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SUFI SHRINE ON CLOUD NINE
By YOGINDER SIKAND
The shrine of the renowned twelfth century Chishti mystic Hazrat Khwaja Moinduddin Chishti in Ajmer in Rajasthan is one of the most renowned and revered Sufi dargahs in all of South Asia. Every year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims—Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs—visit the shrine. Donations to the shrine from pilgrims run into several million rupees annually. This precisely is the cause for a raging controversy involving leading members of the Dargah Committee and a group of Muslim social activists who have recently issued a report on the alleged financial bungling and mismanagement at the shrine. The seven-member group constituted an inquiry committee after the Ministry of Minority Affairs received what the committee says were 'hundreds of complaints' as well as a Public Interest Litigation filed by an NGO in the Delhi High Court about financial misdoings at the shrine.
Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti is known for having led a simple and austere life. He is said to have donated to the poor whatever he received from people who came to visit him. For this he earned the sobriquet Gharib Nawaz or 'helper of the poor'. This, the report says, is in complete contrast to what several members of the committee appointed to manage his shrine are today up to. As any visitor to the shrine will attest, for many custodians of the shrine their work is actually a flourishing business, pestering pilgrims for donations the moment they step inside the precincts of the dargah.
The inquiry committee report relates numerous instances of financial mismanagement at the shrine. It refers to allegations against the President of the Dargah Committee, Peerzada Shibli Qasim, who has been accused of corruption relating to collection of donations in the name of the shrine and of misusing the dargah's guesthouse for his family. He is also alleged of allowing a liquor shop to continue to function in the premises of the Dargah Committee. Interestingly, four of his colleagues in the Dargah Committee, Mansoor Ali Lalli, Shaukat Ali Ansari, Abdul Wahid and Kadar Bhai Wadiwala, lodged a complaint last year accusing him of having filed a writ petition in the Rajasthan High Court without their consent against the Ministry of Minority Affairs for allegedly not taking the permission of the Dargah Committee for the appointment of the Nazim of manager. For that the amount settled by the lawyer was Rs. 34,600, of which he is said to have taken took Rs. 15,000/- in advance. The four members wanted that this amount be recovered from Qasim. Qasim also claims that he has been running a dargah school till, but he has not disclosed the exact amount spent on this as per the Act 36 of the Dargah Act of 1955.
According to the report, Abdul Aleem, the deputy manager or Naib Nazim of the Dargah Committee, is alleged to have consistently issued money to various members of the Committee 'in a manner most unprofessional' and 'without proper vouchers or stamped papers'. He claims to be engaged in social work by running a computer centre, a school and a langar or free community kitchen, but, the report says, he did not divulge the budget for these activities. Allegations have also been leveled against him of permitting the khuddam or traditional custodians of the shrine to encroach on the dargah premises, including in the main courtyard of the shrine.
Shaukat Ali Ansari, proprietor of a gun-manufacturing factory, is another member of the Dargah Committee. The inquiry committee found that he has been occupying a flat in the dargah for more than a year, where he has arranged for the sons of his friend to stay, without clearing the dues. The committee also found that 'he had no answer to the heaps of pages written against his scams at the Waqf Board or concerning the dargah' except denying these charges. Thus, for instance, Babu Lal Singharia, ex-M.L.A. from Kekdi, claims that Ansari had appropriated more some 1.7 lakh rupees. Jas Raj, President of the Ajmer District Congress Committee and former M.L.A., accused Ansari of having 'illegally grabbed the chairmanship of Rajasthan Waqf Board' and 'frittering away the Waqf land, including many graveyards'. The report mentions Haji Qayyum Khan, former M.L.A., who has alleged that Ansari 'has regularly been misappropriating Waqf Board funds'. These include withdrawal of a fixed deposit of a whopping sum of almost 20 lakh rupees, leasing Waqf property at the Imambara in Mount Abu by taking fifteen lakh rupees as bribe and parting with two lakh rupees for election purposes. Haji Qayyum Khan has also leveled charges against Ansari for the death of six persons. The President of the All-India Jamaat-e Qureish, Fazl-e-Karim Qureshi, refers to 'umpteen cases of misappropriation of funds' while Ansari served as Chairman of the Rajasthan Waqf Board between 1991 and 1998, including having allegedly taken some 22 lakh rupees from workers for their appointment.
The inquiry committee raises questions regarding Dargah Committee member Abdul Kadir Wadiwala, who has been accused by Jas Raj, ex-MLA, of misusing a sum of more than 1.75 lakh rupees and of not paying rent for the guest house of the dargah for almost six years. The Muslim Ekta Manch , a local civil society organization, has claimed that that Wadiwala has collected several lakh rupees in the name of the dargah, which he has invested in his own business.
The Inquiry Committee refers to 'bundles of papers of complaints' against another member of the Dargah Committee, Mansoor Ali Lalli, accusing him of gross manipulation of funds. For instance, he is said to have spent more than fifty thousand rupees on food and tea on himself and his family at the dargah's restaurant. He is also said to have charged more than forty thousand rupees by way of traveling and dearness allowance without submitting any vouchers and to have collected money from donors for the decoration of the dargah but failing to pay this into the dargah's account. Another charge is that he has collected money from outside donors as well as a sum of almost sixty thousand rupees from the Dargah Committee for organizing a poetry recitation function or mushaira, although the Dargah Act of 1955 does not provide for allotment of money for this purpose.
Abdul Bari Chishti, another member of the Dargah Committee, has been accused by the Inquiry Committee on account of collection of donations in the name of the dargah and of misusing the shrine's guest for personal purposes. He has been also alleged to have let out dargah premises to people for less than the assessed market rate and of using vehicles belonging to the shrine for his personal use.
The report alleges political interference in appointments to the Dargah Committee. One such case relates to Mr. Wahid, Ajmer District BJP President, a tenant of the dargah, who, while 'erratic and irregular' in paying his rent, was allegedly able to become a member of the Committee through the influence of a BJP Minister, Satyanarayan Jatiya. Wahid has been accused of being involved in changing the rentals of Dargah Committee properties and of occupying some shops in the Dargah Committee complex but failing to regularly pay rent.
Based on the evidence that it claims to have collected, the Inquiry Committee concludes its report by asserting that the presence of unscrupulous people in the Dargah Committee would 'jeopardise and tarnish' the image of South Asia's most popular Sufi shrine. Similar charges could be leveled against numerous other popular religious establishments and pilgrimage centres across India, irrespective of religious affiliation. The report 's damning indictment suggests the need for greater involvement of public interest and civil society groups in overseeing the running of such places, which, in the name of serving religious causes, are also being used to promote the personal interests of their custodians.
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