet to build a mausoleum, which outshines most world monuments, in majesty and beauty, many centuries later. There are some people who have openly shown strong itch to, if not demolish the Taj, at least change its name. Naam mein kya rakha hai? A lot. But then that deserves another essay. Let us keep that for another day.

In contrast, Haji Ali didn’t own a kingdom. He was a fakir, a holy man who had eschewed the desire for power and self. Yet, his kingdom continues to flourish five centuries after he departed. Commoners have added to the shrine’s coffers. There may have been some big donors too. But much of the money in charity to the shrine comes from the commoners, men and women, who throng the shrine seeking solace and blessings. The administrative officer of Haji Ali Dargah Trust, Mohammed Ahmed Taher, told me that over a lakh people visit on Thursday, Friday and Sunday while over 50,000 visit on other days of the week.

Huge donation boxes are kept near the shrine. Nobody forces anybody to dig into her pocket. The devotees donate out of their own will.

So, when the trust needed to renovate the old structure, they debated for a while whether it was prudent to replace it with another RCC structure. Engineers and architects told the trustees that the salt-mixed sea water and air corrode cement-and-iron structure easily. They would eat into the shrine’s structural strength in a few decades. And the structure needed to be earthquake-resistant too. Then someone cited example of the Taj Mahal which stands on the banks of an ancient but living river, majestically and seductively. What is in the Taj that makes it so strong and gives it such longevity? Among other things, it is Makrana marble. They found an owner of a mine in Makrana whose ancestors had supplied marble to the Taj.

While digging the mine, says Taher, a miracle happened. They stumbled upon Grade one marble, better than the ones used in the Taj. After all, Shah Jahan ruled a country. Haji Ali rules millions of hearts. The saint deserved and deserves better treatment than what was accorded to an emperor who had lost his heart to his bewitchingly beautiful wife who bore 14 children. Seven of them survived to adulthood. Their third child, Aurangzeb, went on to rule India for nearly 50 years. What he did and didn’t do during his long reign is for the historians to comment. And they must tell the world the whole truth preferably from atop the Qutub Minar. Will the honest historians who have done rigorous research come out with the explanations why Aurangzeb did what he did?

To me, Aurangzeb’s forebear Akbar is the most important among Mughal emperors. Aurangzeb’s eldest brother Dara Shikoh and heir-apparent of Shah Jahan, could have changed the course of history had destiny not played a cruel joke with him. Those who hate the Mughals so much that they are bent upon erasing the memories of the dynasty need to separate wheat from the chaff. Dara Shikoh spent months in Banaras, learnt Sanskrit and understood the Hindu scriptures and mythologies from learned Pandits and translated many of the Hindu holy texts into Persian. The translations travelled far and wide, making the world aware of much of the ancient wisdom. His Majmaul Bahrain (Co-mingling of the oceans) is a great treatise on commonalities between Islam and Hinduism. But in the hatred of the Mughals and frankly today’s Muslims who cannot be held responsible if some places of worship were razed by a fanatical king, the hate brigade is burying rich legacies of even Akbar and Dara Shikoh in the mighty Ganga and Jamuna.

Did I mention Ganga? Recalling the arrival of Muslims to India as well as acknowledging debt of the Ganga, the poet Allama Iqbal said:

Aye abrood-e-Ganga woh din hai yaad tujhko/Utra tere kinare jab caravan humara (O river Ganga, do you remember the day/When our caravans descended on your banks).

But those who have put on the blinkers refuse to accept if there ever existed something called Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb or the widely celebrated synthetic ethos of India. In urgency to rob the rainbow that drapes India and to turn India into a dull, divisive monocolour they are hitting at its soul.

When I was in college in Patna I wrote an essay titled “India of my dreams” and sent it to the Patna edition of The Times of India. The editor was kind enough to publish it though it needed heavy editing. Admittedly, I didn’t know then much grammar and syntax of the firangi zubaan. In that essay I had dreamt of an India where “no mullahs or mahanths could succeed to fan the fires of communalism”. How wrong I have been proved decades down the line. That was in the 1990s when we were fighting in the name of Mandir-Masjid. One thought the handing over of the Ayodhya land by the Supreme Court to the Hindus would put closure to future disputes over places of worship. It didn’t happen and we are still fighting in the name of Mandir-Masjid.

Once at a book discussion function in Mumbai years ago, I called former BBC correspondent and noted “romantic writer” Mark Tully who believed Indian masses would defeat the purveyors of hate. “Yes, I am a romantic and believe so,” replied Tully at the session that late journo-writer Anil Dharker anchored. Have we not proved Tully wrong by creating an atmosphere of animosity and hatred decades later?

In these times, one thinks departed holy souls like Haji Ali are rays of hope. I saw hordes of devotees, irrespective of religions they profess and practise, standing shoulder-to-shoulder near the Sufi saint’s tomb, offering flower petals and seeking blessings. One mujawar (shrine attendant) kept touching foreheads of the devotees with a broom-like thing. Perhaps he was passing on the benevolent touch of the Pir to the aam junta who needs divine intervention to get their suffering mitigated.

Politicians cannot solve our problems. We need plentiful of divine touches. When am I visiting Haji Ali next?

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