Shrine caretakers in Kashmir decry ouster from donation spots

By Hilal Mir

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir (AA) – Rouf Ahmad Shah’s relation with the Sufi shrine of Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jeelani in Indian-administered Kashmir is both spiritual and economic, like the centuries-long line of his forebears.

Like Shah, hundreds of caretakers (locally called peers) in the shrines of Kashmir conduct Sufi practices, guide visitors on shrine manners, give the distraught people the blessed crystal sugar and bread besides taking care of some affairs of these much-visited abodes.

A peer gets to take home everything a visitor gives him — cash, an occasional sheep or chicken someone in distress has offered to the saint.

Additionally, the peers used to get a share of the donations collected in boxes that were placed strategically in every shrine.

Competing with the peers’ boxes were a much higher number of the boxes of the Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board, a semi-autonomous statutory institution that manages shrines and a sizable number of shrine properties such as shopping complexes, orchards and buildings.

Recently, the board ordered peers boxes should be removed and all donations be collected by its employees.

The board said it had received complaints that some people had been “receiving donations forcibly and through exploitative means.”

An order issued by the board reads: “Despite coming from a reasonably sound economic background, such people are permanently occupying particular spots within the shrines for their activities, and there are instances when such spots are being outsourced or contracted out against receipt of large sums of money.”

An official of the board, who looks into the affairs of some of the shrines in the capital Srinagar, told Anadolu Agency on the condition of anonymity that Wakaf officials collected rupees 100,000 ($1,254) in three days at the shrine of Makhdoom Sahib only, one of the six holiest shrines collectively called “shesh boaqa.”

“Even if 40% of the donations would go to peers, we are depriving the needy of a lot of money,” he said.

- Sufi tradition

Khalid Geelani, who is the hereditary administrator, or Sajadah Nasheen, of the Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jeelani shrine, told Anadolu Agency that the decision to dislodge peers was “too sudden and too harsh.”

“Peers are not about donations alone. They are the torch bearers of a Sufi tradition that is centuries old. This tradition is not self-sustaining. It is an ecosystem that is sustained and nourished by peers and the people of this land. And what is wrong in people giving peers for all these services?” said Geelani, who is an eleventh-generation administrator. His family is the custodian of relics of the Sufi masters buried inside the shrine.

The peer tradition predates the Wakaf Board or any outside administrative setup by centuries.

At the Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jeelani’s shrine, the Waqf Board runs 18 donation collection counters and five boxes — now removed — were meant for 22 peer families. Fifty percent of donations went to the hereditary administrator and the rest was distributed among the dozens of members of the 22 families.

But they didn’t get to take all of it home.

“Peers are part of an institution that would take care of the destitute and widows and other dependent people. Bread and other items for certain rituals would be paid from this money as were the salaries of the muezzin and vice-Imam,” said Rouf Shah.

Geelani said the board should have consulted the people associated with this vast ecosystem if its aim was reforms.

- Money factor

Naseem ul Gani, a retired chief education officer, said the peer families have an emotional connection with the shrines and they owe their special religious identity to this association.

Gani is one of the 288 people who take turns at the shrine of Reshmol Sahab, a mystic in the locally bred tradition of Rishism, in the Anantnag district, for a weekly sitting. The Rishi order is a religious tradition of mystical teaching or spiritual practices associated with the religious harmony of Sufism in the Kashmir Valley.

He told Anadolu Agency that a wait for the second turn can stretch from 24 to 144 weeks. And the person who is on the weekly sitting has to share 40% of the day’s returns with others who are in the shrine at the time, whose number ranges between 20-30.

On normal days, the peers conduct khatmat (ritual chanting of Quranic verses by a gathering of peers over eatables and water, which is then distributed among the visitors) at least five to seven times. On special days, the ritual is held up to 10 times. Attendants of patients at a nearby hospital are the ones who request for khatmat the most, Gani said.

Gani said his father Abdul Gani Khatib was a full-time peer at the shrine and he managed to provide his children education from donations only.

“I feel obligated to go to the shrine. It is a spiritual connection. Otherwise, my children and I pay more than 200,000 rupees in taxes a year,” he said.

Gani and Geelani and other peers Anadolu Agency spoke with are apprehensive about whether this tradition will survive at all because, as Geelani said: “Things are foggy as of now.”

But Darakshan Andrabi, the chairperson of the Waqf Board and a member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, told Anadolu Agency that boxes were removed under the provisions of Waqf rules, which are clear about who can sit in the shrines.

“The rituals peers perform are the soul of these shrines. Nobody will stop them from doing that. And if people give them money, it is their right. We have issues with exploitation in the name of religion,” she said.