Pakistan Diary: at the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh

By Yoginder Sikand - CounterCorrents.org - India
Tuesday, 26 December, 2006

Lahore is an ancient city, and legend has it that it was founded by Lav, son of Rama. My tourist guide lists hundreds of historical monuments in the city, but I have just three days and I have to be selective. Diep, my host, drives me to Anarkali Bazaar, in the heart of the Old City.

We pass by impressive colonial buildings, dating to the period when Lahore was the capital of British Punjab. The bazaar is meant to be a major tourist attraction, but I find it chaotic and hardly spectacular. It is like any busy, crowded and unplanned market in any lower-middle class locality in Delhi, with hundreds of shops lining narrow, winding lanes.

Diep leaves me here and I decided to explore the area on my own. I change money at a booth in a lane that specializes in Indian goods, with stalls selling paan leaves, hair oil and other cosmetics and video cassettes brought in from across the border. I have tea and a pastry-like naan in a shop run by a burly Pakhtun. Stuck on the walls are pictures of Bollywood heroines and slogans that announce 'Wasting Time Here is Forbidden' and 'No Discussing Politics'.

I hail an auto and head further down the Old City. I first stop at the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh, a renowned Sufi, whose magnum opus, Kashf al-Mahjub ('The unveiling of the Veils') is said to be one of the first Persian treatises on Sufism.

The shrine complex is massive and appears to be recently expanded and renovated. At one end of the shrine is what seems to be a newly constructed mosque, with garish, dark glass windows and rocket-like minarets, a glaring contrast to the graceful Mughal-style architecture of the rest of the shrine complex.

In the sprawling courtyard are literally thousands of people, praying, meditating or simply lounging about, drinking in the sun. A large crowd encircles a man in an awesome turban, who seems to be considered some sort of dervish.

Hundreds of people stand before the grave of Data Ganj Bakhsh and that of a Hindu man who converted to Islam at his hands, seeking the blessings of God and offering flowers.

Outside the shrine mendicants sit in rows with their bowls on sheets and in the narrow lanes behind that are lined with filth-clogged open drains and half-built or crumbling houses, shops sell biryani and sweet, orange-tinged rice in massive degh or cauldrons. A corpulent man aggressively hails out to me, insisting I should buy an entire degh to distribute to the poor.

When he learns I am from India, he says sternly, 'You've come all the way from India, so that's even more reason why you should buy a degh'. I hurriedly make my way and head down to the Urdu bazaar, the centre of Lahore's publishing industry.

The bazaar boasts literally hundreds of small bookshops, that specialize mainly in Urdu literature and Islamic and Pakistani history. I spot Urdu translations of the Ramayana, Geeta and the works of Osho, and am informed that these sell very well. In contrast, there are few bookshops that deal in English books, and most of these are imported from abroad, including India. I pick up some interesting Urdu titles—on Sufism, the Partition and several published by the Markaz Dawat ul Irshad, parent body of the dreaded terrorist outfit Lashkar-i Tayyeba.

(The latter were confiscated when I crossed back into India, despite my insistence that I bought them to only to critique them).

(...)

It's evening now and I head for the Alhambra theatre, Lahore's main centre for the performing arts. There's a play on by the well-known Ajokha group about the Punjabi Sufi Bulleh Shah. It proves to be the most well-directed and moving play I've ever seen.

It mocks exploitation of institutionalized religion in the most powerful way, sending the audience to tears.