Open And Inclusive

By TNI Correspondent, *Sufism creates grounds for nation* - The News International - Karachi, Pakistan
Monday, April 5, 2010

Lahore: The religious movement associated with Sufism creates grounds for nation building as pilgrimages and festivals attached with this movement connect people and spaces.

These were the views of noted social anthropologist Pnina Werbner, a Professor of Social Anthropology at Keele University, UK, in her keynote address on “Cultural Practices and Religion” as part of the fifth Annual Humanities and Social Conference 2010 at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) which concluded on Sunday.

The topic of the conference was “Cultural Practices and Religion” and speakers critically investigated culture and religion to shed light on locally embedded discourses of resistance which have the potential to produce social change.

Giving account of her personal experiences, Pnina Werbner argued that Sufi orders reached out beyond the local to create embodied experience of moral relations between strangers. “These pilgrimages and festivals are open and inclusive,” she said adding “this intermingling is extremely rare as people from different walks of life and different classes attend such events”.

She also mentioned women taking parts in Urs celebrations, saying they take active part in such pilgrimages as supplicants seeking help for a variety of afflictions.

Dr Marcia Hermensen made a presentation on “The Black Dervish Whirled: An exploration of globalization, race, and religious practice at a South Asian qawwali in Chicago”. Her paper was based on religious ritual that took place in Chicago in October 2009 according to which an African American dervish briefly took the floor and engaged in Turkish Mevlevi style whirling before a supportive but somewhat baffled audience of Indian Muslims and Pakistani immigrants in Chicago in 2009.

The paper presented material gained by subsequent interviews with various attendees exploring their interpretations and impressions of the incident.

Mr Tommaso Sbriccoli presented his paper on “Mobility strategies of Rajasthani Raikas: Routes, borders and policies” and talked about the strategies of pastoral mobility carried out by Raika sheep herders of the Godwar region in Rajasthan.

He focused on the way space was thought and managed by state institutions on the one side and by Raika sheep breeders moving in the herding camps (dera) on the other.

The paper highlighted that since the partition of India and Pakistan, Raikas have had to readjust their moving strategies, adapting their routes to the changed geopolitical context and demonstrating the capacity to answer to a constantly variable ecological and political environment. It also claimed that with partition, Raikas lost not only spaces for the winter pastures in the Hindu Valley but religious places on the other side of the border.

Bhai Baldeep Singh’s “Musical dilemma as cultural dilemma” explored how music permeated in cultural practices and religion.

The paper “Sense experience: A reading of the poetry of Bulleh Shah” by Anita Mir focused on three ways of knowing, knowing via sight, taste and touch. She called the process of knowing by means of senses “sensible transcendence”.

She examined the experience of senses in the verse of the Sufi Punjabi mystic Bulleh Shah.

A question-answer session was also held.

[Picture: Professor Marcia Hermansen, Loyola University, Chicago, USA.]

[Visit the LUMS]