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Managing Piety The Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh
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L S
Managing Piety The Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh
1
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1Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in Pakistan by Ameena Saiyid, Oxford University PressNo.38, Sector 15, Korangi Industrial Area,
PO Box 8214, Karachi-74900, Pakistan
© Oxford University Press 2015 The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored ina retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permittedby law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of theabove should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
ISBN 978-0-19-940298-4
Typeset in Adobe Caslon ProPrinted on ____________________
Printed by _______________, Karachi
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Contents
Acknowledgements 00
List of Figures 00
List of Tables 00
1 Introduction 00
1.1 The Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh 00
1.2 Relevant Literature 00
1.3 Methodology 00
1.4 Structure of the Book 00
2 The Perfect Saint 00
2.1 A Short Biography of Ali Hujwiri 00
2.2 The Kashf al-Mahjub 00
2.3 The Perfect Saint 00
3 Making Data Darbar Modern 00
3.1 A Short History of Data Darbar 00
3.1.1 The Shrine and its Relation to Lahore 00
from 1073 to 1960
3.1.2 Independence, State Control and 00 Modernization
3.1.2.1 Nationalization and its Political 00
Context
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vi CONTENTS
3.1.2.2 Early Years of State Control, 00
1960–1979 3.1.2.3 ‘Modernizing’ Data Darbar 00
3.1.2.4 Public Opinion and Reactions 00
to the Modernization
3.1.2.5 Conclusion: Bhutto, Zia, 00
Sharif—Attitudes towards
Data Darbar
4 The Functional Division of Space 00
4.1 Entrances, Shoe-Keeping and Ablution Areas 00
4.2 The Roof Garden, Ghulam Gardish and Tomb 00
4.3 The Mosque and its Courtyard 00
4.4 Other Parts of the Complex 00
5 Managing Piety: Behind the Scenes 00
5.1 The Department of Auqaf and 00
Religious Affairs
5.1.1 Powers, Internal Organization and 00 Relationship to the Political Elite
5.1.2 Income and Expenditure 00
5.1.3 Data Darbar as a Financial Paradigm 00
5.2 The Administration and Management of 00
Data Darbar
5.2.1 General Organization and Work Tasks 00 5.2.2 Cash Counting 00
5.2.3 Income and Expenditure 00
5.2.4 Day-to-Day Decision-Making 00
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CONTENTS vii
5.2.5 Religious Identity and Competing 00
Ideologies
5.3 Other Institutions Within the 00
Data Darbar Complex
5.3.1 Madrasa, Research Centre and Library 00
5.3.2 The Punjab Muttahida Ulama Board 00
5.3.3 Police Station and Other Offices 00
5.4 Long-Term Decisions and Private, Political 00
and Civil Society Actors
5.4.1 Political Influence 00
5.4.2 Private Actors’ Influence 00
5.4.3 Civil Society Actors 00
5.5 Qawwali 00 5.6 Managing Urs 00
5.7 Conclusion 00
6 A Shrine Gone Urban 00
6.1 Surrounding the Sacred: Three Dimensions 00
of the Shrine’s Influence
6.1.1 The Economic Dimension 00
6.1.2 The Security Dimension 00
6.1.3 The Social Welfare Dimension 00
6.2 Conclusion 00
7 Contesting Unity: Suicide Attacks on Data Darbar 00
7.1 Suicide Bombings, 1st July 2010 00
7.2 Reactions and Consequences 00
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viii CONTENTS
8 Data Darbar and Beyond: Conclusions and 00
Final Remarks
8.1 Person and Space as Identifiers 00
8.2 The City Within 00
8.3 Fear vs. Faith: Social Welfare, Civil Society 00
and Resilience
8.4 The Shrine as Meeting Place for the State
and Public 00
8.5 Final Remarks 00
Notes 00
Glossary 00
Bibliography 00
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Acknowledgements
This book, and the research necessary for it to exist,
would never have been possible without the support and
cooperation of a large number of people. I would firstlylike to thank Hermann Kreutzmann. From the moment he
suggested to me to apply with a Pakistan-related topic to
the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies
right through to the completion of this study and beyond,
he has been more than just a supervisor. Until the recent
‘internationalization’ of German academia a supervisor would be called ‘Doktorvater’ or ‘Doktormutter’. In a sense
this meant that the topic of a doctoral thesis was understood
as mainly one that had its roots in the experience of the
supervisor. It can also be understood differently however.
The large amount of trust he put in me and giving me the
freedom to do things the way I chose to do them, was thekind of trust one can only expect in an almost ‘father to
son’-like relationship. At the same time I could, and did,
come to him with any inquiry, be it questions regarding
the research, visa requirements or resources. I am deeply
grateful for this support.
The idea to study Data Darbar came to me while speaking
to Georg Pfeffer, who also gave me valuable advice at
different stages of the research project. The topic proved
to be extremely fruitful, and although I am quite sure that
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x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
the result is entirely different than what he had hoped for,
I would like to thank him for his inspiration. I would alsolike to thank Hiromi Loraine Sakata and especially Toni
Huber who gave valuable inputs to the project.
The financial support necessary to carry out the research
came from a grant by the DFG through the Berlin
Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. I am
thankful for this support. The Graduate School offered
much more than just money, and for this I am thankful to
all those that work at the school, especially Gudrun Krämer
(to whom I am also grateful for suggesting the title),
Ingeborg Baldauf, Gabriele Freitag, Jutta Schmidtbauer and
all those students that made the place come alive, especially
in the beginning when things were still a bit ‘sterile’, given
that we were the first cohort to enter the school. Among
all fellow students I want to thank Nils Riecken and
Torsten Wollina in particular. I would also like to thank
Eliza Bertuzzo and Patrick Desplat who were postdocs
at the School during the first year and often enriched my
perspectives on the topic.
Fieldwork would never have been possible in Lahore
without all the great help by Khalid Badjwa and his
family as well as Ejaz and Ghanam. My research at the
Shrine would surely have failed was it not for Muhammad
Javed, Syed Muhammad Fazal Ullah Bukhari, and GhaferShahzad. I would also like to thank Ghafer Shahzad for
letting me use so many of his drawings and pictures. This
book is as much theirs as it is mine. To all of the employees
at Data Darbar and in the Head Office of the Department
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi
of Religious Affairs and Auqaf am thankful for letting me
take part in their daily life and routine. I am also gratefulto the Department of Auqaf for letting me use some of
their photographs.
The time I spent in Islamabad was made comfortable and
enriching by the help of Igor Barbero Garcia and Azam
Chaudhry.
For the completion of this book a number of people need to
be acknowledged, first of all Rune Rehyè and Andi Benz. I
would also like to thank the whole team at the Zentrum für
Entwicklungsforschung (ZELF). For the English editing,
I want to thank my brother Axel as well as Seema Sanghi.
For reading and commenting on the book I am thankfulto Christoph Wenzel. In the very last phase I was lucky to
have all the support from the great team at OUP, first and
foremost Tara Kashif.
Last, I would like to thank Tina for her support and love.
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List of Figures
Hujwiri’s Travels 00
Ghulam Ghardish 00
Data Darbar ca 1890 00Data Darbar 1928 00
Data Darbar 1944 00
Map of Lahore in 1919/20 00
Ghulam Ghardish Under Construction 00
New Complex Model 00
Overview Plan of Data Darbar 00Outside the Shrine’s Main Entrance 00
VIP entrance and Bank Branch 00
Body Checking 00
Roof Garden in 2009 and 2010 00
Chilla Gah of Moinuddin Chishti 00
Tomb Window of the Shrine 00Inside the Mosque 00
Langar Hall 00
Langar Preparation 00
Employees 00
The Manager’s Office 00
Offices at Data Darbar 00Preparing for Urs 00
Cash Box 00
Counting Donations 00
Classroom of the Shrine’s Madrasa 00
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xiv LIST OF FIGURES
The Shrine illuminated during Urs 00
Chaddar Poshi Ceremony 00Opening of the Dud Sabeel 00
Data Darbar and Surroundings 00
Langar Shop 00
Street Vendor 00
Terror Attacks at Data Darbar 2010 00
Social Welfare Actors at Data Darbar 00
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List of Tables
Table 1: Income and Expenditure (Zone-wise) 00
in 2009/2010.
Table 2: Income and Expenditure of Social Welfare 00 Institutions at Data Darbar in 2007/2008
Table 3: Income of Data Darbar Zone in 2007/2008 00
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Introduction
An integral part of the concept of a state is the controlover a distinct territory—the control of space. A state
without space, be it as small as the Vatican, is unthinkable.
The control of space is executed through rules to which
the people within that space have to comply or else face
the consequences of their non-compliance. Apart from
controlling space in this indirect manner, there are, in everystate, places of importance that are controlled through
direct force, e.g. parliamentary buildings or military areas.
Additionally, there are public spaces where their control can
be a significant symbolic asset, as seen in the ‘Arab Spring’,
when control over the Tahrir Square in Cairo became an
important political symbol.
Maybe because the modern nation state is associated
with the enlightenment period and the secularism that
evolved out of it, religious sites have often been perceived
as being excluded from public space under state control.
In Germany, churches are still viewed as places that willnot be stormed by soldiers and thus political refuge can be
found there.
Contrary to this view, however, political figures and
institutions have often made use of religious sites for
1
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2 MANAGING PIETY
political purposes. One example is St Paul’s Church in
Frankfurt, which was used for housing Germany’s firstelected parliament in 1848–49. Another one is that of the
sacred site of Tiwanaku, where Evo Morales was bestowed
with the title Apu Malku (supreme leader), one day before
becoming South America’s first indigenous state leader in
January 2006. There are numerous other examples pointing
to the fact that religious sites are not excluded f rom politicsbut instead are an integral part of it. Turning to Pakistan,
one could think that two of the bitterest rivals in the last
decades of Pakistani politics, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz
Sharif, might have had little in common. However, both
once returned to Pakistan from exile and both went to the
same place upon returning: before going anywhere else, they visited the Sufi Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh. When doing
so, they reproduced a practice deeply rooted in narratives
about the most important South Asian Sufi saints, said to
have visited the Shrine on their way from Central Asia into
the subcontinent, asking the Saint Data Ganj Bakhsh for
permission to do so.
Shrines can be theorized as spaces that focus attention.
Attention to religious practices, to meditation, to the inner
self or the struggle with it, and ultimately as a focus of
attention to God. The visits by dignitaries, such as prime
ministers, presidents, or leaders of the opposition, add to
this the attention to the relationship between religion and
the state. A question arising from this is how a state makes
use of this focus of attention given to sacred places like that
of the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh. And who is the state
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INTRODUCTION 3
in this case? This book tries to contribute to answer these
questions.
Muslim shrines in South Asia have often been viewed as
spaces of ‘anti-structure’ (following Turner 1969, 1974) or
‘counter-structure’ (cf. Werbner & Basu 1998) by western
academics. This often includes the perception of shrines
as places where state control is limited, countered and
contested, and where rules apply that are different from
those of the normal space surrounding them. At the
same time, the Sufi saints buried within these sacred sites
have a reputation of refusing political leaders’ influence.
This view, however, has long been countered by various
examples showing saints as major allies in political control
especially of rural populations (cf. Ewing 1983, Gilmartin
1979). Although the relationship between political and
religious authority is part of the literature on South Asian
Sufism, the political dimension of shrines in studies of
today’s South Asia plays only a minor role. Other topics
are more prevailing, such as the discussion of charisma or
gender, transnational Sufi movements or brotherhoods and
religious identity (cf. Werbner & Basu 1998, Troll 2005,
Werbner 2005, Rozehnal 2007, Rehman 2011).
In Pakistan, the control of space and place is more contested
than in many other countries, as can be seen in recent
examples of lost or contested control in spaces such as theSwat or parts of the border region to Afghanistan, but also
in more tangible places like the Red Mosque in Islamabad,
which was stormed by state forces in 2007 to regain
authority over the site. Because of the importance of the
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4 MANAGING PIETY
control of religious sites in the country, it is surprising how
little attention has been given to the way in which shrinesin Pakistan are controlled by state agencies. This is even
more suprising considering the very ambiguous relationship
between state and religion: while in its inception Pakistan
was essentially a secular state, the reason for its existence
is largely one based on religious ascriptions.
From an academic point of view, the direct control of
shrines by the state contradicts their traditional image,
and, therefore, the question as to why they are nationalized
and how they constitute a part of the public space should
necessarily be addressed.1 This shift both in control and
imagery calls for a closer inspection, even more so because
in many cases a transformation has taken place from being
places of diverse religious practices, including Hindu and
Sikh traditions, towards state-controlled homogeneity,
constituting a platform to define a purely Islamic national
religious identity.
The forerunner in this development in Pakistan has beenData Darbar, the shrine of the eleventh-century saint Ali
Hujwiri, also known as Data Ganj Bakhsh. The question in
how far religious sites can serve as arenas to define national
identities and which consequences this has for such places,
their visitors, and their surroundings, can therefore be
validly studied at this site.
1.1 THE SHRINE OF DATA GANJ BAKHSH
The Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh is situated in Pakistan’s
cultural hub and second largest city, Lahore. It has been
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INTRODUCTION 5
largely neglected by western academia apart from being
dealt with to some extent in Ewing (1997) and Malik(1996), the work of both of whom is used throughout this
study. Its urs , the annual festival celebrating the Saint’s
death (conceptualized as the final union or marriage [urs in
arabic] with God), has been the topic of one article (Huda
2000). Additionally, the Lahori architect Ghafer Shahzad,
who has been working for the government department which runs the Shrine, has published a book in Urdu
dealing with the architecture of the Shrine (Shahzad
2004) as well as having used the Shrine as a case study in
his doctoral dissertation about the built environment of
Punjabi shrines (Shahzad 2010). His writings as well as
our personal communication have been the major secondarysource of information for this book.
Given the fact that the Shrine is today considered one of
Pakistan’s most important religious sites and possibly is
South Asia’s largest Muslim shrine in terms of visitors and
size of its complex, surprisingly little has been published
on it. Why, one could ask, did this Shrine not gain the
attention of academics, considering that Pakistan’s shrines
have otherwise been studied extensively since the beginning
of colonial rule on the subcontinent?
A major reason might lie in the fact that the Shrine
is not closely associated with a particular Sufi order orbrotherhood (silsila ), due to the fact that Ali Hujwiri lived
in the eleventh century, a time when institutionalized orders
were still to evolve.
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6 MANAGING PIETY
Another reason could be its relatively late emergence as a
shrine of more than just regional importance. This happenedlargely in the years after independence, a development
this work will shed some light on. When it happened, it
happened fast. The Shrine quickly became appropriated
by major Pakistani politicians, most importantly Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto and Zia ul-Haq. With this appropriation came
major architectural changes to the Shrine, that have alteredthe general visual impact of it to a degree unknown for
shrines in this country. It stands out as a modern building,
representing a largely delocalized Islam, without any
reference to South Asian building styles. This has made it
a ‘thorn in the side’ for many western scholars working on
South Asian Muslim shrines. As one academic workingon Pakistani shrines put it: ‘They have taken away the
character and atmosphere of the place’—a possible reason
for its neglect by western scholars.
But even before the architectural changes took place,
a major change to the Shrine came about when it was
nationalized along many others in 1960. The nationalization
was a result of a growing discredit given to the traditional
authorities over the shrines, the sajjada nishins (literally
the ones who sit on the prayer carpet). The overall view,
that most shrines were misused for personal gain, had its
roots in the colonial descriptions of the shrines and was
also emphasized by many western-educated Muslims,
such as Pakistan’s national poet Muhammad Iqbal. Apart
from saving the poor from exploitation, another reason
for taking over the shrines was to acquire their incomes.
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INTRODUCTION 7
In addition to the donations made to them, shrines often
have associated agricultural land that brings revenue as well. With nationalization, this income now came under
state control. Last but not the least, taking control of the
shrines was also a way to undermine the political power of
the sajjada nishins .
As mentioned, the fact that many shrines are state-
controlled contradicts their academic image of being places
of ‘anti’ or ‘counter’ structure, where different rules apply
than in their surroundings. What happens, or rather, is
possible, within the boundaries of a shrine, is in fact in
many cases different from what happens in its surrounding.
But in the case of Data Darbar the relationship between
inside and outside activities has become almost reversed.
With the growing control of activities within the Shrine
by its administration through the employment of guards
and the use of video cameras, much of what is traditionally
associated with South Asian shrines, like the dancing at
qawwali sessions, use of drugs and the mixing of genders,
has been ousted to the surroundings of the Shrine. This
also applies to many of the groups traditionally associated
with visiting shrines, like fakirs (Muslim ascetics), malangs
(mendicants), khusre 2, fortune tellers, singers, homosexuals,
drug addicts, homeless persons and prostitutes, all of whom
fall into the category of the marginalized part of society.3
These three characteristics of the Shrine: its non-affiliation
with a particular Sufi order, the fact that it misses a
traditional South Asian architectural ‘look’, and that it
is state-run and has thereby lost many characteristics of
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8 MANAGING PIETY
‘normal’ South Asian Sufi shrines, have thus made Data
Darbar exceptional from an academic point of view.
Why then study a shrine that is so exceptional that it
cannot be a valid example for other shrines in the country?
The answer lies in the fact that the Shrine’s transition both
in regard to its architecture as well as its control are seen
as a success by the Department of Auqaf and Religious
Affairs, which is the government institution under which
most shrines are run. The lessons learned at Data Darbar
are used elsewhere to change the outlook of other shrines,
a very recent example being the shrine of Barri Imam in
Islamabad. Additionally under the disguise of stronger
security measures, behaviour at other shrines has also been
more strictly controlled.
Studying Data Darbar therefore is not only about filling a
gap in the literature on South Asian Sufi shrines. It might
also allow a glimpse of the future of other large shrines in
Pakistan, and possibly elsewhere.
Apart from being a vanguard to other shrines in the country,
the developments at Data Darbar can also be seen within
a larger international frame, where more and more sacred
places are ‘marketed’ by state agencies, be it as magnets for
international tourism or as concrete manifestations of a
national identity.
Lastly, the Shrine is also an example of how the Pakistani
state tries to participate in the discourse on Islam, a
discourse it otherwise has little direct influence on, but is
essential to political developments in the country.
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INTRODUCTION 9
1.2 RELEVANT LITERATURE
In the decade that has passed since 9/11, scholars in the
field of Islamic Studies as well as social scientists working
on Muslim majority countries, and especially Pakistan,
constantly had to (or felt the need to) explain, that being
Muslim does not mean being a terrorist. To exemplify this
point many have turned to Sufism, which has emerged as
‘the better Islam’ in the eyes of many western scholars, andespecially journalists, trying to point out that Islam ‘isn’t all
bad’.4 A vivid example including the Shrine of Data Ganj
Bakhsh could be found in an article published in The New
York Times on 25 February 2010:
Lahore, Pakistan—for those who think Pakistan is allhardliners, all the time, three activities at an annual
festival here may come as a surprise. Thousands of Muslim
worshippers paid tribute to the patron saint of this eastern
Pakistani city this month by dancing, drumming and
smoking pot. It is not an image one ordinarily associates with
Pakistan, a country whose tormented western border region
dominates the news. But it is an important part of how Islamis practised here, a tradition that goes back a thousand years
to Islam’s roots in South Asia. It is Sufism, a mystical form
of Islam brought into South Asia by wandering thinkers who
spread the religion east from the Arabian Peninsula. They
carried a message of equality that was deeply appealing to
indigenous societies riven by caste and poverty. To this day,
Sufi shrines stand out in Islam for allowing women free
access. (Tavernise 2010)
The dichotomy between fundamentalist hardliners on one
side and dancing, drumming and pot-smoking worshippers
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10 MANAGING PIETY
following a message of equality on the other side is as
figurative and visual as it is wrong and dangerous. It is wrong, in this particular case, because activities such as
drumming, dancing and smoking pot are common activities
outside the Shrine during urs , but inside it they have been
strictly prohibited. And as for the free access for women,
the Shrine stands out as one where the segregation of
the genders is very strictly performed, and a large part ofthe Shrine can not any more be accessed by women, e.g.
the large mosque. It is dangerous because many moderate
Muslims share the critique of what happens at the shrines
without being violent. Thus a large class of Pakistanis falls
into the category of fundamentalist if this dichotomy gains
ground.5
However, we find this dichotomy not only in newspapers
but also in prefaces to books and collections on Sufism, Sufi
music and other art associated with the mystical form of
Islam.6 It has also had an impact on the academic writing
on Sufism and Muslim shrines and I myself had initially
chosen a Sufi shrine with the intention to write about
‘something other than terrorism’ related to Pakistan. What
is important for this study is that while Sufism has gained
(and this is not the first time in history) this positive image
in the West, the discussion in Pakistan and other Muslim
majority countries is entirely different and in fact to some
extent reversed. Here Sufism, or, more precisely, the saints
and shrines associated with it, have been criticized from
the eighteenth century onwards by Muslim reformers for
being ‘un-Islamic’. This critique has been mixed in South
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INTRODUCTION 11
Asia with a notion of backwardness and a rural population
trapped in traditions of which venerating the saints is justone example. In Pakistan additionally, a very powerful
notion has emerged, that the ‘un-Islamic’ practices are
remainders of Hinduism. At the same time, the majority
of Pakistanis, especially in the populous provinces of
Sindh and Punjab, continue to visit shrines, venerate the
saints and live Islam in the diverse ways that have been soattractive to western scholars.
The literature on Pakistani shrines reflects this divide. A
large group of scholars look at shrines as an institution
largely unchanged. They discuss the diversity of practices
and tackle questions of transformation of gender, charisma
or ritual at the shrines and mostly have a background in
anthropology. Another group is more concerned with the
changes that have come about as a result of colonialism and
postcolonialism, dealing with the political developments
and the discourse on ‘proper’ Islam and the positioning
within this discourse by diverse religious but also social
and political parts of society. The approach is more
historical although this divide should not be overestimated.
Overall, this work is more concerned with change than
with continuity, but to start with I will shortly present
those works that have come from the anthropological
‘school’, before turning to those which have a more direct
connection with this study.
Two edited volumes focusing on South Asian Muslim
shrines were published in English in the last fifteen years:
Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality, and Performance of
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12 MANAGING PIETY
Emotion in Suf i Cults edited by Pnina Werbner and Helene
Basu (1998) and the second edition of the volume, MuslimShrines in India: Their Character, History and Significance
edited by Carl W. Troll (2005). Troll’s collection concentrates
on shrines in India but four articles from Werbner and Basu
are directly concerned with Pakistani shrines. From Troll’s
collection one article is in particular worth mentioning,
Religion, Money and Status: Competition for Resources atthe Shrine of Shah Jamal, Aligarh by Elizabeth A. Mann,
because it brings attention to the economic dimension of
South Asian shrines which is often underestimated, and
also plays an important part in this study. From the volume
by Werbner and Basu the introduction is of importance
here. In it, Werbner and Basu elaborate on their view ofshrines as ‘juxtaposed to other complex, postmodern, and
postcolonial realities’ (Werbner & Basu 1998, 3) and add
later, ‘Sufism, we show, creates its own alternative texts—
utopian experimental imaginaries of other, possible world
orders. Through such imaginings it also contributes to
“shaping a communal moral consciousness”’ (Ibid., 8). Togive a more concrete example of what these ‘other possible
world orders’ are, the following statement is of use: ‘[…]
commodity economy is converted at a saint’s lodge into a
good-faith, moral economy though altruistic giving to the
communal langar (communal kitchen), indeed, the sites
of saints’ lodges, many of the contributors demonstrate,are set apart as spaces of expressive amity and emotional
goodwill. The state and its politicians, by contrast are seen
as menacing, corrupt, greedy and unfeeling’. (Ibid., 15).
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INTRODUCTION 13
At first sight this view contradicts strongly with the main
thesis of this work. Instead, however, I would argue that Werbner and Basu’s view on the shrines can be used
to explain why the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh is so
important for both the state as well as the political elite.
It is important for the state, because the state should
always be sure to control the ‘utopian […] imaginaries of
other, possible world orders’. I will show that this is oneof the fundamental aspects of the state’s control over the
Shrine. At the same time I would agree that the shaping
of a ‘communal moral consciousness’ is also at the core of
the state’s concerns. The control over shrines by the state
in general should therefore not be seen as a contradiction
to their image as ‘juxtaposed’ places, but as a result of thisimage. The same applies to the politicians taking an interest
in the Shrine. Given the shrines’ image as places of higher
moral standards, it is clear that there is a fundamental
attraction for the political elite to associate itself with these
places of ‘goodwill’. Any politician who can successfully do
so will distinguish himself from his ‘corrupt and selfish’colleagues. Unfortunately, the volume does not delve into
the debate on the relationship between politics and Sufism.
This is most likely a result of the fact that none of the large,
state-run shrines of Pakistan have been dealt with in the
volume.
However, there are a number of publications that have
dealt with this relationship, the most important being the
two articles, Religious Leadership and the Pakistan Movement
in the Punjab by David Gilmartin (1979) and The Politics
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of Sufism: Redefining the Saints of Pakistan by Katherine
Ewing (1983). Gilmartin’s article is the most cited referencefor the development of Muslim religious authority in the
Punjab from the arrival of Islam in the continent until the
end of the British Raj. His most important contribution
is an elaboration of how two very different groups have
gained authority at different times, namely the sajjada
nishins , descendants of the saints, on the one side and laterthe ulama, religious scholars, on the other side. The sajjada
nishins’ authority was based on the power of the saints
to bestow blessings, baraka , on their followers, a quality
that was viewed as being inherited by the descendants
of the saint, if they enacted their role appropriately (e.g.
by performing the necessary rituals at the annual ursceremonies). Gilmartin points out that: ‘The base of their
religious authority in heredity rather than in piety made
sajjada nashins , like tribal chiefs and other local leaders,
readily susceptible to the common forms of state political
control through the granting of honours, appointments and
lands.’ (Gilmartin 1979, 488).
The sajjada nishin, similar to the ‘local petty chiefs’, therefore
became an important class of local leaders through which
the Mughals could enact control over the rural areas of the
Punjab, sometimes they even became governors for certain
areas (Ibid.). The growing importance of the sajjada nishins
for the Muslim state in return also gave them a greater
political authority over their followers. Because of this
close link, ‘the decline of Mughal authority in Punjab had
a substantial impact on the system of religious authority.’
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INTRODUCTION 15
(Ibid., 489). The new powers, the Sikh and British, that
followed the Mughals did not rely in the same extent onthese Muslim religious leaders. According to Gilmartin
two groups gained stronger influence from the eighteenth
century onwards because they found ways to retain religious
leadership without the patronage of a Muslim state: the
Sufis of the Chishti brotherhood and the followers of Shah
Waliullah (1703–1762), a Muslim reformer who influencedthe establishment of the Ahl-e-Hadith branch of Islam
prominent in Pakistan today. Gilmartin elaborates on their
difference:
Both Shah Waliullah and the Chishti revivalists were
responding to the problems of providing religious leadership
without the aid of a Muslim state, but whereas those who
drew on the tradition of Shah Waliullah sought to do this
by seeking ultimately to develop new forms of organization
to produce an independent class of ulama which could set
religious standards for the community, the Chishti revivalists
sought to do it within the traditional forms of religious
authority already popular in western Punjab. They continuedto emphasize the khanqahs (hospice for Sufis) and shrines as
local religious centers, and they relied on the traditional forms
of influence, the piri-muridi (master-disciple) tie and the urs .
(Ibid., 490–1).
In broad terms, the Chishti revival had more influence
in rural areas and the Ahl-e-Hadith in the urban centres, where slowly a class of ulama emerged, which played an
important role during the British reign in the defence
by Muslims against Hindu and Christian polemics and
in the establishment of madrasas all over northern India
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(Ibid., 491). Besides the Ahl-e-Hadith, another group had
evolved which became influential with its critique of the veneration of saints, the Deobandis , called so as a reference
to the seminar of Deoband, who, although being Sufis, were
critical of the veneration or even worship of saints and
the associated cults around their shrines. As a reaction to
the growing groups of Muslim reformers critical of the
veneration of saints, another group evolved, today called theBarelwis . Formally the Barelwis are followers of the A’alim
Ahmed Rida Khan (1855–1919) from Bareilly, a city in
northern India. The self-descriptive name of the movement
was Ahl-e-Sunnat wal Jama’at , but is little used in Pakistan
today (most Barelwis would simply term themselves as
‘Sunni’).
By the time Pakistan became independent, a number
of religious groups with various positions towards the
veneration of shrines had evolved. Gilmartin’s article ends
with the establishment of the Pakistani state in 1947
and the role the sajjada nishin played in it. As we will
see, after independence the political climate changed and
the relationship between sajjada nishins and the political
authority changed drastically, because the leading political
figures, in particular Ayub Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto,
tried to weaken the sajjada nishins’ political influence. They
did so by taking over the most important economical asset
of this class of hereditary pirs (mystical leaders), the shrines.
Katherine Ewing’s article, The Politics of Sufism: Redefining
the Saints of Pakistan (1983) has dealt with the reasons the
shrines were nationalized as well as looking at how the three
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INTRODUCTION 17
main figures shaping Pakistani politics from the late 1950s
to the late 1980s, Ayub Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Ziaul-Haq, used the shrines for their political purposes. She
points out, that the nationalization of the shrines was for
the time a much less drastic measure than had been taken,
e.g. in Turkey and Saudi Arabia where shrines had simply
been demolished (Ewing 1983, 251). In this regard, the
Pakistani government must have seen in the shrines morethan just a deplorable institution, but rather a potential for
social reform and influence. The overall policies towards the
shrines in Ewing’s eyes saw little change from Ayub Khan
to Zia (Ibid., 252), although in contrast to Ayub Khan,
Bhutto and Zia both made more use of the shrines for
public appearances, a trend that has continued and makesup an important part of the shrine’s role for the political
elite today. The process of the political appropriation needs
only to be mentioned here since it takes up a large part of
the coming two historical chapters. For this overview of
relevant literature it is enough to say that research on this
process was carried out especially under Zia’s time and his‘Islamization’ policy, another example besides Ewing being
the work by Jamal Malik to which we will now turn.
Jamal Malik’s Colonialization of Islam: Dissolution of
Traditional Institutions in Pakistan (1996) was published
as a translation of his doctoral thesis that he dedicated to
the historical process of state intervention in traditional
Islamic institutions in Pakistan, including shrines.7 As is
evident from the title, Malik sees the dissolution of
Islamic institutions as a continuance of colonial practices.
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The original work was written at the end of Zia ul-Haq’s
dictatorship and focusses on the years between 1977and 1984, and Zia’s ‘Islamization’ policies. For Malik
‘Islamization really appears to be a means of legitimation
for the regime. It is, in fact, “Islam from the cantonment”,
far from a visualization of the needs of the overwhelming
majority of the population’ (Malik 1996, 8). In this
way he also sees the nationalization of the country’sshrines as mainly a political move aiming at bringing an
otherwise potentially dangerous institution for the state
under bureaucratic control. Malik’s work will be used
throughout this work whenever the historical process of
the nationalization is dealt with. In his thesis as well as
an article based on it (Malik 1990) he not only tracesthe various stages state control took until the mid-1980s,
but also looks at the reactions of ulama, as well as the
traditional caretakers of the nationalized shrines. He also
elaborates on the influence the state has taken through the
shrines on the traditional system of education in madrasas.
While Malik concentrates on the reactions by ulama and
sajjada nishins , another work by Katherine Ewing, Arguing
Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and Islam (1997),
published shortly after the Colonization of Islam, deals with
the consequences of the nationalization of the shrines, but
also the general development of the discourse on Sufism
and the veneration of the saints on a different level. Her
focus lies in the way this discourse has formed the identity
of Pakistanis, specifically in Lahore, and their relation to
practices performed in connection with saints and shrines.
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INTRODUCTION 19
Ewing first elaborates on how the discourse on Sufism
and saints developed during the colonial period. The mostimportant feature of the discourse within the colonial
writings was what Ewing calls ‘The Splitting of the Holy
Man’. She writes:
In western writing during the colonial period, the Indian holy
man was [also] the object of a peculiar split that effectively
created a barrier between him and the European observer.
The holy man as represented in and by old texts was sharply
distinguished from any living representatives. This split was
part of a rhetorical strategy, grounded in a modernist ideology
that encompassed and, in principle at least, disempowered a
threatening other. […] The oriental was either common in
spirit but distant in time or of a common era but distant inspace and culture, in either case denied the status of “modern”.
(Ewing 1997, 47)
This split was essentially a result of two distinctively
different groups of colonial knowledge producers. On the
one hand the orientalist scholars with an emphasis on texts
realizing both the linguistic closeness of Sanskrit to theEuropean languages, as well as the parallels between Islamic
and Christian theological writings. And, on the other
hand, there were the officers, administrators and travelling
writers constantly in search not only for the exotic, but
even more so for the inferior characteristic of religious and
social institutions that could justify the colonial enterprise(Ibid., 47–50).
Thus parallel to the Muslim reformers’ criticism of practices
at shrines with arguments of orthodox Islam, the British
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20 MANAGING PIETY
identified various activities by the Sufis, especially begging,
wandering and the use of drugs, as clear signs of antisocialbehaviour, contradicting their ‘work ethic’. For them ‘[…]
labour for its own sake had taken on a transcendental value
beyond any particular material reward that labour might
offer, and conversely, mendicity was regarded as a refusal to
labour, a form of willful idleness. Idleness was interpreted
as a manifestation of sinful pride, the ultimate rebellionagainst God’. (Ibid., 58–9).
Sufis were essentially viewed as unproductive parts of
society. Ewing can show how this perception had an
influence on the political elite that came to power after
independence and how they, together with the influence
of Muslim reformers, have come to shape the discourse
on Sufism in Pakistan today, which takes up much of her
work. In a central chapter entitled Everyday Arguments
(Ibid., 93–127) Ewing gives a number of examples from her
fieldwork of discussions centring around the veneration of
saints and ‘superstitious’ practices. Most practices associated
with the Sufis are positioned clearly on the tradition side of
the dichotomy between tradition and modernity. Most of
Ewing’s interview partners referred to themselves as modern
Muslims to whom these practices (e.g. asking the saint for
cure of diseases, buying amulets for the same purpose, or
using ‘black magic’) are nothing but superstition. At the
same time, however, Ewing can show how these persons
regularly participate in the practices they condemn. They
then need to rephrase these practices within the discourse
of ‘modernity’. We will later see how this is a feature also
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INTRODUCTION 21
of discussions held at Data Darbar, especially within the
administration.
From Ewing’s study one can already imagine that Sufi
brotherhoods have had to react to the way in which Sufism
has come under criticism. An in-depth study of how a Sufi
brotherhood functions today, what authority it relies upon
and how it has reacted both to the ‘threat’ of modernity
but also to the challenges of transnational migration, or
more generally globalization, is Robert Rozehnal’s Islamic
Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-First Century
Pakistan (2009). Rozehnal’s study is essentially about the
identity of one of the subcontinent’s most important Sufi
orders (silsila ), the Chishti Sabiri brotherhood. The reason
Rozehnal’s book is important for this study is because
Ali Hujwiri, although not part of the silsila , has a specific
position within the Chishti order. Disciples of the Chishti
sheikhs make up an important part of the visitors at Data
Darbar. How the relationship between Ali Hujwiri and
the Chishtiya was established and evolved and what role it
played for making the saint better known will be dealt with
in detail in the next chapter. For now it is important only
to know that Rozehnal’s provides a number of examples of
how the saint and his writing fits well into what he calls
‘the imperative for reform, the pressing need to respond
to changing times and adapt to new environments’ by the
brotherhood, in order to become ‘modern’ (Rozehnal’s 2009,
230).
The question of identity is also central to a recent thesis on
two Pakistani shrines, Sufi Shrines and Identity-Construction
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22 MANAGING PIETY
in Pakistan: The Mazars of Saiyid Pir Waris Shah and Shah
‘Abdu’l Latif Bhittai by Uzma Rehman (2011).8 Rehmanpoints out early in her work that the identity of visitors to
the two shrines relies only little on common categories like
Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, but instead is much more closely
associated with the saints themselves and their poetry
(Rehman 2011, 5). This is a finding which contrasts with
what is happening at the Shrine of Data Darbar, wherethe identity of visitors is strongly connected to the saint’s
image as a pious Muslim and a demarcation of his figure
to the Hindu rulers of his time. As we will later see, part
of the explanation for these differences lies in the fact that
Ali Hujwiri’s writing is not poetic but almost scientific
in style. The more important difference is that she deals with two shrines that have a strong rural following and
play a different role within the respective provincial state
departments in control of the shrines. Thus the shrine of
Waris Shah is important for Punjabi identity and a new
construction was supported by the Punjabi literary board
because of the saint’s poetry’s importance for this language(Ibid., 81).
The strength of both Rozehnal’s and Rehman’s study is
that they can show how the identity of those visiting the
shrines is constructed on two main pillars, Sufi literature
and Sufi ritual and practice. As will become evident in
this study, it is in these domains, that the government of
Punjab through the Department of Auqaf and Religious
Affairs and the administration of the Shrine of Data Ganj
Bakhsh has tried to participate in the discourse on Islam
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INTRODUCTION 23
in Pakistan and thus also has an influence on the identity
formation of those visiting the Shrine.
All of the four works presented (Malik 1996, Ewing 1997,
Rozehnal 2009 and Rehman 2011) acknowledge the fact
that the nationalization of the shrines and the way they are
administered is a way for the state to exert influence on the
religious identity of the visitors of the shrines (cf. Malik
1996; Ewing 1997, 65–90; Rozehnal 2009, 19–38; Rehman
2011, 52). Ewing concentrates on the highest level of
Pakistani politics, the way the leading political figures,
Ayub Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Zia ul-Haq made use
of the shrines to promote their views on the relationship
between state and religion. Rozehnal in addition deals with
the reaction by the Chishti Sabiri order to the discourse
on Sufism’s decline and allegation as being heterodox
and un-Islamic and how they reconstruct their identity
within a notion of being an orthodox order. Both Ewing
and Rozehnal do not deal with the administration of the
shrines directly and Rehman only gives a list of employees
at the shrines she is dealing with, without further going
into detail how work tasks are divided or what backgrounds
those have who are running the shrines. She even states
that: ‘Although the staff of the administration sometimes
directs pilgrims in terms of rituals, its aim does not seem
to be to exercise authority over them.’ (Rehman 2011, 88).
From this point of view it is understandable that she gives
little attention to this group.
What is common to all the presented literature is that
while all acknowledge the importance of the fact that the
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24 MANAGING PIETY
shrines came under state control, the state is simply one
agent, in most cases the direct tool of the particular leaderin power. What we learn almost nothing about is how the
influence on the shrines is executed ‘on the ground’ ( Jamal
Malik does elaborate on it to some extent, as we will see
later). One could argue that looking at the literature there
is one group entirely neglected and simply labelled as
bureaucrats, a label which does not seem to need any moreexplanation, given that a bureaucrat is expected to simply
perform whatever duty is his to perform.9 A central aim of
this work is to question this view because of two reasons:
1. Bureaucrats are human beings (who would have
thought!), have a social and religious background,
political views and often stay in their jobs for more than
just one political party’s or military ruler’s time in power.
2. Although officially and by law responsible for the
shrines, the Auqaf Department is influenced in its
decisions by a number of groups, including politicians,
civil society actors as well as private persons.
The position of this study within the literature on the
nationalization of Pakistani shrines and its influence on
Pakistani identity is therefore to provide on the one hand a
close up picture of how the state defines a national identity
through one particular shrine in various ways and who the
state is in this regard. On the other hand it looks closely at
the groups who do have an influence on this process and
often stand somewhere in between state interests and the
wishes and needs of those visiting the shrines.
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INTRODUCTION 25
1.3 METHODOLOGY
In February 2009 I stepped out of a rickshaw at Lower Mall
Road in Lahore. The driver pointed to the road blocking
ahead and explained this was the closest I could get to the
Shrine. From here it was on foot only. Being my first visit
to the Shrine I was to study for the next years of my life,
I felt nervous and exited at once and started walking with
the flow of people, obviously heading for the same place asI was. After about 700 meters I stood in a crowd of several
ten or possibly hundred thousand people, the white marble
front of the shrine complex only meters away.
There were sounds of people chanting, drums being beaten,
qawwali music played from shops selling CDs and DVDs,food sellers shouting out loud, and police sirens, all trying
to force their way through the soundscape with little
success. There were smells of food, incense and oil lamps
and the syrup-like mixture of human sweat and perfume.
And there were the sensations of bodies, a hand pushing me
forward, a back almost leaning on me, hair from a strangertouching my face. All of these perceptions were so intense
that, after almost reaching the Shrine, I walked past it,
trying to relax my mind by squeezing away.
A year later I knew that the best place to calm the senses
would have been inside the Shrine, but on my first visit I
walked around it instead, and every time I came closer, thegeneral atmosphere of excitement intensified and eventually
I left, exhausted without having made my way into the
complex.
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26 MANAGING PIETY
The next day I went again, during the day, when the
crowds were fewer and the sounds and smells were morebearable. Once inside the Shrine, however, I had a feeling
that this was not yet my place to be. Who was I, coming
from outside, to whom all of this mattered only from an
academic point of view, to take part in the celebration of
the Saint’s death anniversary? So instead of entering the
ghulam gardish, a shaded area surrounding the actual tomb,I stayed in the large roof garden of the Shrine complex,
where I could sit on the grass, trying to make sense of what
was happening around me.
With every visit, and after the urs celebrations were
over this was a lot easier, I moved more freely inside the
complex, sometimes even sitting inside the ghulam gardish,
where carpet is covering the marble for the convenience
of those who sit here for hours, days, or some even for
years. And with every visit I made more contacts with
other visitors until at some point I decided it was time to
introduce myself to the administration.
The administration and management of the Shrine have
offices in the area underneath the women’s courtyard of the
Shrine and some offices scattered in the complex. Anyone
who wishes to speak to an official at the Shrine will be
led to the manager’s office. Just in front of this office I
was asked by a man in his thirties, well dressed and with afinely-cut beard, where I was from and what had brought
me here. I explained that I was doing a PhD on the Shrine,
that I was from Germany and that I intended to spend
the next few weeks here at the Shrine doing interviews
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INTRODUCTION 27
and making observations, and that later this year I would
return for a much longer period of time. The face in frontof me opened up and a bright smile welcomed me to the
Shrine. What I did not know at the time was that the man
opposite me was (at that time) the personal assistant to the
administrator of the Shrine and would become my main
informant. He was the main reason I got access to all the
administrative aspects of the Shrine that make-up a largepart of this book.
My first fieldwork was conducted in February and March
2009 and, besides participant observations, included
structured thematic interviews with local experts and
architects. In parallel, interviews were carried out with the
Shrine’s administration and management which, for the
most part, were semi-structured. With very few exceptions
recordings were not allowed. Most interviews were carried
out in a mixture of English and Urdu. I also regularly
took part in one of the most important work tasks of the
administration, counting the money from donations, where
unstructured interviews took place.
When I came back in September 2009 for an eight-month
stay until May 2010 it was the month of Ramadan. I
participated in the fasting and visited the Shrine a number
of times for the last meal before and the first meal after
the fasting period. The participation in these rituals as well as the fact that I had actually returned, fundamentally
changed the relationship I had with the people working at
the Shrine, for whom I was now no longer a stranger.
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During the second fieldwork, more than a hundred visits
to the Shrine were made, again with a focus on participantobservation. Unrecorded interviews with management,
administration, shopkeepers, subcontractors (for shoe-
keeping and cleaning of the Shrine), musicians, beggars,
volunteers working at the Shrine and general visitors of
the Shrine were made. Semi-structured interviews were
done with staff (the medical superintendent, two doctorsand an accountant) as well as with patients (two group
interviews) at the Data Darbar Hospital, at the madrasa
inside the Shrine complex with teachers and students, as
well as with staff from the library and research centre of
the Shrine. Structured interviews were also carried out
with property dealers, shopkeepers, police officers and hotelmanagers. Approximately half of the interviews were done
with the help of a translator. During the time of urs video
recordings of lectures held at the Shrine and the Punjab
University were made; some of which were later translated
in my presence. Apart from participant observation and
interviews, maps were made of the shops surrounding theShrine, the position of donation boxes within the complex
and the temporal camps set-up at the time of urs .
After the twin suicide attack on the Shrine in July 2010,
another short fieldwork was conducted in November 2010.
Again, structured interviews were carried out with the
management of the Shrine, the local experts as well as with
eyewitnesses to the attack. Semi-structured group interviews
were done with visitors to the Shrine and groups providing
food on Thursday nights. These interviews were conducted,
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INTRODUCTION 29
either in English or in Urdu, with a translator present and
with few exceptions were recorded for transcription. Videofootage of the attack was analysed with the help of one of
the staff of the administration of the Shrine.
A final ten-day fieldwork was carried out in September
2012 in which updates on recent developments were carried
out, mainly through interviews with the staff of the Shrine,
as well as with some local experts. Interviews were also
carried out with staff of other institutions based inside the
complex, but not connected to the administration.
Initially my main focus of research was to learn how various
groups perceived and shaped the rituals and practices at the
Shrine, which were to include every kind of behaviour thatone could observe. Very soon, however, I realized that my
image of Pakistani shrines had very little to do with this
particular one, and that, were I to study my initial question,
maybe this wasn’t a very representative example. It was,
however, this divergence between the common image and
reality that for me made it a very interesting place to beat. The major difference that I encountered from the very
first day between Data Darbar and both the shrines I had
visited before as well as those treated in the literature, was
that the Shrine was so strictly controlled. It seemed that
the place was somehow defined not so much by what did
take place, but rather by what could not take place. Thisshifted my focus to the question of how this control is
executed, legitimized, what are the intentions behind it and
who is actually deciding what is proper behaviour inside the
complex. On a more abstract level it raised the questions
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that were presented at the beginning of this introduction,
questions about the relationship between the state, publicspace, the secular and the religious.
A focus of my fieldwork therefore became the administration,
trying to understand how decisions were made and what
background the ones have, who make them. For most of
the time this meant sitting in an office drinking tea while
observing what happened around me, what arguments
people were having and in between having informal
interviews and conversations. These interviews rarely had
the focus one would normally strive for, but I realized
that it was often after an hour-long discussion about
some arbitrary topic (in most cases German history and
the two World Wars), that my interlocutor would open
up with some information valuable for my research yet
so unexpected that I would not have known how to ask
for it. After some months I was regularly disappointed
that I did not get done whatever work I had intended
but almost always had ended up doing something entirely
different. With time, I realized, however, that it was often
the unplanned meetings from which I had gained most
information and this was a leap forward. I became more
and more comfortable with simply going to the Shrine
seeing what would happen, which proved a good tactic
especially for finding out how decisions came about and
what kind of topics and events were important for the
Shrine’s administration and management.
During the fieldwork I tried to live as close to the Shrine as
possible, which became unfeasible when my family joined
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INTRODUCTION 31
me. In total I lived in the Walled City for three months, a
ten-minute walk from the Shrine. For around one month Ialso lived with my family in the Bilal Ganj area of Lahore,
situated between the River Ravi and the Shrine. Both of
these areas are highly congested parts of Lahore, where
often several families occupy one house and a high diversity
in religious practices can be observed. Economically, these
areas are mostly inhabited by the lower classes. For most ofthe time that I was accompanied by my family, we lived in
Model Town, a semi-gated community in Lahore’s south-
east. My daily contacts thus included two very different
classes of people, the middle classes, e.g. university teachers,
engineers or government servants at a high pay scale, and
the lower classes, many of whom did not have a regular jobat all. Their perceptions towards Islam, Sufism, shrines and
the veneration of saints were quite different, as will become
evident in the study.
All four fieldwork trips were accompanied by political
violence of some sort, which often had an influence both
on my personal life as well as on my work. From the
first fieldwork and a planned visit to a cricket game that
suddenly was cancelled because the Sri Lankan team had
been attacked, through to the very last fieldwork that was
accompanied by massive riots because of the release of a
blasphemous video, the political situation could never be
ignored. The tragic acme of this situation came about, when
the Shrine itself came under attack by suicide bombers in
July 2010. At the Shrine security measures had already
been tightened long before the attack was carried out, and
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the overall most massive change to the Shrine in the three
years from the first to last fieldwork of this study, was theever increasing restrictions that came about as a result of
the security measures. Even though sometime during my
second fieldwork two officers from an intelligence service
came to the Shrine to ask about me, I have largely been
able to move freely in the complex, was allowed to take
photographs, and talk to whomever I wanted to talk to. All of this would not have been possible without the trust
by the administration that had built up during a time
when the Shrine was not yet seen as a potential target
for terrorism. Surely, the research would have been almost
impossible had it started only a year later.
Writing about Islam in Pakistan has become dangerous for
some people, and it can often be difficult to anticipate what
statement or which action might cause violence. Because of
this uncertainty I have chosen not to mention any names
when citing from interviews. Only in cases where the name
is obvious because I am dealing with a person from public
life, have I made exceptions. This decision has a huge
downside. Because many of the employees whom I will
cite in my work are easily identifiable by their biographies
I have had to leave out what many readers will miss, the
context that would give life to those speaking. This can
make it hard to imagine with what kind of a person we
are dealing. Is he young or old? From which class, caste
or region is the person cited? How are the relationships
towards other people cited? All of these questions are of
course essential if one wants to get an impression of what
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INTRODUCTION 33
it is like to work at the Shrine. However, in this regard I
choose not to take any risks. All the information was givento me under the umbrella of a close relationship between
researcher and informants, shaped by trust. This trust
should not be broken.
1.4 STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK
This work is structured around a number of questions.
Essentially these are: Why did the Shrine become the
most important sacred space for the Pakistani state and the
political elite? How did this happen? How is the Shrine
used by various groups today to participate in the discourse
on Islam? What consequences have the enlargement and
political appropriation of the Shrine had on different
dimensions of its relation to the surrounding city? And
lastly, what can the case of Data Darbar tell us about
the Pakistani state’s, or the political elite’s relationship to
religion, or, more general, about the relationship between
sacred spaces and politics?
Each set of questions is dealt with in one chapter. Due
to the nature of the questions the chapters vary greatly
in length. Additionally one chapter (4) serves only as a
reference, including a number of photographs and overview
maps. The chapters are largely descriptive. The reason is
that besides answering questions, this study also hopesto serve as a reference to other studies and thus details
about the Shrine were included despite some of them
not having a great relevance for the questions raised here.
The data presented does not simply serve as evidence for
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34 MANAGING PIETY
an argument. An analytical discussion of the findings of
the individual chapters will be presented together with asummary of the findings in the last chapter, which also
serves as a conclusion.
The chapters following this introduction are:
Chapter 2, The Perfect Saint concentrates on the Saint Ali
Hujwiri, both the historical person as well as the personthat he is remembered to be. In it, I will also deal with the
only book that has remained from his works, because it has
played an important part in how the Saint is remembered
and why he and his Shrine have the position among
Pakistani saints and shrines they have today. The chapter
tries to answer the question why this Saint’s shrine, andnot any other shrine, became the most important shrine
for the government of Punjab/Pakistan in the era after the
nationalization of Pakistani shrines from 1960 onwards.
Chapter 3, Making Data Darbar Modern deals with the
history of the Shrine, and has a focus on the time since
independence and nationalization in which the Shrine
became appropriated by the political elite. The key question
it tries to answer is how the process of appropriation and
enlargement of the Shrine took place, and who the main
actors were, who took decisions in this process.
Chapter 4, The Functional Division of Space will give ashort overview of what the Shrine looked like in 2009 (the
beginning of my fieldwork).
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INTRODUCTION 35
Chapter 5, Managing Piety deals with how the Shrine is run
today by the Department for Auqaf and Religious Affairs.It includes the structure of the department, the position
the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh has within it and the
administration of the Shrine itself, including how decisions
are made and what background those have who make them.
Because a number of other actors from the political elite
but also from civil society as well as to some extent privateactors are involved in the development of the Shrine, they
are also included in this chapter. The central question this
chapter will address is: What are the means by which the
Pakistani state takes part in the discourse on Islam and
Sufism and the religious identity of the country through
the Shrine? Who are the main actors in this process and what are their views on Islam, Sufism and the veneration of
saints? How does Data Darbar serve as a model for other
state-run shrines in the country?
Chapter 6, A Shrine Gone Urban, looks at the surrounding
of the Shrine through three dimensions, the economic
dimension, the security dimension and the social welfare
dimension. All of these dimensions show what consequences
the political appropriation as well as the enlargement of the
Shrine had for those visiting the Shrine and those working
and living in it, its surroundings, and how the Shrine has
become a social centre of the city.10
Chapter 7, Contesting Unity also looks at the consequences
of the Pakistani state’s role in the Shrine, but from a
different perspective, trying to answer why this particular
Shrine was attacked and how the attacks are related to its
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36 MANAGING PIETY
specific association with the state. Some of the consequences
the attacks have had both on the administration as well asthe social activities at the Shrine are also dealt with.
The final chapter (8), Data Darbar and Beyond tries to
summarize the findings of the study and at the same
time brings these together in an analysis of the Shrine’s
specific position in Pakistan. Finally it will also deal with
the question of what the case study of Data Darbar can
contribute to the discussion of Pakistani shrines, but also
to larger debates on sacred spaces and the relationship
between state and religion.
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The Perfect Saint
‘Data Sahib is a space to accommodate everybody’
Dr Mubarak Ali, Lahore, October 2009
The Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh is the resting place of
a man, known in his lifetime as Sheikh Abu al-Hasan Ali
bin Uthman bin Abi Ali al-Jullabi al-Ghaznavi al-Hujwiri .
Today he is often referred to as Ali Hujwiri
, or justHujwiri
,
a name I will use whenever I talk of the historical person.
Commonly Hujwiri is known as Data Ganj Bakhsh, the
meaning of which will be dealt with later. In Lahore it is
also very common that people will refer to him simply as
Data Sahib or even just Data .
What we know of Hujwiri is based on local oral historyand his own sole surviving book the Kashf al-Mahjub
(The Revelation of the Veil). Considered the first treatise
on Sufism in Persian11 the Kashf al-Mahjub is well
known among Central and South Asian Sufi scholars as
well as scholars of Persian literature. The book has been
translated into various languages including Urdu, Punjabi,Russian and English and has made the Saint known to an
audience outside Lahore and Pakistan.12 Apart from the
Kashf al-Mahjub there are few sources available containing
original information about the Saint, the first one being the
2
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38 MANAGING PIETY
Safinat al-Awliya (Ship of the saints), written six centuries
later by the Mogul prince Dara Shikoh, containing onlya short biography and evaluation of the Kashf al-Mahjub.
Today, innumerable biographies of the Saint are available
in the bazaars of Lahore, most of which do not mention
any written and oral sources, but rephrase what is generally
known about the Saint. A concise biography is given in
the first English translation of the Kashf al-Mahjub byReynold A. Nicholson (1911–1976). It is based largely on
the information found in the Kashf al-Mahjub, although
he also makes some use of Dara Shikoh’s work. A more
recent source that has dealt with the Saint and which I will
make use of in the coming sub-chapter is Anna Suvorova’s
work, Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to f ifteenthcenturies .
After having given a short biography of Ali Hujwiri I will
turn to the Kashf al-Mahjub itself. The reason for giving
the book a prominent place is not that it is the sole source
of information about the Saint, but rather its importance
today as a vehicle of the State and its representatives in
forms of bureaucrats and politicians to define a vision of an
enclosing Islam, one in which various Pakistani sects have
a place. The analysis will thus concentrate on the sections
of the book that function as a unifier today.
The last section of this chapter will then try to bring thetwo previous sections together by discussing the reasons
why Ali Hujwiri has emerged in the time since the
nationalization of the many Pakistani shrines as the perfect
Saint when looked at from a state perspective.
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THE PERFECT SAINT 39
2.1 A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF ALI HUJWIRI
The exact date of birth of Ali Hujwiri is unknown. While
the death of a saint marks the final stage of becoming one
with God and thus is recorded and discussed by biographers
(sometimes controversially as is the case here), there lies no
significance in the date of birth (cf. Suvorova 2004, 37–8).
Nicholson’s careful approximation is that he was born either
in the last decade of the tenth century or in the first oneof the eleventh century (Nicholson in Hujwiri 1976). As
his full name and nisba 13 implies, Hujwiri was from the
town of Ghazni (in today’s Afghanistan), then the centre
of the Ghaznavid empire and he most likely lived in the
two suburbs or nearby villages called Jullabi and Hujwer for
some time. In the Kashf al-Mahjub Hujwiri names a totalof eight other books he has written, all of which are lost.
He also mentions that twice manuscripts had been stolen
from him and his name was erased from the cover, which
is why he has put his own name inside the Kashf al-Mahjub
a number of times (Hujwiri 1976, 2). The majority of
statements in the book about Hujwiri’s personal life areconnected to meetings with other Sufi sheikhs and scholars
in various cities. His teachers were Abu ‘l-Fadl Muhammad b.
al-Hasan al-Khuttali and Abu ‘l-Abbas Ahmad b. Muhammad
al-Ashqani or al-Shaqani (Nicholson In Hujwiri 1976, IX-
X). Abu ‘l-Qasim Gurgani (Hujwiri 1976, 169) and Kwaja
Muzaffar (Hujwiri 1976, 170) are also mentioned as givinghim instructions. Through Khuttali, Hujwiri is connected
via Husri and Shibli to the most important Sufi of the
early times, Junayd of Baghdad. Hujwiri’s travels extended
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40 MANAGING PIETY
throughout all of the Ghaznavid empire as well as beyond
it, e.g. Damascus in Syria (see Fig. 1). He travelled as faras Ramla (in Syria) in the west, the region Faris (in today’s
Iran) in the south and Turkistan in the north. The most
eastern city mentioned is Lahore, but India is mentioned
twice (Hujwiri 2010; 287, 475), most probably referring to
places west of Lahore, e.g. Delhi. Hujwiri lived the first part
of his life during the reign of Mahmud ibn Sebük Tigi (971–1030) known also as Mahmud Ghaznavi. Mahmud
reigned from 998 until his death in 1030, a period
in which the Ghaznavid empire saw a massive expansion
including almost all of today’s Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan
and parts of northern India. Mahmud turned his capital
Ghazni into a rival of Baghdad in terms of arts, literatureand architecture and thus Hujwiri grew up in a town
filled with Islamic scholars, artists and writers and with
contacts and trade reaching to a large part of the Islamic
world (Ghaznavid Dynasty 2012). Mahmud Ghaznavi
is mentioned once in the Kashf al-Mahjub: ‘For Hindus
the slavery of love is better than the prison of MahmudGhaznavi’ (Hujwiri 2010, 362). No other names of rulers
are mentioned, most likely because none of the Ghaznavid
kings, including Mahmud’s sons, stayed in power for very
long until Mahmud’s grandson Ibrahim took power in
1059. We know little of when and for how long Hujwiri
stayed in the many places mentioned, but the larger areas ofIraq, Syria and Khurasan (today in southern Iran) seemed to
have been the centres of his travels. This is seen for example
by his statement about the Sheikhs of Khurasan: ‘It would
be difficult to mention all the Sheikhs of Khurasan. I have
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THE PERFECT SAINT 41
met over three hundred saints in Khurasan alone residing
separately and who had such mystical endowments that asingle one of them would have been enough for the whole
world. They are the luminaries of love and prosperity on
the spiritual sky of Khurasan’ (Ibid., 2010, 202).
He also mentions that over a period of time he fell in
deep debt in Iraq (Ibid., 2010, 403–4) and some cities are
mentioned numerous times, like Nishapur, Damascus, Tus
and Ghazna. Since Nishapur in Khurasan and Baghdad
in Iraq were the two centres of Sufism in the tenth and
eleventh century, it is likely he spent most time there
(cf. Karamustafa 2007).
When Hujwiri mentions Lahore we find that he wasbrought there by force and that, at least to him, it was
not a favourable city: ‘My books have been left at Ghazna
while I myself have become a captive in the district
of Lahore, which is located in the suburbs of Multan’
(Hujwiri 2010, 108). No date is mentioned in the Kashf
al-Mahjub for when he arrived in Lahore, but it is likelythat this happened after the Ghaznavids lost large parts of
their western territories. This included the loss of Merv
( 1037), Nishapur and Herat ( 1038) and a decisive
loss in the Battle of Dandanqan ( 1040) (Ghaznavid
Dynasty 2012). Carl W. Ernst (1999, 1) sets the date of
arrival in Lahore to 1039.
Additional information on the life of Ali Hujwiri is found in
a passage on marriage, making clear that he saw marriage as
an obstacle on the way to unification with God, explaining
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42 MANAGING PIETY
why he remained childless: ‘After Allah had preserved me
for eleven years from the dangers of matrimony, it was mydestiny to fall in love with the description of a woman
whom I had never seen, and during a whole year my
passion so absorbed me that my religion was near being
ruined, until at last Allah in His bounty gave protection to
my wretched heart and mercifully delivered me.’ (Hujwiri
2010, 426).
There is some controversy over Hujwiri’s year of death
(cf. Nicholson in Hujwiri 1976, x-xi). The most accepted
view is that he died in either 1072 or 1077, on the
twentieth of Safar in the Islamic lunar calendar (although
other dates are sometimes mentioned). Urs celebrations are
held from the eigteenth to twentieth of Safar every year.
Today, Ali Hujwiri is remembered foremost as the person
bringing Islam to Lahore, as a visitor to the Shrine put it:
‘He is the reason I was born a Muslim!’ In addition, he is
still revered by many because of the Kashf al-Mahjub, and
his prominence rose when the book was translated in themid-nineteenth century into Urdu, and in the beginning of
the twentieth century into English. In the coming section
I will look at the Kashf al-Mahjub, before returning to the
person and the way he is remembered today. I will examine
why he, his book and his shrine, have become, and been
made into, symbols not only of South Asian Sufism, butalso more specifically, of Pakistani Islam.
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THE PERFECT SAINT 43
2.2 THE KASHF ALMAHJUB
The Kashf al-Mahjub is most often translated as ‘The
Revelation of the Veil’. Hujwiri claims in it to have written
his other books already in his youth, indicating that at the
time of writing the Kashf al-Mahjub, he was an old man
and it was therefore most likely written in Lahore. The
book is presented by the author as an answer to a question
put forward to him by a friend, Abu Sa’id al-Hujwiri (whohad come to Lahore with him).
The questioner, Abu Sa’id al-Hujwiri, has asked the answers
of the following questions: Explain the true meanings of the
Path of Sufism. Explain mystical allegories and hints and
different maqamat (stations) of the Sufis. How the love of
Allah and ecstasy overwhelm the hearts, elucidate it. Why
the intellect is incapable to perceive the reality of the Truth,
explain it. Why the nafs (lower soul) is reluctant to attain the
proximity of the Truth and how the spirit gets enrichment
and life thereof. Explain the doctrine, sayings and the practical
aspects of Sufism which are connected with these theories.
(Hujwiri 2010, 14)
This asks for nothing less than a complete ‘Handbook of
Sufism’, a task Hujwiri takes
