Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti ( 1141-1230) is one of the most revered saints of India. His Dargah Sharif in Ajmer is a place of introspection and shared devotion visited by people of all faiths and it is not unusual to see Hindus and Sikhs doing `sewa’ (devotional service) here for weeks on end helping with the cooking and serving of food and in the daily cle.ng of these hallowed premises.
A Sufi saint, Khwaja Chisti practised a tolerant and inclusive form of Islam that incorporated elements of other religions. The Sufi saints including Shaikh Abdul Qadir, Salim Chisti, Nizamuddin Aulia and Miyan Mir were in the forefront of spreading the message of universal love and brotherhood and have influenced amongst many saints including Guru Nanak and Kabir.
Imagine the horror of waking up on Tuesday morning to learn that, like several mosques which are presently under siege, a civil court judge Manmohan Chandel in Ajmer had served notices to the Ajmer Dargah Committee, the Archaeological Survey of India and the Ministry of Minority Affairs demanding a survey be conducted of Chisti’s mausoleum. This notice was given in response to a petition that was filed in Chandel’s court by Vishnu Gupta that the mausoleum was built after destroying Hindu and Jain temples.
Gupta claims the Dargah to be declared a Hindu temple “and if it has a registration, it should be cancelled, an ASI survey should be conducted, and that we should be permitted to pray”. The court order has not been uploaded online or shared with the petitioners so far.
Ajmer Dargah will observe its 813th Urs in January next year and the caretakers of the Dargah are gearing up to cope with the thousands of Muslim and Hindus who will descend in Ajmer to partake in the prayers. Gupta has gone public to state that, “Chishti Saheb was not born here and he was not from here. So, who was here before him? Prithviraj Chauhan. And the city was known as Ajaymeru.”
Syed Sarwar Chishty, secretary of Anjuman Syed Zadgan — a body of Dargah caretakers – has gone on record to state that the destruction of the Babri Masjid was a `bitter pill to swallow believing then that there would be no repeat of this. ` But Kashi, Mathura, Sambhal … it refuses to stop. On June 22, the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat chided his followers insisting `people should not look for a Shivling in every mosque’.
Sadly, Bhagwat’s own followers are not willing to listen to him as hundreds of petitions have been filed in lower courts claiming the destruction of mosques which the petitioners believe have been constructed by pulling down temples. Chishty blames retired Chief Justice of India Justice D Y Chandrachud for having opened a Pandora’s box for no mosque will remain sacrosanct anymore
The Places of Worship Act 1991 categorically barred the changing of the religious character of a monument from its status at the time of India’s independence. Former CJI’s reading of this act was very curious because instead of nipping this can of worms and giving a sou motto decision to disallowing any further contention on the status of the Gyanvapi Mosque, he ruled that the law does not disallow the `ascertainment of their character’ implying hereby that an enquiry could be held.
Obviously, Chandrachud did not stop to consider where such an ascertainment would end up as was evident in the violence that has engulfed Sambhal where the district court ruled the appointment of an advocate commissioner to ascertain whether the fifteenth century Shahi Jama Masjid was indeed a Shiva temple at some point in history. This was done without hearing the Muslim point of view and the advocate commissioner conducted the survey with full police security a mere two hours after the judgement was delivered on November 19.
The Shamsi Jama Masjid, an 800-year-old national heritage site in Badaun, finds itself in the centre of a court case because a Shiva temple existed there eight centuries ago. Of course, the key two mosques under dispute remain the Gyanvapi mosque where puja is taking place in the cellar and for the bringing down of the Shahi Idgah in Mathura that will give place to a `vistaar’ (expansive) Krishna Janambhoomi temple along the lines of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.
Several mosques are being quietly demolished as was the case of a historic 16th-century mosque, Shahi Masjid, in Prayagraj and a 300-year old mosque in Muzzaffarnagar earlier this year because of road-widening projects. Several other mosques have been brought down during the last two years. This is not to say that temples have not met the same fate. Over 150 ancient temples were brought down during the construction of the Kashi Vishwanath corridor.
The claim of illegality rests on a far-right narrative according to which most of these mosques were actually temples but were forcefully converted into mosques by Muslim rulers. Historians dispute such claims because of lack of material evidence to support this plea. The pliant media has successfully pushed the agenda of the far right and today, these claims enjoy enormous popular support
While the Hindutva brigade are clamouring for the demolition of over 2,000 odd mosques which include Delhi’s Jama Masjid and the Taj Mahal insisting this is a battle for the restoration of Hindu heritage, it is obvious that the present revisionist regime is determined to destroy all Islamic religious and sacred spaces.
Khwaja Chishti is venerated across the world and leaders from different faiths are known to have placed chaddars on his tomb as a sign of respect. Modi who has maintained a studied silence on these repeated attacks on mosques during the last decade is also known to have sent a chaddar to be spread over the tomb after taking over the prime ministerial post.
The fate of Indian Muslims has reached a watershed moment. The right- wing brigade are busy showing videos on You Tube and television channels of how violence in Sambhal, to cite one example, was preplanned. They fail to realise that the situation in north India is fast approaching a tipping point. Do we want sectarian violence to spiral out of control as has happened in M.pur.? Have we forgotten the lessons from the communal carnage witnessed in 1947?
Does the government presume that this problem can be handled by the use of force alone or should the political rulers show some measure of objectivity and reach out to all minorities. Nazi Germany showed us that in order to deny a people their future, the first step was to erase their past. By doing so, the hydra-headed political war machine of the BJP and VHP believe, they will be able to successfully deconstruct their present
